Essays for senior software engineers and engineering leaders on what happens when better systems, more accountability, and more discipline stop being enough.
You've already tried the obvious things. Better mornings. New systems. More accountability. A different to-do app. They worked for a week. They might have worked for a month. Then they didn't. And you went looking for the next one. These essays are about what happens when the loop of "try harder, fail, find a new method, repeat" stops being the answer — and what becomes possible once you stop treating effort as the missing ingredient. Pressure isn't the fuel. It's the filter.
The problem isn't your "system"
You add another framework, another tool, another habit. The system isn't the problem. What's underneath the system is. Once you see that, the search for a better one stops.
Read on The ADHD Engineer →"Accountability" is often the wrong fix
If you're not doing the work, the obvious diagnosis is "I need someone to hold me accountable." It's usually wrong. Accountability adds pressure to a system already collapsing under it.
Read on The ADHD Engineer →Pressure isn't the fuel. It's the filter.
Crisis mode produces results. So you assume crisis is the engine. It isn't. It's the filter that strips away everything that wasn't urgent enough to survive — including the things you actually wanted to do.
Read on The ADHD Engineer →But who's really doing the distracting?
It looks like Slack distracted you, or the news, or the open tab. Underneath is a different question: what were you trying to avoid by being available to be distracted?
Read on The ADHD Engineer →Your side project is not a referendum on who you are
Your side project still isn't started, and the obvious diagnosis is "I need to be more disciplined." That's exactly the loop. The goal gets replaced by fixing yourself — and the actual work doesn't get done.
Read on The ADHD Engineer →The quiet question that surfaces once the career landed — and the next promotion stopped being the answer.
For senior engineers caught in the loop of "is it me?" — when capable people treat internal experience as evidence of personal failure.
The parts of senior engineering and engineering management nobody writes job descriptions for.
Most of these essays live on The ADHD Engineer, a sibling newsletter. Subscribe to both — together they cover the same territory from two angles.