 We're here to talk about ADHD today. We are a group of folks who have ADHD. I want to point out just to set some context. We're obviously not experts in ADHD. We are people who've lived our own experiences. Everybody's experiences with it are different, and that can depend on even things like coexisting conditions that you have. And so we're just speaking for ourselves in our own experiences. What we say may not apply to you as an individual. And just to get started, if you're comfortable doing it, raise your hand if you have ADHD, or think you do, or know someone who does. All right, a lot of folks. I think that probably more people know someone who does than think they do as well. Yeah, this is unrehearsed. We're just talking about our experiences. We're going to start off with some intros. Before we do that, I want to mention somebody who's not here today, Walid Shari, who's the person who put this all together, actually, and then, unfortunately, he wasn't able to make it here. So big, big shout out to Walid. I'm sure he is here in spirit, even though he couldn't make it. So we're going to start off with some intros. I'll just go really quick. I'm Amrit Burrows. I work at Loft Labs. I'm middle-aged. And was diagnosed about a year ago, year and a half ago, I think it was. Farah? Hi, everyone. My name is Farah Campbell, and I am the head of the modern applications community at AWS. Live in Portland, Oregon, have two boys, and I was diagnosed when I was a teenager. So hello, everyone. My name is Heval Ayuti. I'm working for Microsoft, a software engineer and AKS team. I am a mom for two daughters. Live in California, originally from Egypt. And what else? Yeah, I've been diagnosed with ADHD almost one and a half years ago. Hi, my name is Bart Farrell. I'm a freelance consultant working with the data on Kubernetes community. And I'm from California, but I currently live in Spain. I've been living there for the last 11 years with my amazing partner, Maite. I love you. And I got diagnosed with ADHD this year. So I guess I'm kind of the new kid on the block. Yeah. Great. So I wanted to start off by asking everybody how you learned that you have ADHD. Well, school assignments. I wasn't completing my school assignments. And actually, I would complete them. I just wouldn't turn them in. So it was a done deal for me. And my mom decided that we should probably see somebody because she didn't understand why I was such a good student, but would get bad grades on my homework and things. But I would ace my tests. So none of it made sense. And remember when I got diagnosed? I didn't really want to have that, because then I kind of felt like something was weird with me. And I expected ADHD to be this hyper kid running around everywhere that can't sit down or things. But yeah, I was diagnosed because I wasn't turning in. Well, I'm turning in completed assignments. I was diagnosed a little bit late. And actually, I started to feel like what's going on when I started to, you know, like my journey with the Kubernetes and everything. I loved it so much. And I felt like, OK, this is what I wanted to do. I tried to learn. I tried to read books, read lots of books, never finished a book, listening to anything. It's like, OK, no, I cannot complete. But I feel like I wanted to do this. So what's wrong? I struggled a lot, a lot. So yeah, I started to get depressed, get lots of anxiety. I feel like, yo, I'm a failure. You know, like, I cannot do it. I cannot learn anything new. And you know, like, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. I know, you know, like we can relate. So yeah, I started to just seek help. And my psychiatrist, she was great. She spent a lot of time until it's like, hey, you know, let's do this. Let's do this test. And yeah, I got an ADHD. So yes, I'm not, you know, like, you know, like dancing, you know, like, moving a lot. But I'm so distracted, so I cannot concentrate for more than, you know, like, specific time. All right. My ADHD story actually has a lot to do with this particular community. And I had always, I've always been a very active person, very energetic, very passionate. And also, like, I have the tendency to get distracted, difficulty focusing, really like starting things, have certain challenges maintaining or finishing them. And, but when it really got sparked, realizing about adults with ADHD was listening to a podcast where does anybody know who Redbeard is? Okay. So I was listening to a podcast where Redbeard was interviewed and I listened to podcasts while I go running so that I get different pieces of information. And I generally tune out the technical stuff. I don't have a technical background. But when Redbeard started talking about his experience being diagnosed as an adult with ADHD, a lot of his experience resonated with things that I had been going through. And in addition to that, I saw a tweet from Rich yesterday or a comment about the pandemic kind of opening up a lot of folks to realizing that, you know, maybe some other things are going on. And that helped me get on the path towards diagnosis. Then I had the whole doubt about doing in Spain because ADHD is dealt with differently in Spain and it's ADHD in adults is not as dealt with as it is in the United States. So while I was going through it, I decided that I did want to go through it and with the support from my partner, I went through the process and while going through it, when all the things were asking me, it was quite clear that I was going to pass with flying colors, get a 10 out of 10. And so yeah, so since then, that's like I said, that's kind of in my experience. It's been, it's an ongoing process, but I'm really grateful to this community to giving me a space where I can explore that and share that and get support for it. That's great, thank you all. My story, I was, I helped organize the DevOps days conference in Portland. And a friend of mine actually, someone I knew