I didn’t like it when friends in school called me spacey. In my head I wanted myself to be focused, determined, in control… like a female lead in a legal TV drama. But I didn’t become a lawyer, and I didn’t become focused. Instead I went to university for fashion design, switched to product design for a few classes before switching back to fashion, built a fashion brand after university, started working on the sustainability side of the fashion industry, and then turned my attention to digital product design while building out my content streams. I believe these ventures are all interconnected for a reason, but some, like my mother, will say I am unfocused.
In 2019, I was diagnosed with Inattentive Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Quoting ADDitude magazine, a publication that provides strategies and information about ADHD, “Inattentive ADHD (once called ADD) is a subtype of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that often manifests as limited attention span, distractibility, forgetfulness, or procrastination. People with inattentive ADHD make careless mistakes because they have difficulty sustaining focus, following detailed instructions, and organizing tasks and activities. They are easily distracted by external stimuli, and often lose things. They may leave projects unfinished and appear not to listen when you speak. These are all symptoms of Inattentive-Type ADHD; they are not personal defects.”
I still find it hard to believe in the last sentence but in any case… this explains a lot!
What it is like in an ADHD brain
Welcome into my brain guys. Please take off your shoes. Here, it’s like a TV that can’t stop flicking through the channels, but will also stay on a channel for hours when it finds a show it really, really likes.
Let’s take a task like copying information from a word document and reformatting it into a powerpoint. Every time I copy something from the Word document, I will pause to think which app I am switching to. I might click on Safari, then Photoshop, then my brain goes: “Ooo nope I think we actually need to go to Powerpoint.” So we go to powerpoint and paste what needs to be pasted. Now everything will be okay if I just click on the Word app icon again to open up Word for the next bit of information I need to copy, but oh no, my brain goes “Let’s click on Notepad… nope, Illustrator… Wait what am I doing again? Ooo right we actually need to go to Word!”
By the 20th time this happens, I am tired, I am frustrated, I literally feel like I am dragging nails against the wall, and I’m about to cry. What is wrong with me? Why doesn’t my colleague seem to have this problem? There has got to be a bug in my brain.
At other times, I would be hyperfocused, and time seems to just fly by. I would even forget to eat. This includes when I am editing a video, creating a piece of design or art, illustrating on my iPad, or writing about a topic I am passionate about. Ironically, I have no attention issues while I am writing this post about attention issues.
I want to say the diagnosis is not a big deal without diminishing that it’s a condition which affects relationships and lives. But let me put it this way: it is not a big deal to me, because it’s the only brain I have ever known and because I’ve made it work for me (though not always – but whose brain works for them always?).
For years, I have been jokingly telling friends I probably have undiagnosed ADHD. But one benefit of having an official diagnosis is feeling a weight off my shoulders, being able to look at official resources on how to manage it, and in general accept it as a personality trait instead of a personality defect.
An incredible ADHD story
But enough about my brain. I came across the story about GIllian Lynne in one of the most viewed TED Talks “Do Schools Kill Creativity?” by Dr. Ken Robinson. You might not have heard of her, but you’d have heard of her work – she’s the choreographer behind Cats and Phantom of the Opera, among others.
When Gillian was 8 years old, in the 1930s, her school wrote to her parents to tell them they thought Gillian had a learning disorder. In the talk, Robinson says: “I think now they’d say she had ADHD. Wouldn’t you? But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn’t been invented at this point. It wasn’t an available condition.”
So Gillian’s mother took her daughter to a specialist. In an oak-paneled room, Gillian was placed in a chair. She sat on her hands for 20 minutes while the doctor and her mother discussed her problems: She couldn’t concentrate, she was fidgeting, she was disturbing other kids.
Finally, the specialist turned to Gillian. He said, “I’ve listened to all these things your mother’s told me; I need to speak to her privately. Wait here. We’ll be back; we won’t be very long.” As they were leaving the room, the doctor turned on the radio. Once out, he turned to Gillian’s mother and said, “Just stand and watch her.”
The minute they left the room, Gillian was up on her feet, moving to the music. The doctor then said to her mother: “Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school”
And thank goodness her mother did exactly that. After dance school she became a soloist at the Royal Ballet, and founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company, soon meeting Andrew Lloyd Webber. She has been responsible for some of the most successful musical theater productions in the world and given pleasure to millions. In Sir. Robinson’s words: “Someone else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.”
