ADHD Awareness Month: Living and working with ADHD

October was ADHD Awareness Month and provides a great opportunity for us to open a conversation about ADHD to debunk some common myths and provide a deeper understanding of what living and working with ADHD is like.

This blog post will talk about what ADHD is and some of the common traits that two of our team members with ADHD, Isi and Jake, deal with a daily basis.

What is ADHD?

ADHD, or Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder, is a neurological condition that affects a person’s ability to focus, manage impulses, and stay organised. It's not just "daydreaming" or "being hyperactive"; it’s a real condition that can make everyday tasks significantly more difficult and is classed as a disability in the UK.

There are three types of ADHD:

• Hyperactive: the ‘8-year-old boy who can’t sit still’ stereotype
• Inattentive: the ‘lost keys, forgetful, disorganised’ stereotype
• Combined: as the name suggests, this has traits from both

Jake: I tend more towards the inattentive type. As a child, my ADHD was overlooked as only the hyperactive traits were well known.

The science behind many ADHD traits is linked to a lack of dopamine, whether through reduced production or increased reuptake. As such, our brains have a naturally lower dopamine level on average. This means it can take more stimulations than a neurotypical person for us to feel the effects. As such, a lot of ADHD behaviour is about dopamine-hunting.

We might find it hard to sit still, focus on a single task, or remember important details even when we really want to. It affects children and adults alike, although it can present differently depending on age and sex.

For example, many females with ADHD display hyperactive behaviour through overthinking and anxiousness, whereas their male counterparts may be more impulsive or fidgety.

Masking

Like wearing a mask, people with ADHD will often try to hide or downplay symptoms to fit in or meet social expectations, often without even realising it. This is a learned behaviour from a very young age.

Continually masking can lead to burnout, an increased chance of anxiety or depression, and can delay diagnosis, particularly in females.

Some masking behaviours are:

• Mimicking others’ behaviour: Copy facial expressions, gestures, or speech patterns to blend in.
• Suppressing stimming: Hide repetitive behaviours like hand-flapping or fidgeting.
• Memorising social rules: Rely on learned scripts to navigate social interactions.
• Hiding sensory sensitivities: Tolerate distressing stimuli like noise or bright lights.
• Suppressing emotional reactions: Hide true emotions like anxiety or excitement.
• Monitoring body language: Adjust posture and expressions (such as forcing eye contact) to match social norms.
• Avoiding special interests: Limit talking about their passions to fit in.
• Overcompensating with politeness: Be overly compliant or agreeable to avoid conflict.

Isi: Females are statistically better at masking than males, which is almost definitely a result of the society we live in. For me, growing up female (although I am now non-binary) made it really hard to know when I’m masking. Smiling, maintaining eye contact and social scripts were all things I learned from a very young age to simply be polite. The line where this crossed into masking is very blurry for me, even as an adult who has learned to unmask.

Unmasking is also an exhausting process, it makes you scrutinise everything you do, even your natural reactions. But I’m far less exhausted and deal with burnout far less now that I mask less – although it means that when I do mask (either intentionally or not), it feels more exhausting than it used to.

Jake: I often find that I can only mask for so long. Once I get tired, the things I was trying to hide from others are much more obvious than they ever were before.

INCUP

INCUP is an acronym developed by psychologists to describe 5 ways that an adult with ADHD can stay motivated. Interest; novelty; challenge; urgency; passion. It’s not perfect, there is overlap between some of them - interest and passion go hand in hand, as do urgency and challenge – but it’s a good way to understand ADHD in the workplace.

Interest

Neurotypical people have an importance-based nervous system, where if something is important, they can get it done. People with ADHD have an interest-based nervous system: regardless of how important it is, they need to be actively interested in the task to complete it.

Isi: We all know that we, as humans, have to do things we’re not interested in sometimes. So, I will often turn on music or watch a film whilst I’m doing those things. This helps to effectively distract half my brain so the other half can get on with the task at hand. It helps quieten my brain so it’s not too loud and I don’t get bored halfway through a task.

Jake: The impact this has on my ability to function is huge. If I find something interesting, I can focus for hours or days without issue, whereas something I don’t find interesting can be difficult even to start.

Novelty

Novelty is directly correlated to dopamine. Som when we dopamine hunt, novelty is a really easy way to get what we’re craving. This is why statistically people with ADHD struggle to hold down a job.

Isi: I’m lucky that my work requires me to wear a lot of hats. It means I get a new hit of dopamine when I start a new task. If I’m ever struggling to focus, I also find the novelty of working in a café helps.

Challenge

Given the close relationship between ADHD and dopamine levels in the brain, people with ADHD will often prefer activities that pose some measurable challenge, as these are more likely to be stimulating and provide dopamine. Tasks that are easy or mundane are instead boring, causing a person with ADHD to look elsewhere for stimulus.

Challenge can be artificially created for easy tasks a few ways, such as creating contests for task completion, setting performance goals, or gamifying interactions.

Jake: Platforms like Duolingo make use of similar techniques to make interactions with the platform more engaging.

Isi: I gamify everything I can, whether it’s a race against the clock or reward systems.

Urgency

Motivation can be difficult to find in non-urgent tasks for people with ADHD. This often results in procrastination, delaying tasks until the last possible moment.

By creating a sense of urgency in non-urgent tasks, it can be easier to find this motivation and begin an otherwise difficult task.

There are a few ways you can create a sense of urgency in a task you’re finding it difficult to engage with.

• Breaking the task into smaller chunks assigning them deadlines
• Coworking with someone who can make you feel like you’re being held accountable, even if they aren’t

Jake: I find it very difficult to create urgency in a task and will often simply ignore artificial deadlines I create. I do, however, benefit from coworking and find this helps me direct my focus more easily.

Isi: Urgency has the biggest impact for me. Having a sense of pressure (but not negative pressure) from coworking or a countdown clock really gets my brain going.

Passion

Where extrinsic motivation relies on external reward, intrinsic motivation utilizes one’s own desires. Studies have shown that intrinsic motivation is extremely effective, requiring less reward than extrinsic motivation, which requires more regular and immediate external reward.

Passion can often manifest as periods of “hyper-fixation”, where a person with ADHD can become intensely engaged in a single task and can even find it hard to disengage at times.

By fostering intrinsic motivation in otherwise difficult tasks, a person with ADHD can create additional drive to engage. This can be achieved utilising a few tools, such as visualising outcomes, focusing on long-term rewards, or considering the benefit to others.

Isi: I’ve found that there are some things I can do to ‘Pavlov’ my brain into getting into a flow state of focus – such as getting a specific drink, lighting a candle or listening to a specific genre of music.

Jake: I also have little tricks to get my brain in gear, like having a specific space I can setup in where my brain knows only work gets done.

Conclusion

You might be reading this thinking, ‘this looks familiar, I feel like this sometimes’, and whilst everyone struggles to focus or feels unproductive at times, it’s important to note how debilitating ADHD can be. Where you might feel like that sometimes, it’s a constant feeling for those with ADHD, and the smallest of tasks might feel Sisyphean.

Jake: Seriously, don’t underestimate how hard it can be with ADHD. It can be exhausting to NOT do a task, because I’ve done it 1,000 times in my head already.

But ADHD also comes with a whole host of advantages. People with ADHD tend to be more empathetic, think outside the box, and be incredibly creative. This is part of the reason why diversity amongst teams is so important, to play into everyone’s strengths and consider viewpoints that perhaps weren’t considered before.