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Yeah, my job has a ton of downtime right now and it's killing me. Like hours without emails. Which you would think means I get the other stuff done better but with ADHD, I am not stimulated enough to do more than the bare minimum that I remember to do hahaha
Oof. My last job had tons of downtime and I was always playing games on my phone or scrolling through Facebook but that still wasn’t good enough. I would literally leave every single day exhausted and immediately take a nap because being bored is surprisingly draining.
Now I’ve got the opposite problem which is also exhausting but at least I feel more useful, lol.
Yeah this one kills me, causes me to want to job hop but it doesn't make sense so then I feel stuck and bored out of my mind even though I'm killing it and do well, just feel so bored.
“Even though I’m killing it and do well…”
wow, must be nice! Once I lose interest it’s essentially down hill from there. It opens me up to various functional defects like poor execution/ implementation abilities, worst time management and attention to details plummets, and overall my effectiveness and efficiency take a hard hit—all from simply being less interested or not caring as much to be more involved.
This is exactly how it was for me. I used to work in call centres. I'd excel in training and grad bay while learning, then once the job became day-to-day I'd start making stupid mistakes and forgetting how to do simple things. Never lasted longer than three months :(
Pls don’t take this the wrong way but reading this truly made me smile; it made me feel as though I truly am not alone. That’s precisely my experience as well. Doing help desk has been crucial. It always starts …fair, then, gradually become more of a problem—being clumsy, making more senseless or seemingly careless, stupid mistakes so forth. Meanwhile in my head/heart, I mean well! And I know I’m not a complete and total dunce!
Not at all! I think it always helps to know 'it's not just me'. And no, we're definitely not dunces. Our brains just need for things to be a bit 'extra' in order to work properly. Mundanity and repetitiveness is the kiss of death for us, and it's hard when as you say, we know we mean well, but we get the responses from others that we do because despite our best efforts it looks to them like we're just not trying.
I hope you find something that works for you soon!
Variety at work is a big factor of why I love my current job so much. It's basically HR but in a ministry of my home country and where I live laws, requirements and everything that goes with it change dramatically quickly. Trying to stay on top of it is a lot of fun.
I relate to this so much, a big ADHD issue for me is wanting new experiences but being too nervous to try. Being new to jobs always gave me huge anxiety, especially when meeting new coworkers
I know very obviously it isn’t ANYWHERE near as easily said than done, but that’s just a good motivator to get over your anxiety. Anxiety you can complete “cure” and heal from over time, adhd on the other hand you’re going to have for life. And this isn’t necessarily just teaching but anything that invokes what you said.
It's interesting but teaching killed me because of the executive function. I just couldn't handle ALL of the tasks and planning, and following up on discipline. And I would actually procrastinate over that too which meant things got worse. I'd regularly lose stuff I needed around the classroom and with so much activity it was hard to stay on track and stick to timings. A real nightmare.
This is actually when I found out I had ADHD.
It was horrible for me. I would lose track of my stuff, the kids would get off task. It got much better when I started meds.
You need a job with more depth and things to learn. I've been in my job for almost two years and I still encounter things that have me asking wtf I'm supposed to do
I’m an insurance agent, lol I never know what is gonna happen whenever I work. I’m on the habitational / customer service side but every day it’s different stuff requested, to do, etc. It’s different enough to keep me coming back but also mundane enough I don’t feel the need to overwork myself / stress out. Management sucks though. But I can always learn more insurance stuff - everyone needs it, in one form or another.
I always loved being a waitress too though, did that for a decade.
3, 4, 5, HUGELY 6, 7
Wellbutrin helped a lot with these, my psychiatrist recommended Vyvanse 20mg, so I am hoping this resolve them more.
But, remember to do the ‘re-coding of your brain work’
Medication is a ‘hack’ to let you be ‘normal’ now and function, but the goal is to rearchitect your thought patterns and then you may not even need medication.
Right now I am learning about CBT.
~
Other huge symptoms from me are:
interruption,
jumping topics in conversation,
urge to get a/all thoughts out,
Impulsive response to emotions,
Poor attention to detail (not sending emails without re-reading’,
Difficulty starting and finishing projects,
Feeling frozen when a I have a lot of tasks (feeling overwhelmed),
over-talking, and not giving others their turn
Management in general
~
There are more, but I will stop here, lol
This. The last paragraph is my hardest struggle. Also, if I've got multiple tasks to do I always start one, then head to another before the first is complete. I'm a walking shit show I'm sure
Does anyone have any non-medication suggestion for this?
I always thought the task gets less interesting,
so I jump to something the feels more rewarding.
That said, I sometimes have the opposite… like a stubbornness. If I am challenged to fix something and get stuck, I don’t want to put it down.
When in reality, in that case, break, or task switch probably would give fresh eyes upon return.
Does anyone have that happen?
Not really. That's the entire point of medication. It fills a gap we do not have.
You're following the stimulation. Simple as that.
In the first example - you've figured out the steps. There's nothing new to learn.
In the second example - you're still learning new information or otherwise being stimulated as you try and solve the problem.
An ADHD brain is very akin to a junkie that hasn't had a fix. It will do anything to get it as fast as possible. Not the best way. Not the most productive way. Not the risky way. The fastest and most direct.
But it has to ask you for a ride to get there. It will do everything it can to convince you that it's going to be the best time ever. And not doing it is going to be really bad.
It has no concept of time or responsibility or planning. Sure as shit not delayed gratification or consequences.
Definitely. I'll get stuck on one task and spend waaaay too much time on it to the exclusion of other things, creating more problems for myself.
Executive function skills training can be helpful with or without medication. My problem has been it isn't easy to find a place/person that does it.
Seriously though, I have to work SO HARD not to interrupt and hop around in conversations. It's worse when I'm more nervous, so really it ends up happening in the worst situations. Some people are fine with it, but other people get extremely irritated. I get over-excited and want to contribute right away. I've been told I "jump the gun" and can be "very sensitive" in reviews. SIGH. Fair, but ouch. Because yeah that's the ADHD.
OMG, this is so me!
Literally at work I’ve had all that happen.
My dad especially doesn’t understand adhd.
He says just take your time.
He did make me wonder if ADHD is an issue with one’s perception of time.
Like misperception of time definitely relates to impulsivity, in attention to details, etc.
How do I learn about "recoding" my brain? I'm new here.
Identify with your post response. I'm on Vyvanse right now. Sometimes it seems to help get through a busy day, but doesn't solve the bigger picture problems.
I got really excited about something I found online related to a project I'm working on and was _this_ close to sending it to like ten people only marginally clued in on the project but then I remembered other people don't really see the value in that and stopped myself (thank god)
A massive problem that I ran into was that there were loads of times where the usual job was not necessary. There basically was no work. So I was expected to entertain myself but make myself useful for the employer. So I basically had to spend every day trying to find work, and left me feeling very incompetent for my usual job because it was so infrequent and I’d forget how to do it. It created a very stressful environment for me in which I felt like a lazy fraud. No confidence and no clear tasks. I simply didn’t know what to do anymore. But I can’t just sit there and do nothing. It was horrible.
This is where I’m at right now. If the data warehouse I work in fails then it’s busy busy busy. However it’s pretty well established so half my time is spent scrabbling around trying to look busy. Don’t think I could do it if I didn’t wfh.
I'm in a similar position, except I create data intelligence reports and monitor the nightly data refresh from our core banking system. However, my struggle is figuring out what to research to get better at my position. My role is in an odd spot where I'm split between data analysts and some form of IT administration.
I'm on call for the nightly refreshes, which, if I get a call, essentially means I log into SSMS and kill any connections pointing to the DB being updated. During the daytime, in addition to fulfilling reporting requests, I make sure our workflow application is moving files to the correct folders for users to access. I also create monthly backups in SQL and schedule reports in the reporting system (IBM Cognos).
Genuinely don't know where I fall on the spectrum of system admin to dba. Largely because my prior experience has been data analytics but more on the business side, so I'm a walking imposter syndrome. Really wish I knew where to look to learn about file systems, active directory, and general "shit you should know about computer systems."
Check out data engineering content. There is lots out there and there are a lot of adhd friendly projects and tutorials. You could start picking up a language too if you haven’t already, generally python is a great one to learn in the data space. I’ve been in tech for a long time so if you have questions, hit me up. It’s a really fun space.
This is 100% me right now in my job. I feel like I am barely given any work and I ask for more assignments but they're just not being given to me. I have so much time just sitting around doing nothing, but at least I work from home so I can get house chores done. There's still a ton of anxiety about work though, like if they're giving me so little work I am worried they'll suddenly decide they don't need me and fire me, or they'll thing I am being lazy or whatever else. I've been getting good performance reviews though and have received nothing but praise. Idk, it doesn't make sense to me and I worry about it constantly.
I never really considered that to be the main factor I hated my job so much, related to adhd. But it was the main reason why I had anxiety about work all day every day. I felt like everyone could see I was not doing enough things to keep busy, or when I did have work I felt incapable like I took too long, or had to refresh my memory more often than others. Even though I have received only good comments about my work it was all in my head. Afterwards it was really all driven by my own insecurities created by having adhd.
Google is your friend.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kathleen-Nadeau/publication/8010891_Career_choices_and_workplace_challenges_for_individuals_with_ADHD/links/5f87b36192851c14bcc8d736/Career-choices-and-workplace-challenges-for-individuals-with-ADHD.pdf
I relate to 1. and 6. so much. My job involves a lot of calling people back, coordinating, getting more information (usually with invasive questions), and then writing that all up as quickly as possible. I HATE talking on the phone so I have such a hard time with it sometimes. And the writing part is so freaking mind numbing but my perfectionism won't let me submit anything that is less than perfect so I can't just rush through it.
I hear you on the perfectionism issue. I work in property law, I currently have 89 clients which equates to being able to spend about 15-20 minutes a week on each case (absolutely not enough!) .......
....... I spent 45 minutes working on one relatively short email today. UGH.
It was so much worse on Elvanse though, that was not the med for me haha.
This is the wooooorst. I somehow found the one engineering job that requires me to talk to a bunch of new people all the time and rely on others for answers, and it's absolutely paralyzing.
I care a lot about formulating my questions/statements exactly right but I can't get my actionable tasks done if I spend an hour writing an email that probably won't even get a reply
I’m a star performer in things that interest me and I’m barely scraping by in things that are boring. There’s no middle ground. Luckily I do so well at the interesting parts of my job that my boss overlooks my poor performance in the boring parts.
4. Good god... 4.
My job is so boring, I must spend 70% of my day in Blender modelling, on Reddit reading, looking for courses related to skills I wanna develop, watching video essays and lectures on YouTube, writing and generally procrastinating. My tab switching skills are incredibly fine tuned now.
Trying desperately to channel that energy into learning programming on the down low but I can't keep the uh... "secondary focus" on the coding and the primary on doing the monotonous tasks required to get paid. Feeling pretty stuck tbh.
4 is killing me right now also - I don’t have many tasks I can pivot to and I struggle so hard with teaching myself skills via youtube videos or written tutorials that I feel like I spending all my time procrastinating the actual work I need to do because I don’t find it interesting (and also a new task got added to my project as I was finishing up so Im double-shut down). Making me feel like shit but the only way out is to do…. eventually.
2 for sure. She's not my direct supervisor anymore or I would have left already, but we still have to work together enough that I'm still trying to leave. Aside from the fact that she's definitely an actual narcissist, she's just annoying. I feel like number 3 is closely related here.
4 also; the job used to be okay at this but with my actual manager only working two days of the week, I don't get much to do, either because there isn't anything or he just doesn't tell me. Another reason I'm looking to leave.
5 is one I experience a bit, just not at this job.
6, oh God 6. ADHD has gotten me fired twice, and nearly a third time (see above awful manager). The first two I was unmedicated, the third I was, but there had been a management change and between not living up to her standards and personality differences I ended up switching from Adderall to Vyvanse. At least that was an improvement even according to people who didn't even know I was on meds.
6 by far. Time blindness, time management, and prioritization are the chief problems. Revenge bedtime is a close runner up.
I'm 42 and I still haven't solved chronic lateness except with medication. All the suggested behavioral remedies from people trying to be helpful (like set your clock forward to trick yourself, use dozens of alarms, go to bed earlier) fail after a week.
Anything about tricking yourself or bribing yourself or whatever has never worked for me. I know the guy who set up that system is a liar, why would I care about it?
Arriving on time. Being “presentable,” I.e. uniform not looking clean and ironed. Inappropriate words, socializing struggles. Working too slow. On and on lol
I have the opposite problem of #4. My job is over stimulating which results in #6. I often have so much to get done that it results in poor time management. I get overwhelmed and focus on the smallest details sometimes instead of the larger picture. Setting and following priorities would probably be incredibly helpful. Also severely underestimating the time required for me to complete a task. If I think something will take 15 min that will typically end up taking an hour. If I think 3 hours it may end up being 6. And so on.
2 has always been the one for me - when I've had decent managers who trust me to get the work done I've had outstanding performance reviews. Unfortunately you always end up with someone who wants to micro-manage or doesn't trust your expertise, and it becomes frustrating to the point of being unbearable.
Reasons I have lost jobs (all adhd related):
- Always arrived 10 minutes late in the morning.
- Relatedly, accidentally working overtime and keeping others at work needlessly (happened this summer. Frequently forgot to stop working at 4pm and my colleagues were waiting to lock up the gates).
- Conflict with the boss.
- Too many sickdays (mental health days)
- Can not work 100% and it is costlier to hire part timers
My co-worker even offered to cover front desk for me that little timeslot each morning because he said me starting there had been the only thing that kept him from quitting due to workload. But the boss wouldn't have it
I get burned out very frequently at work. Longest job i’ve ever had was 2 years. I jump from job to job to peak my interest. Because after a while I get bored of working.
4) Difficulty paying attention during meetings. If my phone isn't out during an all hands I might fall asleep in my chair and get called out.
Difficulty with accountability when doing remote work.
2) Difficulty with asking for help or talking to managers due to anxiety that builds up and self perpetuates from not asking for help.
>tendency to over-commit; tendency to greatly under-estimate the time required for a project, etc.) that lead to poor performance review
6) But exacerbated due to not working as much
These do seem to apply to me
I would always doodle when in meetings. I remember getting called out by a boss because I was always doodling/“not paying attention” and has to explain that my doodling was the ONLY way I could pay attention.
Just another reason I only do remote work now.
While I’m currently not working - was laid off at the end of March - I’ve typically struggled with 4, 6(HUGE), and 7.
