Why this blog?!

After 39 years of dealing with something that ultimately could jeopardize my career, I've decided to do something about it.

ADD/ADHD affects quite a few people in the world, me being one of them. This online article states some surprising facts.

We've heard the comments about us: "they need to stay busy", "they are energetic", "they need to focus"... (the energetic one probably doesn't apply to me!!)

The problem with these comments, while intended to help, is that they really don't help. There has to be a way to effectively handle all that life throws at us without being overwhelmed and still get everything done.

Over the past 15 years, I've been extremely lucky in my technology career for a number of reasons:

• Ability to quickly learn new technologies/methodologies and apply them effectively.
• Identify and solve problems quickly.
• Remember enough to get the job done.

The last reason is a salient point which I'll come back to later in another blog post.

Over the past 15 years, these are some of the issues that repeatedly cropped up:

• Important but small details were missed.
• Inordinate amount of bugs were discovered during the QA process.
• Failing to meet deadlines due to lack of focus.

When something needed to be done quickly, I was the 'go to' guy. About ten years ago, a gentleman I worked for called me "the best HACK coder he knew." At the time it was a compliment, but later in my career I realized that it would come back to haunt me.

Hopefully these rantings will help people understand the mind of an ADD/ADHD technology person...