One of my biggest challenges with ADHD-PI and Software Engineering is feeling like I don't know what people are talking about in meetings that I'm not leading.

It's not so much that the concepts are foreign (sometimes they are), but more so that I often struggle with: - macro level details: I'm still thinking about concept/point A when the group has already moved on to B, C, and D - micro level details: Some engineers spew out terms and concepts at a rate of flow faster than a fire hose; I like details and need this over vague articulations, but I'm left with little time to digest it - fuzzy concepts: Everything feels so fuzzy in my head (e.g. Yes, I've worked with technology XYZ that we are considering using, but I don't remember the details and the way we're talking about it sounds off to me but I can't pinpoint why)

When I'm asked to provide input I often don't know what to say. I usually have a fuzzy concept in my head, an intuition and feeling about the topic, a déjà vu about working with this abstract concept, framework, or problem before (I've been in the industry a long time), but I find it difficult to get it out of my head and articulate it in real time. Other times I just get totally lost!

It need not be meetings, it could even be socially at lunch. It's something I've notices tends to also be a binary thing. I have these issues at times, and then at others I'm on top of things. Like a light switch. But when it's off, I'm stuck.

I feel most comfortable when I have the time to crack open my skull, yank out the tangled mess of thoughts as if they are all the wires behind your computer desk. There is no cable management, so everything is all twisted up. Eventually, I have the one line of thought I was looking for, but it takes so much time to detangle and extract it. If this is a real-time meeting, this extraction usually happens hours after if at all, which isn't helpful.

Meds help, sure. I can pay more attention, my mind won't drift as much, and I might not have as big an initial tangled mess when I reach for thoughts to connect to the topic at hand. The impairment in these situations is still present.

This is all rather frustrating and between meds and ADHD coaching I still haven't found a solution to it. If this resonates with you, what do you do about it?