[HN Gopher] The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting thin...
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The ADHD body double: A unique tool for getting things done
Author : yamrzou
Score : 325 points
Date : 2025-04-05 22:45 UTC (1 days ago)
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| zeristor wrote:
| Strangely I've found myself to be something like 400% more
| productive when pair programming.
|
| I've not heard anyone mention this aspect of paired programming
| for people with ADHD, although as a colleague once mentioned I
| jump from one thing to another, but in the end I've done the
| loop.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Absolutely same experience. It's quite draining but extremely
| effective.
| bitwize wrote:
| That kind of aligns with Guy Steele's experience pair
| programming... with Richard Stallman: "My first thought
| afterward was: it was a great experience, very intense, and
| that I never wanted to do it again in my life."
|
| https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch06.html
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| It helped that they were working on an interesting problem.
| Most problems that need solving are not interesting.
| N2yhWNXQN3k9 wrote:
| There is very little evidence for this. IMO, it is feel good
| advice that sounds right.
|
| Try background noise of any sort, until you find a fit.
|
| I can't pay attention to anything anymore without noise. A
| little rumble in thy ears does wonders.
|
| I severely question anecdotes that pair programming does
| anything other than motivate you to not look like a moron
| wasting time in front of someone else (in the context of ADHD
| -- there are other uses for it).
|
| That isn't a viable strategy for growth, imo.
|
| Also, if you are new to taking stimulants, you might be
| surprised how much worse it gets later in life, especially if
| you have been taking them since youth. There is a non-zero cost
| (I would say a sacrifice) to treating ADHD with amphetamines or
| other dopamine reuptake inhibitors / dopamingenics.
|
| If you doubt this, there is very little mention of body
| doubling in literature outside of blogs:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%20%22Body%20Doubling%...
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22Body%20Double%22%20...
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=%22Body%20Double%22%
| viraptor wrote:
| > I severely question anecdotes that pair programming does
| anything other than motivate you to not look like a moron
| wasting time in front of someone else
|
| So... you're basically saying it works? Because that's what
| it does in practice. The other person is the external
| motivator for keeping attention on the task.
|
| > you might be surprised how much worse it gets later in
| life, especially if you have been taking them since youth
|
| Got any support for that? (Not being dismissive; never heard
| of that beyond the usual "effectiveness goes down over time")
|
| > If you doubt this, there is very little mention of body
| doubling in literature outside of blogs:
|
| Yup, there's still little in terms of specific research, but
| if you look at the papers about externalising
| motivation/triggers... it's close to a specific
| implementation of those ideas rather than a separate thing.
| N2yhWNXQN3k9 wrote:
| > So... you're basically saying it works?
|
| Working under pressure isn't a viable therapy, IMO. In my
| experience, it is a path to burn out and diminishing
| returns.
|
| > Got any support for that?
|
| Anecdotally, ~25 years of eating them, but there is plenty
| of evidence that prolonged use of amphetamine causes
| structural neuronal changes, even at therapeutic doses.
|
| Here is one article:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38665308/
|
| > you look at the papers about externalising
| motivation/triggers
|
| What papers? What do they say?
|
| Also, fear (an external motivator) is a great way to
| release catecholamines for positive outcomes in ADHD, but
| it is also a great way to increase general stress, which
| has many other outcomes (free cortisol changes, etc).
| pjerem wrote:
| > Working under pressure isn't a viable therapy, IMO. In
| my experience, it is a path to burn out and diminishing
| returns.
|
| Except that pair programming doesn't make you work under
| pressure. I extensively use this technique for body
| doubling as much as I can. It motivates me to start the
| task and I also love the exchange : you can learn things,
| teach things, be stuck together, find solutions together,
| swear together, laugh, agree on how horrible is this
| thing you must fix ...
|
| In fact it's what I'd call real teamwork. I never felt it
| like pressure and it gives me a lot of energy.
|
| Incidentally, I think the only friends I made at work
| (the real friends you invite at home even when you don't
| work at the same place anymore) were through frequent
| pair programming sessions. I think there is something
| about knowing how the other person thinks that helps
| bonding together.
| viraptor wrote:
| > Working under pressure isn't a viable therapy,
|
| None of ADHD related stuff is really therapy. We only
| know how to manage symptoms for now.
|
| > Anecdotally
|
| Yeah...
|
| > prolonged use of amphetamine causes structural neuronal
| changes
|
| Sure. But is it worse than unmanaged ADHD which also
| results in brain changes over time?
|
| > What papers? What do they say?
|
| It's a whole category, but you could start with this
| collection:
|
| https://www.connectedpapers.com/main/00e762a8efd5581c93af
| cb8...
|
| Every time ADHD coaching is mentioned, part of that
| process is learning planning ahead for distractions, part
| is learning to externalise reminders / triggers and
| hacking the reward functions. Maybe there's some paper
| which tests each of those in isolation, but I'm not going
| to dig that deep. In aggregate, ADHD coaching has
| positive results. Pairing is an extreme version of one
| part of it.
|
| > Also, fear (an external motivator)
|
| Pairing with others shouldn't involve fear. It's just two
| people being able to share and communicate the motivation
| to initiate the next step / question. If it causes you
| actual stress, either you're doing it with a wrong
| person, or it may just not be for you.
| wavemode wrote:
| What is at all strange about wanting to work near other
| people so you keep each other motivated to remain focused?
| It's not magic, and it's not a treatment for ADHD (nor a
| replacement for such). It's just a common sense response to
| living in an age where everyone works from home isolated.
| Some people just work better with company.
|
| > If you doubt this, there is very little mention of body
| doubling in literature outside of blogs
|
| Wow, I sure better stop doing everything in my life that
| there isn't literature on.
| N2yhWNXQN3k9 wrote:
| Yeah, I mean, saying stuff like this is polarizing.
| zeristor wrote:
| Good points.
|
| Meds. They never quite worked for me, others have noticed a
| change, but not me; and the side effects became too
| intrusive.
|
| Working under pressure, I guess this is an issue for me. As
| mentioned it can be a load on the person you're pairing with,
| but so often I can unlock skills pairing with someone that
| neither of us can ordinarily access.
| bitwize wrote:
| Pair programming flummoxes me because I find it significantly
| harder to concentrate when someone's watching. It's like having
| that execrable old Visual Basic feature where it flags up
| syntax errors if you cursor off a line, forcing you to correct
| the errors before moving to a different line. Except now
| implemented with a smelly human flagging up the errors!
|
| I get it. XP, and Agile in general, is all about relying less
| on individual programmers' focus on the task and more on
| external checks (a shoulder surfer and automated tests). The
| revolution of software development in the 21st century is
| building more effective teams rather than relying on super-
| productive individuals (the fabled 10x engineers). But I don't
| have to like working that way, and I don't.
| nico wrote:
| My personal experience with pair programming is that I first
| was very intimidated by it and instinctively hated it
|
| Then, it slowly creeped up at work, and I noticed that
| initially, most people seemed uncomfortable with it. But, if
| we were able to build trust and get to a place where we
| weren't judging each other, just trying to make progress with
| the task, then things would magically flow and we could solve
| things that each person individually had been stuck on
|
| We then mostly kept it to a weekly activity, in which we
| could tackle either specific tickets from a certain list that
| no-one was actively working on, or on specific things that
| someone would bring up and needed help with
|
| I believe it's probably not the way to work every single
| moment, but it is definitely a very powerful and useful tool
| phito wrote:
| I've never really understood the hype around pair programming.
| In practice, it's usually just sitting with a coworker who
| wants to chat and crack jokes while working. That's fine
| socially, but I don't see any productivity gains.
|
| What I find actually useful is a short, focused meeting with
| the relevant people before coding. That way, we align on what's
| being built, resolve confusion, and then I can just go write
| the code.
|
| Once I'm typing, I don't see how having someone else there
| helps. It mostly just gets in the way -- we keep having to stop
| and explain what we're thinking, which slows things down. And
| usually the other person gets confused at some point, so I have
| to stop and explain things again to get them back on track.
| pydry wrote:
| The productivity gains come from:
|
| * You get unstuck faster.
|
| * When the passenger does background research/slacking
| stakeholders meaning that the driver doesnt have to context
| switch. Sometimes they even just know the answer to something
| you would have to spend 30 minutes researching.