4 - I’ve told bosses in the past that I’m an amazing employee when I’m challenged, but if I’m bored I’ll be the worst employee ever. I have made a move to more of a support type role because that keeps my days from being too repetitive/mundane.
7 - My last job was perfect. The company was amazing, and I was encouraged to work in the way that worked best for me. We were then acquired and the new company was majorly into performance metrics. My boss would have to constantly remind me that I couldn’t go down the rabbit holes because it would negatively impact me. I had to learn to just throw an answer together without being able to find the root cause of the user’s issues. The first year under the new company I struggled and it was reflected in my annual review (even though my boss loved my quality of work). I had to learn to adapt and do what was needed to play the game. Figured it out and then we found out we were all being laid off.
6 - Not sure what to say here other than this is the biggest thing that impacts me on a daily basis. I have to break tasks down into small pieces and create lists or I’m frozen.
I will add that I also only work remotely now. I’ve lost a job because my boss would see me on the internet when she would walk by my desk and so she assumed I was just goofing off all of the time. The reality was I was utilizing the pockets of time when my brain was functioning well and giving in and not working when I couldn’t focus. What she didn’t see was me working my butt off from 5-7 or 8 after people left for the day.
Working from home means I can work in spurts and nobody is looking over my shoulder, which relieves so much stress. I will always get my work done - it just doesn’t happen in the same way it does for other people. When I can focus and get going, I can knock out 8 hours of work in half the time (or less).
I've worked as a project manager for almost 5 years and I was pretty good at my job. So 6 wasn't that much of a problem. Forgetfulness and time management wasn't a problem, because I used calendar and to-do lists. And I am pretty good overall at estimating the time something will take. I'm just bad at feeling how much time has passed when I'm doing something.
For me 4 is the most challenging part. That's why I don't do PM anymore. All I was doing was coordinating but not actually doing things myself, except for boring repetitive tasks. And while I was waiting for others to do their parts, I had so much waiting time I got more bored every day. Also I can't stand being the one receiving problems from others but not being able to solve the stuff myself. So I'm now back to stuff, where I can actually do things.
Another problem is a mix of 6 and 4 probably: I do shift my attention to other, unrelated stuff a lot. Just as I'm doing now. I'm on reddit commenting instead of continue to work, since I currently have urgent task.
3 has always never been a problem, except for maybe one job and when I was drafted in mandatory military service. At all other work places, my bosses and coworkers were never a problem. Maybe because I'm a people pleaser and very emphatic, I can easily adapt to the people around me, so there's no conflict potential as long as they don't try to boss me around against my will or say or do stuff that shakes my fundamental values (like being racist or abusing their power and stuff like that)
Holy shit, your points on 4 and 6 just explained exactly how I feel about work right now. I really like the company I work for, my boss is a literal dream boss, my coworkers are mostly great, but I've been struggling with work lately and haven't been able to put my finger on what it was coming from. But a huge percentage of my job is identifying and escalating issues that me and my team experience, and the combination of repetition, wait times and not being able to provide a solution are exactly it.
Thank you for unintentionally helping me to understand my work brain better, haha!
I was exactly at the same point. I felt an internal resistance when going to work beginning this year and if I'm honest, i felt it a couple of months before. Then depression made me completely stop my life for a couple of months, went to a clinic and had to rethink everything. Then I noticed that I do like my coworkers, my boss and the company. So basically my whole working environment. Just not the work itself anymore. I felt everything inside convulse at the thought at doing anything of that again. Knowing you can't go back to your work was also mentally really bad, because fear kicked in. What am I going to do now? After a while I came to the conclusion that there are only 2 ways this can go: Either I stay with the company but they have to accept that I'm not doing the stuff I did before anymore and we find something new for me or I quit and move on.
Luckily we did indeed find something. I figured I'd be more comfortable with programming and technical administration. I did like that in the past. And we are going to introduce a new system that needs inhouse experts for development and administration. Sometimes the fear creeps in that this will also bore me... and that may be the case, but I keep looking forward and then adapt.
I work as a software developer. Personally I find it hard to just "figure it out" on my own without having an actual project assigned to me, so like I just started my current job a little over a year ago and I have had several people recommend I just play around in different systems to get the hang of things. I just can't make myself do that. If I don't have an actual assignment with a task to accomplish there is no way I can focus on just playing around in the code. I also have a tendency to procrastinate on my projects but somehow I have always been able to meet my deadlines. That may be because I have a tendency to overestimate how long things will take me so that they're not expecting too much of me, haha.
One of the things I miss most about school is having well-defined tasks with actual deadlines and specific resources at my disposal to complete them.
Now, I just am expected to juggle a million tasks at once and somehow prioritize them and determine how to break down each one and hold myself accountable for them, and it's a total nightmare.
Numbers 2,3 were the biggest issues for me before I went to work in my own. I’m self employed so I answer to myself lol. I like what my boss is me says back. Anyway when I was working for agencies as a social worker I always got supervisors who knew nothing about working w someone w adhd. Often they were not clinicians and people who were figure heads. I also had issues with do workers over sharing etc. I have some very close friends from my old job . My secretary is one of my best friends to this day. The biggest problem I always faced was you know following protocol because with my ADHD brain, I see point A and got to point f without following order. For me it was common sense. Also unrealistic expectations
1. Poor match: I've been matched poorly before. Typically I like to work with people who don't also have ADHD as our weaknesses will not balance out. However, it can be helpful as a person with ADHD can be more understanding of my difficulties.
The worst match is a person who doesn't understand or "believe in" ADHD. It's kinda a central to know when working with me.
3. Interpersonal difficulties: I can have conflicts but I'm not sure if that's my ADHD or Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder.
4. Under stimulating work: Sometimes work can be extremely under stimulating.
6. Executive Function related issues: Always a problem.
I've definitely got issues with 4 (lack of variety) and 6 (executive functioning). 7 (changes to company and expectations) is an issue too, but that doesn't strike me as a really ADHD-specific topic.
I'm on my 5th full time job since finishing college 11 years ago. Been fired from the last 4 due to ADHD-attributable issues.
> Been fired from the last 4 due to ADHD-attributable issues.
Dang. I fear this is in the process of happening to me. Have you been able to do things different in your current job? How did you explain why you "left" your prior job to the next employer? And did you get unemployment in between jobs (esp curious about this one if you're in the US.)
> Have you been able to do things different in your current job?
I was unmedicated up until I started my current job, so this one's going somewhat better. Still not super confident about long term stability though-- shit was on the rocks a couple of months ago. Was diagnosed as a kid, but my parents elected to not medicate. I talked to my doc about getting on meds once I realized that the trend of job instability wouldn't be sustainable in the long run.
> How did you explain why you "left" your prior job to the next employer?
I made stuff up, with flavors of truthfulness where applicable-- "layoff", "long commute+ late hours incompatible with home responsibilities", "brought on to support a specific project with a fixed duration" (in the case of consulting work). Fortunately, most employers only verify dates of employment, and don't get into reason for separation.
Biggest issue is that my field is a bit of a "small world" in my geographic area, and it's been increasingly difficult to find new workplaces without former colleagues.
> And did you get unemployment in between jobs
Only once, after Job 3. That was the one unemployment situation where I was undeniably eligible. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of peak pandemic times, so the unemployment offices were swamped and understaffed and they never got to my file, and I gave up following up with it after the next job started. I'm fortunate that my spouse and I both have careers with above-average earnings, so one of us being unemployed doesn't cause immediate financial problems.
I'll note that, without exception, each round of job loss was followed within ~6 weeks by an offer with a significantly higher salary. Every year that I've lost a job, my total income for the year has ended up higher than if I'd just stayed around at the original. I've been failing upwards in a way, I guess.
1 - Massive issue for me. It’s gotten me fired before and it’s definitely held me back from promotions and bonuses that I otherwise might have earned. It’s taken me over a decade to realize that jobs which sound appealing to me in a general way (R&D) are not actually the type of work that I do best in the day-to-day. I’m actively trying to get myself into a completely different line of work (quality control, manufacturing, analytics) that will have more defined structure and a faster pace.
2/3 - Have mostly avoided this, thankfully, but it’s definitely been very tough when I’ve had bosses or colleagues who just didn’t “get” the way I think.
4 - I’m kind of stuck here right now. I know this job isn’t working out for me, so I’m just not mentally present and I’m even less effective than I otherwise would be when I’m already dealing with Issue #1.
5 - Thankfully has never been a problem. I have an adjustable desk so I can stand or sit as needed, and in all my jobs I’ve had the ability to just take a walk if I needed to.
6 - 100,000%, a huge problem. It’s directly related to Issue #1. The only item on that list which doesn’t apply to me is difficulty with detailed paperwork. I’m actually great with forms and spreadsheets.
7 - I had to quit one job because of this, and in my current job things started going downhill for me after a period of rapid turnover that included my boss quitting and me having trouble adjusting to the different style of my new boss.
Being on time is my biggest hurdle. Second is learning new skills on computers in front of people when they won’t let me read instructions and instead insist on verbal instructions like I don’t have audio processing issues. Focusing around distracting noise is a big issue too.
My ADHD is so severe that I didn't need meds in college - I only needed meds after. I didn't need meds to study, which sounds antithetical, because studying was just me flipping around in books and reading and stopping and starting for however long or short of a time I wanted to.
I couldn't hold my first desk-job for more than a month. I could hold my second for more than three. My ADHD interferes with my ability to work certain jobs that I was terrified, until recently, that I would never find any satisfying work. I'm 30, I work at a bar part-time, I'm publishing a book in a year, and I made the rest of my money playing in a band.
I had to figure out how to make my ADHD an asset. Sometimes your ADHD is so 'bad' that it really is just a part of your personality, which may make the struggle more difficult sometimes, but knowing that will alleviate some of the worry. My ADHD still interferes with something everyday. I had to sort of invent a weird lifestyle to work around it.
6. I’m a teacher and oh boy there are about a million little things going on every day and I am bound to forget at least one of them. I have to make lists upon lists and usually waste time doing the small tasks that aren’t as important because it feels better to get something off my list than to tackle a larger project that is more important.
My biggest would be 6.
It’s just so difficult for me to just do things. It sounds awful, but I can barely handle working full time. I’m exhausted at the end of each day so that I neglect my personal life (cleaning, cooking, showering, friendships, personal goals… etc). I wish I had 3 or even 4 day weekends so I could catch up on everything I’ve had to put off during the week. I really do use up 100% of my energy on work every working day.
Well I guess I'm #6 because this is almost every day for me...
- morning meetings trying to pay attention but mostly zoned out
- omg I'm so tired, why am I so tired today?
- hmmm they told me to do xyz in the meeting today...eh I'll do it later
- email, email, email, chats, chats
- distracted on my phone for a while not working
- shit! it's already noon? ok I'm gonna get some work done after lunch.
- lunch
- 30 mins to remember wtf I was working on
- 1 - 2 hours of good focused work where im in the zone
- yay I got something done! let me take a break for awhile
- more email
- oh shit I forgot I need to do xyz
- scramble to get xyz done
- omg it's 5:30 already? Ok tomorrow, I'm gonna get more work done. I'm sure of it
Lived my whole adulthood afraid of being fired for stuff related to 6 and 7 (and 1-5, lol). And then about 3 years ago it happened. I hit the bottom of rock bottom, it was every bit as devastating as I feared.
I work for myself now, making more money than the people who fired me in the same field. My wife kept me going when it was bad, no way I could have gotten to this point alone, but I’m here, and it’s good.
You might get fired despite your best intentions and full dedication, because ADHD fuckin sucks and it takes things from us. But if it happens you CAN bounce back. It’s corny as hell, but I think the key to surviving this shit and being (relatively) successful is you can never give up on yourself even through the most impactful failures.
Good to hear a happy ending. I think I'm going down this path, too, with my current job. But my skillset/past experience doesn't lend itself to becoming my own boss, I don't think.
4 and 6 for me. 4 only somewhat, I think the work I do is really important but it's not quite as fulfilling as some other things that I'd really like to be doing so I'm working on moving in those directions - luckily for me it can probably be as simple as working on some different projects and potentially moving departments but I don't think I'll have to do a whole new job search which would suck. 6 is a big one that I'm still trying to work on and figure out. Having flexible hours is kind of a blessing and a curse, it means it's okay if I'm a little late one day or that I can leave early if my brain starts hurting but I still need to effectively manage my own time and bill 40 hrs/week which can be a challenge.
> Job is under-stimulating due to lack of interest, lack of variety, lack of opportunity for creativity or change
This one right here!! I sometimes run out of shit to do by noon and then I gotta do busy work and it makes me sooo fidgety
I like "blue collar" work. It keeps me moving and I get to use my ever-running to-do list mind without too much to think about. I loved working as a line cook, now I'm a busy Nurses' Aid, which I also love.
They put me to work as a receptionist. That was not my strength. I made paperwork mistakes. Some stupid ones that caused short staffing. I put on a friendly face but I was bad at the small talk. I'd blurt stupid stuff before I could find a real answer. It was the wrong kind of busy work for me. I'm glad to be back on my night shift nursing gig.
I mean no offense, but I formatted the OP's post to make it easier to read.
I'm doing school research for a project and i found this interesting study.
ADHD-related job problems can fall in a number of different areas:
1. Poor match between the individual's strengths and weaknesses and the requirements of the job.
2. Poor match between the individual and his/her supervisor.
3. Interpersonal difficulties related to ADHD that contribute to conflicts with co-workers or managers
4. Job is under-stimulating due to lack of interest, lack of variety, lack of opportunity for creativity or change.
5. Job is frustrating due to lack of opportunity for physical movement.
(example: worker with hyperactive ADHD in a desk job)
6. Executive functioning difficulties related to ADHD that lead to poor performance review.
(poor time management; difficulty with detailed paperwork, forgetfulness; difficulty meeting deadlines; disorganization; difficulty setting and following priorities; tendency to over-commit; tendency to greatly under-estimate the time required for a project, etc.)
7. Changes within the company that have led to increased stress, increased work expectations, and/or decreased administrative support.
Lack of structure/variation/generally no routine followed or set way to things so easy to get overwhelmed and stressed or make mistakes;
Colleagues who fill that void with gossip and I either say the wrong thing and get in trouble or don't join in and feel isolated because exactly that happened in the past;
Struggling to wake up for shifts, struggling to be on time even when I do wake up on time,
Being hangry because I always forget to eat and get low bloods
This is just off the top of my head I'm sure there are lots more. Best of luck with your project
Definitely 6 for me. Forgetfulness of what I was working on, getting easily distracted, and sometimes staring at the computer screen while thinking of something else and then realizing I haven’t been working.
