How Adult ADHD Impacts Life: From Struggles to Strengths
written by Dr. Liz Nissim, posted on Psychology Today
When ADHD makes its way into adulthood, it can impact areas of life such as work, living independently, self-care, and relationships. It can feel like a constant juggling act where most of the balls are falling on the ground on a regular basis. Let’s remember that those life skills, aka executive life skills, are not somehow magically gained because a person became an adult. These are specific and intentional skills that are developed, refined, and changed again and again as life needs come on and change.
Also, let’s not underestimate all of the “super powers” and strengths that come along with the ADHD brain, which are:
- The ability to hyperfocus
- Creativity and creative solutions
- Outside-the-box thinking skills
How Can ADHD Impact Work and Career?
ADHD can have a big impact on an adult’s professional world. Tasks that require sustained attention, organization, and managing deadlines can be very difficult if systems aren’t put in place to help maintain these areas of functioning. The result can be changing jobs often or struggling to work through long-term projects because of the number of details and the stretched-out time frames. Long, complicated projects can result in forgotten details, or parts of the project may be started and then forgotten, left uncompleted before moving on to the next part.
Strategy: Break It Down
At work, adults with ADHD often feel overwhelmed by complex or multistep projects or tasks. To get through projects or daily tasks that have multiple steps, strategize by breaking down one large task into smaller tasks. Create a checklist and work on each task individually. These tasks can be divided over several days as you work toward the deadline.
Breaking down tasks and projects helps to combat those feelings of procrastination or the “I can’t” thoughts by creating a series of smaller goalswith short-term deadlines. Set a time to work on each task and work against that timer. Set the time limit to your attention span or how long you think it will take to complete the task. When the alarm goes off, assess whether you were accurate in your assessment and use that information when you set the next timer. Follow these “work sessions” with movement breaks.