9
An ADD-Friendly Work Environment
In this Chapter
This chapter focuses on aspects of the work environment that can either help or hinder you. Whether you are trying to make improvements in your current job or are looking for a new job, the discussion in this chapter can help you.
What is an ADD-Friendly Work Environment?
The key to success begins with understanding yourself and your needs. Adults with ADD have a variety of needs. A work environment in which most of these needs are met can be described as “ADD friendly.” Knowing your own needs is critical to your finding or creating an ADD-friendly environment.
An ADD-friendly work environment is one that enhances your ability to function well as an adult with ADD. A number of factors— both physical and interpersonal—make a workplace ADD-friendly. Your relationship with your boss or immediate supervisor is certainly one of the most important factors—important enough to merit a separate chapter in this book (see Chapter 10).
There are ADD-friendly job factors that apply to most adults with ADD, but there are undoubtedly other factors critical for you that are not mentioned here. It cannot be repeated enough that (1) there are wide differences among adults with ADD and that (2) you, as an adult with ADD, need to take responsibility for yourself, your choices, and for advocating for your needs on the job.
Stress is extremely ADD-unfriendly. Adults with ADD are more susceptible to the effects of stress than are their non-ADD colleagues.1 High stress increases ADD symptoms. Increased severity of ADD symptoms are typically one of the first signs of stress. You may think that you are calm during a particularly stressful period at work, but then suddenly you realize that you are forgetting more things, are less organized, and are letting things slip through the cracks. During periods when your ADD seems worse, the first culprit to look for is stress.
How is stress created? Although the same things are not stressors for all people, the following are commonly considered to be stressors on the job:
Stress Factors on the Job
Long hours at work
A long commute in heavy traffic
Fear of being fired
Fear for the company’s future
New management
Crisis-style management
High criticism and low praise from a supervisor
Unrealistic demands for high productivity
Frequent deadlines
Financial concerns
Unclear duties and responsibilities
Conflictual relationships with coworkers
Promotion that emphasizes areas of weakness
We are only focusing here on workplace stressors, but stressors in your personal life can also have a negative impact on your ADD symptoms at work. These should be monitored and managed as well.
Low stress
=
ADD friendly
Stimulation
Stress should not be confused with stimulation. Stress refers to things that are distressing, whereas a stimulating job challenges you, piques your interest, gets your juices flowing. Ideal levels of stimulation can reduce ADD symptoms! Each person has his or her own level of optimal stimulation. It is important that you learn what your optimal level of stimulation is and that you learn ways to create and maintain that optimal level.
When you are working at your optimal level of stimulation, you are most likely to function in a focused, creative, and tremendously effective fashion. However, stimulation is a double-edged sword. While optimal stimulation can reduce ADD symptoms and maximize effectiveness, overstimulation can be stress and can increase your ADD symptoms.
How would you rate the stimulation level of your current job? In most jobs the stimulation level varies. Your goal should be to find or create a job that has the right level of stimulation most of the time. It may help to review all of your previous jobs and to rate each of them in terms of stimulation. Here are some things that might be helpful to think about as you consider the stimulation level of your current job:
Your level of interest in the job
Opportunity for creativity
Opportunity to learn new skills
Degree of interaction with others
Opportunity for travel
Pace of work
Degree of freedom to pursue your own interests
UNDERSTIMULATION
Repetitive, Routine, Boring
OPTIMAL STIMULATION
Challenging, Interesting, Engaging
OVERSTIMULATION
Overwhelming, Exhausting, Frenzied
Stimulation and Personality Type
What is stimulating varies from person to person, according to interests and personality type (see Chapter 6, ADD and Personality Type at Work).2,3 In this section certain aspects of personality are discussed, as defined by the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
If you are not sure of your personality type, you may find it helpful to take the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator so that you can take your type into account as you think about how to create your optimal stimulation zone at work.
Extroversion-Introversion
Extroverts (E’s) need people interaction to function optimally. E’s who are isolated run the risk of slumping into the “understimulation zone,” where they may experience boredom and restlessness and are prone to underfunctioning. Introverts (I’s), by contrast, should guard against too much interpersonal interaction that may push them into the “overstimulation zone,” where ADD symptoms worsen.
Sensing-Intuition
Sensors (S’s) function best when they are busy accomplishing practical things—making, fixing, building, curing, or solving practical problems. S’s often find it very satisfying to do things with their hands. An S will not be stimulated by an “all talk and no action” environment. Intuitives (N’s), on the other hand, are most stimulated by that very environment. N’s love the world of ideas, the world of the possible rather than the actual. N’s are stimulated in the best way when they are imagining, writing, creating, and thinking.
