Good, calibrated IQ tests measure something, and that something has a positive correlation with work efficiency in at least certain types of work.

That said, there are many types of IQ tests and some of them are in my opinion rather weird, for example anything where your score depends on your knowledge of English language or English history as I hear has traditionally been the case in US.

Around here it seems they try to make the tests as little dependent on language, history and even math as possible and the ones I have taken has largely been about:

- pattern matching (of these 6 squares with various patterns, which one doesn't fit in?)

- sequences (based on these 3 squares with patterns, which is the next one?)

- and that kind of stuff

These skills are things that are very real, very measurable and often linked to work throughput. Yes, I rarely visualize boxes in my head and rotate them and I rarely sift through through black and white squares with alternating patterns at work, but it seems the ability to do so is often linked to the ability to mentally single step code or spot patterns in bug reports.

It doesn't mean that you are good person if your score is high (or low) and it doesn't mean that you will be a good employee and not waste your time on HN.

Different shortcuts from app to app. Back when I used Mac last time it frustrated me to no end that the simple system that works everywhere on Windows and Linux:

- home / end for start / end of line

- arrow left /right to move one character at at time

- ctrl to move one word at a time

- shift combines nicely with all these in case you need to select the text you move across

while on Mac of course home and end doesn't exist (bonus point for there being two keys there that could have been home and end or page up and page down, but that even the most dyed in the wool Mac users I know cannot explain what they are for) and while I think it is rather consistent now, back then it wasn't consistent that CMD - arrow worked like home or end.

There were different shortcuts from app to app and today I have learned that even the one shortcut I thought was consistent from app tp app on Mac, CMD-X, CMD-C and CMD-V aren't consistent as Finder isn't lacking CMD-x, they have just decided to do it differently so you use CMD-shift-V instead to paste by cutting (?), breaking to consistency even of that.

It is like the (effective, not written) building regulations in my area:

Just make sure your house doesn't look similar to any other house in the area and you should be good.

And yet I have asked for a Macbook for my new laptop. After 10 years I just had to try. The last one was fantastic, only the OS was rage inducing even after 3 years.

This time however I have done my homework. I have a Mac mini, I have checked that the fn and ctrl key can now be put in their correct positions and there now exist a way to fix CMD-tab so it does the only logical and sane thing: switches between the last windows.

Still: wish me luck.

When I am in flow state however something more drastic might be needed : )

I am not affected but I am aware of at least one person who seemed to be affected and it was really really interesting to read.

OK, I see, I think we agree very much here.

----------------

There are the medical definitions, and there are the things you understand when you have friends and family with ADHD and you hear them describe it.

Yes, executive function is the problem.

Also yes, thanks partially to that and frequent comorbidities ADHD-ers also experience:

- time blindness (maybe because flow is so much more important to ADHD-ers that they have learned to hold to it at all cost?)

- on average fewer slots in short time memory (I don't know it this is in DSM, but it is well known)

- anxiety and depression

- etc

Every doctor I have spoken to is well aware that ADHD has many problems in addition to the ones stated in the diagnostic criterias.

I also totally agree that ADHD-ers know what time is.

That said, ADHD is a thing I have to deal with and for me and a number of those I know who have ADHD, "time dyslexia" is a very good explanation for a subset of the problems we observe.

> They absolutely cannot work on the task no matter how hard they try. They have not forgotten. They are not slacking off. They literally just can't do it. Their brain refuses to think about it, their body refuses to move for it. They don't have the willpower or the motivation for it. They are trapped. They are completely unable to make any progress because their brain will not let them.

Here it is you who are taking agency away from ADHD-ers.

Many can, it just takes a lot more effort than for other students/workers.

Things I have seen working:

- restricting oneself heavily so that the work at hand becomes the only possible thing to do

- conjuring up reasons why something is intersting

- pair programming

- various ways of sneaking up to the subject (start by fixing a few small issues, them improve a unit test, then make a small prototype, then take a look at the actual problem in question)

- gamification

- etc

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38158616

Points: 94

# Comments: 46

I have understood and it also observed that meditation can help somewhat, and I wonder what else can help for people otherwise function well who struggle with time?

Nice example!

> ... worked for 1984.

Another nice example, but ouch, that hurt.

Hey, even at the customer I work with now (a rather influential directorate), people have the option to choose Mac or Linux.

And: pro-tip, if you are going to work in such a place (public directorate), consider taking the Mac option because unlike with Windows PCs there are limits to how cheap the bean counters can get them and the budgets for hardware is optimised independently of the budget for hiring more people to cover for the fact that they aren't nearly as effective as they could have been and I am afraid - also the hiring budget. (The Linux option is the second best: you get the same hardware but with Linux you make the best out of it.)

