Yet there are those claiming our productive or organizational malaise isn't developmental at all. And it's certainly not the result of low self-esteem. Debate rages, but many professionals think the disorganized mind is a diseased mind, and therefore incapable of organizational competence (at least without medical treatment).

Recent decades have seen the ‘discovery’ of a plethora of illnesses to explain away our productive deficiencies; many – according to their detractors – conforming more to lifestyle trends than hard science.

Attention deficit disorder (ADD or ADHD if including hyperactivity) is probably the best known. A neurobiological condition, ADD is an indication of brain damage or underdevelopment, perhaps to the frontal lobes (where concepts such as time are sensed). At least that's the committed view of a section of the medical establishment, although there are plenty of professionals willing to dismiss ADD as a fad, perhaps to excuse low achievement or as a chance to sell medication.

Nonetheless, there are clearly personal characteristics that can be grouped as a ‘condition’ that detrimentally impacts our ability to organize ourselves productively, whether we diagnose it as ADD or not.

According to Dr Marilyn Paul in Why Am I So Disorganized? (2009) these can include:

• an inability to focus on anything for longer than a moment,
• problems attending to one task at a time,
• being easily distracted,
• impulsiveness,
• beginning many projects simultaneously, but finishing few,
• scrambling to meet deadlines, despite long lead times,
• a tendency to procrastinate,
• a tendency to be moody or experience mood swings,
• thriving in high-stimulation situations,
• enjoying novelty, and
• a tendency to need immediate reinforcement or confirmation.

Distractibility, impulsiveness and risk-taking

Other writers – including psychotherapist Thom Hartmann in Healing ADD (1998) – focus on just three primary ADD behaviours: distractibility, impulsiveness and risk-taking.

‘These three characteristics show up in a variety of ways’, writes Hartmann, ‘ranging from general disorganization to procrastination to difficulties in school and relationships.’

Yet there's no agreed diagnosis. There's not even an agreed name, with the more popular iteration now being ADHD (with ADD viewed as a ‘predominantly inattentive’ subtype reclassified as ADHD-PI). When considering the unproductive mind, however, hyperactivity is an unnecessary (and potentially misleading) trait, making ADD a more helpful label for our purposes.

Of course, ADD is not an all-or-nothing disorder. It occupies a spectrum of severity, although all the tests developed in the 1990s (when ADD became a diagnosable condition) agree that the symptoms must have been lifelong, rather than the result of some adult event (such as an illness or accident), and must be severe enough to represent, as Hartmann states, a ‘significant step away from the norm’.

The hunter of pre-history

ADD is sometimes described as a by-product of an inattentive modern world seeking instant gratification. Meanwhile, others assume it's a genetic disorder – pointing to a high incidence of inherited behaviours. In fact, according to Oliver James in his book on family survival called They F*** You Up (2002), around three million American children are on medication (usually Ritalin) for ADD/ADHD, based on the assumption that it's a disease with a potentially genetic root cause (something James disputes).

Yet Hartmann offers an alternative view. Sufferers are normal human beings with normal behavioural instincts, he claims. They've simply been unable to adjust their instinctive behaviour to suit our unnatural, urban, post-industrial lives. In his theory, ADD is no more than a psychological leftover from a world that's moved too far from the hunter-gatherer ‘state of nature’.

‘I'd noticed early on that the cardinal characteristics of ADD – distractibility, impulsivity, and a love of novelty/sensation/risk – were all things which would be adaptive in a society where food was acquired by hunting and gathering’, writes Hartmann. ‘The “distractible” hunter would constantly be scanning the forest or jungle as he looked for food and watched out for dangers and predators.’

So, while such behaviour looks maladjusted in the classroom – and becomes viewed as a problem – on the savannah of pre-history, the same impulses would have been vital for survival, a theory Hartmann supports by citing recent studies of the few remaining hunter-gatherer societies.

As a theory, this certainly feels right to me (and we'll deal below with the fact this appears to exclude half the population) – especially as it helps us reframe the negative and self-esteem-sapping consequences of such a label.

Normal human behaviour

That said, as an adult, an ADD/ADHD diagnosis can feel comforting – as an explanatory moment when contradictory behaviours at last make sense.

