12
Alternatives to a “9-to-5” Job
In this Chapter
For some adults with ADD, an office environment will never be their optimum workplace, no matter what accommodations may be available. This chapter describes some alternatives, such as telecommuting, self-employment, and multiple part-time jobs.
Section One—Custom Designing Your Own Work Life
If you are one of those adults with ADD who has always felt “hemmed in,” frustrated, or “asleep at the wheel” when working in an office; who has always dreamed of working for yourself, of starting your own business, and of getting out of the commuter lanes, then this is the chapter for you! By working for yourself, or in partnership with someone else, you have a much greater range of choices to custom design your work life. This chapter discusses a range of possible choices and also talks of ways to make your workday productive and your home office as “ADD-friendly” as possible.
Doing What You Love …
Of all the work-related choices you can make as an adult with ADD, the most important one is to choose to do something you really love. It is a well-established fact that people with ADD cannot only focus, but at times can hyperfocus on activities that really engage and intrigue them. By choosing to do something that really interests you, and by carefully designing your working life to optimize your energy and effectiveness, your likelihood of success is tremendously enhanced.
In her book, Making a Living Without a Job, Barbara Winter writes of the importance of earning a living by being ourselves and by having fun at what we’re doing.1
Another writer, Marsha Sinetar, author of Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow, describes patterns that sound remarkably like those of adults with ADD,2 although her comments are directed toward the general public. She writes that when people are bored, frustrated, or constrained by the work they do all day, they are plagued by drifting attention. By contrast, when a person is totally absorbed in a task and can bring his or her full attention to it, he or she becomes most effective. The process Sinetar is describing is one so crucial to becoming an effective person with ADD—to find what engages us, what intrigues us, and then to take advantage of our ADD ability to hyperfocus.
Acknowledging Your Need for Stimulation and Variety
If you are considering developing your own business, or perhaps pursuing a number of activities from a home-based office, don’t let yourself be overly influenced by the “nay sayers.” Adults with ADD are often highly successful in very nontraditional ways. Doing several things at once, or doing several different things in fairly rapid succession may be highly suitable for an adult with ADD, who needs challenge, pressure, variety, and stimulation to perform optimally. Such approaches may seem foolhardy or too risky to those without ADD tendencies.
In her book, Barbara Winter writes of a young man who was not diagnosed with ADD but whose pattern resembled many people with ADD. He spoke of having lots of ideas and lots of projects. Rather than fearing and focusing on failure, this young man thought of his life like a juggler. “You get lots of plates spinning. If one of them crashes, you just go on to the next one. Not all of your ideas are going to work, and even your best ideas may not last. But that isn’t the measure of success.”3 This young man recognized his need for change, stimulation, and risk taking and did not consider himself a failure if not all of his attempts met with success or developed into longterm enterprises.
Thom Hartmann talks of planning—actually expecting and accommodating his need to move on to new projects.4 He, like many adults with ADD, loves to be creative and innovative. He conceives new projects and new products and finds great excitement in bringing his ideas into reality. After this highly stimulating and creative phase, Thom knows he will lose interest and motivation. Rather than seeing this as a negative, he plans for someone with different skills and interests to take over the day-to-day management of his enterprises once he gets them off the ground. Thom describes himself and similar adults with ADD as “hunters” living in a world of “farmers”—adults who can function in work that is slow, predictable, and repetitive. While ADD “hunters” crave stimulation, challenge, and risk, “farmers” desire stability with minimal risk or challenge.
As an adult with ADD, you should understand your differences and take them seriously. Thom Hartmann warns ADD adults, or “hunters,” not to allow the “farmers” of the world to set the standards by which they judge themselves. The distractibility and inability of those with ADD to function at their best increases when they are required to do dull, unsatisfying work. However, their ability to hyperfocus, to live in the moment, and to become totally involved in a project is greater than that of the “farmers.” Often, by working for themselves, ADD adults have the freedom to choose work that will turn their ADD energy and hyperfocusing ability into a great gift.
Ideal work conditions for many adults with ADD:
A high-interest activity
An optimal degree of pressure
Relative autonomy
Flexibility in tasks and timetables
An option to move on to new projects as interest wanes
A minimum of administrative responsibilities
Why “9-to-5” Might not Work for all Adults with ADD
When most of us think of work, we tend to think of a standard, 9-to-5 job in an office environment, employed by someone else. By definition, when we are an employee, it is the employer who sets the agenda, the priorities, and the schedule. Some adults with ADD, however, find that they need a much greater degree of flexibility and choice than can be found in the 9-to-5 world. An office environment may not be very ADD-friendly for a number of reasons:
9-to-5 may not be your optimal work hours.
An “open” office environment may be too distracting.