|
| * When the passenger spots something you didnt (antipattern,
| bug, problem) and they spot it _quickly_ before you dug
| yourself a hole with it.
|
| * When it makes it easier to take bigger decisions and bigger
| risks as a pair - risks/decisions most people wouldnt feel
| confident about taking solo.
|
| * When those decisions are _better_ - fewer rabbit holes are
| jumped into, more landmines are averted.
|
| * When your respective coding philosophies developed over
| decades hit one another and you try to synthesize something
| that accomodates the best of both (this is next level
| pairing).
|
| Mostly I find the productivity gains come from the quality of
| decisions being higher, which is invisible short term but
| overwhelming long term.
|
| It doesnt help much if the person is very junior and needs to
| have everything explained but if theyre junior pairing is the
| best way to train and mold them into something better, which
| is probably what you want, right?
| phito wrote:
| I already get those benefits from focused pre-coding
| discussions and pull request reviews. They allow for high-
| quality decisions, involve more perspectives, and are
| asynchronous.
|
| Pair programming might help when training juniors, since
| they need that level of hand-holding. But for experienced
| devs, constant back-and-forth while typing mostly just adds
| friction.
| pydry wrote:
| No. You dont. The feedback cadence is then wildly
| stretched out.
|
| Instead of getting notification that you made a mistake
| within a few seconds of making it you are told at, say,
| 4pm, 45 minutes after you raised the PR, 4 hours after
| you made the mistake and in time for you to maybe fix it
| tomorrow. Also, if it was a rabbit hole mistake thats a
| whole lot of wasted work.
|
| With PRs I find reviewers tend to miss more stuff
| (especially forest-not-trees stuff) because there are
| usually a lot of changes all going on at the same time
| and because the mental tax of trying to grasp all of the
| necessary context is higher.
|
| The pre-coding discussions also do NOT provide the same
| value because many problems only become apparent after
| you've started coding. Only correctly anticipated
| problems are caught at that stage.
|
| Code reviews and pre coding discussions are still good
| practices and add value of their own (especially because
| for some issues you do benefit from > 2 sets of eyes),
| but not as substitutes for pairing.
|
| Pairing is also effective at training juniors and
| onboarding, but not only.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Couldn't see anything but the menu
| taberiand wrote:
| I had to switch to reader mode. You're not missing much
| fnordian_slip wrote:
| Same here, but if this is because of Firefox mobile, then
| reader mode is the answer, at least it was for me.
| lemming wrote:
| An online application of this principle is Focusmate, where you
| schedule calls with essentially random strangers and just work
| together. There's very little chit chat and it's not some weird
| front for a hookup scheme. I've been amazed at how well it works
| for me. I can't really explain why, after all the other person
| can't see my screen so I could just be doom scrolling YouTube the
| whole time, but for some reason I don't. I don't use it all the
| time, but when I need to get something unappealing done I still
| use it. I've also used it for exercise, and I've had partners use
| it for all sorts of weird things that they had been
| procrastinating. I highly recommend it, I thought it would be far
| weirder than it turned out to be, and it's really useful.
| senordevnyc wrote:
| I could have written this. I have ADHD and I've done 500+
| FocusMate sessions in the last year. I've found it sticky and
| helpful like nothing else I've ever tried, and I can't even
| explain why. It just feels like some kind of brain hack.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| There was a recent discussion about body doubling on HN. One
| of the theories is that prior to modernity, people mostly
| worked together and that's how we are wired. Doubly so for us
| ADHD people, who would tend to partake in hunting, war or
| such activities.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| There are free discord groups for this too
| jaboutboul wrote:
| Care to share some, friend?
| stephantul wrote:
| Very curious about this
| pxoe wrote:
| also perhaps coworking streams on twitch
| https://www.twitch.tv/directory/all/tags/CoWorking
| day_visit wrote:
| https://discord.com/invite/study
|
| This is a completely free discord server that has pomodoro
| channels, screen share, cam share etc and also tracks your
| progress. Hope it helps people like it has helped me.
| sixpackpg wrote:
| I 2nd focusmate. I feel like it creates an unwritten contract
| with my partner when I state my goals for the session. If I get
| distracted I'm disappointing more than myself. The more I work
| with a partner the easier it is to work with focus too. Though
| I feel it can be double edged sword in some instances where I
| feel like I owe people progress. Though I feel that's probably
| a me problem.
|
| Once you've got a few regular partners Focusmate blossoms.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| I've used it for writing sessions and just knocking out random
| life admin stuff I've been avoiding forever. Definitely not
| something I use every day, but when I'm stuck, it helps way
| more than I expected
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| Hey, you can share your screen in Focusmate. I also started
| doing body doubling with Focusmate & Focus101 since a month or
| so, I read about it on HN. Agreed its extremely effective (I
| have ADHD too). I alternate between the two services so I can
| stay on the free tiers ;)
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I've used focusmate on and off. Need to use it more.
|
| It's not perfect for keeping me on task, but does at least keep
| me at my desk.
| mcharawi wrote:
| I used https://www.flow.club/ which i found very helpful, they
| do small groups rather than one on one, and you can sign up
| ahead of time or join spontaneously
| BrianHenryIE wrote:
| Yep, my sister makes fun of me that her mere presence makes me
| more productive. (when I shared an apartment with her in my early
| thirties) she'd sit in my room just chatting to me and I would
| tidy and clean without her doing anything, whereas I'd been
| meaning to do that for months.
|
| I suggested the idea of a responsiblabuddy website today to my
| wife - if we're both in the same town I'd commit to coming to
| your house on Saturday and you'd commit to coming to mine on
| Sunday and I'd finally tidy my shed / weld those batteries / list
| those items on fb marketplace etc. Then I realised I'd need a
| responsabilabuddy to get me to start and finish the website!
|
| There was a guy running a co-working space in Dublin (Ireland)
| who would open it up on the occasional Sunday for "Sideproject
| Sundays" which I found great for focus.
|
| Edit: there are no search results for "responsiblabuddy", I know
| I didn't come up with that term
| MasterBel2 wrote:
| try "responsibilibuddy" :)
| fsiefken wrote:
| the term 'accountability partner' is used
| mrmincent wrote:
| I wfh pretty much 100%, and have inattentive adhd. I'll
| occasionally go spend a day at a WeWork, either with other
| workmates, or by myself.
|
| On days that I'm with workmates, I get nothing done. On days I'm
| by myself, sitting by strangers, I'm really productive. I can
| just lock in and chug through my work. It never made sense to me
| until I learned about body-doubling, kind of feels like what I
| was inadvertently doing on those solo days.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I have a similar phenomenon - I wfh and if my wife is home
| while I try to work I find it more difficult to get in the zone
| than if I'm home alone. But if I go to a coworking space with
| others around I find it easier.
|
| Last week I finally rented a small private office. The
| difficulty finding coworking spaces that offered external
| monitors, 24/7 access, and direct sunlight in a part of NYC
| that was convenient led me to just get the private office.
|
| Renting was a no brainer after I tried it for a day. The little
| room outside home for me just to work felt shockingly great.
| But now I wonder if in time I'll regret not going with a
| dedicated shared desk where I'm around others.
| paulmooreparks wrote:
| Wow... I start reading the article, and just as I'm thinking,
| "This site might be helpful for finding tips on how to foc..."
|
| ...A popup slides into view in the lower right-hand corner.
|
| That's when I closed the tab. -\\_(tsu)_/-
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I think you dropped this: \
| rpgwaiter wrote:
| I'm sure this works for some people. Personally I loathe social
| interaction of any kind, and mixing that with engineering gets me
| to my mental/emotional limits much faster.
|
| On my own I can work about 2 hours on and 10 mins off, sometimes
| for 10+ hours total. If I have a 2 hour collab coding call,
| that's about all I'll do that's productive that day. I'l
| literally have to spend the rest of that day mentally recovering
| from the stress of the call.
| jfrbfbreudh wrote:
| Same here. I started an in-office job recently as the company's
| highest ranking engineer and my productivity has plummeted vs
| WFH.
|
| I found myself having to allocate mental bandwidth to my
| environment to allow for the possibility of being interrupted
| by others, so I ended up both less productive and more tired.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Are you in an open office? I found that to be extremely
| fatiguing relative to a private office, a shared office, or
| even a cubicle.
