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Do "in the moment" interests sideline your future goals? Feel like you're always rushing to get stuff done? Work well under pressure but poorly without it?
These qualities indicate trouble with executive functioning skills, which are greatly impacted by ADHD. Since time management and prioritizing are executive functioning skills, people with ADHD can find themselves in daily battles to take control of their time.
An ADHD brain does not "feel" time the way a typical brain does. Intellectually, ADHD brains understand the weight of deadlines, the importance of planning ahead, and the value of delayed gratification but they don't feel the weight of deadlines, the importance of planning ahead, and the value of delayed gratification in the same way a typical person does, which makes it difficult to attend to tasks promptly, no matter their importance. This can be frustrating to people with ADHD as their actions often do not match their desires.
It can also be frustrating to others, too, who may feel the person with ADHD is acting selfishly or lazily. This is not the case. People with ADHD spend a great deal of energy trying to force their uncooperative brains into compliance, which can add emotional distress to task completion.
Notably, negative experiences from the past do little to help a person with ADHD with task management in the future. A person with ADHD does not have a nervous system built around rewards and punishments, but, rather, a nervous system based on interests. This does not mean interests as in, "it would be in my best interest to complete this task," but interests as in, "I am going to do this task because I am fascinated by it."
It's easy to see how this type of brain structure might make task management and prioritization difficult, no matter the consequences. It's also easy to see how this brain structure could provide unique opportunities for high achievement as passion can take over in a constructive way.
One of my favorite resources for ADHD material, additudemag.com, describes the conditions likely to help a person with ADHD complete a task:
Interest
Competition
Novelty
Urgency
While these conditions are not always easy to come by in a world built for typical brains, and might not always be realistic, with compassionate understanding, parents, teachers, and employers can help support people with ADHD by creating or allowing a positive working environment unique to their needs. Also, people with ADHD can learn how to create these conditions for themselves.
What might that look like?
Interest
Sara is struggling in math and loves to jump rope. Her mother teaches her a multiplication table jump rope rhyme. Sara loves the one-on-one attention and challenge of skipping rope while chanting her rhyme.
To teach how to write a research paper, a teacher allows her students to pick their own topic.
Jim's boss realizes Jim excels at selling certain products and not others. He gives Jim freedom to choose which products to focus on.
Competition
Dad challenges the kids to pick up the living room before he finishes the kitchen.
A teacher splits her classroom into two teams for a review game.
An editor-in-chief sets up a contest for the best headline of the month.
Novelty
Mom tells the kids they have to pick up their board game using only their toes.
A teacher uses sugar cube bricks to teach geometry.
An accountant is given a tour of the chocolate factory he is completing books for.
Urgency
Mom tells her kids they have twenty seconds to put away all the red items in the room.
A teacher describes a real-world problem and asks her students to help solve it.
Tim's boss gives Tim a project that must be completed by 4:00 p.m.
While ADHD-friendly strategies for task completion may not be possible or necessary at all times, they can come in handy as a workaround when a person with ADHD is having a particularly difficult time with a task.
ADHD brains simply do not work the same way as typical brains, especially when it comes to tasks. Letting go of strategies and standards that work for typical people and embracing ADHD-friendly strategies is the first step in creating an environment of productivity that supports the unique needs of the ADHD brain.
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