Unlike other comments, I don't think this is always associated to ADHD. Rather, I think this is a natural tendency for the current normal hivemind of always being distracted at work.
John Cleese in his book about creativity talks about how procrastination is actually our natural ability to be most creative. If we are leaving something until the last minute, it often means we don't really have a great solution or don't have enough time to think about it. Even if we do have a solution in mind, leaving it till the very last minute gives us enough time for other ideas to come up.
This seems to be a recurring problem in knowledge work where a large effort that has "deadlines" tends to keep being missed. The cause? Not having enough slack or diffused time to just think. Often it's juggling the task ontop of a thousand others and being constantly distracted.
> John Cleese in his book about creativity talks about how procrastination is actually our natural ability to be most creative. If we are leaving something until the last minute, it often means we don't really have a great solution or don't have enough time to think about it. Even if we do have a solution in mind, leaving it till the very last minute gives us enough time for other ideas to come up.
YES. This is why I don't code as a job; to me, coding is a creative exercise and I just hate doing creative things for a living. (I've supported myself/made money with both development work and fiction writing.) I can't force myself to be creative on a deadline, and if I rush something through without giving my brain enough time to think through it, it bothers me because there might be a better way and I get annoyed if I'm forced to give out work that isn't my best.
> Often it's juggling the task ontop of a thousand others and being constantly distracted.
Yes. How the hell am I supposed to problem solve if I'm never allowed any time to think or allowed to make mistakes, explore, etc?
I work in political communications/education as the only techy person on a non-tech team. I have a background in front-end/UX + librarianship and instructional design. So while I do code when I make instructional materials + use my knowledge when I do things like our metrics/data analysis, it's not the majority of my job and none of my teammates can code at all (all but one of them break out in hives if they have to look at HTML).
Minuses: Nobody appreciates when you pull off something difficult/do something impressive.
Pluses: Coding is black magic to them so if I need more time I can say 'this will take me longer' and they're like 'alright'. That wouldn't fly in an actual developer job.
I also do research, outreach, and do things like give educational talks on civics + administrative law concepts. So I prefer to make a living with my research skills and public speaking/presentation abilities as opposed to my creative/coding ones.
I like to use my creative/coding skills as an extra: I'm a LOT better at my job than I would be without my tech background.
John Cleese in his book about creativity talks about how procrastination is actually our natural ability to be most creative. If we are leaving something until the last minute, it often means we don't really have a great solution or don't have enough time to think about it. Even if we do have a solution in mind, leaving it till the very last minute gives us enough time for other ideas to come up.
This seems to be a recurring problem in knowledge work where a large effort that has "deadlines" tends to keep being missed. The cause? Not having enough slack or diffused time to just think. Often it's juggling the task ontop of a thousand others and being constantly distracted.