May 28, 2005
So why IS it good to have ADD anyway?
What special gifts has having ADD given you?
For starters, I can stay up working late at night like I am now. How many ADDers out there tend to do their best work late at night? I think lots do.
When my youngest daughter was a baby, my family and I were at some family function and I was mentioning that she had just started sleeping through the night and my father said “Well, you and your brother NEVER slept through the night” I still haven’t!
But I sure can be productive late in the evening. I can also speak in public pretty well. I enjoy doing that! I’ve experienced that many ADDers have a lot of charisma and tend to speak well in public. In general I think people with ADD are funnier. I can be pretty funny. But all the funniest people I know have ADD. It seems to go along with having ADHD for a lot of people.
I can also do two or four or three-hundred-six things at once. I like that I can do that. But I can hyperfocus too. I am very focused with my clients. Also an ADD gift I think.
I also seem to be able to get to the meat of the matter quite easily. I can generally see the core of complicated issues and make them simple.
I’m talking about me but I believe that everyone who has ADD also has a bunch of special abilities that go along with it. I want to try to get people out of their comfort zone. I want you to look for and find the reasons why you’re glad you have ADD.
I hope people will comment a lot on this. I’ve heard ADD (Sorry, I can’t get used to the term “ADHD”) described as “an island of disability in a sea of abilities”. I think that is a great metaphor!
So think hard……What special gifts has having ADD given you?
Although sometimes frustrating, having ADD is also a pretty amazing set of talents, tools, whatever you want to call it….
For example, I paint signs and murals and today was a comedy of errors: I had the design all planned out; arrived to the site 5 minutes late (traffic much busier than expected… really!); showed the client three ideas and she picked one– the only one which was a bit loose in my sketchbook.
I was about to transfer the small sketch to the big window and a huge wind comes up and blows it away… (it’s windy out there, I should’ve planned better with weights, nails, etc.). Had it been a “regular” wind, and had I not sprained my ankle Saturday, maybe I could have caught the paper. Maybe.
But, having a rapidly turning brain with lots of ideas, I was able to mumble a very few seconds and take out a pencil and draw the basic idea the client chose, but maybe even better! ADD brains are always working it seems, so if a new plan, different idea, better alternative is needed on the spot… you just have to go searching in your own head. That is really cool!!!
Also, it’s cool to have ADD because you can so easily fill up your schedule. Without even “trying” you are able to double and even occasionally triple book the same day with stuff. Then, how in the world can you complain of being bored? You get to choose your favorite item (or sometimes not-so-favorite) and re-schedule the others, if you choose to do so. ADD provides such a great variety of options and flexibility, so that is very cool!
If you are fortunate enough to work “for yourself” (i.e. attempt to set your own schedule), it’s even better. The ADD brain and outlook allow for so many opportunities to learn new things; things I am finding others just take for granted. Boy, are they missing out on opportunities for education and experience!
This may sound a bit tongue-in-cheek in places, but this is very sincere. At this point in my life, I wouldn’t trade the challenges of ADD, or the frustrations of ADD, for anything! I’d lose the challenges and frustrations (interpreted these days as opportunities) and also probably a lot of creativity and variety as well. No thanks!
hyperfocus is definitely a great gift. being dependent on stimuli is too.
i can easily capture the diverse atmosphere/energies of environments e.g. art exhibitions, social events, landscapes.
in settings like this people refer to me as a catalyst. the energy runs through me and i can transmit and communicate it.
this combination of both sensitivity and presence also makes me a pretty “sexy” individual.
people tend to like that. this combination of honesty and charisma. being honestly lost. scanning and processing all sorts of information and transmitting the result verbally or just through a certain kind of pleasure and confidence that i transmit and that they feel.
many people go to art openings for example because it is their job, or because it is just chic, cool and so wonderfully exclusive.
i go because i love the diverity of stimuli, i love to be open, lost. i love to hyperfocus. i love to “create meaning”. and i create meaning.
i am just at home there. vulnerably, confident, strong.
people love this presence.
add can be quite sexy.
ADD has given me creativity. My passion is writing, and I don’t think I could be as creative as I am without it. ADD has also given me the ability to make others laugh, and it makes me more open personality-wise. All in all, I wouldn’t trade my ADD for anything, because it’s the people with ADD that make life so interesting.
First let me say that I don’t see this as having anything wrong with me, it’s only a part of what makes me tick the way I do. I don’t have a handicap or a disability, I just don’t work the way other people do. I am “me” because this is the way I do things.
