ADHD and managing your professional reputation

I volunteer as a mentor in a group where most mentees are recent college grads or early 20s juniors. ADHD is a perennial topic of discussion because most of them (no exaggeration) have either received a diagnosis or have self-diagnosed as ADHD.

One very common struggle I see is when they take internet advice that tells them it’s okay to offload their own struggles on to other people. Unfortunately this blog gives similar advice:

> Focus on managing how your limitations affect others rather than trying to eliminate those limitations. This means: > Being explicitly upfront about your administrative weaknesses early in relationships > Giving trusted contacts alternative ways to reach you when truly urgent > Building a reputation for being aware of your limitations rather than in denial about them

This commonly translates to them adopting ADHD as part of their public persona within the company, which they believe will grant them some degree of protection from consequences.

From what I’ve observed: More often than not this provides a false sense of security. They don’t intend for it to become a free pass, but after “coming out” as ADHD they get the wrong impression that the pressure is now off.

I think they intend to continue working on becoming better at managing their struggles, but it’s really easy to let the opposite happen: Once they think their diagnosis can be used as an excuse, they relax and let their behavior slip even further.

So be careful about getting the wrong idea from this line of thinking. It is good to acknowledge your difficulties and do things like ask other people to follow up if you don’t reply in a timely manner. It is important that you own up when you’ve dropped the ball. However, none of these things should be interpreted as a free pass or a loophole that shields you from consequences. That line of thinking, in my experience, is where people get themselves in trouble.

> it's like trying to teach advanced machine learning to someone with an IQ of 100. No matter how well-intentioned the advice or how clear the potential benefits, there's a fundamental mismatch between the cognitive requirements of the task and the available cognitive machinery.

This obviously isn't core to the point OP is making, but I find it hard to believe that someone of "average" intelligence can't learn about advanced machine learning.

I was diagnosed with ADHD but I still think of myself as a lazy cunt. That probably doesn't help reputation either, I'm sure I project this belief outwards, even unintentionally. Other ADHD-afflicted individuals I've talked to about this report similar.

I "have" ADHD, although I don't believe in it conceptually and I don't take any drugs for it. I think if you poly-score people on impulse control, attention span, time sensitivity, organic recall of pertinent time-sensitive information, etc. you'll find that if you arrange all the scores from best to worst everyone under the 40th percent mark "has ADHD". Below maybe the 10th percentile you'll find that without stimulants it's unlikely that the person will function well in a task-based time-sensitive environment with delayed feedback loops for task completion.

Accepting the framing that ADHD does exist, it feels like brain damage. Every year growing up, in any group of kids I was among the most immature, the most off-task, the most distracted, and the most forgetful. I am plenty smart, move very quickly, and have accomplished plenty, but my entire life has been defined by being more bored, forgetful, and immature than nearly every single person I've been close to. My wife (performs very well on relevant metrics) says it's extremely noticeable and unusual from the outside. Over time I've learned to heavily lean on coping mechanisms (my phone rings about 35 times per day with timers I snooze tactically, I leave my keys in my bag any time I go places so I can't leave without the bag, etc.) No amount of character development schemes, punishments, shaming, positive skill practicing etc. has changed my natural proclivities in the slightest, although many days of good sleep and diet can sometimes produce a bit of a sustained flow state. Sometimes I wonder if I just lack some kind of ion in my blood.

My coworkers sometimes tell me they feel like they have ADHD. Then I watch them listen to someone talk about a subject they find boring for 5 minutes without drifting off or fidgeting, and then remember off the top of their heads to respond to outstanding emails. Come on guys, if we're going to make up conditions we should at least reserve the label for people that it describes accurately.

> Being explicitly upfront about your administrative weaknesses early in relationships

This sounds like a Good Thing, and I'm sure for some people it's a good idea, but in my experience, frontloading this sort of stuff tends to backfire. The problem is that most[0] people don't know how to deal with special needs[1]

If you focus on the facts and "your administrative weaknesses" a lot of people just hear excuses and think you're incompetent.

If you try to explain it as a medical thing first, you might get the "you don't look autistic" response -- they think you are putting yourself down -- but the response I've had even more often is "what does that mean?". Now you have to work to convince them that you are a liability.

A strange game. The only way to win is to not[2] play.

[0] "most": a population large enough that you can't safely ignore their existence. Source? what I reckon.

[1] I don't really like to use the phrase, but I mean the literal meaning of the words and also that's often how they see it.

[2] not the only way to order words

I have to constantly fight the struggle OP is describing, and one thing I’ve never tried is being upfront and honest about my shortcomings… I just get upset with myself and start writing post it notes about doing better, actions to take, and sticking them all over the place. I can’t even imagine the world where I share this about myself and it’s well received by people who, at the core, just want me to deliver a very steady stream of work they can plan for.

I have ADHD and sometimes my brain wants to do admin work but sometimes it doesn’t. It’s actually hard to predict, so that makes it even worse. If I do the admin stuff one time then people assume I’ll always do it but then next time I let it slip and that has negative consequences.