An office job may involve too much paperwork.
Desk work may not allow enough physical movement.
The job may involve too much work that is uninteresting, repetitive, and overly detailed.
The job may involve long-term projects in which an adult with ADD may lose interest long before they are finished.
Office politics may prove frustrating and difficult.
Corporate culture or management style may be a mismatch.
Looking at Alternatives to a “9-to-5” Existence
For individuals with ADD one of the great advantages of reaching adulthood is that your range of choices expands. In high school you perhaps had very few alternatives. If you went to college, you most likely found a wider range of choices. The range of choice often becomes greater still once you enter the world of work. There are many alternatives to a 9-to-5 job. Some of those alternatives include:
Home-based business
Independent professional practice
Multiple part-time jobs
Independent artistic or creative activities
Entrepreneurial activities
Consulting
Matching Alternative Solutions to Problems
If you are unhappy in your current work environment and would like to make a change, you should carefully consider which aspects of the office environment are “ADD-unfriendly” for you and then consider possible solutions. These solutions could range from keeping your current job while telecommuting from home on a part-time basis, having a part-time job that allows you time to develop other income-producing activities, or taking the plunge and working for yourself full-time.
Each of the alternatives listed in the previous section entails pluses and minuses for adults with ADD. So in order to make a good alternative work choice:
❶ | Carefully consider the pros and cons of each alternative. |
❷ | Make a realistic self-assessment asking yourself: |
Under what work conditions am I happiest?
What is most likely to make me productive and effective?
What are my likely downfalls?
❸ | Problem-solve to minimize or avoid any downfalls. |
Telecommuting
Edna Murphy, in her book, Flexible Work,5 writes that more and more companies are opting for telecommuting for selected employees. She describes the ideal telecommuter as:
Self-disciplined
Trusted by managers
Well organized
A good time manager
Self-aware, who knows his or her own needs
Able to seek help when appropriate
Content with little interaction with coworkers, gaining more satisfaction from the work itself
Seeking a better balance between home and work life
At first glance, this list may seem to rule out adults with ADD as telecommuters! Self-disciplined, well organized, and good time managers? These are often pitfalls, not strengths, for ADDers. But don’t immediately discount the idea. To decide whether working from home on a part-time basis might be constructive for you, take a look at some of the “pluses” and “minuses” from an ADD perspective.
“Pluses” of Telecommuting
Elimination of office distractions
The possibility of taking breaks when needed
Working time-shifted hours when preferable—telecommuting is often good for ADD “night owls”
The opportunity to exercise during the day to reduce fidgetiness and restlessness
A chance to be more available to children and spouse during afternoon and early evening
Elimination of time wasted by commuting
The opportunity to dress casually and comfortably
The distractions of home: television, projects around the house, other activities
Less structure or guidance on what to do or when to do it
No external cues to remain on task, organized, and focused
The tendency to sleep late or to procrastinate without the structure of a workplace environment
Loneliness, isolation
Interruptions by family
If you would like to consider telecommuting, you need to be honest in your self-evaluation and make efforts to reduce or eliminate the “minuses.”
Some ways to stay “on track” as an ADD telecommuter include:
❶ | Develop rituals and structured times to work. |
❷ | Create an “office environment” at home that cues you to focus on work rather than personal activities. |
❸ | Check in by phone at the office when you sit down at your desk—this cues both you and your work colleagues that you are “at work.” |
❹ | Verbalize deadlines to coworkers. |
❺ | Have a regular e-mail communication at day’s end with your supervisor to update him or her on your day’s accomplishments. |
❻ | Set daily goals. |
Telecommuting schedules can vary widely. Some telecommuters do the great majority of their work at home and may only go to the office for specific meetings with colleagues or supervisors. Other telecommuters, like Angela, whose story is described below, chose telecommuting as a part-time option best suited for work activities that required extended concentration.
Angela, a Part-Time Telecommuter
Angela was an adult with ADD who worked for a small nonprofit organization. It was Angela’s job to develop themes for conferences held by her organization and to oversee the planning and coordination of those conferences. Her work involved travel, as well as a great deal of writing. She loved the variety and stimulation of her work but found that she had enormous difficulty concentrating in close quarters at the office. As she tried to write, telephones were ringing on adjacent desks and coworkers frequently interrupted her to ask questions or to make comments.
Angela was able to negotiate with her boss to become a part-time telecommuter. She set up an organized office space at home, including computer, e-mail, telephone, and fax. She made a regular time schedule in her home office to work on those things that required sustained concentration and made herself available by phone, e-mail, and fax for ready interface with her colleagues. This arrangement provided a good solution for her distractibility, while still allowing communication with her colleagues.
