ADHD Careers: Focus on Your Strengths

Dr. Laura Muggli – When you have ADHD you you need some structure, but you don’t need the rigid kind of structure that let’s say a nine-to-five typical desk job has, where you have to be in at a certain time,  you have to leave at a certain time, you have to show your face.

Dr. Steven Kurtz – If somebody has trouble staying on one topic and they go from topic to topic it may be that they can use that to their advantage. If somebody happened to have ADHD and they had my job it would be perfectly suited.  I’m never in the same place for more than 45 minutes.  I am managing lots of different projects at the same time.  I have an executive assistant to help with things that might make somebody else disorganized.  So one can learn to use them to their advantage.

Dr. Laura Muggli – I mean even for me being a psychologist in a private practice it’s great because I can come in when I see my patients I can leave, I can teach, I do neuropsychological testing which is very interesting to me.  So I can do more than one thing also which is another thing that’s important for people who have ADHD to sort of be in these areas where they can always be learning and doing new things, because they’re inherently curious people.

Dr. Steven Kurtz – and I think what we do a good job of is talking with young adults about matching careers and schools and opportunities to who their personalities and their biology is. That’s different than calling it a gift. For example we talked about attention surplus.  Kids with ADHD tend to have difficulty proportioning attention at the right times in the right places the right amounts.  If you can hyper focus on something and that’s an asset in your job that’s that’s great. So if you have a job where you can stay hyper focused on the project and you don’t need to be shifting sets often that’s great but you’re gonna do poorly on the tests on the neuropsychological test that we use that measure the ability to shift sets.

So I love that people can find goodness of fit with who they are and what they’re doing, and certainly there are some very famous people who we know had ADHD the man who started at Kinkos was here recently doing a lecture with us and he loves the fact that is ADHD, that’s great the person who owns and started Virgin Airlines is self-proclaimed ADHD.   That’s awesome. But for every two of those there are many more who from ADHD is really getting in the way of their functioning.

Dr. Laura Muggli – if you’re just doing some job that you know is the same all the time you might not do well at it but it’s not because you’re not smart because you’re bored.

Dr. Steven Kurtz – When I meet with parents I don’t like to scare them with the possible negative outcomes, but fact is kids with ADHD become adults with ADHD and they are at risk for some negative outcomes.