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If I get into the office super early and work before anyone else shows up, I’m so much more productive. The second the office fills with people, it’s like my brain shuts down and I start spacing out.
Me
Her complaints were also the same as those of every other woman I had dated: I wasn’t focused on her when we were together, but instead was doing a million different things. I was incredibly passionate about what I did for a living, but my passion for her came in spurts. While I loved doing out-of-the-blue things for her, my day-to-day actions left a lot to be desired. In her words, I was there, but I wasn’t there.
Having ADHD makes life paradoxical. You can super-focus sometimes, but also space out when you least mean to. You can radiate confidence and also feel as insecure as a cat in a kennel. You can perform at the highest level, feeling incompetent as you do so. You can be loved by many, but feel as if no one really likes you. You can absolutely, totally intend to do something, then forget to do it. You can have the greatest ideas in the world, but feel as if you can’t accomplish a thing.
those of us with ADHD can entertain our friends with witty repartee, we can hyperfocus on things that interest us, we tend to do really well at things we enjoy doing. We’re enthusiastic, creative, willing to take risks, innovative, intuitive, spontaneous, compassionate, persistent, and have the brain processing power of the world’s fastest supercomputers. As such, we can connect seemingly unrelated dots, see the forest for the trees in ways that “regular” people can’t even fathom—oh,
To dig deeper, we occasionally blurt things out without thinking. Let me tell you, that fun little trait right there got me beaten up countless times growing up in public school in New York City in the 1980s.
So I land, drop my parachute off at my feet in a corner of the drop zone, pull out my laptop, and write a few thousand words in a few minutes, or record a bunch of videos for my audience, or answer a few hundred e-mails over the next hour.
To quote from the original Point Break (not the remake, we all know the remake sucked): “Some guys snort for it, jab a vein for it; all you gotta do is jump.”
It’s also true that when young people stop getting ADHD meds when they leave high school or college, some turn to illicit drugs as a replacement, and this has been cited as a factor in the rise of cocaine and heroin use among young people.
For example, I don’t take it when I’m on a six-country speaking tour. I don’t need it when I’m skydiving or when I’m training for an athletic event, because my body makes the chemicals just fine on its own at those points.
When I finished school and got a job, I didn’t stay in it very long. I’ve never been able to stay in office jobs for more than six months, with the exception of my time working for America Online in the nineties, where they pretty much let us work the way we wanted to, as long as we got our jobs done.
Same for first 5 years of my caareer
Now, I didn’t know it at the time, nor did I put two and two together, but ADHD happens to work very well for entrepreneurs. Many of the most successful entrepreneurs (many of whom are inspirational to me) have ADHD: Richard Branson, Cameron Herold, Seth Godin (who actually turned me down for my second job after AOL, thankfully), John Lee Dumas, David Needleman, even me. We don’t succeed despite ADHD; we succeed because of it.
you can stop looking at ADHD as a disability and start seeing it for what it truly is: like driving a Lamborghini of a brain, while the rest of the world is pedaling a tricycle.
this: I truly believe that if you’ve had any modicum of success, you have a responsibility to send the elevator back down.
Interestig metaphor
In 1844, the German physician Heinrich Hoffmann created illustrated children’s stories depicting kids with ADHD-like behavior, including “The Story of Fidgety Philip” and Struwwelpeter, which he created as a Christmas present for his three-year-old son Carl Philipp.
I recently wrote an opinion piece for the New York Post in which I talked about how giving medication to ADHD-diagnosed children shouldn’t be our first option, because we might be drugging the creativity out of our next generation of leaders,
I never got to post the comment, because my assistant heard me “typing with purpose,” as she calls it, and quietly disconnected the Internet router, preventing me from sending my comment until I’d calmed down and taken another look at it to decide whether or not I should really send it.
I’m of the opinion that because my brain doesn’t get enough dopamine, adrenaline, and serotonin on a regular basis, when I do get some, I’m much more reactive to it than “regular” people. I can’t prove this via science, primarily because I’m not a scientist, but I’m betting that somewhere out there, there’s a neuroscientist who can.