came in and did talk, Aaron Aldrich. And the talk was about their experience with mental illness. And I knew it was gonna be about that, but I didn't know that we're gonna be talking about ADHD. And I was just blown away because I had never really understood it. And I was watching this talk and almost had tears in my eyes because they were just describing my experience completely. And so in typical ADHD fashion, I didn't get diagnosed for like a year and a half. I put it off, but I was struggling so much in the pandemic that I finally did. And it's helped me a lot. Maybe we could talk a little bit about what some of the ways are that you kind of try to deal with your ADHD symptoms in your life. Setting lots of reminders. I have all my bills set on electronic because again for me, if I like wrote the check, then like to me it's done and I won't remember to send it. I, for big projects or just for tasks that aren't necessarily exciting to me, like when I just cannot force myself to do that, I actually have accountability partners that I'll like actually text and, you know, we'll set up time to actually work together because I know I need to get this project done. I've been waiting for two weeks. It's still sitting there, you know, and or maybe some more like that strategic where you actually have to like sit and think about things. So it's just actually having somebody there that knows what I'm trying to accomplish that's also working too. But then you can also like engage with a little bit so that I don't get super bored. Like when I'm doing that, I found that that's been really, really helpful for me. Medication definitely helps me. I went off medication for a bit just because I felt like there was such a stigma tied to it and even like, I remember like picking up my prescriptions. Sometimes I felt like I was being judged and so I just didn't want to do that anymore. But then as my career grew and responsibilities grew, I was, yeah, when I was failing, I decided to go back on medication and that actually really, really helped me. But really that accountability partners and having friends that I can reach out to when I'm struggling to actually get something done, even though like I want to do it and I'll wake up every day with a good intention to do it. Setting that time with somebody like on a Friday or sometimes it's on Saturday when I need to catch my friends to actually accomplish that work has been really, really helpful. Well, it's, I cannot say that, you know, like I know that like what should I do to, you know, like to be like very effective, but at least I can share with you like what I've, you know, like I've done so far. So because I, you know, like I intend to have lots of commitments without, you know, like it's like over commitments all the time. So before, you know, like it's like I got this, this habit now. If anyone asked me about any project or, you know, like contributing to anything, it's like, hey, yeah, I will, you know, like, you know, like I will reply to you in, you know, like, couple of, you know, like next day or maybe, you know, like after a few hours. And I have, I have like a small whiteboard in my desk that, you know, like writing everything because I will forgot. So, and, you know, like it's like, okay, do I have any place, do they have any time to do this or not? So I'm trying to just enforce me to enforce myself to, you know, like it's like think, think before commit to anything. The second, actually, I just told you about that. The whiteboard is my friend now. It's my lovely friend. So I'm trying to add like to do list every day morning or, you know, like maybe a hundred thing. You know, like, I know that, you know, like, I'm not, I'm not be able to finish even, you know, like percent of them, but it's like, take, you know, like taking them from my mind, putting them in front of me, it's just a relaxation, you know, because it's like, I feel like my mind is, you know, like running all the time. I can, you know, like, it's like, I cannot concentrate on only one thing. So I need to just, you know, like take, take all this information from here, put it in other place. So it's like, you know, like someone, something, you know, like share this with me. And if there is any something that, you know, like I need to accomplish, I need, I need, I need a company, you know, like someone to accompany me to have this done. So sometimes my husband, I love you. I love you, Hamid. So he's like, okay, I need, I need someone, you know, like, I need to, you know, like tell you what I understood, I understand so far. So you can ask me questions and these questions, you know, like I would come back and, you know, like start to, you know, like, ah, I forgot, you know, like to read this for it. Or, you know, like I just kept this chapter. So for example, if I wanted to read a book, I cannot, you know, like, I cannot read the book. So it's like, okay, I will pick some chapters. I will go through them. I will just highlight them with a marker or anything just to be focused. It's like I need to have a bin all the time with me. So, and, you know, like I would have this conversation with my husband because he's a software engineer as well. So it's like, okay, you know, you don't know this part. So it's like, yeah, this is my task. I will go and, you know, like have this back. What else the medication is like a life change for me. And the important thing is accepting, accepting what I have. It's like, I'm not a failure. I'm, you know, like I'm not a bad person. I'm not, you know, I can do this. I can do it, but just in a different way. So I'm trying to figure out with myself, how to do it just in a different way. I can agree with things that were said by both of them. In my case, well, I think with all this too, something that comes up a lot for me is, you know, ADHD, I turned that into ADHD, me, the sense that it's my experience. And so I can only really speak to that