| criddell wrote:
| What you see as an interruption is somebody else clearing
| their path. It could be that your personal productivity drop
| is resulting in a productivity gain for the group.
| lurkshark wrote:
| Whenever I read about pair programming as a standard technique
| (like XP) it sounds so great in theory but in practice I find
| it extremely draining whenever I've dabbled.
| pydry wrote:
| If you have psychological safety and develop a bond of trust
| with the person it is far less draining. Those things need to
| be developed and the working environment needs to make them
| possible, though.
|
| I find that the fact that I rarely get stuck for long and the
| mistakes I make tend to get caught more quickly makes pairing
| vastly more productive in practice.
|
| The productivity isnt directly in the speed of code output
| but the compounded effect over time of it being higher
| quality - meaning vastly less time doing post hoc debugging,
| bugfixing, reworking code, etc. It is invisible over the
| space of one or two tickets, visible over weeks and
| overwhelming over months.
|
| At one company my pairing team routinely (and quietly) worked
| 9-3:30pm or 4pm while the surrounding nonpairing teams worked
| overtime and still delivered way less. If you can nail it it
| really is almost unreasonably effective.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| It also depends on the person and the problem and the
| problem. :)
|
| My thinking isn't logical and it doesn't use language
| internally. It's difficult to explain but, due to mental
| disability I'm using my visual memory to do all of my
| information processing.
|
| Let's say it is not easy to describe a picture in words if
| things get complex.
| jim-jim-jim wrote:
| Like other bad ideas (TDD) it seemed to rise to prominence
| during the heydey of Ruby and untyped JS, when it was so much
| easier to fuck everything up. I think lots of managers
| haven't written a line of code since then and still hold such
| a cargo cult mentality about prescribing it.
|
| It does a massive disservice to everybody involved,
| especially juniors who are never given the chance to prove
| themselves.
| whstl wrote:
| Probably the most stressful portion of my career was when I
| was doing mandatory pair programming in a shop where the
| manager came from Thoughtworks.
|
| Funny enough, the two guys who pushed for it never did any
| pairing.
|
| The CEO put the kibosh on it when he noticed the staff was
| not only unproductive but also massively unhappy.
| darkwater wrote:
| In general I agree but with a caveat: for me it's draining
| when there is a big difference in thought speed/way of
| thinking between me and my peer. If I'm with someone "on the
| same page" we can achieve awesome results, but if OTOH I have
| to explain why my brain just jumped to that other part, give
| context etc this is terribly draining for me as well, and
| after a 2 hours session I'm out for 2-3 hours when I need to
| recharge.
| drowsspa wrote:
| Yeah, I find it specially frustrating to do it with a slow
| reader. Like, in 2 seconds I can scan the page and see that
| what I need isn't there, and the other person is there
| taking like 1 minute to read everything... Or the opposite,
| there is the keyword jumping at my eyes and the other
| person takes so long to even find it. There's also the
| whole issue of the person not wanting to discuss about
| anything deeper other than the task immediately at hand.
|
| But when I do with someone faster and that actually likes
| to discuss the implications, philosophy behind what we're
| doing it's amazing
| yaomtc wrote:
| What type of ADHD do you have? Primarily inattentive,
| hyperactive-impulsive, or combined?
| rpgwaiter wrote:
| Idk, was diagnosed very young and haven't seen anyone
| professionally about it as an adult. Tbh I didn't know there
| were different subtypes until your comment.
|
| I struggled a lot with impulse control but that's managed
| well with meds. I often "zone out" when doing.. well pretty
| much anything that I'm not very interested in
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Not the OP, but I have the "yeah you have ADHD according to
| this survey" from my GP, along with an adderall Rx. I didn't
| know there were documented subtypes.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| Honestly, your solo workflow sounds super efficient. If you've
| found a rhythm that lets you focus and stay productive without
| burning out, that's gold.
| whatever1 wrote:
| I just want to get to work from 10pm to 4am. Just me my music and
| the night highway / city /nature sounds. Anything is possible in
| that timeframe.
|
| Too bad this is incompatible with the society. So we got to pay
| the context switching tax.
| 47282847 wrote:
| The last time I had a sort-of externally imposed schedule was
| at school. At university, attendance wasn't required, nobody
| cared as long as I passed the tests. Since then, which is over
| 20 years ago, I have exclusively worked jobs that are WFH, with
| teams on various time zones and frequent travel (for others,
| not me), so everybody is used to scheduling calls via doodle
| etc.
| t0lo wrote:
| I have a family member who does this. But I think it's more
| because they've fallen down an internet rabbit hole which has
| basically removed all personal autonomy. They just do it because
| everyone else is doing it. It's just called working with someone
| else.
| neilv wrote:
| > _What would chi have to do with a body double? The body double
| might be a chi balancer or protective barrier helping to contain
| and calm the energy in and around the person with ADHD._
|
| Does the writer believe that, or are they pandering?
| 47282847 wrote:
| In modern terms, it is nervous system co-regulation, and, yes,
| that's a thing.
|
| Many people with ADHD also suffer from complex PTSD (see
| comorbidity studies), and unless treated, this has effects like
| social anxiety and emotional dysregulation.
|
| Emotional neglect in early childhood for example can be a
| 'silent', non-obvious factor at play here (even caring parents
| can be emotionally unavailable for longer periods of time due
| to environmental or personal reasons!), which for the later
| adult means they have not (yet) learned the skill to regulate
| their nervous system on their own and can make use of a
| replacement 'caretaker'.
| wormius wrote:
| My roommate comes in and talks, and while they're doing that I
| automatically start cleaning my room. I am a slob otherwise. But
| something about that, it gives me a chance to be away from
| "online" while also giving me a sort of mental
| "space"/distraction so I'm not focused/anxious/worried and seems
| to help me reduce my "executive dysfunction". I also have a
| tendency to place self-demands and so it makes me doing things I
| want to do (not like cleaning room but projects) more difficulty
| because I feel the pressure to do it, so I resist. Having someone
| in the room helps me relax that self-demand. I don't "should" I
| just "do".
|
| I used to do a lot more socially and my computer was in the
| living room with the roomie, but I'm just in my room most of the
| time, and this is making me think - maybe I should go back to the
| living room with my computer (since she's out there too most
| days), maybe that will help me be more productive in
| programming/projects, etc...
| deinonychus wrote:
| >My roommate comes in and talks, and while they're doing that I
| automatically start cleaning my room.
|
| The moment a guest enters my apartment, my body immediately
| begins cleaning my kitchen and putting away dishes and cleaning
| up messes or tidying my living room.
|
| I never thought of this in the body doubling context, but as a
| self-soothing thing for social pressure. Or maybe genuine guilt
| for the state of my apartment. It gives me something to do
| instead of just standing around maintaining eye contact (and
| the second effect of making the place nicer to exist in, for me
| and my guest).
|
| Kind of reminds me of another social self-soothing thing, where
| if I'm not entirely comfortable with a guest (a newer friends
| or romantic partner) I subconsciously place something in
| between us, like standing on opposite sides of the kitchen
| island.
|
| >Having someone in the room helps me relax that self-demand. I
| don't "should" I just "do".
|
| I feel this in my bones. I've been living alone for a few years
| and I'm actually going to move in with a roommate soon to see
| if it can keep me "online" more often without draining me. I
| totally think it's a good idea to try hang or work in the
| living room with your laptop.
| onemoresoop wrote:
| I may have ADHD, I never went for a diagnosis and found body
| doubling useful at times, especially when I was in school some
| decades ago, back then I had no name for it. However, I find
| white noise very helpful with staying on the task and with
| increased focus. My company moved, about a year ago, into a very
| cramped office that is also extremely noisy. This exasperated me,
| I would get drained of energy in a couple of hours and my focus
| was being severy affected. I even considered quitting and looking
| for something else. As a last resort I started listening to white
| noise. I've been using white noise (white+brown+pink) for about a
| year now and find that it helps not only with cancelling out the
| noise but with focus and staying on task in general. I even use
| it at home at times. I know this may not be useful for everybody
| but I'm sure it could help out some of you. I use
| https://noises.online/ and mix all the types of white noise at
| the same time for maximim coverage but any type of white noise
| generator would do. To me it feels like being close to a
| waterfall. At first my ears hurt a bit after a few hours of white
| noise but got used to it after a while.
