ADHD/ADD and Work Part 1 - Finding The Perfect Fit
Table of contents for ADHD/ADD and Work
- ADHD/ADD and Work Part 1 - Finding The Perfect Fit
This is Part 1 in a series of articles about ADHD/ADD adults and their careers.
The perfect job. It’s an elusive quest for most people, let alone those of us with ADHD/ADD. Finding a job we can do is easy. Finding we can do a job after the challenge, the excitement, the monotony of day to day grind sets in is hard. In fact, I’ll say from personal experience it really sucks. So what happens next? Find another job, find another position, change careers, etc.
So how do you find the perfect job? How about the perfect career? As a professional recruiter I was asked this question regularly. It wasn’t until I realized that I had ADD and understood what that implies that the advice that I was giving out for so many years still applies, even more so to those of us with ADHD/ADD.
Your Career
Finding the perfect career is different than finding the perfect job in that career.
A career is defined as an occupation or profession, esp. one requiring special training, followed as one’s lifework. When you say career, the word evokes thoughts of Lawyers, Teachers, Dr’s, etc. So if you don’t have specialized training can you or do you have a career? Yes. Whether you realize it or not what you are doing right now is a career. You don’t always have the training when you start but you get that training while working to the point that you can do it as good or better than others around you.
How do you find the perfect career? Start by looking at your current career. Whether it be writer, cook, home maker, IT professional, accountant, or sanitation worker. Ask yourself a few simple questions.
Why did you go into this career in the first place? If your answer is, it seemed like a good idea at the time? Then what’s the difference now? What’s changed? What about the field appealed to you?
Instead of thinking about the answers, get a pen and paper out and write it down. Making a physical list takes the ambiguity or cloudiness you might have when connecting your job with your career. Don’t write your job description or what you do, focus on the career. The big picture. If I was a cook (chef in my mind at least) I might write something down like, creativity, satisfying, complex, diverse, financially rewarding. There are other ways to describe this career but those are the things that I think of.
The next question is what don’t you like your career now? Boring is every bit as valid an answer as say lack of opportunity, or financial stability. Write this down too. Write down things about your CAREER. Not your job. The two combined might be listed or written in a pro/con style to make it easy to see the difference. On the theme of a cook I might say, labor intensive, frustrating, inconsistent, monotonous, slow paced, etc.
Written that down? Now think about this for a second or longer. This is the kind of list you can use to evaluate anything you take on that involves your professional life. What do you like to do? If you didn’t have to work and you had every day off to do whatever you wanted what do you like to do? Again this is my personal list but it looks like this. Writing, creating, using my hands, thinking of ways to make money, creating new recipes, cooking for people, cleaning, organizing, playing with my boys, etc. It’s easy to think of what you would do if you didn’t have to work. I’m sure we all have a list a mile long TO do, but what do you LIKE to do.
As someone with ADD I know first hand how difficult this can be to answer. Do you notice my list varies from thing to thing. No real consistent pattern other than creating. AD/HD and ADD minds are creative minds. Creativity kicks off chemicals in our brains that help us feel calm. They help us relax and gain a sense of normal focus. It’s not just me, check out Delivered From Distraction sometime to see what I’m talking about. Dr. Hallowell talks about this very thing as do other books, sites, and Dr’s.
Now list the things you don’t like. This again is easy to focus on the job you are currently in but think past that. Think about what type of things you don’t like to do. This is far easier than the first. I don’t like the monotonous repeating tasks, sitting for too long, loud noises, dealing with chaotic situations beyond my control,etc.
What’s the pattern there? If you are a non-ADDer then you won’t necessarily understand but for the ADD adult it’s the signs and struggles of the ADD mind. The lack of stimulation or loss of control. Those stick out.
Now take your lists and compare the likes and the dislikes. Does your career afford the good and minimize the bad? Looking at my list an accounting career is not necessarily the way to go. But as a cook I get a lot of the good and a little of the bad. If not what careers do afford those? If you said lawyer, or doctor, or developer. Those might be difficult unless you have a lot of training and money for training.
Think about these lists. it’s the start of the process. In ADHD/ADD and Work part 2 we’ll be discussing what you found here and start talking about specific types of jobs.
Managing My Day The ADD Way
A lot of people talk about managing their day. New articles, research, classes, discussions, etc. It can be difficult because life is not about managing anything - life happens and we react. But if we have a routine and a process, they can save us from letting everything around us taking advantage of our natural desire to let them.