Thinking-Feeling
Thinkers (T’s) love to analyze in a detached, problem-solving fashion. A group of T’s may feel wonderfully stimulated as they work to understand why a machine is malfunctioning or how a certain economic formula may be applied. This same group of T’s, however, may feel terribly stressed when the problem that needs solving involves people and feelings. The people-oriented problems that are typically stressful to T’s are life’s blood to Feelers (F’s), who are most stimulated by working with people, by empathizing, helping, and doing something “meaningful.” F’s would feel detached and understimulated if they did work that involved things instead of people.
Judging-Perceiving
Judgers (J’s) thrive on structure and will try to create it if it isn’t provided in the work environment. J’s tend to find an unpredictable work environment highly stressful and distracting, whereas organization and structure help them find their zone of optimal stimulation. Perceivers (P’s) are in their optimal zone when they have the freedom to be spontaneous and flexible. In a highly structured, rigid work environment, a P will feel either bored (high structure, slow pace) or stressed (high structure, fast pace).
ADD Traits and Optimal Stimulation
In addition to personality factors, there are a number of ADD traits that vary from one ADD adult to another and that strongly influence the degree and types of stimulation desirable at work.
Intolerance of Routine
Many adults with ADD have little tolerance for routine. Their needs for change and challenge may translate into changing jobs with some frequency. These individuals love the challenge and creativity involved in developing a program or product, but they become bored or frustrated with the day-to-day operations of maintaining what they have created. Thom Hartmann talks about this phenomenon among entrepreneurs with ADD and strongly counsels them to plan on turning over the day-to-day operations of their enterprises to a managerial type.4
Challenge of Problem-Solving
Some adults with ADD recognize a pattern of restlessness and need for change in themselves and actively seek work that allows opportunity for job change. One adult with ADD, for example, is employed in a think tank in Washington, D.C. He reports that this job is ideal for him because every few weeks or months he is working on a new project with different people and is traveling to different places. His rapid flow of creative ideas resulting from his ADD is a strong asset for him in this work situation. Another gifted adult with ADD has developed a career making educational documentaries for television. Again, his need for change and stimulation and his flow of creative ideas make him ideally suited to this type of work (although he has learned to leave the administrative details to others!).
Physical Stimulation
Some adults with ADD find that they need the stimulation provided by action, movement, and physical change. These are the “don’t fence me in” types who typically report that they could never sit behind a desk all day. Rather than the intellectual stimulation required by some, these ADD adults like geographical change and physical movement.
One man with ADD developed his own private demolition company. He loved the risk, the movement, the rough-and- tumble interaction with the men who worked under him. Another action-oriented ADD adult went into the car auction business. Crisscrossing several states in his region of the country, he bought cars at auction and resold them to local dealers. He loved the irregular schedule, the easy social interaction with other men at the auction, and the challenge of recognizing the worth of a car and making a shrewd bargain.
Yet another man with ADD held a job as the head of a construction crew employed by a large company with franchised outlets around the country. The crew’s task was to completely remodel shopping center space to the specifications of the company within a period of 3 to 5 days. This ADD adult liked the variety and challenge inherent in designing and building to suit a particular space and franchisee. Like other restless, hyperactive ADD men, he liked alternating between the intensity of the work and the several days of slack time between work periods.
Social Stimulation
Social stimulation is essential for some adults with ADD. Sales, lobbying, politics, entertainment, and public relations all hold an appeal for ADD adults who have a strong need for social stimulation. Of course, there are adults with ADD who are drawn to combinations of these sources of stimulation. One young woman, for example, finally chose to leave the academic environment, which she had found too sedentary and frustrating, to enter the world of haute cuisine. There she found a combination of physical activity, social interaction, opportunity for creativity, and constant new challenges.
Thinking about the types of stimulation described in the preceding several paragraphs in light of your particular ADD tendencies and personality traits may help you gain a better understanding of the types of stimulation that are best for you.
One ADD young man had an incredible stroke of luck when his family arranged for him to become a page on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., during his high school years. Because he was extremely restless and had little interest in academics, he would probably have done poorly in a typical high school environment. On Capitol Hill, however, the pages attend high school only a few hours each morning and then spend the remainder of their day talking, interacting, and running errands for busy senators and representatives. It was a perfect environment for him. Rather than attending college, he remained on Capitol Hill, where he was widely known and admired, and worked his way into higher levels of employment on the force of his energy, personality, and experience.