Operating a Home-Based Business
While a home-based business entails many of the ADD challenges of telecommuting it includes additional challenges that telecommuters do not have to face. Telecommuters still have ties to an employer who can provide some degree of support and structure. They also are in touch with colleagues, have tasks and deadlines set by others, must meet expectations set by others, and usually have the benefit of support staff and equipment at the office. A telecommuter coordinates her or his work with others. These connections provide a degree of structure and pressure to stay on-task.
When you operate a home-based business, you have less support and structure and fewer connections with coworkers. Instead you have an operation that requires a greater range of activities and responsibilities and a much greater degree of independence. It is you who sets the goal, the agenda, the structure, and the pace. Let’s look at Mary’s story and why she encountered difficulties in her home-based business.
Mary, the Avon Lady
Mary was a woman with ADD who was married and had three children. She had sold Avon products on a part-time basis for several years and decided to try her hand at developing a home-based full-time Avon business.
Mary, like many adults with ADD, was a night owl who greatly resisted getting up in the mornings. When she had worked outside the home, she had no choice but to get up. As an “Avon Lady” she found herself sleeping later. As a result, mornings in her household became chaotic.
With no structure to her day, Mary found that she spent the first couple of hours each morning drinking coffee, reading through the paper, and watching the morning television shows. She reasoned that calling people before 10 A.M. was too early. What Mary didn’t do was use these hours to do household chores, work-related paperwork, or planning.
Her small house did not afford her the luxury of a separate office space. She used a small desk in the kitchen to make phone calls and record orders. This desk was usually piled high, and papers often became mixed with the day’s mail and the children’s school papers. Her dining room became the storage area and staging ground for bagging individual Avon orders.
Mary found that she loved the social aspect of house calls and phone calls but typically spent more time socializing than selling. Orders often had to be delivered in the evenings, since many of her clients were employed full-time. As a result, her evenings became more confused—in addition to dinner preparation and homework, she was now making Avon deliveries at a time when her family commitments were at their highest.
Three years later, after many battles with her husband over financial difficulties and chaos at home, Mary reluctantly agreed to return to her former job as a receptionist. Mary loved the freedom, flexibility, and sociability of being a full-time Avon Lady but reluctantly came to realize that she had not developed disciplined patterns that would allow her to be successful in this kind of endeavor. She finally concluded that, for her, the schedule and structure of an office job were necessary for her to stay focused.
Although a home-based business did not work for Mary, this does not mean that it cannot work for you. Home-based businesses seem to work best for people with ADD when:
Independent Professional Practice
Professionals with ADD often find that they are more content to work for themselves rather than in large practices or organizations. Whether they are doctors, lawyers, psychologists, financial advisors, or in other professions, adults with ADD typically prefer the autonomy and independence of a small or independent practice. Let’s look at three scenarios.
(Mis)Managing a Medical Practice
Alan was an internist with never formally diagnosed ADD. In the process of his daughter’s evaluation for ADD, his wife immediately recognized very strong ADD traits in her husband. Although he was in the range of superior intelligence, he had always been highly scattered and disorganized. Alan, however, was unwilling to consider the possibility that he, too, had ADD. Alan’s denial of ADD became the “last straw ” in an already heavy burden borne by his wife.
Concluding that he had no intention of looking at himself and trying to change destructive patterns, she decided to leave the marriage. In the process of the separation, she also resigned from being his nurse and office manager. For years she had kept his schedule, reminded him of deadlines and events, and nagged him to keep up with paperwork and dictation. Despite all of her efforts, however, the office was a shambles. He typically came home with afoot-high pile of charts, resolving to catch upon his dictations, only to fall asleep in front of the television yet again.
Following the separation, Alan’s practice quickly deteriorated to an unworkable situation. Overwhelmed by the organizational tasks of running an independent private practice, he sold his practice and took position within a large managed care organization in his community.
From Teacher to Real Estate Agent
Scott was a very gifted teacher whose ADD helped him to be very dynamic and creative in the classroom, although grading papers and record keeping had always been a tremendous struggle. He and his wife, a fellow teacher, wanted to have children and concluded that two teachers’ salaries could not comfortably support a family. Scott, a personable, high-energy individual, decided to go into real-estate sales.
One year later, however, Scott sought counseling. He felt anxious, depressed, and very disturbed with his lack of success as a real estate agent. He described his days as drifting and unfocused. After his wife left in the morning for her teaching job, he found himself procrastinating, watching television, going to the local gym, walking the dog—almost anything except drumming up business. He disliked making cold calls, detested the detailed paperwork.
Through counseling, Scott recognized that the isolation and complete lack of structure of his day were paralyzing for him. He resolved to schedule time each day at the real estate office, manning the phones, making contacts with potential clients, and learning ways to build his client base from fellow agents. Scott also decided to apprentice himself to another agent, accompanying him on calls with clients. Scott learned through his counseling and the positive results from the changes he made that he needed the support provided by mentoring and the structure provided by regular hours spent in the office.