while there are things that are in common. So as a mixture and depending on, you know, when it starts in your life and how you approach it, the support systems that you have in place. But like with what both of them mentioned, having, using reminders, I'll put stuff in my calendar. I use Evernote. I start out the day writing, like have a probably about 500 things. Has anybody actually ever successfully used the Eisenhower Quadrant of Urgent Important and stuff like that? That should be erased. I mean, it's put out there like, yeah, you just separate an urgent important and everything takes care of itself, right? And so I struggle with that about knowing about what I need to do first, like with what Farrah said, doing the things that I like the most. And then the rest just kind of, you know, put them off or hope they disappear, which doesn't happen. The IRS hits you up for taxes. And so yeah, that's been part of it. But it is helpful. And it's funny is that I never really considered myself to be someone who liked to make lists, but I make a lot of lists. And one of the things that has helped me is that I do have a sort of personal assistant who I work with on other projects. And he said, one of these days, I'm gonna wake up inside of a list because of all the lists that I make. So that's one thing. Another thing that's important for me is trying to eat healthy. And so making sure that, you know, having like healthy snacks during the day and stuff like that and brain food, not drinking too much coffee, drinking enough water, exercise is a really important thing for me too, to like have that time to sort of calm myself down. And other things, like something that Heba mentioned that's really challenging about ADHD and not, and once again, as Rich said in the beginning, we're not, you know, medical professionals, but something that's talked about a lot in ADHD is what's called rejection sensitivity dysphoria. And it's not necessarily a specific clinical term, but it's a mixture of different things that many people have ADHD is the hardest part about it. That low sense of self-worth, not just a reaction to being rejected, but the fear of being rejected, the expectation and anticipation that's gonna happen. And then a sort of what can happen about emotional dysregulation if that happens or even before it happens. So the stress that you go through, jump into the worst case scenario, assuming that things are gonna go well and in general feeling like a failure. And that's really hard. And so to build that up, you have to find different ways to be kind to yourself because, and it's challenging and there's no magic solution to that. So once again, I really wanna tell everybody out there who has ADHD or is helping someone who does that it's trial and error, it's not gonna be a straight shot. Medication has also been part of my process and that's still an ongoing thing of figuring out what's the best mixture and how to make that right. I also, when I got diagnosed, should have asked more questions about that. So once again, I encourage anybody when they're starting this process, ask all your questions and ask them twice if you're not sure or make a list. But I would say those are the things that definitely helped me. Also, and it's up to everybody and I don't wanna jump ahead too far ahead to next questions, but another thing that has helped me in certain situations is telling people that I have ADHD so that they understand my certain things about my way of working. I never want it to try to sound like it's an excuse and so sometimes I'll maybe even shy away from it when I should say it. But I more and more try to figure out when it's appropriate to provide context. So I would say those are generally the things that I've been doing. And yeah, and then other things as well too, like I'm also very impulsive so I always keep like a guitar or ukulele like close to where I am or I'm working and so if I wanna take a quick break, I can do that. Timed blindness is another thing that's talked about with ADHD and so like with what the others were saying as well, sometimes thinking that oh, it's only been five minutes. No, it's been two hours or the opposite. So like I said, these are things that's just anticipating that and then building that into your routines. I've always been someone who's very anti-routine so it's like I have to sort of, you know it's like I know that if I set up a routine, my ADHD self will come in and sabotage and destroy it and commit of an anarchist as well. So yeah, these are the things that I'm still working on but it's been, I'm seeing positive changes and that's really promising because I know that I'm just getting started with this. I'm 37 years old so it took awhile to get here but excited about the progress that I've been making and also interacting folks like the wonderful people we have here on stage and well, we love you. Great, I'd add that I do think the structure is important like having reminders and things like that can be really helpful but keep in mind that you might get bored with those things so one of the things I've learned about ADHD is that interest is very important. If something is novel and interesting to you, you're less likely to struggle with it and so I work with a coach and I was talking to her about oh, I couldn't keep up with my to-do app and I just wasn't opening it anymore and she said hey, maybe you need to just try a new to-do app every three months and not beat yourself up for the fact that this one didn't work for you forever instead of considering it a failure, just recognize that this is how your brain is and maybe you need to do something else. And yeah, medication I think is a really personal thing. I'm taking Ritalin, it does help me but everybody has their own journey and sometimes it is really even a struggle to kind of figure out which of the medications is the right one for you if any of them are. We wanna save some time