Diagnosed with ADHD 10+ years ago in my 20s. Can be very impulsive in behavior and hyperactive when it's bad. Since about 28 or 29, I flipped from being a night owl to being a morning person. I usually wake up between 5 and 6, depending on when I went to bed the night before. Haven't used an alarm in about 8 or 9 years. I just wake up when I'm done sleeping.

I started lifting weights 2-3 times a week and I changed my diet from being carb-based to being protein based. In my 20s, I'd eat a bowl or two of spaghetti, or a pizza for a meal. Now, a meal is generally a protein source, a carb source, and a lot of vegetables (e.g. chicken and rice and a lot of kale, or steak and potatoes and a lot of broccoli). I think the most significant change was the diet, because in periods when I was injured or couldn't lift weights, I still sleep well.

I also started getting a bit more on a schedule. Eating breakfast between 7:30 and 8:30, lunch between 12:00 and 1:30, and dinner around 7:30, etc. has really helped my focus and attention and poise. It feels like the volume is turned down on the ADHD and it's much easier to remain calm and in control throughout the day.

Edit: I think I also have a mindset about this. I refuse to give myself permission to use ADHD as an excuse for not being the person I want to be. I think the thing I'm most scared of is looking back on my life with regret at the things I failed to do because I used some diagnosis as an excuse to not put in the work necessary to be the person I wanted to.

Great to hear you managed to put yourself in a good place. I'm 28 now, diagnosed last year (in so much as I was prescribed medication based on an official evaluation). These are pretty common sentiments from people who have managed to wrangle their lives, and I'd say that I've already adopted them for the most part. A big contributor to why I lost my job was that I didn't have anything else to do, and I couldn't just get up and do the job that wasn't that stimulating and have that be the day. I'm a skateboarder, I go to the gym, I hike, and do some calisthenics, my diet is mostly fruits and proteins, but aside from not eating 1kg of pasta in one sitting, I haven't seen any profound changes. These are all things that everyone should do, but most people also wake up on time for work. So while these are important aspects of your life now, what was the path you adopted that helped you get there?

Misc advice from a neurosimilar(?) person:

1. It might help to know you’re not alone (at all). I’m lost and burned out for the (n+1)th time myself.

2. For me at least, recovering from burnout needs to be an active process. Time alone does not seem to heal it, and actually seems to calcify it. I’d try volunteering or some sort of non-work related “work”.

3. Staying up (extremely) late is mostly behavioral for me—e.g. not being satisfied with my day and wishing I had done more, so I cling to the “day” and stay up til the birds chirp. Then I’m stuck in that schedule for a long while. I have no real solution to this and it’s not really advice, it’s just an observation that might resonate.

4. Try not to label yourself in such a way as, “I am ADHD, therefore I cannot do {x, y, z}”. Especially with mental health, it’s more accurate to think of it like, “I have a cluster of symptoms / patterns of behavior that could probably be classified as a type of ADHD”. Some of those patterns you may be able to control directly (like with meds or therapy/strategies/habits), some you may have leverage over indirectly via feedback mechanisms (e.g. relieving underlying sources of anxiety/burnout could help your sleep, which will keep burnout in check).

5. If you’re able, try doing a volunteer trip that forces you to go to bed and get up early. More specifically, if you like the outdoors, do a backcountry trail crew trip. It’s easier to fall asleep when there is social reinforcement, constant physical tiredness, few artificial lights, and plenty of weird sounds in the blackness. I did one week with (trailcrew.org) after an intense burnout period and it had a lot of benefits for me.

6. You could always find a more flexible job (remote, flex schedule, etc). If you work with a healthcare provider, you should be able to get reasonable accommodations—if you’re in the US you have this legal right. Go through HR, not your supervisor. If your company doesn’t have HR (startups?), try working for a megacorp where their incentives and ability to accommodate are probably higher. (PS: “Reasonable” doesn’t mean that it has to make managers feel warm and fuzzy, it just means you can’t insist on, say, teaching schoolchildren between the hours of 8pm-4am, for example. If anyone whines about “fairness”, just say: “I have an alternative work schedule for personal reasons” = “f..k off”). Anyways, don’t set yourself up to get fired because you didn’t arrange for fair accommodations—advocate for yourself.

#3 hits home hard for me

I am the same. During the quarantine I’ve moved back to going to sleep at 3-4am. However, I have a kids and when the school year is in session I have to get up at 5am to start getting them ready. So that gets me up and going so that I can make it into work at a decent time. So, I guess my misc advice is to find some sort of responsibility that forces you to get up early.

> So, I guess my misc advice is to find some sort of responsibility that forces you to get up early.

What I find is that my judgement is impaired in the morning - and that I don’t act rationally: it’s like I prefer that nice feeling in my head I get when I’m half asleep - if I had responsibilities I’d just disregard them because at that point in time I value being in bed more than anything else.

It’s why alarm clocks, sunshine, Hue light bulbs with a Wakeup routine set, all don’t work for me :(

I think this is a great description of that feeling, and one I share. It's led me to the thought that at the moment, I just won't be able to do something in the morning I'm not intrinsically motivated to do more than just continue sleeping. Extrinsic rewards don't seem to do that, but meeting friends for a sporadic event like coffee early in the morning, or a hiking trip do. I think you've solved this in a novel way with your caregiver.

Those don’t work for me either. But having kids does. I guess being responsible for the welfare of another human is enough for me to overcome my need to sleep.