ADHD on Sam's Blog

ADHD Prioritizing

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The ADHD Prioritization Problem

Okay, so let’s talk about prioritizing when your brain basically treats every task like it’s either THE MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER or completely invisible. Because that’s what ADHD prioritization feels like, right? Either something has grabbed your attention and it becomes this all-consuming hyperfocus target, or it might as well not exist.

I’ve been trying to figure this out for years now, and I think I’ve finally found something that actually works for my chaotic brain. It’s not perfect—nothing ever is with ADHD—but it’s gotten me out of more than a few “oh shit, I was supposed to deliver that yesterday” situations.

The Formula

The formula is actually pretty simple: Impact - Effort = Importance Importance + Urgency = Priority

But like most simple things, the devil is in the details.

Let me break this down because when I first wrote this little equation, I thought I was being clever, but it took me months to actually understand what I meant by my own system.

Understanding Impact

Impact is supposed to be straightforward—how much does this thing matter? But ADHD brains are terrible at estimating impact because we’re either catastrophizing (“if I don’t respond to this email immediately, everyone will think I’m unprofessional and I’ll lose my job and end up homeless”) or minimizing (“this is probably fine, someone else will handle it”).

So I had to get really specific about what impact means. I use a 1-3 scale:

Impact 1: Nice to have, makes things slightly better
Impact 2: Meaningfully improves something important
Impact 3: Critical for major goals or prevents significant problems

The key insight for me was realizing that “important to someone else” doesn’t automatically make something high impact for me. My manager might think it’s critical that I update that spreadsheet, but if it doesn’t actually move any needles that matter, it’s probably a 1.

Rethinking Effort

Effort is where ADHD gets really weird, because our effort estimation is completely shot. Tasks that should take twenty minutes somehow expand to consume entire afternoons. Meanwhile, complex problems that should take days sometimes get solved during a random burst of hyperfocus.

I’ve learned to think about effort not in terms of time, but in terms of mental load:

Effort 1: I can do this without much mental energy, maybe even while doing something else
Effort 2: Requires focus but doesn’t drain me
Effort 3: High cognitive load, will leave me mentally exhausted

Here’s the thing about the Impact - Effort calculation: it’s designed to surface the high-leverage activities. The stuff that makes a big difference without destroying your brain. Impact 3, Effort 1 tasks are golden—they’re your quick wins that actually matter.

But ADHD brains love to procrastinate on Impact 3, Effort 3 tasks. They’re important but hard, so we avoid them, which makes them more urgent, which makes them more stressful, which makes them feel even harder. It’s a vicious cycle.

The Urgency Reality Check

That’s where the Urgency factor comes in. I use a 0-3 scale:

Urgency 0: No particular deadline
Urgency 1: Should be done soon-ish
Urgency 2: Has a real deadline that matters
Urgency 3: On fire, needs to be done now

The Importance + Urgency = Priority calculation is basically the Eisenhower Matrix, but with ADHD-friendly modifications. Because here’s what I’ve learned: urgency is often artificial, but sometimes it’s not, and the ADHD brain is terrible at telling the difference.

Someone sending you a “quick question” with a red exclamation mark doesn’t make it actually urgent. But a production outage that’s losing the company money? That’s legitimately urgent.

Finding the Sweet Spot

The magic happens when you start looking at tasks that are high importance but low urgency. These are your Impact 3, Effort 1 or 2 tasks that don’t have artificial deadline pressure. They’re the investments that pay off over time, but they’re exactly the kind of thing ADHD brains will ignore until they become urgent.

So I try to batch these during my hyperfocus periods. When I’m in that sweet spot of mental energy and attention, I’ll look for the high-importance, low-urgency tasks and knock out as many as I can.

The other thing this system does is help me say no to things. If something is Impact 1 and Effort 3—low importance but high cognitive load—I can confidently decline or delegate it. My brain wants to treat all requests equally, but they’re not equal.

Reality Check: It’s Not Perfect

Now, does this system solve ADHD prioritization completely? Hell no. I still get distracted by interesting problems that score low on both impact and urgency. I still procrastinate on important-but-boring tasks until they become urgent. I still occasionally hyperfocus on reorganizing my task management system instead of actually doing the tasks.

