Adult ADD Strengths

Great ideas are conceived and subsequently lost in the hands of creative geniuses, everyday. Frustration, rationalization, and despondence loom as creative people jump from idea, to idea, to idea… and fall short of actually making ideas happen. It is a shame that most creative breakthroughs never materialize.

via Kineda

Now this sounds like it was written for adults with Attention Deficit Disorder doesn’t it? While lost creative ideas aren’t solely the domain of adults with Attention Deficit Disorder, they probably occur more frequently with us, and cause us more grief than non ADDers

The Action method is a method of productive creativity by a company called Behance.

Karma Ghost is a very cool funny flash cartoon by Billy Bob which gives you a good experiental explanation of Karma. Usually Karma doesn’t happen this fast or we’d all clue in quickly and start living differently right away.

Seth Godin has a good post on types of people who critique your ideas. He generally divides people giving feedback into 4 categories

• I like every idea you have
• I hate every idea you have
• I’ll push you to crank your ideas up
• I’ll push you to tone your ideas down

so are you choosing your advisors consciously or unconsciously? Do you have a mix?

One big danger for adult with attention deficit disorder is that we often go to two extremes. Either we listen to much to the dream crushers, or go in the opposite direction of not having people ask us some of the tough questions we need to hear so we don’t spend all our energies going in the wrong direction or a million directions at once.

Impulsive, easily distractible, stimulus seeking, time blind, forgetful, procrastinating ADDers often have problems with their personal finances regardless of level of income. Common problems I hear from some of my ADD coaching clients are late payments for bills they have money for, being years behind on filing taxes when the government owes them money, family arguments over money etc.

More than most people we ADD adults need to keep better track of how we’re spending our money. Here’s one possible solution.

Wesabe is an online program that helps you track your spending, and give you a better idea where your money is going and give you contextual tips about how to spend more wisely and track your financial goals. It’s a social web 2.0 app similar to 43 Folders for personal finances.

CBS New’s The Early Show did a piece on women coping with ADHD yesterday, found out from one of my ADD egroups. They profiled 3 women dealing with ADHD as adults. It’s a quick 5 minute clip worth checking out.

Adults with ADHD are often not diagnosed due to ignorance and stigma, but women with ADHD get overlooked even more than men with ADHD because they mainly have the inattentive not hyperactive implusive or combined form of ADHD.

Here’s some articles on women and ADHD. Here’s two books on women and ADHD Sari Solden’s Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life and Terry Matlen’s Survival Tips for Women with AD/HD: Beyond Piles, Palms, & Post-its

When I first read the Canadian Mental Health Association’s press release about their 56th annual mental health week, I thought it was from a coaching association. I.e. the focus on life career balance issue is a very common issue that we coaches deal with, especially those of us who coach adults with attention deficit disorder, who often seem to go-go-go until they end up spinning their wheels going nowhere, crash or burn out.

Self care activities and working on life career balance issues are hugely important for ADDers, who often tend towards perfectionism, workaholism and putting themselves last.

The Free Geek just sent me a link to his post 25 Free Health Tips for Computer Nerds but it’s not just for geeks (there is a difference between geeks and nerds). It’s for anyone who uses a computer and frankly most tips are useful to most people at work, though there are some specific tech examples. Since ADDers are more likely to work in the geek sector because of their ADD superpowers I thought I’d blog it.

Here’s a few of them: