Love this comment. I suffer from some of the same problems and feelings.

One weird thing that works me is playing reality TV in the background (love and hip hop, vanderpump ect). Seems to have really calming effect on my brain which lets me focus on work. I've realized over the years that my adhd is just suppressed anxiety in disguise and reality TV masks it.

I do the same thing, although I typically put on something lightweight that I’ve seen before, like a season of Parks & Rec. It’s interesting to see someone else with this specific experience, I always used the analogy of “picking up the slack”.

If I am engaging in rote work that doesn’t require much creativity or doesn’t fully engage my mind, then part of my attention tends to wander. It might not lead to total distraction, but it does produce an uneasy feeling I describe as anxiety.

I always imagined that music can serve a similar function in others, but I believe that my having been a musician (and a serious one when I was younger) causes me to engage a little too deeply into whatever music is playing, so it’s a little too active for me.

TV shows I've already seen are my go to as well. Parks and Rec is a staple. Office, Scrubs, That 70s Show, Big Bang Theory are all great as well.

Sometimes I get into phases that need a little extra. The Marvel movies phase 1-3 are solid, as is Breaking Bad.

I swap to prog rock music (again stuff I've heard multiple times before) if I have something particularly creative and demanding to work on.

A cognitive psych professor of mine couldn't work without music playing to 'occupy a certain part of his brain', almost always prog rock. Didn't seem to be holding him back - sometimes a mask is a workable solution. :)

John Von Neumann famously preferred chaotic background noise while working. I think most of us would be happy to trade brains with him.

I am the same.

Some things (code, writing docs) I can only do them with music in the background, usually music that is either downtempo, instrumental or both (for the most part Pink Floyd, Sting, Mogwai, Morcheeba or several jazz/fusion artists).

Without music it 10x harder for me to get those activities going.

Since being diagnosed and medicated it’s the total opposite for me.

Before I needed some background music - electronic or hip-hop in any language but English (to avoid my brain focusing on the lyrics).

Now with meds I sit in silence all day.

Nowadays it's as if silence creates some type of mental pressure inside me.

I found this to work really well in many different situations: https://youtu.be/P48QELwruQs

thanks for the positive feedback! I'm not as quick to engage as I once was and I appreciate it

I usually can't do any background noise with a pattern but there are a handful of albums I've listened to hundreds of times while working over the years in the same way I think you're talking about. I ended up finally ripping them from old cd's because every year Spotify would tell me that I basically no other music mattered to me in comparison ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also listen to mynoise.net (a gem of the internet) pretty often. Over the years a few of their tracks have become mentally associated with a sort of calm productivity for me

* * *

Yeah, for sure!

Honestly the ADHD focus ones are kind of random because they're sort of just albums I happened to be listening to at the point in my life when I finally started doing programming professionally (I def still like them though)

These are the ones I listen to the most when I'm programming. I'll flip through them depending on my mood at the moment:

Tool - Lateralus

Don Ross - Klimbim

Axiom of Choice - Niya Yesh

Axiom of Choice - Unfolding

Anoushka Shankar & Karsh Kale - Breathing Underwater

They're just sort of cooked into my brain at this point

Oh, there's also an album of Harpsicord music that I used to listen to at cafes because for whatever reason the Harpsicord drowns out voices really well (for me at least). I can't remember what it is now, though. I mostly use mynoise.net cafe tracks for that now

>Breathing Under Water

Wow, I've known that album since 2009? 2010? and never seen anyone else ever mention it. Curious if you remember how you found it?

I ask because the way I found it was odd enough that it sticks with me...

I was helping a friend in high school with their computer. I went to a boarding school without much internet and all the kids traded music on thumb drives. Windows Vista was new in our parts, and this girl's laptop was one of the first ones running it that I'd had access to. Asked her if she had any interesting music and she said not really, but there were some sample tracks that had come with the computer. So she gave me the Vista sample pack haha.

My favorite track was Karsh Kale's Distance, listened to it a lot. Later (months later, on vacation) looked the guy up to see if he'd made more like it. Didn't really click with the album Distance was from, but Breathing Under Water made the cut into "albums I remember to this day" (and I too have ADHD).

Nice! Yeah, it's kind of random, but less random than how you ran across it, I think.

I have a friend who's a drummer, and at some point in the early 2000's he picked up a tabla (a type of indian drum--sounds like something you're probably familiar with). I was really fascinated by tabla and started looking into more indian music, which led to listening to Ravi Shankar. I think I mentioned that to the same friend who told me about Anoushka and loaned me a copy of Breathing Under Water.

I haven't actually listened to any Karsh Kale, but I'll have to check it out.

I think that's also why I ended up listening to Table Beat Science (which I forgot to mention before).

Another more random album totally unrelated to those that I really like:

Iarla Ó Lionáird - I Could Read The Sky

It's more irish folksy inspired but has a vibe I always really liked. I used to sometimes just pick a random CD at the local music shop that I'd never heard and buy it. I think that's how I found that pme. That's also how I ended up with the four cd play-them-all-at-once flaming lips album(s) zaireeka. In retrospect, sort of an adhd thing to do, lol

Many many thanks! Always looking for music to help focus. Tool was unexpected but expected (I like to listen to NIN and Aphex Twin).

