From a Neurodivergent Drupal to a Neurotypical one
About two years ago a friend of mine posted her ADHD diagnosis on Facebook. From the outpouring support in comments it suddenly became clear half my feed has ADHD. I am quite selective in Facebook friends, half of the people are high school classmates, half of them old time Drupalers. This was the latter half. I seeked diagnosis — and, of course, I am as well.
Today I talked to a relatively new contributor to Drupal core — he started before Drupal 8 came out. Yup, in my world a mere nine years is a new contributor :D He is doing a very awesome job, mind you. When we discussed some big changes necessary for core he pointed out the reason some might not get done because it provides no business value. I tried to describe the old says as driven by passion and challenge. and having fun. How the old pipeline was make a small website — get interested / passionate in Drupal — contribute — get hired and now it seems contributors are much more doing it because they are paid to do so.
I have a very old blog post where I have correctly identified I am doing Drupal core because of the dopamine hit (see having fun above…) although I ascribed it to flow and not ADHD simply because I didn’t know much about ADHD back then.
And then tonight this tweet shows up from @adhdjesse whose newsletter taught me about Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (I so, so badly wish I knew about this like 15+ years ago) here’s what it says:
What’s the most helpful thing you’ve learned about ADHD? For me, it’s about motivation.
Neurotypicals are (primarily) motivated by:
- importance
- rewards
- consequences
ADHDers are (primarily) motivated by:
- interest
- creativity/novelty
- challenge
- urgency
I am screaming here how well this matches. To start with the bottom, urgency? we used to have code sprints! And then based on the interactions described above, it is becoming quite clear old Drupal was written mostly by ADHD people driven by their motivations and now it is written by neurotypicals. It’s not better or worse, it’s different.