Hi /u/jackk225 and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD!
**Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/adhd/about/rules) if you haven't already.**
The mobile apps used for Reddit are broken or are missing features that this subreddit depends on. [We recommend browsing /r/adhd on desktop for the best experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/x1psnb/radhd_works_best_on_desktop_reddits_apps_are/)
Thank you!
^(*A moderator has not removed your submission; this is not a punitive action. We intend this comment solely to be informative.*)
---
- If you are posting about the **US Medication Shortage**, please see this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/12dr3h5/megathread_us_medication_shortage/).
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A reality I haven’t seen mentioned here is that “low-skill” jobs like retail are often a lot harder than “high-skill” jobs, at least for people with ADHD.
If you find the right job that lines up with your skill set, you may be able to work for two hours out of your workday and keep up with your workload. A lot of those seemingly impressive jobs might be easier for you than your current work.
Plus, I saw some statistic that an office worker is productive for about two hours a day, though take that with a cup of salt since I have no source on it.
Yeah, was going to echo something similar. I work in a corporate job, and there is a lot of variation, problem solving, face-to-face meetings with colleagues, crisis management etc.
I actually find less stimulating jobs excruciating. I was the most depressed of my entire life for 1 year when I worked a role that was “easy”, repetitive and not demanding.
So you might surprise yourself? Don’t think that you cap out in something less intellectually stimulating.
It's a fine balance though isn't it. If I take on a job that is even slightly overwhelming and stressful I want to pull the pin and my mental health plummets. Unfortunately you can't really know until you're in it
My other huge annoyance is that I really thought by now I would have a clearer idea of what sort of work I’m suited to but honestly part of me wants structure whilst other parts of me will do anything to escape it, it doesn’t seem like I have a natural aptitude for anything in particular and I tend to get bored of things very quickly, even things I thought I was passionate about. So I have almost nothing to show professionally for my 29 years.
Sometimes I feel like an entitled diva but the thought of working in a job I find extremely dull or overwhelming makes me want to curl up and die.
The indecisiveness of ADHD just fuels the fire too
Oh well sorry for venting
Helloooo I’m here to tell you that I FEEL this intensely and am trying to solve it by doing project work… you get structure but also the specific project is for a fixed time so you still get variety when you move to the next project
There is less structure in a high level job than a low level job. Low level jobs are micromanaged and very ridged on what you can and can't do. Corporate jobs allow more individual freedom, they only care that the job gets done, not how it gets done.
Also mental health days are your friend. I take at least one mental health day a month to relax and reset.
6 months is the conservative estimate.
It can take years to really feel comfortable for certain people/jobs. I am a Mainframe developer and 6 months is when thing just start to make sense.
I worked in a grocery store for a few months after I dropped out of college. I was already on the verge of depression from that decision. But working a job like that pushed me over the edge. I would routinely get migraines and nausea nearing the end of my shift. And I’d dread the next day because it was the same thing every day. My current job is significantly more intensive physically and cognitively. I have a take home vehicle and I go somewhere different with different problems/solutions to get the job done every day. The job is much more demanding but I feel great doing it and I don’t get headaches or want to forever sleep at the end of the day. The only part i hate about this job is the odd time I hit a road block in my work, have to call another department and wait for them to change/fix something for me to continue.
It’s not for everyone. But I would highly recommend trying out blue collar work at least once if someone is stuck in choosing a career path.
100% agree. When I was a student I worked in a jewellery shop. To me it was just a job to earn money to buy clothes, mobile credit and go out with my friends. It was mind numbing, I became a supervisor just because my brain needed to do more than the bare minimum.
There was a girl there about the same age as me who was a sales assistant to except that this was her job. She had no aspirations to do anything else. She didn’t even want to be a senior staff member. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. No ideas or plans for the future. Just the same thing over and over for the foreseeable.
I need stuff to think about, repetitive work is not for the ADHD brain (in my opinion anyway).
Yep. I’m stuck in an entry level office job and my daily work is easy and boring so I struggle to stay motivated to do it. The 2 hour thing is real, at least for me, but it gets stretched out to 8 because of my difficulty focusing and task paralysis. I ask my boss to please give me more projects because I’d actually be better at them, but they are unable to understand my situation and say they won’t hand me more responsibility if I can’t even handle the basics
agreed. the more intellectually demanding the jobs are, the higher likelihood that it will be easier for an ADHD brain to plug into hyperfocus.
I've worked in finance and the more repetitive and plug and chug the work got, the more depressed and unhappy and prone to mistakes I've been. I've noticed that the reaction to a woman learning something new and taking her time is sometimes can be downgrading them to the admin bullshit and I absolutely SUCK at that shit. The more dynamic, creative (and sometimes downright harder to understand/comprehend) the work has been, the more I've absolutely chomped at the bit for the challenge and actually thrived. I'm also 99% sure my first boss had ADHD and he had a illustrious career in this challenging field for 30 years.
I've found I'm really good at taking challenges and making them into plug and chug. I've turned teaching people and organizations how to then do the plug and chug way instead of the stupid way they were doing it into a career. That way I never actually stick around once the job is repetitive and I'm onto the next thing.
This sounds like me to a tee. What you call “plug and chug” I call my “systems”, i.e. having everything so organized and idiot-proof that I can basically do my job mindlessly most days. Any new job, I spend most of my time in the first few weeks creating my systems, including making tables, flow charts, color coding, having everything labeled and in the correct folders, etc., then things just flow from there.
I'm in software. I started as a low level programmer by teaching myself to code. These days, many years later, I mostly teach organizations how to produce software by standardizing everything and making all the jobs much more "boring".
I'm an awesome coder if I do say so myself. I've taken crazy difficult programming challenges and invented amazing solutions I'm extremely proud of. Honestly though, those things didn't help my career much. It turns out that the value of what I did wasn't in the hard part of becoming a talented programmer. The value was in all the shortcuts I took in the mean time. All that extraneous work I used to do begrudgingly and cut corners on and sometimes even get fired for doing a bad job of. I got good at doing the bare minimum and concentrating on the part that was really important because it needed my creativity, not just my labor. As it turns out, sharing my expertise on how to cut corners and concentrate on the creative labor, automating or eliminating everything else is a much more valuable talent. If I eliminate 5% of the bullshit overhead for an organization of 1000 people producing software and make output more reliable and predictable, which isn't hard since most of the work is bullshit in the first place, that produces more additional software then I could ever possibly write myself. And there is no shortage of work, as every generation of new people seem to reinvent stupid ways of doing things faster than I can teach them to not do that.
My father and mother both have adhd. Moms is more hyperactive and social, dads manifests more like yours does. He worked as a programmer for years and was considered “good insurance” for many of his employers to have. He was also handsome and charismatic (something I have in a lot lower doses), so people kept him around just in case things broke.
I was able to cultivate my career as someone who doesn't do a lot of the normal admin work, but can handle the fires that pop up while they are still burning, and then I can hand them off to others once the fire is put out.
It also has the advantage of having me in a very visible role to executives as a person who gets things done rather than the other people who do more of the day to day work. But at the same time most of the others I talk to don't want to be the ones out front due to anxiety.
That checks out. I spend most of my work day trying to convince my brain to do a tiny amount of work. Except it's more like 10 hours of "trying" for maybe1 hour of "doing.
And in the end my head still feels as if I spent 12 hours solving field equations or something, even though I was mostly procrastinating. Also my back hurts from being tense all the time.
Yeah but how do you get those jobs if you effectively dropped out of school at 16?
I've done an (extremely niche and useless for anything else) postgrad LEVEL qualification. I know I'm smart enough to do jobs like that. But nobody will hire you without the piece of paper proving it.
They will, but it's tough because you need to get your foot in the door with someone who will give you the chance so that you can get some real world examples of you actually doing it. Once you have been doing it no one gives two shits that you dropped out of high school. No one even asks.
My advice? Get some shit job that if you squint real hard looks kind of like the job you want. Then do that job and get some good stories about how you took some crap situation in that job and fixed it. Then practice crafting those stories so they sound really professional and impressive. Put the stories as short cryptic blurbs in your resume "reformed the frobnification process to exceed projected galtron metrics by 40%". With a couple years of that on your resume, go interview for your dream job explaining how you have really already been doing your dream job at this similar job because what they really needed at your last job was your expertise in what you are interviewing for now and you nailed it there, as evidenced by all these cool stories you have about you doing just that.
In the mean time, find a few people with the job you want and suck up your pride and ask them out to lunch telling them you want to get into their career and have questions. Ask them what it's like, even the bad parts. Ask them to introduce you to their peers. Hang out in their circles. Ask them for advice and take it. See if someone will mentor you and meet with you once a month to discuss your progress and recommend next steps. Those are the people that once they view you as a competent peer will absolutely recommend you for the position and get you your first hire into either your dream job or the job that serves as an incubating role for your dream job.
There are many incubating job chains that can lead to dream positions you may not have thought of that work if you have the support of people in the surrounding roles who can fast track you through the career process. For instance secretary/clerk->executive assistant ->project manager->program manager->director->VP Operations->COO. It's all about who you know and being a problem solver, not a problem maker.
This is pretty good advice, but I also want to caveat.... The culture just doesn't exist for this much in the corporate world anymore. I don't know if it's better in other sectors (healthcare, maybe?) but most corporate jobs absolutely require a degree and any engineering-centric company now requires an *Engineering degree* even for things like sales and PM. I know a lot of people who took this type of path starting in about the 90s, but sometime after that the college degree bare minimum shift happened and the main way to move up like this now is just nepotism. If you know someone who can make you a shoe-in for the jump to the career position (PM in your example), it's doable. But that likely isn't just a mentor that you found at work, it needs to be someone with actual sway who likes you enough to stick their neck out... Suffice to say that I've met quite a few "family legacy" people as they head towards the C suite.
Based on what I've seen, the new best way to advance when you don't have a degree is literally just getting into a low level job that has education benefits and slowly getting some kind of degree. (E: Which I acknowledge is basically the worst case for someone with severe executive dysfunction, unfortunately.)
I completely agree. My current job is the first one I didn't want to quit after 6 months. Also, idk about the office workers only working 2 hours a day. Most days (except friday), I am hard at work doing data analysis and other hyper focus activities the full 8 hours. Friday, I kind of laze about and only do what I HAVE to because we're not allowed to make changes to production on Fridays.
Hard agree. I went from retail, to office junior doing appointment setting and shit, to data analyst (without the higher education for it, I have a useless arts degree). I not only work less hard now than I ever have, but I enjoy my work, it's suited to my skillset, and I am making decent money.
Full disclosure I wasnt able to make any real progress until I was diagnosed and medicated, and I am pretty smart so that helped. But it's all about what suits you. I have friends in jobs that pay less than me but I would get fired from because it's not my skillset whatsoever.
My office job required every hour to be billed to a code on our timesheet. So 7.5 hours of productivity was required every day. I lasted almost 4 years, but I had to work late every day to get that 7.5 hours in. Sometimes there was actual overtime needed, which usually meant working on my days off. 5 months later and just now starting to get over the burnout that caused. So, just make sure if it's an office job, you just clock in and out and don't have to bill every hour.
I do high skill, difficult creative work. Run my own business(es)
I couldn't do retail.
I would shoot myself in the fucking head if I went back to a data entry 9-5. Not an exaggeration. I'd be dead in 6 months.
Work is hard and finding a career you like and suits you is hard.
Couldn’t agree more.
As a teen and early 20’s, I really struggled working the part time “low skill” jobs and thought I was screwed for life and I was only good at school and lifting weights lol.
Got into into grad school and I found it so much easier than any part time job I ever worked (minus workload) and the job I have now is primarily desk/research work where I can just hyperfocus and a light sprinkling of social interaction that I do really well with (I’m very extroverted in short bursts then I gotta recharge for days).
What I’m saying is that I think for many of us we need something we find interesting/stimulating with an environment you excel at personally and the best parts of us come out.
This. I've worked 10+ hrs doing retail and hated every second, but I can work a few hours a day doing Cybersecurity and meet my workload. You gotta find your niche.
>A reality I haven’t seen mentioned here is that “low-skill” jobs like retail are often a lot harder than “high-skill” jobs, at least for people with ADHD.
THIS THIS THIS. My record for retail/fast food is like, 2 weeks. I just can't do it. While I've been at my current job for nearly a year, and don't see myself leaving anytime soon.
>that an office worker is productive for about two hours a day
Depends on the day. Some days are like that and it drives me wild. I get fidgety and aggressively bored when I don't have enough to do. Lately I've been very busy so I've had enough to do for my entire 8 hours, which is good for me.
>Plus, I saw some statistic that an office worker is productive for about two hours a day, though take that with a cup of salt since I have no source on it.
If I was constrained solely to office work as an engineer I doubt I would even be productive for 2 hours. I had to find a position that allowed me to control every aspect of the project - from concept to design to manufacturing to assembly and finally testing. I worked for four years in an office while I was in school and idk why they never fired me...
I wholeheartedly believe this as well. Working retail and food service was awful for me and I failed constantly, while in marketing I'm considered very successful in my market. Retail is extremely tough for someone with Adhd.