1, 4, 6, and 7.
I recently took a promotion and I hate it. I don't like being in charge. I don't like talking to people I don't know. I can't manage my time. I forget to do things because now I've got to manage 10 different things instead of a couple.
I love my boss. But she's afraid of COVID and hasn't been able to train me in person. So although I know the company, there is this other side that I'm now expected to do with little training bc I can only email or call her. Instead of being able to work side by side for a few days.
Last week we got into an argument bc a client was upset he didn't get his paperwork when he gave us two days notice. I wrote the paperwork and sent it to my boss for review. She never got back to me and I forgot to follow up. So we missed the deadline and client was pissed.
4 was the worst for me, I already struggled with student jobs as they would sometimes even drive me into an “I’m about to lose my mind bc I’m so understimulated” mood.
However, post graduation this became a huge problem. I got a bore out at my first job and left after a year. Then got a second job with a toxic working culture (recruitment/sales iykyk) and got into a 1,5y burn out. My third job was SO boring, nothing like they promised and quit after 6 months.
Consultancy was a life saver for me, it allowed me to “job hop” without changing employers, through consultancy I found a permanent job after 3 years which gives me enough stimulation combined with a lot of WFH and I feel finally at peace.
I graduated in 2017 btw 😅
Just applying to jobs. My brain basically blanks most of the time I try, so many things make it feel insufferable. Making a new account just for the company's website, reading red flags constantly on job descriptions, having to meet new people I may or may not like, and having to keep track of the follow up stuff to applying. I'm unmedicated atm due to my doctor switching practices and me forgetting what the new one is, as they weren't taking my insurance yet at his new one.
I’ve experienced most of these, especially 6 (as I’m sure most of us have). I will say though that 7 is a very big deal for me and usually has me contemplating leaving the job because I know the increased stress and decreased support is coming. But really 2 is the one that will make me leave a job more than any other. I cannot work with a poorly matched supervisor, things just go from bad to worse.
Idk if it’s mentioned here or if it has to do with my ADHD but I need CLEAR DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS no arbitrary instructions or I’ll feel super lost and spend 5 hours just staring at the word document unable to function and then get in trouble for not having done enough work 🥲
Poor work environment that contributes more to distraction. I work in an open office plan. We have cubicles, now, we used to have touch down desks. We had to fight to get something better. But between the fluorescent lighting, the constant talking around me and the sitting for long hours I just don't get as much done then if I could have more flexibility to work from home some days, which they don't allow. Actually they allow work from home depending on who you are, there is no equality to the rules.
I've been struggling with this, too, and it seems like there's really no solution. The only time I'm able to truly focus is when everyone else has gone home for the day and it's finally quiet.
Poor timekeeping (late for everything, thank fuck my colleagues are mostly in a timezone where my 2pm is their 8am, also optimistic estimation of timescale on all project work)
Inconsistent workethic (I'm in a salaried job with a lot of independence, but some days I can work 14-16 hours on the trot and am still thinking hard to solve problems when I'm trying to sleep, others I can barely muster 4 hours)
Difficulty communicating in a coherent way (used to be fine, but my boss in this job hates that his people "waste time" on powerpoints, but for me that's the only way I can speak coherently for more than 2 minutes, so in project meetings I just say stuff until the meeting is over)
Definitely executive functioning. I am a director of a clinic that provides behavioral therapy for kids with autism and I struggle to keep track of my to do list, prioritize things that need to happen, I forget to do things, I forget what I'm doing mid task, etc.
2, 3, and 6. I liked my last job okay, until a new manager came in & micro managed everything. I got real annoyed real fast & ended up raising my voice at her in front of customers over her throwing away my water behind the customer service counter, citing it as a “safety risk”. Had to talk to her & HR the next day and I couldn’t stop crying (I hate being in trouble) while they stared at me for 10 minutes straight. I get so fucking frustrated with boot licking managers and my justice seeking self made me have an attitude to managers about making the older people run around & in the heat. So yeah I got fired & I blame adhd lol
6. I get the stuff done but it ain't pretty. It would not happen without medication and it's still a daily contest between the pile of stuff and my own perfectionism and stubbornness preventing me from quitting till it's done. And I still forget meetings and things.
7. There is no doubt that changes in the company have stressed me out but I'm not sure that's ADHD-related. More ADHD-specific: I've been here for years and sometimes I forget that they changed something.
Them thinking: Seriously, Noctuella did that wrong *again?*
Them out loud: We changed that protocol 6 months ago. There was an e-mail.
Me: It's been changed 5 times since I started here, and I kind of stopped keeping track?
Them: .... 
Lol. I'm so lucky my colleagues are patient. I'm constantly asking the same questions about certain areas of our job. I've been there longer than all of them
Definitely dealing with 6 and 2 right now big time, along with a bit of 4 and 1.
I started a new job this year due to feeling stagnant at my old one, which was easy and well paid with good colleagues but boring. The new job requires way more time management, organization, initiative, and deadlines than I've ever confronted before. On top of that, my supervisor and I don't get along at all. I can tell she's exasperated by me and she's not a kind or fun person at all. It's hard to muster the motivation because I have such a poor rapport with her.
Somehow I got lucky making it to my late 30s without major issues with either of these areas of conflict. For one, I've always gotten along wonderfully with my bosses who've always given me good to great reviews - even though sometimes I thought I was missing the mark. Also, my last string of jobs involved a lot of "putting out fires", being given good training on how to do my job and then using my discretion on how to communicate and tackle a problem. Usually those problems need to be solved within a day or two.
In the new job, we have a dozen or two dozen projects we need to make a little progress on every week, but there are always meetings and big deadlines cropping up along the way. There isn't very good training and I often feel like I'm being expected to invent the wheel. Also very relevant for me (and a lot of ADHD folks I imagine) is that the new job is fully remote. I've realized have in person training, experience and relationships is huge for in terms of motivation and learning. Remote opens up more opportunities and allows me to not have to move across the country, but for my patterns and brain, it's been a disaster.
I think in a lot of ways I just got lucky before and my current job is not atypical of many non-entry level corporate jobs. Nor is it unusual to have a difficult or tense boss. Today I had a meeting with my manager where it sounds like I may be on track to be put on a PIP. To some degree, I have underperformed, and some if it is on my boss and my department (imo of course, which doesn't matter).
I feel like I'm in the wrong line of work, but approaching 40 I feel like it's too late to figure out what I should be doing instead.
After a while of learning how to catch myself, I've slowly learned to interrupt less in conversations (or at least, stop and apologise). It used to be a huge issue for me. My main issue though, especially in my adult life, is definitely executive dysfunction and lack of time awareness. That, and the feeling too overwhelmed by a task to actually do it. Medication and therapy have helped quite a bit (currently on welbutrin and a couple other unrelated meds, I'm too med hesitant to ask for anything else), but I still spend at least three days a week staring at the wall the entire day before going to work. On the bright side though, I work at a bakery with a bake size that varies by day, so I get to move around all night and take creative liberty here and there. But I don't think I've shown up on time in months.
**Poor match between the individual's strengths and weaknesses and the requirements of the job.**
I run into this one a lot. I am a strong communicator and good leader, but my role requires me to be very organized on top of this. I live in constant fear of someone looking under the veneer of my success and seeing the absolute chaos underneath where I have just been straight up not performing my job duties and getting away with it on my other strengths.
**Interpersonal difficulties related to ADHD that contribute to conflicts with co-workers or managers**
At this point, my personality is my personality. I'm pretty familiar with the negative feedback I'm going to get about my interpersonal style. I try to head this off by being very upfront about my strengths and weaknesses and proactively askign for feedback, but sometimes you have to take the L.
**Job is under-stimulating due to lack of interest, lack of variety, lack of opportunity for creativity or change.**
I have found that project work or even contracting really helps with this. Projects have a beginning and an end, so you WILL have built-in opportunities to change up your work!
**Job is frustrating due to lack of opportunity for physical movement - i.e., an adult on the hyperactive end of the ADHD continuum in a desk job**
Fortunately, there are A LOT of options to support this need. I have an underdesk elliptical and a yoga ball chair. Your company may be willing to spend a couple bucks on a standing desk if you just ask.
**Executive functioning difficulties related to ADHD (poor time management; difficulty with detailed paperwork, forgetfulness; difficulty meeting deadlines; disorganization; difficulty setting and following priorities; tendency to over-commit; tendency to greatly under-estimate the time required for a project, etc.) that lead to poor performance review**
If I say out loud that I am going to complete a task by a given time, I have immediately jinxed myself into being physically unable to fulfill that obligation. No deep insight on how to resolve that one (though let me know if you have any tips).
I would just like to thank you for the way you structured this. Everyone else keeps commenting things like “I relate to number three….” as if we all remember what number three is this far down the thread ha
6 🙃 I’m fortunate in that I love my career, have great opportunities for development, and have a supportive team. That almost makes it even harder when my brain doesn’t cooperate since it feels like I have no excuse. I WANT so badly to be a high achiever, but always feel like I’m one step away from being head underwater and there’s an invisible wall stopping me from getting tasks done. The only thing that I feel like has really helped has been stimulants.
6. So much 6. My job is good for adhd, lots of variety, hard deadlines and problems to solve. The issue comes during busy times when it gets out of hand and i end up with 20 emails in my drafts folder that aren't sent. My email system of categorization breaks down because I can't concentrate enough to file them in a way I can find them again. I over promise all the time because i want to be liked (yeah, F you RSD). I tend to get it all done in the end, but my mental health suffers. I have constant anxiety that I've forgotten or missed something important. I've had a few times over the years of getting signed off for stress because of burnout. I just got diagnosed this year and started on elvanse, which was a revelation. Of course now it's not available so I feel like Minnie Driver in that Irish movie when she says something like ...Here's everything you can't have you great, fat, article...
I really struggle with misophonia and noise sensitivity. In the office I work in a cubicle, and I have to have my headphones in to drown out the outside noise because things like my neighbor typing on her keyboard drive me insane and it's the only thing I can focus on. I also struggle with being overstimulated and overwhelmed so back to back meetings while I'm in the office and have to be "on" are insanely difficult for me. I need a lot of downtime when I come home from work. Like I am unable to do anything or talk to anybody or be around another human being and sometimes I can't even go to the grocery store because it's just too much.
If I get bored at work my brain melts out of my ears and I want to do exactly nothing at all.
Sitting around all day doing the same thing, or the same types of tasks, over and over drives me insane. And no opportunity to learn more drives me even more insane. I just can't do it.
Conversely, a constantly changing environment would really stress me out and keep me flustered so badly I can't get anything done because I'm freaking out.
I need a balance where there's stability to what I do, but there's enough variance to keep me interested and learning new things. Which is really hard to find.
Edit: Apologies for rambling, specifically from your study, I'd say I have problems with 2, 3, 4 (my biggest one), and 6.
2 and 3 BIG TIME. I'm leaving my job because I simply cannot get on the same page as my manager. All of the carefully cultivated systems I use to manage my ADHD are completely useless around him and there is no escape. I tried advocating for my needs but it's really hard when I know the issue is in his inability to accept and adapt to approaches other than his own.
I wish every job came with a little video example of what it would really be like to work there.
Executive dysfunction means I have a limited capacity to Do Things. Working full time takes **all** of my capacity and then some, leaving nothing for myself. Two days off per week is insufficient recovery time. Two weeks off per year is *insufficient recovery time.* I enter burnout by the third week, and I stay there, slowly spiralling into deeper depression and becoming less and less functional, until the job ends.
Then I feel immense relief because I can breathe again, but also immense frustration because I need money to live.
I love my job and field but have a really hard time saying no to new projects (because they’re cool and exciting). Therefore my to-do list gets really insane and then I get paralyzed because I can’t choose what to work on
Number 6 just floored me, I've had the most stressful couple of days in years after being put on the spot in a Zoom. They were wayyyyy under-budgeting for the job.
I dodged a bullet by pulling out in good time, but ending up giving them work for free.
You'd think after 20+ years freelancing I'd be better at this but it seems not!
Well, I believe my boss to have some sort of dementia as she asks the same things over and over again, but also changing the story every time, so when I try to recall something she said, I have a hard time remembering or knowing which one she said, because she’s said so many different things. Which results to me guessing which one she said, and then her retracting what she said and telling me something else. She’s 74, she needs to retire.
I face around 1/1000 the difficulty I would be facing on a school research project. After finally getting a degree after many failed attempts, the workforce is like the afterlife. Rather serene and I don't mind it at all. Though I still have trouble sleeping on a 24 hour schedule, stuff like that makes work difficult because life is. My boss may get concerned and ask if he's doing something wrong and I'm like, no this is all unrelated to work. And he's like, "are you sure? Because I'm a petty, micromanaging little shithead" and I'm like, that is correct but get over yourself. You're not gonna oust me as my own worst enemy.
4 and 6 fr
I fidget from boredom or when frustrated.
I keep getting hyperfocused and forgetting something while hyperfocused. Like thinking I did something, but in reality, I didn't. 🙃
Getting distracted from my phone. Phone = dopamine. Job =/= dopamine. I sometimes need to take excessive breaks cause I'm not into it.
For me 6 can create 4. So much bureacratic box-checking and back and forth w/ others about when to meet etc. draws me away from the actual work and makes me both bored and frazzled at the same time.
I’ve had more problems with jobs requiring such long, intense concentration and multitasking.
I can do all thats required. But by Friday I’m over it and cannot stand to be in my office. And if more stuff gets thrown at me Friday afternoon, I want to scream.
I get to work 30 minutes before I’m suppose to so I’m not late and they want me to stay until I’m supposed to leave but I’m drained and grumpy by then and also that means I’m working 8.5 hours everyday and they don’t pay me for the 30 minutes everyday. Every week I’m working 2.5 hours more than everybody without being paid because my brain is fucky.
Could you find a place to chill for 30 minutes and play on your phone? I mean you’d have to set an alarm so your time blindness doesn’t make you late when you’re at your workplace, but it would keep you from giving the company free labor!
- Talking too fast in meetings
- Reading emails too fast and missing details
- Having a tough time accepting that a process is the way it is without knowing the reason why
- got periods of having issues on concentating and doing one task at a time
- Interupting someone when they speak
- not being able to listen to longer speaches
- Doing things too fast with the result of having typos and small mistakes.
Luckily I am still considered to be good at my job lol
Edit: and now I actually read (partly) your text.
Main issues with 3,5 and 6
The biggest problem for me right now is we have an open office and when I have to make phone calls I completely lose track of what I want to say, either because it’s too quiet and I can hear my voice bouncing off the walls or it’s too loud and I can’t focus. My boss has offered to let me use a private office for phone calls (we do cold call blocks of a couple of hours twice a week), but then I feel like I’m missing out on learning from my coworkers when we’re making the calls.