Barry, an Independent Financial Consultant
Barry had arranged a professional life for himself in which he found both personal satisfaction and financial success. Let’s look carefully at the differences between his approach and theirs. In studying these differences you may find some clues to structuring a successful professional practice for yourself as an adult with ADD.
Barry was a highly independent financial consultant whose consulting practice thrived. What did he do differently from Scott and Alan? Primarily Barry was able to see himself realistically, with detachment and accuracy and to make changes in his work life accordingly.
Early in his career, he had worked in a large brokerage firm that he found constraining to work for.
In his mid-thirties he decided to take the plunge and open his own private office. Realistic about his strengths, he knew that he excelled at developing a client base, in inspiring confidence in those clients, and in making strong recommendations for investment opportunities. Equally realistic about his ADD traits, he recognized the need to establish order, flexibility, and low stress in his work environment. He rented office space a scant ten minutes from his home. Knowing his weakness in the areas of paperwork and record keeping, he wisely convinced his administrative assistant in the large firm to move with him to his private firm. She already had an in-depth knowledge of the business and of record keeping needs and procedures.
Barry created a work environment in which he was in charge, which gave him the flexibility to take breaks during the day when they were needed, and to keep his workflow at a manageable level. He was also realistic about the amount of work required to run an independent consulting firm. He worked very hard but on a schedule that suited his own biological rhythms. He taught his adminstrative assistant to protect him from unnecessary interruptions and to handle as much of the administrative portion of the work without involving him.
Barry’s business was soon thriving. Although he could have easily expanded by taking on associates and creating a bustling financial advising service, he was smart enough to realize that he didn’t want to re-create an environment similar to that which he had voluntarily left a number of years earlier. After fifteen years of independent work, he had created the ideal life for himself, earning a comfortable living, keeping his stress level low, and recognizing his limitations as well as his strengths.
Having two or more part-time jobs can sometimes be an ideal solution for an adult with ADD. By working for others in these part-time jobs, the structure and time lines are built-in. By having more than one job, there is more movement and variety, which helps prevent the boredom and restlessness that so often plague adults with ADD in the workplace.
Wayne, Have Social Work Degree, Will Travel
Wayne was a clinical social worker with ADD who arranged a work schedule that kept him interested and active. Initially, after earning his degree, he found a full-time job in a social service agency. There he found that the work was repetitive, the work load was stressful, and a great percentage of his time was taken up with paperwork. All of these are warning signals for adults with ADD. After a couple of years, Wayne felt very dissatisfied and began to search for work alternatives.
Changes in his work life evolved gradually. At first he accepted part-time work in the evening, in an agency that dealt with the elderly. There he co-led a counseling group for people in retirement homes. He found he enjoyed the interpersonal interaction as well as the very low demand for paperwork. He was well liked and was offered more work over the next several months. Through his professional grapevine he learned of part- time work of a similar nature available at a large private agency that dealt with the needs of the elderly.
Over the course of a year, Wayne resigned from his fulltime job, having been able to arrange two part-time jobs offering him equal pay and greater satisfaction. Because he was not a member of the full-time staff of either agency, his presence was normally not required at administrative meetings, allowing him to focus on the clinical work that he loved. He enjoyed the variety of going to different work sites on different days, the reduced paperwork requirements, and the stimulation of a variety of professional activities.
Anne, Two Part-Time Jobs, Two Careers
Anne was a trained nurse who loved working with and helping people, but she was very unhappy in the managed health care environment where she was employed. A highly trained, highly intelligent woman, she found that the high stress and lack of autonomy in her workplace were having a very negative effect on her attitude and professional satisfaction.
Through some creative problem solving in counseling, Anne decided to take a risk and give up her frustrating, but highly secure job in order to seek greater personal satisfaction. She was hired as a part-time clinical supervisor to younger, less- experienced visiting nurses in the community. Anne loved the opportunity to pass on the knowledge gained by her years of experience as well as the recognition and respect she gained as an instructor and supervisor.
At the same time, she found an outlet for her love of writing, something she had pursued in college but had found no time for when employed as a full-time nurse. She was hired half- time to work on a nursing newsletter, editing and writing articles. This gave her a much-desired intellectual outlet and gave her the opportunity to express ways in which she felt her profession needed to be changed.
Anne exchanged an inflexible full-time job for two very different part-time jobs, both of which offered her intellectual stimulation and challenge. In both of these positions she not only had structure and interaction but also a high degree of autonomy and variety—often an ideal combination for an adult with ADD.