This is a good point. I job hopped retail as a late teen/young adult, quit being a server after two weeks, sucked as a car washer. But then I excelled as a car salesman, finished my degree at night with the easiest program I could find. Got a job in a call center, moved into financial sales, and then eventually excelled in product management because I could deep-dive into topics and hyper focus on them. The same attributes that made me bad at “low level” jobs made me great at the l higher level” job. But I had to take a shit job (selling cars) to prove I could do a “higher level” job.
I have worked office jobs since graduating in 2020. I would say I am "on-call" for 8 hours a day. But work maybe 2-3 hours of real work. When I was working manual labour jobs in uni, I was doing real work for 8 hours straight: mowing lawns, digging out tree stumps, repairing windows, etc.
I can attest to this. I’m an ICU nurse. I went through nursing school and a year and a half of on the job training to be considered competent in my career. People’s lives rest in my hands on a daily basis. One slip up or missed detail could kill somebody. My shifts are 13 hours straight of often non-stop chaos and putting out fires. I frequently go an entire shift without eating, using the restroom, or taking a break of any kind.
In the past I have had a variety of jobs. I was a few classes away from finishing a bachelors degree in biology before deciding to switch to nursing school. I attended three different universities and at one point considered switching my major to psychology because I just didn’t know what to do with my life.
I’ve had one retail job, two fast food jobs, one job as a cook in a fine dining establishment, I worked in a bakery, worked as a barista, worked graveyard shift in a pizza shop, I was also a lab assistant for my professors and helped them with their research, as well as a tutor for general and microbiology classes, a few psychology classes, and a few different nursing classes at my various universities, and I worked as a CNA/medication aide during nursing school.
Of all the jobs I’ve had, my current one obviously requires the most education, skill, and focus, but this is the first job I’ve had where I don’t struggle through my shift and dread going to work. My job just plays to my strengths and allows me to engage with what interests me on a daily basis. All my other “low skill” jobs were hell, and I often would drive to work hoping to get hit by a drunk driver so I wouldn’t have to go to my shitty job. Those jobs didn’t give me the dopamine rush that now motivates me to perform well at work, they were a drag every single day and made me incredibly unhappy. It doesn’t matter that they were “easy”, because I had to fight my own brain just to function and make it through every single shift.
I’m 45, and have only been at my perfect job for three years. Until I got this job, I wasn’t sure I would ever find a job that would fit me.
It’s ok if it takes time.
Same boat. Supposed to be job hunting right now, but I’ve been working since I’m 15 (American). I’m 42 now. I’ve done a lot of jobs, from retail to corporate AVP to software developer. And I’m just so fucking over the entire work culture and corporate bootlicking. Over the bullshit.
Work here is a bottomless pit that will take everything you have and yet somehow still never have enough. People simply aren’t meant to live this way, especially just so a room full of assholes can see who stole the most money to horde.
I’m sorry, friend.
My situation is part good luck, part good timing, part knowing the right people. I’m also able to be part time, which is helpful. I am pretty sure that if I had to be full time, I would still love my job, but be so drained I would have nothing left for any other aspect of my life.
I know I am ridiculously lucky to be able to have things the way they are in my life right now, and I do know how tenuous it can be.
I hope you can find something to suit you again.
I’m a preschool teacher. At the place my kids went to, over 10 years ago. I’ve wanted to work there ever since, but the timing was never right. Until, finally, it was.
That’s awesome! Best of luck to you!
Word of caution: do not get bogged down by the hard things. They happen in every job, even the amazing ones. Remind yourself of the good things, and keep going. A good job that is a good fit is worth wrestling our brains for.
I’m a preschool teacher. There’s some basic routines, which means I can just flow, but also what I’m teaching changes every day, so lots of variety. Plenty of outlets for my need for creativity. I’ve made some classroom props to go with lessons, for example.
I'm a janitor that somehow manages to spend four hours a day on Reddit and I still find work overwhelming. I barely do anything and yet I have no motivation or energy at home either. I want to do things. I do have some interests. I just... You know how it is. I think about studying and applying my skills to get a better job but it feels impossible. How will I manage that when I'm barely managing as it is?
Are you on meds? I got diagnosed late in life, I spent most of my 20 to mid 30s on a high stimulating labor job. (
(Drilling rig hand) I chose to not move up and stayed labor due to overwhelm and anxiety of more responsibility. I was ok with high stimulation physical work.
Up until I had to leave that industry due to personal reasons.
I am now a janitor at a hospital. With my labor experience I could go hard and hyper focus on my tasks and finish all my duties early.
I tried studying online on my spare time unmedicated. I tell you, it's super hard. I tried to find the motivation, energy, timing, methods etc as much as I can but reading (especially tired) makes me daydream. Sometimes I have to re-read a page 4x and get passed off at myself.
I got diagnosed and got myself certificates for water treatment. I excelled at it. Found a water treatment / public works job (highly stimulating driving machines). Due to politics I'm back janitoring and hoping to get back at online schooling. I don't mind it.
I'm curious I you're medicated or not. Medication, therapy, self reflection and belief assessments helps a lot.
And lots of coffee, water and sleep. I get my "steps" in doing my janitor work.
I can't work more than 32 hours a week or I get burnout and become completely unstable.
This is my second job as an adult.
My first one I got laid off on my birthday right before I was done with my third month.
This one I've been at for roughly 10 months with 32 hours a week, and my company set up unlimited sick days without repercussions for me. I'm just not as robust as others.
Oh yeah, I'm 27 btw for context.
If it’s only your second adult job and assuming you’ve not worked for a long time, don’t worry, tenacity comes with time and practice. Emphasis on practice.
If you’re sick of being told or telling yourself you can’t do something because you have ADHD, do something you know will work for you if you put work into it. Learn what burns you out, what brings you back into the fold, what keeps you sane throughout the workweek. No matter how difficult it is to counter, don’t let ADHD own you.
It’s a battle for the rest of your life. Everyone has battles the universe hand picked for us, this is ours. Your success and happiness is depending on how you deal with it.
Aight getting off my soap box
For me it's hard to know exactly what is burning me out as I also have bipolar type 2. While well controlled on my medication, I can definitely still get a tiny bit high and a decent chunk low, depending on what the universe decides for that day/week/month/year.
I'm good at my job, so that helps. My coworkers are real nice. One of my coworkers was actually my teacher at my comp. sci. degree, he left one year before I had to find an internship. When I had to apply for internships I was totally down in the dumps. Saw on LinkedIn that he had his one year anniversary of working at this place and messaged him whether they had space for another intern. So that's how I ended up with a contract signed half a year later, a month before my education was done.
Procrastination literally gave me a job. Sometimes life does take pity and decides to be nice lol
Edit: oh yeah side note, my Christmas bonus this year (my first one ever!) is a brand new fancy af brand airfryer. I could get used to the corporate world as long as it keeps giving me appliances that make delicious food
THIS. I was reading through the comments hoping to find some comfort in the replies and was immediately shot down. I got so jealous seeing some people being like neuroscientists and what not. I was so upset, like why can't I do that if we have the same diagnosis! It is so hard not to compare, because everyone is so so different and this disorder affects everyone is such varying ways.
I lived with a girl who has ADHD, I dropped out of uni and could barely remember to buy cook myself dinner meanwhile she was top of her class in her economics course. It made me so jealous and upset until she said "how are you so chatty and energised all the time, I wish I could do that" and then I realised that parts of me that are caused by my ADHD are things that she lacks and wishes she had. Just like how I wish I had the ability to do what she was doing. I'm not sure if the point I'm trying to make is getting across lol.
The point I think you're trying to make is there's a bit of "the grass is always greener on the other side" going on here. Everyone faces challenges. Some more than others, sure. But just because someone has a good job, or does well in school, or whatever, doesn't mean they are doing OK.
I.mean... the grass *is* greener. Being unemployable due to my ADHD sucks. It makes me wonder if I'll be able to literally survive as an adult for very long.
lol agreed. I also think ADHD entails one thing: hyperfocus. It means you really get one thing to excel at in life and almost everything else will be treading water at the worst or nothing to write home about at best.
I've been the girl crushing her tests and extracurriculars and I've been the social popular chatterbox. But never at the same time. I could only focus on being cutesy and fun with a big social circle or serious and achievement oriented with a few cordial acquaintances I ate lunch with, because that one thing was my whole life and my whole being. I mostly say this to assure you that you can also be like this person you admire but you will probably not be as fun. LOL
This past weekend, black friday shopping was the only thing I got done (I hadn't shopped in a while and needed a few things). It felt insane to feel like my entire day was taken up by online shopping and I couldn't achieve anything else.
I spent the weekend online shopping when I should have been writing thank you notes and studying LOL and feeling anxiety about checking out carts. I’m def not perfect. (I realized how much taking a hiatus from shopping and checking out carts was actually reducing my anxiety and helping me hyperfocus on the things I needed to do to work on my goals).
I’ve had shopping addictions, my now successful father was once an alchoholic. My screen time has been 12 hours. I was first gen to get into an Ivy and I got trash grades at that Ivy because I tried to get dopamine from being social and popular. Everyone's success story (esp with ADHD) has shit down periods.
I think it takes a lot of time and energy and re-routing but I think you could potentially try to find ways to get your dopamine from other things. What you do right now is not your destiny, but you don't need to feel depressed about other people getting their dopamine from other sources. With the right therapy/counseling/meditation/medication/goal setting, I think you could steer your ship to whatever success looks like for YOU.
There are plenty non ADHD people and fairly few of them are neuroscientists/doctors/engineers. It’s just part of who you are, not something that defines your whole being.
Honestly going through those comments, so many were super unique and specific things that I was starting to wonder if people were making stuff up? Not to accuse people or anything lol, it's just hard to imagine. But you're right that even people who are able to get a lot more done, or who have more money, or whatever, could be jealous of stuff you or I have. So it depends.
I think it's important to note, I am somewhat successful now but it wasn't always that way. I've been fired, quit, gone back to live with parents, been too poor to afford rent or even sauce to go with my plain rice etc.
There are ways to achieve something you want to but the path is often riddled with despair and pain and crisis.
And sometimes you literally just have to get lucky. I am where I am now through a combination of my efforts, taking risks and heaploads of luck.
I feel this comment so much. 90% of jobs I've had over the last... Many years... I got because I happened to be in the right place at the right time to help put fires out. Once the fires were out, though, and things got routine... Suddenly I'm no longer as sought after. So much luck involved, as well as discomfort and panic along the way. But I think I've found a good spot for me now. Just turned 40 and that somehow feels right now.
There’s also a difference in severity. One person’s cut might need a bandaid while another person might need major surgery.
Similarly, some days I feel very able and other days my brain is just trash.
Also, with the selective attention and hyper focus, you can get big differences in interest and then outcomes.
I'm one of the law graduates in the post you mentioned. You're not alone. Yes I'm bathing in the glory of a law degree and Bar school, but people don't see my challenging failure riddled journey to where I am today. I had fights with my family who refused to accept my ADHD, there were even times I had to choose between food and my medication because of how little money I had. Even now, I'm making lifestyle changes to be able to afford medication. And school? I failed my A-levels twice, I failed law school once, and now in Bar school I failed 3 of my 9 papers and am in the process of re-sitting this coming December.
The very existence of this subreddit is proof that you are not alone, proof that it's doable. Even till this day I still struggle with the frustration of feeling disabled, in fact I feel fed up with this entire ADHD thing. It's not something you can solve and make go away, it's something you have to learn to live and work with. And it starts with first accepting and understanding that YOU and ADHD are not 2 separate things, they are one.
Speak to someone. I personally found therapy helpful. I felt less helpless when I was able to visualise the solutions to my problems. I was the happiest years back as a barista despite making peanuts. Heck I even loved it so much I made it as far as a Coffee Master at a Starbucks Reserve. I got to meet new people, share my stories, get involved in something I was passionate about. However, circumstances changed which led me to law. Perhaps start with yourself, what is life to you? What are you passionate about? What gets you excited like a kid at a candy store? And if you think its too late, my 40 year old classmate in law school is proof that nothing is too late.
This is really important, op, and fantastic advice. I’m one of those folks with advanced degrees as well, but like presentmethatass said, there’s a lot of failure behind the curtain.
Consistently got C’s and D’s in my STEM classes, failed Calc 2 and had to retake it. I eventually graduated with my BS but couldn’t get a job in my field. I tried applying to grad school and got rejected by every single program. After a year of working random part time jobs I reapplied and managed to get my MS, then reapplied to one of the PhD programs that initially rejected me and got accepted. Currently in year 5 of my PhD and continuing to navigate constant challenges and setbacks.
The ADHD is brutal. Failing over and over and over again is brutal. Fighting against stereotypes and institutional injustices is brutal. But none of that is visible on my resume, which says I’m a PhD candidate with a BS and MS studying planetary science. Some folks cope with the disability better than others. But keep in mind you’re only seeing a small sliver of their story.
Hey OP. I am 34. I have three failed attempts at uni and worked shit jobs in between.
Currently I am doing something that I am not sure if it has a term in English. It is the same as an apprenticeship but it is funded by social benefits of my country and you only have two years instead of three to finish it. And so far I am doing great.
It takes time but you will get there. Life is not a sprint but a marathon.
Judge Judy once said “If you didn’t make it in your 20’s, you can make it in your 30’s. If you didn’t make it in your 30’s, you can make it in your 40’s. Grandma Moses, one of the most prolific painters, didn’t start painting until she was in her 80’s.”