‘ADD seemed to explain many of my behaviour patterns, thought processes, childish emotional reactions, my workaholism and other addictive tendencies, the sudden eruptions of bad temper and complete irrationality, the conflicts in my marriage, and my Jekyll and Hyde ways of relating to my children’, writes Canadian physician Gabor Maté MD, author of Scattered (2000). ‘Beyond everything it revealed the reason for my life-long sense of somehow never approaching my potential in terms of self-expression and self-definition – the ADD adult's awareness that he has talents … he could perhaps connect with if the wires weren't crossed.’

Certainly, Maté's description resonates. Yet it also reveals a misunderstanding about ADD characteristics, or unproductive or disorganized behaviour generally: motivation. Indeed, of Hartmann's many case studies one stood out for me – of a youth in the north of England who'd become a social problem – getting into fights or trouble with the police, being thrown out of school, drunkenly raging against the world and generally terrorizing his family and the neighbourhood.

‘Richard has ADD’, said his mother, ‘he is completely unmotivated. He doesn't want to do a damn thing.’

Yet when quizzed by Hartmann, the boy revealed strong motivation for a range of activities including drinking beer, loitering with his friends, driving fast (perhaps stolen) cars and skate­boarding. Motivation was not the issue, Hartmann concluded. It was the direction of his motivation that was problematic (at least for others).

This certainly concurs with my own experiences. From an early age I indulged in antisocial activities – including shoplifting and petty vandalism – that had me marked down as a ‘problem’. Yet, despite the view of my teachers, I was far from unmotivated. Even as a young child I could invest time and energy creating and completing tasks requiring highly detailed levels of organization. Put me in the garden and I'd invent and build a complex maze for my pet guinea-pig to navigate. With friends, I'd dream up convoluted plans for stealthily traversing the back gardens of the neighbourhood. Even when left alone in my bedroom, my collection of marbles became a new and highly specialized sport involving elaborate rules and international teams.

And the levels of complexity grew the older I became. From the age of ten, I mentally occupied my own made-up country: a scaled-up version of my neighbourhood (in which my village became a city and the local town a metropolis). Enlivened by the excitement of this private world, I was soon doctoring local maps to create coastlines and physical features and – before long – was writing and drawing my country's unique geography, history and economy. The detail was extraordinary: transport maps, government department budgets, national symbolism and heritage – even election results, newspaper headlines and football squads. Every aspect of this country was recorded in a logical and accessible order after hours spent in creative thought and detailed analysis.

So, it's not motivation that's lacking from the unproductive person, or the ability to order their lives (when motivated to do so). Often it's simply a resistance to formalized – imposed – structure. To those with ADD characteristics, such impositions feel abnormal: like a mental imprisonment. In fact, many can be thrown (rather than helped) by organizational aids such as a to-do list or daily plan or appointment book. They become just another barrier – something else banging on their unconscious door as a reminder of their ‘deficit’.

As we plot our path towards productivity, therefore, we need to remain acutely aware of this. Formal structures imposed upon us may simply build our resistance to organization. We have to ensure they're our structures – suited to our needs – and aimed at securing our goals.

Women and ADD

But have we forgotten half the population? The traits above – and certainly their potential roots in early society – have an undoubtedly masculine bent. Indeed, much of the original focus on ADD – and current focus with ADHD – suggests this may be an exclusively male concern. Yet researchers and physicians now accept this is far from a boys-only malaise.

‘ADD can have a profound impact on women, perhaps even greater than its effect on men’, wrote David B. Sudderth MD and Joseph Kandel MD in their 1996 book Adult ADD – the Complete Handbook.

One reason offered for the oversight is the fact girls are far less likely to exhibit hyperactivity, which is frequently seen in boys and is, perhaps, the most outwardly noticeable trait (although, as stated, a far from universal one). Another is that girls with ADD characteristics often have more acute self-esteem concerns, according to Sudderth and Kandel, and this may form the focus of parental or professional concern.

Even accepting Hartmann's pre-history hunter theory (as I do) shouldn't exclude girls. Surviving hunter-gatherer groups in both Asia and Africa – such as the Aeta in the Philippines – reveal that the majority of women also hunt. And anthropologist Stephen L. Kuhn of the University of Arizona has suggested that gender-specific roles (such as the hunting and gathering division) only emerged in the Upper Paleolithic era (i.e. late Stone Age), which can be as recent as 10,000 years ago.

So ADD characteristics can undoubtedly exist (or develop) in girls and can have a major impact on female adults – especially when trying to juggle the multiple responsibilities that so often become the woman's role in the family home. Poor productivity at this level can also lead to enhanced feelings of guilt and inadequacy because women feel they're letting down others, while the male version is usually more focused on the personal consequences.