Creative Activities at Home
Have you ever dreamed of writing the Great American Novel, of pursuing the artistic talent you’ve ignored since high school or college, of really developing your skills as a potter, weaver, or other type of craftsperson. For some adults with ADD, the urge to create and the satisfaction of creative activity is one of their strongest driving forces.
The pros and cons are very similar to any type of work that you might pursue at home on a completely independent basis: how to keep yourself focused and how to meet your needs for structure, administrative support, and social contact, without detracting from your work at home.
Larry, an ADD Photographer
Larry was a highly talented photographer whose home- based photography business fell apart when his non-ADD wife, Lynn, grew tired of dedicating her life to keeping him focused. For a number of years, she had been his business manager, taking care of advertising, marketing, and serving as his agent in setting up photography exhibits. He became well-known in his community for his intuitive, highly personal portraits as well as for more abstract, artistic photography. When Lynn gave up being his support system, Larry’s business rapidly faltered. Unlike Barry, the financial consultant, he had no experience in establishing supports for himself. He had married his support system, and his support system had resigned.
Through counseling with the couple, Lynn agreed to return to working with him on a limited-time basis and to helping him to “grow up” professionally by finding and hiring the necessary supports to replace her. During the course of the next year, Larry found a photography assistant who also had good organizational skills. He also located an agent to promote his gallery work. Eventually with his assistant’s and agent’s support, Larry’s business grew. He developed a line of note cards featuring his photographs and found a publisher to print a calendar of scenes he had photographed of the local Pennsylvania countryside. Two years after Lynn’s final “resignation,” Larry found that he had, in fact, been able to build a professional support system that functioned even better than his former overdependence on his wife.
Michael, Novelist or On-Line Addict?
Michael was an adult with ADD who worked as a technical writer in the computer industry. He enjoyed the opportunity for travel that his work afforded him and worked well under the publishing deadlines. Michael, however, had always dreamed of writing fiction. An English major in college, he had found work as a technical writer as a practical move after graduation. When the industry newsletter for which he worked was bought out by a larger newsletter, Michael’s job was eliminated. Rather than looking for another position, Michael and his wife, Anne, decided to let this become an opportunity for him to pursue his dream. Anne’s recent promotion allowed them more financial flexibility. They decided that Michael would stay home and work on his novel, begun several years earlier and gathering dust in a comer.
One year later, however, Michael found himself anxious and depressed. With medication and with the structure of deadlines and short-term projects, he had functioned well. Now, at home full-time, with no structure, no social contact, and no deadlines, Michael found himself sleeping late, struggling with writer’s block, and spending more and more of his time writing e-mail messages to other lonely people. Hungry for personal contact, his social world became interaction with others he had “met” on-line.
Through counseling, Michael recognized that having “all the time in the world” to write was not an advantage for him. Rather than give up his dream of completing his novel, he decided to do two things to give more structure to his day. First, he recontacted former colleagues in the technical writing field and found a part-time job. This job got him up in the morning, gave him some social contact, and lent structure to his workweek. Secondly, he joined a writer’s group. In this group, each writer brought ongoing work to share and critique. This way, he found that he kept more focused when writing. He had only a limited number of hours each week in which to write, and he had a group that was expecting to hear about his progress on a weekly basis. Thus, through some trial and error, Michael finally found a working combination of flexibility and structure that allowed him to be focused and productive in pursuing his dream of fiction writing.
Thom Hartmann writes that some adults with ADD are ideally suited to be entrepreneurs.6 Such people, he finds, are risk takers, who are easily bored by mundane activities. Hartmann believes that ADD adults are overrepresented in the population of entrepreneurs because they can be so ideally suited to this type of high risk, high stimulation activity. While not all adults with ADD fit Hartmann’s hunter model, if you feel that his hunter traits describe you, then you may want to consider engaging in some sort of entrepreneurial activity yourself.
The types of entrepreneurial activities Hartmann refers to are more challenging because they are self-generated, more creative, less structured, and may involve more risk in terms of initial investment of time and money.
One of the big ADD pitfalls of starting your own business is that typically, at the outset, you don’t have the capital to hire others to help you, forcing you to perform tasks for which you may be poorly suited, due to your ADD.
Thom Hartmann also writes of another interesting phenomenon among entrepreneurs with ADD.7 He finds that he, and many others, are more excited by and suited to the creation of a new enterprise but ill suited to managing its day-to-day operations. Once the “hunter” is faced with “farmer” managerial activities, which require repetition, persistence, regularity, and patience, he loses interest. In his own life, Thom expects this to happen and plans for a transition in which he hands over the managerial reins to someone else while he moves on to a new and exciting project.
