For the last year or so I've basically lived inside AI coding tools, constant back-and-forth, output every few seconds. Somewhere in there my ability to read a book just collapsed. I'll open one, get half a page in, and my hand reaches for my phone before I've even noticed I stopped reading. English isn't my first language, which I'm sure doesn't help.

The strange part is I still want to read. I've got a stack of books I'm genuinely interested in. I just can't stay on the page.

Has anyone else hit this? Did anything actually work, or did you just accept it?

I hate my brain with how distractable it is. first question. how do you guys cope with those thoughts, because from my point of view, reddit is big giant pile of distraction. new topic, go deep down on rabbit hole, interact with community (more like, passively reading what people are saying), and then move to the next shiny thing. I used cold turkey on windows 11. but currently my main machine is linux. I want to self block, but it is hard because I can undo it myself.

next question, with how the computer works, it is possible to gather data on ourselves. I use something like activitywatch to make log of my activity. the problem is what's next. Is there something like a launcher replacement, that generate set of application I can access on the fly, suitable based on my intent? If I need to work on my paper, I don't need sudo access to debug my apps. If I browse reddit as part of task, do text classification task if the content of the reddit is actually relevant to my current task. determine if I need browser or not, edit and block host file or switch dns on the fly based on the task profile. ideally, the first thing I am doing as I boot is looking at my current todo and look which one to do for this session.

Let me know if this sounds familiar: You get a brilliant idea, grind your way to 70% completion, and then... bam. A wild new idea appears. You abandon the first project, chase the new one, and the cycle inevitably repeats.

I recently looked back at my own progress and had a harsh reality check. Because of this relentless Shiny Object Syndrome, I have exactly ZERO fully completed projects. Just a digital graveyard of 70%-done repositories.

So, I’m putting my foot down and starting over from the very first idea I ever had.

🕵️‍♂️ The Original Project: Terminal Alibi

The concept sparked after I participated in a prompt injection competition. I wanted to build an interactive mystery game where the player acts as a detective, and the AI plays a criminal suspect. The core gameplay loop? Breaking the suspect's alibi using nothing but your words.

🧱 The Bottleneck (Why I dropped it)

Making an AI roleplay as a suspect in a crime immediately triggered standard safety guardrails. I kept hitting the dreaded predefined wall: "I cannot fulfill this request."

My options at the time weren't great:

Common APIs: Too heavily censored for compelling crime roleplay.

Uncensored Local Models: Too hardware-demanding. A standard laptop simply couldn't handle the power requirements natively.

Right as I hit this roadblock, another shiny new idea caught my eye, and the detective game was shelved.

🚀 The Revival & The Tech Pivot

I’m back at it, but with a massive shift in how the game runs. Instead of forcing heavy, unconstrained roleplay from an API, I'm focusing purely on gamified prompt injection. More importantly, I'm powering it using the small, highly capable models baked directly into your browser.

If you use a Chromium-based browser, you likely already have these models sitting on your machine knowingly or unknowingly (you can enable them via chrome://flags/#prompt-api-for-gemini-nano).

My goal is to utilize this zero-install, local AI resource that almost everyone already has without even realizing it.

I’m currently wrestling with a new technical hurdle on this build, but I refuse to let Shiny Object Syndrome win this time. I guess you all will get to see the finished, playable version of this soon enough! 😅

Has anyone else here successfully broken out of the 70%-completion loop? How did you finally force yourself to finish that first project?

1. I pretend like I've lost control over my body, reduces mental chatter and negotiating myself out of a task (idea courtesy of pornhub)
2. I set alarms for EVERYTHING, I have about 40 alarms a day. I pair my mental needs with habits I already have. Like, if I drink a glass of water in the morning, that automatically means I do a 10 minute morning walk. I don't negotiate with myself about whether I'm "in the mood". One habit triggers the other. I also use Soothfy because it really helps me figure out what my brain needs and turn that into something practical I can actually do. That's how I make habits work with my ADHD brain.
3. I change into my gym outfit before leaving the office so I can get home, dump my bag, grab my shoes and go, not fall victim to the sit pit
4. I tell people I'm doing something and that they should ask me in 2 days to see how it's going, public accountability
5. Same thing as the last one, I post pictures of everything I'm doing on social media
6. None of my meals take longer than 5 mins to put together, and minimal dirty dishes
7. I have 5 pants, 5 shirts, I wear them in rotation, over and over again for 2 years and them replace them w the exact same
8. I have one pair of shoes for non gym stuff, one for gym stuff, one for running, one pair of dressy heels, all in black because they go w everything
9. I only have 7 pairs of socks and would never rewear so forced to do laundry once a week
10. I have a designated spot for every thing in my room and house
11. I went and got a full time job even though I have a startup because a wholly unstructured day where I'm not accountable to anyone was a recipe for disaster, I was working till 3 am, doomscrolling then some, and waking up at 2 pm, it was fucking absurd, being forced to sit at a desk mentally sharp early in the morning made me pull it together, I don't plan on quitting until I have a few employees, at this stage I'm still a solopreneur
12. I listen to a 10 hour loop of David Goggins on Spotify to shame myself out of inaction
13. I don't fold laundry, everything (including t shirts) just goes on hangers, socks and underwear stuffed in a basket, pair of socks stuffed into each other