So small breakfasts doesn't work, it often merely triggers my hunger even if it is just egg and bacon.

So my solution is just to skip it all together. If food isn't on the agenda my body totally accepts that.

1. drowsiness around and after lunch time which sounds related to your problems even if mine where just from lunch and onwards and every day of the week

2. a feeling of being jittery (not worried about anything particular but a strong feeling that I should do something, so strong that I have a hard time doing anything). Often related to coffee consumption.

-----------------------

As for solutions and attempted solutions, here is what I got:

1. (Discovered by chance:) if I skip breakfast I don't get drowsy after lunch. Why? No idea. But it has worked for maybe 8 years or so so it is not just that it feels novel.

Please be careful with this. I am not at doctor or a food expert. This might not be for everyone. There might be good reasons for why everyone tells us to eat breakfast to stay focused during the day, but with my brain, my guts, my work, my habits and my body it is completely the other way around.

Be espescially careful you consider this or consider mentioning it to someone else if you or they have a history with eating disorders. I have recently supported someone through a bout of mild anorexia and it was really scary.

Personally I am somewhere around 180cm and weighs well above 80kg so for me the reduced food intake is a pure bonus.

2. For the jittery feeling I have tried a lot of things:

- replace coffee with energy drinks: works but is expensive and you lose the social aspect of drinking coffee together. But it also means that for me it doesn't seem to be only the caffeine that makes me jittery but the whole composition of the coffeee.

- eat things from my childhood, hoping my brain or guts would make me feel better: didn't work for me

- eat fat or protein rich foods: works for milder cases. Now I just drink half a liter of full fat milk as a meal replacement

- skip chewing gum: works. This one is annoying. Chewing gum has helped me keep my teeth clean after lunch but at one point I realized it seriously wrecks my digestion.

- physical activity: not a food but I think it is worth mentioning still. Hard monotonous exercise (spinning bike in my case) seems to work. On a related note, drowsiness can sometimes be cured by beating the living crap out of a punching bag "for all it tried to do against my family" or something.

- sometimes just disconnecting works: again unrelated to food: I just stop whatever I can't do anyway because of the jittery feeling and read a passage from the Bible or something. Find something that works for you.

The only problem is that these are not pooled up towards fixing environmental issues but used as part of the general budget by whoever holds the government at any time.

Which in turn annoys even people like me who think it is a good idea to tax it because:

1. not enough gets done to combat environmental damage

2. it gives politicians an incentive to keep increasing these taxes to afford other projects they want

I seriously wish it was like water and sewer and waste taxes around here:

the municipality can increase these as needed but are not allowed to make a profit from them so if money is saved then the next years these taxes are lowered. (Or the year after, whenever the calculations are finished.)

Free, up to date and does not send neither money nor data to Mozilla.

But personally I don't care so much about privacy extremism:

The day another more liberal organization forks it again, adds Google search for some easy cash and start fixing the extension API etc I am probably going to recommend that.

I already dial back some extreme measure(s), nuking my sessions whenever I close the browser comes to mind.

Also of course I will not use Google myself, but it seems to be the way for browser developers to make a living so I'll allow whoever takes care of the future of Firefox to do the same.

Today however Mozilla stalls at giving us back basic primitives like for example a programmatic way to hide the top tab bar when an extension provide an alternative tab bar like Tree Style Tabs or Sideberry.

My problems with Mozilla are:

- Misuse of money: the browser team have brought in lots of money over the years (we talk billions) and the foundation is milking it dry. If the income created by the browser had stayed with the browser team they would have had funding for years to come.

- Being dishonest: Mozilla has sought donations for Firefox and I think many of us have donated thinking we supported Firefox, while in reality the Firefox team funds itself and the rest of Mozilla and Mozilla isn't even allowed to send money the other way.

- Not being up front about what they do: they more or less lied about their relationship with Pocket. I like Pocket, both the product and as a way to bring in income, but whenever it comes up, everyone who was there starts thinking about their lies.

- Nerfing the extension API.

- Writing "dear community members" in emails begging for money while simultaneously being rude to us in responses to real issues in Bugzilla.

Now, if anyone think I use Chrome, think again.

I am still optimistically waiting for authorities to wake up and punish Google the same way they punished Microsoft - huge fines and browser ballots - but that does not mean I give Mozilla a free pass ;-)

That tends to upset some engines including Bing I think.