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    Adult ADHD: How to Succeed as a Hunter in a Farmer's World
    Adult ADHD: How to Succeed as a Hunter in a Farmer's World
    Adult ADHD: How to Succeed as a Hunter in a Farmer's World
    Ebook208 pages2 hours

    Adult ADHD: How to Succeed as a Hunter in a Farmer's World

    By Thom Hartmann

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    About this ebook

    How to harness your ADHD “hunter” strengths to start your own business and prosper in the workplace

    • Provides organizational strategies, tips to maintain focus, and tools to set goals, build a business plan, and discover the right project to keep you motivated

    • Shares ADHD success stories from Fortune 500 CEOs, inventors, small business owners, and the author’s own experience in launching new businesses

    • Explains the positive side of ADHD behavior in the context of creating a business, working within an existing company, and raising children with ADHD

    Most people do not “grow out” of Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). For many, their ADHD traits have led to difficulties in school, relationships, and work. But for our hunter-gatherer ancestors these characteristics were necessary for survival. Hunters must be easily distractible, constantly scanning their environment, and unafraid of taking risks. When humanity experienced the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, a vastly different type of personality--the methodical “Farmer”--became dominant. Most of our modern world is tailored to this Farmer personality, from 9-to-5 jobs to the structure of public schools, leaving ADHD Hunters feeling like unsuccessful outcasts. However, the Hunter skill set offers many opportunities for success in today’s Farmer society--if you learn how to embrace your ADHD traits instead of fighting against them.

    In this step-by-step guide, Thom Hartmann explains the positive side of Hunter behavior. He reveals how Hunters make excellent entrepreneurs, sharing ADHD success stories from Fortune 500 CEOs, inventors, small business owners, and his own hands-on experience in launching new businesses. Drawing on solid scientific and psychological principles, he provides easy-to-follow organizational strategies, tips to maintain focus and create a distraction-free workspace, and tools to set goals, build a business plan, and discover the right business project to keep you motivated. Hartmann shares valuable advice for both the Hunter entrepreneur and the Hunter within an existing company and for curtailing the aggressive side of the Hunter personality in group situations or manager positions.

    Revealing the many ADHD opportunities hidden within the challenges of work, relationships, and day-to-day life, Hartmann also includes tips on navigating family relationships and parenting--for most Hunter parents are also raising Hunter children.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherInner Traditions/Bear & Company
    Release dateJun 16, 2016
    ISBN9781620555767
    Author

    Thom Hartmann

    Thom Hartmann is the host of the nationally and internationally syndicated talkshow The Thom Hartmann Program and the TV show The Big Picture on the Free Speech TV network. He is the award-winning New York Times bestselling author of 24 books, including Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception, ADHD and the Edison Gene, and The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight, which inspired Leonardo DiCaprio’s film The 11th Hour. A former psychotherapist and founder of the Hunter School, a residential and day school for children with ADHD, he lives in Washington, D.C.

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      Book preview

      Adult ADHD - Thom Hartmann

      INTRODUCTION

      How This Book Will Help You

      The great direction which Burton has left to men disordered like you, is this: Be not solitary, be not idle.

      SAMUEL JOHNSON, IN A 1779 LETTER TO

      LORD CHESTERFIELD, REFERRING TO A QUOTE

      FROM AUTHOR ROBERT BURTON (1577–1640)

      There is a substantial subpopulation of the world that has a common and somewhat consistent set of personality characteristics. These traits have—for many people—led to difficulties in school, relationships, and work, and are collectively known among psychologists and psychiatrists as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

      When researching this subject I was struck by the number of ADHD adults I met and interviewed who’d chosen to become entrepreneurs, to strike out on their own, to forge their own unique lifestyles and businesses—independent of others. Most often these people are involved in an ever-changing life, often starting many businesses, or regularly leading their existing companies in new directions. They thrive on stimulation, and living on the edge. One biography of Ben Franklin asserts that he was America’s—and possibly the world’s—first real entrepreneur, because rather than simply learning a trade and opening a lifelong business, he learned dozens of trades and created more than thirty businesses as well as social and governmental institutions. This creation of something new—over and over again—is the core of entrepreneurship, whether you are a company owner or an entrepreneur within a company where your job constantly involves new projects or change.

      When writing an earlier book, Attention Deficit Disorder: A Different Perception, I heard from a psychologist who specializes in ADHD that perhaps as many as half of all entrepreneurs have ADHD. Now, a few years later and after conversations with thousands of entrepreneurs around the country, I’ve come to the conclusion that nearly all entrepreneurs have ADHD, to one extent or another.