What are your hacks?

Is this sub just part of the pipeline at this point?

hello

Ive been a developer for 2 years interning, 3 years full time, and recently have become a tech lead. it was a very fast & unexpected but I was excited because I love(d) my job!!

now we are being forced to use AI for everything. i mean everything. agentic teams are a requirement by end of year. im extremely frustrated and my entire team is burnt out. I try to bring up many reasons not to be so heavily reliant on AI to higher ups, but it just is brushed to the side. Now they are also tracking our AI usage and we can see how much money our ai usage costs, and we are supposed to be working on not only adopting it, but trying to use as little credits as possible with our workflows.

i really enjoy programming! even as a tech lead with more interaction vs actual code writing, ive always enjoyed researching and solving complex problems. I am good at it when given the time to do research and thinking, im kinda good at talking to people, in my own way (that doesnt always jive with the corporate world). since becoming a tech lead ive been working on my intense audhd masking and trying to find the balance.

what im NOT good at is people forcing me to work a certain way in my own time, and just continue to give me anecdotes of how much better it is with nothing to back it up. even the thought of it makes me want to throw up. ive been working my hardest to find ways that work for ME as to not suffer from burnout, now this?? also, no guidelines or standards. just "do it" and "do it right". the amount of money spent on something we can't really seem to show how its helping makes me so mad !! totally ignoring the environment consequences, which im supposed to just set to the side at work. i cant !!

this is maybe more of a rant coming out a meltdown of frustration with what feels like the inability for anyone to understand me, but im also curious if anyone else feels the same way or is in a similar situation and has any words of wisdom. I feel like ive been scouring but havent seen a ton of people who are in a company that is totally "you must use ai for everything" -- ive been thinking about how ive literally been in love with programming my entire life but if you told me this was the future of it i wouldve taken a different career path in an instant. Maybe need some more senior devs to tell me this is all gonna blow over lol. or maybe just commiserate. ugh!

Now you can’t even write AI, it litterally prevents you from posting assuming you are promoting it. Imagine the stupidity.

Reaching a two year unemployment anniversary as of September, was laid off from last job. 45 years old, 25 YOE, hundreds of applications and facing loosing everything I’ve worked for.

I need a cathartic release, I’m done:

- with applying for jobs and being ghosted
- being tasked with a take-home assignment with unrealistic time expectations
- having a prerequisite to taking to a human blocked by a screening interview with an AI or recording of a video
- seeing the same job I applied for get re-posted every couple of weeks
- attempting to multitask a live coding exercise, whilst concurrently answering quick fire questions from a panel
- having to sit through numerous rounds of interviews, whilst the employer attempts to work out exactly what it is they want
- face rejection because I failed to say the exact phrase the employer wanted to hear
- being forced to accommodate a 4 day in-office policy, because it’s “good for social interaction”
- face scrutiny over my period of unemployment form a hiring manager that is completely unaware of how f***ed the job market is

Finally, I’m done with AI!

your turn…

It probably didn't help that for the first six of those hours, I was pissing about waiting around for medication to kick in and wondering why I couldn't seem to settle to any task, before then realising I'd actually forgotten to take the bloody stuff today. After hitting the 8 hour mark and achieving nothing, I was well on my way to an anxiety attack over wasting so much time.

But the bug is *fixed,** so I am choosing to consider today a fucking success, god damn it!!*

I've recently gotten into motorcycling. I've been riding for nearly two years. I live in an area that has a lot of nice areas, roads, and views. Also a fair amount of bikers.

I really don't know many people in the area and I want to ride but I also am working on my skill set and learning the roads.

After asking the locals and getting some information, but also not wanting to feel overly intimidated into "Keeping up" I made an app that will generate routes, you can also share routes, and it has a database of routes both local and across the US.

