That's a great way to put a positive spin on it, but be realistic. ADHD is not a super power, it's not all sunshine and roses, it is a disorder. You can sometimes harness parts of it for positive outcomes but it has a lot of negative results too.
Another thing to remember: your ADHD is not everybody's ADHD. Some people have less severe cases, others have more severe cases.
For every time you can hyperfocus on work, imagine every time you've hyperfocused on ants walking by, or a speck of dust, or literally anything other than what you actually need to do.
All totally true! It’s definitely not great, but I try to find the silver linings rather than beat myself up about the hard parts. Good point about my ADHD being different than others’
Implying you can control or induce these hyperfixations in a productive way is disingenuous at best, measurably harmful at worst.
If you work in a job that can use use the chaos in a productive way that's great, but I'm willing to bet you still face abnormally high difficulty with general life tasks, and consistently struggle to enforce a work/life balance.
You're not helping people with ADHD by posting this. You're establishing an unattainable standard for people that are already doing everything in their power just to get by.
Every parent should be gassing their kid up though. Most of our "successful" people are just normal kids that never hit a wall or had help getting around walls. Realistic expectations are what keeps people from jumping jobs for a raise; applying for positions they don't fully qualify for; moving for better job market access; retraining for management roles; and so much more.
Note, I'm not talking about rags to riches, success can be a first generation college graduate getting a professional job; a homeless kid getting a steady job and pulling their family off the streets; a burnt out delivery guy getting a union warehouse job. The point is people with low expectations don't look for new opportunities.
This swerves way into "ADHD is a superpower" territory which is bullshit.
edit: For example, while I have a lot of these traits, I also can't remember to put a new trash bag in the trash bin when I take the full bag out to the garage, which is a 1 minute task. Despite reminding myself AS I'm removing the full bag. Twice a week. For years now. Because I will see something in the garage or think of something while doing the mundane task that completely derails my train of thought.
I do similar things when a task has two physically separate locations like taking out the trash.
While walking out with the trash I will repeat constantly "put in new bag" all the way to the garbage and all the way back, otherwise the task doesn't get completed.
I would be lying if I said I hadn’t done the same thing. “New bag new bag new bag new ba… hey why did I leave that camp chair over there. Man I miss camping. Well trash is done, back to the computer!”
Not saying this will work for you, but I’ve had some success with convincing my self conscious to do things without me thinking. Then I can shut down the thinking part of my brain for periods of time in between tasks. I’ve done this through meditation since I was a kid. It has helped me to “just know” what needs to be done and I do it.
The simplehuman line of trash cans has a step that keeps the internal trash can liner out of the trash can so you can easily see that you didn’t replace the bag. It’s very helpful for this.
In my experience all it takes is a reasonable manager who can make progressive goals that are easily achievable which help build and develop a person while getting them engaged and acknowledging their hard work at each stage. It's much easier than tricking i feel
Someone close to me has struggled forever with ADHD. A heroic effort got her through med school. They are an ER doc. Their life outside the ER would not work at all without an amazing partner, but at work, it's kind of perfect. Fix it, it goes away. Everything is different all the time. Fix shiny thing, send it home, find next shiny thing.
If anybody here is an engineer, I'd highly recommend applying for jobs at tech startups. It's very chaotic and disorganized; you'll be constantly putting out fires. But you know where you're at when you're putting out fires? Flow state.
Just like non-adhd brains do.
I think the issue brought forward here is the lack of ahdh friendly work environments compared to the advantages that can be just as brutally exploited.
But your average manager is an extroverted neuronormie achiever & to such adhd work processes are really not intuitive. Not to mention how much less work they have if there is less individuality among the workers & everyone behaves the same-ish.
It's like morning people vs evening/night people. The morning chickens just have to "trust" that the lazy owls really do have energy later in the day & not judge (perceived) others evening productivity by their own.
Hello it's me, high functioning non medicated adhd (or some form of) person.
I do extremely well in my tech-centric job because of exactly what the post is talking about. I do fall short on longer term projects (forget about them until last minute) but most of my job is more in the moment, which works well for me and my skillset.
Edit: I guess that's ultimately the thing right, it's possible for the work or job to fit with an ADHD mind, but many jobs do not.
Me. Am engineer. Make great money essentially being empowered to ask why the work people are doing exists. Not necessarily to automate it either. Lot of what I do these days is process simplification. Turns out having someone who thinks meanial tasks are bullshit is a fantastic skill in my field.
