I wouldn't want you to change, just to find your place in the world and satisfaction in being naturally you. Its like you have pockets full of keys and really good at finding new keys just no locks to use them with. There are other people who have the opposite problem and have locks they obsess over but find looking for keys exhausting, frustrating and confusing. You can be a force multiplier for them.

One idea, if you wrote a blog about each new thing you try, you accidentally create something "you stick with" because its about all the things you are not sticking with :) When your attention moves on, its not a failure any more because each article is a success. Documenting what you are doing might also let you spot some patterns that take you to the next level.

I wonder if you might find teaching \ training a rewarding occupation. Keeping up with continually moving tech and having a breadth of knowledge might make you excellent at that.

My enormous blind spot is that I then miss legitimate trends, and I can completely fall behind in the industry.

I also find myself not learning new tricks and techniques that would improve my workflow, and have to take time out of my schedule sometimes just to play around with new approaches.

I can definitely see how both approaches lend something, and both approaches have huge weaknesses.

The biggest issue that I've actually seen with novelty-seekers it that they'll build something based on some new framework or tool--that turns out to be be really rough and they hit those rough edges and get frustrated. Then instead of trying to fix the tool they're using they move on to some other new shiny tool of the day. That behavior can leave a ton of tech debt in its wake.

As you mentioned I do really have 'ton of tech debt'. I hope I could change my behavior and reduce my tech debt.

Sure, as long as the quiz doesn't involve how to use something in ways not spelled out in its README. Or issues and limitations in applying it --- also not in the README which is more of brochure from a fanboy perspective.

In other words, don't ask, "How did you use that to solve a similar problem? What problems did you encounter, and what were the solutions and workarounds? Would you use that again?"

Someone who knows about alternatives isn't nearly as useful as someone who has the inside knowledge to evaluate them in a relevant way (that is bang on).

Do you procrastinate a lot?

Do you have a hard time transitioning? Are you late for things because you a) can't accurately estimate time and b) can't pull yourself away from the thing you're doing at that moment even though you know you're going to be late if you don't?

Do you have a very unstructured sleep schedule?

Do you have high impulsivity? Spending (sounds like it)? Speeding? Substance abuse - including alcohol?

Did you breeze through HS with decent grades without trying but then suddenly find college and its unstructured environment and lack of supervision much harder and hard for you to succeed in?

If you answer yes to many of those questions, then you may want to talk to a psychiatrist about the potential for you being ADHD.

I was very much the same way and was diagnosed at age 29. Best thing to happen to me. I've managed to turn my career and my personal life around.

Everything you describe sounds like the impulsive behavior of ADHD to me, but I am not a medical professional and I am not trying to diagnose you. You just sound an awful lot like I once did.

Best of luck..

Looking back at the age of 40, my life has been much richer for it, having met interesting people, traveled to strange places, and worked on amazing projects. Most of the behaviors you listed have naturally attenuated through experience and age.

But to be honest I still struggle (albeit somewhat successfully) daily with a lot of it, so I'm wondering what treatment you got that worked so well. I'm definitely not interested in drugs for myself, but would still like to hear your thoughts on that if your treatment included them.

It has also caused me to be less risk adverse and take career moves that have really helped me over the years. I haven't been afraid to try new things, to gain new experiences, etc.

But those upsides all had their downsides. The same impulsivity that let me drop everything and move to NYC for bigger and better things is the same impulsivity that saddled me with an embarrassing number of speeding tickets and car accidents, substance abuse issues (alcohol), etc. The same intensity that is a large part of my charm is also a large part of the reason many of my relationships become strained.

Being diagnosed and getting a handle on it has curbed the negative side effects greatly while still allowing the positives to shine through.

So, I'd say you are less "risk averse". (Trying to be helpful, not a grammar nazi... I hope)

I use medication and cognitive behavioral therapy. They are a tandem duo and neither alone would be nearly as effective.

First, do yourself a great favor, read the book Driven to Distraction. It's a super easy read and will give you a great amount of insight.

Second, try to really re-evaluate your fear of medication. ADHD medication gets a bad rap. My opinion is that it's because it's over diagnosed in children and abused heavily at the college level. For those who truly have ADHD, however, it can be a life-change overnight. I mean that.

The ADHD brain lacks dopamine, this shortage is a major component of the behaviors that follow. A low amphetamine dosage should have no ill effects on the patient (you're not trying to get high on speed here..), but what it does do is artificially boost the dopamine levels in the brain. This covers the shortage that your brain is constantly trying to fill by jumping from exciting thought to exciting thought or through thrill-seeking. Suddenly, your executive functions are much better and you can direct your focus far better. You'll never be "normal", but it's a world of difference. For me, not only did I immediately regain better control over my focus, but I also found I could transition better, I didn't procrastinate as much, and I wasn't as emotionally reactive as I normally was which has always been a major issue in my personal relationships.

This alone, however, won't fix all the issues. Once you have the medication and are able to wield your focus, the next step is unlearning all those bad habits you've learned over 40 years of struggling and compensating for your ADHD. This is where Cognitive Behavioral Therapy shines.

These two things together, along with accepting and learning to appreciate your brain for what it is and making use of tools (lists, calendars, regimented scheduling, written goals, etc.) that complement your way of thinking will go a long, long way.

Anyway, your mileage may vary, and your feelings on medication are between you and your doctor, but this is what worked for me and what I recommend to everyone I know who is thinking of seeking treatment. Best of luck.

Seconded.

And know that those medications works wonders for lots of people, at least Ritalin which is the one I have seen in use.

Only be aware that the effects seems to differ from person to person, so work with a qualified person when trying these things out. I have seen some weird examples (same dose giving wildly different effect, even on siblings, same weight and generally similar) which is why it seems most professionals will generally start at 10mg and work carefully up to around 40 - 80mg/day. As long as instructions are followed however, highly recommended.

Additionally, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy has been huge for me. Since I was diagnosed late in life, I had just shy of 3 decades of bad habits to unlearn and replace with better ones. I still struggle with some things - punctuality, sleep schedule, for instance - but I'm far more productive and far happier.