When I heard this talk, I felt goosebumps running down my spine. How many kids (or adults!) out there are fishes being judged by their ability to climb a tree?
Recognizing ADHD talents in the workplace
Perhaps ADHD is not so much as a disorder than condition – a point of difference – and people with ADHD are more suited to do certain things than those without it.
In fact, a growing number of big corporations are seeing the value in hiring “neurodiverse” talent. Nerodiverse is defined as those with autism, Asperger’s syndrome, ADHD, dyslexia, and other people with cognitive differences. Many people with these disorders have higher-than-average abilities; and studies have shown that people with some of these conditions, including autism and dyslexia, have special skills in pattern recognition, memory, or mathematics. Yet those who are affected by these conditions find it hard to fit into the profiles employers are seeking.
Fortunately, some companies are already reforming their HR processes in order to more effectively access these talent; among them are SAP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Microsoft, Willis Towers Watson, Ford, and EY [SOURCE]. The managing director of HPE South Pacific—an organization with one of the largest such programs— even goes so far as to say that no other initiative in his company delivers benefits at so many levels. These benefits include increase in productivity, quality improvement, boosts in innovative capabilities, and broad increases in employee engagement.
So fellow ADHD-ers, this might just be our moment.
Managing your ADHD
As I grew older, I realized that thriving in the real world (even if I were to do non-traditional creative things) requires me to manage my attention issues. I need to let it go when I am being creative, but rein it in check when I’m making life and business work in general. I feel like I am talking about managing a racehorse.
While I don’t take medication, I truly believe that even if you do, these tips are useful for managing your ADHD and living a happy, healthy and wealthy life. Please note that these are things that work for me – so they might not work for everyone! With that said, here are a few things I do to manage my attention issues:
1. Keep a “work time log”
Because I do freelance work on my own schedule, I keep a “work time log” – basically a tracker of how much time I spend on each task. The perception of time lapse is very subjective, captured by this saying credited to Albert Einstein: “When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.“ Sometimes I would feel like I have spent hours on a task when I’ve only spent 50 minutes. Other times I thought I’ve only spent an hour on something when actually 5 hours have passed. This keeps me accountable for how much time I’ve actually spent on both tasks I enjoy and don’t enjoy.
I am also trying time-blocking – filling my day’s calendar with blocks of time for each task. It’s a known method for increasingly work efficiency, but I think for ADHD-ers especially, it’s important to do time-tracking as I’ve described above first so you understand how much time tasks takes, before trying to slot tasks into your day. I will report back after some time on how time-blocking is working for me!
2. I make lists, like this one you’re reading
To-do lists, to-buy lists, lists for structuring the content of a Youtube video, a blog post – they are your friends. Normal people use lists, ADHD people especially have to use lists to get organized.
3. Change of pace
Don’t force yourself through a period of the day when you can’t concentrate. When you get to a certain point of unproductivity or distraction, do something else. If you can (say you’re a freelancer), the most effective “change of pace” activity is to go for a quick workout – one hour including shower is enough. If you can’t do that, go take a walk around the block. I personally LOVE Chloe Ting’s work outs. You don’t need to do a full program if you don’t want to – just pick any of her videos!
4. Differentiate between when you are tired vs. when this is not for you
Sometimes, the job you’re at really isn’t suited for your condition in the long run. But sometimes when you feel deflated at work, it’s because you’re burned out after a high period of concentration, not because you’re not suited for the job. Differentiating between the two takes time.
Also, when you think something isn’t for you, before you switch completely out of your role, review whether there are tasks within the role you can delegate. Perhaps the role is great, it is just a few tasks holding you back that you need to delegate or outsource!
5. Normalize your ADHD
If you can’t normalize it, own it and make it special instead of wrong. To have ADHD work for you and be on your side, it’s important to get to a place where you don’t see yourself as the victim, but someone with special powers. I am learning to do this every day!
6. Let your sudden burst in passion for something sit at the back of your mind for as long as possible before acting on it
This is a haaaaaaaarrrddd one. People with ADHD tend to get really passionate about a new idea really quick, but also tend to get bored of it soon. Try your best to hold off buying some equipment or expensive bootcamp course or telling someone about your brilliant new idea immediately, as much as your head tells you “THIS IS IT!!!!!”.
