I have ADHD for which I take regular medication. 2 months ago I relocated out of state to take a more challenging position at a larger and faster-paced company. I now feel completely overwhelmed. My distractability is very high and I am struggling with basic executive function—tracking and following through on tasks, synthesizing and retaining new information, proactively and regularly communicating. Unsurprisingly my anxiety level is now high also. It's like I've gone back to my pre-diagnosis state.
I need strategies to keep the lid on my head, maintain focus, and restore good performance.
For the last 5 years I was a software engineer and then engineering manager at a 20-person startup. My work was well-regarded, I was productive, and I had a strong relationship with the CEO and my coworkers. I had established processes for tracking work, maintaining communication, and supporting my team members. I am now 3 months into a new job at a 2000-person unicorn. In theory I have the same job function and same number of people reporting up to me, but the organization has a very different shape and I am struggling to get traction.
The sheer volume of communication at NewCompany is immense—a constant flood of emails, long-winded proposals, project documents—all written like people are being paid by the word. Some of this involves complex product or technical concepts that I need to understand, some of it requires quick response, other parts are low-value or don't actually require my attention at all (but being new, I can't always tell which is which).
There are many different work-tracking tools and methods in use by different teams/projects so tasks and status can come from multiple sources. I'm working on consolidating them into one view for myself and regularly grooming the list. However, my level of distractability is so high right now that I am struggling to do even that consistently.
Some days I literally talk myself hoarse with meetings. Establishing and building relationships both within and outside my team is clearly important and something my manager has emphasized, but even when actively taking notes I find I have low retention of the actual content of discussions. I am concerned my team members think I don't care about and/or can't understand what they are working on and my introvert batteries are drained.
Additional challenges:
- My team and I are in a different city from the main headquarters. The other two teams in our group plus the group manager are both at HQ, and this is my first time being managed remotely. My impression is that the entire group is not viewed as sufficiently productive by upper management, and my manager has expressed directly that she does not view my team as performing at full potential (presumably that's part of what they hired me to deal with). Making visible progress is important here.
- I am part of a demographic minority in the industry and at NewCompany. In addition I have a less prestigious professional history than my manager and many other people in the organization. I feel secure in my own abilities in the long term, but in the short term both factors invite extra scrutiny.
- It's a modern tech company so of course they have an open office plan with desks packed close together and a lot of ambient noise. Quiet work space is hard to come by. Noise-canceling headphones help a little. I am also able to work from home 1 day/week and do so if my schedule permits.
Things I'm doing now: asking my manager for guidance and regular checkpoints, defragging my calendar, aggressively filtering email, taking a lot of notes, starting to delegate a few things, trying to build a habit of immediately marking down tasks in a central view. My personal life is also going downhill (messy house, lots of aimless web browsing) but I have been keeping up the basics of a balanced diet, enough sleep, and some exercise. I am open to working with a psychiatrist on medication adjustment. However, due to moving out of state I don't yet have local medical support and probably won't get it in the next couple of weeks.
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