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Anybody else here have pretty bad concentration issues? I'm near the end of a coding camp and will be looking for a job in tech soon (timing couldn't be worse, with the tech job market as it is).
I've been messing with various stimulants. I used to take Dexedrine or Adderall, but I don't tolerate amphetamine well. Currently I use coffee, but I'm also sensitive to caffeine so I can only handle about half a cup currently. I sometimes use provigil, I used to take a full 200mg pill, but that made sleep too difficult. I switched to half a pill, 100mg, and that seems to work. But it isn't something I can take daily, again because of sleep. I still need to experiment more with a quarter of a pill, 50 mg. I've only done that a handful of times, but it seems like it might be low enough that I'm thrust into the comedown after two or three hours, which would be a problem.
I used to smoke, and vape, and use snus. Nicotine seems to work well for me, but I don't want to mess up my lungs, get gum disease, or obviously cancer. So I've been using tobacco free nicotine pouches, a ten pack of 15mg nicotine pouches will arrive today. I don't have a comedown or anxiety with nicotine, so that seems to be the winner so far.
Does anyone have advice for managing this stuff? I'm so much more productive with it, but I'm so sensitive to anxiety and sleep disturbances that it's hard to imagine that I could do it long term. Maybe a day with 100mg provigil, then a day without, repeat? Provigil's half life is so long that daily doesn't seem possible, at least not long term.
Edit: Does anyone have experience with khat?
I have been working in software for a long time and I find it extremely difficult to concentrate on mental tasks consistently over hours unless they are deeply creatively rewarding. Working on the boring and unnecessarily difficult tasks (eg. refactoring code someone else wrote on very little sleep) are difficult to force yourself to do. I'm not sure how a coding bootcamp would compare, but if you know deep down inside that the given task isn't actually worthwhile it might be hard for you to concentrate on it. I'm projecting, but that's how I feel.
The greatest weapon I have against the forces of distraction is pair programming because it turns programming into a social activity where your mind is held in place by someone else who is presumably also interested in getting the task finished.
I believe that many of the tasks we're asked to get through in a day are mostly meaningless and in-human. We're not meant to sit at desks staring out the window all day. If you can feed your soul with hobbies and social activity and the other things that make us human it's easier to treat intellectual work as a retreat and relax in to it. Nothing makes me more antsy than staring at my editor avoiding writing annoying code when what I really want is to get out on my bike.
Drugs sound like a great time if you have a project you actually care about, but don't waste drugs on an overall meaningless job for Uber But For Accountants 2.0 - The Revenge Co.
Fair enough, I do find pair programming the best way to learn. It does help me to concentrate quite a bit. I haven't had as much of a chance to do that as I'd like, but when I can, I do.
Can you find a local coding group? When you're looking for work mention that you have got a lot of value out of pair programming and maybe you can find a place who practices it well. I miss it at my current employer.
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