Freedom from Distractions
Another important factor in the ideal ADD-friendly work environment is the intensity and frequency of distractions. People with ADD struggle with problems of distraction under the best of circumstances. It’s important to look for a work environment that is as nondistracting as possible. In the modular office environment so common today, freedom from the following distractors is not easy to achieve:
People traffic
Phone calls
Interruptions by coworkers, messengers, visitors
General noise pollution from the operation of office equipment
Seek a Quiet Work Space
The ideal setting for an adult with ADD is, of course, a private office. For most workers, however, this is not a feasible option. If you work in a modular environment, ask for a cubicle out of the line of traffic. Seek a cubicle that is not near the photocopying machine, the water fountain, the boss’s office, or along the main corridor down which everyone walks. If you lack even the benefit of a modular office space, you can request portable screens to surround your desk on three sides to cut down on both visual and auditory distractions.
Noise pollution can be diminished through the use of headphones or a small white noise machine near your desk. Visual distraction can be minimized by placing your desk chair so that you face away from the opening to your cubicle. Other important visual dis- tractors, however, may be found within your own cubicle! Even non- ADD adults tend to work more efficiently when they work in a neat, orderly work space with a clean desktop.
Schedule Interruptions
The interruption of phone calls can be minimized by taking all your calls as voice mail. In that way you can set aside blocks of time to listen to your voice mail and return calls at your own convenience, instead of allowing random incoming calls to interrupt your work and destroy your concentration. One man with ADD had to make an additional accommodation for a boss who needed to be able to contact him immediately rather than resort to voice mail: He carried a beeper that signaled him that his boss had called so that he could return the call immediately.
Time-Shift Your Work Hours
Meetings and casual interruptions are essential to manage if you are to function efficiently in the workplace as an adult with ADD. One way to enhance work efficiency is to arrive early or stay late, so that you have a block of time each day with few, if any, interruptions. If you are working on an important project, ask permission to be absent from nonessential meetings so that your train of thought isn’t broken. It is helpful to develop an automatic, diplomatic way to let people who drop by your office for a quick question or comment know you are busy. Better yet, suggest that they send you E-mail or a memo!
Minimal Paperwork
It is no surprise that paperwork tends to be the bane of the workplace for adults with ADD. Paperwork entails all the functions that are difficult and frustrating for people with attentional problems, namely, attending to detail, organizing thoughts, meeting deadlines, and fighting boredom.
One man with ADD held a rather high-level government position in which he enjoyed the services of an administrative assistant. Through a departmental reorganization he lost his assistant. Shortly thereafter his performance ratings began to decline. The mountains of paperwork, for which the government is well known, became overwhelming. Although he could perform the more complex interpersonal and intellectual aspects of his work, he found himself unable to keep up with paperwork demands. His once promising career deteriorated into an unsatisfying job for which he was ill suited.
Other adults with ADD have reported similar, though less dramatic, stories. Keeping track of travel expenses and time sheets is often a chronic point of tension for adults with ADD.
One young man with ADD was employed as a social worker in a large social service agency. His job was to interview many people each day to determine their eligibility for various social services. Each client was required to provide a rather large number of documents. The social worker was expected to keep track of each case, to complete all paperwork, and to keep a record of documents that were yet to be provided by each client. After several months on the job he was hopelessly behind. A mountain of charts lay in complete disarray on his desk. After repeated warnings, he was finally asked to leave his position owing to his inability to keep up with the paperwork. Fortunately, this young man sought treatment for his ADD. In the course of his therapy, he formulated a plan to seek a job in which he could use his social work training but that had minimal paperwork requirements. He found such work in a psychiatric hospital, where his duties were to interact with patients and staff, lead group meetings, give oral reports on the status of each patient, and write a brief note in each patient’s chart at the end of his daily shift. By finding an ADD-friendly position, he changed from an employee with an unsatisfactory work record to a highly regarded, dedicated staff member.
Needless to say, in seeking an ADD-friendly job, it is important to look for one in which paperwork is simplified, streamlined, and deemphasized—or, best of all, one in which you can seek the assistance of someone else to keep up with the flow of paperwork!
Short-Term Projects
An important feature of ADD-friendly work is involvement with projects of limited duration. Complicated long-term projects can result in diminished interest over time, procrastination, reduced motivation, poor planning, faulty follow-through, and strained organizational skills. Adults with ADD are often much better suited for more immediate tasks.
One woman with ADD had a job that involved responding immediately to incoming telephone calls. Each caller had specific questions that had to be researched and responded to on the spot. There was no opportunity for procrastination, no requirement to respond to several calls at once, and no possibility of becoming forgetful or disorganized. The woman described this as the perfect job for her ADD. She always had something immediate and different to stimulate her, and there was no leftover paperwork at the end of the day.