Just a suggestion from an outsider (I'm not a programmer). What is your 'time constant' (like an RC circuit) in terms of getting bored? You mentioned a month up the screen. Can you get contract work on tiny projects that last less time than your 'time constant' and thus generate some income and give yourself time to see how the treatment goes?

I found out the hard way that the freelancing life did not work for me. Double booking clients on accident, forgetting deadlines, not being able to motivate myself to start projects, etc.

I certainly don't mean to project my experiences onto OP as fact, but ADHD often makes a lot of the skills that are required to run your own freelancing business very difficult to master and stay on top of, alas.

That being said, I think it's a really great suggestion if OP finds himself out of a job again. Especially if he can do projects serially and try not to overlap them. That's where I got myself into trouble.

Same here, I always suspected it, but as I'm 25 and don't want to take medication, I never thought there's much that could be done.

I would love here what y0y did to work with his condition as well.

Don't be afraid of medication. Find a healthcare professional that you trust and will work with you.

There is a book I recommend to everyone who suspects they may have ADHD: Driven to Distraction

It's a very easy read and will give you a lot of insight.

One of the lines I use from that book often with regard to medication and the stigma it has is: would you deny yourself glasses if you couldn't see? The medication helps focus your mind the way glasses help focus your eyes. The medication is the catalyst for other treatment options to be more effective. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, for example, works far better when you are able to actually concentrate and do the exercises properly without your mind wandering on you.

Most people find that the medication dosage they need of amphetamine is actually quite low. You're not trying to get high and become a speed freak like college kids popping Adderall the night before Finals to cram. Your brain simply lacks dopamine and is forever craving a fix for it - thus always latching on to the most exciting thought and causing impulsive thrill seeking behavior. A small dose of amphetamine feeds the brain this dopamine, rids you of the shortage, and restores the balance you need to be the person you expect yourself to be+.

+Very simplified explanation, obviously. But, it's the best way that I can relate to my brain's behavior - by always thinking of it in terms of a dopamine imbalance. While it's true, other factors are likely involved and ADHD is also often comorbid with anxiety and depression as many of the same chemical pathways are shared.

It's currently being re-evaluated, but it's good enough at the moment.

Long term amphetamine usage has been shown to potentially be toxic to the brain, especially at high doses. It also increases risk for high blood pressure, heart attack, and renal failure for those with pre-existing conditions or who are at-risk for other reasons: genetic conditions, obesity, etc.

Most of us (myself included) will take long breaks from their medication. I don't take it while on vacation, I take most weekends off of it, etc. I take it when I need to be at my best for work and I take it if I am on vacation and feeling like my emotional reactivity is too high, etc.

Ritalin is actually shown to mitigate the effects of amphetamine toxicity, as well, surprisingly, because while it also work on dopamine it uses a different strategy. Instead of causing your brain to produce it (thus potentially frying the cells that do so), it simply prevents the brain from re-absorbing it, much like an SSRI does with serotonin. So, I've heard of some people switching back and forth between amphetamines and Ritalin, though I have not done so myself.

Lastly, there are other drugs such as Cymbalta and other SSRI/SSNRIs that seem do help some people. SSRIs have a whole slew of side effects (especially weight and sexual side effects), and, while SSNRIs tend to have far fewer side effects (Cymbalta seems to have barely any for most people), they are still a fairly new class of drug comparatively so I could understand someone being cautious.

All that being said, the risks are worth it for me. Even if it took 10 years off my life, I'd rather have the remainder of my life be productive, happy, and have healthy relationships than continue to be the shit show I was at times in the past.

That being said, as I mention in another comment, there are valid reasons to be cautious with ADHD medication. And as for the stigma, I am very careful about who I talk to about my ADHD in real life. A few of my coworkers know, my boss knows, and a couple of my friends and family members. I discovered very quickly that ADHD itself has a pretty bad stigma, let alone the medication. Everyone thinks you just want to get high. So, I just don't talk about it anymore, even though I so often want to explain to someone that the reason I did something rude (like interrupt them 5 times in 10 minutes) is because I'm ADHD and my medication has worn off, ha.

May I ask, where this bias against medication comes from?

While it is a real enough problem it has some remarkable upsides as well. You have to live with the downsides even though you can make them less visble and annoying, but also be aware of your superskills and put them to use for yourself so that you can have more to give back to your family, your friend and the world.

I feel I am verging towards that end of the sectrum (I assume its a spectrum). I never though if it as a disability, just stuff I am good at / bad at.

If that is the case why does it have such a negative stigma attached and is treated as a problem (like I say I am verging that way, but I don't see myself as ADHD, so maybe my perspective on it is off). Many people proudly proclaim they are "not good at maths" but they are good at other things, why is this seen as such a negative that we put people on medication for it?

There are different subtypes (not sure if they are in the DSM but they are often referred to in other literature), e.g. hyperactive vs non-hyperactive. Sometimes, though, the hyperactivity exhibits itself in ways that are non-obvious.

I think the negative stigma comes from what many (myself, included) believe to be an over-diagnosis in young children. It seems to be used as a catch-all for children who are difficult to handle, who aren't good at sitting still in class, etc. This over-diagnosis causes a lot of people to think the disorder isn't real.

Secondly, a lot of people will try to fake their way into an ADHD diagnosis (especially at the college-level) to gain access to the amphetamines. This makes it difficult for those with the actual disorder, as we are scrutinized heavily and often made to feel somewhat criminal when we pick up our prescriptions at pharmacies that have had issues with this in the past. I won't say it's overly common, but it does happen. I've been told they were out of stock before because I tried dropping off a prescription at 3am once. I had it in my wallet and had meant to drop it off on my way out with friends. On my way home, the subway stop I get off at (I live in NYC) is where my 24/7 pharmacy is. I didn't think anything of it, I'm just dropping it off to save myself a trip in the morning.. well, the pharmacist looked at me.. 3am, clearly had a few drinks.. and he gave me the "we're out of stock" line. Magically it was re-stocked at 7am.