And, for women and men, we must also be aware that the modern world – while not necessarily to blame – is unlikely to improve our distractibility, with contemporary office jobs exacerbating rather than soothing our organizational deficiencies.

Asperger's syndrome – more than just low empathy

Yet we're far from done with the conditions potentially impacting our productivity. First up: Asperger's syndrome, named after the Austrian paediatrician who studied childhood traits such as poor nonverbal communication skills, limited empathy with others and physical clumsiness – later banded together as a diagnosable condition.

Debate rages regarding what characteristics are included as part of an Asperger's diagnosis, although most sources accept the following:

• a lack of demonstrable empathy, especially in immediate situations,
• difficulty developing meaningful or mutual friendships,
• poor reciprocity in conversation – including indulging in monologues (or ‘talking at’ people),
• difficulties with social interaction and poor social intuition,
• uninhibited verbalization of thoughts, including potentially hurtful or tactless statements,
• awkward social skills, such as intense eye contact or inappropriate facial expressions,
• poor or misleading voice intonation – including oddities in volume and pitch,
• intense preoccupancy with narrow subjects – potentially to the extent of being considered mildly autistic (in fact, Asperger's is on the World Health Organization's ‘autism spectrum’ of pervasive developmental disorders),
• physical clumsiness and inelegant limb coordination,
• impaired humour appreciation – including a low awareness of non-literal language such as irony or sarcasm,
• differences in perception with others witnessing the same event – although often with an enhanced perception of (not always significant) details,
• dislike of even minimal change, with a potentially extreme preference for routines and rituals,
• unusual sensitivity to light or sound or other stimuli, making them appear restless and distracted,
• sensory processing inconsistencies – meaning they can both over-respond (perhaps being majorly concerned by background noise) and under-respond (perhaps not noticing when they are being directly addressed),
• sleep disorders, and early morning awakenings,
• deficits in task fulfilment involving visual-spatial perception, or auditory perception.

And while only the last of these traits is directly linked to poor productivity, difficulties with sensory processing can prevent a sufferer from managing sustained and focused attention. Also, an obsession with particular – and potentially irrelevant – details can act as a barrier to planning and progress, as can a preference for ritualistic routine. In fact, children and adolescents with Asperger's are prone to poor levels of self-care and organization. Many delay leaving home, procrastinate with respect to major decisions or projects and are disturbed by change.

As to the causes, Hans Asperger himself noticed that family members – especially fathers – tended to share the same characteristics, which has, again, led to suggestions of a genetic condition, although no gene has ever been discovered. Certainly, other autism spectrum disorders are mostly viewed as genetic by the medical establishment, although there are plenty of observers (including Oliver James) who think that environmental factors (such as family life) play a more significant role.

Other disorders

Of course, many people reading the above will have mentally ticked off the characteristics to conclude that they have Asperger's syndrome. I certainly did. But then I did for ADD. And then I read about ‘simple schizophrenia’ (sometimes known as ‘disorganization syndrome’ or ‘deteriorative disorder’) and thought I had that as well. Characteristics – according to London-based psychologists Susannah Whitwell, Jessica Bramham and John Moriarty, writing in Advances in Psychiatric Treatment (a journal of the Royal College of Psychiatrists) – include:

• poor interaction and sociability resulting in withdrawal,
• difficulties in planning or making decisions,
• chaotic behaviour (including lateness and an ability to obey rules),
• low threshold for verbal aggression,
• difficulties in initiating actions, or in completing tasks once initiated, and
• behavioural disinhibition – perhaps resulting in a poor awareness of appropriate behavioural boundaries.

The reference to ‘simple’ is due to the lack of hallucinations or delusions usually associated with schizophrenia, and it differs from Asperger's or other autism-spectrum disorders due to the fact the condition develops in people previously seen as ‘normal’.

Yet there are plenty more disorders where these came from. Another condition, which gained traction in the 1990s, is myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) now more commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Again, not without its controversies, symptoms mostly occur after periods of extreme stress or in the recovery period from a flu-like illness, which has led to speculation that CFS is linked to a virus or series of viruses (although recent studies have ‘disproved’ the link). Fatigue and muscle pain persist – for as long as six months or a year – and are accompanied by psychological characteristics such as depression, mood swings, irritability, anxiety and panic attacks. The result: impaired information processing and a decrease in attention span, memory, reaction time and motivation.