It's an interesting juxtaposition. I did politics and governance in Afghanistan and was extremely knowledgeable about it. But remembering to shave every morning was hard. I'd come back from lunch and my sergeant would be like, "great work, now when's the last time you washed your coffee cup? Did you remember to empty your desk trash last night?"
To be fair, I also have a TBI and nobody's sure how much of this is TBI and how much is ADHD.
I've made it work surprisingly well in software development - I work in the architecture field and as long as I'm truly diligent about note taking (or am lucky enough to have a trusted coworker to lean on) I'm able to make it work.
Also, micromanagers are your fucking bane if you have ADHD - sometimes I'm not working, I accept that and do house shit when I can't focus... I still produce more output than most of my coworkers but I absolutely do need full brain breaks.
ITT:
"it's not a superpower! i cant even do a boring and monotonous task!"
and
"I love that I found a place where I'm able to utilize the benefits of the way that my brain functions!"
It's a super power in the same way that being able to mentally move yourself while not being affected by gravity is a super power. In specific circumstances it's awesome. The rest of the time you're just trying to not float away.
To put a finer point on it: OG Quicksilver (don't even get me started on the historic Marvel v DC handjobbery) ended up so "super powered" that his inborn celerity transcended the very laws of physics — having little to no frictional effect on the reality he was moving through. Thus, much like Jean Grey, Magneto, Legion, and a few others, his powers were not only beyond "super", but recognized as equal parts boon and curse to the entire species. Thanks, 90s.
Anything that is more about talking to different parties rather than documenting and being the one to deliver. the more specialised people the better you connect, the bwtter. They will love your ability to see the patterns of the work place, your helicopter perspective. That will help them to test their ideas, to understand the concepts and what their task is all about. They will also love that you will not micro manage (as long as you dont end up hyperfocusing on their topic) and let them do their thing.
Don't be the specialist. Don't be the one that tries to have an eye on all the details, all the numbers. I tried to be an accountant for a while...
Ooh this is good. Yes I can see my ability to absorb wikipedia coming in useful here.
How do you think I should prepare myself for a role like this qualification-wise? I'm interested in STEM but the thought of picking one niche (say, chemical engineering) and devoting myself to it really hurts.
I was gonna ask this too. I've heard that some employers in the UK (perhaps in the Netherlands too) are actually explicitly asking for ND people in their job listings.
It seems we've been taught strict expectations about "functioning."
When a machine doesn't get the resources it needs to do its function, it does not function, and it is not expected to function, if the mechanics are understood.
We know a lot about what people need (still more to discover) but we're expected to "function" without having our needs met.
But you don't understand, Mr... Sandbag Tiara, was it? Can I call you Sandbag?
Sandbag, what we're really looking for in this position is someone who's really a people person, you know? Somebody who's a team player, ready to go the extra mile, fit in with our company culture because we're a """""family""""" here. Really shine in our three pointless but mandatory department-wide meetings per day, smile on demand, have a very firm handshake, and really help us close those KPI numbers.
The job in question is a backend software dev position, where the employee will theoretically never have to interact with anyone except their immediate boss, and has no reason whatsoever to emerge from their dungeon. But never mind that.
I develop software for a huge company that everyone has heard of, and work by myself on my own projects with no collaboration required and incredibly small amount of oversight. I get to do it my way. Living the dream.
Many of my friends work in the scenario you described and do not like the whole collaboration thing!
Are there things we can do to take advantage of this? Even on my meds I struggle to write my documentation, but the initial period of trying to find a solution and making a working POC is so great
I am generating markdown tables with a Json file and a GitHub action that builds a markdown table for me lol
I just learned today that I have to upskill on QA more and lead some organizational change. Reading tense technical manuals on testing is my nightmare
I use copilot to draft all my initial copy. It’s FAR too time consuming for me to try to produce original copy myself. Once I have the copilot results though, then I can analyze and optimize from there. That said, I fucking hate writing documentation and I procrastinate too much.
I struggled with this most of my life without knowing why, always feeling like I never measured up. Since being diagnosed and treated at 47 it made a huge difference. I set reasonable boundaries at work and I'm blessed with a sympathetic manager. He gives me tasks that allow me to play to my strengths and make a positive difference in the workplace.
Those traits gave me two things in my IT contracting career, the ability to roll into a new position at the same contractor so I didn't have to job hunt, and the contractor wanting nothing to do with bringing me in as a full time employee. I saw it as a win/win