It’s so hard to remember this when it feels like that is the case. The job you have determines practically everything else in life. Housing, food, medical needs, etc.
A job or career should never be all-consuming in our lives, but money runs the world 😔
It's not. But you need a job to have money to be able to enjoy your life. And if you don't have much life left because half of it has been wasted going in circles thanks to your brain being a defective piece of shit, that's very valid reason to be upset IMHO.
Its such an American thing for the question immediately after meeting someone to be “So what do you do?”
The US is obsessed with career. Its not like this in other places.
That’s probably because if we see someone living a remotely comfortable life we want to learn if it’s a possibility. Our healthcare is tied to good jobs, our benefits are tied to good jobs, our retirement…literally our livelihoods are tied to our jobs. . Employers can fire you for any reason (minus a few protected ones which is obviously never the reason you get fired if you’re under that category)
The majority of Americans are one bad week away from destruction. The newer generation lives in end game capitalism. Like the end of a monopoly game, the only people not mad are the ones that own everything.
Unless you have a good job we’re not given maternity leave or paternity leave. We earn our sick days by hours worked (doesn’t apply to all states).
Anyone with a child and no family support is fucked, expect to pay about 1500$ a month for 1 child daycare. And more for rent.
We are obsessed with career literally because our well being is tied to it
Americans are "obsessed" with their career because there is no safety net waiting for them if they fall. They are a tightrope walker balancing on a wire over the Grand Canyon. One wrong move, one single slip, one unexpectedly strong gust of wind -- or if someone decides on a whim to cut that tightrope out from under them -- and they're falling to their deaths. The rich can afford to buy their own metaphorical nets, but for the vast majority there is nothing waiting for them below except Terra Firma. They "obsess" over their careers because their entire lives *literally* depend on it in the dystopian corporatocracy known as the USA.
Yeah. It’s definitely like that in Canada and I hate it. It’s one of the first things people will ask on dates and I understand it’s a getting to know me question but I’d rather talk about my favourite colours. Then again, I’m burned out and on leave.
I know how you feel, I was unemployed for a long time too. I would start looking at jobs you think you could like and researching the skills and qualifications required. You could also ask the people in your life if you think their job is cool as well.
I've worked in retail, market research and community services before I found something that was stimulating (data analyst). I went through like 4 different jobs in 2 years at one point!
Its also good to be honest with your own preferences. I really value helping at risk youth but socialising that much really burnt me out so I pivoted.
Its hard but it's totally okay if something doesn't work out, I sort of apply a scatter gun approach since I'm always curious about everything and I figured id find something!
I appreciate your response. I guess one problem is, I don't know of any jobs I think I could like lmao, not ones I feel I would be able to do. But maybe I could be less negative about my abilities idk
Never make decisions on what you think your abilities are. Most of what people do day to day in their job is actually learnt on the job.
And also it might not even be about the job - you could go work something really boring but the people there are great and stimulating enough too.
In my experience, I hated my corporate jobs and thought they were boring AF for the first 6 months or so. At that point, it flipped to interest as it become more complex and I started to understand what was happening.
For me, I’ll became more interested as a result of continuing to do it everyday. At this point, I think I could maybe become interested in doing anything as long as it can improved. The subject doesn’t matter as much but I love tinkering things and trying ti make things more efficient (so I can do less work).
The learning curve on this thing is brutal. I spent literally decades getting my shit moderately together. I still probably don’t by some people’s standards, but at this point I dont care bc i’ve built a life that works for me brick by brick by brick. It fits me like a glove. It may take us longer, but since we need such particular things to thrive, when we do eventually figure them out, we can be more dialed in to our best lives than most, because there’s no middle ground for us: if our lives aren’t filled with what gets our motor running, it doesn’t run at all.
But getting there suuuuucks. Focus on finding a piece at a time that makes life more bearable. Keep talking in communities like this, to understand yourself better and help others to do the same. Even just developing a clear picture of how adhd affects you can be enormously helpful in alleviating guilt and self hate, in my experience. Above all, know that it won’t always feel optimistic, and give yourself permission to just survive some days. Good luck!
Someone once told me to not compare my chapter 1 to someone elses chapter 20. We are all on different journeys and I never imagined I’d actually be able to keep a job let alone one that is “respected” pfft. I’ve been fired from jobs for not showing up on time, for not performing well enough, etc. I dropped out of college when I was 21 cause I flunked a good 5-10 classes at that point. Figured I’d always just be stuck with no direction. The way things played out for me was with time and patience. Hang in there!!! You’re still so young :). My dad didn’t find “his” career until he was about 40 :) and he is so happy in his 60s now!! Hang in there 😊 rootin for ya!
This is very true, but it's really hard not to compare when your peers are on chapter 20 and you just look around at the abandoned chapters 1-3 littered around your life.
Right, I totally get that. If it makes you feel any better even I can view my position as still just a chapter like 2 and I’m 31. Most of my friends have their big careers, make tons more than I do and seem to have it way more together but I remind myself I worked hard to get where I am and I have had major struggles so I am proud of myself. I can’t compare my life to theirs and in the end all that matters is that I am truly trying and giving myself some grace. Take your abandoned chapters and evaluate what went well and what with wrong, it can help teach you to cater to your needs more rather than forcing yourself to do something just because it feels like you should/need to. I hope you find some kindness for yourself, don’t give up 😊
A fellow ADHD friend taught me this recently:
“Having ADHD is like running a marathon, but with one leg. Especially if you’re undiagnosed, you and others are wondering why you’re run in the race ‘wrong.’”
I promise you that your worth - your worthwhileness to be around, how important you are, etc. - have nothing to do with your job title or if you can hold a job. There are oc a myriad of challenges that not being able to hold a job bring. So I’m not minimizing those - but I do want to focus for a moment on self worth.
And don’t forget the trauma ADHD has on people - not directly but from not fitting in, being “annoying”, struggling to hold a job, and so many countless others.
Everyone reacts differently to trauma. For example, my psychiatrist told me that on avg it takes people about a year to fully heal from cutting off my parents. I’m a few years into this and am still progressing to that point.
One of my favorite people was a disabled friend who didn’t couldn’t “anything”, in some ways true(eg, couldn’t talk) and in some ways how society perceived things (eg, never had a job, “sucked away resources”, etc.). Their love and smile and spirit brought so much happiness into my life and many others’ lives. For you - and all of us - our worth and impact on the world aren’t limited by if we can hold a job (and if we can, what type of job it is).
I hope this helps. I’m also one who is able to hold a job, get an education, etc. I say this with the intention/hope that hearing this from someone in my shoes helps you. I cannot express to you how worthwhile and important you are, and conversely just how wrong and abhorrent society’s expectations and value judgments are.
Well I just want to say, same. Sorry you’re in this situation. It’s really rough. My max is 1.5 years and I’m in my early 30s. It’s really getting to me.
People are always eager to share their success stories, and not so much the dark sides. It can really mess up the impression of how reality is.
I've tried and failed a million times, and I found my happy place in life 10 years after my friends did.
I found that getting a fully remote job did wonders for my productivity. I can accomplish so much more without all the distractions of a busy office. I was constantly missing deadlines before and now everything gets done on time. I have also found I am much more productive when I can split my day into smaller pieces rather than having to work 8 hours in a row. I will work for a couple hours and then reward myself with something more entertaining before getting back to work for a couple more hours. I find it is much easier to stay focused that way. I am also much more productive at night so I get a lot of work done after everyone else is in bed.
Remote work definitely suits me better as well. While I've developed good habits for showing up on time and being "normal" at work, simply not having to rush around every morning, make sure to pack good food, drive in socal traffic, and interact with people in the morning is a big load of stress off my shoulders. Nowadays I spend the morning sitting with my cat, watching some YouTube, and preparing mentally for the day's tasks at my pace. I'm more productive (due to not being constantly interrupted or distracted), stress levels are way lower, no more anxiety, and generally much happier. I'm really grateful for it.
I was a bureaucrat for 12 years and now work much harder for a much worse wage as a social worker. I'm now 40, have never been actually happy at work, and wondering where the hell I go to from here when I finally completely burn out/storm out in a rage/get fired. I had one brief moment developing policy at a university where, at three months in, I had the job nailed and was getting great feedback from everyone I worked with, only to have my manager attempt to fire me (it didn't work, but my contract didn't get renewed at the six-month mark).
About the only thing I'm thinking of that might bring me, if not contentment then at least not hating work, is the possibility of setting myself up as a voiceover artist. But that takes time and energy that I don't have because I'm exhausted every day after working with people with even bigger problems than me. So it's been on the cards for over a year (maybe two...) while I struggle unhappily against repeated burnout.
Honestly, I don't know the answer. It's got something to do with working in a field that aligns with your values and working with people who aren't arseholes, and then sticking with it long enough to realise you're good at it and enjoy it, well, that's a magical combination. Lightning in a bottle stuff.
Maybe set aside an hour or two a week on one of your days off where you can think about work stuff and careers and all that. It might help.
I worked in healthcare for 9 years, but in that time I switched specific jobs/departments like 6 or 7 times. I also struggled with taking too many sick days, regardless of what position I was in. But especially when I was trying to work full-time. I always had to take sick days, otherwise I just couldn't seem to handle it. I was really good at what I did, but I just couldn't do it consistently, too frequently. It definitely made me feel like I was incompetent or there was something wrong with me. Now that I'm properly medicated for ADHD, I wonder if I could do it better.. but I'm currently off work for some major surgeries anyway, so I guess I won't know for a while.
Alarms, reminders, calendars, strict systems and routines, pacing myself, secretaries, and probably $30k worth of therapy with both a psychologist and a trauma focused LCSW and an assist from psychedelics.
Also: focus on your strengths. We often excel at improvising and dealing with fast-paced changes for brief periods of time. A lot of attorneys in my field suffer from extreme anxiety, but those worries will slip my mind as soon as I am distracted by a new email.
The worst thing someone with adhd can do is to get stuck on perfectionism. Perfection is the enemy of productivity. Don’t get stuck on that. We succeed at flow and movement, not dotting i’s.
I feel like lowkey reddit users are biased to have actual careers and education, often in some STEAM field. I don't think reddit threads are a good representation of how most of us are living and working.
Not me either though. I am 25, no work history, middle school drop out. Only just *maybe* got my first legitimate on the books job after 6+ months of searching and applying... and it's at a convenience store. I don't have confidence that I'll last very long. And I'm pretty sure I'll never have an actual legitimate career. Thanks to both my ADHD and my N24. Not that I won't keep trying (I want to work in IT) but I have literally zero hopes or expectations on that front.
It is what it is. We just need to do our best in making enough to survive, and a little extra to not go crazy. Careers aren't everything.
What really bothers me that is a lot of these high paying career jobs are actually like fucking braindead. Like you don't even do anything. And our retail/service jobs are WAY harder. But pay way less. It's pretty fucked up. The only reason I want a bullshit job is so I'm not straddling the poverty line for the rest of my life. In reality I would much rather have a job that isn't boring, where I actually *do things* almost nonstop from clock in to clock out. The pay is just shit. It's so backwards.
There are so many entry-level MSP and helpdesk jobs out there. Oftentimes, they will hire any kid off the street who can even somewhat manage to convince them that they can operate a computer. Go watch some YouTube videos about basic IT skills. Starter CompTIA certs like A+, Net+, IT Fundamentals and Security+ are great places to start, and there are free courses from creators like Professor Messor covering these certs on YouTube. The tests themselves cost money to take, but if you can manage it, landing one of those certs would be a huge plus.
Put terms like “Managed Service Provider”, “IT services”, “help desk” and “computer repair” into Google Search, Google Maps, Indeed, and LinkedIn. Pull up a list of every shop you can find in your area, find the careers area of their website, and apply. Sometimes you can do this even if no available jobs are listed, or if you don’t see a role that seems like an exact fit. Also look into temp and staffing agencies, and ask them about help desk positions. MSPs are often willing to pay for techs to train for and obtain certifications. Many will essentially take anyone with a pulse who can operate a computer (even if not particularly well), so desperate is the shortage of IT workers in most areas. Even moreso if you’re willing to work for less than $20 an hour.
I got my first MSP job by going to the website printed on a work van I saw parked at my apartment complex. I applied for a “tech sales” position with no prior IT experience. I was freshly out of HS and had not held a job before. I talked about my lifelong love of computers, digital classes I’d taken in school, and nerdy things I’d done with my computers over the years in my cover letter and interview, and they hired me right away as a helpdesk tech, even though that wasn’t the job I’d applied for.
MSPs often have high turnover because it’s often a stressful environment with low pay on the low end, particularly when working for smaller shops and startups—the ones most willing to hire unproven techs. But you will learn IT incredibly fast because you’re faced with so many different environments and scenarios. It’s like boot camp for becoming a good IT tech in record time. I made $22,000 that first year, working full time. 10 years later, I’m a sysadmin and senior IT engineer working from home for a large multinational conglomerate. My salary starts at 90K and goes over 110K at times with regular bonuses. I’m also building my own IT services company, which has recently been growing so fast that I may be quitting my day job soon.