But it gives me a framework for making decisions when my brain is too scattered to think clearly. It helps me recognize when I’m avoiding something because it’s hard versus avoiding it because it’s not actually important. And it makes me feel slightly less guilty when I choose to work on the interesting problem instead of the “should do” task, because at least I’m making that choice consciously.

The Real Insight

The real insight, though, is that prioritization for ADHD brains isn’t just about choosing what to work on. It’s about choosing what not to work on. About recognizing that our attention is finite and precious, and we need to be strategic about where we spend it.

Because the alternative is letting urgency and anxiety drive all our decisions, and that’s a recipe for burnout and constantly feeling behind.

So yeah, that’s my system. Impact minus Effort equals Importance. Importance plus Urgency equals Priority. Scale of 1-3 for everything. Simple enough that I can calculate it in my head when I’m overwhelmed, complex enough that it actually helps me make better decisions.

Just don’t ask me to prioritize writing about prioritization. That’s definitely a high-effort task that I’ve been procrastinating on by hyperfocusing on the system itself.

Another Day, Another Tool, Another Dopamine Hit

Fri, 13 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Another day, another productivity app. Another JavaScript framework. Another note-taking system that’s going to finally, finally be the one that gets my chaotic ADHD brain organized.

I know this cycle intimately now. I’ll be struggling with some aspect of my workflow—maybe I can’t keep track of my tasks, or I’m losing important information in the noise, or I just feel like I’m not being as effective as I could be. And then I’ll stumble across some new tool, some elegant solution that promises to solve exactly the problem I’m having.

The demo looks perfect. The interface is clean and intuitive. The features seem designed specifically for someone like me. I can practically feel my future self thanking me for discovering this game-changing solution.

So I sign up. I spend an afternoon configuring everything just right, importing my data from the previous tool, setting up integrations, customizing the interface. I feel productive and organized and optimistic about how much more effective I’m going to be now that I have the right tool.

For about two weeks.

Then the novelty wears off, and I start noticing the limitations. Maybe the mobile app is clunky, or the search function doesn’t work the way my brain expects it to, or it doesn’t quite fit into the rest of my workflow the way I thought it would. The initial excitement fades, and I’m back to feeling like I’m fighting against my tools instead of being helped by them.

And then I see a post about some new tool that promises to solve exactly the problems I’m having with the current tool, and the cycle begins again.

I’ve been through this so many times now that I could write a field guide to productivity tools for ADHD brains. Task managers, note-taking apps, calendars, time trackers, habit builders—I’ve tried them all. Multiple times.

Obsidian, Notion, Roam Research, Logseq, RemNote. Todoist, Things, OmniFocus, TickTick. Clockify, RescueTime, Toggl. Forest, Habitica, Streaks.

Each one was going to be “the one.” Each one had some feature or philosophy that seemed perfectly aligned with how my brain works. Each one generated that same burst of dopamine-fueled optimism.

And you know what? Some of them actually were genuinely helpful, for a while. The problem isn’t that these tools are bad—many of them are excellent. The problem is that I keep expecting them to fix something that can’t be fixed with software.

The ADHD brain craves novelty. It’s wired to pay attention to new and interesting things, and to get bored with routine and familiarity. This is actually a strength in many contexts—it makes us good at spotting patterns, adapting to change, coming up with creative solutions. But it’s a liability when it comes to consistency and routine.

We need systems and processes to manage our scattered attention and poor working memory. But we also get bored with systems and processes, especially once they become predictable. It’s like needing medication that stops working after two weeks because your brain adapts to it.

The tool-switching isn’t really about the tools. It’s about the dopamine hit of discovery, the excitement of possibility, the brief period where everything feels manageable and under control.

It’s also about hope. Each new tool represents hope that maybe this time will be different. Maybe this system will be the one that finally makes everything click into place. Maybe this interface will be intuitive enough that I’ll actually stick with it. Maybe this approach will work with my brain instead of against it.

And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that hope. The alternative is accepting that you’re just going to be disorganized and ineffective forever, and that’s not a healthy mindset either.

