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Minneapolis Star
Tribune, 12/14/05
ADHD: FINALLY FINDING FOCUS AT WORK
Increasingly thought to last a lifetime, ADHD has implications for
many workers as well as their employers.
by H.J. Cummins
Brian Broughten was a natural at graphic design.
At his old print-shop job, he thought putting together pages was
like solving a great puzzle. And his work was always clean; any
typos and errant lines seemed to jump off the page at him.
But Broughten couldn't keep track of his X-Acto knife if his life
depended on it. Or his ruler, or his tape measure. And he was a big
one for cigarette breaks.
Broughten would wait almost 10 years to learn how he could be both
star employee and staff flake at the same time.
That's when he finally was diagnosed with attention deficit
disorder, or ADD. He was 40.
ADD is one form of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or
ADHD, long known for making children restless in classrooms.
The neurological disorder was thought to fade away with age. But
doctors increasingly are convinced it lasts a lifetime, and that
means the distracted child grows up to be the scattered employee.
Some counselors are beginning to specialize in the workplace
implications of adult ADHD. In the right job -- usually creative,
often self-employed -- many with this condition thrive. Broughten
now owns an aquarium design-and-installation business, Advanced
Aquarium, in Robbinsdale.
But many with the condition -- estimates run from 3 to 8 percent --
don't even know they have it. And employers often brand them as
slackers with a bad attitude.
"It's still controversial, and some believe this is lame, poppycock,
psychobabble for being unmotivated," said Kathleen Nadeau, director
of the Chesapeake ADHD Center of Maryland.
It can be hard to convince employers that ADHD is a disability that,
under federal law, they must reasonably try to accommodate.
"We often work with ADHD because there's a lot more diagnosing of
adults," said Ann Macheledt, program manager for Staying on the Job,
a nonprofit consulting agency in Minneapolis. "And when we're able
to get medical documentation, we have had a lot of success
identifying strategies that help people at their work."
A car with faulty spark plugs
ADHD hampers the human brain's "executive functions" such as memory,
time management, organization and planning, said Susan Brokaw, a
Minnetonka counselor and ADHD specialist.
"That's all the stuff you need to manage your life and your work,"
Brokaw said.
There's a problem with the brain's "arousal" system, said counselor
Ken Traen in St. Paul. It's like a car whose spark plugs don't fire
consistently.
But when these brains do fire, it's with a passion, Traen said,
which is why people with ADHD can "hyperfocus" for hours on whatever
captures their imaginations.
ADHD brains go in many directions at once and without judgment,
Traen said. That's disastrous for prioritizing but great for
generating ideas.
"You're basically brainstorming all day whether you want to or not,"
he said.
These brains are built to crave challenge but to stray from routine
-- like record keeping. That's why Brokaw's two basic principles for
success are: Do what you love. And hire help for your weaknesses.
'I was never normal'
An offhand comment by a family member about four years ago
introduced Broughten to ADHD.
"It stuck in my head because I knew I was never normal," he said.
"So I Googled a test and, depending how you look at it, I either
passed or failed 100 percent."
A full medical diagnosis led to a Ritalin prescription.
By that time, Broughten was eight years into self-employment. After
the old printing business went under, he had followed his passion
for saltwater fish and started custom-designing fish tanks for
offices, clinics and luxury homes.
"I don't want to say medication was miraculous, but it was huge,"
Broughten said. "The year I was on Ritalin, I had my best business
year yet. I had my task list and bam, bam, bam, I got it all done."
The bigger, the more unusual the aquarium, the better.
"I can immerse myself in one thing for hours," Broughten said. A tip
on LED lighting -- light-emitting diode lighting, which consumes
almost no power and puts out almost no heat -- pulled his mind
through aquarium possibilities all the way to global ecology and
wind turbines and corn-burning stoves.
"And it all started with a light bulb," he said.
At the same time, he realized it took him an hour every day to walk
from his basement office to the house mailbox, because he'd stop to
put a spoon away or a move a book that was out of place. He couldn't
ignore the smallest distractions.
The Ritalin gradually lost its effect, which sometimes happens. So
now he's on another medication, Adderrall, and he says it's helping,
too.
Now Broughten has turned his bookkeeping over to his wife, Valerie.
He now keeps all his business data and vendor lists on a computer.
He figures out how long it will take him to drive to an appointment,
and he programs a Palm Pilot to sound an alarm when it's time for
him to leave. He started that after missing three of the first four
sessions with a counselor who was going to help him with his chaos.
And he now has a global positioning system that steers him to
appointments, "because sometimes I'd know how to get there from
home, but if I had to leave from St. Paul I couldn't do it," he
said.
Business is good, and that's a good thing, because he has yet to
finish a full-color sales brochure that he started to design four
years ago.
"This is part my printer background and part my ADD," he said. "It
has to be perfect."
Copyright 2005 Star Tribune |
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