Next up: obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) – an anxiety disorder in which potentially harmful or inappropriate obsessions are countered by compulsive behaviours (for instance an obsession with germs can lead to compulsive hand-washing). And this can result in diverting behaviours that pose a significant barrier to our productive and organizational pursuits.

Then there's dysmorphophobia (an anxiety disorder leading to withdrawal, poor social functioning and low motivation often due to an obsession with a small – perhaps facial – disfigurement); bipolar disorder (where energetic, even euphoric, episodes of lucid creativity are followed by depression, self-loathing and inaction); childhood disintegrative disorder or Heller's syndrome (in which development in self-care functionality or social skills regresses as the child ages), seasonal affective disorder (in which seasonal change generates a depressed and demotivated state), and execu­­tive dysfunction (a neurobiological condition affecting planning, sequencing, organizing, initiating and self-monitoring skills), and so on …

Eventually, the world of disorders capable of negatively impacting our organizational competence starts resembling a Savile Row tailor, in which we can all be measured for a near-bespoke mental ailment to explain away our deficiencies.

MBTI types

And we may not have any form of disorder. We may simply be a type. Certainly, Katherine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers would have us think so. They created the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) in the 1940s, initially to help women entering the workplace during the war years to choose appropriate employment preferences. Today, MBTI is the world's most widely used psychometric (i.e. the measurement of psychological traits) questionnaire – adopted by human resources departments across the globe as a ‘reliable’ universal test of employee suitability.

The types originate from the psychological theories of Carl Jung who considered humans divisible with respect to how they process information and evaluate the world. Jung considered these divisions hardwired – based on the accumulation of many generations of behaviour, especially in particular societies. MBTI proponents also insist there's no right and wrong or better or worse ‘type’, although it quickly becomes apparent certain types have a propensity for stronger productivity than others.

While too complex to explain in full, in essence MBTIs divide people into groups selected by a combination of answers to either/or questions. Various permutations of these choices – combined with a calculation regarding which preferences dominate – determine our personality type.

For instance, when ‘making decisions’ (one of four key MBTI determinants) we're invited to choose between our preference for ‘thinking’ or ‘feeling’. Thinkers like to decide things from a detached, logical and reason-based standpoint. Meanwhile, feelers tend to come to decisions using their emotions. They look for empathy and harmony and ‘fit’.

With respect to our ‘favourite world’ (another key determinant) we have to choose between being ‘extraverts’ and ‘introverts’. Those preferring ‘extraversion’ like to act, then reflect, then act further based on the results. Their motivation declines if they're inactive. Introverts, however, prefer to reflect, then act, and then reflect again. Extraverts direct their energy to people and objects, while introverts direct it towards ideas.

And then there's ‘sensing’ or ‘intuition’ – our decision with respect to ‘dealing with information’. Those who prefer sensing are more likely to trust concrete information. They distrust hunches while liking facts and figures. Intuition-oriented individuals, meanwhile, prefer theoretical or abstract information.

The MBTI tests result in the award of one of 16 types, described in terms of four-letter acronyms. Yet the types are always de­­scribed positively, which means we must read between the lines to discern the negatives. For instance, ENFPs are extraverted, intuitive, feeling and perceptive, which means they're sociable, imaginative, outspoken and personable. Yet that may also mean they're bored by routine and seldom able to repeat the same task in the same way, which – while making them apt to adopt many new interests – also makes them strong candidates for being inattentive thrill-seekers.

ISTJs, by contrast, are introverted, sensing, thinking and judgemental. They are quiet and serious, thorough and dependable. They are practical, orderly, logical, decisive and able to work steadily towards a planned goal, which makes them unlikely candidates for a book aimed at unproductive and organizationally dysfunctional people.

Are types useful?

There are two million assessments undertaken annually according to the company that publishes the MBTI test, so they clearly work at some level – perhaps helping major employers differentiate between academically-similar candidates. But the tests have their detractors, who most often focus on the lack of critical scrutiny of the outcomes. Some statisticians point out that the score distributions reveal abnormalities, while others point to the terminology being vague, the descriptions being too brief to be meaningful and the tests being open to dishonest reporting.

And then there's the fact that a large percentage (estimates range from 36–76 percent) of those tested fall into a different category when retested, perhaps just weeks later – all of which leads critics such as psychologist David Pittenger to wonder about the usefulness of those ‘beguiling … horoscope-like summaries’.

Indeed, just like zodiacal signs, it's easy to accept your type and then search your personal history for traits that confirm your classification – a bit like all those conditions, in fact.