How did you choose your occpuation for people who didn"t just follow thier passion
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
I was very lucky. I got my diagnosis at age 44, right when I started figuring out I was good at identifying and resolving process gaps. With meds, I found out I was really good at it, as well as rapidly understanding very complex processes, and being able to explain them to different parties. Suddenly I oversee a bunch of data architects and software engineers who do file ingestion and data analysis. And without me, they function like a squabbling kindergarten, if they function at all.
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
I just always followed my passion: IT. But I really don't work well in groups or with someone above me so I rarely did that. So basically I retired somewhere in my 20s, which already was over 20yrs ago. Since then I live ny passion at home, tinkering with my servers, smart home and just general coding. Rest of the time I enjoy with wifey and travel. Guess I'm one of the luckier ones.
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
My adhd was mostly untreated til about a couple years ago, and I was tryna get into film or TV production, but indecision paralysis hindered me 6 ways til Sunday, and being diabetic was also a major hurdle cause I needed good insurance. Thankfully my dad was a union electrician so I got into that easily. But I couldn't handle construction and quit after 3 months. Then I went into something more residential, but injured my wrist. Luckily they let me do dispatch and other desk job stuff there and I just kinda stayed, cause going to one location and staying there really worked out for me.
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
I needed a stable job so. And it was the easiest way to get it.
After I chose to follow my passion and started working on that, which is my current job. Just to find out that not because you work in your passion your job is going to be fun.
Then I realized than a job is a job. And most jobs are shitty. So I focused on working as little hours as possible and just enjoy my hobbies.
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
Tried to become a philosophy professor but couldn't get funding for my PhD - needed another 5% on my grades to get a distinction at MSc level to achieve that.
While studying philosophy I'd got interested in FOSS and Linux so I was vaguely aware that I found computers interesting. It turned out there was Scottish government funding for doing a MSc in Computing without needing to have done a relevant undergrad (Computer Science would have required a related UG degree).
Became a dev after doing the MSc Computing. Was a junior for 1 year then left that company and moved to another one at mid-level, where I realised I enjoyed the data related tasks. Promoted to senior after 3 years there. Also became aware Data Engineers got paid more than regular engineers.
Moved to my current company as a mid-level Data Engineer and recently became a Senior Data Engineer. Not 100% sure how it all happened given I've never been particularly good at maths however philosophy has a lot of problem solving/discrete mathematics type puzzles involved so that probably helped.
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
Not every job is a great fit for someone with ADHD, but some of that is a learning curve as well. If you're worried about it I'd recommend looking into the kinds of work that are more hands on, active, and varied.
Beyond that, you don't choose a job for life. You don't even necessarily choose an industry for life. Most people will change jobs, industries, even entire careers once or twice. I'd expect people with ADHD probably more so.
You look for something that aligns pretty well with what you want, while doing that you figure out what parts of it you're good at or you like, then down the line you steer your career in a direction that aligns more with those things. You do that two or three times and you end up with a fulfilling career you may not have known existed at the outset.
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
Looked up which were the highest paying jobs for people not inheriting wealth or social connections. Realized the field was oil & gas and the highest job was Petroleum Engineer, took Chemical Engineering because of its wide applicability, accepted I'd be working in the boonies for at least a decade of my life, made it work.
5/10. Wouldn't recommend for the loneliness.
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I'm looking for a second non-career (slave) job to do to fill in gaps when I can't find a job in my career. Can you think of any slave jobs where you can progress in the skill to be paid better?
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I'm looking for a second non-career (slave) job to do to fill in gaps when I can't find a job in my career. Can you think of any slave jobs where you can progress in the skill to be paid better?
That all depends on your local market, ie job access
Practically hard to advise. But white collar is played for now.
It seems blue collar where is some demand but anything with prospects there would essentially require a switch and getting some sort of apprenticeship type set up which is also aint that easy but more viable than office
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I wish I knew. Ideally I planned to build a set of skills that can be applied to solving multiple very different problems.
It worked for a while. For a short time I had jobs whenre proving myself by doing was appreciated more than having formal credentials. But even then, my need for constant change was not understood. People even thought they were doing me a favor by giving me a long-term stable project as a reward.
Everything since has been hell.
In the corporate world the idea of transferable skills doesn't exist, actually it's actively looked down on. Unless you have the exact same job description in your previous job they won't even consider letting you do it, even though it's 80% the same.to build a set of skills that can be applied to solving multiple very different problems.
What was your set of skills?