And lastly, there is a stigma in the US, in general, when it comes to mental illness. These aren't things people can see, for one. And, perhaps more importantly, our mental selves are what we view as our actual selves, so people can have a hard time admitting to themselves that they have something about their mind that is considered abnormal. Other people have a hard time accepting it because they simply can't relate - how do you explain to someone what it's like to be ADHD?

You might tell them that you forget things a lot, feel impulsive, etc. and they simply say "Yeah, everyone is like that though, you just need some discipline and will power dude." What they fail to recognize is that, yes, everyone does feel that way sometimes. Just like everyone feels anxious sometimes. What makes it a disorder is the frequency, intensity, and duration of the feeling(s). Many people just can't accept this, especially in the US it appears. Our attitude is "pick yourself up by the bootstraps" or "be a man" or "put yourself together - no one's gonna do it for you. I certainly didn't need medication!" and there's a lack of empathy because they simply can't understand.

No widen your horizon and find reasons both for why to improve (for yourself, your family, community, everyone) as well as how (applying skills at current job or plan to get a new where you can use them.) Me for example I'm good at talking to people and when I get into a new setting/position and see no one wants "that" customer I tell them I can do it. Bam, instantly +1 in an honest way that benefits everyone.

Now, I take Methylphenidate (long release Ritalin), and think it's wonderful -- it allows me to focus on tasks that need to get done, and has allowed to become more professional.

My biggest advice, as others mentioned, is play to your strengths. I've been incredibly lucky to find positions where I can design and prototype but don't have the trudgery that gives me trouble.

Find a team that will let you work on new problems regularly is very important. I grew very tired of working on the same tiny feature for a year, but it took me some time to realize.

A startup will have you facing different problems every week, but with fewer engineers, you'll need to do more maintenance, and it's even more important to temper the thirst for new tech stacks, because new features are more important.

tl;dr - meds until find ones that work and/or find a team that lets you work on new projects, something like R&D or custom integrations.

Best of luck, but I see ADHD as tradeoffs -- less focus on boring tasks for hyperfocus on interesting tasks.

   Do you have a hard time transitioning? Are you late for 
   things because you a) can't accurately estimate time and 
   b) can't pull yourself away from the thing you're doing 
   at that moment even though you know you're going to be 
   late if you don't?

The ADHD brain is always seeking dopamine and constantly seeks out the most "exciting" thoughts. When you are actually into something and engaged, the brain is producing dopamine (the reward chemical) and so an ADHD person will hyper-focus on that thought/activity intensely for long periods of time, barely noticing the time as it passes.

This is one of the reasons, in my opinion, a lot of people in the software field are ADHD. Being able to sit at a computer and code for 12 hours while having it feel like 2 is not normal, per se. Hyper-focus allows us to be amazingly productive at this job. It's a gift as well as a curse, however, because it's that same hyper-focus that can keep us playing a video game far longer than we should even when we cognitively know we need to stop.

In people with ADHD, the executive brain function has a very hard time overriding the impulsive side of the brain. So, if the brain is getting its dopamine fix due to playing the video game and you're running late for an important meeting, it's going to be super hard to override it even if you cognitively know that being late to this meeting is a very bad thing.

What I find even more interesting than that, though, is that being late is stressful, and stressful thoughts are, as far as the brain is concerned, exciting! It's a double edged sword; as soon as the stress of being late is more exciting than what you're doing, you'll get up and leave. Until then, you'll sit in denial and read Reddit or HN or play your video game.

This is also one of the reasons ADHD and Anxiety tend to be co-morbid, I believe. Anxious thoughts are "exciting" for the brain so we tend to fixate on them.

So yeah, transition, in general, is very hard for those with ADHD.

http://www.healthline.com/health/adhd/adhd-symptoms-hyperfoc...

If you don't mind sharing, could you please explain how you've managed to work with it and some of the steps you took. What were some of the difficulties you experienced along the way?

Is it possible you are just abandoning ship on any project as soon as it gets hard? The first few stages of any tech - googling, researching, following tutorials - is pretty easy. Shorter projects are easier than longer projects.

When you read textbooks, do you actually do the exercises, or do you just skim? There's an entire second part of learning that involves thrashing and struggling against your own limitations as soon as the tutorials run out, and that's where the real learning is. The trick to that is to accept that it's supposed to be hard and you're supposed to feel helpless and dumb when it happens. The successful ones are the ones that keep trying anyway in spite of their own feelings of stupidity.

Anyway, ignore this comment if it doesn't apply, but your question can be read in a variety of different ways, and this one interpretation is just if you haven't toughened up and learned some tenacity.

PROS: 1. Your energy level would match the students 2. You could make sure the curriculum stays up to date, and every few years transition some large parts of the curriculum to a new language/framework. 3. You have tons of experience to draw for the many left-field questions you would get 4. The consistent new influx of students might feed that need you have for novelty

CONS: 1. Not sure if you could teach each session knowing 80-90% is the same content as the last, but you're just changing 10-20% for this batch. 2. Could you handle answering some of the same newbie questions every 3 months? 3. They would, like most jobs, want you to stick around, but this isn't a total CON, they are likely more amenable to you leaving than almost any corporate gig.

So maybe it's something to consider!

I do think you might need some more help in managing this, but in the meantime, you can always find work that fits what some part of you needs right now.

There's also academia -- though even there, you will need to follow through and translate your learning into something you can communicate to the scientific community.

There are probably a number of causes, but coffee may be one of them. Don't be radical, but if you're having too much coffee, I'd suggest cutting down to just one coffee in the morning. It will take a bit of effort but may help you concentrate.

Then I suggest you try to focus on finishing things as the main goal. You have to get rid of the addiction to the rush of novelty, but you can get addicted to the rush of publishing, with obviously positive results. In order to do this, lower the bar enormously. Take only TINY projects: writing a short article or even a tweet. Writing a tiny piece of software that does something. Cleaning up one corner of your disk. It is key that you accept average or even poor quality, that shouldn't be a consideration. And it is very, very helpful that you publish the result: post the essay on Twitter, Facebook, or a blog. Upload the code to github and share it. Obviously, cleaning up your disk drive isn't so amenable to be published, so maybe you want to write a line in an "achieved.txt" file.

