Working in Movement

Except for some caterers, working on the job is no picnic. The sheer volume of work seems to grow larger all the time, as the amount of time available to do it gets shorter and shorter. It's demanding, to say the least. But for some, these sorts of multitasking demands are, well, more demanding than for others. Office Messes paints the difficult picture of working adults who have been diagnosed with Attention Deficient Disorder or ADD.

An estimated 3 to 5 percent of school kids can be said to have ADD in one form or another. Before I read this article, I assumed that most of these kids outgrew it, or at least learned enough coping skills to get by as they became adults. But in fact 60% of ADD kids retain the disorder and its symptoms after they become eligible to vote, drink, marry and all the other things adults do. And those other things involve getting a job and going to work.

The article describes the struggles encountered by a some of these folks, and a fairly detailed portrait of a highly-educated young woman working as a reference librarian. She had been diagnosed with ADD as an adult, but only revealed it to her supervisors when it looked like her job was going down the tubes because of attentional and behavioral issues. There are some accommodations, including a job coach, that show promise for a while. In the end, though, she is let go.

I've known about the growing field of life coaching, but until reading this was unaware of a special field of ADD coaches for adults. There are even now places to train such coaches; ADD Coach Academy and ADDCOACH.COM being the two listed at the top of a Google search for ADD Coach.

There are also pharmacological approaches treating ADD. The article mentions Strattera as a popular drug for ADD adults, giving at least one positive account of the drug's use in the workplace.

But no everyone sees the ADD condition as something to treat and get rid of. Some actually celebrate and use the experiences and perceptions that come with it.

David Neeleman, for instance, the founder of JetBlue Airways, has said that he will not take medication for his A.D.D., fearing that it would make him just like everybody else.

''It's the source of my creativity and my drive,'' echoed Thomas Apple, who was given a diagnosis about seven years ago, when he was in his early 40's, and went on to create the world's largest video display for stock market quotations. ''You can think outside the box because you're not in a box.''

''A.D.D. is the greatest thing that happened to me,'' said Sam Grossman, who became a partner in the Albert Corporation, a real-estate company based in Brookline, Mass., two years ago, when he was 22. ''I wish I could hire four or five people like me with A.D.D.,'' he said. ''The impulsivity that comes with this means I can walk into a building, see things an ordinary person wouldn't see and act on my gut right away.''

You have to be careful when reading these quotes to remember that all work, all jobs, aren't the same. They don't require the same skills, temperaments, instincts or whatever. Entrepreneurial, journalistic or performance work isn't even remotely related to jobs like the one the reference librarian got bounced from (in spite of her hard work and best efforts). Not to make lite of a serious condition like ADD, it seems that, like most things, giving some thought to what you want to do, what really suits you, is worth a lot. But you have to know yourself pretty well to pull that off.