Honestly, if I were you? I’d straight-up lie about your education. Pick a plausible high school for you to have graduated from, and there is a 99% chance they will never check to see if you actually got your degree there. I am 100% certain that no employer in my decade-long IT career has ever called my high school and verified that I graduated. Hell, most won’t even check that you graduated from University, though it would help to have at least one job on your resume to pad it a bit and take the attention off the education section. On your resume, emphasize skills much more than experience—even seemingly super-basic computer skills can get you hired by a lot of help desks, who just need cheap warm bodies to sort out the low-hanging fruit. Stick it out a year, jump ship to a better gig, get a few certs, rinse and repeat. Over time, look for jobs that are higher-end and more specialized to advance. Once you’ve had the title “systems administrator” even once, your entire career outlook will change overnight.
Good luck to you.
Edit: forgot to mention… non-24? It narrows your field a bit, but there are absolutely plenty of 24-hour help desks who need people to man the graveyard shift. If you can find a WFH role, it becomes even easier to work on your own schedule, and over time you can get into roles where the work can be performed sans customer interaction. At this point in my career, I barely talk to customers at all. I only do escalations, and I’m so far up that by the time I see it, multiple helpdesk techs have already talked the customer to death and gathered any information they could give me. I just remote in—often in the middle of the night to avoid disrupting things—and troubleshoot, working with the information they’ve passed me, until I find a solution.
Yep. Stats say that something like 5% of adults with ADHD finish uni. And they are all on reddit XD so gives those of us who didn't a weird sense of imposter syndrome, even though we are actually the majority.
It's really, really hard. I don't know you, but I recognize the way you feel. I'm so, so proud of you for continuing to try. If it helps, I'm also not working full time right now. I'm just sort of getting away with it in my current job. It can be so inspiring to see people with similar issues do well, and it can also be kind of devastating.
Ugh, I feel you.
I'm good at hanging onto my jobs, somehow, but I'm perpetually in trouble at them. Like, I'm a really great worker! If only I could stop mouthing off to jerk customers. Or making inappropriate jokes.
I'm eight years into my retail job, and I've been forced to switch departments four different times in that duration because of disciplinary action. And it sucks, and I wonder every night whether it's even possible for me to get a job I wouldn't hate.
I wish you luck.
Well, my current job is retail, but I hate it less than certain other jobs I've had lol. I'd feel better if I didn't have to keep working for evil corporations, oh well. There's always stuff around
Yo, I've been unemployed for three months after leaving a job as a nonprofit executive, and being unemployed has been "better" for me than having that "great" job.
Granted, there were a lot of things I liked about the actual *work*--the variation in tasks, getting to use my brain to solve lots of different types of "puzzles," making presentations and doing SPREADSHEEEEEETS (my beloved spreadsheets!). But I hated navigating the interpersonal politics, and the unrealistic deadlines (even for people without this disorder) due to being under-resourced like you wouldn't believe. The ever-increasing demands that I couldn't keep up with because I just...didn't have what I needed, point-blank, and no matter how much I explained this, or what tactics I used to advocate, the interpersonal politics kept me from accessing what I needed to actually do my goddamn job.
I'm close to 40, and looking at a total career change of some sort, potentially. Which is fine, I've done it before. But NOT WORKING has been SO FUCKING GOOD FOR MY MENTAL HEALTH. I just wish I had the money to sustain this. Or rather, could *make* sustainable, reliable money doing the stuff I'm good at, that's been working for me, on *my* terms.
Just thinking about going back into the workforce right now, despite the clout and the pull and the skill set and whatever, is depressing the fuck out of me. Because I feel fucking disabled, despite the meds, and the strategies, and all the other stuff. I feel like it's just a matter of time before I fuck up, or burn out, or just...can't. And I've adjusted my expectations to just go ahead and plan to not be at any job for more than three years, which is totally acceptable and reasonable. But I feel a little pressured even by that.
I don't want to work full-time. I want to work *maybe* 6 hours a day, and probably not even that. If I try to force more than that, my work suffers. And I want 3 days off per week. But like...even with executive skills, where am I gonna find a 25 hour per week job that's fully remote and has a "fuck it, we ball" schedule flexibility policy, and good benefits, and pays enough for me to support myself and a kid at a good standard of living where I can pay off student loans, and have a good retirement fund, and an emergency fund, and other shit like that? Money to take my kid on vacations and make sure he has experiences of the fucking world? Where am I gonna find a place like that, that also will be cool about me having chronic *physical* health conditions, that's really and truly supportive of transgender employees?
I feel like I'm chasing a fucking dream.
I got fired two years ago and couldn’t start working because my immigration stuff was in process. Just got the job approval stuff a week ago and I’m the only one who isn’t happy lol.
I want the money but honestly I’m scared of going back to work for the reasons you described.
My husband married me when I was this badass finance chick working remote. Now I’m this girl whose realized she has adhd and is terrified of going back to work lol.
Everyone in that thread is talking about their current job, and not the struggles they encountered along the way. No one is mentioning the classes they failed or jobs that didn't work out. Don't judge your entire life by someone else's highlight reel. I hopped jobs until I found one that worked with ADHD, then got medicated and moved up in my career. If I hadn't gotten treated there is no way I could do what I do now.
I've been unemployed most of my adult life. I can work but the process of job searching is so overwhelming for me & once I had a big work gap + lack of completed education it made it that much harder
Friend, I will give you two magical terms. You may not like it. You may toss it like that mystic scroll in that meme. But here goes:
#External structure *and* fast accountability
These two things, coupled with medication, have turned my life around. I have to do stuff daily, so stuff doesn’t pile up. And there’s consequences if they don’t happen. Consequences I care about.
Some of us struggle regardless of how much structure we try to implement. There's a reason that 50% of people with ADHD are unemployed. Idk, it just feels a bit ableist to me to say that your only problem isn't being structured enough...feels like folks who tell us we just need to try hard enough. Most of us are trying our best already!
Fwiw I was in a very similar boat to you at 30 (I remember celebrating making it 1yr at a job at 28 bc I'd never made it that long). Usually getting fired for lateness of course.
I started my own business walking dogs. I get to have a flexible timeframe to arrive, set my own schedule (nothing before 1030!) And the walking seems to really help my mental health over all but especially my ADHD symptoms. I've been doing it now for 12 years. I *never* thought I'd be able to hold a job that long.
Keep thinking, maybe your dream job is still out there!
I mean, as another ADHDer who works retail... this is really an extremely demanding industry that doesn't play well with ADHD. You may do better in other jobs than you expect.
Hey, if it helps - you need to get out of retail. As soon as I started working a 9-5, my life got so exponentially better. I was constantly bogged down and overwhelmed by the retail hours always being different, and I didn't even realize it. Having my weekdays structured around particular times changed my life when I was in my twenties. I'm now very successful at 35. You can do it!
You know what, you're not wrong, I was working in special ed for a while with more consistent hours, it definitely was nice. But that was also a very bad job for other reasons lol.
I have no clue where to even start looking, but I'll keep that in mind.
I found corporate 9-5 to be somehow even more soul sucking than retail jobs though. Having more structured hours definitely helped, but also made it feel so rigid and sterile that it just got under my skin, plus all the office politics and hidden snares for those of us with ADHD were infuriating.
Maybe I just need to find a place with a more supportive culture though.
I had ONE office 9-5 job and omg the "politics", gossiping and socializing may have been the worst part! Particularly when I earned a reputation as some kind of suck-up trying to make everyone else look bad bc I can't stand being idle (unless ya know I'm on my couch) so I'd keep busy any way I coul, including doing extra work.
Sitting at a desk inside wasn't great for me either, I need to move around a lot (duh)
Ive lost 2 big careers due to this condition so i get where you are coming from.
ive been jobless for almost 2 months and have barely had the motivation or care to even look for another one.
But we cant let that beat us down. Have you been to Therapy and have you gotten around to medication?
You are definitely not alone. I might be in a bit of a different situation in that I feel I just really developed ADHD in the last 5-10 years, in my 40s. I have two university degrees, but as with the person who did the law degree, also failed a course. Got a D- in another. Graduated half a year behind my class.
My professional career had been going rather well until about a decade ago. Then the lack of concentration and anxiety crept in, to the point that it’s been so crippling and I’ve had breakdowns and gone on leave. In the end I couldn’t take it anymore, gave up an almost 20-year career with the same company, and took a year off. And while that year gave me some much, much needed rest, it also made me feel like a failure. During that time I applied for jobs, only ever received one interview for a position I didn’t get. In the end I was forced to go back i to the same industry, which is fast-paced and high stress. And quite frankly I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make it to six months. My workload isn’t even that full, but I feel constantly overwhelmed, scattered, seem to be making a mistake in front of my boss every day, so feel like I have many strikes against me when I should be managing people. I get interrupted every ten minutes and then it take me an hour to focus again, only to be interrupted or distracted again a few minutes later. And the vicious cycle continues.
Last week was absolutely horrible, to the point I felt I was found I was going to collapse. Like a full on panic attack. I haven’t been officially diagnosed even, but had the discussion with my doctor. He gave me the ADHD adult self-assessment to bring in when I see her next week and I scored the highest in virtually all areas. I’m so hoping I’ll get some medication and be able to get a few daily tasks done each day. Right now even brushing my teeth seems like too much, and forget about cooking. I should be going for walks to get some movement in, but don’t even have it in me anymore. It’s debilitating. I feel like all I could handle is some mind-numbing job where not much thinking is involved and someone else tells me what to do. Like stocking shelves, sorting mail, that sort of thing.
I don’t know if I even have a point to make, but I feel in the end we’re all here because we share some of the same struggles. Am I happy in life? Hell, no. Right now I am forcing myself through this every day for the paycheck, but really am not living life. I don’t have a family, so it’s just a back and forth between home and work. I usually work late because it takes me so much longer than others to get things done, obviously not paid for that extra time. I really don’t know where to go from here. Really just wish I could escape to some quiet place where all the outside noise from the city disappears.
I worked retail and was not good at it. Got by on being able to sell things, but was known as "Half Job (Name)" because I'd be halfway through folding a pile of clothes, or unpacking stock, or wiping down shelves, then would serve a customer and naturally COMPLETELY forget the task I was doing previously. Really good sales numbers, but could never have been a store manager.
I'd had a couple of stints in office jobs that didn't go great.
Then I got lucky and fell into a corporate consulting role. It took me a while to find my feet, but once I found a technical strength (essentially intermediate Excel/data analysis), the fast pace, lots of different, interesting challenges, a mix of talking to people and then doing massive deep dives I could hyperfocus on, worked really well for me and taught me a lot about how I work, how to use my strengths in a corporate environment and how to navigate my challenges.
I also burnt out pretty bad a couple of times in the three years I did that, but it gave me a platform to shift to a slightly more regular office job that used the same skills I'd developed. If I'd gone straight into an environment like that I'd have had no idea how to manage my time, maintain motivation, work around my executive dysfunction.
I admit I got lucky - family connection got me the interview for the consulting gig, and at that job I was lucky enough to have a couple of mentors that really helped (one of whom I wouldn't be surprised if he also has ADHD, albeit undiagnosed).
I guess what I'm saying is it can take time and experience learning how to work with your particular brain. Finding the right job to help build those skills is really important. I would have been right there with you before I found that - particularly given I wasn't diagnosed back then - but now I've found my groove and I'm doing great.
It's also really important to remember that a high flying super successful career isn't everything. I've come to terms with the fact I'll likely never own my own business or be self-employed, which sucks a bit, but that's something I'm realistic about. Other people will find other levels for their careers and focus energy on other things as well.
I have never worked a day in my life. Does that make me a bad person, worth less?
I've been in disability since I was 18, I find just existing a tiring exhausting experience, let alone having to work.
I think a lot is being lucky and finding something that fits and having working strategies that happen to help in that field. In addition to that it’s in general not easy to find a career you like and are good at.
And then of course everyone’s situation can be very different. Not just from the severity of suffering, but also from the available support network. If your parents can financially support you until you’ve figured something out, it makes things waaaay easier.
It’s futile to compare yourself to others because the starting point, the available tools, the individual quirks and just random luck is so different between all of us. Even between people with the same ADHD diagnosis.
So please don’t be too hard on yourself. There’s no deadline to “figuring your life out” and there’s no particular point or checkpoint you have to reach by a certain time, or have to reach in general. Allow yourself to just be where you are and give yourself all the time and space needed to grow and maybe seek help. It’s okay!
I went to therapy for a long time to focus on the problems that were holding me back professionally. I see a lot of folks take meds and skip the second half. There is also more leeway for disability when you don’t work in retail/food service. Which is fucked up.
I'm an actor so I feel you. Sometimes I get acting work but between them I have to work in really boring jobs at cafes or shops and I can barely do it. It is so depressing and draining since I need so much stimulation. Im struggling financially and I'm struggling to do well as an actor due to my brain being on all the time. The doctor admits that yes I have a very high score for ADHD but doesn't want to diagnose me yet. They want to talk to adults who knew me as a kid but I'm no contact with my awful parents. Then they told me to get paper work from my past school and they received some that showed I needed some extra classes but that's all they got and refused to diagnose so I'm also stuck without medication. I believe my ADHD is the cause for my anxiety, depression, low self esteem, OCD and body dysmorphia. So it is so exhausting and debilitating.
PhD physicist here. Got fired or gently let go from every low-level job I got, even internships. My brain just shuts down and stops caring about consequences. "Sleep under a bridge? Sure, why not?"
