ADHD

Walking While You WorkI'm not going to link to any articles or research about the benefits of walking while you work. I've been standing at my desk since I started working at home and to me this is the next progression. I have ADHD and I'm always trying to find ways to hack my brain. I decided to get in on the treadmill desk game. The First StepsA couple months back I ended up buying a cheapie treadmill on Amazon to experiment with walking while working. I used it a couple of times with some success but I ultimately felt it didn't provide much help for my focus. I kept doing research to determine what the issue was and spent time observing myself during a walking session with it. I was surprised it wasn't obvious why I didn't like this experiment. ...

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: https://twitter.com/gregibrown/status/452133773727899648 I 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? ...

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. ...

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. ...