ADHD Center for Success

*Resource: Russell Barkley, PhD

Russell Barkley, PhD, one of the foremost researchers of ADHD suggests that ADHD is not an attention disorder. He suggests that “ADHD is a blindness to the future… so that the child and adult with ADHD are going to wait until the future is eminent (in your face)… and then they will try to deal with it.”

Barkley suggests that “ADHD  creates a nearsightedness to time so that the person with the disorder cannot organize to the delayed future but only to the imminent future. Thus, everything in life becomes a crisis. But the crisis was avoidable and no one has patience with this because they see this as a moral failing. ‘You could have chosen to get ready, but didn’t’.”

 Dr. Barkley also suggests that “ADHD is a performance disorder. You can’t perform the things you know how to do. People with ADHD know what to do, but they can’t do what they know”.

“I have heard Dr. Barkley speak several times but I had not heard him speak of this before. Most of the ADHD children and adults that I work with struggle with procrastination, delaying the activation to get things done.”  ~CoachRudy

If you’d like to hear Dr. Barkley yourself, click on the link below.

Eliminate Time-Draining E-mail Habits 

If you are feeling overburdened and stressed at work, your online habits may be partly to blame. Poor e-mail management often is a sign—or the cause—of other time management woes. A top culprit: mismanaging incoming messages.

Marsha Egan, president of The Egan Group, a success-coaching firm, offers a self-management program that teaches you how to eliminate time draining e-mail habits and boost your productivity. First, Egan says, you need to alter your perception of e-mail: Stop viewing the act of checking e-mail as a task in itself; come to see e-mail as merely a task delivery system. Then adopt these habits:

• Empty your inbox every time you check it.
• Live by the two-minute rule. If you can handle any incoming message in two minutes or less, do so immediately. That could mean replying to, forwarding or simply deleting a message.
• Use a filing system. Create action folders and use them temporarily to file e-mail messages that will take longer than two minutes to respond to. Treat those messages as items on your daily to-do list.
• Control incoming messages—instead of letting them control you. Change your “send and receive” e-mail function from “Automatic” to “Every two hours.”

Source: Success Magazine July/August 2007

 There are many possible reasons for putting off until tomorrow what you intended to do today. It is only once you know why you are doing it that you can figure out what to do about it.

Source: “The Organized Life: Secrets of an Expert Organizer” by Stephanie Denton

(HealthDay News) — Adults with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) miss, on average, more than three weeks a year in workplace productivity, according to a new global reckoning of the problem.

Altogether, between 3 percent and 4 percent of adults worldwide have ADHD, according to survey data from the World Health Organization (WHO). Researchers say the condition can cause a serious loss of concentration at work due to chronic hyperactivity, forgetfulness and impulsiveness.

But many adult workers with ADHD may not know they have a problem, the team noted.

“While surveying mental disorders around the world, we’ve interviewed close to 200,000 people in almost 30 countries, and we’re discovering that an enormous number of adult workers — more than 3 percent on average — have untreated adult ADHD,” said study co-author Ron Kessler, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School in Boston. Kessler is also the director of the WHO’s World Mental Health Survey Consortium, which is based at Harvard.

Dr. David W. Goodman, director of the Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Center in Luthersville, Md., agreed that ADHD is an “under-diagnosed and under-recognized psychiatric condition that causes a tremendous amount of disability in the work environment.”

Read entire article>

Article By Alan Mozes
HealthDay Reporter

Last Updated: May 28, 2008

Many of us are using email and texting as a tool for social and work related communication. While these tools can be very effective they also require some level of personal management. Remember, ‘stimulation is my friend’. Email and texting can be effective, quick, entertaining AND it can be a major distraction from other, potentially more important tasks and responsibilities.
 
Here are a few of Coach Rudy’s tips for ADHD Self Management: 

• I generally find it important to schedule your email time.
• Turn on your email only during your scheduled times.
• Keep your email turned off during all other times.
• Use mindfulness bells to help monitor your email use.
• Avoid texting while driving, walking and multi-tasking

 
Here are some ways to use e-mail to your advantage (source: Stephanie Moulton Sarkis, PhD, author of “10 Simple solutions to Adult ADD”).
 

• Keep questions in your emails to a yes-or-no format.
• If you receive an email that asks you detailed questions, type your answers in a different font color directly after the original questions.
• Unsubscribe from mass mailings you do not read. Usually, there is an “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email.
• Schedule a time to answer your email. Enforce a time limit on your email use.
• Send yourself an email to remind yourself of important information for the next day.

ADHD adults are typically challenged by completing tasks and especially completing tasks ‘on time’. We’ll discuss this further in an upcoming class but here are a few tips that may help you to get started.

1. Start by asking yourself    

• How important is this task to YOU?    
• How important is it to YOU that you complete it? I recommend a scale of 1-10; [10 = High]. If the task is a #7 or below it’s not likely you’ll get done (on time).

2. Plan your time ‘realistically’. Establish a goal or deadline for completion of your tasks/project. Question: Is your intended date for completion realistic? Do yourself a favor and add extra time (days/hours) to complete your project. 3. Use an A, B, C Prioritization system.