But I’ve started to recognize the pattern, and that recognition has helped me approach it more strategically. Instead of expecting any tool to be a permanent solution, I think of them as temporary scaffolding. Something to support me while I’m building habits or working through a particular challenge.

I’ve also gotten better at identifying which aspects of a tool are actually useful versus which ones are just novel. The shiny new interface might be what initially attracts me, but the boring features—like reliable sync, good search, simple data export—are what determine whether it’ll actually be helpful.

Mostly, I’ve learned to be more forgiving of myself for the constant tool-switching. It used to make me feel like I was flaky and undisciplined, like I couldn’t commit to anything. But I’ve realized that the experimentation itself is valuable. Each tool teaches me something about how my brain works, what kinds of interfaces and workflows feel natural, what features I actually need versus what I think I want.

The ADHD brain learns by doing, not by planning. We can’t just think our way to the perfect productivity system—we have to try things and see what works. And what works changes over time as our responsibilities shift, as our understanding of our own needs evolves, as the tools themselves improve.

So yeah, I’m probably going to keep trying new tools. I’m probably going to get excited about the next note-taking app that promises to revolutionize how I organize my thoughts. I’m probably going to spend a weekend setting up some elaborate system that I’ll abandon in a month.

But now I know that’s okay. The tool-switching isn’t a character flaw—it’s just how my brain explores the space of possibilities. The dopamine hits aren’t shallow and meaningless—they’re fuel for the experimentation that eventually leads to insights and improvements.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I discover something that genuinely makes my life better. Not permanently, not perfectly, but meaningfully. A workflow that reduces friction, an interface that matches my mental model, a feature that solves a problem I’ve been struggling with for years.

Those discoveries are worth all the false starts and abandoned setups. They’re worth the eye-rolls from friends who’ve watched me get excited about productivity systems dozens of times. They’re worth the nagging voice in my head that says I should just pick something and stick with it.

Because the alternative—giving up on the search for better ways of working—means accepting limitations that might not actually be permanent. And the ADHD brain, for all its inconsistencies and contradictions, is fundamentally optimistic about the possibility of improvement.

We keep trying because we believe things can get better. We keep experimenting because we’re not satisfied with “good enough.” We keep switching tools because we’re still learning how we work best.

And you know what? Sometimes that relentless optimism pays off. Sometimes the next tool really is better than the last one. Sometimes the experimentation leads to genuine insights. Sometimes another day, another tool, another dopamine hit is exactly what we need to keep moving forward.

Even if we’ll probably be trying something new again next month.

Unfiltered thoughts from an ADHD Engineer

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Silent Struggle of ADHD

So here’s the thing about having ADHD in tech: nobody talks about it. Not really. We’ll talk about imposter syndrome and burnout and work-life balance, but we won’t talk about what it’s like to have a brain that works differently in an industry that expects you to think in straight lines.

As someone who’s been aware of their ADHD diagnosis for the last 20+ years, this is nothing new. And yet despite all of that time, and the many years spent trying to better understand how my brain works, I still only somewhat have a grasp on what is going on inside my mind. We don’t fully understand ADHD (nor the treatment options) from a scientific perspective, so how can I be expected to understand it as a regular person?

And now I’m trying to figure out how to talk about it professionally without sounding like I’m making excuses or asking for special treatment. Because the truth is, ADHD is both my biggest professional asset and my biggest professional liability, sometimes within the same hour.

It’s Not a Deficit: It’s Dopamine Disregulation

But here’s what I wish more people understood: ADHD isn’t really a deficit disorder, despite what the name suggests. It’s fundamentally about dopamine regulation—or more accurately, the inability to regulate dopamine distribution in your brain.

Dopamine is your brain’s reward and motivation system. It’s what makes tasks feel rewarding, what helps you maintain attention on things that aren’t immediately interesting, what drives executive function. In neurotypical brains, dopamine gets released in predictable ways that help maintain steady attention and motivation.

In ADHD brains? It’s chaos. We don’t produce dopamine consistently, and we don’t distribute it where it needs to go when it needs to be there. This explains so much about why we function the way we do.