It kind of feels like I’m just a passenger and my subconscious is doing the driving in terms of my decisions if what to focus on.

I don't officially "have ADHD" but I have related things that often come with "ADHD-like symptoms" which as I've gotten older seem to either get worse or just come to the forefront more. So I open this article looking for something and... man, it is really shocking and bizarre to see basically my entire life-success strategy independently written down by someone else.

Some are worthy of specific comment:

> These suggestions assume that the primary challenge is knowing what to do rather than the neurological capacity to consistently execute such systems.

YES YES YES YES YES. I am utterly sick of being told to make a to-do list (thanks, therapist, last Monday). I have a list. I have a half-dozen discarded lists. Lists are not the problem. Someday I will find the solution?

> Be exceptionally helpful when you can, so people are more forgiving when you drop administrative balls

It's kind of hilarious to see this written down, because usually when people seek me out for help (or I go to them to help)... it's something novel or at least a change of pace for me... so it automatically activates the novelty circuits in my brain and I get really into helping out anyway. Brains are weird.

> Being explicitly upfront about your administrative weaknesses early in relationships

This one caught some flak upthread but for me it is as simple as saying "hey, I'm not always great about responding to pings, if it's important just ping me twice and that usually works" (which, for me, it does). Saying that kind of little thing explicitly can go a long way.

> it's like trying to teach advanced machine learning to someone with an IQ of 100.

Everyone already agrees this is ridiculous, but I have to say it too: this is ridiculous.

I have adhd one way I get myself to do my administrative tasks is by trying to somehow mentally connect it to a goal that I am hyper focused on already. Another thing that helps me personally is running as it helps me center my thoughts to find my next step to advance to the goal(s) I am trying to achieve.

I have extreme adhd. I have zero struggles with what the article describes. I am extremely detailed oriented in every aspect of my life. I just can’t bring myself to sit and work on the most difficult and meaningful things unless they’re highly novel and I happen to find some sort of groove which is usually short lived.

Not sure the point of my comment. Maybe just to shed light on now it can be different. I would also never in a million years admit my adhd in a professional setting. It’s really stigmatized

This article hits home so precisely -- not personally but in terms of those who I've worked with in the past, and in particular the reputation bits.

It was been painful to watch, to be honest, because the impact on our team had been so acute, and it simply never got better after so much effort on the part of management, other engineers, etc.

Where I diverge with base assumptions however is that I suspect these particular people had been misdiagnosed with ADHD, were given medication, and it was the medication that led them to drop the ball. Why? Basic physiological needs were never being met, again and again. They were constantly reporting insomnia, missing meals, fatigue and all of the things you associate with stimulants being either misused or abused. Having _been there_, it was easy to spot. And I think this sort of thing is tragically common in our field, and is rarely confronted because of identity issues associated with medical labels.

> it's like trying to teach advanced machine learning to someone with an IQ of 100. No matter how well-intentioned the advice or how clear the potential benefits, there's a fundamental mismatch between the cognitive requirements of the task and the available cognitive machinery.

couldn't the same be said about adhd? or looking at it from the other side by the author's terms wouldn't a sub-100-iq machine learning enthusiast be also entitled to special treatment so s/he can work with it? isn't it fair to say that adhd relates to non-adhd like sub-100-iq to plus-100-iq? again, just taking the author at face value.

This is a pretty good article, from my point of view as an undiagnosed probable ADHD sufferer (I dropped out of high school over this kind of thing).

I wrote a book about my coping strategies— which invert most of the common productivity-fetish advice. For instance, I value procrastination. It has important benefits.

A key move for me was to stop thinking of my mind as if it were a power boat and start thinking of it as a sailboat. Hence my book on professional self-education: Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar.

Another key move was to recognize that discipline is not my road to getting things done. Rather, my motivator is helping people.

I am also usually very careful about what I promise. Most of my promises are to do things that I have already completed, or as near as.

If you're interested in figuring out how to gain focus / concentration in life without having to get an adderall prescription, look into Samādhi.

small disclaimer: You probably can't choose to only gain focus / concentration if you embark on this path. Other stuff is going to come along with it, since technically speaking, you'll be unveiling the nature of consciousness in the process.

There's is sort of a natural efficiency in forgetting some things.

Sort of a sieve of things that weren't worth doing anyways.

Maybe I have something like thus but admin tasks are a real challenge. Monday morning my heart wants to code and be in flow... but I know I need to plan future initatives, communicate stuff and worst of all make phone calls for personal stuff.

Never have I ever read such a pile of bull.

Of cause everybody prefers the new and shiny but not executing on what's important is simply lazyness and lack of will.

The cherry on top is the comparison of the impossibly of teaching advanced machine learning to someone of average IQ -- clearly indicating that they assume to be of higher IQ since they have grasped that topic.

OP seems to be a low performer thinking of himself as high performer held back by circumstances and not themselves