| felipeerias wrote:
| White noise and similar soundscapes (rain, water...) help me
| focus much better than pure silence.
|
| Perhaps a predictable sound that drowns all others allows my
| brain to "shut down" the little part of it that is on edge
| waiting for noises and distractions.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| There's an app/service called Endel which makes music I find
| helpful for focus too. My family finds it eerily void and dead,
| like it's technically music but lacks any soul. I don't mind; I
| don't listen to it for entertainment. It's like the white
| noise.
|
| I also like the white/brown/pink noise a lot. I think sometimes
| I crave a bit more texture and feature in the noise and so I'll
| pull up endel, but I get by really well without it a lot of the
| time too.
| sixpackpg wrote:
| I feel the same about being drained with noises. I use white
| noise too. But make sure to only use white noise when I want to
| focus, as it feels like I've conditioned myself to be focused
| when it's on. Previously, I had it permanently on and I found
| the effectiveness dropped
| 01100011 wrote:
| Beyond type II bipolar, I don't have a diagnosis for anything
| psychological but I'm pretty sure I have ADHD with a touch of
| Asperger's(based mostly on a review of my behaviors over the
| past 50 years). But yeah I've found "smoothed brown noise" to
| work wonders.
|
| I also had some success with wearing a snug fitting balaclava.
| It's odd, but it worked.
|
| Nicotine helped, but I now have NAFLD and nicotine might be a
| factor in it so I quit.
|
| Modafinil really worked, despite leaving my body feeling
| drained and sore. I didn't want to keep taking it though.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| > Beyond type II bipolar, I don't have a diagnosis for
| anything psychological
|
| The word "beyond" is doing some heavy lifting in that
| sentence (I say as someone with the same diagnosis)
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| In my experience, bipolar can be one symptom of larger brain
| problems.
|
| You end up with symptoms of a lot of different mental
| disorders that have a different underlying cause than normal
| for those disorders.
|
| For example, I have a rather severe impairment of executive
| function. I have a diagnosis of ADHD, but my internal
| experience doesn't seem to match what I've read about other
| people with ADHD and none of the first or second line
| treatments for ADHD work on me.
|
| I also have a significant overlap in the symptoms of autism,
| but I do not have the internal experience of someone who is
| autistic.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| That actually sounds super familiar... I've had a similar
| experience with noisy work environments just tanking my energy
| and focus. White noise is such an underrated lifesaver. It's
| wild how something so simple can create that mental "bubble"
| where your brain finally chills out enough to focus.
| kristianp wrote:
| What do you do about notifications from Slack/Emails/Teams
| messages?
| lionkor wrote:
| Not OP, but it's good to turn them off for sessions of focus.
| They can, almost always, wait.
| wpm wrote:
| I have my notifications for Slack and Outlook turned off. I
| get a Dock tile badge, and Slack does ping my wrist via
| smartwatch, but not much else. Most emails I get are not
| vitally important, nor do most of the things I get on Slack
| immediately required reading or actionable.
| halfcat wrote:
| Notifications need to be off if you're doing focused work,
| and good managers will not only know this, but support you in
| it, or even expect you to set this boundary in order to do
| your best work.
|
| Simplest version is to have agreed upon avenues of
| escalation, which can be _"if someone doesn't respond in the
| timeframe you need, pick up the phone and call them, and if
| they still don't respond, pick up the phone and call their
| boss"_.
|
| Then from your end, you just need to make sure your boss is
| set as a favorite contact or whatever is required for them to
| be allowed through your do-not-disturb settings.
|
| You can also set other routines like weekly check in meetings
| with certain groups. Often times people don't need you right
| now, but they think blowing you up on slack is the only way
| to get what they need. By setting aside a couple hours one
| morning and having several "office hours" style meetings, you
| give people the comfort of knowing they have a time they can
| get your attention, and that often cuts down on 50-80% of the
| ad-hoc interruptions.
| spit2wind wrote:
| Rather than stream noise over the network, I've generated it
| locally with either Sox or Chuck. I've since lost the Chuck
| script, but this is one for Sox:
|
| sox --no-show-progress -c 2 --null synth 3600 brownnoise band
| -n 1500 499 tremolo 0.05 43 reverb 19 bass -11 treble -1 vol
| 14dB fade q .01 repeat 9999
| stutonk wrote:
| Brown noise in Chuck. Adjust the filter cutoff (freq) to your
| desired comfort level. CNoise noise => LPF
| lpf => dac; noise.mode("flip"); lpf.freq(120);
| while(true) { 1::second => now; }
| dcminter wrote:
| Not ADHD (as far as I know), but I'm terribly prone to
| procrastination. I too find white noise helpful - I use and
| would recommemd an Android app called "A Soft Murmer" which
| lets you have rain noise and throws in a rumble of thunder etc.
| from time to time.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| > my ears hurt a bit after a few hours of white noise
|
| Seems like something that could lead to permanent hearing
| damage
| Teleoflexuous wrote:
| I come to shill my webapp for background noise because it has a
| twist not appearing in anyone's recommendations.
|
| Whenever I'm switching between tasks (thinking vs reading vs
| writing) I'd either turn the sound off or on, given I needed
| more or less attention at the moment. Minor problem with that
| was that sometimes unexpectedly I'd stick with the new task
| longer than expected, start to get bored, but w/e background
| sound I had on didn't match the task, so I'd look for something
| else... Overall a bit annoying for some groups of tasks.
|
| I'm experimenting with mixing music with podcasts with extra
| noise and turning it on and off, but I also made
| https://stimulantnoi.se/ (with extra reading on psychological
| basis of the design and link to open source standalone desktop
| app on https://incentiveassemblage.substack.com/p/why-is-
| nobody-ser...). It allows for mixing (including uploading
| additional) sounds into sets and binds switching between those
| whole sets to media keys for quick access.
| jimmydddd wrote:
| Nice job. I played with the industrial set (grouping) and it
| worked well. The groupings concept looks good. And the
| intensity adjusting is an interesting concept. I've tried or
| signed up for a lot of ambient sites over the years, and this
| one definitely introduces a few concepts I haven't previously
| seen. Good luck!
| noahjk wrote:
| For some reason I don't hear anything in Safari on macOS. I
| tried disabling all of my browser-based content blockers. I
| see the 'audio playing' icon but I don't hear anything.
| Teleoflexuous wrote:
| Oh, I'll check what's going on in Safari. Thanks for the
| report, if you could forward me if there's any error in
| console, I'd greatly appreciate it.
|
| It's especially surprising if the 'audio playing' icon is
| there, since that should be coming from the browser itself.
| deinonychus wrote:
| Interesting. I'm surprised how much I enjoyed the Human
| playlist, especially the High setting with those percussive
| sounds that were quite grating at first. I could easily see
| myself getting in a productive trance to that. It reminded me
| of why I like techno, drone, and ambient music. I'm surprised
| how well BPM Forest worked too. Imo it could use some variety
| in kicks and longer forest/rain loops.
| Teleoflexuous wrote:
| Thanks for checking it out. It could definitely use larger
| library of sounds in general.
|
| Ideally, I'd like to allow sharing and storing of presets,
| but it was simply out of scope for the PoC - the
| functionality is there in the desktop version btw, but it
| on the other hand asks users to download an unknown .exe
| and then share mp3 and json files with each other, putting
| us firmly in the mid-90s'.
| nexus6 wrote:
| MyNoise.Net is also very good.
| antfarm wrote:
| I like to listen to https://coffitivity.com to stay
| concentrated.
| yamrzou wrote:
| These don't work for me. My brain knows I'm deceiving it, so
| it doesn't respond to this kind of stimulation.
| snozolli wrote:
| Here's an HN submission from 2022 that I have bookmarked. NYT:
| Can Brown Noise Turn Off Your Brain?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32998960
| TomK32 wrote:
| Unless is a very small company you won't be the only one with
| this problem and management should do something about if it
| drains your energy which long-term will cause you health
| problems.
