Sh*t my brain says and forgets about

Tag: ADHD

I like Shiny Things

Last week I was having a discussion with my coworkers about how I think someone should feel when viewing/interacting with their site stats in the WordPress world.  I made a list of things I’d expect and one of them I wrote down was definitely inspired by my personality:

do really like shiny things.  Okay maybe part of it is attention-related but in general I like things that stand out.  Why have stuff that’s dull and drab when it perform the same function but LOOK AWESOME?

You’ve seen my laptop.

You’ve seen my desk lamp.

And I’ll further confirm it with my shoes and custom WordPress backpack.

BrightThings

 

Shiny Things keep me engaged and entertained.

My Attention So Far

In the recent past I blogged about my trials and tribulations with my experiences with ADHD working at Automattic.  I figured it was time to give a follow up on how things are going!

Back in October last year I started on a medication called Vyvanse to help me cope with the problems that ADHD had been presenting.  My ultimate goal with the medication trial was to keep it just that – a trial.  I’ve lived with the spastic brain patterns all my life and I just wanted a few months of clarity so I knew what to work towards.  Late February, I decided to take myself off the medication.

The first thing I realized when I was on Vyvanse is that my eating patterns got all screwed up.  I started losing weight which I felt was a great side-effect since I was almost at my heaviest ever prior to starting the medication.  It gave me the jump start I needed to drop the weight.  I also stopped a different medication before starting Vyvanse that may have caused an interaction – one that helped alleviate Cluster Headaches (a whole other set of posts for this).  Turns out that medication in itself caused the weight to pile on and made it very difficult to lose it.

Immediately after stopping the medication for ADHD I discovered I was somewhat back where I was last summer.  Scatter-brained, overwhelmed with the communication from coworkers, and unable to focus on long-term goals.  I had to force myself to use the tools my counselor encouraged me to develop while I was on the medication:

  • Centering yourself
  • Exercise to reset your day (yoga, aerobics, a quick walk)
  • Elimination of distractions
  • Listening to your own mind

and one of the ones I recently rediscovered myself:

 

Exercise has been a big part of my success, I believe.  Three to four days a week I will do some aerobic exercise which usually ends up being step aerobics.  It’s simple enough to do at home and it is a great workout.  I set up a workout area in my basement so that I can leave the equipment up and it gives me the locale change I need.  I also track calories with MyFitnessPal, movement with the Nike+ FuelBand SE and RunKeeper for the social aspect.  I have a Withings Scale to help with tracking weight and it syncs across all of the apps to help with calorie burn calculations.  Good stuff.  I’m down 30lb from my heaviest last summer!

So how’s it going?  Well, actually.  After a month of the difficulty of readjusting myself to being off the medication I re-discovered one of the things about my personality I missed – my random thoughts and internal tangents.  I think that’s one of the reasons I didn’t feel just right – I missed seeing the weird things, the small things, the things people easily pass by.  I’m embracing my ADHD and I’m learning how to control it so I can use it as an advantage.

Paying Attention at Automattic

All of my teen and adult life I realized that I perceive the world a little differently than most. I’d like to think I’m a smart guy but I never did very well in high school on exams especially for topics that weren’t science/math/computer related. I couldn’t read textbooks very well; my eyes would gloss over the details and I’d realize after reading a page I retained none of it. I hated research papers the most. In my early teens I discovered electronic music (at the time everything was called techno) and I realized listening to it while doing homework would keep that part of my brain busy so I could somewhat focus. I never put a name to the condition and just moved forward.

In my adult life, I coped with the challenges of whatever this condition was through a series of tools that I put together through trial and error. None of these tools were formally created by myself, much like the music discovery in my teens, I found what worked and continued with it. I ended up continuing on into college part time at night while working full time – I found the context shift during the day allowed my brain to focus on the learning. I did very well and my grades finally reflected how I felt what my potential could be. Work itself was a challenge, but I realized I liked taking on a number of different tasks and spending a pre-determined amount of time on each every day, keeping a structure in place to prevent boredom. I continually wanted to learn new things. Music and noise-canceling headphones also were still in my toolbox.

As I elevated myself in my career, getting more responsibilities like peer mentoring and tech lead on projects, I found the tools I had in the past didn’t quite work for this. Having to interact with others and integrate with their workflows caused me to derail pretty quickly. Keeping focus and retaining facts got hard at times. I plugged on.

Flash forward to me starting at Automattic.  Automattic, if you’re not aware, is an entirely distributed company.  All of us work out of our homes or wherever we may be.  We are all forced to be self-starters and good communicators over IRC and through posting of internal blogs.

I realized pretty quickly – within the first week there – that my quirkiness with focus and attention was more than just an annoyance. It was preventing me from maintaing cohesiveness between the work days and I felt like I was losing track of important details. I had an annual physical coming up so I decided to voice my concerns with my primary care doctor. He was receptive to what I was talking about but required me to talk with a specialist in the clinic – she is a trained counselor that deals with a variety of issues, ADHD being one of them. It was apparent to her that I had been showing signs of ADD (not so much hyperactivity) and suggested we take a layered approach to combating it. I was not comfortable with being on medication for the rest of my life but was willing to give it a whirl so I had some idea of what “normal” feels like.

So what’s my next steps and am I seeing any improvement? Short answer, yes, the medication seems to be helping with attention and focus. I can have conversations with people and I hold onto the train of thought much easier. I’m doing other things as well including meditation, yoga, exercise and some computer software to keep things in check. I’m also started a new internal blog at Automattic called Automattention for those of us who want to talk about ADHD and how it affects our lives at Automattic. I also plan on sharing my experiences here as I think it’s something a lot of people can benefit from hearing!

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