Career drift
With ADHD, it’s really easy to get bored and jump from one random thing to the next.
If you’re not careful, you can end up with a lot of shallow experience in a lot of different things, but not enough depth to every really grow into more senior roles, increase your salary, or become the kind of expert that has a variety of career options.
When you get tired of what you’re doing now, instead of picking something completely different as your next thing, pivot into something related or adjacent.
- Bored with HTML and CSS? Pivot into client-side JavaScript.
- Bored with front-end work? Pivot into backend/server-side JavaScript.
- Bored with backend JavaScript? Pivot into another backend language.
A CTO I used to work with referred this as career drift.
With each pivot, the skills you already have become an asset that helps inform the new stuff you’re doing.
A JavaScript developer who knows HTML and CSS is more versatile than one who doesn’t. A backend developer who can write good front-end code is more marketable to an employer than one who cannot.
Another benefit of career drift is that if you don’t like the new thing, it’s easy to pivot back to what you were doing before.
You may even find that after some time away, the thing you grew bored with is exciting again.
Now, you’re in a good position to incorporate more of it into the new thing. And, you haven’t completely thrown away the career and skills you’ve already built.