|
| To help me with my ADHD (diagnosed at 42) I put on some
| Jungle[A], listen to the repetitive Mountain[B] or even a
| modern classic like Phillip Glass or Terry Riley[C]. I know it
| sounds mad, but it gets some body part whipping and just
| overwhelms any distracting thought I could possibly have.
|
| [A] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7boqBRRiQw [B]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGyVgm6uiSk [C]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRaa34E8tXQ
| jbaber wrote:
| 1. I hope you're saying your ears hurt from physically wearing
| headphones, not from volume. 2. Many responses in this thread
| self-diagnose with many disorders because of the need to wear
| headphones in an open office environment. Open office
| environments are like emergency rooms filled with crying babies
| -- they feel almost intended to distract. This is true of
| "baseline", "normal", "non-disordered", whatever the codeword
| of the day is for average humans.
|
| Open offices save employers more money (they hope) in space
| than they lose in lowered productivity. There's no reason to
| think your average Joe or Jane can just carry on working in one
| as efficiently as in a private office.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| as an AuDHDer, noise cancellation and white noise are critical
| for my mental health (at work and elsewhere), but near constant
| _interruptions_ of my flow state by coworkers in the same
| physical space causes me almost visceral pain, and has only
| been amplified to unsustainable levels (for me) from forced
| RTO. I started fully remote at my current employer, so I
| communicate effectively and prolifically on async comm channels
| like slack, but even that can get to distractible levels for
| me. I recently implemented schedulable "office hours" for folks
| to access my time, so we'll see if that helps in either case.
|
| If my current mitigations don't help, i'll be forced to file
| for a wfh exception, but those tend to be denied where i work
| (fang). I'm already on medications to manage my stressors (of
| which there are many), so i feel like i'm almost out of options
| in an RTO world...
|
| This issue is compounded by presenting as neurotypical, as i'm
| forced to mask when sharing physical space with neurotypicals.
| this is exhausting on its own, and i've found to be largely
| unavoidable in a large setting via trial and error spanning 20+
| years in industry.
|
| AuDHD is almost a full contradictions of needs. I excel with
| body doubles, but they can't regularly interact with me without
| me loosing the current "thread". I crave novelty, but require
| structure. It's a difficult thing to understand, let alone live
| with...
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| if my post above resonates with you, i can say from personal
| experience that inaction and carrying on the status quo
| (continual masking, enduring the "pain", etc) inevitably
| leads to burnout and possible further mental and physical
| health complications. Please don't just "tough it out", you
| won't like the end results. It takes a toll on you physically
| and mentally that can take months or years to recover from
| (if you ever do)
| brailsafe wrote:
| You're using "AuDHD" quite liberally, is this a serious
| portmanteau you've adopted as a label after getting diagnosed
| for both or either?
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| i have a formal diagnosis for both, and yes this is a
| common abbreviation used within the autistic + adhd
| community.
|
| edit: i probably should have lead with what that
| abbreviation meant, but although counterintuitive they're
| common comorbidities
| riedel wrote:
| I actually wrote my diploma theses for 6 month in a very
| crowded student bar / cafe . I didn't even suspected such
| diagnosis, but I guess it is not so much about diagnosis as
| finding the things that work. A former colleague always had TV
| series on while working. Brains are sometimes strange. Also now
| beyond 45, it seems I have to find new things that work for me.
| growingkittens wrote:
| Body doubles work especially well for tasks that involve changing
| visual context and sequencing.
|
| As a child, I noticed that my brain worked differently when
| someone was in my room. I begged my mom to stay in my room so I
| could clean my room, but she didn't understand what the point
| was.
| esaym wrote:
| Wish I could read it. The menu stays open on Firefox even if you
| hit the X.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/T6tY7dc
| janwillemb wrote:
| I could read it using the reader view
| riedel wrote:
| Sometimes it needs those constructive comments. Thanks, this
| worked for me.
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| I blocked the menu using Ublock Origin.
| Xiol32 wrote:
| This article is clearly written to the word count and not the
| overall content. A painful read.
| bcoughlan wrote:
| I'm nearly certain that the images and the text are AI
| generated from other sources and perhaps tweaked a bit. The
| headings are the giveaway. Low signal-to-noise ratio.
|
| Google search results is full of this stuff, but first time
| seeing it at the top of HN
| ascorbic wrote:
| The article says it was originally written in 1996. It's on
| the site of the Attention Deficit Disorders Association. The
| images are generic stock photography.
| netsharc wrote:
| If the URL claiming uploaded in 2015 can be believed (i.e.
| in the time before the Internet was 95% sewage), this could
| be that original article: https://www.gettingclear.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2015/05/Body...
|
| It's much more fucking concise than the drivel of the
| republished stuff.
| ErigmolCt wrote:
| I love how something so low-tech like just sitting next to
| someone can short-circuit the ADHD chaos spiral. Like, no fancy
| app, no productivity hack, just a warm body in a chair nearby.
| It's kind of beautiful.
| snvzz wrote:
| Website overrides browser scroll behavior, forcing laggy (i.e.
| animated) scroll.
|
| As such, it's extremely irritating.
|
| Archive version[0] does not have such problem.
|
| 0. https://archive.is/r5SZc
| snvzz wrote:
| Requiring another person is a major issue.
|
| I wonder if a plushie can act as substitute.
|
| Keep it on the corner of the desk when on task. Maybe have
| different plushies for different tasks.
| tofflos wrote:
| What's unique about this? This is basically what every parent and
| teacher already does.
| janwillemb wrote:
| True, but this is about adults in a professional context.
| ulrischa wrote:
| This is why childs in Germany get a Schulbegleiter. A person that
| just goes with the child to school
| tom89999 wrote:
| Ich muss mich aber fragen warum dies notig wurde. Niemand an
| meiner Schule hatte eine Allergie, Erkrankung dieser Art oder
| irgendwas. Was ist seit den 1980ern passiert? Sind es
| Umweltgifte? Farb- und Aromastoffe? Zuviel Susses? Ich kann es
| mir kaum vorstellen dass das menschliche Erbgut so kaputt
| gegangen ist. Wir haben eine exzellente medizinische Versorgung
| und Forschung und Entwicklung gehabt. Mein Frau lehrt an einer
| Waldorf-Schule. Die Kinder leiden wirklich keinen Hunger und
| Not. Leider aber werden viele Kinder gekundigt da sie
| verhaltensauffallig und somit unbeschulbar sind. Es kann doch
| nicht sein, ich wurde es verstehen wenn die pure Armut oder
| Gewalt in der Familie die Kinder kaputtmacht. Sind es die
| Smartphones?
| heeen2 wrote:
| An einer Waldorfschule hast Du selection bias
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| This is where remote work goes off the rails, but then it's wild
| how intentionally isolating the implementation of RTO that many
| large corporations are doing now.
|
| They line people up in rows, put headphones on their heads and
| wire them up to Teams and Jira to spend the whole day in
| isolation. Because taking a walk to another floor of building to
| talk to someone like a normal human being is too wasteful, but
| somehow forcing everyone to spend hours commuting isn't.
|
| It's the worst of both worlds.
| lionkor wrote:
| That sounds awful. I go to the office to chat with everyone,
| it's incredible how much work gets done when you can just walk
| over to someone and debug or rubbery ducky in real time.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| Yes. I got fired from that place for being too negative and
| now work somewhere much more sane.
|
| The CEO to his credit went on a campaign to improve the
| culture, but middle management obstinately refused to change
| a single thing. I recently heard he got fired by the board
| too, go figure.
| stitched2gethr wrote:
| Remote work did a number on middle management. When many of
| them realized that if they aren't the strategic brain at
| the top, and they aren't individual contributers, and they
| can supervise butts in chais, then they aren't actually
| providing that much value.
| firoso wrote:
| So adapt. Learn to curate your team and their work. Lead
| by helping people organize, getting obstacles out of
| their way, shielding them from alarmist BS from higher
| management, and stop worrying about butts in seats. Focus
| on agreements, goals, commitments, accountability,
| growth, and coaching.
|
| It's not that hard.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| Everybody is different. When I visit the office sometimes, I
| do it to socialize and talk about things not related to work
| mainly. And then I get back to do the actual work. If I need
| to communicate with someone, I simply ask them for their time
| - they can get back to me whenever they are free. This system
| serves me and my coworkers well but it's obvious there are
| many people who prefer synchronous in-person communication
| for most tasks.