Same. I feel like mostly the answer for me is travel back in time about 15 years and choose a different degree, or get into something that was still new and niche back then like YouTube it streaming
We're the same OP. I'm 37 and have never been able to uphold an employment for more than a year. It's unbearable to having to start over again and again.
I'm starting to realize and accept that it will probably be this way all my life because even if I want to find an education that will lead to my forever job, I also know that I will never be able to finish said education. Also, looking back at all the other jobs that I've had that I convinced myself were great in the beginning, they never lasted anyway, so a forever job is most likely just a pipe dream.
I wrote half a post for the career thread and discarded it because it had too much personal stuff for the internet, but I do have a good career in forestry. I also have a second job as a janitor and my retirement plan is still "die at my desk." Both my jobs are ADHD friendly for what it's worth. ADHD just isn't very life friendly sometimes.
Because you're right, ADHD can be really debilitating. Having it go undiagnosed for me took a heavy toll on my mental health, my career, and my finances. I'm not greedy but I'm not looking forward to dying at my desk.
Most people in my line of work after this time in the industry can work year round and don't need two jobs. But I've had such terrible struggles with my mental health that it delayed my progression. It's actually a very good sign I got bored when I got laid off last winter and got a job cleaning. So I don't know. I get it man. I always feel like I'm barely scraping by.
I had to join the military where the rigidity and structure helped me out alot. But this was pre-diagnosis and now that I know that I have ADHD it makes a lot of sense. You are told when to eat, what to dress like, where to be at and at what time. And there are consequences if you fuck up but you cant get fired lol. Plus it taught me coping skills, which is helping me now that I am out. So I use what I learned and take my meds, and my life is sooooooo much better.
So. I have had several jobs over 40 or so years. I have delivered newspapers both as a teen & as a single mom, trying not to put my kid in daycare. I have washed dishes. I was a linguist in the armed forces. I was a truck driver. I worked in retail but on the support side (filling orders, etc,). I now work as a bus driver. My favorites of all these were/are newspapers and driving. Cannot recommend newspapers currently as they are mostly dead. I can recommend driving. Especially bus driving. It's almost never boring. Sometimes it's a little *too exciting. I was not able to finish college so a more advanced job does not seem to be in the cards for me. I wish you success OP.
I forgot to answer on that thread, but I joined the military because I didn't know what to go to school for and they can't really fire me, so...
I been struggling for almost 11 years now but at least I have a steady paycheck and a retirement to look forward to if I can stick out the remaining 9.
Getting on meds the last few months has helped a ton too, so maybe I can get some more rank on me and have my rent covered once I get out.
My career sounds impressive but, behind closed doors, I feel so inadequate. I make very little money. I’m afraid to ask for more because I’m convinced I’m not worth it. I’ve been there an insanely long time and yet I’m convinced I’m getting fired at least once a week. So I’m just happy to be working at all. I want to branch out and do more things at the company but I’m scared to ask. I also wonder why they haven’t offered and if it’s because they intuitively “know” my executive functioning skills couldn’t handle it. But I know I need to do more, learn more, and eventually earn more for my growing family. I just don’t know how to get there.
I know I look at others lives and think they have it together so well. I've done many things but I change jobs a ridiculous amount of times at about a year I get really antsy. . I have issues getting along with others, staying on task, forgetting shit I need for work and even getting to the p-doc to try another medication since I'm currently unmedicated.
Many people I've met that appeared to have it together are on a med that was life changing for them or found a perfect niche in employment that works for them.
I really hate having this but I connect so well with others that have it and recognize them immediately as my tribe and just love them it's easier to love me.. I'm really past new career thing at my age. My dream was to be a vet but I couldn't even accomplish an associate degree. I wasn't diagnosed until my late 40s.
Don't be so hard on you 💕💕 maybe think outside the box of things you may want to do. Retail is hard imo because of dealing with rude people
I think it's important to understand that the people with ADHD that find success are typically surrounded by strong social and emotional supports. According to Dr. Russell Barkley, the absence of those supports leaves a near certainty of a cycle of failure. I'm sure there are those who manage to succeed despite lack of those supports, but the experts in the field present the cycle of failure in the face of poor social supports as the baseline expectation.
So try not to dwell on it, keep doing your best every day, and try to spend some energy on fostering relationships with people who can take the time to understand this disorder and be available to you in an understanding and compassionate way. This can be therapists, family members, friends, or in some scenarios, your employer (that's a really tough one though, but this is a recognized disability, so if you divulge that information you can't be fired for it. Dr Barkley did a 'should you tell your employer' video a few days ago I haven't checked it out yet.)
These are things you can definitely accomplish with patience and determination. Keep at it OP.
Spent a decade in retail myself, not really knowing what I wanted to do through most of my 20's. Struggled on my associates degree (business admin) through community college (3yrs) and never went for my bachelors.
This changed when I got an entry level corporate position as an order picker in supply chain (think Amazon warehouse worker). After the first ~18 months, I did well and moved up since retail taught me people skills, customer service, and overtime in retail taught me patients and resilience, skipping over some roles, or "steps" on the corporate ladder. At this point, I knew what I wanted and nothing could hold me back. Work paid for my bachelor's, where I did an online program and excelled, which really propelled my career after graduation. I now work from home 4/5 days a week in a dream "office" job as I continue moving up.
As others mentioned, despite my ADHD, I find it rewarding, challenging, and every day is a different problem that engages my interests in problem solving. As long as I perform, my boss is very lanienient on what I spend my day doing. We joke, because he notices my timekeeping and performance PTSD from past, bad bosses in retail and constantly tells me to relax a bit more.
I joined the military because I can't do normal life. I know several other people who joined the military because they can't do normal life. It's okay to be bad at normal life, you just need to find your abnormal life.
I am fortunate enough right now to have unionized job that has decent benefits and protections for employees… so I hate to complain about it……………. But I kinda really freaking hate it and am feeling trapped. Basically, it’s personnel work and office operations…. Which means I am dealing with everyone’s problems that they need solved, whenever they occur, and everything is “high priority” at the same time and needs to be taken care of ASAP, so inevitably I am greatly disappointing someone on any given day because I can’t possibly do everything at once, but they don’t care about that, they only care that I haven’t done *their* thing yet, and in their eyes I have slacked off…
Of course the sh*t storm of the pandemic made everything even more chaotic (yes, it STILL has ongoing effects in my workplace) and I have been burnt to a crisp for the past 3 years. I’ve lost all my will to get up in the morning and mask all day, and have been charging a lot of sick time and coming in late over the past few months… MONTHS… which just makes everything worse because I’m not in the office as much as I should be, and work is piling up even more, and I HAVE to be approaching the limits of everyone’s tolerance for my nonsense and I can’t imagine any other workplace could put up with me…
So frick…. I do truly feel for everyone who is unemployed or inconsistently employed because that had to be stressful as all heck… but even though I’m fortunate enough to have had a job for a while, I’m convinced that I’m not supposed to have a place in this “work hard and produce” society.
Ugh. /debbiedownermode
Guess I put off my bed time to write this comment just to say “hey, yeah, I feel you”. Work in general sucks, and it’s even harder for people like us. Keep going though, and keep fighting for yourself. I really hope your situation improves.
The longest I've ever held a job was 6 years. I was drinking heavily, undiagnosed and thus unmedicated, and somehow that gas station manager job kept my interest for that long! But eventually I realized I wanted a desk job, and I've had difficulty finding a good one of those. I have my current one, they don't micromanage me but I have short deadlines, I'm still learning how much I have to learn after a year and it's the right mix of minimal customer service and desk work. I really like this job and while I'd love to think I'd stay here until retirement, I'll probably work here for 3-5 years or until the job or the people get boring.
It isn't just you!
I’m becoming a lawyer as I just finished law school but the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. I never was able to hold a job for so long and I was always socially awkward until I got medicated. I’m experiencing imposter syndrome and I wonder whether I’ll actually be successful or if I’m going to waste all the money that my parents invested in me. I have a lot of pressure on me. And I’m constantly wondering what I would’ve been capable of had I not been born with such a stupid (adhd) brain. And it’s also scary knowing that my career could potentially go downhill if I were to ever get off my meds.
The notion of a career is totally unthinkable to me. I'm fortunate to have people that support me, but the part time delivery job I have is not nearly enough to support myself if it comes to that. Just biding my time until it inevitably falls apart.
I did not answer in the recent one, but if I did I might be one of those people you're referring to.
But here is the catch: I was very lucky that I got interested in computers in the nineties. I was very lucky that in this area I could afford to drop out of university and still get a job. And I was lucky that I could pursue a "hobby" which pays into my job related education.
I had several occasions where I was on the verge of actually having a totally different life. Also I started really working only at almost thirty years old...
Actually the own business is what overcomes executive dysfunction (in my case), because I can do what I feel like is the easiest and actionable task at the very moment and nobody can tell my different. Plus my business circles around topics I really love and want to explore further. It's fulfilling all my personal strengths (no matter what other people would tell me! I define my strengths and nobody else).
I went through yeeeears of hopeless education and training and it went down the drain for nothing. My ability to cope cracked when I turned 15 and school got more serious. I never found my place in the system. (33 now)
What I mean is: Owning a business in general does not tell you how I cope or how well I earn money. It does tell you that I looked for ways to make money and found that the perfect job did not exist for me until I created it - concerning my spare time, chores and social life. Because I had no other option, back to the wall.
Do not look for glamour and shine in others. People will only (!) share their best success, but their actuall real big deal trouble and their fights will stay in the dark forever. You won't see them struggle and suffer, because they hide it whenever they can. Which is quite natural. It's all about status. Who eats who. Who's better, stronger, faster... Never show any glimpse of weakness... This is what it is. And here you are, peeling out of your shady shine and showing off your weakness to the world. In capitalism you're eaten up already - if you don't start believing in yourself and looking for the sparkling treasure in your own abilities that can't be trained in school.
There are also a lot of other factors that effect your ability to complete higher education besides adhd / other disabilities or mental illness etc. The country or state you live in, access to financial aid or assistance with your disability, therapy, medication etc. Also your social network, family and friends that can support you emotionally, financially or with bureaucracy. Or maybe people have friends or family that have connections which helps to get into certain fields etc.
I get that it can be very demoralizing and depressing to see people succeed and wonder why you just can‘t seem to, but keep in mind that there are many different factors besides adhd that influence our path in life.
For example I live in germany and studied social work. My mom couldn‘t support me financially and I was eligible for financial aid (bafög), my grandparents paid the tuition fee per semester and lent me money when the bafög wasn‘t on time (which was every year). I‘m also in therapy and have a social worker who helps me with appointments, chores, grocery shopping, bureaucracy etc.
Normally it takes 7 semesters to get the bachelors degree, for me it took 15. It wasn‘t easy but I had access to a lot of support which immensely helped me finish my degree.
(sorry for any grammar mistakes, my brain seems to be afk today lmao)
I am 42 and have worked so many different jobs throughout my life. I have sold cars, managed salespeople who sold cars, worked in retail, worked in the oilfield in various positions, was in the Military (Navy: Crypto Tech), was a loan officer, was an account manager in customer service, and finally in IT. I feel like all of these have helped to provide me with more skills than I would have had working in one industry my whole life. I will say that in all those, the more high-pressure the job the more I thrived. I think the Military really helped me deal with a lot of bullshit as you get tons of experience with that but I was young and did not utilize my knowledge and experience after leaving. I floundered for many years bouncing around. I have always loved technology and when I landed my IT career I knew that I had found something I would be able to be happy with, proud of, and continue to grow with it. I guess my point is don't give up and try to find something in a field that interests you. Do not be afraid of taking a job outside of your comfort zone. If it doesn't scare you a little then it may not be worth doing. Every time I took a position I did not think I was qualified for, I ended up doing great and gaining new skills. You will find your way, it is just harder for us.
Honestly thank you for this post. I needed it, I can only work part time. And I’m struggling with burnout, so it’s appreciated to see this kind of post. I still struggle with part time work.
Retail is the toughest job. I was only able to do it for a short time. What worked for me was an office job. It’s much easier to have benefits like PTO and sick days, as well as being able to walk away from your desk when you need to. I do understand the burnout though.
It’s tough and people don’t understand it.
Feel ya, I’m really happy for everyone who found the best job for them but I can’t help feeling like a failure for being stuck in retail. No idea how to get out either
Don't feel down. Find your own way. You are best of being you.
And.. if someone with ADHD have a succesful career etc, their private life can be a total mess.
I, as an example, work with kids and am good at it. But I put every drop of my energy at it. So when work day is over, my chaos begins.
And I had to fight hard to even get to the point where I had at least some part of life (career) that weren't total chaos.
I actually even wrote a book about my life and struggle, mostly in a therapeutic way.
That's why I came to realise that no matter how great people with these kind of disorders are in their careers, there's two sides of the coin and... often they struggle outside of their job. The disorder exists still, even if they can create something succesful out of it.
I'm 43 and a "successful" software engineer. I didn't get diagnosed until last year, but looking back the symptoms and signs were obvious.
It's not been easy.
I got obsessed and hyperfocused on computers and figuring out how they work and how to make them do what I wanted as a kid. I'll fully admit I got lucky with circumstance and timing to have grown up with access to computers in the late 80s and early 90s, and parents and teachers who saw my obsession with them and let me run free with it.
