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NADD

4 min readStatus:Seedling

NADD

NADD (Nerd Attention Deficiency Disorder) is Michael Lopp’s deliberately tongue-in-cheek term for the multi-channel, high-frequency attention pattern common in software engineers: simultaneously monitoring an IDE, Slack, a browser, a music stream, email, and a build pipeline — switching between them fluidly and, often, productively.

What NADD Is (and Isn’t)

The term is a parody of ADHD, but Lopp’s intent is not clinical. NADD is a reframe: what looks like distractibility from the outside is a trained adaptation to the information density of software engineering. Engineers with high NADD capability scan many streams in parallel, detect relevant signals quickly, and context-switch efficiently across short-horizon tasks.

This matters for managers: NADD-fluent engineers are not broken. They are well-adapted to interrupt-driven work — triage, on-call response, code review, exploratory debugging. Pathologising this attention style misses what makes it valuable.

Where NADD Serves and Where It Fails

  • Where it serves: exploratory phases, on-call, triage, coordination-heavy situations that require rapid context shifts
  • Where it fails: sustained creative work — what Csikszentmihalyi calls flow and Newport calls deep work — which requires uninterrupted focus over extended periods

The cognitive science is clear on the cost of switching. Gloria Mark’s field research found that after an unplanned interruption, workers take an average of 23 minutes to fully return to a prior-depth task, with roughly two intervening tasks before they get back. Czerwinski et al.’s diary study found knowledge workers switch tasks approximately 50 times per week, with returned-to tasks being among the most complex in their work.

Each NADD-mode context switch is low-cost only because the tasks are already shallow. The moment work requires depth, the same switching behaviour imposes heavy cognitive penalties.

The Management Implication

Lopp frames NADD as a management problem, not an engineer problem. The engineer’s NADD adaptation is efficient for their default environment. The manager’s job is to:

  • Recognise when depth is required — architecture design, novel problem-solving, complex system reasoning
  • Protect the Zone — the uninterrupted focus state where deep work happens (developed further in Chapter 33)
  • Redesign the environment — interrupt-free blocks, async communication norms, Maker Schedule principles for technical work

Treating NADD as a discipline failure, while simultaneously fragmenting engineers’ time with meetings and interruptions, is the most common and most costly management error related to this pattern.

Future Connections

Sources

  • Lopp, Michael (2019). Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, 3rd ed. Apress. ISBN: 978-1-484-23712-4.

    • Chapter 32: NADD — original framing of the multi-channel attention pattern as an adaptive rather than pathological trait

  • Mark, Gloria, Daniela Gudith, and Ulrich Klocke (2008). “The Cost of Interrupted Work: More Speed and Stress.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘08). ACM, pp. 107-110. DOI: 10.1145/1357054.1357072.

    • Field study finding average 23-minute recovery time after workplace interruption; confirms the depth cost of context-switching

  • Czerwinski, Mary, Eric Horvitz, and Susan Wilhite (2004). “A Diary Study of Task Switching and Interruptions.” Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘04). ACM, pp. 175-182. DOI: 10.1145/985692.985715.

    • Diary study showing knowledge workers switch tasks ~50 times per week; returned-to tasks are the most complex ones in their work

  • Newport, Cal (2016). Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World. Grand Central Publishing. ISBN: 978-1-455-58669-1.

    • Establishes the concept of deep work as the high-value complement to NADD’s default shallow-mode scanning; frameworks for protecting depth

  • Graham, Paul (2009). “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule.” Paul Graham Essays. Available: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

    • The structural incompatibility between interrupt-driven manager scheduling and the long-block focus needs of creative/technical makers — the organisational root of NADD vs. Zone tension

Note

This content was drafted with assistance from AI tools for research, organization, and initial content generation. All final content has been reviewed, fact-checked, and edited by the author to ensure accuracy and alignment with the author’s intentions and perspective.

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