Consulting
Kate Kelly and Peggy Ramundo, both adults with ADD and authors of You Mean I’m Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!, point out that for adults with ADD, the life of a consultant may provide the best of both worlds: the more structured world of the corporate office environment and the flexible world of the self-employed. They state, “As a consultant… it can be easier to avoid arbitrary rules and rigid people. You can … move on when policies and people start getting on your nerves.” At the same time, they note that you can “retain some of the benefits of working for someone else—use of office equipment, secretarial support and the established network of business contacts.”8
Unlike a new entrepreneur, a consultant is working with a familiar set of skills he or she has already developed and is often working with people with whom he or she already has a long-established relationship. For these reasons, there is more familiarity and more built-in structure. Consultants can command high hourly wages as experts in their field without having to struggle with the non-ADD- friendly responsibilities of serving as a manager within a large firm.
As with all of the variants of more independent work life that have been discussed in this chapter, the downside of consulting is often related to administrative details. Many adults with ADD describe that the consulting work itself is very satisfying. They find that generating ideas and verbal communication are easy for them. However, the necessary follow-up reports, record keeping, and billing can be their downfall.
Section Two: Tools for Success in Self-Created Jobs
In the first section of this chapter a variety of alternatives to a “9-to-5” job have been explored, considering the pros and cons of each alternative. No matter which alternative you might be considering, there are a number of patterns, techniques, or approaches that may make your efforts to custom design your work life more likely to succeed.
Creating Your Own Support Network
If you choose to work independently, one of the most effective ways to combat the negative effects of your ADD is to create a “team” or support network around you. Who is part of this network and how elaborate it is depends upon your needs and activities.
Support staff. Many consultants, home-based business people, or professionals starting out in independent practice protest that they cannot afford support staff. If you have ADD, the reality is more likely that you can’t afford not to have support. This doesn’t mean that you must hire a fulltime assistant. There are many creative ways to meet your needs without overextending yourself financially. There are many people with professional secretarial skills who have their own home-based business and can work for you on an hourly basis doing all kinds of administrative work—typing, record keeping, billing, tax reports, etc. They don’t even need to come to your office. With the convenience of answering machines, fax machines, and E-mail it is quite possible to stay in close touch without being physically in the same environment.
Partnerships. Another way to create a support network is to form a partnership. Some adults with ADD find that having a partner or partners in their enterprises helps to keep them on track and gives them a forum for processing new ideas as well as a way to divide work according to the skills and preferences of the partners. Even less formally, it is possible to work in partnership with one or more people on specific projects without forming a legal partnership.
Support groups for the self-employed. Many self- employed individuals who work out of their homes, whether they have ADD or not, feel isolated and hungry for interaction with other home-based self-employed people. In several cities, clubs have sprung up in response to this need. In Washington, D.C., for example, there is a small group of self-employed professionals who meet regularly for lunch. This affords them social stimulation of a professional nature and allows them to share experiences, problems, and solutions. In the process, some of these professionals have formed contacts with one another that have enhanced their work projects.
You may find that some or all of these approaches for forming a support network are helpful to you in developing and maintaining your independent work life. What seems clear, however, is that most adults with ADD seem to function better when they have the opportunity to get feedback, share ideas, build structure, and delegate non-ADD-friendly tasks to employees, contractors, or partners.
Tools for Managing Your Time and Work at Home
Merrill and Donna Douglass, in their book Manage Your Time, Your Work, Yourself,9 outline a range of techniques for enhancing personal effectiveness and productivity on the job. Some of their excellent ideas are included in the following discussion.
Time Management—Peak Hours and “Pit” Hours
The more independently you work, the more important good time- management skills become. This doesn’t mean inflexibility, but it does mean discipline. Know yourself, your peak performance hours, and your “pit” performance hours. Schedule your at-home work accordingly.
Planning and Scheduling
You should make a plan for each day, either at the end of the previous workday or as you begin your new workday. According to Donna and Merrill Douglass many people erroneously use planning and scheduling interchangeably. However, there is an important difference:
After you have made your plan for the day, then schedule when, and in what order, you are going to carry out your plan. A plan doesn’t have to be inflexible. If circumstances change, don’t give up your plan; rather, alter your plan according to the unforeseen events, and then proceed with the altered plan.
“To do” Lists
Make your “to do” lists work for you, but don’t become a slave to them. Some adults with ADD become so overfocused on making daily task lists that they become overwhelmed by an overly lengthy and detailed list. Others play mental games, pretending that each item on the list is of equal value. They then proceed to do all of the “easy” items, whether or not they are important, because they feel so satisfied by the numerous items they have been able to check off. Meanwhile, the most critical task of the day, most likely a multistep, challenging task, goes undone.