Having ADHD allows you to supercharge your brain when you need it, letting you hyperfocus on tasks, solve problems in untraditional ways, and come up with ideas that haven’t been thought of before.
especially if we’re a little older and facing up to our ADHD for the first time. Chances are, we spent a good portion of our youth (or even most of adulthood) being ostracized or shunned for being different, for not “falling in line,” for not being like everyone else.
You need to get into the habit of taking frequent “dopamine breaks,” as I call them. They’re little five-minute windows when you do something completely different. Getting up and simply walking around is the easiest thing to do, in almost any environment.
Resolutions fail for most people, but fail ridiculously hard for those with ADHD because we are unbelievably adept at convincing ourselves of anything, including talking ourselves out of things that we know we should
They’re not looking at it like we do: I don’t think about waking up at 3:30 A.M., because that’s not the end goal for me. The end goal is how I’m going to feel when I go to bed at night: happy, productive, and complete. I’m chasing the positive high, not the negative. Of
So Rule A in creating a ritual: The ritual has to come from a positive place. A negative place won’t do it. Rule B in creating a ritual: Continue to work backward from the reward.
My roommate taught me something I’ll never, ever forget. She taught me the “apple test.” It’s incredibly simple. When you’re hungry, ask yourself one single question: Am I hungry enough to eat an apple? Chances are, you’re not. If you were, you’d devour that apple without thinking about it.
But the bigger reason? If I had more space, I’d fill it with more stuff, and that’s detrimental to the way I work. SQUIRREL!: When you’re ADHD, less stuff is better.
A clean environment allows your brain to devote all resources to your current task, as opposed to having to think about “We need to do this report, but ugh, that pizza box has been sitting there for a month! I’ve got to throw it out, and then wash down the table underneath it since it’s now covered with grease.”
ADHD is tricky. As free as we can be, as much as we can come up with ideas that work on the fly, we can occasionally start to get cocky. We can forget that it takes only one bad decision to start a cycle that doesn’t end until we do. In skydiving,
Faster than normal people’s free will: “I think I want pizza tonight. I’ll order a large pie and eat two slices and put the rest in the fridge for tomorrow and the next day and the pizza is here and I’ve just eaten all eight slices and now I hate myself and why did I do this?” In other words, when you have ADHD, there’s a lot of free will that isn’t exactly free.
Rule One: Eliminate Choice Whenever Possible The elimination of choice is just what it sounds like. There are certain parts of my life that I simply don’t need to think about. I don’t need to expend energy on them, either because they’re not worth it or
If I went into my closet and found it stuffed with an assortment of choices (turtlenecks, T-shirts, button-down shirts, sweaters, jeans, khakis, dress pants, sneakers, loafers, tie shoes) it would mean rummaging around and remembering various occasions when I wore specific items.
There are other ways to eliminate choice, too. I have the same shopping list each week. All that changes is food for my daughter. For me, I eat the same because it’s easy, it’s healthy, and I enjoy it. Occasionally I’ll try something new and if I like it, add it to my repertoire.
Ever hear of intermittent fasting? I learned about it six or so years ago from a friend with whom I worked out in the gym. Essentially, he would eat between 2:00 P.M. and 9:00 P.M., fasting the rest of the time. He did this because he was competing in bodybuilding contests, and something about his body mass versus caloric intake—I don’t know, I wound up being distracted by something shiny. But the gist of what he did stuck with me, and I tried applying it to how I eat and consume food. Turns out, it’s another way to eliminate choice, and works great for me!
If it’s not between 1:00 P.M. and 8:00 P.M., I don’t eat. (I have a protein shake after my early morning workouts, but that’s not what I mean.)
Author of Delivered from Distraction and founder of the Hallowell Center for Cognitive and Emotional Health, Edward Hallowell, M.D., advises all of his ADHD patients to fill half their dinner plate with fruits or vegetables, one fourth with a protein, and one fourth with carbohydrates.