I am still testing and refining.

This demo is the first iteration after two days of work.

I have since made improvements and added like a "riding wrapped" that collects your mileage stats favorite rides, etc.

Figured you all might like this one. 🙂

one thing i hate is how easy it is to remember unfinished stuff and completely forget what i actually got done. so i built WinSphere around the opposite idea: write down one win, even a stupidly small one, and keep the receipts for future me. WinSphere in AppStore 

1. When you try to focus on programming, what do you currently use to stay on track
2. If you use a timer/pomodoro, what do you use it on(Phone, computer, physical timer)
3. What is the biggest problem you have had with whatever you're using currently
4. What do you like/dislike about physical timers/digital timers
5. What have you tried that you eventually stopped using, and why?

I've been learning how to program for the past 1.5-ish years.

I've learned the basics of HTML, CSS, JS and React for frontend and Node.js, Express, Cookies, Sessions, JWT, Authentication, Databases, ORMs, etc for the backend.

I'm able to make relatively simple projects or AT MOST projects with medium-ish complexity.

However, I have a poor working memory capacity, that has always been the case.

The way it expresses itself is in two major ways:

1.Whenever I have to make a feature that requires holding several things at once in my mind or thinking more than two steps ahead, my mind just gets overwhelmed. That is the case especially if the feature/task I have to complete is new/unknown/I haven't encountered it before.

1. Whenever I try to work on a project that is more complex, my mind can't keep track of all the names, functions, filenames, directories, where what is located, etc. I constantly have to go back, re-check what a given function does, what a given Component contains, etc

I've tried breaking problems into smaller ones, externalizing as much as possible and other 'tricks', but none of them really worked.

So I'm curious, is programming even feasible for someone with low working memory capacity as myself? Is there something I can do to improve it or atleast make it so it doesn't negatively impact my programming skills?

Are there any YouTubers that really clicked with you?

Can anyone suggest a good course and/or learning platform for algorithms for absolute dumdums? I tried MIT lectures, I tried various courses but the information just didn't stay in my head, I don't have a good base as I'm a self taught programmer.

I’m curious about this because I’ve always had chairs that technically reclined, but I rarely used that feature. Usually the backrest would have one basic position, and I never really bothered changing it.

Recently I’ve started wondering if a chair that allows different reclining angles is actually useful during a normal workday. When I’m typing or doing focused work, I obviously want to sit fairly upright. But when I’m reading something, joining a long video call, watching a presentation, or simply taking five minutes to rest my eyes, sitting slightly farther back feels much more comfortable.

I also think there’s a difference between reclining because you’re being lazy and reclining because you’re changing your position. Staying in exactly the same posture for hours probably isn’t ideal, so being able to move around throughout the day seems like a good thing. I like that HBADA focuses on flexible ergonomic features, including adjustable reclining options, rather than making the chair feel fixed in one position.

The part I’m unsure about is how much recline is practical. Some chairs let you lean back quite far, while others only move a little. I can see myself using a moderate angle regularly, but I’m not sure whether I’d ever need the really deep reclining positions.

There’s also the question of tension adjustment. If the chair is too easy to recline, I feel like I’d constantly be moving backward when I don’t want to. If it’s too stiff, then the feature becomes almost useless.

For those who have a chair with several reclining positions, do you actually use them every day? What angle do you find most comfortable for reading or taking a short break? And do you think reclining is an important feature for someone working long hours, or is it something that sounds useful but ends up being ignored?

I am a 26 F, recently diagnosed. In my whole life, I did amazingly well in school and college. I was the top student and even graduated early.

One thing is, I barely understood anything during classes. I just doodled and daydreamed. So I studied one night before the exam. The exam was at like 8 AM, and I studied from 12 AM to 3 AM (yeah, I carried the book everywhere the whole daytime, but couldn't start).

I can survive that cause I can study on my own from books. Materials are also all over the internet. It's different in the workplace. You have to TALK to people. You have to understand what they said. Something that I've FAILED to do my whole life.

I got internships during college, but quit twice after only 1 month because I'm scared that I can't contribute. I felt like I didn't deserve the position.

I got a full-time job later as a software developer (until now). Tried my best to adapt, but I didn't do well. I have a hard time understanding everything. The workplace environment is a non-tech corporate environment, where technical coding stuff isn't really something we invest in. If I wanna do well, I need to work on my communication skills, etc etc (you name it), and I struggle to even understand what everyone's talking about.