Instead, let it ruminate, dance around and do its thing at the back of your mind for as long as you can reasonably let it before acting on it. When you do act on it, take small investments first, like a cheap online course or a bunch of googling and planning on the side, check to see if your idea and passion really has legs, before diving head first into it. This is not only better for your bank balance and your career, but also better for your credibility.
Make ADHD your superpower!
“If someone told me you could be normal or you could continue to have your ADD, I would take ADD.”
David Neeleman, JETBLUE FOUNDER
But as much as I complain about ADHD, I am thankful for my brain in many ways. I used to design hats and my design process involves a quick sketch and then draping or creating a “draft” of the piece. I’ll put this together with thread and needle and glue, and sometimes, things would go wrong. A regular brain will go, “Oops, let’s fix that” but my ADHD brain will go “Oh wait didn’t think of THAT! Let’s go with it.” I literally wouldn’t’ have designed half the stuff I’ve designed if it wasn’t because of that process, and I think that’s how most artists and designers operate because creativity is a lot about the ability to see connections in accidents.
ADHD also has allowed me to take the “Oh wait didn’t think of THAT! Let’s go with it.” mindset into life. With how rapidly the world and technology is changing these days, there are popular jobs these days that didn’t exist ten years ago, and this phenomenon will only continue in the future. I believe in having your eye on the goal, but you should be open to changing the path to that goal as you go.
ADHD has limited the choices for me for what I could do. Literally, I need to be on medication if I were to be an accountant, or read tons of documents like a lawyer. Having ADHD means I need to pick something that I am reasonably passionate about, that has a decent amount of regular newness and is something I can get into a “flow” doing. I said “reasonably” because this is not La La Land, having ADHD is not an excuse for the need to find a job where there are no bad nor boring days.
Know that you are not alone
What do business mogul Sir Richard Branson, Maroon 5 frontman Adam Levine, actress Emma Watson, award-winning journalist Lisa Ling and JetBlue founder David Neeleman, have in common? Yup, you guessed it, they all have ADHD. Knowing that many successful people have ADHD and are public about it has helped me come to terms with the fact that even as I have the condition, if I leverage my brain in the right way and in the right career, I will get somewhere – and probably because of it, not in spite of it.
Levine wrote in ADDitude magazine about how as a child, he struggled with what seemed normal to other kids. His problems persisted into adulthood. “I had trouble sometimes writing songs and recording in the studio. I couldn’t always focus and complete everything I had to. I remember being in the studio once and having 30 ideas in my head, but I couldn’t document any of them,” he wrote.
Talking to the same magazine, Neeleman said, “If someone told me you could be normal or you could continue to have your ADD (an out-dated term for ADHD), I would take ADD. I can distill complicated facts and come up with simple solutions. I can look out on an industry with all kinds of problems and say, ‘How can I do this better?’ My ADD brain naturally searches for better ways of doing things.”
Know that you are not alone in struggling with this condition and there are ways to work around it, work with it, and live your best life because of it.
Resources for further discovery!
I’ve discovered a podcast titled ADHD for Smart Ass Women by Tracy Otsuka. It’s amazing there’s a podcast titled exactly that, check it out for more tips on how to manage your condition to better relationships and life.
There is also a fantastic episode on BBC’s The Documentary Podcast titled “ADHD and Me”, which talks about a brief history of ADHD, flipping the script about the negative impacts of ADHD to recognizing the positive ones, and how modern working environments are shifting to work with people with the condition. I learned so much from this episode – I hope you will all check it out.
Last but not least, I have quote ADDitutde magazine a few times in this post. Since 1998, ADDitude has been delivering expert advice and caring support for parents and adults living with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). They provide evidence-based, expert guidance and empathetic understanding to help you navigate the very real challenges that arise from ADHD and related conditions.
And that’s it for a long-winded account of how I came to accept my ADHD diagnosis, learned to manage my condition and try to thrive with it. Ironically, I have had little attention issues while writing this post, perhaps because I am very passionate about the subject. What has been your experience with ADHD and how have you navigated it? Let me know!