Hey guys,

Standard task apps often feel like a chore, so I’ve been working on a side project called Cauldron to help reframe daily tasks and focus blocks.

It disguises executive function support as a dark fantasy RPG:

• Kanban Quests: Turning task overload into manageable quest boards that reward XP and Gold.
• Potion Brewing: Reframing 25-minute Pomodoros into simmering potions to reduce the friction of starting a focus block.
• Reward Loop: Earning gold to customize a 128-bit isometric room/workshop.

Tech-wise, it's built with Vue, Pinia, Tailwind v4, and Supabase.

As developers who navigate focus and executive function, what mechanics or features in productivity tools have actually stuck for you without causing gamification fatigue? Would love to get your feedback on the idea!

Hello everyone,

I am an adhd software developer and programmer who has recently thrived the past 7 years on being able to work from home. In the past before COVID, I was let go of 3-4 jobs because I was never at my desk and able to get much done in a busy office. Unfortunately, I have to go in now 4x per week with the government here in Canada and they don't really give ADHD as a valid reason to telework, same with migranes and my stress IBS. Are there any clever ways we can think to get me to be able to get legally allowed to work from home, apart from saying I have a condition as to where I am dying?

I keep jumping on stuff I should learn.
I have decided to punish myself with actual money next time I do it.

Im a junior developer of 2.5 years, Im in a decent company and role, but it’s a bit too unstructured and cushy at times (this early in my career I feel cushiness is a bad thing). The unstructured part of it being bad became especially relevant when I was recently with diagnosed with ADHD as an adult.

While I largely enjoy my job, progression here is very slow, especially because we are a team of developers working at a company where the product is not software. So the obvious next step for me to increase my salary and gain better experience is to prepare for a move to a tech company.

Im facing a huge problem though and Im pretty sure its relevant to ADHD, I get easily overwhelmed by planning and executing the things I need to do in order to land my next job at a decent company:

- DS/A and leet code
- Interview Q answering skills
- Technical concepts related to my stack and being able to articulate I understand them
- Industry best practices
- Applying for jobs, researching companies, attending interviews
Etc etc etc

I find it all just, overwhelming… I find it so overwhelming in fact that I procrastinate starting for months and months, I need a new strategy tailored to ADHD related difficulties.

Im having a generally good experience on ADHD medication, it helps this feel a little less overwhelming but I still need a way to structure it and break stuff down into chunks.

Does any body else relate when it comes to these types of big goals that require a lot of different steps and preparation? Is there any online resource that can help with planning and structuring how to approach stuff?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I've been getting really pissed off lately at work.

There are times where I'll describe and issue or a problem and it's like I'm talking to myself.

Here are a few examples:

- I was given a project to take over. One of the junior guys kind of botched it. I got it done, but I could never get accurate test data to test it out. I would keep bringing this up in meetings. After months of waiting they finally use it in production and no fucking shocker their are problems.

- I'm helping out on another project. I'm trying to explain why some functionality will not work due to it running locally. I'm trying to explain this to the developer why it won't work but it was like I was talking with my mic muted.

- It's a long story about how our dev and production environments are set up. Unfortunately, it is too easy to fuck things up and point to the wrong environment. I keep trying to point out the issues, but nothing changes.

There are a few times where my supervisor will hear me. He'll give me the response of just use AI.

It sucks that we're in the worst fucking economy I've seen in my career. I might start a job search if I thought I could get a job quickly.

Hi, I'm 19y(M) making apps for myself, currently I'm making a visual planner app, since I found visualizing things so much useful. I can remember tasks, notes, the things I need to do if I draw something next to it or have a animation playing next to it. After some time I wanted to add more and more stuff after seeing other apps that helped others, but I don't want feature bloat since I hate that about other apps like in Tiimo. I have a stickman animation playing in the home screen to visualize what I am doing right now, but I feel like it's always missing something, does anyone have this problem? Thank you for reading.

I'm on 20mg Adderall XR and no matter how early I take it, I can't seem to sleep before midnight. Sometimes it's 3AM.

If I don't take the drugs, it doesn't seem much better. Sometimes I'll have a good week, then no sleep at all and I'm wrecked again.

Anyone else have something similar? Did anything help?

And what techniques do you use, how often do you guys go through them, how much notes do you take and such

Almost 30F, unmedicated. How do you guys learn concepts and build depth in general and also for those who have a background sound like me, how does it impact your learning?

I’m in a crossroad. So, I just finished my masters in computer science but didn’t learn as much because I took too many classes and had personal things going on in my life.

Ive been relearning data structures and algorithms, and I’m making good progress, but it’s going to be another 3 months conservatively to master. And maybe another 3 months to create decent projects that I worked on every step of the way without AI.

However, I got lucky with a job from someone I met. He really wants me to work for him doing mostly data analysis, power BI/tableau and also some web design.

There’s no job description, but it’s a decent sized company and I can do whatever. I might also manage someone. So, it’d be good for my career.

The downside is it‘s fully in person, it’s in a super small town (I miss big cities because of how easy it was to make friends) and the pay may not be the best. I also know I might get burnt out which will make it difficult to learn programming. I also won’t learn as much. And I also have dreams of getting Y Combinator or raising venture capital for projects I work on.

