What are the key takeaways from this The Bike Shed episode?

Key insights include: **Single-threading work:** Keep only one ticket in progress at a time to avoid context-switching costs. Mark blocked items explicitly and move them to a blocked column rather than juggling multiple incomplete tasks simultaneously.; **Wait time strategy:** During test runs or CI builds, resist switching tasks for short waits under ten minutes. Context switching wastes more time than waiting, and prevents forgetting to check results when builds complete.; **Calendar automation:** Set meeting reminders for one minute before start time instead of ten minutes. Longer lead times allow getting distracted and missing meetings, while one-minute warnings force immediate context switching to meeting mode.

What did Adi Slater and Sally Hall discuss on The Bike Shed?

Adi Slater and Sally Hall share their experiences managing ADHD as software developers, discussing practical workplace systems, accommodations, time management strategies, and the importance of accepting neurodivergent work styles without shame. Key topics include: **Single-threading work:** Keep only one ticket in progress at a time to avoid context-switching costs. Mark blocked items explicitly and move them to a blocked column rather than juggling multiple incomplete tasks simultaneously.; **Wait time strategy:** During test runs or CI builds, resist switching tasks for short waits under ten minutes. Context switching wastes more time than waiting, and prevents forgetting to check results when builds complete..

How long is this episode of The Bike Shed?

This episode is 37 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

The Bike Shed

478: ADHD at work

October 14, 2025

37 min episode · 2 min read

Adi Slater,Sally Hall

Episode

37 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Career Growth, Productivity, Leadership

AI-Generated Summary

Published Dec 25, 2025

Key Takeaways

✓Single-threading work: Keep only one ticket in progress at a time to avoid context-switching costs. Mark blocked items explicitly and move them to a blocked column rather than juggling multiple incomplete tasks simultaneously.
✓Wait time strategy: During test runs or CI builds, resist switching tasks for short waits under ten minutes. Context switching wastes more time than waiting, and prevents forgetting to check results when builds complete.
✓Calendar automation: Set meeting reminders for one minute before start time instead of ten minutes. Longer lead times allow getting distracted and missing meetings, while one-minute warnings force immediate context switching to meeting mode.
✓End-of-day anchors: Leave failing tests or Post-it notes with specific context before ending work sessions. Red terminal output or physical notes placed on monitors provide concrete re-entry points that bypass time-blindness and memory gaps.

What It Covers

Adi Slater and Sally Hall share their experiences managing ADHD as software developers, discussing practical workplace systems, accommodations, time management strategies, and the importance of accepting neurodivergent work styles without shame.

Key Questions Answered

•Single-threading work: Keep only one ticket in progress at a time to avoid context-switching costs. Mark blocked items explicitly and move them to a blocked column rather than juggling multiple incomplete tasks simultaneously.
•Wait time strategy: During test runs or CI builds, resist switching tasks for short waits under ten minutes. Context switching wastes more time than waiting, and prevents forgetting to check results when builds complete.
•Calendar automation: Set meeting reminders for one minute before start time instead of ten minutes. Longer lead times allow getting distracted and missing meetings, while one-minute warnings force immediate context switching to meeting mode.
•End-of-day anchors: Leave failing tests or Post-it notes with specific context before ending work sessions. Red terminal output or physical notes placed on monitors provide concrete re-entry points that bypass time-blindness and memory gaps.

Notable Moment

One developer shared forgetting to feed their children during coding bootcamp due to hyperfocus, then accidentally broadcasting a Slack reminder about feeding kids to their entire general channel after forgetting the slash command syntax.

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Episode Transcript

Auto scaling is a simple concept. Automatically add resources when needed and automatically shut them down to avoid paying for excess capacity. How hard could that be? If you've set up auto scaling yourself, you know it's not that easy, especially using the native auto scalers on platforms like AWS and Heroku. That's why you need Judo Scale. Judo Scale is auto scaling as a service, and they make auto scaling simple and easy, as it should be. You can use Judo Scale on AWS, Heroku, Render, fly.io, and more. It's free for low traffic apps and unlimited plans start at $25 per month. Autoscale on easy mode at judoscale.com. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at Thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Adi Slater. And I'm Sally Hall. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way. So, Sally, what's new in your world? Well, I am working on my first gem, which is really kind of just a generator that makes a scenic view Okay. Which is relevant because I've been trying to figure out how to test this. Right? So there's testing, and then there's testing a gem, and gem that is also a generator, and then there's testing a gem that is also a generator that relies on another gem. Okay. So I've been struggling with that, and I finally got it all working today. Excellent. That's awesome. Have tests that run, and then I made sure that it also still works with, like, a an app, you know, where it's actually gonna be used. Mhmm. And I feel unstoppable now because I wrote a test today. Well, I didn't even write the test today, but I got the test to run. Right. Yeah. It's very exciting. Yeah. That's so many layers deep that I have not yet had to think about. Like, not only is it a gem and how do you are there different things that you have to do for writing tests for a gem, but then also a generator which has to work in another app and relies on a gem. Yeah. Did you find that there's anything different that you had to do just that this is a library to test? Yeah. So what I ended up needing to do is make a little mini app within the spec folder of the gem. So to test the gem, some of the tests don't need this, but the to really test the main functionality of the gem, there's this little demo app and then have to, like, run the generator from the gem. And then that generator creates a couple of database migrations. So then you have to also migrate, and then you can test the behavior that you were expecting to happen. And then I also figured out that cleaning this up is different because you're creating you're, like, changing the app itself. Mhmm. So …

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