The Dopamine Feast or Famine

Sometimes we get massive dopamine floods from interesting, novel, or challenging tasks, which is what creates hyperfocus. Your brain finally gets the chemical reward it’s been craving, so it latches onto that activity with laser intensity. This is why I can spend fourteen hours straight debugging a fascinating race condition but can’t force myself to spend twenty minutes updating documentation.

Other times, we’re running on dopamine fumes. Boring but necessary tasks don’t trigger any reward response, so our brains literally can’t engage. It’s not laziness or lack of discipline: it’s neurochemistry. The executive function circuits that control planning, working memory, and task switching all depend on adequate dopamine, and when it’s not there, they just… don’t work.

This feast-or-famine cycle also explains why ADHD brains are at higher risk for addiction. We’re constantly seeking that dopamine hit, whether it’s from stimulating work, caffeine, social media, video games, or unfortunately sometimes more dangerous substances. Our brains are literally wired to chase rewards because we’re not getting consistent baseline dopamine like neurotypical people do.

The Superpowers (Yes, Really)

Let me start with the good stuff, because there is good stuff, even though most of the literature focuses on deficits and disorders. The ADHD brain is really, really good at pattern recognition. I can look at a codebase and immediately spot the places where abstractions are breaking down, where complexity is accumulating, where the architecture is starting to buckle under its own weight.

I can context-switch between projects faster than most people can remember what they were working on. I can hold multiple complex mental models in my head simultaneously. I can see connections between seemingly unrelated problems and come up with solutions that nobody else was considering.

When I’m in hyperfocus mode (which is basically the ADHD equivalent of flow state, except more intense and less controllable) I can solve problems that have been stumping teams for weeks. I’ll disappear into code for eight hours straight and emerge with some elegant solution that addresses not just the immediate problem but three other issues that nobody even realized were related.

These are genuine strengths. They’re not consolation prizes or silver linings. They’re legitimate advantages that have made me better at my job in measurable ways.

The Hidden Costs

But here’s the thing: they come with costs that are really hard to explain to people whose brains work more predictably.

When Hyperfocus Goes Wrong

Let me talk about hyperfocus for a moment, because everyone seems to think it’s a superpower without understanding the downsides. Yes, hyperfocus can be incredibly productive. But it’s also completely involuntary and often inappropriate.

Hyperfocus happens when something finally triggers enough dopamine to flood your attention circuits. The problem is, you can’t control what triggers it or when it stops. I can hyperfocus on optimizing a function that saves three milliseconds while completely ignoring the critical bug that’s affecting thousands of users. I can spend six hours researching the perfect keyboard instead of working on the deadline that’s tomorrow.

And when you’re in hyperfocus, everything else ceases to exist. I’ll forget to eat, forget to go to the bathroom, forget that I have a family. I’ve missed meetings, ignored urgent messages, and worked through severe dehydration because my brain was locked onto something and wouldn’t let go. This isn’t my experience only; this is a pattern that most people will ADHD will recognize immediately. “Have you had food/water today” is a question that is honestly not asked of me enough.

Executive Function: When the CEO of Your Brain Goes Missing

Then there’s executive functioning (or in this case, disfunctioning): basically the CEO of your brain. This is the element of your mind that is supposed to prioritize tasks, manage working memory, control impulses, and coordinate between different brain regions. In ADHD brains, that CEO is either completely absent or drunk on the job.

This is why I can architect systems that handle millions of users but need seventeen different productivity apps to remember basic tasks. The part of my brain that can solve complex technical problems is completely separate from the part that’s supposed to manage day-to-day executive tasks. And when dopamine isn’t flowing to the executive function circuits, that CEO just… doesn’t show up to work.

It’s not that I don’t care about responding to emails or submitting timesheets. It’s that the neurochemical infrastructure required to prioritize and remember those tasks literally isn’t functioning properly.

The Dopamine-Seeking Trap

Here’s something nobody talks about: ADHD brains are basically addiction machines. Not because we have addictive personalities, but because we’re constantly seeking the dopamine hits that neurotypical brains get naturally.

This shows up in tech work in ways that can look productive on the surface. The endless scroll through Hacker News or Reddit “for research.” The compulsive checking of notifications, email, Slack. The inability to step away from a problem even when you’re exhausted because your brain finally found something that’s giving it the chemical reward it craves.

