I'm a developer in my 40s considering getting diagnosed and medicated for (predominantly inattentive) ADHD for the first time. I've built a career around working with my brain rather than against it - freelancing and consulting where I could choose projects that interested me, constantly switching stacks / languages / domains to stay engaged, and developing an acute sensitivity to maintainable engineering practices (because I knew if code became a mess, I'd be physically unable to work on it even if my life depended on it.)

This approach worked for years. But now I have the resources and experience to pursue projects I now have real potential, and I'm hitting a wall. The problem is that I understand my hyperfocus cycles so well that if I realize a project will outlast my focus window, I don't even start. I have learned to work fast to outrun my focus juices running out but not that fast where I need to do more than development and switch my attention to different needs of a business constantly. It is getting worse for me, not better.

The irony is that avoiding work I "should" be doing made me a better, more versatile engineer - I learned broadly while procrastinating, developed strong opinions about maintainability out of self-preservation, and became genuinely multidisciplinary. But I've never been able to do traditional employment (didn't even try it ever, making myself work on something I'm not intensely interested in is simply impossible, regardless of reward or punishment), and now even self-directed work is slipping away.

I'm curious: has anyone here gotten diagnosed and medicated in adulthood and found it made a meaningful difference specifically for self-directed, long-term projects? Not even mentioning how the rest of my life is a mess because of ADHD. I'm not looking for general ADHD success stories - I want to know if treatment helped people like us who've survived this long through workarounds, but now want to actually execute on the things we're uniquely positioned to build.