Write Despite Your ADD: Embrace Your Adult ADD and Increase Your Output

Do you ever spend hours reading and commenting on new AC content when you know you should be writing? Can you be distracted by the research you're doing for your next article? Do you find yourself unable to stay focused long enough to finish one article before you're thinking and researching another one? Me too.

Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) is a highly prevalent disorder in America, affecting 3 - 6% of adults. The typical symptoms of ADD are:

--Inability to focus
--Impulsivity and
--Hyperactivity

These basic symptoms translate into easy distractibility, daydreaming, procrastination, and easily feeling overwhelmed by large projects or large amounts of information. Does this sound like you? Take an Adult ADD quiz to see if the shoe fits.¹

Procrastination is my biggest problem. To deal with it, I find that I need a schedule, and the discipline to stick to it. Beyond a wholesome discipline, though, I need some self-love and self-forgiveness.

Why? With Adult ADD, my brain works differently than other's and sometimes differently than I would like, but this is my reality. It is not necessarily a bad thing. I have discovered a freedom in embracing my ADD.

If you desire contentment with your work, if you wish to contribute to society with your writing, and if you have ADD, you will need rules. A person with Adult ADD will find it difficult to work effectively or efficiently without them.

Don't bristle at the idea of "rules." Rules are only bad if you didn't impose them and you don't agree with them. But these rules will be your own.

What are your priorities?

First, be honest with yourself about what your current priorities are and whether or not you are satisfied with them. Perhaps currently you spend most of your time reading and commenting on other people's articles rather than working on your own. Whatever you spend the most time on is currently your top priority, whether you want to admit it or not. Not happy with that? Change it. Set new priorities. Write them down and post it next to your computer to remind yourself.

You may want to look at the "Whys" of your priorities. Is fear playing a part? Are you afraid of putting your thoughts and ideas out for public consumption? Are you terrified you'll say the wrong thing or make a mistake? Understanding these things might explain why you spend so much time on other parts of the writing process.

Perhaps it isn't really so important to you that you produce articles. Maybe having fun, being part of the community, is more interesting. That's okay, but you need to admit that to yourself and decide if that works for you. Do you need to create a minimum amount of work to be satisfied with your writing? Then you may need to rearrange those priorities and move fun a little further down the list.

What works for you?

Adult ADD can hobble us. It impairs us. It affects our lives, and we need to either embrace that part of ourselves and work with it, or medicate it to alleviate its effects.

Medication is available, and if you're interested in that, please talk to your doctor. Certain stimulant drugs can help in about 75% of cases.¹ The fact that medication helps people with ADD is evidence that there is definitely a biological component to the disorder.

In my research, I have found that people feel medication is helpful, but that it stunts their creativity and spontaneity. Medication might allow you to focus your thoughts and get your work done, but unless your ADD is a severe problem, there are other ways to handle it.

You need to try different approaches to see what works for you. However, regardless of how you decide to handle your ADD, first you need to get organized. How getting organized can help:

--Be more productive
--Make more money
--Feel less frustration
--Reduce feeling overwhelmed
--Spend less time looking for things

Perhaps organizing would let you focus on one part of several projects at a time. For writing articles, this might look like: research project one, research project two, write one, write two, proof one, proof two, and so forth. With computers, this type of organization is easy.

Some other "rules" you may want to impose upon yourself to increase your productivity:

--Break your task into small, manageable pieces;
--Let the answering machine pick up incoming calls;
--Set a time each day to stop everything else and start writing (and be brutal about this);
--Find a quiet place to work - no radio (or use "white noise" in the form of classical music or nature sounds to drown out noises around you);
--Post a "Do Not Disturb" sign - let potential visitors know you are not to be distracted;
--Produce your work in short, intense periods of output;
--Face a wall, not a window;
--Keep your desk uncluttered to cut down on distractions;
--Use a dayplanner and/or to-do lists (for some outstanding suggestions on this, see Resource 2 below).

Using to-do lists or a dayplanner is an excellent way to calm an overactive brain. Capture your thoughts and ideas and put them in your book. Always have that book with you, always; even if you're just running into a convenience store. As soon as you don't have it, you'll regret it. And whether you use the idea or not, that really isn't the point. The point is that you have given yourself freedom to think about other things once it's written down. And that kind of freedom relieves stress.

Relieving stress is important with Adult ADD. With so many things screaming for attention, we can drive ourselves nuts without a strategy to deal with them.

Our productivity is intricately tied to our feelings of self-esteem and self-respect. I would venture to say that most of us feel better when we are productive and contributing members of society. So if we battle Adult ADD, it will be worth the effort to find what works for us, set our own rules and priorities, and stick to them. A healthy dose of self-discipline can actually set us free.

Finally, remember what one of the twentieth century's most influential and prolific writers, Isaac Asimov, said when asked what he liked to read: "When you write as much as I do, you don't have enough time for reading."³