Is there some kind of definitive list of useful transferable skills that these can be found on? I'm starting out and something like this would be very useful bc I have no idea
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Hmm true. I was thinking of something artisian like being a cook/chef where even though you just use it as a plan B, you gain tangible skill the longer you do it to fill said gaps
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Hmm true. I was thinking of something artisian like being a cook/chef where even though you just use it as a plan B, you gain tangible skill the longer you do it to fill said gaps
Brutal work though and very hard to break out
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True. Idk any other ideas?
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to build a set of skills that can be applied to solving multiple very different problems.
What was your set of skills?
Is there some kind of definitive list of useful transferable skills that these can be found on? I'm starting out and something like this would be very useful bc I have no idea
Well, my "narrow" specialty is software engineering. I'm putting narrow under quotes since it's a very wide field itself. There are many specializations within the field but having an interest in a specific domain is what's really important. It's quite easy to switch between specializations given the opportunity.
Moving up on the abstraction ladder, software engineering is one manifestation of systems thinking. Meaning designing and modifying complex systems consisting of machines and humans. This mindset is applicable other areas, really anything that has a "network" in the description - cargo logistics, public transportation, electrical grids, telecommunications.
Even law to some extent. I'm only half joking when I say programming made it easier for me to understand the legal system.Unfortunately I don't think anyone has a categorized list of possible options.
Anecdotally some groupings I've noticed:- Manual service jobs (sure hairdresser and cook are very different jobs but somehow the jump between them is not so huge)
- Caring about and improving other humans (teachers, therapists, nurses, coaches, both physical and mental)
- Physical violence (military, police, mercenary, criminal. Ideally for protecting others, but the line is very thin be careful here)
- Medicine (once you go there there's no going back, incl veterinarians)
- Agriculture (raising cows and planting corn is very different, but due to cultural and practical grouping switching between the two is easier)
- Art. Regardless of the preferred medium it's all very fluid. For example creating a sculpture after a few years of being a musician will surprise nobody.
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Most people don't love their job.
That was not the question, though.
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
ahdh, I work at a bank because it pays well for not having a degree
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
I studied physics in undergrad, and was planning to continue to graduate studies. Took me until my senior year to realize that I actually found most of the work in physics to be extremely boring, and I was actually just following the degree path out of an egoistic desire to prove how smart I was.
But now that I'd lost my path in life so close to graduating, I realized I needed to find another, fast. Luckily I'd been taking classes for a CS minor, so switched that to a major and graduated with both degrees with an additional 6 months of classes.
However, since I'd been banking on physics, I only had one summer to do a CS internship, got it at a no-name local company, and ended up in .Net development after graduation. Despite what Lemmy might say, .Net is actually not that bad - at least as a developer. The documentation is good, the tooling mostly makes sense, and corporate support is pretty responsive. But it doesn't lend itself to working on sexy, pro-social, world-changing tech. So I generally found my coworkers and company to be pretty boring and closed minded, and the work we did to be quite meaningless.
Due to the lack of social connection at the job and meaninglessness I felt about the work - in combination with the fact that I kind of felt I'd been forced into the occupation by circumstance - I suffered from a pretty consistent depression for about 5 years while working in software.
Luckily, my actual passion was the outdoors. During college, I'd taken 6 months off to hike the appalachian trail, spent my weekends going to the mountains with friends, and spent weekdays riding bicycles around town and dumpster diving - I was happy doing these things, and realized I didn't need much in the way of money or material posessions to make me happy.
So when I got my software job, I immediately started saving as much money as possible and putting it in investments. So after working for about 8 years, I was able to retire.
These days I work part time rigging concerts, do little diy projects around the house, and go rock climbing. So on the whole, I feel like it worked out well. Though now I have the itch to get back into software and prove that I could do the thing where I do something meaningful and enjoy it and make tons of money.
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
Land Survey. I stumbled into it by accident and it is perfect for ADHD folks. It’s a combination of cartography, history, law, geometry, geography. You can be in an office, you can work outside. Best part is, you can get licensed with out a degree in a lot of states. And, even if you don’t get a license, you can make a decent living at it.
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As some with ADHD, my interest fluantuats wildly. How does an average person choose a job thats suppose to be for life and not worry about loss of interest, let alone some with ADHD.
Money and its ability to support my (future) family was the biggest deciding factor for choosing IT. The other factor was not wanting my passion (playing music) becoming a necessary burden to make ends meet, with the resulting stress killing my passion.
It's just a job. Some days it's good, some days it really fuckin' blows, but overall, it's tolerable.
