Maybe you're right in the fact that the coping mechanism help with that. Maybe using LLMs is similar in that it is easy to lose focus for neurotypicals so having lived with that we know how to handle it. Or maybe it's just us, who knows.
Now I want to do a study!
I wonder if the extremely fast dopamine hits of LLM use trigger the same sort of dopaminergic response that ADHD does when faced with a stimulus? If so, are we simply better at dealing with those swings, since we’ve literally dealt with them our entire lives?
It's obviously massively generalising, but I'd say someone without ADHD is more likely to feel like the number of tasks they can do at once is only limited by pesky things like physics and time, and LLMs "solve" this by allowing them to do more at once.
A bit like when a good manager takes on more and more reports and their ability to manage the larger team goes completely to shit, but without the useful feedback loop of the grumpy, mismanaged team.
Things like drawing small defined boundaries, understanding where and how to delegate, and forcing myself to “hyperfocus” on 1-2 tasks at once. My strategy with building revolves around offloading mental context as fast as possible and into sequential, modular pieces. It’s made me a much better systems thinker. However, because of that I also don’t really see the point in running more than 1-2 coding agents at once. Others I work with don’t relate and are trying to parallelize as much as they can.
Part of me is concerned that this way of thinking isn’t compatible with the new wave of agentic SWE and these skills will become outdated. Or maybe it’s actually all converging back and is more valuable than ever.
I have not found myself less productive than my peers, but I have found myself less scattered across a bunch of different things. I do not think this is worse.
Also, consider reading about and/or getting tested for ADHD. You may not have it, of course, but I was diagnosed at 33 and it changed my life. Not because of medication (though I did that for about a year and a half, with success) but for a dozen other reasons, including being able to accept parts of myself rather than fight them, recognize (and reinforce) the coping mechanisms I’d built, recognize the ways in which it made me literally better than other people at certain things (some refer to ADHD being a “superpower” which it can definitely feel like at times), etc.
If you haven’t read Mark Suster’s posts about his experience with ADHD, read them - there are 3. If it resonates, consider talking to someone.
My email is in my profile; I’m happy to chat if you ever want. :)
What I’m trying to solve right now is how to communicate this intuition with colleagues and management. It feels like fighting against the current and near impossible with the levels of hype. Hoping that we as an industry make this realization soon
(That is also an unproven statement, obviously, but that’s what I’d want to study/test)
People who keep dozens of agent plates spinning all the time must have a broken understanding of productivity where they think more code = better regardless if anyone needed the code. In the old days engineers burned out when they got a promotion and thought they now need to write more code to compensate, maybe burnout in the agentic age looks different.
I am much more able to use fragmented bits of time now. Whereas before if I had 20 minutes here and there I would not be able to even read code or notes in order to get context enough to make a change let alone do real work.
I suspect personality matters. Often in discussions with AI or anyone I tend to take opiate position and constantly challenge and dig in. I don't go with the flow. With people this can be problematic. With AI it merely takes more time but probably a avoids some pitfalls.
Pre-AI, I worked on projects where people tended to multitask and juggle many tasks at once. They felt productive, they worked a lot and hard and felt they are treated unfairly when outsiders complained about slow speed. Except that, their overall speed was extremely slow, really.