Make sure we are talking really small projects here, and that we are not expecting anything from them but completing them. They will be small and mediocre. No problem at all! You can't solve everything at the same time. Make things small enough that their scope fall under your current reach, which you said is tiny - so make tiny thing! Err on the side of caution. You want to make sure you complete them. Half-an-hour projects are perfectly fine here!!

Do this for a week and recap.

I'd suggest gradually cutting down to none. Apparently the alertness and general cognitive enhancing properties of caffeine don't really exist and all that people are noticing is the effect of the caffeine on their caffeine withdrawal symptoms.

No they aren't.

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/156/9/842.short

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20182035

These are just two of the first studies I found. There are plenty of others.

if you do not over-do it, there is a 90% chance of feeling more alert when you drink coffee.

90% of statistics are made up on the spot. If you're going to acuse me of making shit up on the spot maybe you shouldn't do it yourself? Feeling is the operative word in your statement.

No, what we know about benefits of caffeine is quite weak.

http://www.evidentlycochrane.net/caffeine-and-health-evidenc...

The long-term passion and commitment come after some level of success, not before.

Steve Jobs didn't dream of dedicating his life to Personal Computing. It was his early successes that fed into his self-image and a feeling that it was what he was meant to do.

Maybe you need to find the right project.

Turn your weakness into a strength by publicly launching a new project every week. A new mobile app, web site, screencast, open source project, whatever. They don't have to be good, just a bit useful. Make things that you want and try to give them away and/or sell them to other people.

There are a lot of ways to make a living as a skilled programmer. Most people have trouble finding the right kind of project, and that's mostly because they don't iterate quickly enough.

Start a project, commit to the technologies beforehand, and deviate under no circumstances.

Facebook was built with PHP. AdWords was built with MySQL. Instagram was built with Django. GitHub was built with Rails. Stack Overflow was built with Microsoft technologies.

It seems there are few instances where a "boring" tech stack prevents the product from being built. If the idea is good enough, you'll make it work with what's on hand.

If you can commit to a stack, yet still can't finish a project, you may have to face some uncomfortable possibilities: that your ideas are no good, or that you're simply not a very good programmer.

Attention span is a requirement for being a decent programmer.

Commitment to stack is some problem for me, but it's OK for 6 months, maybe even a year. Anything longer-term, and I inevitably think something in the lines of: "this Java code now looks like shit, I learned so much new things, why not rewrite anything in Scala/Akka/Go/another interesting stack du jour?"

I realized embarrassingly recently that I am a mental coward---if I don't like the implications of something, I just don't think about it. This is surprisingly non-disabling in a classroom setting, especially if you enjoy learning. It is a no-good for homework, though. I was everyone's favorite student---and failing.

My fear of unpleasant mental work ( http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html) led to an inexperience with mental work, making the fear worse.

When I untangled all this, the solution manifested itself in a few different pieces:

1. I gave up on the entitlement of always being in a flow state. This was scary, and my faith helped.

2. I started my days by planning them. I am actually not very good at this, and often I just write "coding" for a significant portion of the day, but the biggest benefit here is that I force myself to think about whatever it is I don't want to think about.

3. At the end of the day, I write down what I did that day. This forces me to confront myself about whether I'm planning badly or not.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906843

I spent a long while, and still do, thinking about what am I heading towards. I know a lot of people don't know this and there is no way I will ever know all the details to make a decision, but I prefer the 'fail to plan, plan to fail' montra. Thus I plan, but am willing to scrap my planes in the wink of an eye, contingent on new infromation.

This is what I did and maybe you'll find something helpful in this method. Find what makes you tick. Make a list of things you enjoy doing. Try to be specific as you can. (You like novelty. Okay then maybe something like 'I like to learn a new trade skill (wood carving, stained glass, etc.) every 6 months.') Try to begin to boil it down to a long list. Keep adding things to the list, and take a break from the list every now and again (just to bring a fresh pair of eyes to it). If an idea seems broad, try to break it down (when I did/do this, I try to be able to tell someone the idea and they would be able to go out and do it exactly how it is in my head).

Then next to the list make columns like 'Financially sound ideas' (buying 32 Raspberry PIs to make a large cluster computer is not as financailly sound as Learning how apache2 works), 'Speed of doing' (you can learn how to write C at a basic level in an afternoon, but learning how to weld may take you longer), 'Practical for you to do' (if you weigh 400lbs and wanting to go backpacking through the Rockies is not as practical as learning how to write better on a whiteboard), 'It would bring me immediate gratitude', 'it would bring me long term gratitude', etc.

After you make a large list rank each column with 1-5 or some other ranking system (I liked the 1-5 because I could say I really hate, sort of hate, neutral, like, love an idea). Then you can hopefully start to see things that rank high in each category you made. (e.x. I really want to take a trip around South America (drive for two weeks or so through the Andes). It isn't practicle, it isn't quick to do, it isn't finacially sound, but it would be one hell of a memory. It is something I want to strive towards and go one day.)

What's killing me is inability to stop learning and start focusing on doing, intensely and persistently. When I have a job, I can't focus on the job. When I try to run my business, I can't focus on administrative side and routine (and successful routine is the essence of every business). I only want to learn, even if it is self-destructive, even if there are many more urgent and important things to do.

And very often, it is. But sometimes it ends up being the type of problem that requires a much more involved architecture change to solve correctly. It's not just a one line change, but something the whole team will have to sign off on. Which will require at _least_ 100 times the work of the usual two line fix. By this point, I already 'know' how to solve the problem, and it could be very easy to lose interest. But the error emails keep on coming. And they're easy to ignore because "they're just those weird errors we get from that 3rd party API we use so there's nothing we can do about it."

But these emails are really annoying. So I find I have to reframe the problems from understanding how to fix the issue to how to get buy in and get the fix actually deployed, and I haven't run out of these types of problems at any company I've worked at, and that works for me to keep my attention.

