I often have at least 1-2 really productive days during the week. Sometimes I can have 3-4 days of productivity. Usually there is at least 1-2 days when I can't get anything done (like sitting at the computer trying to work, but just can't manage to make any progress or gold plating a project you enjoyed working on instead of moving on to other stuff you need to do). This is on average, so some weeks are better than others.

This makes sprint work a challenge for me (and I often dread the scrum stand-up when I was unproductive the day before). I fear people expect me to perform like a robot and crank out work consistently on a daily basis, It just doesn't work that way for me. Productivity comes in fits and starts for me.

I also have trouble planning, time boxing, and time blocking, Why? I can't guarantee that I can take action on those planned tasks/time slots when the time comes. Estimating how long something will take? Well that depends on if I'm going to have a productive upcoming week or a difficult week. That task might take me 3 hours or 3 days! Depends on how complex/difficult my brain interprets the work when I start working on it! Perhaps I'll estimate it as 5 story points because I'm like: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Even with Adderall. Meds help, they absolutely do, but only in that they make the unproductive days happen less often or make doing things less excruciating mentally. The general inconsistency remains, however.

So when given assignments and tasks, how do you manage the lower than expected performance days and weeks? What do you do when your manager or others start asking for status updates (and the answer is I'm at the same place I was yesterday or... shutter... in the most extreme: last week) or wondering why it's taking so long for a task to get done?

Note: As some background I work at a startup and typically am assigned 2-3 major concurrent tasks to work on each sprint (plus a lot of random smaller stuff). I have 15 years of experience and hold a high level position. So the expectations on my performance is high. I wouldn't have gotten here without doing good work. But it really sucks when I hit a dry period, and it's a challenge to even get the smallest task done some days.