A quick note that I’m moving The ADHD Engineer off Substack and onto my own email setup.

The writing stays the same. You stay subscribed. The only thing changing is the plumbing that gets it to you.

The full archive already lives at its new home: theadhdengineer.com/writing.

You don’t need to re-subscribe or confirm anything. I’ll bring your subscription over, and the next post will land from my new setup in the next week or so.

It will arrive from a new address (contact@theadhdengineer.com), so if you can, add that to your contacts now so it doesn’t quietly get filed into spam later.

If you’d rather not come along, that’s completely fine. Unsubscribe from this email and you’ll be left off the new list.

Why move? Substack has started feeling like yet another social media platform for me to juggle. And I’d rather not feel pressure to speak to an algorithm when I communicate with you.

That’s it. Talk soon.

Michael

The show is Two Humans in Tech.

It’s not a frameworks-and-takeaways show. Just two people thinking out loud about tech work.

The conversation are intentionally off-the-cuff and minimally edited. There are enough gurus, influencers and entertainers showcasing polished unrealistic versions of themselves, and peddling frameworks and recipes that promise transformative outcomes.

I don’t believe in any of that.

And I am hoping that by just being me, I can encourage you to just be you. Let’s drop the mask, together.

The first episode is about why a career full of people can still leave you quietly disconnected.

The clip up top is a moment that stayed with me. You can watch the full conversation here:

Watch Episode 1 on YouTube

If it resonates, subscribe while you’re there to catch the next one.

— Michael

P.S. — This “feeling alone” thing is also why I run the Vibe Check Roundtable: a small, honest check-in for people in tech. There’s one coming up soon if you’d like to join: vibecheckroundtable.thecompleteengineer.com

On paper, he had time.

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There’s a lot going on in an engineer’s day and in regular life, and something I hear often in conversations is:

“I need to be more organized.” “I need to be more disciplined.” “Once I get that sorted out, then I’ll start.”

And it makes sense.

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He told me he needs to be more disciplined.

He wants to work on his own thing, but can never get focused.

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“I’m doing a lot… but it’s not getting noticed.”
“Maybe I’m not doing the right things.”
“I don’t know what I’m missing.”

Thoughtful engineers doing solid work… but carrying a quiet, brooding sense of self-doubt.

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I Need a Better System

You’ve said it before.
Or if you’re being honest, you’ll admit that you probably say it all the time.

Sitting at your desk, staring at a ticket you’ve opened and closed four times without doing anything.

I just need a better system.

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Instead of a written issue this week, I wanted to share something a little different.

I was recently a guest on Attention Talk Radio with attention coach Jeff Copper. We had a wide-ranging conversation about ADHD and self-acceptance, what it really means and why it is often harder than it sounds.

You can listen to the full conversation here:

One theme that came up was the relationship between pressure and acceptance.

For a long time, I thought pressure was helpful.

But something I have noticed, both in myself and in people I work with, is that when pressure shows up we start moving very fast.

We go on autopilot and never slow down enough to actually understand what is going on. In the process, we lose ourselves.

At one point the conversation even wandered into Miles Davis and B.B. King, which turned out to be a surprisingly good metaphor for ADHD and self-acceptance.

I will let you hear that part for yourself.

We will return to our regular newsletter next week.

Warmly,
Michael

You’re the Only One, Right?

There’s a particular kind of loneliness in feeling like you are the only one who can’t just move forward.

Everyone else seems fine.
They’re shipping code, answering questions in standup, not visibly stuck.

But you’re stuck.

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“I’ll just figure it out.”

It sounds confident.

Sometimes it even feels responsible.

You say it after a meeting where something didn’t fully make sense. Or while reviewing a ticket that feels half-specified — one key detail missing, one edge case undefined.

No one else asked a question.

Everyone seemed fine.

So you decide you’ll handle it.

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There’s a sentence I hear often, usually said with a mix of frustration and self-criticism:

“I just need better accountability.”

On the surface, “accountability” sounds reasonable. Responsible. Adult.
Like the missing ingredient between knowing what to do and actually doing it.

But when we slow the moment down, something else is usually happening.

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The Task That Never Asked to Be a Judgment

There’s a moment that often starts quietly:

Why can’t I just start this task?

Nothing is on fire yet.
No one is waiting.
No feedback has landed.

Just a task sitting there in your ticketing system.

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“I only seem to function when everything is on fire.”

This is a sentence I hear often — sometimes said with frustration, sometimes with dark humor, sometimes almost with pride:

It usually comes after someone describes weeks of stalled progress… followed by a frantic push right be

fore a deadline.
Or after they admit they’ve been avoiding something important — until the consequences became impossible to ignore.

What’s striking isn’t just how common this moment is.
It’s how coherent it feels from the inside.

“That’s just how I work best.”

When everything is on fire, things finally seem to make sense.

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Over the past year, I’ve had dozens of conversations with thoughtful, capable software engineers with ADHD. Different roles, different companies.

But I noticed that the same pattern keeps showing up.

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