So a new approach I am trying is the "GPU Pipeline of side projects". First, I choose to trim my list of side projects to a few important ones (4 is a number I like, so four). I work on them in a parallel pipelined fashion. So I have one that's more advanced, one that is being setup, one that is being fleshed out, one still in ideation phase (you get the idea).

Secondly, I realize that when building things, the novelty can come from "recursing down to the details". For example, setup a AWS pipeline for code deployment would mean, learning how to setup an Ec2 deployment, then a Chef or Puppet instance, then easy config management of them, best way to document our setup (gitbook etc) and so on.... So if we use our boundless curiosity, which is both a strength and a weakness, to look a little deeper, we will find enough novelty to keep going even in a "single" project.

What I realized is that one single project is like a LISP S-Expression. (project). You (eval project), and it returns (list sub-project1 sub-project2 interesting-research3 wonderful-idea4) All you have to do is keep eval'uating the sub-expressions till you hit an "atom" of truth to share with the world.

I would suggest you set up with a consulting firm - Thoughtworks for example tend to try out a lot of new things across the entire company. This means that getting from 0 to somewhere, quickly, is something they can really sell. The downside is the poor bastards like me who have to deal with no one wanting to throw out the 'prototype' version of the solution.

So, novelty seeking, I do this: - work part-time on something i'm passionate about as it's products that help others. Research based, which brings more novelty naturally. Also, passion for me was the most important thing to keep my focus, not "interesting" as "interesting" gets boring. - spend rest of the time mostly building random side-projects that won't be finished, but I don't care, that's not the point.

Seems to be working well.

With your generalist skills, you may make a great developer evangelist who can give overviews and demos of new technologies at developer talks, internal corporate trainings, or online trainings. They get paid well and I have come across some right here on HN.

My Java code: https://github.com/atemerev/pms/blob/master/src/main/java/co... (saved me probably man-years in my consulting projects).

Code samples for Javascript, Matlab, Haskell and Go available on demand. :)

If, by maintainability, you mean "looking at the mess I did some years ago in some large project and see how it turned out", then yes, I avoided such projects and large teams. Most of my code was written either by me alone or as a part of 2-3 persons team.

The OP is asking for strategies, alternate ways of viewing things, ideas he hasn't though of or dismissed. "Suck it up", is something we all try, or attempt to convince ourselves we "just" have to do. It usually doesn't work. The brain is changed by tricks and nudges, not some doomed-to-fail attempt at overriding yourself through (easily depleted) willpower.

If sucking it up worked for you, then you are probably in a very different situation.

You're such a monster for invoking the Occam's Razor of solutions. /s

I like building novelty stuff too, but I've found that stability and security in life is far more fun.

I sucked it up and busted my ass for what I have now, and life is fucking great! Sure there may have been some missed opportunities, but I look at what I have now and regret nothing.

Some weeks suck, some other weeks I get this niggling and build some crazy projects in my free time. It all ebbs and flows.

The hunter seeks new challenges, is less risk adverse, needs to be good at responding to the unknown and seeks the thrill of the pursuit and catch.

The farmer is more risk adverse and has the patience and diligence to gain satisfaction from seeing plans develop, mature and deliver results.

For me, while a definition of ADHD delivered by someone trained in identifying personality traits might be useful in developing a perspective on the strengths and weakness of one's personality, one might choose a more 'active' approach and look at the techniques that can help mitigate the most destructive aspects of the 'condition'.

Everyone is unique, we are somewhere on a bell curve and I don't believe that classification is particularly helpful, knowing one's self is not always any help in changing the status quo.

In terms of advice, I've never met anyone who has come to any harm from seeking talking therapy, I loved CBT and met a very nice councillor with a 'holistic' approach, trained in many diverse disciplines and with a very rounded and realistic angle, baby steps towards things you want to change.

Good Luck :)

One could question if you really "learn" those new things, instead of merely skimming over them, since you don't seem to stay with them long enough to really get into the details.

Maybe what you're afraid is really learning? Which involves comitting to a stack, and also getting to the parts where a project approaches being finished, which is where the real and important issues emerge.

I know this is HN, but you haven't really mentioned anything about novelty outside software. Now, I will try to not make assumptions, but is it perhaps that you are only seeking novelty in a very constrained way, which makes you feel uneasy about your choices?

What type of food do you eat? What hobbies do you pursue? Maybe you have a very monotonous life (or at least you think you have it) and try to compensate in your career with novelty.

If I were in your position, I would first write down when and where I experience these 'novelty rushes'. The key here is not looking at these notes after you write them for at least a couple of weeks. After a couple of weeks doing this, look at what you wrote and see if it maybe has to do with other factors in your life (maybe you rush to try something new after an argument with your wife, when you don't drink your coffee in the morning or when you don't go running for 1 or 2 days)

Perhaps it has nothing to do with your life outside this area, but maybe you just like reading documentation. At any rate, writing down what you are doing when you get these 'novelty rushes' would help you identify the problem. Hopefully.

I lived in 6 different countries (going through bureaucracy hell while getting paperwork done each time), visited another 20 or so, tried getting a PhD, founded two startups (failed both), etc etc.

Part of the problem. :)

I don't know if I can think of any practical advice. But I'm in the same boat, and I think this can be a good quality if it means you are constantly thinking of new ideas. I also love starting new projects, and have even been able to finish a few. Recently I even posted an unfinished project on Reddit, which got a few laughs, and that's all I was going for.

If you're up for it, I would enjoy chatting about some of the projects we worked on, and countries we've lived in. I'm still looking for the perfect place on earth to settle down for a while, although I think I might have actually found it this week (New Plymouth, New Zealand).

Feel free to send me an email, my address should be in my profile. And we can also maybe work on some ways to mitigate the addiction to new things.

Can't find your e-mail, contacted you through your blog form. :)

Our product (https://grabaperch.com) is a PHP and MySQL CMS. A self-hosted PHP and MySQL CMS. That means that we are not only PHP, but we have to support really old PHP, we support right back to PHP5.3 as that is the reality of the terrible shared hosting people use. Then in the UI we have to support the browsers that our customer's clients use. So we can't use all the latest front-end techniques.

