Hey all! I’m a software developer that was diagnosed with ADHD a few months ago.
My productivity went to complete shit during Covid and hasn’t recovered. Part of the issue is that I’ve learned body doubling is one of the most effective ways for me to get stuff done. And, unfortunately for me, no one has wanted to come back into the office. I’ve tried setting reminders for myself to get routine-but-not-daily tasks done, but those only worked for a couple weeks. Pomodoro timers the same.
Anyone have any tips for being more productive at work? Ideally oriented toward software development, but I’ll take anything.
I hit burnout during COVID and once we came out the other end my productivity halted. It’s only just began to recover (also newly diagnosed and recently started vyvanse so that’s helping).
I benefit from working in an extremely large organisation, and we have an internal ND Peer Support group on our org’s Yammer (Viva Engage?). Someone set up a body-double rota, so anyone in the group can go into a shared calendar and sign themselves up to host a Team meeting for “body doubling”. You can either sit silently on the call (cams on!) or chitchat if others are okay with it.
A few other things I’ve done to help keep myself on track in my specific team:
- Set up a Team Planner (works similar to Trello) so I can see what is MY task and what other people are working on. My manager is responsible for recommending due dates and we go through the planner during our team meetings.
- Setting up accountability mechanisms with my manager and subordinate: they give me clear deadlines/requirements
- Agreed that any actions discussed verbally need to be followed up with an email because I WILL forget within 30s of the discussion if I never put it in the Planner
- Plan meetings in the morning rather than afternoon where possible, because afternoon meetings prevent me starting a task due to appointment paralysis
- Me and my subordinate both did ‘working with me’ guides, just a one-pager that describes who we are and how we like to communicate/work
- Use OneNote to categorise almost all of my work. I have a ‘library’ page that shows all the resources I use/may need. A page describing who people are and what they’re responsible for. A page where I put every note I take from a meeting. Then tabs for current work, tabs for completed work, all broken down by subject.
My org is limited to using MS suite of products so there may be other tools that yours will use. For my personal life I use Google Tasks & Habitica.
I’m also in an extremely supportive team where I felt safe to disclose my ND, and appreciate how lucky I am for that. If you can find a confidant in your team/org it may help.
From what you write you struggle with organizing your work and remembering deadlines and tasks. Is that the main part? How or why have reminders failed you? I have set automated recurring timers for recurring tasks and it helps me immensely. I also write schedules and to do lists and such which works a little bit.
Or do you also struggle with the ‘actually doing the thing’ when you remember it? I got less tips for that.
1 Have a think about when you’re best able to think straight and do the trickier jobs, then. (I’m pretty useless in the afternoon).
2 Set a time to check email, if you can.
3 Use filter rules to send email to folders. This makes it easier to understand, quickly why to do with them.
4 Block your calendar with tasks and try to keep them consistent so you get into a habit.
5 make a plan for each month and week. Add stuff to your calendar on Friday, for the next week.
6 at the end of the day, check you calendar so you know what you’re doing tomorrow. (I have a reminder alert).
That’s more or less what I try and do, anyway! Most of this is based on David Sparks’ tips.
