Summary: Adult ADHD can affect work performance in a variety of ways: the symptoms of ADHD can have a negative impact on focus, memory, time management, and organization, all of which can affect work performance.
Key Points:
- Similar to the ways ADHD in children and teens affect school performance, adult ADHD can affect work performance.
- Problems with attention associated with adult ADHD can impair the ability to stay on task.
- Problems with hyperactivity associated with ADHD can lead to intense boredom and restlessness while at work.
- Difficulty with impulse control can lead poor decision-making and disrupt smooth working relationships with coworkers.
- It’s possible to develop strategies to mitigate the impact of adult ADHD on work performance.
Know the Symptoms of Adult ADHD
For decades, most people thought only children and teens developed attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Over the past ten years, however, awareness of adult ADHD has reached a point where most people know adult ADHD is a real thing. Here’s what we mean by that:
It’s possible to receive a diagnosis of ADHD for the first time at any time during adulthood.
It’s true that to receive a diagnosis of ADHD as an adult, you must confirm that you experienced the core symptoms of ADHD before age 12. That’s not a problem, generally speaking, for people who receive a diagnosis for adult ADHD. In most cases, when they receive an evaluation and a diagnosis, they say things like this:
I’ve acted and felt like this all my life – I’ve just had to figure out ways to deal with it.
By “it” we mean the symptoms and their consequences. ADHD appears in three basic forms, each with a characteristic set of symptoms:
Inattentive ADHD
Symptoms of inattentive ADHD revolve around the ability to initiate and maintain focus. This affects the ability to listen to and follow complex instructions, remember important details, stay organized, stay on schedule, and finish projects on time – as well as a host of other things necessary for optimal performance in the workplace.
Hyperactive/Impulsive ADHD
Symptoms of hyperactive/impulsive ADHD involve the ability/inability to manage urges and acute impulses. In adults, this often results in feelings of intense restlessness and boredom, impatience with others, problems working quietly or alone, interrupting, talking over/through/past others, and excess fidgeting.
Combined ADHD
A person with combined ADHD shows symptoms of both types of ADHD.
To receive a diagnosis for adult ADHD, the core symptoms must have been present since before age 12, and they must cause difficulty in at least two areas of life, such as work and home, and not be better explained by the presence of another mental health or behavioral disorder.
How Adult ADHD Can Affect Work Performance
The non-profit organization Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (CHADD) maintains an excellent website on ADHD, with resources for children, families, and adults. All their information is high quality, but their pages on adult ADHD are incredibly valuable for adults with ADHD or family members of adults with ADHD. They provide well-researched, evidence-based resources on everything ADHD in a clear, practical format that anyone can benefit from.
On the page ADHD Workplace Issues, their team of adult ADHD experts identify ten characteristics of adult ADHD that can affect work performance. We’ll review those ten characteristics now. If you think you may have adult ADHD, and think it’s affecting your work performance, we encourage you to review this list carefully.
How Can Adult ADHD Affect Work Performance: 10 Common Issues
1. Distractions
External stimuli, such as coworkers talking and moving around the office, sound from heating and AC – or simply the world going by out the window – can divert attention from the task at hand. Internal stimuli, such as thoughts, emotions, or daydreams can also divert attention from the task at hand and degrade quality and timeliness of work product, among other things.
2. Impulses
The inability to control acute impulses can result in hasty decisions, rushed work, actions that may be inappropriate for the workplace, and temper and/or emotional volatility that can have a negative effect on both work product and coworker wellbeing.
3. Hyperactivity
People with the hyperactive type of ADHD who find themselves in sedentary jobs often feel a sense of frustration, feel edgy, and feel out-of-place all day long. Over time, these feelings can lead to poor work performance, dismissal, or voluntarily leaving the job.
4. Memory Problems
Issues with distractibility, hyperactivity, and impulse control can cause a person with ADHD to lose focus while receiving instructions, which often means they don’t truly hear them, and therefore don’t remember them or only remember them partially. In the workplace, this can frustrate coworkers, lead to incomplete work, missed deadlines, and an inability to retain information on company policies and procedures learned during training.
5. Restlessness/Boredom
People with ADHD who find themselves in repetitive jobs, sedentary jobs, or jobs that involve patient, detail oriented work often feel like they’re going to jump out of their skin. The preference for stimulation, variation, and diversity often leads to distraction, daydreaming, and mentally checking out, which can result in a variety of negative outcomes.
6. Managing Time
The ADHD characteristic of distractibility often means a person with ADHD will start a task, have their attention drawn to something else, and forget the task they started. The task may remain unfinished or be finished later – rushed – when the person with ADHD remembers it. When working as part of a team, this can frustrate coworkers waiting on input or a work deliverable. When working solo, delays or incomplete work can frustrate managers and bosses, with negative consequences such as demotion or dismissal.
7. Procrastinating
When a person with ADHD is presented with a large, multistep task or project, they often feel overwhelmed, and put it off until they feel ready to tackle it – which may or may not happen, when considering additional ADHD symptoms such as hyperactivity, memory problems, and general time-management issues.
8. Details: Forms, Folders, and Files
Inattention and distractibility can cause a person with ADHD to lose track of important paperwork, forget to turn in work deliverables on time, forget to fill out time sheets, and miss small but important details on work-related paperwork. In addition, people with ADHD often create their own filing systems that work for them, but can appear sloppy, inefficient, and disorganized to the outside observer.
9. Long-Term Follow Through
Issues with memory, organization, procrastination, and keeping track of details can prevent a person with ADHD from effectively managing large, multi-part, multi-person projects that play out over weeks, months, or years. In some cases, people with ADHD develop personal strategies to mitigate the impact of these issues and successfully manage large projects. However, these strategies often take significant psychological and emotional energy, which can lead to exhaustion, frustration, and burnout.
10. Peer Interaction/Social Skills
Difficulty with distractibility, impulse control, and hyperactivity can cause a person with ADHD to talk excessively, talk loudly, blurt out answers/jokes/observations, interrupt coworkers, and lose focus while listening. These behaviors can feel disrespectful to coworkers, and, although no ill will is intended, give the impression that the person with ADHD is insensitive, rude, or uncaring, when often the opposite is true.
We’ll discuss this information below.
Adult ADHD: Cumulative Emotional and Psychological Consequences
One thing that people without ADHD often don’t realize about people with ADHD – especially adults with undiagnosed ADHD – is how exhausting it can be, emotionally and psychologically.
Many adults with undiagnosed ADHD experience decades of:
- Missing deadlines
- Failing to complete projects
- Forgetting important details
- Feeling paralyzed by procrastination
- Feeling restless/bored
Let’s be clear:
An adult with ADHD doesn’t miss every project and every deadline and forget every important date or detail.
But those things do happen more often to adults with ADHD than those without. Over time, consequences of ADHD – that look and feel like the same or similar mistakes made over and over – accumulate. Over years, they can degrade self-esteem and lead to chronic feelings of guilt, shame, and other negative emotions such as anxiety. In addition, the ad-hoc, personal strategies they develop to compensate take significant psychological and emotional energy, and can lead to the kind of chronic fatigue and low mood associated with depression.
That’s why it’s important to understand how adult ADHD can affect work performance: if you have these types of problems at work, they may be the result of adult ADHD. The good news is that with professional help and support, you can receive treatment for ADHD that helps you manage your symptoms, improve your overall wellbeing, and – if you establish it as a goal of treatment – significantly improve work performance.
Gianna Melendez
Jodie Dahl, CpHT