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novok10/12/20243 repliesview on HN

A lot of adult ADHD diagnoses came from the pandemic because a lot of people were suddenly without the structure of an office and became adrift and unproductive. The office provided body doubling, some executive functioning, some help with time blindness, a prosthetic environment and more and now they had to make it themselves without any direction while suffering from poor executive functioning. It was not good for many.

A lot of the value of being in an office is to reduce the barriers to social grooming and communicating. It's an emotional morale advantage, and some things are fixed faster or discovered faster when people talk to each other, and people do it better when in person than they do over shitty video calls, where the majority of people have crap setups, and despite your best efforts, will continue to have crap setups. Most people don't have the emotional ability and seriousness to compensate for the barriers that remote work brings up and make sure this important part of the work gets done.

Sometimes the most productive times in an office can be coworker lunch and coworker lunch over zoom calls sucks ass.

I know I will get a lot of people here who seethe 'but for ME, I HATE socializing with my coworkers', or 'my coworkers do socializing wrong and it's a detriment!' and I say to you, good for you, but have you considered that those things might be a negative thing for the rest of your team and the company. The company hired you for your total value contribution to the system of the company, not just your isolated measurable personal productivity alone and to not be self centered about is something to consider, hypothetical person.


Replies

austinjp10/12/2024

Just to add (as I'm sure the contributors are aware) parent comment and grandparent comment are both true.

It would be nice if wfh wasn't such a polarised issue.

giraffe_lady10/12/2024

> A lot of adult ADHD diagnoses came from the pandemic because a lot of people were suddenly without the structure of an office and became adrift and unproductive. The office provided body doubling, some executive functioning, some help with time blindness, a prosthetic environment and more and now they had to make it themselves without any direction while suffering from poor executive functioning.

Well, and now we have diagnoses and corresponding treatment, intentional & personalized interventions rather than accidental and incomplete ones.

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brainzap10/12/2024

Agree, I have a coworker with some addictions and only performs in close proximitry to other workers.

Btw which is something I also sometimes seek out, a hard working colleague is an inspiration.