So it's very easy to get bored and not learn anything new.

To counteract that my personal projects tend to be about really new stuff, for example I've spent a lot of time writing and talking about an emerging CSS spec that interests me. I tend to implement new and interesting things in our own stack too where we don't have the constraints that the product does.

So my best advice would be to see if you can channel your novelty seeking into places outside of work, and accept that work sometimes involves having to stick at something that is boring. Sad but true!

I have some of the same tendencies, and infosec has given me all the entertainment I can handle and then some.

(There are other fields adjacent to software engineering which you might prefer as well---consulting, operations.)

My story and maybe something for you to explore. I never held a job longer than 24 months when I was younger. Not being able to figure out a career direction and trying to get some direction in 2000 I sought testing at a great organization called Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation. They do aptitude testing and have been for 70+ years. Lots of data and studies on job satisfaction, aptitudes (which are different from both interests and skills), and success. Check out their web site they have some great info.

I tested high aptitude (80 - 99th percentile I think) on about 1/2 of the 19 or 20 aptitudes they've identified in their research. About 10% of the population tests this way. Most people have 3 or 4 max. The problem is if the aptitudes don't get used they agitate. Deeply. Like having a team of 20 sled dogs all fighting to run and no sled to pull or direction to go.

So I have learned I must use them or suffer the consequences. For example, Argentine Tango exercises my musical and social aspects. Engineering aptitudes, inductive reasoning, rapid idea generation, etc... all need expression. Some more so than others. Ideaphoria is rapid idea generation, handy in marketing or teaching, and a real pain if it is suppressed.

Commonly people with many aptitudes have a lot of difficulty with careers. Some use seasonal work or multiple part-time jobs or many different activities in one job to deal with what can often be conflicting drives.

Whether or not you are in this situation I don't know. What I did learn that may be of help was that I needed to respect the cards I was dealt in life. Gifts or burdens depended on how I looked at things. It's okay to have multiple projects and very diverse abilities and interests. Some may get abandoned quickly while others stick around.

Sharing seems to help. Get a blog up and start writing about all your projects. The ones that work and the ones that don't! For some reason sharing project results seems to help regardless of how they turn out. For example, I just had a surprising and inspiring response from HN readers on a blog post I wrote in November. I didn't realize other people would find what I was doing interesting enough to discuss!

I'm going to be 50 this summer and finally feel like I'm getting a handle on things. Keep at it. I hope some of this was useful. Get the help you need as you find the resources. Take care of your health, physical and emotional,and honor your gifts.

I'm definitely going to have to follow up on aptitude testing! I reckon I fit the description of sled dogs to a tee; I actually have absolutely tragic committal issues and I wonder if that might be the cause.

Link to website for Johnson O'Connor: http://www.jocrf.org/

Testing is apparently $675, $750 in NY.

FYI, this particular group doesn't franchise outside of Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D. C. - and sadly I'm in Australia.

I really wish your response was higher up just for this line. It really hit home for me in helping me understand more about myself. Thanks for the response.

You cannot "cure" what you find motivating. Just learn to live with it and perhaps force yourself to take longer "tours of duty" in jobs. Consecutive jobs held less than 1 year is universally considered a red flag by employers, as is getting fired. Engagements lasting 2 years in fast-paced industries are generally OK. If you're good at what you do you can probably control your urge to quit for a bit longer and do enough to not get fired. 2 years is not a long time and if you're able to do other things besides work, it can be a great advantage to have a job while exploring new things.

Another thing to consider is your life outside of work and your relationships with family or a significant other. If you're defining yourself strictly through work and ignoring the role you play in the lives of others, you're going experience some profound disappointments. In other words, perhaps your career decisions aren't really the root cause of your turmoil-- perhaps it is something far more personal? In that case nothing you do related to work will resolve your issues. YMMV-- just a thought to consider.

I used to feel this way as well, but at some point things changed for me and I began to care deeply about the impact of a technology far more than what components it was assembled with. The obsessive, myopic phase is good for awhile because it gives you the motivation to build useful skills when doing so is hard work, though it does become a burden eventually for the reasons you list.

Others have recommended speaking with a therapist or counsellor, and I agree with that advice; you may be surprised at how deeply-held attitudes or patterns of thought can hold you back.

Finally, I can tell you what changed my goals, though this is obviously anecdotal and not treatment advice. I joined a big tech company, which gave me the ability to work on projects with a ton of reach. I didn't realize how tired I was of working on little-used web apps and experimental stuff that never saw the light of day until experiencing the contrast.

But yes, good point. This may not apply in your case. I wish you luck...the search for motivation and purpose is fundamental to identity.

I've found two things that seem to help:

1. Start a startup. I started Fogbeam at least in part because it gives me an outlet to pursue things that are interesting to me, and a place to work on really cool new cutting edge stuff, even if my day-job doesn't. Back at my last "boring enterprise software development" job, I found that coming home and working on Fogbeam stuff helped keep me sane. (Note: in my scenario the startup is just a side project, but if you have savings or feel like raising money, I suppose you could just jump into it full time. YMMV)

2. Become a consultant. I started consulting for Mammoth Data back in 2012, and I've found that this consulting lifestyle is quite a bit more interesting than the typical "sit at the same desk, working on the same product, with the same people" routine. I'm constantly working on new and different things... every project is different, and since we focus on "Big Data", analytics, BI, etc., there's a non-stop stream of new technologies being invented / released that we have to try and keep up with. In the past year or two I've worked with Neo4J, Hadoop, Spark, Storm, Kafka, Knox, HBase, Phoenix, Couchbase, EMR, Google's Cloud stuff, Impala, Kinesis, Pentaho, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. The downside, of course, is the need to travel a lot at times (which is another of those "good and bad" things) and the feeling you get sometimes that you're drowning in all this new stuff. Example: In the past month or two, 3 different major companies have released distributed Machine Learning platforms (Google, IBM and Microsoft). And every day or two there's some new Hadoop / Big Data related sub-project hitting the Apache Incubator. And as a consultant, I feel a need to be on top of all of that stuff.. which, unfortunately, it's pretty much impossible to be.

