I appreciate the fact that some employers recognize that some of their employees struggle with cognitive disorders. But, asking someone with ADHD to click through a very boring presentation about neurodiversity is almost peak irony. Not to mention, trying to distill such complex disorders down to one sentence is practically guaranteed to fail.
Props for trying I guess.
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Autism further: prone to arson if routines around the workplace change even slightly
Have you seen my stapler?
Me when I have all 4
Interesting, I never considered that having a specific cognitive disorder would mean your brain compensates in other ways, but it makes sense. I have both dyscalculia (which is specifically only number reversal) and dysgraphia, and my reading (words, not numbers), writing (when typing), and verbal skills are definitely above average.
It’s not necessarily even compensating for something else, just a different skillset. I work in software/robotics and my ADHD brain is really happy thinking about the whole system and all the interactions between components, and keeping track of many development threads at once. My neurotypical coworkers excel at being experts in one system and knowing it to the minute detail, and performing sequential tasks. They consider what I do extremely hard and/or annoying because of all the moving pieces… But the opposite is true, I’d die if I had to become an expert in a single, narrow area.
I guess it depends on context. If it’s an awareness thing aimed at helping peers and leaders support people, I think it’s a good start. Most such things are inaccurate, though. This one says “challenging to maintain focus”, which is only true of something I’m not interested in. At other times, it’s more challenging to switch focus. 🙂
Mind if I hijack this thread for a related topic?
I’m on the hook for doing a short talk on ADHD in my workplace’s next all-hands meeting (I volunteered). I figure I’ll use the time to correct some misunderstandings. I’ll probably start with the name - calling it “attention deficit” is like referring to color blindness as “vision deficit” - it’s true in some circumstances, but not very useful. I’m a bit leery of going with “executive function impairment”, since I think that many people might think all congnition is part of “executive function” and hear that as “thinking impaired”, when it’s much more specific.Does anyone have a term they like better than ADHD to describe what’s really going on with us?