Help with Long-Term Projects
Long-term projects that require planning and organizational skills are often the downfall of adults with ADD. If you are in a job with a strong emphasis on such projects, your best approach is to emphasize teamwork so that individuals better suited to the planning and monitoring of the project can take major responsibility for those aspects, leaving you freer to focus on problem solving (often an ADD strength) or on short, clearly defined aspects of the long-term project.
An ADD-friendly job that entails long-term projects will provide the following:
Clearly defined short-term tasks.
Regular (weekly, perhaps even daily) feedback from a supervisor
Teamwork with someone more skilled in long-term planning
“Big Picture” Emphasis
The ideal ADD-friendly job is one in which the “big picture” skills of the adult with ADD are emphasized and the details are left to a more focused, detail-oriented non-ADD individual. Hard to manage details often include:
Scheduling
Paperwork requirements
Multistep bureaucratic procedures
Keeping track of addresses and phone numbers
Filing
Limited Supervisory Responsibility
Being promoted to a position that requires the supervision and management of others can be the downfall of an adult with ADD since such a position requires one to monitor and guide others, attend to details, and assume multiple, sometimes competing, responsibilities. These tasks tend to be difficult for adults with ADD who have difficulty with self-monitoring and in attending to the details of their own work. When the responsibility for others is added, they may become overwhelmed and disorganized.
The promotion, the raise, the prestige are often temptations too strong to resist. ADD adults who have worked hard to become expert in their field often find that when they are promoted to management, they shift from peak functioning to faltering. They have moved into a position that calls on their weaknesses rather than their strengths.
Be Realistic
There are certainly ADD people whose symptoms are mild or whose compensatory skills are excellent who can do an adequate or even good job as a manager. If you decide to accept such a position, though, it is important that you recognize the potential pitfalls. If you have made your best efforts and find the job still isn’t right for you, don’t try to hang in there no matter what. Recognize the problem for what it is, namely, a job that emphasizes your areas of weakness, and head for a more ADD-friendly position.
Breaks from Extended Concentration
Long conferences and half-day or all-day meetings are extremely tiring and stressful for those with ADD. They typically surpass the concentration span of non-ADD adults. An “ADD-friendly” job rarely requires the individual to focus and concentrate for such long periods without opportunity for breaks. If you are in a job where such meetings are inevitable, arrange to take brief breaks independently if enough breaks are not scheduled during the meeting. In addition some adults with ADD find that their attention span is extended if they take notes during the meeting.
Opportunity for Movement
A chance to move about frequently during the workday is very important for restless or hyperactive adults. Ideally such movement is a natural part of the job. Some adults who are on the hyperactive end of the spectrum specifically look for jobs in which they are on their feet and moving about most of the day.
Physical Environment
An ADD-friendly physical environment has good lighting, clean air, and a comfortable temperature; is reasonably quiet, spacious, and orderly; and includes a comfortable desk and chair. People with ADD are sometimes hypersensitive to certain aspects of their physical environment, aspects that may be only minor irritants to others. If this is true for you, there is no need to feel defensive or apologetic; often there is a neurological basis for this type of hypersensitivity. Hypersensitive children, for example, may be extremely irritated by wool or scratchy material and even by labels and seams in their clothing. Such hypersensitivity may be due to problems with what is called sensory integration.
You may find that you are bothered by loud sounds or by sounds at certain pitches. Some people with ADD are extra sensitive to the flickering of fluorescent lighting. Irritants in the physical work environment all take their toll, increasing fatigue, distractibility, and other ADD symptoms. Don’t condemn yourself as being too picky if you find that you are more sensitive than your coworkers to environmental irritants; you’re not being picky, you’re being “ADD-smart.”
High Interest
It almost goes without saying that an ADD-friendly job is one that holds your interest. In fact, high interest and motivation are two of the most powerful forces to use in your battle against ADD problems. There is no magic formula for determining which job will be of high interest to a specific individual, but reading this book may help you in making your choice.
To sum it all up, there are many important factors that in combination create an ADD-friendly work environment.
A Quick Checklist of ADD-Friendly Job Characteristics
❶ | Low stress |
❷ | Optimal stimulation |
❸ | Nondistracting workspace |
❹ | Minimal paperwork |
❺ | Short-term projects |
❻ | Assistance with long-term projects |
❼ | Emphasis on the “big picture”—not on details |
❽ | Limited supervisory duties |
❾ | Opportunity for movement / breaks from demand for concentration |
❿ | Comfortable physical environment |
| High interest activity |
No workplace environment is perfect. It is ureasonable to ask for perfection, but you should take your reactions seriously. Think about yourself and your reactions to the workplace factors listed in this chapter. Then compare the most important factors to your current workplace environment. Can you think of creative ways to reduce and minimize problems? Perhaps this chapter will give you ideas of ways to improve your current job and of things to look for in your next job.