| lionkor wrote:
| I don't prefer the in-person communication personally, but
| I know it's more productive for me, so I do it and end up
| preferring it. The same way I prefer clean code; it makes
| my and the companies life easier. Makes more money. I'm
| German, and it's painfully obvious.
| anshumankmr wrote:
| Yeah I spent 2 hours in commute to attend Teams calls.. yay?
| saghm wrote:
| > They line people up in rows, put headphones on their heads
| and wire them up to Teams and Jira to spend the whole day in
| isolation. Because taking a walk to another floor of building
| to talk to someone like a normal human being is too wasteful,
| but somehow forcing everyone to spend hours commuting isn't.
|
| Sure, this is pretty much exactly what I'd expect from
| companies; wasting the employee's time doesn't matter, but
| wasting the _company's_ time is anathema. In the absence of
| something to push back against it, companies will always make
| decisions like this. We're only a bit over a century and a few
| repealed regulations from another Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
| after all.
| erikerikson wrote:
| Except we're largely talking about salaried employees who
| aren't paid by the hour.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| They may not be paid by the hour, but they're being
| _graded_ by the hour.
|
| It may be beneficial to the company to save overall
| "company time" at expense of wasting time for many
| individual employees, but I don't think this analysis
| accounts for the costs of people leaving or being fired.
| Both of those are very costly, but they're step changes and
| hard to attribute to any specific cause.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I've been evaluated half yearly or annually, never hourly
| that I've known.
|
| Do you work in HR?
| tanjtanjtanj wrote:
| The above poster was fairly obviously using a figure of
| speech, they did not mean that there was a specific
| formal evaluation like a mid-year review every hour.
|
| Think about what the average salaried person (especially
| outside of tech) might get dinged on either explicitly or
| implicitly. Come in at 10:00 every day? Not being "seen"
| enough in your seat or around the office? Not replying
| quickly enough in Teams/slack? Jira/Github statistics?
| These are not things that do not reflect a salaried
| worker's output but you're still getting evaluated by
| them on an minute by minute, hour by hour, day by ay
| basis.
| erikerikson wrote:
| This has sincerely not been my experience, even as my
| role has blended into management adjacency over the
| years.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| But surely you experienced the fact that being paid a
| salary is a matter of contract, while being evaluated
| (formally and informally) for productivity is _not_
| independent of time. The company may find it valuable on
| the net to waste your time with distractions and bad
| process, but _your manager_ may not know it and think you
| 're just lazy.
| erikerikson wrote:
| I have certainly experienced management that took many
| actions which reduced productivity.
|
| I think the biggest blind spot is management's negative
| emotional externalities which cost far more than anything
| else. Many of us got into this because we love it, let's
| us sincerely do our job well, please!
| suzzer99 wrote:
| Working in an open office on cool stuff with legitimate friends
| was the best work experience I've ever had by far. Most days it
| didn't even feel like work. Now I wfh full time with people who
| are just coworkers and I'm miserable.
| szszrk wrote:
| I feel a bit like that, when we in the team started to
| introduce agile practices. Corporate agile practices, of
| course.
|
| And while some of those aspects are important and we sucked
| at it, we are also stripping away any relation we had with
| each other. Insight into what we really struggle with,
| releasing tension...
|
| Twist is that it's driven by youngest team members and they
| love it, because that's what they did in past jobs. So we cut
| some meetings time, but now we have no idea what we are doing
| and need more meetings ;) Incentive to actually be on the
| same page dropped, we are becoming strangers.
|
| I still struggle if I should keep trying to fix that or if
| it's just "going upstream" and will make me seen as problem
| maker.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's the core aspect of my open-office experience too.
| Working together on cool stuff with legitimate friends? Best
| thing ever. Take away even one of {together, cool stuff,
| legitimate friends} - just a single thing - and open-office
| instantly becomes _psychological torture_ for me, because for
| some reason, my mind parses this as feeling under threat, and
| gives me large amount of anxiety to deal with.
| swader999 wrote:
| Volunteer for something your interested in locally on the
| side. It's the only way I stay sane.
| darkwater wrote:
| Bingo if you are in your late 20s or early 30s. But then life
| and priorities change...
| roland35 wrote:
| I also had a fun experience in an open office, but the key
| element of it was that the office was only about 15-20 people
| and we were all on the same project and team.
|
| When I visited the Big Tech office (as a remote employee), it
| was an entire floor with rows of unrelated people all
| together. My team was together but it felt much different,
| more distracting, and hard to have a conversation without
| feeling like you are bothering other people.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I'm part of the minority of folks who think the value of in
| office outweighs the cost. Particularly amongst those who
| aren't in management.
|
| But only if you are working in close proximity to those
| working on the same projects and leadership going up at
| least two levels. (leadership, not management)
|
| Why large companies with globally distributed teams see
| value in having employees in office sitting side by side in
| isolation is beyond me.
| keybored wrote:
| That you say "two levels" suggests formal hierarchy,
| which is management.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| I mean, not just the people who ensure ICs show up to
| work and complete their task, but the people who are
| responsible for determining strategy, vision, and
| direction.
|
| Because there is bidirectional benefit in those people
| having casual interactions with ICs. Both as individuals
| and as a group.
| pydry wrote:
| It's about maintaining a feeling of control, it's not about
| collaboration. Thats just the lie they tell to RTO.
|
| Ive worked in:
|
| 1) collaborative in office
|
| 2) uncollaborative in office
|
| 3) collaborative wfh
|
| 4) uncollaborative wfh
|
| Personally i found 4 to be the most tortuous (because of ADHD),
| but 2 isnt much better.
|
| 1 and 3 i think are roughly equally good while you're there but
| wfh has so many ancillary benefits like not commuting that it
| wins overall.
|
| After experiencing 4 and before I experienced 3 I actually
| desperately wanted to RTO.
|
| I think a collaborative environment is only quite tangentially
| related to inhabiting the same space, though. It's more about
| culture, trust and shared goals.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| The trouble with 3 is that while achievable, it requires an
| incredibly high degree of intentionality and strong
| leadership.
| pydry wrote:
| 1 and 3 both do.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| Certainly
|
| But the bar is even higher for 3 than 1 and likelihood of
| it occurring organically lower.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| i don't see how leadership has anything to do with it, at
| least any more than any other collaborating members of the
| team. all parties need "good enough" communication skills,
| which can be learned (to an extent). poor communication
| skills regardless of in office or remote will tank a
| project and if systemic, a company
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| Because in a fully remote environment it is easy to
| default to having transactional relationships and only
| when a job responsibility requires them. Just like I do
| with a customer service rep.
|
| You don't see your coworkers in the hall, overhear them
| talking to their kid, or talk while working. Certainly
| don't by default interact with folks who work in
| parallel.
|
| Not saying that in office means these things will
| certainly occur. But because by default these
| interactions don't occur, the likelihood of them
| happening organically is quite low.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| i have many personal connections to my remote colleagues,
| but i don't see how that's required or relevant for going
| beyond "transactional" work. i could be off base, but i
| think you mean working the minimum that is required for
| getting "the job done". depending on your intended work
| life balance, this may or may not be a desirable outcome.
| obviously employers want more, but that doesn't mean
| they're entitled to it. most things in life are
| transactional, at least from my experience. ymmv
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| for me, #3 is the ideal, but communication and collaboration
| being primarily async is the key. face to face has a place
| but 90% of the time it "could/should have been an email", and
| just exhausts me like nothing else... ("high functioning"
| AuDHDer)
| whatnow37373 wrote:
| The commute isn't paid, so who cares. Let them drive 4 hours a
| day. But don't you dare stealing a few minutes in idle talk,
| because yes, _not_ being valuable every second you are on
| company premises is _stealing_. You should feel bad. Now put on
| your headphones and work through your task list, you miserable
| ant.
| swader999 wrote:
| Meh, we haven't seen anything yet. Just wait till the AI
| managers take over. Keystroke, app usage, bugs, velocity, eye
| tracking, stool samples... All logged and dash boarded in real
| time.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| "Privacy regulations aren't important, because I have nothing
| to hide."