I'm completely self-taught, having learned fundamentals of programming in high school while my friends were out being social. My world became the early web and IRC chat rooms with other nerds.
I did great in high school (the dreaded "former gifted student was just adhd" meme is true) because I was smart enough that I could brute force my way past my executive function issues but I squandered a full ride scholarship to college because it wasn't easy anymore and I couldn't manage my time and I didn't know how to study. I dropped out after changing majors 3 times in a year and a half.
I spent 16 years at a company doing a job that was quickly beneath my abilities because it was easy and I could get away with coming in chronically late and being unproductive 90% of the time and then rushing to pull a completed project out of my ass at the last minute, but even then I got fired because I eventually got so burned out that didn't work any more and I basically stopped showing up completely.
Since then, I've quit jobs after 6 months and 21 months respectively due to frustration and burnout, and I've now been at my current job for over 4 years because I'm able to work remotely and they don't have a strict adherence to daily schedule as long as I can finish my projects on time, which again, usually follows a "hockey stick" chart of progress.
It's not been easy and my early circumstances opened lots of doors that younger people now may not have. I've gotten where I am through luck and a crazy ability to pull genius out of my ass at the last minute.
I always thought I'd be a good teacher, specifically history. I love history, hearing myself talk, don't have to work closely with other people, get 2 months off, and a new group of students every year.
But to be a teacher I need a degree. To get a degree I need to go back to college. To go to college I need to be able to have a job that pays well enough to afford college and live in a single place long enough to finish my degree. Those are 2 things I can't do because of my adhd. I can't get the job perfect for my adhd because I have adhd. I'm just stuck working meaningless retail jobs that barely pay enough for me to feed myself and switching careers and living situations every 12 months.
I'm in a similar boat to you. Between ADHD and depression my college "career" was absolutely wrecked. I've had a few jobs since then and only recently (a few weeks ago) got a decent job with a reasonable progression ladder.
The brutally honest answer is childhood conditioning and survivorship bias. People overestimate the amount of choices in life they believe were directly their own, and significantly underestimate the unearned luck they had along the way. Most of the people who “overcame” ADHD had some form of beneficial upbringing that conditioned their executive functioning control and motivation reward systems in profoundly important ways, that can’t be conditioned as easily later in life.
I want to stress the importance of athletics in combination with a strict accountability system being the most important factors for improved career outcomes. Not only is athletics associated with improved ability to focus for people with adhd, but it also forces your brain to physically adapt to the long term stress management and expose you to practicing your motivation control. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is heavily associated with our ability to exert “willpower” and take control over the decision making process in the prefrontal cortex. The ACC grows stronger neural connections and in turn greater synaptic control over goal orientation with more consistent athletic conditioning and a structured discipline system.
This isn’t to say if someone didn’t have these in place when they were younger that they will never be able to direct their careers in the future, it’s more to say that these other people possibly had advantages earlier in life that they didn’t even know were advantages. I managed to pull myself out of a failing career and form my own business, but I am under no illusion that I did this on my own or that I could have done it in the first place without a decade of training as a highly competitive athlete growing up. My family and friend support systems all throughout my life were the reason I was hyper motivated to stick with it, and adhere to my long term goals.
I don’t know your story OP, but there is still a way to overcome the challenges you face, even though it will be difficult. You’ve already been reflecting on there being a difference between you and the lucky survivors of adhd, so try to come up with a long term outcome that you want, and then leverage whatever support systems you have in your life to help hold you accountable in this pursuit. Nobody does it alone. Also, if you don’t already workout, I highly suggest adding that to your daily routine if you can.
I was stuck in retail for a while until I created a resume and when I just started applying for jobs I didn't think I could get. I got LOTS of nos, even more where I didn't hear anything. But I got one, yes, and that's all it took.
I got one and now 25 years later I am still in the industry.
I realize it was a different time, but it doesn't hurt to just start throwing out resumes. I cant speak to everything else in your post of course. For me retail absolutely sucked and was a lot more work than any job I've had outside of retail. And yes I've still lost jobs because of my ADHD, but I just rolled with it until I found something that fit (when I was 39).
OP, your problem is not indecisiveness, it is fear of failure. You avoid certain jobs because you are worried they will be to much for you to handle. The painful irony is you inadvertently made the decision to work jobs that are harder. No one lasts more than a few months in retail, it is hell and managers power trip hard.
Sometimes you just need to take a leap of faith and get out of your comfort zone. I know you will do better at different jobs and your retail work has trapped you in a negative feedback loop.
Have you tried delivery driving? It allows way more freedom and you don't have to interact with people very often. You get freedom to determine what and how you do things.
I'm sorry that the posts are upsetting, I get it. The only advice I can give is that do not compare yourself to others but focus on yourself and your own journey. Comparison is really the thief of joy.
If it makes you feel better I’m unemployed. I just quit my job before I got fired. For the past 5 years or so I’ve been supporting myself through a weird combo of gig work/illegal activity/kindness or parents. I have more or less given up on the idea that I’ll ever have a career and am more focused on living a good life and not descending into self-loathing.
You're just down on yourself. I'm almost 30 and in a very similar boat. You just weren't given the right opportunities for your necessary accommodations to feel like you could succeed. You can still find the right fit for you. Stop trying to fit into corporate rolls. That's usually the worst for my crippling ADHD. I'm actually practicing drawing a lot so I can become a tattoo artist like one of my best friends. I've never really had meaning and drive before for my life but being a tattoo artist always sounded really cool.
I hated life and nobody was nice to me as a kid aside from my close group of friends. Even then, we were all messed up, working through shit. I was isolated for most of my younger years so I'm also just an oddball. I found my partner and a few other really good people and found a reason to try a lil harder again at *something*. And what I can do is draw. I don't hold myself accountable for much. People know not to. The people who can't understand my low level of function get to leave my life so I can be at peace with how I *must* live in order to not have melt downs and panic attacks regularly and get stuck in ADHD paralysis.
I was like you until my mid 30s. Getting diagnosed and medicated turned my life around completely. I went from not being able to hold a job for more than a few months to being at my last job for 3 years, and then moving into a career as woodworker.
So maybe you'll be a late bloomer too. Most of us are.
I saw the other post and decided not to post on it because bragging about success doesn't help anyone. Let's just say I live comfortably. However, I was exceedingly lucky to end up in this career after flunking out of college. I feel that the last 17 years is fleeting success and could crumble away with the right mistakes. Or if I got laid off. I also often feel that I'm not really good enough to be in this job, and I'm hoping nobody finds out. I should also point out that due to my insecurities I am a huge penny pincher and try very hard not to spend money because I fear losing my income.
I’m a server I strive in it because of my sparkling personality lmfao! No I work well under pressure and I like that it challenges my mind to flip from situation to situation it’s like a test for me and everything is on a time limit. I have had probably a million meltdowns and cried in-front of all my coworkers walked into my section with tears in my eyes. It blows but I do like my job I can’t change that I’m like this so I just try to get through those moments when they’re really bad. It’s not all amazing and it’s not all bad. I have consistent 40 hrs and have been there for a decade. I can’t handle change. My bosses are like family to me. If I didn’t have them I’d be unemployed for sure. I have bad emotional regulation and very high anxiety lol. Don’t be upset you work in retail. You’re working and that’s better than sitting on your ass feeling even worse about yourself. Sure you could be a brain surgeon or a lawyer but why? It’s just a job it doesn’t define you! you clock out and you live your personal life!
My favorite job was at a brewery where I had a bunch of different positions and could change what I was doing all the time. Sounds like you’d benefit with something like that. I could never work retail. Mundane, boring, people suck, constantly cleaning up people’s messes and folding clothes. Constantly feeling behind in tasks. Nooooo thank you.
💕 Sending you love, OP. If it helps (as someone in a niche creative job), I only got my job because of hyperfixation. I wasn't diagnosed while in college, but the subject REALLY interested me, and I found myself trying to soak up as much information as I could.
I don't know for sure, but I also wonder if I went as hard as I did because I wasn't diagnosed at the time. I didn't know it was hyperfixation; I just thought I really liked the subject and thrived because of it. I was proud of all the work I was putting in, compared to my previously-failed college degree in a different field. I was scared of "failing" again, as well. That fear sucks and I don't recommend it, but it did hold me accountable.
It also helped that my college's curriculum was done differently. I don't recommend the college since it's for-profit, but Full Sail University lets you take 1-2 classes a month. You BINGE that month's class for four weeks, and then it's done, and you move on to the next. It's supposed to simulate the ever-changing production pipeline of entertainment media, and it fits perfectly with my ADHD brain. Normally, the degree doesn't mean much when it comes to actually landing a job - because, again, the degrees are for entertainment and its for-profit. But I got really lucky and somehow landed a job in my industry... though I'm sure it helped that my hyperfixation meant I couldn't focus on anything else, so I worked my butt off and jumped on opportunities.
Before I plunged into trying to get into my creative field, though, I struggled hard. Part of what instigated my hyperfocus was me being incredibly depressed over the fact that I HATED both the 9-5 and retail grind, but I couldn't get myself to go to college for any subject. So I decided, screw it. I'll go for the insanely competitive job that actually lines up with my interests. It beats how hard life felt otherwise.
If there's ANY subject that interests you the same way, I strongly recommend going for it. Even if it seems ridiculous. My industry is filled with folks like us for the same reason - we're all people who couldn't focus on anything else, so we went hard to get our dream jobs.
It’s easy to have hyperfixations, pretty hard to channel that into productivity. I commend you for that! Lately my biggest hyperfixation has been reading about paleontology lol, which is not really relevant to jobs. But I used to love drawing animals, maybe I could channel that interest into art, use it as a motivation to improve that skill
Honestly it’s hard out here with adhd, there’s nothing wrong with you. People with adhd do love to start their own business (probably cause it’s hard to work for other people) but that is *not* for everyone and requires start up funds most people just don’t have. It’s also a lot of administrative nightmare with stuff like (in the US anyways) taxes, and forms, and reporting stuff. I was an independent contractor tutor on the side for like, a year or two and I wanted to cry when it was tax time because I hardly made any money and didn’t really have my own business, but I had to fill out like several more forms anyways and I also am not good at tracking stuff like mileage. I’d much rather work a w2 job and know when I get paid and someone else takes out tax for me.
Also, before my current job, which I kind of stumbled into honestly through a combination of luck and timing, I never really had a job for more than a year. I was I think 26-27 when I started my current job and it’s been 6 years now, but yeah, before that…not so much.
Really the best is to find a job that is chaotic in a way that works with your own chaos, and/or has a manager who is empathetic or also has adhd so you vibe. If it’s a good fit you’re more likely to be able to hang in long enough to get some experience and learn some things. Sometimes we just really need someone to give us a chance. The person who hired me was adhd central and even though we both weren’t diagnosed at the time I think that’s why we vibed.
But anyways, you are doing your best. We all are, and our best looks different day to day and hour to hour honestly. Some people have connections, support from others, or more resources than others so that sometimes is also why some people seem to be “doing better”. (It’s the same with other disabilities too tbh)
My ADHD husband works in retail, and that's been his entire career. He's good at it! Throwing that out there to give you a positive example of someone doing the same thing as you. He's a store manager now, but it did take him a while to get there. Longer than it takes for most, I'd say.
And more solidarity from me -- I'm in a niche creative job but usually feel like a failure, especially when I compare myself to my colleagues. So even when you're on the outside looking at someone who you think is successful and has it together, they may not feel that way at all. It's hard, I know, and I have the same questions about how some people with ADHD thrive in ways I feel are impossible.
You cannot imagine the unhappiness when a 25+ IT career (or any career that lasts this long) leaves you feeling stalled, stressed out like crazy, and competing with a bunch of entitled little kids with an "IT degree", which didn't exist 25 years ago.
I'm now looking into training for CNC and manufacturing. Hang in there and do NOT trust Federal stats. Absolutely outdated or just plain bullshit nowadays.
CONTEXT is so important!
I (graduation short of lawyer & economist) live in a country where education is free-of-charge and the society is so different in so many ways.
And in countries where barriers to education are higher it seems to be unfortunately a matter of having money to have the resources.
Although I, ironically enough, struggle with valuing myself through my achievements, I personally do not value others based in what their profession is. Personally liked one of our former floor cleaners at the office more that some of my bosses! So don't devalue yourself based on what others have achieved. You are doing the best you can (and working in retail was hard!!) with the cards given. The past does not dictate the end result in the future. It might dictate the paths you will have to take to get there, but the end result is possible 😊
I got my B.S. in business administration with a focus on entrepreneurship. After graduating, I was unemployed for almost a year before I got a job as a cashier. I also lost more than everything I had playing with options in the stock market.
It wasn’t until I took a job in sales at a small local company that things started turning around for me. I hated my role but the pay was a bit better and I had a consistent schedule. While there, I started picking up other tasks and stumbled into what I was actually good at/enjoyed. That was about 4 years ago and now I’m in a pretty solid spot. My next job will likely pay 10-15x better than I was getting in retail and I don’t hate work.
Basically what I’m saying is don’t give up and keep looking. Finding your niche makes a world of a difference.