When you have ADHD, it’s so easy to go down a road of bad decisions. One drink becomes seven. One grilled cheese becomes five. And one week of not exercising becomes two years. It happens really, really fast.
Ever have a meeting with a coworker who drives you insane? You promise yourself you won’t let them get to you this time. You’re not going to engage. You’re not going to get sucked into their . . . Next thing you know you’re both screaming at each other, or you say nothing but brood about it for the rest of the day. Yeah. That’s a trigger.
Or we simply get angry at the wrong thing; for example, we take a phone call from someone when we’re in a “hyperfocus zone,” and then get angry at the person for calling, instead of getting angry at ourselves for not having shut off the phone in the first place.
Over time, I was able to determine that there were three main factors preventing me from getting things done: lack of focus, lack of “workable time,” and constant interruptions. To make matters worse, each issue fed off the others. If I had to go to a 2:00 P.M. meeting, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a full day’s work in, so I’d be hesitant to start any new project, and wind up futzing around until it was time to leave for the meeting. So now I’ve ruined my morning by not doing anything productive, and I’ve got that hanging over my head as I leave for the meeting. With
A twenty-minute meeting, in theory, sounds awesome, but if it takes me twenty minutes to prep before I leave the office, then thirty minutes to get there, thirty minutes to get back, and another half hour to get productive again, that twenty-minute meeting just cost me two to three hours of my day. Two twenty-minute meetings a day could easily eat 85 percent of a day’s productivity.
My assistant and I implemented some new rules: I was to have meetings only one day a week. The other four days would be devoted to working—whether writing, creating content, whatever—no meetings, and as few phone calls as possible. I would accept and understand that the
See, when you’re ADHD, you want to “fix” things, because you want them to be perfect. We’re usually terrible at explaining things to people, but we’re great at pushing them out of the way and doing it for them ourselves.
PARTNER: “See? That’s the problem, Peter! You always try to fix things, when what I really need you to do is just listen!” ME: “See, I don’t think that is what you need, I think what you need is for me to fix the thing that’s wrong.” PARTNER: “See? You’re not even listening now!” ME: “Fine. I’ll listen. Fine.” PARTNER: “Well, I’m not going to tell you if you’re going to get frustrated.” ME: “ARRRGH!!!” PARTNER: “See? I knew you were frustrated.” The
The same thing is true with deadlines, whether work or personal. If they’re hanging over your head, they’re all you’re going to focus on, at the expense of everything (and everyone) else in your life. And the worst part? You might not even realize you’re focusing on whatever’s hanging over your head.
Turns out, not having a deadline was destroying JP’s productivity. See, if you put a project in front of JP, he’s going to immediately start it and work it to completion. Nothing will get in his way, except one thing: if you put another project in front of him. Do that, and the first project is now in competition with the second project, and both of them wind up not being finished.
It’s the same reason we need to feel heard in an argument: if we don’t feel like you heard us, we can’t file what we just said and move on to the next point, so we’ll raise our voices and keep talking.
When I decided to downsize for the first time, I discovered that I had twenty-two Android device charging cords. I hadn’t owned an Android device in over a year.
Virgin founder Richard Branson, who both is dyslexic and has ADHD, attributes much of his productivity to delegation. “You must understand the art of delegation. I have to be good at helping people run the individual businesses, and I have to be willing to step back. The company must be set up so it can continue without me,” he says. Good advice.
As much as possible, I try to keep my meetings no longer than twenty minutes. Sometimes that’s not doable, but most of the time it is. I tell the people with whom I’m meeting that we’ll have twenty minutes, and we’ll start on time.
before we get to the digital tools) is this: Create a network. If you’re the smartest person in the room, then my friend, your ass is in the wrong room.
And because we’re ADHD, remembering a hundred different passwords becomes a nightmare. So what do we do? We either write them all down, or we use the same password for everything. Both of those are terrible options for security.
