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alaithea

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alaithea
·5 mesi fa·discuss
I have the opposite problem. I often forget what the last thing I copied was, or whether I copied it, and have to go back multiple times to get the copy + paste achieved. A clipboard history would help me, too, but thus far I've been unable to make using one a permanent part of my toolkit (I'd have to remember the history exists).

That said, copying and pasting (and the attendant switching between windows/tabs) does often feel like one of the biggest cognitive frictions I have to deal with in any given day. That's a nut I'd like to crack one day.

One thing that has helped me the most in that regard is Alfred's multi-clipboard feature, where I can append to clipboard, which means I can copy-paste N links in N+1 actions instead of N*2 actions.
alaithea
·5 mesi fa·discuss
This. My very first thought upon reading this article was "this author does not have ADHD." I've achieved one of my most productive setups ever by keeping more browser tabs open, and using tab groups to organize them. When I need to switch to one of a handful of projects I'm working on, the tabs in that group help hydrate my memory space around the project.

I work better with a conceptual (but not actual) blank slate, by asking myself each day what the top three things are that I need to get done that day, and not allowing an ever-growing TODO list to get in the way of seeing what's important.
alaithea
·7 mesi fa·discuss
It could be, but the Wikipedia article notes that she may have also suffered a birth injury from hypoxia.

Rosemary's story is so tragic and heartbreaking. Her life was filled with what would today be considered multiple instances of medical malpractice, and heartless, unethical behavior on the part of the Kennedy family. Her father didn't even tell her mother about the lobotomy until after it was done.

Incredible that she lived to the age of 86. The nuns taking care of her might have actually cared, which could hardly be said of the Kennedy family.
alaithea
·9 mesi fa·discuss
Since tech has largely stopped hiring younger people, sounds like a problem.
alaithea
·9 mesi fa·discuss
ChatGPT has been shown to spend much more time validating people's poor ideas than it does refuting them, even in cases where specific guardrails have supposedly been implemented, such as to avoid encouraging self-harm. See recent articles about AI usage inducing god-complexes and psychoses, for instance[1]. Validation of the user giving the prompt is what it's designed to do, after all. AI seems to be objectively worse for humanity than what we've had before it.

[1]: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/urban-survival/20250...
alaithea
·9 mesi fa·discuss
Human cloning, nuclear bombs (other than for sabre rattling)... to name a couple.
alaithea
·9 mesi fa·discuss
Respectfully, I think you're missing the point that this is a societal rather than an individual concern. What will the average person's response to AI be? Probably to not recognize it, let alone spurn it. The cumulative effects of your neighbors, particularly the young ones who will grow up amidst this, or the old and gullible, being led along by computers over years is the thing you need to be more concerned about.
alaithea
·10 mesi fa·discuss
Why email clients have started hiding/not providing access to headers is beyond me. It seems like an anti-pattern. There have been many times recently where I've wanted to check the headers because an email was suspicious, only to find I couldn't.
alaithea
·11 mesi fa·discuss
Mine walked to school (< 10 minute walk) at about second grade. Running errands at about fourth.
alaithea
·11 mesi fa·discuss
Your concerns are extremely valid, but it is not _that_ bad in many places in America. I relocated my family specifically so that my kids could have a walkable community to live in, and since then (about five years), we've had no issues with them getting to schools, parks, the library, friends' houses, and downtown shops on their own.

That said, we live in the inner district of a small city that was settled in the mid 19th century, so it has a street grid, alleys, uninterrupted sidewalks, etc.... everything that makes a place as safe as possible in this day and age for kids to get around without getting hit by a car. (One exception being dedicated biking infrastructure, which would be awesome.)
alaithea
·11 mesi fa·discuss
> How long did it take you to get to this point? And how do you deal/ identify/ know you are “done”?

It took me around three to four years after starting medication to get to this point.

The "done" part comes out of setting and meeting realistic and prioritized goals. If I've done that part right, then I can feel OK about stepping away. How to set those goals is the harder part.

Tasks with time-constraints have to be identified and dealt with, such as "prep for meeting with product team." Identifying them means looking ahead on the calendar (not always easy for ADHD'ers!), and getting out of ADHD magical thinking about "just needing a few minutes before" to prep sufficiently. That might mean scheduling a half hour block for prep on the calendar. As a bonus, being aware of what's coming up next is always a good thing.

Open-ended tasks and independent work are harder to clarify and prioritize, but I got the greatest reward when I started attempting to describe what I was doing at my team's daily standup meetings. I might be spending weeks on writing some document, which can feel endlessly the same, but I force myself to not have the update everyday be "worked on the document," but rather:

> I researched topic X and spoke to people A, B and C to try and answer this question I had, and learned this thing

or

> finished drafting section X, editing section Y and started on section Z

Then it becomes much easier to keep track of the longer journey through writing that document. In addition, writing the description for other people helps make that easier.

Breaking the description down also helps you notice when you're stuck, because your daily descriptions start to sound the same. If you notice that sameness, but then ask yourself "if I say _____ today, what will I be able to say that's different tomorrow" then automatically you'll start to get more specific, have better updates, pace yourself better, and as a bonus you have an idea of what you'll do the next day.

Using the above tactics, I started to use standups to pace myself and feel better about my work (more "done"), whereas I used to become full of anxiety and guilt for not feeling like I could report "progress" day over day. It was all a mindset shift.
alaithea
·11 mesi fa·discuss
I feel this. It's so very hard to manage one's medicated-ADHD productivity in a way that feels useful but doesn't burn like a white-hot flame.

My boss has been supportive and really helped me see the ways in which I was causing myself burnout, encouraging me (as a senior tech IC) to write things down, do more knowledge and skill transfer, and delegate more. That helped me a lot.

What I used to think of as "autonomy," which I valued so highly, following the shiny problems that made my brain happy, was more lone wolf behavior than I like to admit, and not serving me very well career-wise, as it was hard to document or sell what I was doing.

I also had to privately learn how to pace myself, setting realistic, appropriate and prioritized daily goals (nevermind the arm's-long TODO list). Checking myself against those, aiming for better goal-setting each day. Being able to close the laptop when it's done. I never really had a sense of "done" before, I had a lifetime of feeling always-behind. There's this peace, though, that comes with realizing that you _can_ prioritize effectively, do the things, then rest. That peace can become its own reward, which is bananas to me, because my unmedicated brain would never have felt that.

Speaking of which, I might never have had the head-space to work on things like this if I hadn't gotten medicated five years ago. My career has improved and stabilized. For the first time in my life I've stayed at a job for more than three years. Been promoted. Been able to see a future that doesn't just involve running from a job when things get too hard and starting again.

The side effects can be a beast, though. I wonder to myself how many more years I'll be able to manage them.

I wish you the best in finding your way back to a place that works for you.
alaithea
·2 anni fa·discuss
> there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations?

The Logic of Failure is a fantastic book about failures, including some famous examples of failure (e.g. Chernobyl).

https://www.amazon.com/Logic-Failure-Recognizing-Avoiding-Si...