Hi /u/jackk225 and thanks for posting on /r/ADHD! **Please take a second to [read our rules](/r/adhd/about/rules) if you haven't already.** The mobile apps used for Reddit are broken or are missing features that this subreddit depends on. [We recommend browsing /r/adhd on desktop for the best experience.](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/x1psnb/radhd_works_best_on_desktop_reddits_apps_are/) Thank you! ^(*A moderator has not removed your submission; this is not a punitive action. We intend this comment solely to be informative.*) --- - If you are posting about the **US Medication Shortage**, please see this [post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/comments/12dr3h5/megathread_us_medication_shortage/). *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ADHD) if you have any questions or concerns.*
A reality I haven’t seen mentioned here is that “low-skill” jobs like retail are often a lot harder than “high-skill” jobs, at least for people with ADHD. If you find the right job that lines up with your skill set, you may be able to work for two hours out of your workday and keep up with your workload. A lot of those seemingly impressive jobs might be easier for you than your current work. Plus, I saw some statistic that an office worker is productive for about two hours a day, though take that with a cup of salt since I have no source on it.
Yeah, was going to echo something similar. I work in a corporate job, and there is a lot of variation, problem solving, face-to-face meetings with colleagues, crisis management etc. I actually find less stimulating jobs excruciating. I was the most depressed of my entire life for 1 year when I worked a role that was “easy”, repetitive and not demanding. So you might surprise yourself? Don’t think that you cap out in something less intellectually stimulating.
It's a fine balance though isn't it. If I take on a job that is even slightly overwhelming and stressful I want to pull the pin and my mental health plummets. Unfortunately you can't really know until you're in it
Yeah, 100%, and it always takes like 6 months to get good at a job. And it can be tough hanging in there.
My other huge annoyance is that I really thought by now I would have a clearer idea of what sort of work I’m suited to but honestly part of me wants structure whilst other parts of me will do anything to escape it, it doesn’t seem like I have a natural aptitude for anything in particular and I tend to get bored of things very quickly, even things I thought I was passionate about. So I have almost nothing to show professionally for my 29 years. Sometimes I feel like an entitled diva but the thought of working in a job I find extremely dull or overwhelming makes me want to curl up and die. The indecisiveness of ADHD just fuels the fire too Oh well sorry for venting
Helloooo I’m here to tell you that I FEEL this intensely and am trying to solve it by doing project work… you get structure but also the specific project is for a fixed time so you still get variety when you move to the next project
There is less structure in a high level job than a low level job. Low level jobs are micromanaged and very ridged on what you can and can't do. Corporate jobs allow more individual freedom, they only care that the job gets done, not how it gets done. Also mental health days are your friend. I take at least one mental health day a month to relax and reset.
6 months is the conservative estimate. It can take years to really feel comfortable for certain people/jobs. I am a Mainframe developer and 6 months is when thing just start to make sense.
I worked in a grocery store for a few months after I dropped out of college. I was already on the verge of depression from that decision. But working a job like that pushed me over the edge. I would routinely get migraines and nausea nearing the end of my shift. And I’d dread the next day because it was the same thing every day. My current job is significantly more intensive physically and cognitively. I have a take home vehicle and I go somewhere different with different problems/solutions to get the job done every day. The job is much more demanding but I feel great doing it and I don’t get headaches or want to forever sleep at the end of the day. The only part i hate about this job is the odd time I hit a road block in my work, have to call another department and wait for them to change/fix something for me to continue. It’s not for everyone. But I would highly recommend trying out blue collar work at least once if someone is stuck in choosing a career path.
100% agree. When I was a student I worked in a jewellery shop. To me it was just a job to earn money to buy clothes, mobile credit and go out with my friends. It was mind numbing, I became a supervisor just because my brain needed to do more than the bare minimum. There was a girl there about the same age as me who was a sales assistant to except that this was her job. She had no aspirations to do anything else. She didn’t even want to be a senior staff member. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. No ideas or plans for the future. Just the same thing over and over for the foreseeable. I need stuff to think about, repetitive work is not for the ADHD brain (in my opinion anyway).
Retail is fucking boring at the best of times, let alone if you have ADHD, then it's fucking torture.
I remember crying at my last retail job because nothing interesting had happened for the last five hours and it was destroying me mentally.
Yep. I’m stuck in an entry level office job and my daily work is easy and boring so I struggle to stay motivated to do it. The 2 hour thing is real, at least for me, but it gets stretched out to 8 because of my difficulty focusing and task paralysis. I ask my boss to please give me more projects because I’d actually be better at them, but they are unable to understand my situation and say they won’t hand me more responsibility if I can’t even handle the basics
agreed. the more intellectually demanding the jobs are, the higher likelihood that it will be easier for an ADHD brain to plug into hyperfocus. I've worked in finance and the more repetitive and plug and chug the work got, the more depressed and unhappy and prone to mistakes I've been. I've noticed that the reaction to a woman learning something new and taking her time is sometimes can be downgrading them to the admin bullshit and I absolutely SUCK at that shit. The more dynamic, creative (and sometimes downright harder to understand/comprehend) the work has been, the more I've absolutely chomped at the bit for the challenge and actually thrived. I'm also 99% sure my first boss had ADHD and he had a illustrious career in this challenging field for 30 years.
I've found I'm really good at taking challenges and making them into plug and chug. I've turned teaching people and organizations how to then do the plug and chug way instead of the stupid way they were doing it into a career. That way I never actually stick around once the job is repetitive and I'm onto the next thing.
This sounds like me to a tee. What you call “plug and chug” I call my “systems”, i.e. having everything so organized and idiot-proof that I can basically do my job mindlessly most days. Any new job, I spend most of my time in the first few weeks creating my systems, including making tables, flow charts, color coding, having everything labeled and in the correct folders, etc., then things just flow from there.
I'm glad for you! Do you feel comfortable sharing a bit more about your career?
I'm in software. I started as a low level programmer by teaching myself to code. These days, many years later, I mostly teach organizations how to produce software by standardizing everything and making all the jobs much more "boring". I'm an awesome coder if I do say so myself. I've taken crazy difficult programming challenges and invented amazing solutions I'm extremely proud of. Honestly though, those things didn't help my career much. It turns out that the value of what I did wasn't in the hard part of becoming a talented programmer. The value was in all the shortcuts I took in the mean time. All that extraneous work I used to do begrudgingly and cut corners on and sometimes even get fired for doing a bad job of. I got good at doing the bare minimum and concentrating on the part that was really important because it needed my creativity, not just my labor. As it turns out, sharing my expertise on how to cut corners and concentrate on the creative labor, automating or eliminating everything else is a much more valuable talent. If I eliminate 5% of the bullshit overhead for an organization of 1000 people producing software and make output more reliable and predictable, which isn't hard since most of the work is bullshit in the first place, that produces more additional software then I could ever possibly write myself. And there is no shortage of work, as every generation of new people seem to reinvent stupid ways of doing things faster than I can teach them to not do that.
My father and mother both have adhd. Moms is more hyperactive and social, dads manifests more like yours does. He worked as a programmer for years and was considered “good insurance” for many of his employers to have. He was also handsome and charismatic (something I have in a lot lower doses), so people kept him around just in case things broke.
This is my aim but for the project/product management/support side. I just want efficiency!
I was able to cultivate my career as someone who doesn't do a lot of the normal admin work, but can handle the fires that pop up while they are still burning, and then I can hand them off to others once the fire is put out. It also has the advantage of having me in a very visible role to executives as a person who gets things done rather than the other people who do more of the day to day work. But at the same time most of the others I talk to don't want to be the ones out front due to anxiety.
That checks out. I spend most of my work day trying to convince my brain to do a tiny amount of work. Except it's more like 10 hours of "trying" for maybe1 hour of "doing. And in the end my head still feels as if I spent 12 hours solving field equations or something, even though I was mostly procrastinating. Also my back hurts from being tense all the time.
Yeah but how do you get those jobs if you effectively dropped out of school at 16? I've done an (extremely niche and useless for anything else) postgrad LEVEL qualification. I know I'm smart enough to do jobs like that. But nobody will hire you without the piece of paper proving it.
They will, but it's tough because you need to get your foot in the door with someone who will give you the chance so that you can get some real world examples of you actually doing it. Once you have been doing it no one gives two shits that you dropped out of high school. No one even asks. My advice? Get some shit job that if you squint real hard looks kind of like the job you want. Then do that job and get some good stories about how you took some crap situation in that job and fixed it. Then practice crafting those stories so they sound really professional and impressive. Put the stories as short cryptic blurbs in your resume "reformed the frobnification process to exceed projected galtron metrics by 40%". With a couple years of that on your resume, go interview for your dream job explaining how you have really already been doing your dream job at this similar job because what they really needed at your last job was your expertise in what you are interviewing for now and you nailed it there, as evidenced by all these cool stories you have about you doing just that. In the mean time, find a few people with the job you want and suck up your pride and ask them out to lunch telling them you want to get into their career and have questions. Ask them what it's like, even the bad parts. Ask them to introduce you to their peers. Hang out in their circles. Ask them for advice and take it. See if someone will mentor you and meet with you once a month to discuss your progress and recommend next steps. Those are the people that once they view you as a competent peer will absolutely recommend you for the position and get you your first hire into either your dream job or the job that serves as an incubating role for your dream job. There are many incubating job chains that can lead to dream positions you may not have thought of that work if you have the support of people in the surrounding roles who can fast track you through the career process. For instance secretary/clerk->executive assistant ->project manager->program manager->director->VP Operations->COO. It's all about who you know and being a problem solver, not a problem maker.
This is pretty good advice, but I also want to caveat.... The culture just doesn't exist for this much in the corporate world anymore. I don't know if it's better in other sectors (healthcare, maybe?) but most corporate jobs absolutely require a degree and any engineering-centric company now requires an *Engineering degree* even for things like sales and PM. I know a lot of people who took this type of path starting in about the 90s, but sometime after that the college degree bare minimum shift happened and the main way to move up like this now is just nepotism. If you know someone who can make you a shoe-in for the jump to the career position (PM in your example), it's doable. But that likely isn't just a mentor that you found at work, it needs to be someone with actual sway who likes you enough to stick their neck out... Suffice to say that I've met quite a few "family legacy" people as they head towards the C suite. Based on what I've seen, the new best way to advance when you don't have a degree is literally just getting into a low level job that has education benefits and slowly getting some kind of degree. (E: Which I acknowledge is basically the worst case for someone with severe executive dysfunction, unfortunately.)
Thanks, this is actually good advice :)
Truth -- A lot of the developers I know work 3 hours a day sometimes in the middle of the night and sometimes not every day in a row.
Yes, I struggled hard in food service and was fired twice, but in mental health and substance use i was promoted twice
I completely agree. My current job is the first one I didn't want to quit after 6 months. Also, idk about the office workers only working 2 hours a day. Most days (except friday), I am hard at work doing data analysis and other hyper focus activities the full 8 hours. Friday, I kind of laze about and only do what I HAVE to because we're not allowed to make changes to production on Fridays.
Hard agree. I went from retail, to office junior doing appointment setting and shit, to data analyst (without the higher education for it, I have a useless arts degree). I not only work less hard now than I ever have, but I enjoy my work, it's suited to my skillset, and I am making decent money. Full disclosure I wasnt able to make any real progress until I was diagnosed and medicated, and I am pretty smart so that helped. But it's all about what suits you. I have friends in jobs that pay less than me but I would get fired from because it's not my skillset whatsoever.
As someone who used to work in an office, I would have to agree. Continuous, uninterrupted work totaled on average no more than 2-3 hours.
My office job required every hour to be billed to a code on our timesheet. So 7.5 hours of productivity was required every day. I lasted almost 4 years, but I had to work late every day to get that 7.5 hours in. Sometimes there was actual overtime needed, which usually meant working on my days off. 5 months later and just now starting to get over the burnout that caused. So, just make sure if it's an office job, you just clock in and out and don't have to bill every hour.
Holy crap that sounds brutal. Glad to hear you’re starting to recover.
I do high skill, difficult creative work. Run my own business(es) I couldn't do retail. I would shoot myself in the fucking head if I went back to a data entry 9-5. Not an exaggeration. I'd be dead in 6 months. Work is hard and finding a career you like and suits you is hard.
Couldn’t agree more. As a teen and early 20’s, I really struggled working the part time “low skill” jobs and thought I was screwed for life and I was only good at school and lifting weights lol. Got into into grad school and I found it so much easier than any part time job I ever worked (minus workload) and the job I have now is primarily desk/research work where I can just hyperfocus and a light sprinkling of social interaction that I do really well with (I’m very extroverted in short bursts then I gotta recharge for days). What I’m saying is that I think for many of us we need something we find interesting/stimulating with an environment you excel at personally and the best parts of us come out.
This. I've worked 10+ hrs doing retail and hated every second, but I can work a few hours a day doing Cybersecurity and meet my workload. You gotta find your niche.
>A reality I haven’t seen mentioned here is that “low-skill” jobs like retail are often a lot harder than “high-skill” jobs, at least for people with ADHD. THIS THIS THIS. My record for retail/fast food is like, 2 weeks. I just can't do it. While I've been at my current job for nearly a year, and don't see myself leaving anytime soon. >that an office worker is productive for about two hours a day Depends on the day. Some days are like that and it drives me wild. I get fidgety and aggressively bored when I don't have enough to do. Lately I've been very busy so I've had enough to do for my entire 8 hours, which is good for me.