| eru wrote:
| If the AI is any good, it won't need the stool samples: it
| can infer all that data well enough just from your webcam.
| Tabular-Iceberg wrote:
| The real value of AI is if they could make one that is
| capable of looking at dashboards. So much time is wasted
| making dashboards that nobody cares enough to look at.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| As much as I dislike the isolation of WFH, particularly since
| leaving the job I had pre-2020 that began in office and started
| doing fractional work at fully remote companies, I keep
| reminding myself that offices aren't what they used to be.
|
| Also, the kind of relationships I had in office as a 25 year
| old grinding it out on a sales floor aren't going to be the
| ones I'd find as a 35 year old in revenue operations.
| dep_b wrote:
| God yes. I've spent 8 years working remote before the pandemic
| hit.
|
| Only after that I started coming into offices again because my
| local freelance customers demanded it.
|
| Spent most days looking at a bunch of nerds with headphones,
| being ignored until lunch. I had to drag people out of their
| cocoons to have conversations. Nobody had any collaboration
| lined up the days I came in.
|
| I mean I see the collaboration thing, but most teams are more
| autistic working in-office than I was working remote.
| Apparently I was the only person reaching to other people all
| the time?
| Qwertious wrote:
| You can take the tiger out of the jungle, but you can't take
| the jungle out of the tiger.
| goda90 wrote:
| My employer was very quick to force return to office after
| covid lockdowns. Like they were willing to pour millions into
| subdividing offices into closets so people could isolate at
| work even, but the county health department gave them a stern
| look and they ended up scraping that and waiting another year
| to force RTO.
|
| But they actually put their money where their mouth is. Ad-hoc
| conversations in the hallway, going to chat in person, etc were
| all encouraged. Holding a meeting over Teams when everyone was
| in office became almost a taboo. Even team building activities
| and events saw an increase in frequency.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| I would love an offline only work environment. Just a small
| cadre of tech obsessed smart folks working in a room and
| talking when they need to.
|
| In grad school we did this. Everyone was heads down, except
| when they were stumped they'd go to the whiteboard, which was
| open invitation to discuss a problem, if you had time.
|
| That kind of "opt in" / volunteering help was way more trust
| building and low pressure than pulling someone from their
| flow to ask for help. And otherwise being around a bunch of
| hard workers helped build motivation.
|
| It just doesn't translate though. No work environment I've
| experienced recreated that spirit of autonomy and esprit de
| corps. Instead you get open offices and a ton of "calls" and
| meetings subdividing time. Add in some boss standing over
| your shoulder and you bet I'll take my basement office over
| that any time.
| leoqa wrote:
| I experienced this environment a few times: when I was in
| school in the CS lab, when I was working at AWS on a
| research team building a database and when I was working at
| a startup (early days, like 5 people). The startup scaled
| to 100s and we lost the spirit. Since then, it's been FANG
| with no spirit and now I've been WFH for 5 years,
| effectively stuck in a covid lifestyle.
|
| Would love to return to offline only, 20 people max
| environment that paid the bills without worrying about
| implosion.
| perrygeo wrote:
| I agree. Those offline jobs are highly productive and fun.
| I'd like to think they still exist somewhere. They did 15
| years ago. But I'm afraid a whole generation of software
| professionals is growing up without ever experiencing it,
| just taking the current state of the industry as the norm.
|
| I like the way you frame it as an "offline only" work
| environment. Offline vs online does seem to be the main
| distinction here.
|
| It's not the remoteness. It's the apps and the
| intellectually-lazy culture they encourage. Slack, Jira,
| Github, Docs, Sheets, etc. So much of modern work is
| navigating those byzantine digital games to score virtual
| communication points, rather than actually communicating
| anything of value. Being terminally online is almost
| guaranteed to lead to presence monitoring, stilted
| communication, territoriality, lack of clarity, poor
| product quality and dehumanization. It can happen remotely,
| it can happen in the office. Doesn't matter. The app-
| ification of all communication lines is what's harmful.
|
| At some point, you need to stop with the digital games and
| just use your brain. Commit to the deep work of
| communicating. There are a shocking number of people who
| would rather shuffle tickets around all day than read or
| write a single coherent paragraph. Thinking in slack
| responses and Jira tickets is a symptom of brain rot.
| sneak wrote:
| I'm quite the opposite. Whiteboards are terrible. The most
| productive and aligned teams I've ever worked on formed on
| irc. We don't even know each others' first names.
|
| Imagine if the Linux kernel took this approach.
| tass wrote:
| My most productive ever was being in a room of 2-4 people
| working on the same thing. Small conversations were
| encouraged but anything unrelated was taken outside.
|
| I wish I could find that again.
| woleium wrote:
| It's magic isn't it! And then it's gone, and you realize
| you didn't appreciate it for what it was when you had it.
| I am sure i will say this about youth when i am older
| (still) too ;)
| ironmanszombie wrote:
| "Opt in" is exactly what I expect of people when I need
| help. The closest implementation of your white board is me
| using Teams to DM people for help - when they have time.
| The expectation is they'd reply once they're free instead
| of instantly replying with a meeting invite.
| wrs wrote:
| When I got the opportunity to build out an office for my
| own startup, I had it designed with different environments:
| an open office in the front, a big conference room, a few
| medium size rooms (for solo focus, meetings, or temporary
| workgroups), a cafe/meeting area in the back, and a nap
| room in the quietest corner (with a couch). All the meeting
| rooms had a big screen TV to connect to meeting rooms in
| our other office.
|
| So on any given day, you could pick the appropriate
| environment to work in, while still being within casual
| reach of everybody else for those impromptu conversations.
| and of course people could have lunch together in the cafe.
|
| I thought the temporary workgroup offices were a great
| idea. A few people working on a new feature could move in
| there for a couple of weeks to get focused time together,
| and have daylong conversations without bugging everybody
| else.
| intothemild wrote:
| Lol, that sounds like hell on earth to me. Do they allow
| anything for Autistic people? or similar?
|
| Cause that's just... the worst.
| mr_toad wrote:
| I pretty sure that Teams has tanked productivity in some
| offices. It used to be that arranging a meeting required
| finding a physical space. Now some people are spending their
| days in back-to-back teams meetings and never get any actual
| work done.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| The counter to this is that you can actually have a 5 or 10
| minute teams call which was all that was needed to resolve
| the issue / answer the question / or whatever the meeting was
| about. Whereas, if it was a physical meeting in a booked room
| then it would easily expand to fill 30 or 60min or whatever
| time the room was booked for.
|
| I see this myself. I get a teams call with a manager and a
| few others, get something sorted and then end the call. Boom.
| done. The same in a physical meeting would have been a huge
| time suck.
|
| Having said that. I like being in the office because there
| are tons of coffee room and hallway conversations that would
| not have happened if WFH, but were actually really beneficial
| to keeping everyone informed about whats happening.
| chubot wrote:
| People used to have phone calls for this! It was on the way
| out even 15 years ago, but a simple telephone call can get
| people unblocked pretty efficiently
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| I work far more effectively remotely in isolation.
|
| The article is specifically about those with ADD/ADHD, not a
| generalization.
| firoso wrote:
| I have ADHD. I doubled my productivity going remote and
| working from a well curated home office.
|
| Charging station for my phone just inside the room, good
| sitting/standing desk and chair, good laptop, with a dock, 3
| displays. A desktop with a vertical monitor I use for teams
| chat, technical documents, and work management only. Second
| laptop used for secure prod access tucked under a monitor
| riser until needed. Whiteboard. Couch with a small station
| for engineering journaling. I also take video calls from the
| couch often. Treadmill and elliptical, TV for watching
| YouTube tech videos while I'm taking a fitness break,
| bookshelves for my collected engineering journals and useful
| books. Roughly 275 sqft. Virtual body doubling helps
| sometimes but is hardly needed.
| firoso wrote:
| I am ADHD. I work remotely. My productivity went up
| substantially after leaving the open office. Body doubling is
| one of many tools, and it is not a required one. I do however
| often livestream my coding work in an open teams chat meeting
| and hang out with others im working with relatively often.
| daenney wrote:
| > While there's no research to prove its effectiveness [..]
|
| > Originally published in 1996, this article was republished on
| February 20th, 2025.
