Ask HN: Struggling with inattention but don't have ADHD
For years I've been extremely envious of people with ADHD who, after starting treatment with drugs, exclaim "So this is what being normal is like? Being able to just do things?". That has never been my experience. There only two types of tasks in my life, the ones that immediately grab my attention with the strength of a boa constrictor (and these usually come and go) and those who I struggle a lot to focus on, very few in between.

I've finally gathered enough courage to seek an ADHD assessment, but it came back as negative (I cannot decide if I'm relieved or disappointed). From the conversations I had with my psychiatrist, I have no reason to doubt this result, as I always got mixed signals from the online info anyways.

However inattention/procrastination has a strong in impact in my life. I graduated uni below my expectations because I couldn't force myself to actually sit down and study. I wasted at least one big work opportunity (maybe two) for under performing (due to lack of effort, not skills). I cannot keep a hobby to save my life. I am scared of looking for new jobs with the fear that I won't be able to deal with a normal 9-to-5 workload (for reasons I don't fully understand I have been able to get away with putting very few actual hours on my current job).

Some random facts about me that might give you an idea of the extension of my inattention, hopefully some of you can relate:

* I can consistently focus on some things, specially cleaning and cooking for some reason
* Every now and then I get a strong impetus to start a personal project, which I spend some time obsessed with, often putting other more important tasks to the side (guess what I should be doing instead of writing this post...)
* I cannot watch films or series by myself at home. But I can easily focus when with company (specially of my husband), or in a cinema or airplane. Most media I consume is just youtube always at 2x speed
* I do not use social media much, though I do lurk on twitter and of course HN
* I am not burned out, I enjoy my current job and profession in general
* I absolutely I cannot work from home. The most I can usually do is milk 1 or 2 hours of half-assed or unproductive work, often even less. During the pandemic I could go a whole week without doing any work
* Pressure seems to be a factor. If something is on fire, I usually can bring myself to work
* The kind of task is also a factor. In general if I can just dive into the meat of a task I can do it more or less expediently. If there is a hurdle (e.g. need to figure out how to setup a test before implementing a feature or bugfix), it can take me weeks to overcome it.
* I mostly work well in the office (2 days a week in my current job), and that's where I can put most of my productive hours. Even then it's not entirely unusual for me to be able to waste more hours than I'd think it's normal, I just have to be more discreet on how I do that in office versus at home
* My bosses never caught up with how few hours I have put into my job. I like to think it's because I'm a 200IQ sigma 77x developer, but it's probably just because my company pretty chill and light on the workload
* My smartphone is not my main source of distraction, so getting rid of it won't help (I have tried)

Although the list above is mostly related to work, these points manifest in the similar ways with studies, hobbies, etc.

I don't wanna give a wrong impression, my life is good. This is what I'd call the mental health equivalent of a first-world problem, i.e. when all other big life problems (studies, finances, relationship, etc) are sorted, this kinda of issue becomes extremely grating, and now I have the time and money to try and address it, I just don't know how. So I would like to hear from people that have similar struggles that managed to deal with it one way or another (without ADHD drugs).