I’ve seen ADHD engineers burn out not because they were working too hard, but because they couldn’t stop working once they found something stimulating. They’d code for eighteen hours straight, forget to eat, ignore their families, and crash completely when the dopamine finally ran out.

The addiction risk is real and higher than most people realize. Stimulants (including caffeine), alcohol, gaming, social media, even workaholism: they’re all ways our brains try to self-medicate the dopamine disregulation. The line between “passionate about technology” and “addicted to the dopamine hit of solving problems” can be frighteningly thin.

The Invisible Struggle

And the worst part is that these struggles are invisible. When someone sees me solve a complex technical problem quickly, they assume I’m just naturally organized and productive. They don’t see the internal chaos, the constant background noise of half-formed thoughts and mental tangents, the exhaustion that comes from fighting your own brain all day just to appear normal.

They don’t see the imposter syndrome that kicks in when hyperfocus wears off and suddenly I can’t remember how I solved that problem or whether I actually understand it as well as I thought I did.

They definitely don’t see the shame spiral that happens when I miss deadlines not because the work is hard, but because I couldn’t make myself do the boring parts. Or when I have to ask someone to repeat instructions for the third time because my mind wandered during the explanation.

The Diversity We Don’t Talk About

The tech industry loves to talk about diversity and inclusion, but we mostly mean visible diversity. We’re getting better at recognizing that teams work better when they include different backgrounds and perspectives and experiences. We’re slowly learning to accommodate different working styles and communication preferences.

But we’re still not great at accommodating different cognitive styles. We still design processes and practices around neurotypical assumptions about attention and motivation and memory.

When Agile Isn’t So Agile

Take agile ceremonies, for example. Daily standups are supposed to be quick check-ins, but they often turn into rambling status updates that go on for thirty minutes. For someone with ADHD, that’s torture. My attention starts wandering after about five minutes, and by the end I can’t remember what anyone said, including what I said about my own work.

Retros are supposed to be collaborative reflection sessions, but they’re often dominated by whoever talks the loudest or thinks the fastest. The ADHD brain has great insights, but they often come in bursts, or tangents, or connections that seem random until you explain the underlying logic. By the time I’ve figured out how to articulate a thought, the conversation has moved on.

Project planning sessions assume that you can estimate how long tasks will take based on their apparent complexity. But ADHD brains don’t work that way. Sometimes the “easy” task takes forever because it’s boring and my brain won’t engage with it. Sometimes the “hard” task gets done in two hours because it triggered hyperfocus.

I’ve learned to work around most of these issues—I take detailed notes during meetings, I break large tasks into smaller pieces, I use timers and reminders and accountability systems. But it’s exhausting to constantly translate between how my brain works and how the workplace expects it to work.

The Performance of Normal

I’m one of the lucky ones. I’m in a field where being weird and obsessive about details is often seen as a positive trait. I work for companies that value results over process, where being able to solve hard problems quickly matters more than being able to sit still during long meetings.

But I still feel like I’m performing “normal” most of the time. Still worrying that if people knew how much effort it takes me to do things that seem effortless for others, they’d question whether I actually belong here.

The truth is, I don’t know if I’m a good engineer despite having ADHD or because of it. Probably both. The pattern recognition and systems thinking and ability to see connections—those come from the same brain that can’t remember where I put my keys or what I had for lunch.

We’re Not Alone

What I do know is that there are a lot of us out there, more than most people realize. Engineers and designers and product managers and CTOs who are quietly struggling with executive function and working memory and attention regulation while trying to build the future.

And maybe we’d all benefit from talking about it more. From acknowledging that diversity includes cognitive diversity, that different brains solve problems differently, that the weird kid who can’t sit still during meetings might be the same person who sees the solution that nobody else was looking for.

Worth Celebrating

Ultimately, the best technology comes from people who think differently. Who see patterns others miss, who ask questions others don’t think to ask, who approach problems from angles that seem random until they reveal insights that change everything.

That’s worth protecting. That’s worth accommodating. That’s worth celebrating.

Even if it means figuring out how to make meetings shorter.