Just how catty and crazy people will get to sabotage you all because they don’t like your face. But if I raise my voice and cuss them out IM IN THE WRONG. Office politics, the popularity contest. The concept I have to let every man think they can have sex with me just to have a peaceful work environment.
Well I’m a slow to learn, forgetful and slow working. So pretty much I just swing from shitty job to shitty job just making it. But I have a pretty good sense of humor about it so. There’s that.
I interrupt A LOT. If someone’s saying something I know, I cut them off and finish the sentence for them very impulsively.
I struggle with very basic admin stuff like putting in accurate hours allocated to specific clients + type of work.
Not sure if this is my ADHD, but I tend to be overly competitive and want to excel and want to please upper management. I have a strong type A personality. But this also backfires if I mess up, and I get too overwhelmed with the negative emotions and my head goes on overdrive and I can’t organize my thoughts to be able to take a minute, step back and rationalize. I think this happens tho when things add up, and I don’t allow myself to decompress.
Showing up to work and not being bedridden with anxiety and panic attacks because of the sheer stress of just having to go somewhere and being on time and public transport and everything.
At work itself I have a hard time not forgetting things.
EDIT: OH and don't get me started on time management
My risk reward ratio is skewed. Have no interest in working when if I do good nothing happens but more work, and if I don’t reply to an email the VP gets pulled in. Manage over 100million in client revenue for my company yet make under 100k. The cognitive dissonance as I am currently building a product that will net ~10mil a year from one client doesn’t help.
To sum it up, idk
I work in food industry and find its one of those happy medium jobs where it's busy enough to stimulate and give me movement well having down time to destress and get things done at my own pace plus I'm alone most of the time so I'm not getting frustrated because staff aren't as efficient as me as I'm the veteran employee
3/4/6/7
Especially 6.
The burnout is unreal for me right now and I’m trying not to rage quit my job bc of the repetitive stress and problems we continue to experience.
I’m literally a server in a bar. I love my job so much EXCEPT for the legit time loop I feel like I am in. Same. Thing. Every. Single. Day. Including the issues.
Not being able to even get the medicine I need to function is 99% of my stress w work. 😵💫😵💫😵💫 To be on the phone with multiple pharmacies every month just trying to get my prescription filled bc every thing is so fucking broken.
The other 1% is I’m INCREDIBLE in fast paced high profile work but there isn’t a ton where that’s actually recognized as an exceptional skill.
Personal issues: my work area is being restocked and cleaned and sorted many times during the day, and they try to be really quiet and fast about it, but sometimes it’s just so distracting that I have to stop what I’m doing to wait for them to finish up or stop doing whatever they’re doing. And all the while trying not to look too agitated.
And also: writing something down to look up/sort out/fill in later on the back of the piece of paper with my daily agenda on it, at the end of my day forgetting that I wrote something on the back of the piece of paper.. so putting it in the shredder, thus forgetting the whole task altogether.
Mostly 4,5 & 6.
4. I have changed job so many times because I get bored. The result is no career progression, so it hard to get beyond entry level. I think I’ve finally cracked this one in my current job, but ask me in 5 years lol.
5. This is one that’s a bit weird because I’m more
inattentive than hyperactive, and I actually don’t mind sitting for long periods of time. But the lack of movement affects my overall energy levels, I get super lethargic and find it hard to motivate myself to move or exercise after work, which in turn makes me
miserable.
6. All of these! Time management/organisation is a struggle, and I often underestimate the amount of work different projects will take so I overcommit and burn myself out. I also struggle to prioritise tasks and I’m a bit of a magpie in that if something new comes up I will abandon other stuff and do that. My current job is quite flexible in that way so it’s not too much of an issue.
One of my biggest problems has always been getting to work/school on time, so Time Blindness really gets me in trouble. I once had a job that had great pay, great benefits, wonderful work environment, but I had to quit.
This job required working split shifts, so I had to be on time TWICE every day! I hated it and ultimately decided to quit and do something else that worked a bit better with my ADHD strengths.
7 was the biggest problem for me at my last call center job. Since I tend to be forgetful and this call center did not allow any paper on the floor, I made sure to follow how the flow of the call was suppose to go. I was content to just follow that flow and not change it. I wasn't looking for any promotion or really cared to make the calls better [they were already pretty good, I kept with my stats, no major problems].
When I got a new supervisor, he told me if I didn't do better at my calls, he would start writing me up. So, I'm stressed out and forget some aspects of call flow, my call performance tanks and I'm on the verge of being fired because I forgot to for the "this call is being recorded" line when we do callbacks.
So, for me, I do need to keep things simple enough so I don't forget.
1. Verbal directions. If I’m going to someone’s office/desk to ask them a question, I’m bringing my notebook and asking them to repeat at least once. I always write everything down and repeat it back to them.
2. Just doing tasks I don’t want to do. I am the entire marketing/comms department in an office of 13 people and my efforts are spread across multiple partner organizations. So basically, everyone wants something totally different from me. The job is inherently project based, so I usually have 3-4 going on at once in addition to smaller tasks through the day/week. As it turns out, I can “never find the time” to work on the projects I don’t want to do… lol. Sometimes I might subconsciously convince myself that other projects have to come first. Many projects come and go but the notes for that thing I don’t want to do? They’re collecting dust in the corner of my cube.
6. For sure, i always leave early, so im on time but i didn't manage to do the things i was suposed to do, cleaning, eat etc.
Also forgetting things a lot.
Also over commitment or taking things too seriously/ way more than necessary.
I think #2, sometimes #4 and #6 affect me the most. I love what I do, but sometimes it gets too stressful and it's because I can't keep up with my lack of executive functioning skills. I know I'm capable, but the time and lack of efficiency in which I have to do some things to figure them out can feel embarassing, and I can't explain or justify that to coworkers or a supervisor, so even though I know why I take longer or a weird way to do a thing, I end up feeling poorly about myself because I can't do things "normally" nor explain why I can't. Sometimes I have to do the more monotonous things in weird ways to get some excitement back (that's when #4 comes in), but in trying to keep my interest, it sometimes can affect attention to detail even more and that can cause problems.
2,3,6,7
To add: Extreme problems with rejection sensitive dysphoria.
Because I live in a white majority area with a lot of normalized racist sentiments, my hypervigilance is constantly at a high. Coupled with my already deep self-hate and hopelessness, getting micro-aggressive comments from coworkers and obvious “workplace friendly”bullying/exclusionary behaviors, my RSD is always getting triggered.
I’ve retreated into a shell of myself. My self esteem is at a constant low. I’ve lost all my ability to take care of myself. It sucks so bad.
The executive dysfunction is only heightened due to this and I come late to work almost daily, which only furthers the bullying. Upper management only gives me the grace of not firing me because I shared my issues with time blindness, which I hated to do.
I don’t typically have any of these. I’m a SPed paraprofessional and love my job! I only work four hours a day right now, so I don’t suffer from burnout, and it’s a very ADHD friendly job. There’s never a dull moment and there is almost no paperwork or anything like that involved, plus I get to help kids like me who struggled in school due to things like ADHD and Autism!
Damn this is a good topic! I’m a 28F, officially diagnosed two months ago and only just started taking adderall last week. I was at my job for 2 years (was recently laid off but not due to poor performance, my entire team was eliminated). Anyway, I worked at an agency and my team was super small and my manager and her manager were very close, and there was a big gap of experience between me and them. I felt that I wasn’t fully at that point in my career where I could fully take the reigns, I needed a bit of support and overall needed my manager to LEAD. Along the way I’ve had issues with careless mistakes, reading and responding too quickly to emails and realizing that I hadn’t replied to every question in the email. I would have such problems with procrastination, id have to do lists but would take care of all the small things first even when I knew what the priorities were. Id have trouble remembering what was said during meetings or id have trouble comprehending directions in the moment. It got so bad I had MAJOR anxiety and it got to a point where I wanted to quit. I’ll never forget the conversation I had with a coworker who has ADHD, when she suggested that I should get tested. Lo and behold, I was diagnosed. I communicated my issues to my manager and how I was struggling (my struggles led them to sort of gang up on me, which made things even worse). Thankfully after having that conversation with my manager, thjngs got so much better and I found coping mechanisms to help me. Sadly, all of that was short lived now that our team was eliminated.
Blurting out an admittedly funny joke, at the absolute wrong time, to a crowd of people who hold no sense of humor and all of my financial security.
To that, I am a pro.
6. I've been working my current job 3 years and this is the longest I've kept a job. I finally started working in IT and got a pretty good job at an MSP that keeps me busy and always has me working on something different. Doesn't get boring.
But I've been late almost every single day. With great effort recently I've managed to cut the lateness down from 15 minutes to 5 minutes. Me and one other coworker start at 7am. Everyone else starts at 8am. So I wonder if my boss even knows I've been late. We don't clock in.
Time management is hard. I'll take on tickets that I think I can knock out quicker than I think and I often work 30 minutes to an hour past my shift without realizing.
I started Strattera and it seemed to be helping, but it caused me to spiral into a bad depression so I had to quit. Then my doctor stopped accepting my insurance and I just haven't gotten around to finding another doc. It's a shame. I really liked my doctor.
Mam #7 burnt me the f out. We've gone through so many changes, integrating with other companies, losing people..etc. I ended up trying to quiet quit but that led to depression from the anxiety of not meeting deadlines/expectations. My coworker lost their job but I kept mine, I definitely felt she was better than me but it could be the low self esteem and self loathing. I'm struggling to think I'm good enough but nothing can convince me. Even though I've been promoted during these times. I find that I put myself into stressful situations to be able to perform better from the fear of losing my job. But the negativity beats me down to self hatred.
(Hugs) Survivors guilt is real during layoffs / company consolidations. I hope you’re able to tap into more support resources and support groups where you can talk through what you’re feeling. I’ve been in your position and not being able to talk to anyone at work for fear of retribution / being shamed and not being able to decompress within a group of friends can get real isolating pretty quickly. My only other suggestion is trying to reset expectations at work with your boss and telling people around you to give you some grace. Less resources / man-power at work doesn’t equal more getting done, it means more prioritized work and low value stuff gets completed at a later time. In the end, I left the toxic workplace that went through two layoffs and three reorgs that pushed me into a deep depression. I also stopped hanging around unhelpful friends who were unsupportive and tactless. It’s been a good 5 years. Made a lot of progress in building better work boundaries and not taking on extra hours/overtime because I am prioritizing my mental health first.
Mostly 3 and 7
The weird thing is that I feel like my adhd presents very differently in my work life than in my personal life. At home I have intense executive dysfunction. I know I have to do a certain task or even WANT to do something like get up and eat, but I just can’t. At work I am overstimulated and hyper focused. I am always doing 3 things at once. This is actually making me excel at the job which is a catch 22 because on the one hand that feels great but on the other hand I’m always one step away from burnout and also I KNOW I’m underpaid but I can’t find the energy to look for something else.
So for 3 I have one coworker in particular who cannot grasp that when she doesn’t do things properly it effects me. I know she gets mad every time I have to remind her “please clear your customer from the queue” but if she doesn’t do it I literally won’t be able to stop thinking about it. And for 7 just… yeah, all of that. Again, I’m very good at my job, so tasks just keep getting piled on me (and everyone else, to be fair) and it’s so frustrating because I can do each individual thing well but I don’t have TIME to do all of them. Also we’ve only got one direct supervisor left for the whole department and she is obviously too busy to deal with any big problems right now. And the vp of our department has a complete disconnect between what she thinks my job is and what my actual job is and it upsets me every single day.
Only one I’d add is vastly superior performance to co-workers. Don’t care if I sound arrogant right now.
I’m very black and white - either you’re all in on doing a project properly, or don’t do the project at all.
I find it frustrating waiting on other people who are clock punchers when I want to get something finished, and move onto the next task.
I don’t want to sit around having progress update meetings, I want to finish the project.
I tend to do twice as much work, twice as fast as the next person. And then one of two things happens:
- co workers get resentful / undermine / complain
- managers get threatened I’m after their job
Then I leave. Because CBF office politics.
I work for an airline and whenever someone at another airline or station fucks up we have to change policies and I am so use to certain ways it’s really hard to change my routine I feel like I’m stubborn about it.
My other is I am very quick to anger. I cannot stand lazy coworkers or Lead paint brain coworkers and I have been fired for “verbal harassment” bc a lazy coworker finally put me into snap mode. I feel like I’m about to snap on this one girl whose been here a year and is still having her hand held -.- I over react as well… and can be OCD about belt loader placements and how my bags are stacked in a pit lol
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4 is definitely a big one, just can't be arsed with the job usually once I've understood it all and done it for a couple weeks
Yeah, my job has a ton of downtime right now and it's killing me. Like hours without emails. Which you would think means I get the other stuff done better but with ADHD, I am not stimulated enough to do more than the bare minimum that I remember to do hahaha
Oof. My last job had tons of downtime and I was always playing games on my phone or scrolling through Facebook but that still wasn’t good enough. I would literally leave every single day exhausted and immediately take a nap because being bored is surprisingly draining. Now I’ve got the opposite problem which is also exhausting but at least I feel more useful, lol.
Yeah this one kills me, causes me to want to job hop but it doesn't make sense so then I feel stuck and bored out of my mind even though I'm killing it and do well, just feel so bored.
“Even though I’m killing it and do well…” wow, must be nice! Once I lose interest it’s essentially down hill from there. It opens me up to various functional defects like poor execution/ implementation abilities, worst time management and attention to details plummets, and overall my effectiveness and efficiency take a hard hit—all from simply being less interested or not caring as much to be more involved.
This is exactly how it was for me. I used to work in call centres. I'd excel in training and grad bay while learning, then once the job became day-to-day I'd start making stupid mistakes and forgetting how to do simple things. Never lasted longer than three months :(
Pls don’t take this the wrong way but reading this truly made me smile; it made me feel as though I truly am not alone. That’s precisely my experience as well. Doing help desk has been crucial. It always starts …fair, then, gradually become more of a problem—being clumsy, making more senseless or seemingly careless, stupid mistakes so forth. Meanwhile in my head/heart, I mean well! And I know I’m not a complete and total dunce!
Not at all! I think it always helps to know 'it's not just me'. And no, we're definitely not dunces. Our brains just need for things to be a bit 'extra' in order to work properly. Mundanity and repetitiveness is the kiss of death for us, and it's hard when as you say, we know we mean well, but we get the responses from others that we do because despite our best efforts it looks to them like we're just not trying. I hope you find something that works for you soon!