for Q and A so I think we've just got time for one more question here. I wanna ask folks, in the context of the Kubernetes community itself, like what your experience has been like, if there are things that you found really great about having ADHD in this community or things that have been hard? I would say the things that are hard is when you're meeting people and having conversations, I get distracted really easily and so sometimes I won't look direct at the person or sometimes I'll start thinking or I'll be talking through something but then somebody walked by and now I forgot totally what I was gonna say and then you have to pause and try to remember where I'm at or sometimes I'll be telling a story and then start on some other tangent and then trying to figure out how to get back or what I was really even trying to say. So I think those are the harder things. I'm newer to the Kubernetes community and so just trying to make sure that I'm looking and I'm paying attention and I'm actively listening and I have to practice that and tell myself, be an active listener, try to look at somebody in the eye and not keep looking away the whole time or even when you're at the booth and having those conversations, I have to really focus hard because everything that's what's going on around me, I'm constantly trying to, I wanna pay attention and I'm like, look, squirrel. So I think for the harder part and I think the good part is obviously things like today that we have this safe space to kind of talk about it and to have shared experiences so you don't feel so alone. It's not just me, I'm not lazy because I can't get up and do this thing that I didn't wanna do and I have a bunch of lists and I've tried really hard to organize my life and I do have to change how I'm doing it because I do get bored with what, however, I get bored really easily and I need to move on to something else. So I think the hard part is making sure that I'm participating and that I'm not looking like I'm not trying to participate and the good things are that I really think that we have this safe space to share and learn with one another. Well, to be honest, I may be like, I don't want to be like a phony person, but it's like I'm really happy these, at least the last two years, not only because I knew what was going on since I was a teenager and why I'm studying so hard, but I just forgot in the exam or something like that, but okay, so this community, they validated me. So it's like I always have this fear of the rejection. It's like people will not, they don't want it to talk to me or maybe lots of excuses. Oh, the accent is not clear. Maybe because I'm different, whatever. It's like a lot of things on my head. It's like, they will reject me. They will reject me, but actually what happened when I started to contribute and start to just get started, they were welcoming. Lots of people just reach out to me and private messages or whatever. It's like, hey, they wanted to speak. They wanted out. Let's have a conversation. People, especially in Twitter, it's like I have friends finally because it's for my whole life, it has been struggling so much because some day I would be very active, some day I don't want it to do anything because I'm just bored. I cannot continue anything. I cannot do anything in just this routine. It's like every day I will wake up, I will do, it's very hard for me. The second thing that helped me a lot is having variety of work. So I have BRs in, like, sick testing, but like, oh, I can work in SegRelease now. Oh, yeah, it's exciting. I can have something here. I can review another PR or I can open an issue in another sec. So I feel like I'm moving while I'm sitting doing code because coding is so hard to just focus for sometimes to have it done. So this variety, it's really helpful. So yeah, I really like what I'm doing right now. Yeah, I would echo that because sometimes there can be a tendency to talk too much about the positive things that can come along with ADHD and ignore the negative ones, but some of the positive ones I completely agree with have like, for me, being part of this ecosystem is being able to plug so many different things about my life, whether it's speaking Spanish, having lived in different countries, working in events, video production, all these different things. At the same time, with what Jay said, I suffered a lot when I got started because of imposter syndrome because I don't have a technical background and thinking like someone is gonna call me out and tear me to pieces and it was really, really stressful. And then getting to the point that when someone asked a very technical question, I would say honestly, I don't think I'm the best person to answer that, but I can definitely find you someone who can and it was like, oh great, so I get to meet somebody else and realizing the value that I can provide in networking and having resources depending on what people might need, that that adds value. And so I really think that I feel extremely lucky because I told my wife this when I first got started out that for me, getting into this space is kind of like getting to Neverland as if it was an alternative universe that I wasn't aware that even existed. And like I said, being able to use those different things whereas someone who doesn't have ADHD might just wanna focus on one thing, I'm someone who likes to jump around. What I would say though, and this is also what Heba said and Farrah mentioned too, is in terms of working with people that have ADHD is that because of the fear of rejection, a lot of times ADHD folks will some will go out of their way to be people pleasers and will have a real hard time saying no to things if they're offered and we'll end up with Heba said about over commitment. And so before saying yes or that you can always have a nice no, is that before I say yes to something, I really need to check all the existing things that I have going on so