Managing Your Job With ADHD

Do you hate your job? Do you intensely dislike the people who work with you? Do you put things off until your boss roars because you’ve not gotten a project done? Are you just totally and horribly unhappy? If you have adult ADD, this could easily be true.

The 40-hour work week might seem like a strait jacket for you, and it might hinder that great ADD energy and creativity you have inside. But you also have the ability to hyperfocus and get things done, providing that they’re projects that interest you. You’re probably great at things like detecting and solving problems, but you probably shy away from the paperwork involved. It’s just too boring!

Don’t worry! The problem can be solved in a couple of different ways. You can adjust some of your work habits, or you can find a job with you love and that loves you in return.

Get Out Of An Office

The most obvious solution seems to be running your own business. This is a good situation for someone with ADD, who can organize and plan things, or if they can hire someone or have a partner who can do these things for them. This won’t be the ideal situation for everyone with ADD, but it does allow you to unleash your creativity and to function on your own terms.

Yet, people with ADD often enjoy fast-paced situations. Firefighters, police officers, and EMS technicians all have this kind of job. People who trade stocks, auctioneers, and food servers are high energy jobs, as well. However, you can really work any job, if you have ADD symptoms under control.

Need To Take Small Steps To Complete Projects

Impulsiveness can have you taking off on tangents, just because something other than what you’re supposed to be doing interests you. One major problem with ADD is that we try to do too much. Someone asks for another project to be done or task that needs accomplishing, and we say, "Of course, we can do that." Learn to hold back a little. Don’t overwhelm yourself, just because you want to try new things. But instead of overloading yourself, try to underload yourself. Do less than you think you can do. When you try to handle too much at once, you might make yourself much more unhappy in the long run. Besides, when you find yourself with free time, you can always work in other tasks as time permits, rather than making another ongoing committment.

Stay On A Structured Schedule

When you’re distracted. Try setting a timer that will beep periodically to help you remember to stay on task. Or, break up your work schedule. Do ten minutes of the job you hate doing or is boring for you, then, do 10 minutes of something else you like to do. You can fit as many as 6 activities into an hour, and rotate through them. That way, you’ll never be bored, and you’ll always be on task because your attention span is accommodated. If your attention span is longer than 10 minutes, perhaps you’ll rotate 4 tasks per hour, but try this and see what span of time works for you.

Boredom is hard to deal with for most adult ADD-ers. We just can’t stand to be bored! The rotating tasks technique can work for you, if you are easily bored, but you should also try to do the boring things you have to do when you’re at high energy times of the day. And never hesitate to delegate whenever possible. What’s boring to you might be someone else’s fun.

Set Daily Objectives

Just don’t procrastinate. Get the hard parts of your job done first, and the rest of that job will go more quickly because it will seem easier. Never anticipate things. Get them over with because the faster you get the thing you’re procrastinating over done, it will be gone, out of the way. An accountability partner can help you with this. Find someone who will rattle your chain if you don’t have things done on time.

But if it’s your co-workers that are giving you cause for pause, look in the mirror. Could their antagonism actually be your fault? Try not to go off into long lectures about things that nobody is interested in, anyway. And if you interrupt people in conversation, and catch yourself doing it, apologize and stop talking. Don’t be blunt, either. Though honesty is always good, it’s not always socially polite. Try to be more tactful and your inter-office relationships will improve.

Any of these ADD-related situations can cause work problems. But don’t jump to another job, just yet. Try some of these strategies and see if they don’t help you to be more productive and more sociable. Yet, if you can’t, if you’re still that square peg, find a more flexible job that will suit your ADD abilities and make yourself a happier person.Published by Adult ADD

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