| coldblues wrote:
| Focusmate is probably the most popular tool in this category. I
| don't like the other ones, I am more comfortable in a 1-1 video
| session rather than multiple people. It works really well when I
| want to force myself to get something done.
|
| For the most comprehensive and effective solution, medication is
| still the go-to. Disregard any stigma and misguided fears around
| it and just get medicated.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Wow - I actually do this - did not know it had a name but pairing
| up with someone actually makes it easier (although loads of
| coders I know dislike working with others - so pair programming
| is an attempt to do this technique without knowing who has adhd
| or not?
| robin_reala wrote:
| There are a bunch of "study with me" videos on YouTube that aim
| to do a similar thing, for example
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ex_bNIFR1A
| Nevermark wrote:
| Where does specialization end?
|
| Personally, I would like to vicariously YouTube double with a
| "friend" on our private jet. For about four hours, then another
| hour looking out the window, listening to said friend
| continuing to work, while I enjoy a well earned inflight (I.e.
| home made) cocktail before we land on a tropical island.
|
| Someone would like to host videos like that for a living.
| suzzer99 wrote:
| I don't necessarily need someone there all the time. But talking
| it out really helps when I need get over that hump and get going
| on some annoying problem.
|
| I've also found it helps sometimes to have the TV on in the other
| room, on some mindless sports pundit show that I can half-listen
| to.
|
| When I have some task I don't want to do, especially if it's
| something no one is expecting me to do right away but I still
| need to get it done, I go to Starbucks and don't leave until it's
| finished.
| bgnn wrote:
| This site (add.org) doesn't function on Firefox mobile.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| I had to click Reader Mode to see it
| INTPenis wrote:
| This is super interesting. I can only speak anecdotally but my
| older brother has ADD and he has already spent 4-5 weeks writing
| a powershell script to automate a trivial task at work.
|
| But whenever I visit he makes huge breakthroughs and I notice
| that he really wants me to come visit, and he asks me more and
| more questions on IM and shares his thoughts and progress.
|
| He has a hard time coming out and saying what he feels but I'm
| observing that he works better with me present.
|
| What's funny though is that I'm the absolute opposite. When
| someone is present and only slightly focused on what I'm doing, I
| act as if I have ADD.
| asar wrote:
| Really interesting method. I've been calling a similar strategy
| the library effect. Whenever I work in an environment where other
| people are productive (or at least look productive) I can focus
| much better and get in the zone. It's now gotten to a point where
| I'm actively seeking desks with my screen exposed to the room, so
| people would be able to see me procrastinate, guilt tripping me
| to limit this sort of behavior.
| deadbabe wrote:
| This used to work for me, but not anymore. The less I care
| about what other people think the more I don't care about
| procrastinating even when they're right next to me.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| > Really interesting method. I've been calling a similar
| strategy the library effect
|
| As libraries reinvent themselves for an era where all the
| world's knowledge is available on my cell phone, I wish more
| emphasis was placed on meeting booths.
|
| Because then I'd work from them all day and never consider
| coworking spaces.
| deinonychus wrote:
| > It's now gotten to a point where I'm actively seeking desks
| with my screen exposed to the room, so people would be able to
| see me procrastinate, guilt tripping me to limit this sort of
| behavior.
|
| I have this same brain. Working in public at a coffee shop is a
| great baseline, but it's even better if I can feel the social
| pressure to not fuck off even if it's made up by my own
| neurotic head. It's a crazy double-edged sword to wield. Really
| useful, but I think it heightens burnout and I can't stand to
| stay in the same place for long due to the palpable buildup of
| pressure to Go Home.
| jamesbfb wrote:
| In my 40s and I've recently been diagnosed with inattentive adhd.
| TFA makes a lot of sense to me given I'm one of the rare people
| at my company who commutes to the office every day even though we
| are an in-person optional workplace. Whenever I've had to WFH,
| I've struggled massively to gain an initial focus. Although
| medication has helped tremendously, I still feel much more
| productive in an office setting.
| deepsun wrote:
| Looks related to XP (Extreme Programming), but the problem is
| that you get tired and stressed way too fast to reap the
| benefits.
| bentt wrote:
| I find coworking spaces with other people around hits on thos
| effect. You don't even have to be near the people, just in the
| same area.
|
| And on the flip side, it seems there is no remote way of getting
| the same feeling. Even having my business partner on Discord
| doesn't really do it. He doesn't feel like he is parallel working
| as much as TOO close in that case.
| Tade0 wrote:
| My most productive period within the last 12 months was when I
| rented a desk in a co-working space for the summer so that I
| could catch up with a friend who also went there.
|
| To me it was less his mere presence and more the ability to
| immediately share any thoughts that would occur to me. Also air
| conditioning.
|
| Same goes with chores - I would much rather have someone be in
| the same room while I e.g. do the dishes or cook.
|
| I also noticed that if I don't have anyone close, I start talking
| to myself.
|
| That sounds like a strong argument for working from the office
| and it is, but to me it doesn't outweigh the disadvantages. For
| one I could pull this off only because my commute was short
| thanks to it being vacation season, so traffic was way smaller
| than normal.
| criddell wrote:
| > I could pull this off only because my commute was short
|
| The other critical factor was sharing a space with somebody who
| wanted to work in a similar way. If you shared that space with
| somebody who was significantly more or less social, the
| impedance mismatch could have been very negative.
| AbstractH24 wrote:
| Would be interesting to create a tool that efficiently
| matched people this way.
| sameermanek wrote:
| So, basically schizos can cancel out their adhd?
| chneu wrote:
| The podcast Science Vs just had an ADHD episode. They talk about
| body doubling and a bunch of other ADHD stuff.
|
| Good episode. Recommend. Be aware that most folks who think they
| have ADHD really don't. Just like "OCD" and "migraines", people
| just like to throw labels on themselves.
| BOOSTERHIDROGEN wrote:
| So, this is basically what Mark is trying to do, isn't it?
| Building a metaverse where everyone can virtually body double.
| viraptor wrote:
| That concept doesn't need metaverse. If you can body double
| with someone, you can do it over any communication medium.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| Yeah, nothing like an open office with random interruptions,
| noises, and movements to improve your focus.
| viraptor wrote:
| It may not work for you, but... kinda, yes. My most productive
| days are while waiting for the periodic car checkup at the
| dealer and it's effectively an open office environment. But no,
| an actual open office every day would not give the same result.
| Brains be weird.
| thimkerbell wrote:
| Downvote for misleading terminology
| keybored wrote:
| > The ADHB body double
|
| Okay. Maybe I can apply this metaphorical technique
|
| > You're gonna need a literal body
|
| I'm out.
| codesnik wrote:
| yep. it works. SOMETIMES.
| parentheses wrote:
| https://www.focusmate.com/
|
| I used this during the early pandemic and found it very useful
| hbarka wrote:
| Does having a cool calm collected cat next to you count?
| zoogeny wrote:
| I've been thinking about this for a while. Seeing paid services
| like Focusmate, Flow Club and Focus101 show the basic idea is
| attractive enough to make into a lifestyle sized business.
|
| But my idea was a bit more. A lot of people are leaving religions
| for many reasons. One of the interesting parts of religion, from
| my perspective, is a community of people meeting at some cadence
| (e.g. once per week). At that time, they all make a public
| commitment to some set of values. It's like a shared affirmation.
|
| This led me to wonder if this ritualistic activity is important
| in a psychological way that is effective outside of theistic or
| other dogmatic beliefs.
|
| I was thinking of a service exactly like the ones mentioned,
| except it would also include some kind of intention setting. The
| word "prayer" is a little loaded and often brings to mind asking
| a God for some kind of favor. And "intention" is more like a
| stated goal.
|
| It is interesting that in the modern world we feel comfortable
| stating/sharing intentions that are productivity related. But we
| don't share intentions that are more broadly ethical/moral in the
| same way that religions promoted.
|
| If anyone has examples of services that do what Focusmate/Flow
| Club/etc. are doing but on a broader scale, let me know.
| daxfohl wrote:
| Not for my kid. Even sitting right next to her, she'll zone out
| and start doodling for hours unless we're on her every couple
| minutes.
| mrgoldenbrown wrote:
| What browsers does this site support? It is broken on Firefox
| mobile.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Firefox mobile + read mode works
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