that I don't spread myself too thin and then get really angry at myself and beat myself up for not being able to do things that it's literally impossible to get to. And then having to get out of something when I've already committed to it. So those are things that I would say to keep in mind but most of all I just, and also as well too, going back to being welcomed in this space, we don't have enough time to give shout outs. One of the first people that I interacted with is with us right here is Chris Short and shout out to Matt Broberg as well, all the folks in the Contrabex group and I got into that because of Divya, because of Rin, because of Savitha, because of a lot of wonderful people that knew my background experience and still encouraged me to get in because I thought I'm not gonna be able to do anything here. I have a Religious Studies degree and I've never written a line of code in my life but I have tons of stuff to do here and I'm super grateful for that and I feel extremely loved and supported and for me it's just a privilege to try to give that back and really pay it forward. That's an expression I didn't know before. Getting into this space is the idea of paying it forward and I think we all have something to give whatever it happens to be and I just really like being in an environment where those kind of things are happening and those experiences are being built. Awesome, thank you all. I just add really quickly again the importance of interest and I very much echo what Hebo had to say. When I came to work at my current job I talked to my boss about this, our CEO Lucas and I mentioned that I struggle sometimes and that boredom was really bad and his response was, well, we've got a lot of different things you can do so you shouldn't get bored but it's been really good to have that kind of out in the open. We are going to, I think we're just gonna have time for some quick questions but before we do that I just wanted to mention that we really are just hoping to kind of start a conversation with people here. This isn't meant to be the end of it. There is the burnout channel in the CNCF Slack and some folks have talked about these kind of issues there some, I understand. There's a couple other things that you might check out here too but we weren't sure, oh, we missed type burnout, didn't we? We have ADHD, by the way. We talked about potentially advocating for a new channel in the Slack or something like that and we weren't sure if people even want that so we kind of want to kick this back to the community and maybe we can start some conversations about whether this is worth pursuing more. I think we have time for just one or two questions. Oh, there's a lot of hands, oh my gosh. What we're gonna do, yeah, yeah, yeah. So are you gonna bring the mic around or? How about there? And speakers, I guess when we hear the questions maybe just give me a little wave if you're super excited by answering that one, okay? Go ahead. Okay, so I guess, well, has meditation ever entered your mind in terms of ways to, it's not a magic silver bullet by any means but if it's something that you've ever tried extensively or you tried it once and then just gave up or one of those things. So the question is meditation. Okay, I'm just gonna say one thing real quick which is that I've done it at times but everything, I have trouble keeping the routine up, right? And I literally just forget to do it. Bart? I'll give a 30 second answer. I start every day with an affirmation where I have a bunch of different things written down and I take deep breaths in between and it lasts about five minutes. And so all the different things that I want to remind myself about whether it's about self-worth, whether it's about organizing myself, whether it's about all those different things. So then I start the day at an equal, we can say playing field or with the same sort of focus and that's helpful. And but like I said, that's just my case. Other times I've tried like mindfulness things and stuff like that. I do listen to ADHD concentration music stuff that's on YouTube. And that's helpful as like background music because if not, I love music and I'll just jump around from song to song and then that becomes really distracting. So that's my case. Are you gonna say anything? Yeah, yeah, go first. Oh no, go ahead. Yeah, okay. Okay. So for me, having music in the background helps a lot in the morning. Okay, so in my phone, I have a lot, a lot of reminders, a lot of reminders. It's like reminding me to take the medicine. Remind another reminder for take a break. Another reminder for drink a coffee. How many times I drink coffee? I have meetings, you know, like another reminder. My, you know, like in my phone or you know, like my Apple watch. And again, accept yourself. This is really important. Accept yourself. Accept that I will try, I will fail. I will try again. Oh, you know, like it happened this time. It's okay. And you know, like start to, you know, like start again, start again, all the time. So I meditate. It's taken me a long time to get there. I can get to, you know, 10 minutes before I think my mind starts to wander. I used to wonder like why couldn't get further but like even getting to 10 minutes was a big deal for me. I also practice yoga and nidra in the evening, which is kind of like a talk down of your body, trying to relax myself along with like, I think music is very meditative for me. So yeah, I definitely, I've gotten to 10, 15 minutes and that's about as far as I can get. All right, I'm sorry. I don't think we're gonna have time for another question. We've got one minute left. Did we have ADHD and like to talk? But I really wanna thank everyone for coming. This is such a great turnout and we're really excited that so many folks wanted to talk about this. Like I said, let's please keep the conversation going and thank you all. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your KubeCon.