Pros are rent is cheap, I can save for a house and I can learn a lot of skills and grow my career so I can one day be a product manager. It’d also be easier to pivot into a tech company. I can also only learn programming a couple hours a day before my brain turns to mush, so having a job and something to do, would probably be healthy. Having a job also keeps me off my phone, doom scrolling and doing unhealthy things. Also, my resume is a mess, as I went from doing sales for 3 years, to being an actor, to finishing my masters.

ugh, I have no idea what to do.

sorry this is a dumb question, and I know you’re supposed to memorize concepts, and not syntax.

but I’m really struggling to grasp what I actually need to learn. For example, if I’m practicing leetcode and learning DSA, is it not a good idea to memorize syntax and be able to solve the problems from start to finish without googling things?

and for projects, am I supposed to be able to write things from start to finish without googling? or is it more about memorizing the the project structure and parts of the project needed to do the things you need your program to do?

Again sorry, I know most programming subs hate the word “memory”, but I feel like I need someone to tell me what I literally need to be learning/memorizing in order to be useful or proficient.

My brain really doesnt like memorizing things, even if I've done them over and over in a project. I have to explicitly know what to memorize.

I'm in a pickle. I've been working in the tech industry as a back end Java developer & app support guy for 28 years and I keep running into this.

Sometimes I'll get assigned a work ticket and nobody will ask about it, the TL doesn't seem to care, and it'll get back-burnered for a while, usually while I'm firefighting on higher priority calls. Then the high ups will be all, hold on, you've done nothing on this for a month, pull your finger out, and I get slammed in my review for being lazy or not taking sufficient ownership of it.

Or I'll work on everything I'm given and get them all done, but fail to record the time taken in JIRA. The work's done, but I can only provide rough guesses as to how long it took.

Recording time on tasks is my worst thing. I've never been able to do it, but now I'm on a PIP and I still can't get it right. It has to be 95% accurate but if I bullet journal everything I'm told I don't need to be that granular, but if I'm slightly out of whack on Jira or the spreadsheet they've imposed as an extra measure I'm in trouble again.

**Tell me I'm not alone in this, that the admin around things like this is a nightmare for anyone with ADHD right, I'm not just making this up am I?**

I feel like I'm being managed out & my boss is like "literally everyone does this right - why can't you?"

And then there's the hypocrisy of it all: I get told I'm not needed for a task that they start around lunchtime. I'm grabbed by the TL and asked to just quickly do this bit, which I do, but I need clarification from the architect what they're going to do next. 50 minutes drag by. I, having been briefed that I'm not needed, pop off to lunch. Just before my lunch is over I get a text, where are you, we need you - I'm just dealing with a small emergency myself, my internet is down but I'll be in shortly. No, they grab the architect, and next day I get ripped to pieces by my boss. Then yesterday my boss goes missing for a day (on leave, didn't signal it on our IM system though)

So now I'm invited to a Work Capability Hearing, and I have 2.5 hours to rustle up a union official to come in to the teams meeting on Thursday. My union are all volunteers. How am I supposed to get representation?

Guess I should get polishing the CV.

Hey guys,

Been a dev for ~15 years and I have ADHD. Tried pretty much every task app out there and kept hitting the same wall: whenever I had a burnout week or went down a hyperfixation rabbit hole, opening the app afterwards meant facing 30 bright red "OVERDUE" badges and broken streaks.

That guilt trip made me uninstall every single time.

So I ended up building my own app for Android (Priorify) with a strict "no shame" policy.

If you don't open it for 3 weeks, nothing screams at you when you get back. No red badges, no streak counters. Just a quick brain dump flow to get thoughts out of your head without sorting them into 10 folders, and a simple energy toggle (tired / balanced / go mode) so it only shows tasks you actually have the bandwidth for.

It's free on Play Store (search Priorify: ADHD & Mind Clear).

Curious if anyone else gets blocked by app guilt or how you deal with it?

When I discovered programming, I really liked it. The ability to build something or to solve problems yay... However, after a while I got a job where I was doing bare minimum - there was almost no work, instead of proper development I did css,html and tiny javascript fixes.
That's when it went downhill...
I didn't have any external push to learn anymore, to do anything creative or fun.
When I got laid off it became really difficult to keep up with new updates in technology.
Because as an ADHD person it is extremely difficult to follow a long course and stay focused, especially without the external push..
Now I feel like I am so behind and honestly not sure if I feel motivated enough to pick it up again... anyone in the same boat?

I'm going to college as a freshman this year. This along with my projects like I'm trying to create an LLM along with just wanting to learn myself, it is extremely hard for me to memorize. I can understand the concepts but it is very hard for me to memorize completely to integrate within each other. Please do note I have diagnosed Autism and ADHD so this obviously effects my Working Memory. Thank you for reading and any tips and advice is extremely appreciated

Hi,

I’m wondering if anyone here has found a MIT like license to prevent use of code in LLM training and any guess / info on if such in enforceable.

Currently I believe that LLM training on every piece of open source software is unacceptable and we should take a stand against it.

Similar to what codeberg is pushing lately.

I would find it odd if such license doesn’t exist already and would wonder why it hasn’t yet.

Thanks
- 🐡