Another side-note: You may find that signing up for and taking lots of MOOC's on Coursera, Udacity, EdX, etc. may serve as an outlet for your neophilia, and might let you stay more focused at work. Just treat coming home and working on a cool new class on Machine Learning or Synthetic Biology or $WHATEVER as a reward for putting in a good day of hard, focused work at the day-job.

Later on, you can get business from LinkedIn, mouth to mouth, previous clients who now contact you directly etc.

Write.

You love learning new stuff, but get bored quickly. Seize the enthusiasm you have for a new technology while you've got it, and make the most of it. Create books, online courses (e.g. Udemy), and blog about what you're learning. Build up experience and a reputation as someone who can turn lots of new and confusing technologies into stuff that helps other people learn.

If you already have, or can develop, the skills necessary to write and present well, after 2-3 years you could have a pretty impressive portfolio of material. If you can successfully monetise that, you've got yourself a career that fits your working style.

I recommend checking out the book "Authority" by Nathan Barry: http://nathanbarry.com/authority/

It's much more difficult to make it lucrative, though.

It sounds like you need to see a therapist. However I imagine that's difficult if you're in debt, so you probably need to first try to get a job and pay that off.

Honestly there's going to be parts of any job that you don't like. Unless you are filthy rich or have someone paying for you, you're going to have to do things even if they bore you sometimes. The best you can do is try to do them efficiently so you can spend more time learning.

Also: have you considered contract or consulting work? If you have the freedom to travel around for work, it can be more dynamic and rewarding than your current pattern.

I do see therapist occasionally, but it is quite expensive (especially given my loads of debt) and doesn't help much. I was diagnosed with ADD, and therapy helps with some focus related issues, but not with novelty seeking behavior. :(

What helped me is outsourcing the administrative stuff (book-keeping, taxes) to an accountant and forcing myself to meet with him once per month physically, best is to make an appointment a month ahead. Insisting on the physical meeting is a trick to force myself at least once in a month to prepare for the meeting (getting all the documents together, travel receipts, invoices, letters). It costs a lot of money but it is worth it for me.

The next trick has a similar pattern: find somebody to spend talking time on a regular basis, at least once per week. Not necessarily a therapist, but a friend, partner, colleague with whom share some common interests. Then force to keep those talking meetings. This helps, because you can talk about your anxiety, talk about what new things you have found, etc. I do it with a friend on a weekly basis and with a psycho-analyst at least once per week - if I don't travel.

The third trick I discovered only lately when being under huge pressure, in a situation in which I didn't know a way out: I started writing as a form of talking to myself. It worked best by "switching off the screen", i.e. typing without seeing what you type (either by literally switching off the screen, or by putting the font to same color as background - I made color scheme mode Vim), it gives you an additional motivation to re-read it later. When I first discovered this, it felt later like magic. I use this trick only when under big pressure - didn't make it to a habit, yet.

Maybe this advice helps.

I wish you to find a way to cope with your life and get to a situation where you can have a decent and more stable life, but still learn new stuff. Good luck.

That's really interesting. Have written to get stuff out before but there is always the reading, writing, rereading, editing flow that kind of makes it a pain. Going to try 'switching off the screen' next time.

I'd be interested to know how it worked for you.

You can look for research jobs or freelance, where you can try lots of things quickly.

Alternatively, find a business partner or team that complements your skills/interests.

Colleges often offer low cost services if you're concerned about cost right now (with the ACA this should be less of an issue). There's often a waiting list, get on it now.

http://www.ishafoundation.org/Ishakriya/Learn-online

I'd guess you don't have a novelty-addiction problem, you have a problem where you're unwilling to apply yourself to hard things with long-term payoffs, and the novelty-addiction is what fills in the gap. Maybe there's some reasons for that (procrastination of emotionally difficult things in favor of mood-repair is a big deal for a lot of people) but you'll just need to deal with them.

This will help in 2 ways: 1) Slowly bring in cash which will tackle your $50k debt in definite time period. Remember "compounding" is the biggest weapon! 2) The client's project will be short self contained tasks which will bind you in a timeframe to complete stuff. This is very important if you want to grow the focus and tenacity that you lack right now.

After a couple of months or a year, you will notice substantial benefits. The big debt will have come down a lot + you would have learnt to execute on ideas.

Now you will finally be ready to execute on your own stuff and make it big hopefully.

(Advice rendered from personal experiences!)

Well, I sometimes worked longer, but never longer than 3 years at one place. In addition, I don’t remember being fired, my employers were generally happy with my performance, instead I got bored and quit myself.

For me, freelancing is working OK. Today I’m working on some Windows Store SDK, yesterday I’ve worked on an industrial-grade WinCE embedded software, tomorrow I gonna work on a cross-platform OSX+Windows 3D authoring software, and in my spare time, when I’m bored, I learn CUDA.

Also, you might want to consider switching to front end software development if you haven't already. There's always a new framework or library to learn in front end development and the development cycles are shorter.

My first job in a R&D/Testing type role was working for an application service provider. I was responsible for evaluating new hardware from vendors before it would be released to our data centers. I had to not only test the hardware, but ensure the applications worked correctly, performance test, and document configurations. Each week was something new and I had great relationships with vendors such as Compaq, HP, Dell, and Microsoft that would constantly send demo hardware/software just so I could play. I left the job to take a position at Microsoft, and looking back regret it. I stayed at Microsoft for a little over a year for the same reason as you, I got bored. That is when I switched to just doing consulting.

But, if that doesn't work, I would look for positions in R&D for a company (that is the type of position where I traced my problem back to). Depending on the company/position you actually get paid to find and work with new "toys". Also, look at testing type positions.

Also, if you haven't yet talked about this with a mental health professional, you probably should. It may take trying a few before you find someone who understands your particular problem.

