Im wondering if this is a common adhd thing.
For example, I have always wanted to program, but I can’t let myself start with some easy gui building block code. I need to understand how the code is interacting with the computer itself and know how they did it in the 80s. Then of course it’s too hard for me and I give up.
Or if im making music, I need to do everything from scratch the hard way, making it as hard as possible (and killing any creative effort i had in the beginning).
It’s the same with anything. I can’t progress if I dont know the absolute reason why something is being done. And if I do it the easy way, I didn’t do it right and took shortcuts so it was worthless.
TLDR: commit to a course.
For the last two to three years I tried a couple of times to get into Python on my own. Each time I find the very basic steps extremely boring. And once I come to a bit more complex question I am like: you didn’t teach that yet! Since I am interested in biology, I want to look into data. I tried my hand on already published stuff but often felt like I am not making anything new, just copy pasting.
The last year I took 2 day classes and are now in a “full on learn 5 month from scratch programming course”. The first two weeks were rough because we went over the very very basics in a slow tempo. And now the “fun” stuff starts.
One day we had a a different tutor and he showed us that some cities (in Germany) provide public data to their citizens. And that this is a good resource. I checked for my city and I have plenty of csv files to choose from. Just waiting to be made into a graph. It helped me stay engaged in the first two weeks. Did I code it myself? Hell no. ChatGPT was a huge help. The haters will tell me I just “vibe coded” but I had so many error messages to work through I think I learned a lot while analysing the data and going back and forth checking if anything made sense. The gist of it is that I am now committed to a course, where I have to show up every day (online). I still often feel like a failure when I don’t understand a question and it is hard to judge if the others are as lost as I am. But it is also kind of fun and having others going through the same makes it more tolerable.
For me the commitment part was the issue. I’m still working on figuring out how to trick my brain into cooperating with commitments. Having a team that was looking forward to my suggestions and ready to rely on it ended up being the one thing that worked. But this is obviously not easily replicable.
I understand that. I find it hard to commit myself to something which I don’t burn for. I can start a huge crochet project let’s say because I want to gift it, it has a clear start and end (starting a magic loop -> finished product). My driver for the programming was: you are unemployed, they got you the course, if you don’t go your unemployment benefits would be cut. And I rather choose my own course instead of being pushed to do something I don’t like. I don’t enjoy the programming, but I enjoy pretty data. If I was still working I wouldn’t have started. So the stars aligned.
Similar here, except I suggested a course and they accepted and paid for it (Software Testing). The programming is what I enjoy and want to pursue.