Your harpsichord comment reminded me of a folk band called Muszikas

np!

Muszikas just went on my list.

I don't listen to tool a ton anymore. I still like their stuff and think they're a talented band but just don't get the urge often, except for Lateralus.

Some of it is just happenstance, I think, but something about that album's energy and vibe can help me intentionally get into a steamroller of hyperfocus on work problems. It's honestly sort of draining for me? So I don't do it a lot. I can honestly say that I've listened to that album many hundreds of times at this point, so my brain long since stopped latching onto the patterns and lyrics.

For some reason I've never sat down and listened to Aphex Twin, which feels weird now. I'll have to check them out more intentionally.

There’s something to this.

I had a period where I’d play old episodes of Mr. Rogers while working.

When one of my kids was an infant, the only thing that would get him back to sleep in the middle of the night was watching shows like House Hunters on HGTV.

Something about the chill vibe, people interacting kindly and relatively quietly, nice scenery, no music or sound effects, longer durations without cuts.

Contrast this with, say, Sports Center on ESPN, where it’s a constant blitz on the senses.

I got the same clock! but I find it hard to read the screen without the backlight. going to try it again given your comment.

To be honest, nothing really works for me except medications. like i have a spare smartphone that's running my pomodoro timer, but if it's a task that interests me i will blow past every 5min pause and anything else because im focused on the task that interests me on hours end, like i would program in my head while drive home, but if the task is boring that i don't want to do i can have 100 timers it would not help. like for example i have to fill a form and send it that would return me 17k in overpaid taxes i did not do it for last 4 months. there is X amount of those task that no amount of timers would help me do it. i fucking hate my adhd in that without medications im a zombie. the only thing that i can hope without medications is find interesting problems. that's also shit when you have a family because you cannot turn of, because you are dealing with the interesting problem all the time and it consumes you. my brain is great in resolving big challenges, but the worst at doing daily tasks.

I very much relate to this (or at least parts of it; everyone's relationship with their own adhd is very specific and personal).

I was medicated as a 90s kid, then went a long time without being medicated. It took awhile to get medicated again and a longer time to be okay with it as a part of my life instead of constantly trying to wean myself off of it because of lingering stigmas around medications and mental health.

The timer for me is 100% in conjunction with meds and other life strategies for managing my ADHD and honestly, even then it feels crippling at times, especially since I've been laid off. Without the day-to-day structure of a job, my brain feels like a tornado in fog a lot of days.

Context is another big one for me. I don't do well working from home, so if I have a remote job I rent a small office. Part of it is having "work context" and part is just the fact that I don't have a VR headset, a thousand books on random hobbies, ten unbuilt lego sets, and a shelf of books on elm, clojure, idris, or whatever random language I'm interested in that week.

Anyhow, what you're saying makes a ton of sense. I feel like the timer thing just helps me specifically with even being aware of time at all, but I really find that coping mechanisms for adhd are super varied.

Appreciate you contributing your own experience, though, and highlighting that it's not as simple as one or two life hacks

I was in similar situation. From my experience a lot of people for whom timers, to-do lists, blockers etc. don't work react positively to body doubling (i.e. doing a task in presence of another person). Have you tried it? It's the only method that works for me (granted, I haven't tried meds yet, I'm at the end of diagnosis process).

can confirm body doubling / virtual coworking does miracles I am so sure of it I went out and built a whole platform around this concept :)

Show me yours, I'll show you mine ;-) Just kidding, I'll show you mine anyway. https://workmode.net/ ;-)

MacOS can announce the time every 15, 30, or 60 minutes. I've used it in the past. It's kind of like a metronome for my day. I think I'll try turning it back on. :)

System Settings > Control Center > Clock > Clock Options

I’ve been getting into wearing and collecting not that expensive wrist watches as a hobby to help feel more connected and aware of time and it’s been a great and enjoyable thing for me! Along the lines of you comment

That's a super interesting idea. Make the newness a thing you constantly rotate on purpose.

It reminds me of recently thinking that my clothes are only neatly folded after I learn a new way to fold them, so maybe I should just invent one every week, lol--which feels a little less tenable than the watch idea

Really cool way you're coopting the novelty like that

Thanks for sharing.

For me, The act of starting the pomodoro timer itself was the chore, I think being contextually aware of pomodoro timer was a drag to me.

So I fixed that by creating a butt triggered timer which starts when I sit on my chair and reminds me to get off the chair after 25 mins and triggers the break timer when I do. The whole process is un-attended and I didn't have to be aware of the timer at all.

Then I went overboard and built a game around it using WASM & what not[1] which defeated the whole purpose of me not having to be aware of the timer, So I again went back to the basics and built a new Simple Butt Mover[2] which I use regularly now with huge quality of life improvement.

P.S. Congratulations to OP for the launch of their Pomodoro timer.

[1] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/buttmoverWebApp

[2] https://github.com/abishekmuthian/simpleButtMover

I have a feeling just by the length of your post that you’re on medication too.