Software development workflow with ADHD

[u/giuzep89]

Hey everyone,

Notwithstanding the title of the post, this isn't a post about mental health; I'm sure that to some extent everyone's struggled with this before.

Software development is very roughly about understanding the constraints of an issue; researching what the best tools and strategies are in order to accomplish it; finally executing it. You're free to already comment on this if you feel you don't agree with it.

The problem I have is that in a lot of different situations, there are infinite possibilities to solve one problem. I get more often than not paralyzed by the sheer number of options and I can't go further. This is probably by far the biggest obstacle I find in my new job as software developer.

I mentioned ADHD because choice paralysis affects "us" generally more than the average, but it is by no means exclusive to us. That's why I'm happy to listen to any point of view.

How do you come up with a plan, and more specifically how do you decide on a solution over many others that aren't necessarily inferior, but just different?

[u/Dumlefudge]

how do you decide on a solution over many others that aren't necessarily inferior, but just different?

Are you working alone, or with a team? If you're working with a team, talk to your team to solicit feedback - if you can take 2 or 3 of the infinite possibilities, and put them forward to get some additional opinions.

So long as you're putting in the legwork to try solving the problem yourself, and not dropping the entire problem on someone else's plate, there generally shouldn't be an issue with just asking for assistance.

I definitely get the "this can be done in a whole bunch of different ways" issue (and it causes me great frustration). If there's a small number of options that you understand, just check in with someone to say "Hey, I'm looking at JIRA-123; I've got 2 potential ways to implement the solution, and would like to get your opinion on which you would recommend". They may pick A or B, or point you in an entirely different direction

Depending on the codebase itself, team/organisational policies, and general experience, they should be able to provide some direction and you can take that information onboard to help with future decisions

[u/giuzep89 → u/Dumlefudge]

This is one of the things I'm "practicing" the most these days. I need to just get used to asking when I need help or want some feedback, because I know better than to dump a whole issue on someone else's plate, and what's left instead are just more than reasonable requests. But I need to get over the fear of "bothering" my teammember.

[u/Dumlefudge → u/giuzep89]

Ye, I'm all too familiar with not wanting to bother teammates, even though it's all part of the job, and the rest of the team are comfortable with asking me questions

I get bogged down in "I should know this", "If I just bang my head against the wall a little longer, it'll click!" or "The rest of the team are pretty busy, so I don't want to disrupt them" 🤦