1. As a software developer I’ve worked to optimize our tooling to minimize this kind of waiting.

2. Be transparent about having ADHD and just task switch, keep a rotation of active projects and if one gets blocked just go to the next one.

Try not to start another task during the waiting time has worked for me. If you are able to listen to music, try an audio visualizer or something like that. That will give you something to look at while you wait. Or find some kind of fidget. I hope that helps, it has helped me some but certainly isn’t for everyone.

Oh, don’t forget to take small breaks if that helps as well.

I do something not on my computer and leave the window thatcis loading up so that I don’t forget about it in the background. I know not all jobs have that option but maybe save any non computer tasks you do have until those moments.

Orna has been good for that. Its a GPS RPG that’s just interesting enough to keep me playing, but not quite “just one more” levels of interesting.

I can do a different type of dungeon run based on how much time I need to kill but it doesn’t make me so enthralled that I lose myself.

The periodic resets help me remember the passage of time, too- run one quick menu dungeon for a reset notification in an hour, etc.

Its what grounds me.

Can you perhaps find a puzzle game with a sliding scale of duration, that helps you focus, but is too boring to keep you playing all day?

Maybe easy sudoku or match 3s? A shorter format on Pokemon Showdown? (1v1 or 2v2)

IDK if you’re allowed to play games at work, but maybe finding something like that could help at other times?

I just know if i don’t keep my mind busy, it wanders bad. Or I get sleepy.

I used to eat a biscuit every time I was waiting for my PC to reboot. It was hard to stay thin while running Windows 98.

I have a second laptop next to me so I can do something completely unrelated while waiting for my code to compile. If I watch my code compile, I’ll start reading the logs and I WILL start investigating one of the 243 linting errors I inherited from the other devs.

By the end of the week, I’m sometimes switching between 3 different branches and raising a 5-line pull request for the one thing I was asked to do. I then have a 100+ line PR because I refactored some trash module to shave 200ms off the program startup time.

Back to your question of how I manage waiting. I don’t manage. I have a dream that one day my codebase won’t be trash and I can make a change without invoking an 8 minute wait.

At least now that I have stims, I don’t feel the urge to snack every time my mind idles.

I have these things I call “Sacred Rituals”.

Sacred Ritual #2: If it’s in the book (my daily planner) it gets done. If it’s not in the book, it ain’t happening.

I have yet to find an app that I prefer over an actual physical planner. This year I decided to try a bullet journal and I think I like that format a little better. It works for me because I’m a relentless “box checker” and if I hand write something, I can usually remember it. There’s something kind of satisfying about looking at my agenda and seeing a line through every task at the end of the day.

Idk if this will help your situation exactly but: If I’m waiting in a long line & I can’t do something else (like airport security & you can’t use your phone) — I count backwards from 1000 by 7s. It’s hard enough to keep me distracted on that task, it doesn’t remotely matter if I slip or start over, & it eats up tons of time 🤷‍♂️

Begleri. You can order them customized and with magnets as an option, just don’t stick them somewhere and forget about them.