I'm a boss with ADHD, the way I usually do things is start a project, fuck this I'm bored, delegate it to someone else, repeat until I'm out of time/people to delegate stuff to, then panic and work my ass off to get everything done before my boss shows up. It was a lot easier when I had a support mgr working with me every day because I made the decisions and he executed them, and I would just work on whatever I felt like doing at the time.
Fuck yes. I'm a project manager with ADHD. WHY THE FUCK DID I GO INTO PROJECT MANAGEMENT? Something about "Can't deal with the future" combined with "your job is literally to plan for the future" seem unnecessarily stupid of me.
That said, if shit goes wrong in a project and things need to be dealt with fast, I'm the one you want on your side (I have a lot of experience dealing with shit going wrong at the last minute...).
If anything this video was demoralizing for me, makes me feel like I'm in exactly the wrong place. Oh well.
Yeah, for sure. Everyone on my team knows that when shit goes down, I'm a steady hand in the storm.
My problem is just when shit isn't going down, I'm like "fuck this shit, smooth sailing! Why would I continue to plan when I could be browsing reddit?".
You could spend 20-40+ hours working on a traditional plan and solution over 2 weeks or you can let the stress and adrenaline hit to gitrdun in 5-10 hours.
edit: bit of "man maths" later and those are a lot of tasty hours saved to spend on reddit, gaming, nothing
Holy shit, are you watching me? That's pretty much the standard MO.
Do nothing for weeks, start feeling really bad about everything (mostly I start feeling like I'm being paid way too much and basically do nothing). Finally a deadline approaches and I hammer that shit out, then look at what I've done and say "damn I'm good".
Then repeat the entire process. It's not great for the psyche, but it's a hell of a ride.
I accepted the behaviour as normal to me during my bachelors and it has helped to at least not feel so bad about everything you are doing "wrong." It's just different to the easily accountable norm.
Perhaps management is slowly changing again, hopefully this time it takes the behaviour more into account so it is less hidden behind audits of hours "worked" on a project.
Can agree that it takes its toll, but that is why the saved time is for regenerating.
The only problem with this is eventually your body can't keep up anymore. I'm only 27, and the all nighters that I could, if necessary,1 pull every other day for weeks at a time in my early 20's now wreck me for half a week after just one.
This is me in college. Fucking behind in say, Differential Equations, for weeks.
Finals week comes around and I need an 18/20 to pass the class, but the exam is after another exam that I need to study for. I end up paranoid and stressed for the DQ exam, to the point I can't even sleep enough for the 1st exam. I do the first exam on 1 hour of sleep, wait for adderall to wear off, then sleep from 12 Noon to 8PM, and then study until 11AM the following morning, fucking lit the whole time.
Ended up getting a 23/20 thanks mostly to extra time on the exam.
I always feel like crisis management and thinking on the spot are some of our strengths. I'm very good at thinking on my feet( or whatever that expression is)
It's very true, I was thinking about that recently, and think part of it at least is due to the intense experience we have. I mean, all through school I got REALLY good at pulling shit out last minute, finding creative solutions to problems I never should have had in the first place, etc. Now in the workplace, the same people who worked for months on their assignments, and studied for tests in advance can't seem to cope with the all consuming panic of shit hitting the fan nearly as well as me.
As I said though, I don't know if it's an intrinsic ability that comes with ADHD, or just the fact that we live our lives in constant crisis so another one is just another Tuesday for me.
My problem is that there's stuff that works when you blaze it at the 11th hour, and then there's stuff that you need a bit prep work so that the final 11th hour sprint doesn't end in you falling on your face.
Its THAT prep work that is fucking hard to tap into.
I use todoist and keep that pinned on the left side of my side monitor so that it's always in sight. That way even if you get sidetracked, there's a good chance that i'll be reminded of wtf i need to be doing and i'll jump on that shit.
To a degree, a lot of the job is just dealing with what is currently in front of my face. That patient. It's much easier to deal with a patient's future than it is my own.
LOL, a lot of experience dealing with shit going wrong at the last minute . . . .
You couldn't be any worse than my project manager. I may have ADHD, but I don't have a mind like a sieve. Everybody, absolutely everybody working on this project can't remember what anybody said about anything. They ask what do I want, I tell them, they forget what I said, they do exactly what I said not to do. Read my emails, somebody, anybody? I think some of us get too worried about how ADHD handicaps us, and we don't see that everyone else is flawed as well. You just gotta use what you got.
I'm ADHD-C, emphasis on the impulsive and emotionally unstable, so I have to delegate the face-to-face stuff to someone else so I don't either cry or punch someone. I don't do well at meetings.
Hahaha. My husband does something similar to project management, and seriously, his job scares the shit out of me. The thought of being required to do that kind of thing brings me out in a cold sweat. I think he's some kind of organising wizard.
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u/[deleted] May 30 '17
My boss has ADHD. It's like working in a fucking tornado.