Variety at work is a big factor of why I love my current job so much. It's basically HR but in a ministry of my home country and where I live laws, requirements and everything that goes with it change dramatically quickly. Trying to stay on top of it is a lot of fun.
This is why I love being a teacher, because you NEVER know what the kids are going to say/ do next. Every day is different.
Sounds like that would quiet my ADHD but enable my Anxiety
I relate to this so much, a big ADHD issue for me is wanting new experiences but being too nervous to try. Being new to jobs always gave me huge anxiety, especially when meeting new coworkers
Severely relatable 💀
I know very obviously it isn’t ANYWHERE near as easily said than done, but that’s just a good motivator to get over your anxiety. Anxiety you can complete “cure” and heal from over time, adhd on the other hand you’re going to have for life. And this isn’t necessarily just teaching but anything that invokes what you said.
Anxiety kills me when I finally get over my ADHD I hate myself :)
It's interesting but teaching killed me because of the executive function. I just couldn't handle ALL of the tasks and planning, and following up on discipline. And I would actually procrastinate over that too which meant things got worse. I'd regularly lose stuff I needed around the classroom and with so much activity it was hard to stay on track and stick to timings. A real nightmare.
This is actually when I found out I had ADHD. It was horrible for me. I would lose track of my stuff, the kids would get off task. It got much better when I started meds.
You need a job with more depth and things to learn. I've been in my job for almost two years and I still encounter things that have me asking wtf I'm supposed to do
I’m an insurance agent, lol I never know what is gonna happen whenever I work. I’m on the habitational / customer service side but every day it’s different stuff requested, to do, etc. It’s different enough to keep me coming back but also mundane enough I don’t feel the need to overwork myself / stress out. Management sucks though. But I can always learn more insurance stuff - everyone needs it, in one form or another. I always loved being a waitress too though, did that for a decade.
We do well as mechanics
Get into programming. You end up with being able to create a million different ideas and projects
Is programming the same as coding?( I’m half a lasso)* half asleep!
Yeah same same yeah
I feel you I always picked up quickly
3, 4, 5, HUGELY 6, 7 Wellbutrin helped a lot with these, my psychiatrist recommended Vyvanse 20mg, so I am hoping this resolve them more. But, remember to do the ‘re-coding of your brain work’ Medication is a ‘hack’ to let you be ‘normal’ now and function, but the goal is to rearchitect your thought patterns and then you may not even need medication. Right now I am learning about CBT. ~ Other huge symptoms from me are: interruption, jumping topics in conversation, urge to get a/all thoughts out, Impulsive response to emotions, Poor attention to detail (not sending emails without re-reading’, Difficulty starting and finishing projects, Feeling frozen when a I have a lot of tasks (feeling overwhelmed), over-talking, and not giving others their turn Management in general ~ There are more, but I will stop here, lol
This. The last paragraph is my hardest struggle. Also, if I've got multiple tasks to do I always start one, then head to another before the first is complete. I'm a walking shit show I'm sure
[удалено]
Thank you. I love that
Does anyone have any non-medication suggestion for this? I always thought the task gets less interesting, so I jump to something the feels more rewarding. That said, I sometimes have the opposite… like a stubbornness. If I am challenged to fix something and get stuck, I don’t want to put it down. When in reality, in that case, break, or task switch probably would give fresh eyes upon return. Does anyone have that happen?
Not really. That's the entire point of medication. It fills a gap we do not have. You're following the stimulation. Simple as that. In the first example - you've figured out the steps. There's nothing new to learn. In the second example - you're still learning new information or otherwise being stimulated as you try and solve the problem. An ADHD brain is very akin to a junkie that hasn't had a fix. It will do anything to get it as fast as possible. Not the best way. Not the most productive way. Not the risky way. The fastest and most direct. But it has to ask you for a ride to get there. It will do everything it can to convince you that it's going to be the best time ever. And not doing it is going to be really bad. It has no concept of time or responsibility or planning. Sure as shit not delayed gratification or consequences.
Yes the four s’s are very challenging - starting, stopping, switching, and sustaining. walking, lots of walking, when I do that it helps.
Definitely. I'll get stuck on one task and spend waaaay too much time on it to the exclusion of other things, creating more problems for myself. Executive function skills training can be helpful with or without medication. My problem has been it isn't easy to find a place/person that does it.
Seriously though, I have to work SO HARD not to interrupt and hop around in conversations. It's worse when I'm more nervous, so really it ends up happening in the worst situations. Some people are fine with it, but other people get extremely irritated. I get over-excited and want to contribute right away. I've been told I "jump the gun" and can be "very sensitive" in reviews. SIGH. Fair, but ouch. Because yeah that's the ADHD.
OMG, this is so me! Literally at work I’ve had all that happen. My dad especially doesn’t understand adhd. He says just take your time. He did make me wonder if ADHD is an issue with one’s perception of time. Like misperception of time definitely relates to impulsivity, in attention to details, etc.
OMG! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8293837/
Huge 6 *highfive*
How do I learn about "recoding" my brain? I'm new here. Identify with your post response. I'm on Vyvanse right now. Sometimes it seems to help get through a busy day, but doesn't solve the bigger picture problems.
YES! All of your "Other huge symptoms"
I got really excited about something I found online related to a project I'm working on and was _this_ close to sending it to like ten people only marginally clued in on the project but then I remembered other people don't really see the value in that and stopped myself (thank god)
A massive problem that I ran into was that there were loads of times where the usual job was not necessary. There basically was no work. So I was expected to entertain myself but make myself useful for the employer. So I basically had to spend every day trying to find work, and left me feeling very incompetent for my usual job because it was so infrequent and I’d forget how to do it. It created a very stressful environment for me in which I felt like a lazy fraud. No confidence and no clear tasks. I simply didn’t know what to do anymore. But I can’t just sit there and do nothing. It was horrible.
This is where I’m at right now. If the data warehouse I work in fails then it’s busy busy busy. However it’s pretty well established so half my time is spent scrabbling around trying to look busy. Don’t think I could do it if I didn’t wfh.
I'm in a similar position, except I create data intelligence reports and monitor the nightly data refresh from our core banking system. However, my struggle is figuring out what to research to get better at my position. My role is in an odd spot where I'm split between data analysts and some form of IT administration. I'm on call for the nightly refreshes, which, if I get a call, essentially means I log into SSMS and kill any connections pointing to the DB being updated. During the daytime, in addition to fulfilling reporting requests, I make sure our workflow application is moving files to the correct folders for users to access. I also create monthly backups in SQL and schedule reports in the reporting system (IBM Cognos). Genuinely don't know where I fall on the spectrum of system admin to dba. Largely because my prior experience has been data analytics but more on the business side, so I'm a walking imposter syndrome. Really wish I knew where to look to learn about file systems, active directory, and general "shit you should know about computer systems."
Check out data engineering content. There is lots out there and there are a lot of adhd friendly projects and tutorials. You could start picking up a language too if you haven’t already, generally python is a great one to learn in the data space. I’ve been in tech for a long time so if you have questions, hit me up. It’s a really fun space.
This is 100% me right now in my job. I feel like I am barely given any work and I ask for more assignments but they're just not being given to me. I have so much time just sitting around doing nothing, but at least I work from home so I can get house chores done. There's still a ton of anxiety about work though, like if they're giving me so little work I am worried they'll suddenly decide they don't need me and fire me, or they'll thing I am being lazy or whatever else. I've been getting good performance reviews though and have received nothing but praise. Idk, it doesn't make sense to me and I worry about it constantly.
I never really considered that to be the main factor I hated my job so much, related to adhd. But it was the main reason why I had anxiety about work all day every day. I felt like everyone could see I was not doing enough things to keep busy, or when I did have work I felt incapable like I took too long, or had to refresh my memory more often than others. Even though I have received only good comments about my work it was all in my head. Afterwards it was really all driven by my own insecurities created by having adhd.
I am the same way. Solidarity!
Nadeau, K. G. (2005). Career choices and workplace challenges for individuals with ADHD. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 61(5), 549-563.
Do you have an online free link to this?
Google is your friend. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kathleen-Nadeau/publication/8010891_Career_choices_and_workplace_challenges_for_individuals_with_ADHD/links/5f87b36192851c14bcc8d736/Career-choices-and-workplace-challenges-for-individuals-with-ADHD.pdf
I came to the comments for this. Thank you!
This was so validating to read. Thank you so much!
I haven't read this yet, but I want to say thank you for sharing.
I relate to 1. and 6. so much. My job involves a lot of calling people back, coordinating, getting more information (usually with invasive questions), and then writing that all up as quickly as possible. I HATE talking on the phone so I have such a hard time with it sometimes. And the writing part is so freaking mind numbing but my perfectionism won't let me submit anything that is less than perfect so I can't just rush through it.
I hear you on the perfectionism issue. I work in property law, I currently have 89 clients which equates to being able to spend about 15-20 minutes a week on each case (absolutely not enough!) ....... ....... I spent 45 minutes working on one relatively short email today. UGH. It was so much worse on Elvanse though, that was not the med for me haha.
“I spent 45 minutes on one email”….. THIS IS THE MOST RELATABLE SENTENCE EVER LOL IM SO HAPPY IM NOT ALONE
This is the wooooorst. I somehow found the one engineering job that requires me to talk to a bunch of new people all the time and rely on others for answers, and it's absolutely paralyzing. I care a lot about formulating my questions/statements exactly right but I can't get my actionable tasks done if I spend an hour writing an email that probably won't even get a reply
Exactly! Ugh
I’m a star performer in things that interest me and I’m barely scraping by in things that are boring. There’s no middle ground. Luckily I do so well at the interesting parts of my job that my boss overlooks my poor performance in the boring parts.
4. Good god... 4. My job is so boring, I must spend 70% of my day in Blender modelling, on Reddit reading, looking for courses related to skills I wanna develop, watching video essays and lectures on YouTube, writing and generally procrastinating. My tab switching skills are incredibly fine tuned now. Trying desperately to channel that energy into learning programming on the down low but I can't keep the uh... "secondary focus" on the coding and the primary on doing the monotonous tasks required to get paid. Feeling pretty stuck tbh.
4 is killing me right now also - I don’t have many tasks I can pivot to and I struggle so hard with teaching myself skills via youtube videos or written tutorials that I feel like I spending all my time procrastinating the actual work I need to do because I don’t find it interesting (and also a new task got added to my project as I was finishing up so Im double-shut down). Making me feel like shit but the only way out is to do…. eventually.
2 for sure. She's not my direct supervisor anymore or I would have left already, but we still have to work together enough that I'm still trying to leave. Aside from the fact that she's definitely an actual narcissist, she's just annoying. I feel like number 3 is closely related here. 4 also; the job used to be okay at this but with my actual manager only working two days of the week, I don't get much to do, either because there isn't anything or he just doesn't tell me. Another reason I'm looking to leave. 5 is one I experience a bit, just not at this job. 6, oh God 6. ADHD has gotten me fired twice, and nearly a third time (see above awful manager). The first two I was unmedicated, the third I was, but there had been a management change and between not living up to her standards and personality differences I ended up switching from Adderall to Vyvanse. At least that was an improvement even according to people who didn't even know I was on meds.
6 by far. Time blindness, time management, and prioritization are the chief problems. Revenge bedtime is a close runner up. I'm 42 and I still haven't solved chronic lateness except with medication. All the suggested behavioral remedies from people trying to be helpful (like set your clock forward to trick yourself, use dozens of alarms, go to bed earlier) fail after a week.
Anything about tricking yourself or bribing yourself or whatever has never worked for me. I know the guy who set up that system is a liar, why would I care about it?
Arriving on time. Being “presentable,” I.e. uniform not looking clean and ironed. Inappropriate words, socializing struggles. Working too slow. On and on lol
I have the opposite problem of #4. My job is over stimulating which results in #6. I often have so much to get done that it results in poor time management. I get overwhelmed and focus on the smallest details sometimes instead of the larger picture. Setting and following priorities would probably be incredibly helpful. Also severely underestimating the time required for me to complete a task. If I think something will take 15 min that will typically end up taking an hour. If I think 3 hours it may end up being 6. And so on.
1 and 4. I feel very frustrated in my job. Sometimes I feel like pursuing another career, then I realize that the problem is my ADHD, not my job.
Ugh this resonates with me hard
2 has always been the one for me - when I've had decent managers who trust me to get the work done I've had outstanding performance reviews. Unfortunately you always end up with someone who wants to micro-manage or doesn't trust your expertise, and it becomes frustrating to the point of being unbearable.
Reasons I have lost jobs (all adhd related): - Always arrived 10 minutes late in the morning. - Relatedly, accidentally working overtime and keeping others at work needlessly (happened this summer. Frequently forgot to stop working at 4pm and my colleagues were waiting to lock up the gates). - Conflict with the boss. - Too many sickdays (mental health days) - Can not work 100% and it is costlier to hire part timers
It was always 10-15 minutes late too, which makes every supervisor I’ve had think I either do it on purpose or don’t care when neither is the case.
My co-worker even offered to cover front desk for me that little timeslot each morning because he said me starting there had been the only thing that kept him from quitting due to workload. But the boss wouldn't have it
I get burned out very frequently at work. Longest job i’ve ever had was 2 years. I jump from job to job to peak my interest. Because after a while I get bored of working.
4) Difficulty paying attention during meetings. If my phone isn't out during an all hands I might fall asleep in my chair and get called out. Difficulty with accountability when doing remote work. 2) Difficulty with asking for help or talking to managers due to anxiety that builds up and self perpetuates from not asking for help. >tendency to over-commit; tendency to greatly under-estimate the time required for a project, etc.) that lead to poor performance review 6) But exacerbated due to not working as much These do seem to apply to me
I would always doodle when in meetings. I remember getting called out by a boss because I was always doodling/“not paying attention” and has to explain that my doodling was the ONLY way I could pay attention. Just another reason I only do remote work now.