      I’m not speaking here of the fellow who carefully invests his money in a corner dry-cleaning shop, runs his own business on that corner for twenty-five years, to finally retire comfortably. While that person may meet some definitions of entrepreneurship, I’d rather refer to him as an independent small businessperson. Such people constitute an important and stable core of the business life of this country.

      Instead I’m speaking here of those individuals who create or participate in dynamic, thriving, ever-growing, ever-changing companies. I’m speaking of the ones who take chances, who experiment: Henry Ford, who had several bankruptcies before he hit on a formula that worked; or Thomas Edison, who tried thousands of different variations before he could get a working lightbulb. These people’s lives are often littered with failures, but their successes have given a spark of vitality and enterprise to America, and made our country—particularly in its early days—unique in the world. They continue to bring us innovation and change that give great hope and promise for the future of our nation and the world. Some have applied their entrepreneurial characteristics to become great leaders: John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill, for example, stand out. Others have created inventions, businesses, social institutions, and art that have changed the world.

      This book is about people who have overcome their challenges and in many cases actually used aspects of their ADHD to achieve prosperity or victory, and for those who would seek to emulate them. This book is for those who are willing to take chances, to forge a new niche in the business, social, cultural, political, or art worlds, or to create something new.

      And how to do that successfully.

      In the writing of this book, I’ve interviewed many people in the business world—including some of America’s greatest. Few would want to jump up, raise their hands, and say, Yes, I have something that psychiatrists call a disorder! Nonetheless, all were, to my mind, Hunters (my term for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder as described in this book) to one extent or another. They shared stories of their successes and failures, from childhood through advanced age, that were remarkably similar.

      From these stories, and my own successes and failures as a businessperson and entrepreneur, I’ve assembled a collection of specific tools and techniques for people with ADHD to achieve success in the business world.

      TERRITORY ONE

      What Is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and Why Is It Important?

      1

      Nature of ADHD

      It is distraction, not meditation, that becomes habitual; interruption, not continuity; spasmodic, not constant toil. . . . Unused capacities atrophy, cease to be.

      TILLIE OLSON, SILENCES

      Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

      We all experience a spectrum of levels or states of consciousness as we go moment to moment through daily life. On one end of the spectrum is a very open, distractible state that we experience when driving or walking on a busy street—noticing all the events around us, alert to everything in our environment. At the other end of the spectrum are the tightly focused states of consciousness, in which we’re so intent on the book we’re reading or the conversation we’re having that the ticking of the clock in the room, or the drone of traffic, ceases to exist.

      When in a normal and relaxed state of consciousness, most people fall into a place somewhere between these two extremes of open and focused. They shift from open to focused and back—with relative ease. It’s difficult for the average person, however, to maintain either an extremely focused or an extremely open state of consciousness for hours at a time without such things as meditation training or the use of drugs like caffeine. The natural tendency is to snap back to the centerline between the two states, with a bit of both present.

      Some people, however, have an off-center baseline state of consciousness as their norm. Estimates vary between experts and researchers, but these people may represent as little as 10 percent to as much as 40 percent of the population.

      About half of these off-baseline individuals easily slip into such a focused state that they’ll stare at a chessboard for hours on end, or spend day after day dealing with meticulous detail such as spreadsheets, budgets, or complex legal documents. They’re rarely diagnosed as having a disorder, because the nature of their deviation from the statistical norm doesn’t cause them difficulties in school or work. Who would fault the child who loved to spend hours with his homework, after all?

      However, these people may experience some difficulties in their social or interpersonal lives because they become so focused on a single subject that they have little time for anything else. They take no risks, no chances, and think everything out very carefully, often before even speaking.

      People on the other end of the spectrum are the subject of this book. Their baseline state of consciousness is closer to the open or distractible end of the spectrum, and they are easily distracted by events around them. They often have problems in school because it is so difficult for them to focus. It’s hard for them to push their consciousness into a sufficiently focused state to listen to a teacher drone on for an hour when the kid in the next seat is preparing a spitball or the janitor outside the window is mowing the lawn. They find it hard to work in an open office environment where they’re surrounded by others, and they need to be able to close the door to get anything done. Their attention span is measured often in minutes, rather than hours. Once they’ve figured something out, they have no desire to repeat it a dozen times. Their plea is, OK, already, I’m done with that! What’s next?

      These people may have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

      When mental health professionals talk about ADHD, they are referring to a diagnosis based on a specific set of symptoms that cause problems in people’s lives. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), provides the criteria used to diagnose all manner of mental disorders, including ADHD. The fifth edition of this book (called the DSM-5) was published in 2013. Thankfully, quite a bit has been learned about ADHD over the years, and the diagnostic criteria have changed to incorporate this knowledge. One of the biggest changes is the new focus on adults with ADHD; previously the medical field thought it was just a disorder of

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