I have many reasons why it’s good to have ADD, but I’ll start with this; everything I do in life is an adventure.
We go on a road trip, we always get an unexpected side excursion into the local culture. Some might call this “getting lost”, I call it high adventure.
My trips to the grocery store always result in the invention of new dining experiences for my family. Some might call this “forgetting to buy everything on my list, or forgetting to put things on my list in the first place.” I call it “Culinary Improv” and it plays nightly in my kitchen. That’s high adventure the whole family can enjoy.
These are only a few examples of how ADD can turn an otherwise mundane day into something that’s anything but ordinary.
Later in this broadcast…Why I can talk to almost anyone about almost anything under the sun….
Why I can talk to almost anyone: simple, because I have ADD. I follow paths put before me.
When a cat sees something interesting what does it do? Does it go “Huh, interesting” and then go on about it’s business, or does it go “wow, cool, I’m checking that out”? You know the saying curiosity killed the cat. What no one ever tells you is the rest of that saying;but satisfaction brought it back.
The satisfaction for me is pursuing that interesting thing and learning everything I can about it. I have dozens of interests and hobbies, I go, I do, I volunteer, I join, I research, I’m into a million things. Being into a million things exposes me to tons of great people in all walks of life, and I talk to them. Some might call this being easily distracted. I call it a quest for knowledge and experience.
I’ve done every level of job from grunt to Head Chieftess in more fields than I could list here. At work I find out everything I can about why my job matters, about the whys and wherefores of business, the industry, the market. I find new ways to do things and new things to do. I’ve done it within the same company for as much as 10 years or moved on after 2 years. I’ve had times in my life where I’ve had 3 jobs at once, just to do it. Why? Because I have ADD. I can’t keep doing the same repetitive thing for years on end. So my challenge is to either make what I do more interesting as I go, or move to something that I have leeway to face new challenges even if I have to come up with them myself. Some may call this a handicap, I call it a supreme gift from the universe.
So not only am I knowledgeable in many areas, much of it first hand, but what I don’t know I’ll ask. I can talk to the president of a Fortune 500 company as easily as a laborer on a construction site, or a Mom as easily as a race car driver. I’ve done or know enough about some aspect of them and what they do to be able to hold a viable conversation either as a contributor or knowing what kinds of questions to ask.
Which also leads to why I’m the perfect party mingler….
Mingling, why people with ADD are the perfect minglers.
The average mingling conversation lasts about 10 or 15 minutes. Which is perfect, because in 10 or 15 minutes something else is going to grab my attention and I’m out of there. Or I’ll need to walk away for a while and process everything I’ve garnered while doing it.
But for those glorious 10 or 15 minutes I’m riveted to the subject and the speaker. They feel good for having gotten that focused attention without it getting overdrawn and uncomfortable, and I feel great because I’m on to the next attention riveting conversation.
If you look at lists of famous people who have/had ADD, in so many cases they are people known for being brillant in working a room. That’s why. They make ordinary things into adventures everyone can enjoy, they can talk to almost anyone about almost anything, and/or they give everyone personal attention and conversation, if even briefly.
There are all kinds of people with ADD. Just like there are all kinds of people without ADD. And that’s the key. Different, not better or worse. It’s a question of whether we want to accept the challenge to embrace it and work with it to accomplish or not is all.
Maybe this means reassessing our choices and methods to find ones that work better for us. People who don’t have ADD do this all the time. They make choices for what works for them because they can’t or don’t like to do what someone else does. And they reassess those choices and make changes.
They only need to do it every so often, we need to do it continually, and that’s our challenge. Sometimes it’s more effecient and effective to make a square opening than to keep trying to force the square peg into the round hole. Sometimes we have to find a way to make it fit into that round hole regardless. It’s our challenge to find the best way to accomplish those given the tools we have to work with, or to find new tools if those aren’t getting it done. But the immense satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment we get from facing those challenges and rising above them is a feeling I wouldn’t give up for anything in the world.
I don’t have ADD. Sometimes I wish I did. The cool people have ADD…you know them…funny, lots of great ideas,life of the party,smartly sarcastic, maybe a little distractable, maybe a little bad “self talk” from the years prior to diagnosis, maybe a little stuck in the low self awareness part. My life is the best of both worlds. I Coach people with ADD. I get to hang out in their amazing technocolor world for a while everyday, get my ADD energy fix, and do a little good along the way. Returning to my black and white and shades of grey world is linier, quite, safe….and boring?