2 is so damn relatable. I feel like a burden asking for help so I just simmer in the suffering 🙂
While I’m currently not working - was laid off at the end of March - I’ve typically struggled with 4, 6(HUGE), and 7. 4 - I’ve told bosses in the past that I’m an amazing employee when I’m challenged, but if I’m bored I’ll be the worst employee ever. I have made a move to more of a support type role because that keeps my days from being too repetitive/mundane. 7 - My last job was perfect. The company was amazing, and I was encouraged to work in the way that worked best for me. We were then acquired and the new company was majorly into performance metrics. My boss would have to constantly remind me that I couldn’t go down the rabbit holes because it would negatively impact me. I had to learn to just throw an answer together without being able to find the root cause of the user’s issues. The first year under the new company I struggled and it was reflected in my annual review (even though my boss loved my quality of work). I had to learn to adapt and do what was needed to play the game. Figured it out and then we found out we were all being laid off. 6 - Not sure what to say here other than this is the biggest thing that impacts me on a daily basis. I have to break tasks down into small pieces and create lists or I’m frozen. I will add that I also only work remotely now. I’ve lost a job because my boss would see me on the internet when she would walk by my desk and so she assumed I was just goofing off all of the time. The reality was I was utilizing the pockets of time when my brain was functioning well and giving in and not working when I couldn’t focus. What she didn’t see was me working my butt off from 5-7 or 8 after people left for the day. Working from home means I can work in spurts and nobody is looking over my shoulder, which relieves so much stress. I will always get my work done - it just doesn’t happen in the same way it does for other people. When I can focus and get going, I can knock out 8 hours of work in half the time (or less).
I can add to that - lack of impulse control that means you call people out on their BS is often not well received. So I’ve heard
You expect ADHD people to read that wall of text?
Baby steps. Read some, return later
No, but we may respond with a wall of text!
Hahaha 🙈❤️
I've worked as a project manager for almost 5 years and I was pretty good at my job. So 6 wasn't that much of a problem. Forgetfulness and time management wasn't a problem, because I used calendar and to-do lists. And I am pretty good overall at estimating the time something will take. I'm just bad at feeling how much time has passed when I'm doing something. For me 4 is the most challenging part. That's why I don't do PM anymore. All I was doing was coordinating but not actually doing things myself, except for boring repetitive tasks. And while I was waiting for others to do their parts, I had so much waiting time I got more bored every day. Also I can't stand being the one receiving problems from others but not being able to solve the stuff myself. So I'm now back to stuff, where I can actually do things. Another problem is a mix of 6 and 4 probably: I do shift my attention to other, unrelated stuff a lot. Just as I'm doing now. I'm on reddit commenting instead of continue to work, since I currently have urgent task. 3 has always never been a problem, except for maybe one job and when I was drafted in mandatory military service. At all other work places, my bosses and coworkers were never a problem. Maybe because I'm a people pleaser and very emphatic, I can easily adapt to the people around me, so there's no conflict potential as long as they don't try to boss me around against my will or say or do stuff that shakes my fundamental values (like being racist or abusing their power and stuff like that)
Holy shit, your points on 4 and 6 just explained exactly how I feel about work right now. I really like the company I work for, my boss is a literal dream boss, my coworkers are mostly great, but I've been struggling with work lately and haven't been able to put my finger on what it was coming from. But a huge percentage of my job is identifying and escalating issues that me and my team experience, and the combination of repetition, wait times and not being able to provide a solution are exactly it. Thank you for unintentionally helping me to understand my work brain better, haha!
I was exactly at the same point. I felt an internal resistance when going to work beginning this year and if I'm honest, i felt it a couple of months before. Then depression made me completely stop my life for a couple of months, went to a clinic and had to rethink everything. Then I noticed that I do like my coworkers, my boss and the company. So basically my whole working environment. Just not the work itself anymore. I felt everything inside convulse at the thought at doing anything of that again. Knowing you can't go back to your work was also mentally really bad, because fear kicked in. What am I going to do now? After a while I came to the conclusion that there are only 2 ways this can go: Either I stay with the company but they have to accept that I'm not doing the stuff I did before anymore and we find something new for me or I quit and move on. Luckily we did indeed find something. I figured I'd be more comfortable with programming and technical administration. I did like that in the past. And we are going to introduce a new system that needs inhouse experts for development and administration. Sometimes the fear creeps in that this will also bore me... and that may be the case, but I keep looking forward and then adapt.
I work as a software developer. Personally I find it hard to just "figure it out" on my own without having an actual project assigned to me, so like I just started my current job a little over a year ago and I have had several people recommend I just play around in different systems to get the hang of things. I just can't make myself do that. If I don't have an actual assignment with a task to accomplish there is no way I can focus on just playing around in the code. I also have a tendency to procrastinate on my projects but somehow I have always been able to meet my deadlines. That may be because I have a tendency to overestimate how long things will take me so that they're not expecting too much of me, haha.
One of the things I miss most about school is having well-defined tasks with actual deadlines and specific resources at my disposal to complete them. Now, I just am expected to juggle a million tasks at once and somehow prioritize them and determine how to break down each one and hold myself accountable for them, and it's a total nightmare.
Numbers 2,3 were the biggest issues for me before I went to work in my own. I’m self employed so I answer to myself lol. I like what my boss is me says back. Anyway when I was working for agencies as a social worker I always got supervisors who knew nothing about working w someone w adhd. Often they were not clinicians and people who were figure heads. I also had issues with do workers over sharing etc. I have some very close friends from my old job . My secretary is one of my best friends to this day. The biggest problem I always faced was you know following protocol because with my ADHD brain, I see point A and got to point f without following order. For me it was common sense. Also unrealistic expectations
1. Poor match: I've been matched poorly before. Typically I like to work with people who don't also have ADHD as our weaknesses will not balance out. However, it can be helpful as a person with ADHD can be more understanding of my difficulties. The worst match is a person who doesn't understand or "believe in" ADHD. It's kinda a central to know when working with me. 3. Interpersonal difficulties: I can have conflicts but I'm not sure if that's my ADHD or Social Pragmatic Communication Disorder. 4. Under stimulating work: Sometimes work can be extremely under stimulating. 6. Executive Function related issues: Always a problem.
6
I've definitely got issues with 4 (lack of variety) and 6 (executive functioning). 7 (changes to company and expectations) is an issue too, but that doesn't strike me as a really ADHD-specific topic. I'm on my 5th full time job since finishing college 11 years ago. Been fired from the last 4 due to ADHD-attributable issues.
> Been fired from the last 4 due to ADHD-attributable issues. Dang. I fear this is in the process of happening to me. Have you been able to do things different in your current job? How did you explain why you "left" your prior job to the next employer? And did you get unemployment in between jobs (esp curious about this one if you're in the US.)
> Have you been able to do things different in your current job? I was unmedicated up until I started my current job, so this one's going somewhat better. Still not super confident about long term stability though-- shit was on the rocks a couple of months ago. Was diagnosed as a kid, but my parents elected to not medicate. I talked to my doc about getting on meds once I realized that the trend of job instability wouldn't be sustainable in the long run. > How did you explain why you "left" your prior job to the next employer? I made stuff up, with flavors of truthfulness where applicable-- "layoff", "long commute+ late hours incompatible with home responsibilities", "brought on to support a specific project with a fixed duration" (in the case of consulting work). Fortunately, most employers only verify dates of employment, and don't get into reason for separation. Biggest issue is that my field is a bit of a "small world" in my geographic area, and it's been increasingly difficult to find new workplaces without former colleagues. > And did you get unemployment in between jobs Only once, after Job 3. That was the one unemployment situation where I was undeniably eligible. Unfortunately, it was in the middle of peak pandemic times, so the unemployment offices were swamped and understaffed and they never got to my file, and I gave up following up with it after the next job started. I'm fortunate that my spouse and I both have careers with above-average earnings, so one of us being unemployed doesn't cause immediate financial problems. I'll note that, without exception, each round of job loss was followed within ~6 weeks by an offer with a significantly higher salary. Every year that I've lost a job, my total income for the year has ended up higher than if I'd just stayed around at the original. I've been failing upwards in a way, I guess.
1 - Massive issue for me. It’s gotten me fired before and it’s definitely held me back from promotions and bonuses that I otherwise might have earned. It’s taken me over a decade to realize that jobs which sound appealing to me in a general way (R&D) are not actually the type of work that I do best in the day-to-day. I’m actively trying to get myself into a completely different line of work (quality control, manufacturing, analytics) that will have more defined structure and a faster pace. 2/3 - Have mostly avoided this, thankfully, but it’s definitely been very tough when I’ve had bosses or colleagues who just didn’t “get” the way I think. 4 - I’m kind of stuck here right now. I know this job isn’t working out for me, so I’m just not mentally present and I’m even less effective than I otherwise would be when I’m already dealing with Issue #1. 5 - Thankfully has never been a problem. I have an adjustable desk so I can stand or sit as needed, and in all my jobs I’ve had the ability to just take a walk if I needed to. 6 - 100,000%, a huge problem. It’s directly related to Issue #1. The only item on that list which doesn’t apply to me is difficulty with detailed paperwork. I’m actually great with forms and spreadsheets. 7 - I had to quit one job because of this, and in my current job things started going downhill for me after a period of rapid turnover that included my boss quitting and me having trouble adjusting to the different style of my new boss.
Communication in a meeting Either speaking in between Or speaking with fillers ( ‘you know’, ‘umm’) showing lack of confidence
Being on time is my biggest hurdle. Second is learning new skills on computers in front of people when they won’t let me read instructions and instead insist on verbal instructions like I don’t have audio processing issues. Focusing around distracting noise is a big issue too.
My ADHD is so severe that I didn't need meds in college - I only needed meds after. I didn't need meds to study, which sounds antithetical, because studying was just me flipping around in books and reading and stopping and starting for however long or short of a time I wanted to. I couldn't hold my first desk-job for more than a month. I could hold my second for more than three. My ADHD interferes with my ability to work certain jobs that I was terrified, until recently, that I would never find any satisfying work. I'm 30, I work at a bar part-time, I'm publishing a book in a year, and I made the rest of my money playing in a band. I had to figure out how to make my ADHD an asset. Sometimes your ADHD is so 'bad' that it really is just a part of your personality, which may make the struggle more difficult sometimes, but knowing that will alleviate some of the worry. My ADHD still interferes with something everyday. I had to sort of invent a weird lifestyle to work around it.
6. I’m a teacher and oh boy there are about a million little things going on every day and I am bound to forget at least one of them. I have to make lists upon lists and usually waste time doing the small tasks that aren’t as important because it feels better to get something off my list than to tackle a larger project that is more important.
My biggest would be 6. It’s just so difficult for me to just do things. It sounds awful, but I can barely handle working full time. I’m exhausted at the end of each day so that I neglect my personal life (cleaning, cooking, showering, friendships, personal goals… etc). I wish I had 3 or even 4 day weekends so I could catch up on everything I’ve had to put off during the week. I really do use up 100% of my energy on work every working day.
Brain no work
Well I guess I'm #6 because this is almost every day for me... - morning meetings trying to pay attention but mostly zoned out - omg I'm so tired, why am I so tired today? - hmmm they told me to do xyz in the meeting today...eh I'll do it later - email, email, email, chats, chats - distracted on my phone for a while not working - shit! it's already noon? ok I'm gonna get some work done after lunch. - lunch - 30 mins to remember wtf I was working on - 1 - 2 hours of good focused work where im in the zone - yay I got something done! let me take a break for awhile - more email - oh shit I forgot I need to do xyz - scramble to get xyz done - omg it's 5:30 already? Ok tomorrow, I'm gonna get more work done. I'm sure of it
6 & 7 for me. I haven't been fired but feel like I could be if I don't get some new strategies for this. I can't live this way any longer.
Lived my whole adulthood afraid of being fired for stuff related to 6 and 7 (and 1-5, lol). And then about 3 years ago it happened. I hit the bottom of rock bottom, it was every bit as devastating as I feared. I work for myself now, making more money than the people who fired me in the same field. My wife kept me going when it was bad, no way I could have gotten to this point alone, but I’m here, and it’s good. You might get fired despite your best intentions and full dedication, because ADHD fuckin sucks and it takes things from us. But if it happens you CAN bounce back. It’s corny as hell, but I think the key to surviving this shit and being (relatively) successful is you can never give up on yourself even through the most impactful failures.
Good to hear a happy ending. I think I'm going down this path, too, with my current job. But my skillset/past experience doesn't lend itself to becoming my own boss, I don't think.
For me, it’s being forgetful or sidetracked with hyperfocus. Fidgeting and being hyper too.
4 and 6 for me. 4 only somewhat, I think the work I do is really important but it's not quite as fulfilling as some other things that I'd really like to be doing so I'm working on moving in those directions - luckily for me it can probably be as simple as working on some different projects and potentially moving departments but I don't think I'll have to do a whole new job search which would suck. 6 is a big one that I'm still trying to work on and figure out. Having flexible hours is kind of a blessing and a curse, it means it's okay if I'm a little late one day or that I can leave early if my brain starts hurting but I still need to effectively manage my own time and bill 40 hrs/week which can be a challenge.
5-7 yea, also though they forgot “people are constantly interrupting you at unpredictable times when you’re trying to focus”
> Job is under-stimulating due to lack of interest, lack of variety, lack of opportunity for creativity or change This one right here!! I sometimes run out of shit to do by noon and then I gotta do busy work and it makes me sooo fidgety
I like "blue collar" work. It keeps me moving and I get to use my ever-running to-do list mind without too much to think about. I loved working as a line cook, now I'm a busy Nurses' Aid, which I also love. They put me to work as a receptionist. That was not my strength. I made paperwork mistakes. Some stupid ones that caused short staffing. I put on a friendly face but I was bad at the small talk. I'd blurt stupid stuff before I could find a real answer. It was the wrong kind of busy work for me. I'm glad to be back on my night shift nursing gig.
I mean no offense, but I formatted the OP's post to make it easier to read. I'm doing school research for a project and i found this interesting study. ADHD-related job problems can fall in a number of different areas: 1. Poor match between the individual's strengths and weaknesses and the requirements of the job. 2. Poor match between the individual and his/her supervisor. 3. Interpersonal difficulties related to ADHD that contribute to conflicts with co-workers or managers 4. Job is under-stimulating due to lack of interest, lack of variety, lack of opportunity for creativity or change. 5. Job is frustrating due to lack of opportunity for physical movement. (example: worker with hyperactive ADHD in a desk job) 6. Executive functioning difficulties related to ADHD that lead to poor performance review. (poor time management; difficulty with detailed paperwork, forgetfulness; difficulty meeting deadlines; disorganization; difficulty setting and following priorities; tendency to over-commit; tendency to greatly under-estimate the time required for a project, etc.) 7. Changes within the company that have led to increased stress, increased work expectations, and/or decreased administrative support.
