Work is a Nightmare (with ADHD)

I've always had a lot of struggles at work, and up until my ADHD diagnosis, I thought I was the only one. But I'm not. Not only because the research says so, but because you said so. 72% of you said that you either struggle severely at work, or you have had to quit your job because of ADHD at some point in your life. For 72% of us, work can be a real struggle. And the taboo subject of work struggles is not making this problem any better. So I thought we'd play a game to work against that. I'm going to share my work struggles, and for each one that you relate with, you're going to give yourself a point. You score all the points, bingo. There's no shame in that. And if you want to watch without playing, that's also completely fine. The first category is schedules. You get one point for each statement that you agree with. Waking up on time is hard, and my brain doesn't even work for the first one or two hours of the day. Set working hours can suck the life out of me, because what if I don't feel like doing the thing when the time comes? I really don't want to do something when I don't feel like it. If I don't feel like it, I can't force myself to do it, and it's going to take all of my energy to even try to do that. I would rather stare at the walls. It is not acceptable to stare at the walls, so I have to pretend that I'm working, which even takes more energy, it makes me anxious, it makes me embarrassed, and it makes time pass so slow. That's boring, and I hate boredom. And finally, I don't want to do anything for eight hours. I don't even want to have fun for eight hours. I don't want to watch TV or play games or eat. It's too much. Eight-hour workday, mm-mm. Next we have environment. I can't deal with distracting noises, especially human-made noises like chewing. I also can't deal with disgusting smells or visuals. I will be so distracted by someone eating an oily chicken at their desk. Ew. And I also struggle to sit at my desk like a normal person. Even though it's expected of me to sit at 90 degrees, I would much rather be peacefully shrimping at my desk or with my legs somewhere on my head. Then we have colleagues. And first of all, they are distracting. Second of all, I hate it when they talk, and when we're finished, they can just go back to their work and continue as if nothing ever happened. But I cannot. I have forgotten everything, and now I'm demotivated, and the day is over for me. I also hate having to answer their messages on time because it is expected. I ghost my own grandma, but I'm not going to ghost Stacey from accounting. I also hate talking on the phone to them, but maybe that's a generational thing. I will zone out in our meetings, especially if they are long and boring and I'm not taking part in them. I'm definitely imagining myself at the beach. I wonder if others notice me zoning out, and it makes me feel very embarrassed and self-conscious. And I can't leave out that I hate water cooler talk. But I also have some communication issues of my own. I make inappropriate jokes a lot. I say a lot of impulsive things that get me in trouble. I hate authority. I believe we are all equal human beings, even the boss. And I cannot pretend otherwise. In fact, I cannot pretend at all. So if I don't like someone, I will actually stare them down into the pits of hell, even if it's ruining my work performance and the team spirit. It's just really, really hard for me to pretend. I try to do it for the sake of niceness, and it drains all of my energy. The next category is understanding things at work. I take much longer to understand things than others, and it's embarrassing. I struggle with verbal and written explanations. People need to show me visually, or I need to experiment with it. I suck at reading the instructions. Even if I read the instructions, I hate following them. I will not even follow recipes. I want the creative freedom to do what I want. Then we have productivity. I can only do the same task for so long until I absolutely hate it. But switching tasks on purpose, if I don't want to, is hard and annoying, and my brain just wants to do what it wants to do, and I hate telling it otherwise. It drains my energy. Basically, this video is all about how I have zero energy at work because of stupid insignificant things. If that's you, leave a like or comment something. Depending on how much I care about a task, I will either do the bare minimum and make a lot of mistakes, or I will overcomplicate it and do things that nobody ever asked for. Because of this, I can never estimate how long a task will take me, and if somebody asks me about it, I will just get really anxious. I'm also usually the slowest team member with all but creative work. I often do random insignificant side tasks, and then have to go back and do the main thing, which leads to overworking and doing overtime, and just doing so much more than other people to get worse results, which drains my energy. If I actually do finish fast, I'll probably make a few rushed mistakes. It doesn't help that I don't like to go back and check my work either, like I already did it once, don't show it to me. I will often push incomplete work because of excitement, like I will solve the first page of the exam, but I won't turn it to see the other page, I'll just give it like that and get half of the grade. I struggle to see the big picture, so I will fool around and waste time until I finally see it, unless somebody distracts me, then maybe I'll never see it. I overwhelm myself by overcomplicating everything. I either forget to take breaks, or I take too long breaks and never want to come back. I get brain fog by the end of an 8 hour work day, and the rest of the day feels like I'm a robot with no actual brain and I have no capacity for anything. Sometimes I cannot focus for the life of me. If it's a bad brain day and I need to be outside taking a walk but I'm instead at work, I will not do anything useful. I struggle with my confidence because I know about all of these things and the knowledge alone is enough to sabotage me. Feeling like you suck sucks. These things give me so much anxiety that the very thought of going to work sometimes makes me rather be sick and stay at home in my bed or quit my job. Which I did. And it sucks. So how many of these did you get right? Do you have bingo? If you do, we're twins, you should definitely comment that. Jokes aside, I am one of the 36% of us that have had to quit their job at one point in their life because of ADHD. It was just becoming unbearable and I am very lucky to have the opportunity to also try and freelance and work for myself. I'm really focusing on working in a healthy way, in an ADHD friendly way, just giving myself all of the accommodations that I need to be productive because you cannot unhave ADHD. You will always have it, even with the medication. So you need accommodations and other people are not just going to give them to you. You need to give them to yourself. But how much does medication really help? Well, I answered all of your medication questions in this video and if you just want to hear about my experience after one year of medication, you should check out this video. I promise we're going to talk about some solutions for the work troubles at some point, but I feel like a ranty, angry video really needed to be made because this is a huge problem that is not being addressed enough.