When I found out that I had AD/HD I was at a loss for understanding how I was going to leverage this for my betterment but keep it controlled so I wasn’t lost anymore. With a lot of research, several changes to my routines, creation of new routines, and some medication I found success. It’s nothing complicated, but it makes all the difference in the world.
The first thing I did was identify what I had to do every day. I used this to create a routine. Like a daily check list. Now I don’t follow this check list to the letter, but it’s a guide, and more and more it’s becoming the pattern. What does it do? It frees me up from thinking about what I have to do and I just walk the process so I can think about other things. Like Einstein and his wardrobe. He would wear almost the same outfit(different clothes but the same pieces) so his brain could focus on e=MC2 and not what he had to put on that day.
The next thing I do is follow the same routine when I walk in the office. I put my keys, money, phone, etc in the same place. Come time to go home and I have everything in one place. I don’t have to ask myself did I forget something.
During the work day I manage many projects simultaneously. While I have project plans to follow that generate tasks to accomplish, they don’t provide the list tracking mechanism I need to stay on track. For that I use Remember The Milk. It creates tasks that can send reminders to your email or phone. It uses tags, tabbing, priorities, and integrates with many different free services. As people come to me with issues before I track it in the project I use RTM to manage the information. This way I spend more time thinking and less time worrying about what I’m forgetting.
I make myself take breaks to snack and connect with people. Before I started taking medication I couldn’t sit still for longer than 15 minutes. It was excruciating to sit there and do the mundane. Now between my tasks and my medicine, I’m the energizer bunny. Funny enough it’s not from the amphetamines, but it’s from being able to focus and multitask so much better now that my old get up and down energy is driving through the projects. So getting up gives me 3 opportunities. Change of scenery, food or beverage, and a chance to connect with people, even if briefly. — As a side not to this - before the diagnosis it would have been said of me that I over socialized at work, though it didn’t hurt my performance in comparison to the “standard”.
Another thing I do is if I feel I’m racing, I sit down and take deep breaths and walk myself through calming down. It’s natural to seek out drama when you have AD/HD. This keeps me in check. Especially if I’ve forgotten to eat or get up for a while little things can set me off where they turn into a big thing when they don’t need to. I still haven’t figured out why little things push me to big drama but they do. Maybe they did all along but wasn’t aware of it before. Now I know.
The last thing I try to do is disconnect from work before I walk in the door. It’s not always easy but it helps me to play with the kids and enjoy my family so much more. I disconnect by thinking about dropping off my son that morning and the last words he says. “I love you Dad.” That usually does it.
AD/HD or ADD is manageable. Use your creativity and think outside the box. Finding your own niche or mechanism is important. If you’re not sure, send me a note or make a comment and I’d be glad to offer any help I can.
Blogging Tip #1 For The A.D.D.er
Table of contents for ADD Blogging Tips
- Blogging Tip #1 For The A.D.D.er
These tips can apply to anyone. I got the idea while reading Dr. Hallowell’s blog when he talked about getting the hang of blogging.
Some people may already know this, but for those that don’t here you go. Blogging is about writing. It’s writing when the idea hits you. It’s writing about what you know about. Even fiction is about something we have some idea about. But writing consistently every week can be difficult. I fall behind all the time.
I have 4 blogs I participate on and 2 that are just mine. This is one of them. Not to mention forums, email, etc. So how do you write consistently when you are writing so much already?
Strike while the iron is hot. By that I mean when an idead hits you. When you see something or realize something write.
You don’t have to write on your blog just then, but you should write down either the whole artical or just enough that when you come back you’ll see it. I like to use google notepad to quickly get my thoughts down. A great application for offline and online writing is ecto. It lets you write online or offline. It’s available in PC and Mac.
Let’s say you’ve just written an entire post but you don’t want to post it until later that week because you just posted. It’s a simple change to your post. Here are the steps for a wordpress blog, but it should be available for all blogs.
1. Create your post.
2. Save your post as draft.
3. Open the post up for editing.
4. In the right hand side is “Post Timestap.
5. Expand this and set it at a future date.
6. Publish.
This will then publish the posting to your blog on that particualr day.
Now you can write away without the headache of waiting or storing your idea until the next time you’re available. So strike while the iron is hot. Next week we’ll talk about another tip. Figuring out how to keep track of what you’re writing.
ps I wrote this Sunday morning.