To make the most of a “to do” list:
❶ | Write a realistic, doable list. |
❷ | Take care of items on that list in order of importance. |
❸ | Take advantage of odd moments that might otherwise be wasted to take care of the quick and easy “to do” items, rather than beginning your day with them. |
Make Your Moods Work for You
Many adults with ADD report that they can only work when they are “in the mood.” They may sound petulant, almost childish, when saying “I’m not in the mood” to work, and you may find yourself feeling this way at times. However, don’t use your moods as an excuse not to work. Use your moods as a powerful engine that can drive great productivity. Shift from task to task as your mood and energy level change. When you work at home, you have much greater flexibility. Write during your peak hours, then do more mundane tasks as your energy level falls. Schedule necessary meetings or business-related errands for times when you feel restless or energy depleted.
Procrastination
Procrastination is often a struggle for adults with ADD, even in a structured office environment. The possibilities for procrastination multiply with a home-based workplace, where little or no external structure is provided, and there are few, if any, people to report to. If you tend to be a procrastinator, you need to work even harder to develop “antiprocrastination tools,” particularly if you are considering working at home. Here are some approaches that can help:
Tips for Making Your Independent Workday Productive
Get an Early Start
“As your first hour goes, so goes the rest of the day!” Remember that “It’s the early bird who catches the worm.” Don’t give in to the temptation to sleep in, read the paper for an hour, or otherwise put off starting your workday just because you don’t have a boss looking over your shoulder. You’ll most likely find you are more productive if you take breaks later in the day when your concentration wanes, rather than “goofing off” at the beginning.
Begin (or End) Your Day with a Planning Session
During this session review your daily task list, and schedule when you plan to accomplish each task (or cluster of tasks). Use this time for longer-term planning as well.
Build in “Check-in” Times with Someone Else
Normally this check-in would be with a colleague, supervisor (if you are a telecommuter), or partner. If you are completely solo in your work, this check-in can be with someone who is functioning as your ADD coach, an assistant, or your spouse. These check-ins should help you keep on track. Talk about what you plan to accomplish that day or what you have accomplished.
Identify Personal Temptations and Distractions
Identify your personal temptations. These might include television watching, reading the paper, talking on the phone, playing computer games, or going “on-line” to interact with others.
Develop solutions to limit these temptations. Make a rigid rule: “No TV” during your specified work hours. Alternatively, use these temptations as rewards for completing work-related tasks that are unappealing to you.
Set Boundaries for Yourself Between Personal and Work Life
One of the advantages of working for yourself, or working at home, is that you can more conveniently take care of personal and family business during the week. Make sure this advantage doesn’t become a pitfall, however, by consistently robbing you of time you intended to devote to your work. It may help to schedule “personal time,” for example, set aside designated parts of your day or parts of your week for appointments, grocery shopping, chores, etc.
If you have the necessary time awareness and self-discipline, you may choose to move back and forth between professional activities and personal activities throughout your day, choosing to exercise, work in the garden, or prepare a meal as a break from your work activities when you find that your concentration is waning. The key here is to manage those breaks so that an intended half-hour break doesn’t grow into extended, unintended time away from your work.
Set Boundaries for Your Family Between Work and Personal Life
It is important for your spouse and children to realize that just because you’re home doesn’t mean you’re not “at work.” Your spouse may assume that you are the obvious choice for running errands during the day since he or she is “at work” and you are “at home.” Of course they are less likely to respect work/personal life boundaries if you don’t. If you are prone to watch Oprah in the afternoon when you intended to be working, you are certainly inviting your spouse or children to request that you pick up the dry cleaning, run to the store, or drive the car pool !
The issues for young children who have a working parent at home should also be addressed. It is difficult for young children to understand and accept that even though their mother or father is at home, they cannot be disturbed or spoken to because they are “working.” One psychotherapist whose office was at home told a humorous story of his four-year-old daughter who came running stark naked into his consulting room where he was seeing a client, because she wanted to tell him something. If you have young children at home, unexpected interruptions are inevitable. However, the separation of work and family life becomes easier to understand as children become older.
It is helpful if your at-home work space is completely separate from your family living space so that psychologically you are “at work” rather than “at home.” Of course you will blur those boundaries if your children see you wandering into the kitchen for a drink or a snack at odd moments! Many parents who work at home find that their productive work hours are when their children are at school or asleep at night.
Creating an ADD-Friendly Work Space at Home
Having a “Dedicated” Work Space Helps You Dedicate Yourself to Work!