1. Realize that tendency CAN be a powerful tool if you channel it correctly and get yourself into the right environment. I'm in media, because the tools change quickly, each project has different problems to solve, and there's a broad, somewhat disconnected set of skills that are useful.

2. Every job, no matter how passionate you are about it, will have some crap you just have to get through that you don't want to do. Don't confuse temporary boredom with lack of passion.

3. Willpower is a muscle, and you CAN get better at powering through the portion of your work that you don't enjoy.

4. If you master things quickly enough you can move up in your career so that you are doing new things with each new move.

5. It's worth talking to your healthcare provider about these concerns, there are a variety of tools and strategies that can help.

6. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Use your free time to explore widely disparate disciplines.

7. Limit your time aimlessly browsing the internet. It's a great tool, but using it without purpose seems to make it much harder to focus on tasks.

There is this theory that says that for every IQ level you have to find an appropriate occupation. If the occupation does not require the whole your potential, you feel bored. If it requires higher abstract capacities than you have, you feel overwhelmed. So the thing is to find your level.

On my previous job I switched projects every 6 months. At the beginning they all sounded so exciting, I didn't know anything about things that I would have to do on them, so I was so eager to start them and learn all the stuff. But after 3-4 months they were so boring, I was struggling so much and then I always inevitably landed in my boss office telling him that I cannot stand it anymore and I have to switch the project otherwise I have to leave the company. But the thing is this subconscious urge to do something different is much stronger than rational thoughts. I can fight for some time with myself and then I give up.

But then I decided to switch the whole industry where I was working. And now I am incredibly happy with that switch. Now I am on the same project for 8 months and it is nowhere any sings that I wanna jump to the next thing. It is very different here and the tasks I have, they require really whole my mental capacities leaving no place for boredom.

So what I wanted to say is that IT project != IT project. You can use the same programming language to build something that is not that complex in its nature and it will make you bored, or you can use it to solve a very complex problem and then you don't need to satisfy your thirst with new technology because the project itself is already demanding whole your mental abstract capacities.

So what I would do in your place, is that I would try to find an industry which is not only using new shiny tools but also builds something extremely complex. You have to find a complexity level appropriate for your. So take something that you think you are not capable of (something with complex math or physics or whatever) and see whether you can deal with that.

Take one of those jobs and spend your afternoons working on your own projects which can be implemented using whatever technology you want and can be as concrete as you want.

Look at your job as a necessary hell, but try to find the fun in it while at work and always remember that you have your fun projects back at home

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/01/nassim_nicholas_taleb_the_fu...

DA website: http://www.debtorsanonymous.org/help/questions.htm There is a meeting every day somewhere in the bay area. If you come to the friday night Laurel Height meeting you'll see me: http://www.ncdaweb.org/SF.html

You probably have a good idea how great software development should be done. But can you get 10 programmers to actually work like that and stay profitable, while they still don't resent you too much?

Above all else, engineers should be obsessed with the proper functioning of a system, throughout all aspects - speed, security, robustness, etc. What tools are chosen are chosen only for the purposes of enhancing those goals. An true engineer senses these needs and works towards them uncompromisingly. To choose otherwise - for any reason - is to be a bad engineer, which it sounds like you are (sorry! Just being honest!)

The good news is that having an insatiable appetite for novelty has its place in this world. Could you work as an angel scout? Or a tech crunch (-style) writer?

Try working with a really growing startup you might like it. I was into infra for a while, the QA team, then development, then scaling dbs etc... Keep changing the role.

It is not just about the job. Try doing a course on coursera/edX. I do multiple courses across very different domains. I did Mathematics, biology, Electronics, then philosophy, Quantum computing etc. It gives you the element of "novelty" if the job doesnt interest you.

I'd perhaps recommend doing an MBTI personality test (there's a bunch of them on the internet). This might help you to understand the mechanisms behind your behaviour and most importantly give you some hints how to make yourself useful.

I recommend to consider psychologist only as last resort.

Other thing - become a remote freelancer. Get in to projects that last 1-3 months. You can make good money while doing what you like.

Also the short interest period on projects is not part of your personality, but it might be a stage. I had same thing, but turned out to be good for me. I used it to my advantage - I learned everything I could. I would jump from niche to niche making money along the way. My base would be marketing, from there I could freely move to tech, programming and consulting while making money. It took a while but I grew up from it. Now I am full stack startup owner - I do everything from programming, through customer service to marketing - and it is awesome.

It allows you to experiment with a wide range of topics while still providing useful contributions to the community.

"Component has bugs? Rewrite it in a new language!"

   ophilia

Sheesh ... what did you all think I was talking about?

There are research engineering jobs that also might be a good fit - you deal with a lot of different problems and get to satisfy your need to learn additionally from the researchers.

I recently had an awesome remote front end gig, yet this crazy outlandish opportunity knocked and I tried to ignore it, but they kept knocking (reality TV show for startups), so I gave up my job for it. I didnt make it that far in the competition, so now I am jobless .. late 30s .. similar debt .. dont own my own home .... no family and g/f is tired of my lifestyle/gave up on me.

Overall you are not alone .. this stuff for those who struggle with business guys/girls (im an inventor), don't have rich relatives or friends (investors to help you have a long runway to figure your road to success) isn't easy. Yet, we continue to do it ... it is an addiction, yet again Im too old now to drop everything(as I just did).

Also, there are so many of us in the industry who jump from one dev job to another for various reasons. Again, you are not alone ... we all have the desire to leave our mark on this earth and or just do what we love to do.. create awesome stuff on the web! Ironically my stuff helps me get jobs and then as you can see above distracts me from keeping many great steady jobs(but I AM DONE unless those who knock offer me loads of money & or a solid job doing what I love to do; invent).

There's always a new technique to master which can be brought upon in your work.

It is novel once you get there, but may take a while.

Quality construction, impeccable tailoring, expert craftsmanship – these are the marks of quality.

There's novelty in the next feature around the corner, but there is beauty in something crafted.

Ecstatic pleasure can be obtained from crafting. Perhaps give it a go.