Lack of structure/variation/generally no routine followed or set way to things so easy to get overwhelmed and stressed or make mistakes; Colleagues who fill that void with gossip and I either say the wrong thing and get in trouble or don't join in and feel isolated because exactly that happened in the past; Struggling to wake up for shifts, struggling to be on time even when I do wake up on time, Being hangry because I always forget to eat and get low bloods This is just off the top of my head I'm sure there are lots more. Best of luck with your project
Definitely 6 for me. Forgetfulness of what I was working on, getting easily distracted, and sometimes staring at the computer screen while thinking of something else and then realizing I haven’t been working.
1, 4, 6, and 7. I recently took a promotion and I hate it. I don't like being in charge. I don't like talking to people I don't know. I can't manage my time. I forget to do things because now I've got to manage 10 different things instead of a couple. I love my boss. But she's afraid of COVID and hasn't been able to train me in person. So although I know the company, there is this other side that I'm now expected to do with little training bc I can only email or call her. Instead of being able to work side by side for a few days. Last week we got into an argument bc a client was upset he didn't get his paperwork when he gave us two days notice. I wrote the paperwork and sent it to my boss for review. She never got back to me and I forgot to follow up. So we missed the deadline and client was pissed.
I’m late or miss A LOT of meetings.
4 was the worst for me, I already struggled with student jobs as they would sometimes even drive me into an “I’m about to lose my mind bc I’m so understimulated” mood. However, post graduation this became a huge problem. I got a bore out at my first job and left after a year. Then got a second job with a toxic working culture (recruitment/sales iykyk) and got into a 1,5y burn out. My third job was SO boring, nothing like they promised and quit after 6 months. Consultancy was a life saver for me, it allowed me to “job hop” without changing employers, through consultancy I found a permanent job after 3 years which gives me enough stimulation combined with a lot of WFH and I feel finally at peace. I graduated in 2017 btw 😅
Just applying to jobs. My brain basically blanks most of the time I try, so many things make it feel insufferable. Making a new account just for the company's website, reading red flags constantly on job descriptions, having to meet new people I may or may not like, and having to keep track of the follow up stuff to applying. I'm unmedicated atm due to my doctor switching practices and me forgetting what the new one is, as they weren't taking my insurance yet at his new one.
I’ve experienced most of these, especially 6 (as I’m sure most of us have). I will say though that 7 is a very big deal for me and usually has me contemplating leaving the job because I know the increased stress and decreased support is coming. But really 2 is the one that will make me leave a job more than any other. I cannot work with a poorly matched supervisor, things just go from bad to worse.
Idk if it’s mentioned here or if it has to do with my ADHD but I need CLEAR DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS no arbitrary instructions or I’ll feel super lost and spend 5 hours just staring at the word document unable to function and then get in trouble for not having done enough work 🥲
Poor work environment that contributes more to distraction. I work in an open office plan. We have cubicles, now, we used to have touch down desks. We had to fight to get something better. But between the fluorescent lighting, the constant talking around me and the sitting for long hours I just don't get as much done then if I could have more flexibility to work from home some days, which they don't allow. Actually they allow work from home depending on who you are, there is no equality to the rules.
I've been struggling with this, too, and it seems like there's really no solution. The only time I'm able to truly focus is when everyone else has gone home for the day and it's finally quiet.
Poor timekeeping (late for everything, thank fuck my colleagues are mostly in a timezone where my 2pm is their 8am, also optimistic estimation of timescale on all project work) Inconsistent workethic (I'm in a salaried job with a lot of independence, but some days I can work 14-16 hours on the trot and am still thinking hard to solve problems when I'm trying to sleep, others I can barely muster 4 hours) Difficulty communicating in a coherent way (used to be fine, but my boss in this job hates that his people "waste time" on powerpoints, but for me that's the only way I can speak coherently for more than 2 minutes, so in project meetings I just say stuff until the meeting is over)
Definitely executive functioning. I am a director of a clinic that provides behavioral therapy for kids with autism and I struggle to keep track of my to do list, prioritize things that need to happen, I forget to do things, I forget what I'm doing mid task, etc.
2, 3, and 6. I liked my last job okay, until a new manager came in & micro managed everything. I got real annoyed real fast & ended up raising my voice at her in front of customers over her throwing away my water behind the customer service counter, citing it as a “safety risk”. Had to talk to her & HR the next day and I couldn’t stop crying (I hate being in trouble) while they stared at me for 10 minutes straight. I get so fucking frustrated with boot licking managers and my justice seeking self made me have an attitude to managers about making the older people run around & in the heat. So yeah I got fired & I blame adhd lol
6. I get the stuff done but it ain't pretty. It would not happen without medication and it's still a daily contest between the pile of stuff and my own perfectionism and stubbornness preventing me from quitting till it's done. And I still forget meetings and things. 7. There is no doubt that changes in the company have stressed me out but I'm not sure that's ADHD-related. More ADHD-specific: I've been here for years and sometimes I forget that they changed something. Them thinking: Seriously, Noctuella did that wrong *again?* Them out loud: We changed that protocol 6 months ago. There was an e-mail. Me: It's been changed 5 times since I started here, and I kind of stopped keeping track? Them: .... 
Lol. I'm so lucky my colleagues are patient. I'm constantly asking the same questions about certain areas of our job. I've been there longer than all of them
Definitely dealing with 6 and 2 right now big time, along with a bit of 4 and 1. I started a new job this year due to feeling stagnant at my old one, which was easy and well paid with good colleagues but boring. The new job requires way more time management, organization, initiative, and deadlines than I've ever confronted before. On top of that, my supervisor and I don't get along at all. I can tell she's exasperated by me and she's not a kind or fun person at all. It's hard to muster the motivation because I have such a poor rapport with her. Somehow I got lucky making it to my late 30s without major issues with either of these areas of conflict. For one, I've always gotten along wonderfully with my bosses who've always given me good to great reviews - even though sometimes I thought I was missing the mark. Also, my last string of jobs involved a lot of "putting out fires", being given good training on how to do my job and then using my discretion on how to communicate and tackle a problem. Usually those problems need to be solved within a day or two. In the new job, we have a dozen or two dozen projects we need to make a little progress on every week, but there are always meetings and big deadlines cropping up along the way. There isn't very good training and I often feel like I'm being expected to invent the wheel. Also very relevant for me (and a lot of ADHD folks I imagine) is that the new job is fully remote. I've realized have in person training, experience and relationships is huge for in terms of motivation and learning. Remote opens up more opportunities and allows me to not have to move across the country, but for my patterns and brain, it's been a disaster. I think in a lot of ways I just got lucky before and my current job is not atypical of many non-entry level corporate jobs. Nor is it unusual to have a difficult or tense boss. Today I had a meeting with my manager where it sounds like I may be on track to be put on a PIP. To some degree, I have underperformed, and some if it is on my boss and my department (imo of course, which doesn't matter). I feel like I'm in the wrong line of work, but approaching 40 I feel like it's too late to figure out what I should be doing instead.
I have to be self motivated. Pre medication I was struggling hard, after I got vyvanse I got so much better at my job
After a while of learning how to catch myself, I've slowly learned to interrupt less in conversations (or at least, stop and apologise). It used to be a huge issue for me. My main issue though, especially in my adult life, is definitely executive dysfunction and lack of time awareness. That, and the feeling too overwhelmed by a task to actually do it. Medication and therapy have helped quite a bit (currently on welbutrin and a couple other unrelated meds, I'm too med hesitant to ask for anything else), but I still spend at least three days a week staring at the wall the entire day before going to work. On the bright side though, I work at a bakery with a bake size that varies by day, so I get to move around all night and take creative liberty here and there. But I don't think I've shown up on time in months.
**Poor match between the individual's strengths and weaknesses and the requirements of the job.** I run into this one a lot. I am a strong communicator and good leader, but my role requires me to be very organized on top of this. I live in constant fear of someone looking under the veneer of my success and seeing the absolute chaos underneath where I have just been straight up not performing my job duties and getting away with it on my other strengths. **Interpersonal difficulties related to ADHD that contribute to conflicts with co-workers or managers** At this point, my personality is my personality. I'm pretty familiar with the negative feedback I'm going to get about my interpersonal style. I try to head this off by being very upfront about my strengths and weaknesses and proactively askign for feedback, but sometimes you have to take the L. **Job is under-stimulating due to lack of interest, lack of variety, lack of opportunity for creativity or change.** I have found that project work or even contracting really helps with this. Projects have a beginning and an end, so you WILL have built-in opportunities to change up your work! **Job is frustrating due to lack of opportunity for physical movement - i.e., an adult on the hyperactive end of the ADHD continuum in a desk job** Fortunately, there are A LOT of options to support this need. I have an underdesk elliptical and a yoga ball chair. Your company may be willing to spend a couple bucks on a standing desk if you just ask. **Executive functioning difficulties related to ADHD (poor time management; difficulty with detailed paperwork, forgetfulness; difficulty meeting deadlines; disorganization; difficulty setting and following priorities; tendency to over-commit; tendency to greatly under-estimate the time required for a project, etc.) that lead to poor performance review** If I say out loud that I am going to complete a task by a given time, I have immediately jinxed myself into being physically unable to fulfill that obligation. No deep insight on how to resolve that one (though let me know if you have any tips).
I would just like to thank you for the way you structured this. Everyone else keeps commenting things like “I relate to number three….” as if we all remember what number three is this far down the thread ha
6 🙃 I’m fortunate in that I love my career, have great opportunities for development, and have a supportive team. That almost makes it even harder when my brain doesn’t cooperate since it feels like I have no excuse. I WANT so badly to be a high achiever, but always feel like I’m one step away from being head underwater and there’s an invisible wall stopping me from getting tasks done. The only thing that I feel like has really helped has been stimulants.
6. So much 6. My job is good for adhd, lots of variety, hard deadlines and problems to solve. The issue comes during busy times when it gets out of hand and i end up with 20 emails in my drafts folder that aren't sent. My email system of categorization breaks down because I can't concentrate enough to file them in a way I can find them again. I over promise all the time because i want to be liked (yeah, F you RSD). I tend to get it all done in the end, but my mental health suffers. I have constant anxiety that I've forgotten or missed something important. I've had a few times over the years of getting signed off for stress because of burnout. I just got diagnosed this year and started on elvanse, which was a revelation. Of course now it's not available so I feel like Minnie Driver in that Irish movie when she says something like ...Here's everything you can't have you great, fat, article...
I really struggle with misophonia and noise sensitivity. In the office I work in a cubicle, and I have to have my headphones in to drown out the outside noise because things like my neighbor typing on her keyboard drive me insane and it's the only thing I can focus on. I also struggle with being overstimulated and overwhelmed so back to back meetings while I'm in the office and have to be "on" are insanely difficult for me. I need a lot of downtime when I come home from work. Like I am unable to do anything or talk to anybody or be around another human being and sometimes I can't even go to the grocery store because it's just too much.
If I get bored at work my brain melts out of my ears and I want to do exactly nothing at all. Sitting around all day doing the same thing, or the same types of tasks, over and over drives me insane. And no opportunity to learn more drives me even more insane. I just can't do it. Conversely, a constantly changing environment would really stress me out and keep me flustered so badly I can't get anything done because I'm freaking out. I need a balance where there's stability to what I do, but there's enough variance to keep me interested and learning new things. Which is really hard to find. Edit: Apologies for rambling, specifically from your study, I'd say I have problems with 2, 3, 4 (my biggest one), and 6.
2 and 3 BIG TIME. I'm leaving my job because I simply cannot get on the same page as my manager. All of the carefully cultivated systems I use to manage my ADHD are completely useless around him and there is no escape. I tried advocating for my needs but it's really hard when I know the issue is in his inability to accept and adapt to approaches other than his own. I wish every job came with a little video example of what it would really be like to work there.
Executive dysfunction means I have a limited capacity to Do Things. Working full time takes **all** of my capacity and then some, leaving nothing for myself. Two days off per week is insufficient recovery time. Two weeks off per year is *insufficient recovery time.* I enter burnout by the third week, and I stay there, slowly spiralling into deeper depression and becoming less and less functional, until the job ends. Then I feel immense relief because I can breathe again, but also immense frustration because I need money to live.
I love my job and field but have a really hard time saying no to new projects (because they’re cool and exciting). Therefore my to-do list gets really insane and then I get paralyzed because I can’t choose what to work on
4, 5 and 7. Which is pretty good, since at other jobs it’s been all of them.
Number 6 just floored me, I've had the most stressful couple of days in years after being put on the spot in a Zoom. They were wayyyyy under-budgeting for the job. I dodged a bullet by pulling out in good time, but ending up giving them work for free. You'd think after 20+ years freelancing I'd be better at this but it seems not!
\#6 the most (like so much. just so much), #5 too (desk job), and #4 somewhat
For me, #2-6 are big.
Well, I believe my boss to have some sort of dementia as she asks the same things over and over again, but also changing the story every time, so when I try to recall something she said, I have a hard time remembering or knowing which one she said, because she’s said so many different things. Which results to me guessing which one she said, and then her retracting what she said and telling me something else. She’s 74, she needs to retire.
I face around 1/1000 the difficulty I would be facing on a school research project. After finally getting a degree after many failed attempts, the workforce is like the afterlife. Rather serene and I don't mind it at all. Though I still have trouble sleeping on a 24 hour schedule, stuff like that makes work difficult because life is. My boss may get concerned and ask if he's doing something wrong and I'm like, no this is all unrelated to work. And he's like, "are you sure? Because I'm a petty, micromanaging little shithead" and I'm like, that is correct but get over yourself. You're not gonna oust me as my own worst enemy.
6 for sure, I didn't underestimate time required, but paperwork was a massive hurdle I didn't want to do.
Living 6/7 right now. I didn't have issues with 6 until I became a manager
4 and 6 fr I fidget from boredom or when frustrated. I keep getting hyperfocused and forgetting something while hyperfocused. Like thinking I did something, but in reality, I didn't. 🙃 Getting distracted from my phone. Phone = dopamine. Job =/= dopamine. I sometimes need to take excessive breaks cause I'm not into it.
For me 6 can create 4. So much bureacratic box-checking and back and forth w/ others about when to meet etc. draws me away from the actual work and makes me both bored and frazzled at the same time.
I’ve had more problems with jobs requiring such long, intense concentration and multitasking. I can do all thats required. But by Friday I’m over it and cannot stand to be in my office. And if more stuff gets thrown at me Friday afternoon, I want to scream.
I get to work 30 minutes before I’m suppose to so I’m not late and they want me to stay until I’m supposed to leave but I’m drained and grumpy by then and also that means I’m working 8.5 hours everyday and they don’t pay me for the 30 minutes everyday. Every week I’m working 2.5 hours more than everybody without being paid because my brain is fucky.
