By Rustan Ace Corpuz —

How I Manage ADHD as a Software Engineer: The Power of Constant Note-Taking

Finding What Works

As a software engineer with ADHD working in leadership and platform roles, I've spent years developing a note-taking system that helps me stay focused and productive. It's still a work in progress, but it gets better year by year.

The core of my approach is simple: I constantly write down my thoughts as they happen. Think of it as a diary of my chain of thoughts throughout the workday.

What My Notes Actually Look Like

Here's a typical excerpt from my daily notes:

10:00 AM
- Architecture review meeting for new data pipeline
- Team debating Pub/Sub vs Kafka for event streaming
- We're already deep in GCP ecosystem, Pub/Sub makes more sense
- Random thought: should investigate if our Vertex AI costs would drop with better batching
- BACK TO MEETING: consensus on Pub/Sub with Dataflow for processing

10:45 AM  
- 1:1 with platform team lead
- Discussing GKE autopilot vs standard mode costs
- They mentioned our Cloud Run services are scaling too aggressively
- Side note: need to review our Terraform modules for container resources
- Action item: implement workload identity for better security

11:30 AM
- Debugging FastAPI service latency in production
- Background jobs getting queued up in Cloud Tasks
- Are we hitting Firestore write limits again?
- Actually, why aren't we using Redis for hot data?
- TODO: discuss moving from Cloud Tasks to Pub/Sub for better throughput

2:00 PM
- Composer vs Astronomer evaluation meeting
- Team frustrated with Cloud Composer cold starts
- Astronomer looks promising but another tool to manage
- Random insight: most of our DAGs are just BigQuery scheduled queries anyway
- Should we just use BigQuery scheduling + Cloud Functions for simple workflows?

3:30 PM
- Terraform state file corruption issue... again
- Remote state in GCS bucket but someone ran apply locally
- Need better CI/CD guardrails
- Mental note: investigate Terraform Cloud vs our current setup
- Why do we have 47 different service account keys floating around?

Why This Works for Me

External Memory: I don't trust my brain to remember what I was thinking about 10 minutes ago. These notes act as my external working memory.

Capturing Random Insights: Some of my best architectural decisions came from random thoughts during unrelated meetings. Writing them down means I don't lose them.

Context Switching: In leadership roles, I'm constantly switching between strategic planning, technical decisions, and people management. Notes help me pick up where I left off.

Processing Information: Writing helps me process complex technical decisions. It's thinking on paper.

My Setup

The key is making note-taking frictionless:

  • HHKB keyboard - The tactile feedback and compact layout work well for me
  • Vim keybindings - Fast navigation and editing without leaving the keyboard
  • Touch typing - Being able to type quickly means I can capture thoughts in real-time
  • Simple text files - No fancy tools, just markdown files organized by date

What I've Learned Over the Years

Start Simple: I began with just a text file. Don't overthink the tools.

Consistency Matters More Than Perfect Organization: Messy notes that exist beat perfectly organized notes that don't.

Review, But Don't Obsess: I skim previous notes during morning coffee. Sometimes I find gems, sometimes I don't.

It's Okay to Capture Everything: Meeting notes mixed with random curiosities, technical decisions alongside reminders to check something. It all goes in.

The System Evolves: What worked as an IC didn't scale to leadership roles. I've adapted my approach as my responsibilities changed.

Practical Benefits I've Noticed

  • Better Decision Making: I can trace back why we made certain architectural choices
  • Improved Meeting Efficiency: Quick access to past discussions and decisions
  • Reduced Cognitive Load: Not trying to hold everything in my head
  • Knowledge Repository: Years of notes become searchable documentation
  • Career Growth: Documenting my thought process helped me develop leadership skills

A Work in Progress

After several years of this practice, I'm still refining my approach. Some days are better than others. Some notes are more useful than others. But the cumulative effect of having this external brain has been transformative for my work.

The goal isn't perfection—it's progress. Each year, my system gets a bit more refined, a bit more useful. For anyone else managing ADHD in technical leadership, I'd encourage you to start simple and iterate. Find what works for your brain and your role.

The best system is the one you'll actually use.