If possible, have an office space at home that is not used for other purposes by other family members. One of the huge advantages of working independently at home as a telecommuter or working for yourself is that you have the opportunity to create an ADD-friendly work space for yourself. Some may have the good fortune to have a very private, separate work space at home, while others may have to creatively devise this space. Be careful, however, not to shortchange yourself. You will need a separate, closed-off space dedicated to your work and organized to suit your work, even if it means giving up a dining room or guest room to create an office. This dedicated space is essential to reduce distractions and to help keep you focused and organized. Using a space dedicated to work helps to give you an “at work” mind-set that you aren’t likely to have sitting at the kitchen table.
Set up Your Telephone System to Reduce Distractions, not Cause Them!
Use an answering machine or answering service to take calls and record messages. Then check your messages and return calls in blocks of time rather than allowing others to randomly interrupt your workday and break your concentration. If you use an answering machine, don’t leave the sound on to screen your calls. This will be a big distraction as you stop your work to listen. If there are people who need to have direct, immediate contact with you, a good system is to have an “inside line” that only they have access to. Others should call you on your “published” work number, leaving you a message to return at your convenience.
Another approach is to place a message on your answering machine that states that you will be available for direct phone calls between certain hours, giving callers the option to leave a message or to call back during your “telephone hour.”
A Clear Desk Leads to Clear Thinking!
Clutter management. A clear desk greatly enhances your ability to focus and to sustain your concentration. In fact, serene, uncluttered surroundings in your entire work space will enhance your effectiveness. Even if you are not successful in keeping up with your filing, try to arrange your office space so that your “piles” are not on your desk and are not in your immediate line of vision as you work. Some people find that a credenza placed to the side, or better yet, behind their desk chair can serve this purpose. On the credenza (or shelf) you can place baskets for “action items,” such as items “to file,” or items “to mail,” leaving your desk clear except for the materials you are currently using.
If You Can’t Use Your Filing System, You Don’t Have One!
Filing systems. Many adults with ADD working at home find that developing and maintaining a filing system is one of the most impossible tasks they face. Often they are prone to develop a very detailed filing system, which they don’t use consistently. Some adults with ADD report that they have created duplicate files with slightly differing names because they have not developed a simple, logical filing system. Remember, if you don’t use your filing system, you don’t have a filing system!
While everyone must develop a system that works for them, a general guideline to keeping up with your filing is to make your system very simple. It is far better to have a few large categories of files than to have detailed files that are underused as unfiled papers pile up on every horizontal surface in your office. One man with ADD developed an almost primitive filing system that worked well for him. He purchased a series of square plastic containers, the type sold in discount stores for storing toys, clothing, and the like. He wrote large labels on each, which pertained to some large project or some large aspect of his work, and then literally tossed papers into these storage containers that were lined up on a shelf across one wall of his office. He might have had to do a little searching within each basket to find a particular document, but at least he had created a system simple enough to guarantee that the paper would be somewhere in that particular pile, rather than somewhere in one of any number of piles of unfiled papers.
A Pleasant, Soothing Work Environment Enhances Productivity.
Create a pleasant, soothing, but nondistracting work space. While most of us have little control over our work environment when we are employed by someone else, we have many more degrees of latitude when we create a work space for ourselves at home. It is important to put some thought into arranging your work space to best meet your needs. Many individuals find that they work better when they are exposed to natural sunlight. Place your desk near a window. If you are prone to distract yourself by looking out the window, place your chair facing away from the window but still near it to enjoy the benefit of sunlight.
Think about what colors you would like to be surrounded by and what photographs, pictures, and artwork will give you a feeling of well-being as you work. Do you work well with soft music in the background? If so, invest in a radio or CD player with decent sound quality. One man with ADD who worked at home part-time as a fiction writer found that he worked best listening to rock music at high volume! As a self-employed writer, he was free to accommodate himself in a way that would never be tolerated in a work space shared by others!
Don’t Allow Physical Discomfort to Distract You.
Invest in a comfortable chair. You’ll be spending a considerable amount of time sitting in it. Make sure, if you write at a computer, that your keyboard is at keyboard height and not desk height. Spending hours holding your hands and arms several inches too high can lead to muscle tension and neck and shoulder problems.
In general, the more ADD-friendly your work space is, the more productive you are likely to be.
Conclusion
By working independently, whether as a telecommuter, consultant, artist, or businessperson, adults with ADD have the greatest opportunity to custom design their work life. First, try to make an accurate self-assessment. In the numerous ADD stories contained in this chapter, some individuals were very successful in choosing a line of work they loved and in setting up a work environment in which they could function well; others found themselves barely able to function when they were completely on their own. If you are working at home, but struggling with disorganization and procrastination, you may be able to make good use of some of the techniques suggested in this chapter for getting and staying on track. After an honest self- examination, you may decide that, like it or not, you function better as an employee in a more structured job. This book presents you with a wide range of options, both in the office environment and in the home environment. The important thing is to find the levels of stimulation, variety, and autonomy that work best for you.