I’ve got a degree in engineering. I love engineering, programming, electronics, CAD and physical prototype design. I love identifying problems and figuring out requirements and designing something to solve it. I know I’m really good at it, but I can only really perform what feels like 20% of the time.
I’ll get into some hyper focus for some problem, learn some complex technology, solve the problem, then not be able to look at tech for weeks. This is cool for hobby stuff but man I gotta work too.
I find it nearly impossible to work on things which I don’t find personally interesting which isn’t good because most “work” isn’t interesting whatsoever. I envy people who are able to just go “ah time to do this boring thing” and they just fucking do it. It genuinely feels impossible to just start.
I’m medicated for ADHD but it feels like it only works like 20-30% of the time. The rest of the time my eyes just lose focus and I stare blankly at a screen waiting for hours to pass.
I don’t know how to make this work for me either. I know theoretically I could be a prototype engineer, the type of freelance generalist who gets an idea out and disappears but I don’t know how to network sufficiently enough to do that. I’ve got a good job right now, but COL is so high and full remote isn’t possible so I’ll always be living in a small apartment or be in so much debt I’ll never be able to retire.
I want to do more hardware stuff but that’s so rarely a remote type job and offices just hurt my soul with how uncomfortable I am all day long. I could probably make a living as a software engineer but I don’t know if I’d be able to keep up any kind of pace long term that would let me keep my job.
I almost want to take a stab at doing youtube videos and see if I can make a handful of neat projects that get me a sponsor. enough to score a house in a rundown rustbelt town and be able to fuck off and work at my own pace without the impending doom of rent or mortgage staring me down.
I drink plenty of water, jog when its warm, use a pomodoro timer when I remember. I learned the fundamentals of Rust in a weekend, designed and manufactured a run of PCBs in under 3 months. I just can’t keep that momentum going, even if I try to slow down.
thanks for letting me rant. Its not lost on me how privileged I am in this scenario. I’m quite lucky and comfortable but it terrifies me how even someone doing well like myself can’t see an exit off this awful ride.
“I’m medicated for ADHD but it feels like it only works like 20-30% of the time. The rest of the time my eyes just lose focus and I stare blankly at a screen waiting for hours to pass.”
Yeah, I’m doing university (I have two more semesters left) and an internship and I feel ya.
“I almost want to take a stab at doing youtube videos and see if I can make a handful of neat projects that get me a sponsor. enough to score a house in a rundown rustbelt town and be able to fuck off and work at my own pace without the impending doom of rent or mortgage staring me down.”
Feel that too. I have a YouTube and TikTok channel but it’s harder than it looks. And I don’t want to do it for the money, I just want to make videos.
But man, so many things to do and so little time, it seems.
Yeah, I don’t want to pretend like youtube or other content creation is easy. I think I do well in multi-disciplinary projects where I can bounce around my tasks when I get tired of one aspect. When I get into it, I almost can’t stop working, which is bad because then I burn out.
But man, so many things to do and so little time, it seems.
too true.
The problem is I have trouble “switching” to the next task.
I can’t just start another task. I get stuck in one task due to my OCD and Autism or for whatever reason, and I just can’t switch to the next one that easily.
I hear that, if I’m hyper focused I can’t switch but if I’m feeling distracted, picking another task for a bit is super welcome and gets some momentum going from feeling accomplished. I feel like my main task every day is just tricking my brain into painting the proverbial fence.
I experienced that too but it got cold and gl getting my ass to a corporate gym.
Only gym I ever enjoyed going to was this strength/powerlifting gym owned by a husband and wife and the clientele was equal part older ladies flipping tires and the largest, kindest power lifters I’ve ever met.
Same. The most friendliest old school gym, it was my safe space for real. For me this place closed down a few years ago so I first tried to go to the rebranded, but could not.
Thankfully got some home equipment during covid so doing that still. It actually worked out great for bodyimage and audhd inertia, but the initial cost was high even though I got the stuff a lot cheaper from a friend.
I’m confused. Do you have a job in tech? Maybe you just… don’t like what you went to school for. That happens. Or your associate the work with something negative enough that you don’t like doing it.
I work in tech but I solve enough problems daily that (although minor) I get the dopamine hit to keep going. I also know how to recognize small victories. I too had the burnout problem when trying to build a 3d printer and just let it stay half assembled for an entire year. Then I picked it up again a few weeks ago. I’ll keep working on it today because I don’t want to burn cash on a preassembled printer and I know I can finish it. It’s just time consuming. How I manage burnout won’t be the same for you but you can try switching projects more often instead if grinding out the same one until it’s done. I learn that way that since projects are not worth finishing or at least require me to think about how to continue them for a while. But I usually go back to them to work them out anyway. Because leaving half done projects sucks.
I’m confused. Do you have a job in tech? Maybe you just… don’t like what you went to school for.
I have a job in tech, a fairly niche area that has limited mobility, which leaves me stuck in a geographical area I don’t enjoy living in working with certain personalities I don’t enjoy working with. This is partially me being a baby but my personality clashes a lot with the kinds of personalities the area attracts. I really enjoy the subject matter but the general psychic toll it takes to work on it isn’t worth it. I rather do something else and do this as a hobby without stakes.
I still like what I went to school for and find myself tinkering more often than playing games. I think I’m frustrated to the extent I must retrain myself to exit my current field. Basically like taking on a second job which really saps the joy out of the learning.
It’s not generally that difficult to switch engineering fields, you just have to be able to sell your experience and knowledge as relevant. I know electrical engineers working exclusively in software, robotics engineers working in semiconductor manufacturing, biomedical engineers working as electrical engineers. Now, right now it might be a little difficult to do so, because a lot of tech and engineering companies seem to be wary of actually hiring on (my boss is basically on a hiring freeze, but they’re shuffling people around to avoid having to train new people after recovering from hypothetical layoffs). I’m not sure what the next year will hold, but I’ve become more discrete in my workplace organizing because I feel like the writing is on the wall right now and I swear every other engineer is a fucking chud.
This is me as well. ADHD sucks. Sorry I don’t have anything useful to add as comment here
Relatable. It has been an up hill battle to get through uni and sit all my exams, and still now I do what feels like what little I can muster while I’m at work. I’ll spend so much time planning to do stuff but never actually getting anywhere. I’m unmedicated, undiagnosed, and the only thing I have that remotely helps is modafinil, but that’s a point the barrel and pull the trigger situation where if I am still not 100% distraction free I will hyper focus all my energy into something else completely irrelevant.
Other people can just switch off and distract themselves with games or whatever. I am so jealous of those people. I never get a break. I’m either doing work, or thinking about what work I need to be doing, and I’m so inefficient I still get less done than an equivalent neurotypical. I do all this work just to keep up, and if I could only function properly, with this level of dedication I could become god.
Throughout all uni people would just do their work. My entire life I have complained I have homework to do and people would always respond so just do it if you care about it, like it’s that easy. At work I watch people dutifully plod along all day every day and I just… if I have a meeting and it goes on for too long I just will not work for the rest of the day.
It used to take me hours and hours to do a single homework. Most days for me started at 7am and ended at 9pm. I’d just sit there till it was done because there was no other option. It worked out in the long run but man it was miserable.