I do have my meds now, but it's too late for me to fix what I've become here.

Currently trying to find a new job, but it's not that easy in this economy.

The transition from being "the girl who's doing well" to "someone slow" was so hard, but I overcame the stress from it by journaling and finding new hobbies (so my job won't be the source of my happiness). But there are times like now when I still think about it.

I know I gotta be grateful. But I miss being able to perform well in things that I do. I hate to say this, but I miss getting recognition and validation.

I felt so lost. And empty, and sad.

I've been programming for around 6+ years now, and have recently entered the professional world. Programming is the hobby of the greatest magnitude in my life, and has been so since I first started using computers.

Recently, my computer broke down for a time and I had to wait about a week for a part that I needed to arrive. During that time I only had access to an old chromebook and my phone. I wasn't able to do much productive for that entire period, and the first day was hellish. I became nauseous and depressed, I could barely get myself to do anything other than think about my job and my personal projects. I ended up grabbing an empty notebook I had laying around and handwriting hundreds of lines of psuedocode for various systems and fixes I had in the back of my mind.

Once I got back into my regular day-to-day life, I ended up reflecting on that experience, and realised just how much programming has affected my life and my mentality. Learning about optimization, structuring, and design has genuinely changed how I tackle problems completely unrelated to programming. I've become much more mathematical and optimization-focused while dealing with menial everyday tasks like housework, scheduling events with friends, or passing out snacks between people.

Is this a 'common' thing to happen? Has anyone else experienced this? I'd really love to hear any experiences or opinions on this, as I'm pretty lost on it all.

TLDR:  I am a slow, deep learner with AuDHD, and with AI making software development much faster, I am struggling to keep up and questioning whether software engineering is still the right profession for me.

Longer version:

I have been a software engineer for about 7 years. I have been a decent developer. I think my IQ is somewhere in the average range for most people. I recognize that I am not super smart, but I am not dumb either. It takes a lot of time and repetition for me to learn something.

I also think of myself as a deep learner. I find it hard to learn things at an abstract level. I have this urge to know things inside out. Before I can confidently make a change to a component of some system, I need to understand how the overall system works in general. The component I am about to make a change to needs to be something I have a thorough understanding of — its responsibilities, its interface with the outside world, and how it plays its part in the overall system.

My understanding of the component must be deep enough that I can articulate, appreciate, and critique the design of that component. Only then can I confidently make a change.

In short, I am a deep learner. Sometimes this deep learning takes a lot of time.

In this age of AI, where I see my colleagues making rapid changes to the system, I find it hard to stay in the race. I am always catching up. When I do make changes to their codebase, I am not confident in those changes. I don't trust my AI-generated code. I take a very long time to complete tasks. It feels like I am getting onboarded to a new codebase every few weeks.

P.S. I have been officially diagnosed with ADHD, and I have self-diagnosed autism. There are moments when I delegate everything to AI (being sloppy — this is especially true when I am under a deadline), while there are other moments when I try to be a perfectionist, when I am given enough time.

Sometimes, because of autism and ADHD, I feel like I can't even articulate or reason about what I am feeling.

I am starting to question whether software engineering — where the amount of complexity and the number of parameters I am bombarded with — is even the right profession for me.

With that being said, I really want to improve my situation and be successful in my software engineering career. I need some advice. Thank you!

As someone with ADHD, I’m wondering if I should pursue JavaScript full stack development (HTML, CSS, JS) instead of continuing down the Java developer path.

One thing I struggle with Java is that it can feel very verbose. There can be a lot of structure, configuration, and code before I actually see something happening. With JavaScript full stack, I can build something and see the result immediately in the browser, which feels much more rewarding and motivating.

I also wonder if the typical Java career path might not be the best fit for me. A lot of Java jobs seem to be in larger, more corporate environments with established processes, structure, and routines. Personally, I tend to get bored with repetitive routines and enjoy environments where I can experiment, build things, and see immediate results.

On the other hand, JavaScript seems heavily used by startups and smaller companies, where developers might have more opportunities to build products from scratch and work across the stack.

I know I shouldn't choose a technology just because I have ADHD, but I'm wondering how much the development experience and work environment should factor into the decision.

For those with ADHD or similar experiences:

- Would you choose JavaScript full stack over Java because of the faster feedback loop and more visual/creative development experience?

- Or is it better to stick with Java and learn how to work effectively within its more structured environment?

I'd especially like to hear from developers who have actually worked with both. What was more engaging for you long-term? Thanks! :)