20 tips for handling your ADHD at work

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Work’s complicated

For many adults with ADHD, work can be an assault course each day. Work is not easy when overwhelmed with process, admin chores and planning. It’s harder with ADHD to focus on dull tasks, remember essential details, hold emotions in check and resist the urge to rebel! Here are twenty simple tips to better manager your ADHD at work.

Focus

Use music to boost focus, just make sure lyrics don’t distract
Doodle, fidget, draw, fiddle – all raise your overall level of engagement
Find an office with a door that closes to avoid distractions
Take a stimulant: coffee, medication timed when you most need to focus, say half an hour ahead
Take a break, take a walk, move location, change things to become more alert

Procrastination

Write critical assignments and deadlines somewhere within your eye-line
Use you diary for everything, put every date straight into your phone/PC
Figure out your most productive time of day, get your tough tasks done then
You don’t need to write the novel just the first page – what do you need to do next?
Commit to deadlines with colleagues, “I will email you by close of business”

Planning

Get up and stretch, take a break from what you’re doing
Take short breaks, sometimes to find a private space for thinking.
Confirm back verbally or by email that you have understood a task correctly
Move location. Go to Starbucks to plan your week or write the report
Ask: is this work important?, is there anything else I should be doing right now?

Communication

You may not need communication but others do, both staff and your management
Check in with your boss more frequently, ask “is this what you wanted?”
With staff set up brief regular meetings, get them to write the notes
Get your boss involved in decisions even if you don’t need their help
If you know what you are doing it’s far easier to tell others

Andrew Lewis

Andrew Lewis is an Adult ADHD Coach, writer and founder of SimplyWellbeing. He has over 16,000 hours of experience in coaching over 600 adults with ADHD, including many ADHD business professionals and ADHD creatives. Andrew ran a major ADHD support group and even an ADHD diagnostic clinic for a while. Andrew is an adult ADHD Coach backed with business expertise from a twenty years career in software, from roles in programming, through marketing, sales and to running a few software start-ups.

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