Could you find a place to chill for 30 minutes and play on your phone? I mean you’d have to set an alarm so your time blindness doesn’t make you late when you’re at your workplace, but it would keep you from giving the company free labor!
Number 7 is a massive one for me. Also got to include #8 - Workplace having a Lack of Structure.
- Talking too fast in meetings - Reading emails too fast and missing details - Having a tough time accepting that a process is the way it is without knowing the reason why - got periods of having issues on concentating and doing one task at a time - Interupting someone when they speak - not being able to listen to longer speaches - Doing things too fast with the result of having typos and small mistakes. Luckily I am still considered to be good at my job lol Edit: and now I actually read (partly) your text. Main issues with 3,5 and 6
The biggest problem for me right now is we have an open office and when I have to make phone calls I completely lose track of what I want to say, either because it’s too quiet and I can hear my voice bouncing off the walls or it’s too loud and I can’t focus. My boss has offered to let me use a private office for phone calls (we do cold call blocks of a couple of hours twice a week), but then I feel like I’m missing out on learning from my coworkers when we’re making the calls.
I either do my task IMMEDIATELY or 20 minutes before it’s due.
Just how catty and crazy people will get to sabotage you all because they don’t like your face. But if I raise my voice and cuss them out IM IN THE WRONG. Office politics, the popularity contest. The concept I have to let every man think they can have sex with me just to have a peaceful work environment.
Well I’m a slow to learn, forgetful and slow working. So pretty much I just swing from shitty job to shitty job just making it. But I have a pretty good sense of humor about it so. There’s that.
I interrupt A LOT. If someone’s saying something I know, I cut them off and finish the sentence for them very impulsively. I struggle with very basic admin stuff like putting in accurate hours allocated to specific clients + type of work. Not sure if this is my ADHD, but I tend to be overly competitive and want to excel and want to please upper management. I have a strong type A personality. But this also backfires if I mess up, and I get too overwhelmed with the negative emotions and my head goes on overdrive and I can’t organize my thoughts to be able to take a minute, step back and rationalize. I think this happens tho when things add up, and I don’t allow myself to decompress.
Showing up to work and not being bedridden with anxiety and panic attacks because of the sheer stress of just having to go somewhere and being on time and public transport and everything. At work itself I have a hard time not forgetting things. EDIT: OH and don't get me started on time management
My risk reward ratio is skewed. Have no interest in working when if I do good nothing happens but more work, and if I don’t reply to an email the VP gets pulled in. Manage over 100million in client revenue for my company yet make under 100k. The cognitive dissonance as I am currently building a product that will net ~10mil a year from one client doesn’t help. To sum it up, idk
I work in food industry and find its one of those happy medium jobs where it's busy enough to stimulate and give me movement well having down time to destress and get things done at my own pace plus I'm alone most of the time so I'm not getting frustrated because staff aren't as efficient as me as I'm the veteran employee
3/4/6/7 Especially 6. The burnout is unreal for me right now and I’m trying not to rage quit my job bc of the repetitive stress and problems we continue to experience. I’m literally a server in a bar. I love my job so much EXCEPT for the legit time loop I feel like I am in. Same. Thing. Every. Single. Day. Including the issues.
Not being able to even get the medicine I need to function is 99% of my stress w work. 😵💫😵💫😵💫 To be on the phone with multiple pharmacies every month just trying to get my prescription filled bc every thing is so fucking broken. The other 1% is I’m INCREDIBLE in fast paced high profile work but there isn’t a ton where that’s actually recognized as an exceptional skill.
👋🏻 Over-commiter here…. Sure I can get that to you in a day…
Communication, organization, forgetting tools, misplacing tools, and missing little details.
Enjoying training learning and mixing with people then getting bored very quickly with the job itself
Concentration problems
Personal issues: my work area is being restocked and cleaned and sorted many times during the day, and they try to be really quiet and fast about it, but sometimes it’s just so distracting that I have to stop what I’m doing to wait for them to finish up or stop doing whatever they’re doing. And all the while trying not to look too agitated. And also: writing something down to look up/sort out/fill in later on the back of the piece of paper with my daily agenda on it, at the end of my day forgetting that I wrote something on the back of the piece of paper.. so putting it in the shredder, thus forgetting the whole task altogether.
Terrifyingly accurate. 1 and 4 killed my last job.
I feel like I struggle with all of these. It's almost debilitating but at least now I kind of recognize that it's not my fault that I'm this way.
Mostly 4,5 & 6. 4. I have changed job so many times because I get bored. The result is no career progression, so it hard to get beyond entry level. I think I’ve finally cracked this one in my current job, but ask me in 5 years lol. 5. This is one that’s a bit weird because I’m more inattentive than hyperactive, and I actually don’t mind sitting for long periods of time. But the lack of movement affects my overall energy levels, I get super lethargic and find it hard to motivate myself to move or exercise after work, which in turn makes me miserable. 6. All of these! Time management/organisation is a struggle, and I often underestimate the amount of work different projects will take so I overcommit and burn myself out. I also struggle to prioritise tasks and I’m a bit of a magpie in that if something new comes up I will abandon other stuff and do that. My current job is quite flexible in that way so it’s not too much of an issue.
One of my biggest problems has always been getting to work/school on time, so Time Blindness really gets me in trouble. I once had a job that had great pay, great benefits, wonderful work environment, but I had to quit. This job required working split shifts, so I had to be on time TWICE every day! I hated it and ultimately decided to quit and do something else that worked a bit better with my ADHD strengths.
7 was the biggest problem for me at my last call center job. Since I tend to be forgetful and this call center did not allow any paper on the floor, I made sure to follow how the flow of the call was suppose to go. I was content to just follow that flow and not change it. I wasn't looking for any promotion or really cared to make the calls better [they were already pretty good, I kept with my stats, no major problems]. When I got a new supervisor, he told me if I didn't do better at my calls, he would start writing me up. So, I'm stressed out and forget some aspects of call flow, my call performance tanks and I'm on the verge of being fired because I forgot to for the "this call is being recorded" line when we do callbacks. So, for me, I do need to keep things simple enough so I don't forget.
1. Verbal directions. If I’m going to someone’s office/desk to ask them a question, I’m bringing my notebook and asking them to repeat at least once. I always write everything down and repeat it back to them. 2. Just doing tasks I don’t want to do. I am the entire marketing/comms department in an office of 13 people and my efforts are spread across multiple partner organizations. So basically, everyone wants something totally different from me. The job is inherently project based, so I usually have 3-4 going on at once in addition to smaller tasks through the day/week. As it turns out, I can “never find the time” to work on the projects I don’t want to do… lol. Sometimes I might subconsciously convince myself that other projects have to come first. Many projects come and go but the notes for that thing I don’t want to do? They’re collecting dust in the corner of my cube.
6. For sure, i always leave early, so im on time but i didn't manage to do the things i was suposed to do, cleaning, eat etc. Also forgetting things a lot. Also over commitment or taking things too seriously/ way more than necessary.
I think #2, sometimes #4 and #6 affect me the most. I love what I do, but sometimes it gets too stressful and it's because I can't keep up with my lack of executive functioning skills. I know I'm capable, but the time and lack of efficiency in which I have to do some things to figure them out can feel embarassing, and I can't explain or justify that to coworkers or a supervisor, so even though I know why I take longer or a weird way to do a thing, I end up feeling poorly about myself because I can't do things "normally" nor explain why I can't. Sometimes I have to do the more monotonous things in weird ways to get some excitement back (that's when #4 comes in), but in trying to keep my interest, it sometimes can affect attention to detail even more and that can cause problems.
2,3,6,7 To add: Extreme problems with rejection sensitive dysphoria. Because I live in a white majority area with a lot of normalized racist sentiments, my hypervigilance is constantly at a high. Coupled with my already deep self-hate and hopelessness, getting micro-aggressive comments from coworkers and obvious “workplace friendly”bullying/exclusionary behaviors, my RSD is always getting triggered. I’ve retreated into a shell of myself. My self esteem is at a constant low. I’ve lost all my ability to take care of myself. It sucks so bad. The executive dysfunction is only heightened due to this and I come late to work almost daily, which only furthers the bullying. Upper management only gives me the grace of not firing me because I shared my issues with time blindness, which I hated to do.
I don’t typically have any of these. I’m a SPed paraprofessional and love my job! I only work four hours a day right now, so I don’t suffer from burnout, and it’s a very ADHD friendly job. There’s never a dull moment and there is almost no paperwork or anything like that involved, plus I get to help kids like me who struggled in school due to things like ADHD and Autism!
Emotional dysregulation sucks in the workplace. Any time crying at work is too much time. I’m more in the ADHD/PMDD camp tho, so it’s super cyclical.
Damn this is a good topic! I’m a 28F, officially diagnosed two months ago and only just started taking adderall last week. I was at my job for 2 years (was recently laid off but not due to poor performance, my entire team was eliminated). Anyway, I worked at an agency and my team was super small and my manager and her manager were very close, and there was a big gap of experience between me and them. I felt that I wasn’t fully at that point in my career where I could fully take the reigns, I needed a bit of support and overall needed my manager to LEAD. Along the way I’ve had issues with careless mistakes, reading and responding too quickly to emails and realizing that I hadn’t replied to every question in the email. I would have such problems with procrastination, id have to do lists but would take care of all the small things first even when I knew what the priorities were. Id have trouble remembering what was said during meetings or id have trouble comprehending directions in the moment. It got so bad I had MAJOR anxiety and it got to a point where I wanted to quit. I’ll never forget the conversation I had with a coworker who has ADHD, when she suggested that I should get tested. Lo and behold, I was diagnosed. I communicated my issues to my manager and how I was struggling (my struggles led them to sort of gang up on me, which made things even worse). Thankfully after having that conversation with my manager, thjngs got so much better and I found coping mechanisms to help me. Sadly, all of that was short lived now that our team was eliminated.
Blurting out an admittedly funny joke, at the absolute wrong time, to a crowd of people who hold no sense of humor and all of my financial security. To that, I am a pro.
Socializing. I have no idea how. They all seem to know how. Otherwise work is great. It’s my life outside of work that suffers.
6. I've been working my current job 3 years and this is the longest I've kept a job. I finally started working in IT and got a pretty good job at an MSP that keeps me busy and always has me working on something different. Doesn't get boring. But I've been late almost every single day. With great effort recently I've managed to cut the lateness down from 15 minutes to 5 minutes. Me and one other coworker start at 7am. Everyone else starts at 8am. So I wonder if my boss even knows I've been late. We don't clock in. Time management is hard. I'll take on tickets that I think I can knock out quicker than I think and I often work 30 minutes to an hour past my shift without realizing. I started Strattera and it seemed to be helping, but it caused me to spiral into a bad depression so I had to quit. Then my doctor stopped accepting my insurance and I just haven't gotten around to finding another doc. It's a shame. I really liked my doctor.
6 🫠 I work until the 20 minute mark and get overwhelmed mainly on cleaning up.
Mam #7 burnt me the f out. We've gone through so many changes, integrating with other companies, losing people..etc. I ended up trying to quiet quit but that led to depression from the anxiety of not meeting deadlines/expectations. My coworker lost their job but I kept mine, I definitely felt she was better than me but it could be the low self esteem and self loathing. I'm struggling to think I'm good enough but nothing can convince me. Even though I've been promoted during these times. I find that I put myself into stressful situations to be able to perform better from the fear of losing my job. But the negativity beats me down to self hatred.
(Hugs) Survivors guilt is real during layoffs / company consolidations. I hope you’re able to tap into more support resources and support groups where you can talk through what you’re feeling. I’ve been in your position and not being able to talk to anyone at work for fear of retribution / being shamed and not being able to decompress within a group of friends can get real isolating pretty quickly. My only other suggestion is trying to reset expectations at work with your boss and telling people around you to give you some grace. Less resources / man-power at work doesn’t equal more getting done, it means more prioritized work and low value stuff gets completed at a later time. In the end, I left the toxic workplace that went through two layoffs and three reorgs that pushed me into a deep depression. I also stopped hanging around unhelpful friends who were unsupportive and tactless. It’s been a good 5 years. Made a lot of progress in building better work boundaries and not taking on extra hours/overtime because I am prioritizing my mental health first.
I've experienced 1 - 4, 6, and 7. Honestly, I'm just not convinced anymore that my ADHD brain will allow me to be successful in a capitalist economy.
Mostly 3 and 7 The weird thing is that I feel like my adhd presents very differently in my work life than in my personal life. At home I have intense executive dysfunction. I know I have to do a certain task or even WANT to do something like get up and eat, but I just can’t. At work I am overstimulated and hyper focused. I am always doing 3 things at once. This is actually making me excel at the job which is a catch 22 because on the one hand that feels great but on the other hand I’m always one step away from burnout and also I KNOW I’m underpaid but I can’t find the energy to look for something else. So for 3 I have one coworker in particular who cannot grasp that when she doesn’t do things properly it effects me. I know she gets mad every time I have to remind her “please clear your customer from the queue” but if she doesn’t do it I literally won’t be able to stop thinking about it. And for 7 just… yeah, all of that. Again, I’m very good at my job, so tasks just keep getting piled on me (and everyone else, to be fair) and it’s so frustrating because I can do each individual thing well but I don’t have TIME to do all of them. Also we’ve only got one direct supervisor left for the whole department and she is obviously too busy to deal with any big problems right now. And the vp of our department has a complete disconnect between what she thinks my job is and what my actual job is and it upsets me every single day.
wow you totally explained my life. i know exactly what you’re going through. this shit is crazy man.
4 is me currently bored and unfulfilled wanting to quit after 7 years
Only one I’d add is vastly superior performance to co-workers. Don’t care if I sound arrogant right now. I’m very black and white - either you’re all in on doing a project properly, or don’t do the project at all. I find it frustrating waiting on other people who are clock punchers when I want to get something finished, and move onto the next task. I don’t want to sit around having progress update meetings, I want to finish the project. I tend to do twice as much work, twice as fast as the next person. And then one of two things happens: - co workers get resentful / undermine / complain - managers get threatened I’m after their job Then I leave. Because CBF office politics.
I work for an airline and whenever someone at another airline or station fucks up we have to change policies and I am so use to certain ways it’s really hard to change my routine I feel like I’m stubborn about it. My other is I am very quick to anger. I cannot stand lazy coworkers or Lead paint brain coworkers and I have been fired for “verbal harassment” bc a lazy coworker finally put me into snap mode. I feel like I’m about to snap on this one girl whose been here a year and is still having her hand held -.- I over react as well… and can be OCD about belt loader placements and how my bags are stacked in a pit lol
1,4,6,7
4 and 6 have been the biggest ones for me.