Its symptoms include an inability to focus, being easily distracted, hyperactivity, poor organization skills, and impulsivity
ADHD—Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder—is often associated with children, but the truth is it affects adults and kids alike. All adults were once children, right?
However, not everyone has all these symptoms, it varies from person to person and changes with age—people with ADHD can experience lessening of their symptoms as they mature, even if they won’t go away entirely.
In this series of three articles, we set out to explore how ADHD affects people in the workplace, delving into the world of ADHD, its impact in professional settings, the most common challenges people face, but also the unique strengths that come with it.
Keep in mind, these differences don’t define limitations; they highlight the unique aspects of an ADHD brain! 😊🧠
So-called “neurotypical” people don’t understand the difficulties in the workplace when it comes to memory, focus and distractions, because they don’t see the inner struggle, everything happens inside the mind of the ADHDer.
For example, you won’t see me constantly fidgeting or jumping around, that’s a misconception right there. 😹😹
I am apparently quite calm… At least I am perceived as calm and mellow. No one sees the chaos inside me or my legs swinging constantly under the table.
I’m the person who remembers every detail of an event 10 years ago, but can’t remember why I just walked into the room…
I’m the person who’s going to a party and really want to wear that special dress that really makes me stand out… but find that it’s in the laundry basket, so I wash it straight away, reminding myself over and over again that I’ve got to remember to hang it out to dry afterwards.
While I wait for the washing machine to finish the wash cycle, I start making lunch. I go in the bedroom to call my son for lunch and notice that he has a lot of clothes to fold and put away. I start folding his clothes, making the bed while we talk, and by the time I remember lunch, the food’s already gone cold…
When we’ve finished lunch, as I puts the plates in the sink, I notice the laundry is still in the machine… I hurry to put the laundry out to dry, when I see a neighbor walking his dog outside. As I meet the neighbor’s greeting with a wave, I remember that my own dogs haven’t had lunch yet.
So, forgetting the wet clothes on the kitchen counter, I go about serving my dogs. As I watch my furry friends eat, I remember that I need to buy dog feed. It would be terrible if I let theirs run out, right? So, I sit at the computer to place the order and, while I’m at it, I notice that I have a few emails to reply to and some of them are urgent… Afraid that I will end up forgetting if I procrastinate, I take care of it right away! I repeat to myself several times that I need to go back to the website and confirm that dog feed order.
Sitting in front of the screen, I notice my work in progress folder and remember that I had promised my boss I would finish that urgent article during the weekend. It’s Sunday, I’d better get on with it… And the afternoon flies by.
After a few hours of typing furiously, my husband calls and asks if I’m ready for that party… In a panic, I run to the clothesline to get the dress, only to discover that I never actually laid it out to dry.
What’s worse, I never laid out the dress, I didn’t reply to the emails or confirm the dog feed order. But I’m absolutely exhausted, and feeling all over the place, and incapable.
This is the story of my life.
As an adult with ADHD diagnosed since childhood, I’m often faced with misconceptions and myths.
Also, this is not an intellectual impairment—that’s a myth!
I have always been at the top of my class. Yes, it can hinder learning, as it affects people differently, since attention span & IQ also play a part .
Many people with ADHD won’t match the emotional maturity of a 21-year-old until their 30s, but a potential lack of support from the closest family members and/or the educational system takes a share of the blame.
It’s true that, as adults, we may find it harder to get organized or remember instructions, appointments and chores. For some, it will be difficult to keep a job, but others can excel in their career of choice!
Not only because arriving at work on time and being productive on the job can be especially challenging, but also because things become “ancient history” in no time, and the initial hype will quickly fly out the window…
Many, like me, are lucky enough to have landed a job we love surrounded by people who understand our handicaps and small quirks, and that support us, valuing our strengths and special abilities, so we have stable and flourishing careers.
There are challenges. For example, I’m constantly worrying about messing up—even if I don’t actually make that many mistakes. I’m traumatized by my teenage and early adulthood years and I never know when something is going to go wrong, so I can be a bit paranoid. 👽 👽
If my boss says we’re having a Zoom meeting soon but she’s vague about the topics to discuss, I wonder what I did wrong. Yet, no meeting to date has ever been intended to reprimand me, or anyone else for that matter!
I often assume that at any moment I will get sideswiped by some mistake I never knew I made: either something I did or forgot to do.
As a professional translator and reviewer for over two decades, I have created my own strategies, methods and mnemonics to be precise and efficient, and to meet deadlines: and I do. 👩🏻🦰 💼
In my 20s I worked as secretary for a prominent lawyer, and I invented a method to organize his endless shelves of messy dead file folders; created a system to keep my desk clean instead of accumulating work in my tray like many coworkers did; and simplified many overly complicated processes.
He never knew WHY I needed to do everything the minute it arrived: in case I would forget to do it later OR forget the instructions!
I don’t procrastinate—I can’t afford to.
And it’s not just a short-term memory issue (my long-term memory is actually very good!), my attention span and impulsivity are also problematic. It’s out of the frying pan and into the fire. 🍳 🔥
For example, I often impulsively send out an email asking my colleagues a question only to find the answer myself half a second later… Let’s just say I often wish life had an “undo” button. 🔙
However, many people with ADHD demonstrate very high resilience levels, which is a strong predictor of success.
Self-Regulation is also a trump card! ADHD individuals learn self-awareness and self-reliance, polishing their ability to manage emotions and behaviors. They can also become very good at reading people. And believe me, reading people is an ally you can use in many settings!
I am an avid reader and learner. From a young age I found that if I managed to understand how things worked and why they occur, they would be easier to learn than if I tried to memorize them. And my grades were very good, but if I had to memorize things to repeat them by heart in the classroom or in an exam, my mind went blank…
Despite setbacks, I was very inventive, so I soon realized I could develop mnemonics to help me memorize things fast, and color codes to help me study. I still use these tricks every day.
For instance, when I had to memorize the multiplication table as a small child, I realized that if I could understand how it worked, I would do the calculations when prompted. So, I excelled in reciting it from 1 to 10 and backwards, and aced my written exams but I never knew it by heart. 🧮
As a teenager and young adult, being very inventive, creative and prolific, I’d often start personal “projects” with great and relentless enthusiasm, investing all my time, effort and even money, until… I’d suddenly loose interest. I tried to force myself to follow through but always ended up leaving things incomplete just to dive into my next bright idea! 💡
This fickleness disappears with maturity, as we grow up and get older.
As a teacher, throughout my 30s, I had good results with students because I applied my own experience in teaching. I made sure they would understand rather than memorize; and even if they didn’t like the subjects, they could at least relate to what they were learning, through practical examples taken from their own reality; and I helped them create mnemonics for things they needed to learn by heart.
These methods proved to work on special needs students and I ended up specializing in students with ADHD, dyslexia, and also other learning or cognitive disabilities.
Today, as a translator, proofreader and copywriter, ADHD is also the fuel behind the incessant supply of imagination and ideas for articles, publications, strategies and solutions, etc.
Has ADHD brought me, and still brings me, challenges? Yes, that’s undeniable. But it has also helped me over the years.
If we don’t give up, we can turn a problem into a solution.
While you’re waiting for the second part of our exciting article, browse our website to learn more about our professional translation and transcreation services, our professional proofreading services and our professional writing services:
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