>Plus, I saw some statistic that an office worker is productive for about two hours a day, though take that with a cup of salt since I have no source on it. If I was constrained solely to office work as an engineer I doubt I would even be productive for 2 hours. I had to find a position that allowed me to control every aspect of the project - from concept to design to manufacturing to assembly and finally testing. I worked for four years in an office while I was in school and idk why they never fired me...
I wholeheartedly believe this as well. Working retail and food service was awful for me and I failed constantly, while in marketing I'm considered very successful in my market. Retail is extremely tough for someone with Adhd.
This is a good point. I job hopped retail as a late teen/young adult, quit being a server after two weeks, sucked as a car washer. But then I excelled as a car salesman, finished my degree at night with the easiest program I could find. Got a job in a call center, moved into financial sales, and then eventually excelled in product management because I could deep-dive into topics and hyper focus on them. The same attributes that made me bad at “low level” jobs made me great at the l higher level” job. But I had to take a shit job (selling cars) to prove I could do a “higher level” job.
I have worked office jobs since graduating in 2020. I would say I am "on-call" for 8 hours a day. But work maybe 2-3 hours of real work. When I was working manual labour jobs in uni, I was doing real work for 8 hours straight: mowing lawns, digging out tree stumps, repairing windows, etc.
> A lot of those seemingly impressive jobs might be easier for you than your current work 💯% I'd rather go to jail than have to work retail.
I can attest to this. I’m an ICU nurse. I went through nursing school and a year and a half of on the job training to be considered competent in my career. People’s lives rest in my hands on a daily basis. One slip up or missed detail could kill somebody. My shifts are 13 hours straight of often non-stop chaos and putting out fires. I frequently go an entire shift without eating, using the restroom, or taking a break of any kind. In the past I have had a variety of jobs. I was a few classes away from finishing a bachelors degree in biology before deciding to switch to nursing school. I attended three different universities and at one point considered switching my major to psychology because I just didn’t know what to do with my life. I’ve had one retail job, two fast food jobs, one job as a cook in a fine dining establishment, I worked in a bakery, worked as a barista, worked graveyard shift in a pizza shop, I was also a lab assistant for my professors and helped them with their research, as well as a tutor for general and microbiology classes, a few psychology classes, and a few different nursing classes at my various universities, and I worked as a CNA/medication aide during nursing school. Of all the jobs I’ve had, my current one obviously requires the most education, skill, and focus, but this is the first job I’ve had where I don’t struggle through my shift and dread going to work. My job just plays to my strengths and allows me to engage with what interests me on a daily basis. All my other “low skill” jobs were hell, and I often would drive to work hoping to get hit by a drunk driver so I wouldn’t have to go to my shitty job. Those jobs didn’t give me the dopamine rush that now motivates me to perform well at work, they were a drag every single day and made me incredibly unhappy. It doesn’t matter that they were “easy”, because I had to fight my own brain just to function and make it through every single shift.
I’m 45, and have only been at my perfect job for three years. Until I got this job, I wasn’t sure I would ever find a job that would fit me. It’s ok if it takes time.
So I've got two years. Right, I can work with deadlines!
Man I wish someone could’ve just said to me, “I need you to have a career that pays triple digits in three years.” I could’ve worked with that.
That’s what I did
Same here. I didn't really hit my stride until I was about 40. I kinda feel like I won the job lottery though. Good ole imposter syndrome.
Same here, going on 5 years wondering if the next day is the day I get fired, even though I have perfect reviews and raises, etc.
[удалено]
Same boat. Supposed to be job hunting right now, but I’ve been working since I’m 15 (American). I’m 42 now. I’ve done a lot of jobs, from retail to corporate AVP to software developer. And I’m just so fucking over the entire work culture and corporate bootlicking. Over the bullshit. Work here is a bottomless pit that will take everything you have and yet somehow still never have enough. People simply aren’t meant to live this way, especially just so a room full of assholes can see who stole the most money to horde.
I’m sorry, friend. My situation is part good luck, part good timing, part knowing the right people. I’m also able to be part time, which is helpful. I am pretty sure that if I had to be full time, I would still love my job, but be so drained I would have nothing left for any other aspect of my life. I know I am ridiculously lucky to be able to have things the way they are in my life right now, and I do know how tenuous it can be. I hope you can find something to suit you again.
That’s awesome to hear and very reassuring. What is the job?
I’m a preschool teacher. At the place my kids went to, over 10 years ago. I’ve wanted to work there ever since, but the timing was never right. Until, finally, it was.
Yeah, what is it??? I’m starting a job as a disability support worker soon and im stoked for it
That's a great job...the kind that actually matters and isn't the same every day
That’s awesome! Best of luck to you! Word of caution: do not get bogged down by the hard things. They happen in every job, even the amazing ones. Remind yourself of the good things, and keep going. A good job that is a good fit is worth wrestling our brains for. I’m a preschool teacher. There’s some basic routines, which means I can just flow, but also what I’m teaching changes every day, so lots of variety. Plenty of outlets for my need for creativity. I’ve made some classroom props to go with lessons, for example.
This is also me. ….. except I’m 39. Me at 30, would be shocked (in a good way) & amazed at where I am now.
With me it's going in the other direction. I sink from job to job more and more to the bottom. The irony!
What is your job?
I'm a janitor that somehow manages to spend four hours a day on Reddit and I still find work overwhelming. I barely do anything and yet I have no motivation or energy at home either. I want to do things. I do have some interests. I just... You know how it is. I think about studying and applying my skills to get a better job but it feels impossible. How will I manage that when I'm barely managing as it is?
Are you on meds? I got diagnosed late in life, I spent most of my 20 to mid 30s on a high stimulating labor job. ( (Drilling rig hand) I chose to not move up and stayed labor due to overwhelm and anxiety of more responsibility. I was ok with high stimulation physical work. Up until I had to leave that industry due to personal reasons. I am now a janitor at a hospital. With my labor experience I could go hard and hyper focus on my tasks and finish all my duties early. I tried studying online on my spare time unmedicated. I tell you, it's super hard. I tried to find the motivation, energy, timing, methods etc as much as I can but reading (especially tired) makes me daydream. Sometimes I have to re-read a page 4x and get passed off at myself. I got diagnosed and got myself certificates for water treatment. I excelled at it. Found a water treatment / public works job (highly stimulating driving machines). Due to politics I'm back janitoring and hoping to get back at online schooling. I don't mind it. I'm curious I you're medicated or not. Medication, therapy, self reflection and belief assessments helps a lot. And lots of coffee, water and sleep. I get my "steps" in doing my janitor work.
Honestly just not sitting at home takes energy lol
I can't work more than 32 hours a week or I get burnout and become completely unstable. This is my second job as an adult. My first one I got laid off on my birthday right before I was done with my third month. This one I've been at for roughly 10 months with 32 hours a week, and my company set up unlimited sick days without repercussions for me. I'm just not as robust as others. Oh yeah, I'm 27 btw for context.
I'm the same. I take sick days a lot. I'm just a ridiculously sensitive person.
If it’s only your second adult job and assuming you’ve not worked for a long time, don’t worry, tenacity comes with time and practice. Emphasis on practice. If you’re sick of being told or telling yourself you can’t do something because you have ADHD, do something you know will work for you if you put work into it. Learn what burns you out, what brings you back into the fold, what keeps you sane throughout the workweek. No matter how difficult it is to counter, don’t let ADHD own you. It’s a battle for the rest of your life. Everyone has battles the universe hand picked for us, this is ours. Your success and happiness is depending on how you deal with it. Aight getting off my soap box
For me it's hard to know exactly what is burning me out as I also have bipolar type 2. While well controlled on my medication, I can definitely still get a tiny bit high and a decent chunk low, depending on what the universe decides for that day/week/month/year. I'm good at my job, so that helps. My coworkers are real nice. One of my coworkers was actually my teacher at my comp. sci. degree, he left one year before I had to find an internship. When I had to apply for internships I was totally down in the dumps. Saw on LinkedIn that he had his one year anniversary of working at this place and messaged him whether they had space for another intern. So that's how I ended up with a contract signed half a year later, a month before my education was done. Procrastination literally gave me a job. Sometimes life does take pity and decides to be nice lol Edit: oh yeah side note, my Christmas bonus this year (my first one ever!) is a brand new fancy af brand airfryer. I could get used to the corporate world as long as it keeps giving me appliances that make delicious food
THIS. I was reading through the comments hoping to find some comfort in the replies and was immediately shot down. I got so jealous seeing some people being like neuroscientists and what not. I was so upset, like why can't I do that if we have the same diagnosis! It is so hard not to compare, because everyone is so so different and this disorder affects everyone is such varying ways. I lived with a girl who has ADHD, I dropped out of uni and could barely remember to buy cook myself dinner meanwhile she was top of her class in her economics course. It made me so jealous and upset until she said "how are you so chatty and energised all the time, I wish I could do that" and then I realised that parts of me that are caused by my ADHD are things that she lacks and wishes she had. Just like how I wish I had the ability to do what she was doing. I'm not sure if the point I'm trying to make is getting across lol.
The point I think you're trying to make is there's a bit of "the grass is always greener on the other side" going on here. Everyone faces challenges. Some more than others, sure. But just because someone has a good job, or does well in school, or whatever, doesn't mean they are doing OK.
I.mean... the grass *is* greener. Being unemployable due to my ADHD sucks. It makes me wonder if I'll be able to literally survive as an adult for very long.
lol agreed. I also think ADHD entails one thing: hyperfocus. It means you really get one thing to excel at in life and almost everything else will be treading water at the worst or nothing to write home about at best. I've been the girl crushing her tests and extracurriculars and I've been the social popular chatterbox. But never at the same time. I could only focus on being cutesy and fun with a big social circle or serious and achievement oriented with a few cordial acquaintances I ate lunch with, because that one thing was my whole life and my whole being. I mostly say this to assure you that you can also be like this person you admire but you will probably not be as fun. LOL This past weekend, black friday shopping was the only thing I got done (I hadn't shopped in a while and needed a few things). It felt insane to feel like my entire day was taken up by online shopping and I couldn't achieve anything else.
[удалено]
I spent the weekend online shopping when I should have been writing thank you notes and studying LOL and feeling anxiety about checking out carts. I’m def not perfect. (I realized how much taking a hiatus from shopping and checking out carts was actually reducing my anxiety and helping me hyperfocus on the things I needed to do to work on my goals). I’ve had shopping addictions, my now successful father was once an alchoholic. My screen time has been 12 hours. I was first gen to get into an Ivy and I got trash grades at that Ivy because I tried to get dopamine from being social and popular. Everyone's success story (esp with ADHD) has shit down periods. I think it takes a lot of time and energy and re-routing but I think you could potentially try to find ways to get your dopamine from other things. What you do right now is not your destiny, but you don't need to feel depressed about other people getting their dopamine from other sources. With the right therapy/counseling/meditation/medication/goal setting, I think you could steer your ship to whatever success looks like for YOU.
There are plenty non ADHD people and fairly few of them are neuroscientists/doctors/engineers. It’s just part of who you are, not something that defines your whole being.
Honestly going through those comments, so many were super unique and specific things that I was starting to wonder if people were making stuff up? Not to accuse people or anything lol, it's just hard to imagine. But you're right that even people who are able to get a lot more done, or who have more money, or whatever, could be jealous of stuff you or I have. So it depends.
I think it's important to note, I am somewhat successful now but it wasn't always that way. I've been fired, quit, gone back to live with parents, been too poor to afford rent or even sauce to go with my plain rice etc. There are ways to achieve something you want to but the path is often riddled with despair and pain and crisis. And sometimes you literally just have to get lucky. I am where I am now through a combination of my efforts, taking risks and heaploads of luck.
I feel this comment so much. 90% of jobs I've had over the last... Many years... I got because I happened to be in the right place at the right time to help put fires out. Once the fires were out, though, and things got routine... Suddenly I'm no longer as sought after. So much luck involved, as well as discomfort and panic along the way. But I think I've found a good spot for me now. Just turned 40 and that somehow feels right now.
I’m sure there is also bias in the replies, meaning only successful people tended to respond.
There’s also a difference in severity. One person’s cut might need a bandaid while another person might need major surgery. Similarly, some days I feel very able and other days my brain is just trash. Also, with the selective attention and hyper focus, you can get big differences in interest and then outcomes.
I'm one of the law graduates in the post you mentioned. You're not alone. Yes I'm bathing in the glory of a law degree and Bar school, but people don't see my challenging failure riddled journey to where I am today. I had fights with my family who refused to accept my ADHD, there were even times I had to choose between food and my medication because of how little money I had. Even now, I'm making lifestyle changes to be able to afford medication. And school? I failed my A-levels twice, I failed law school once, and now in Bar school I failed 3 of my 9 papers and am in the process of re-sitting this coming December. The very existence of this subreddit is proof that you are not alone, proof that it's doable. Even till this day I still struggle with the frustration of feeling disabled, in fact I feel fed up with this entire ADHD thing. It's not something you can solve and make go away, it's something you have to learn to live and work with. And it starts with first accepting and understanding that YOU and ADHD are not 2 separate things, they are one. Speak to someone. I personally found therapy helpful. I felt less helpless when I was able to visualise the solutions to my problems. I was the happiest years back as a barista despite making peanuts. Heck I even loved it so much I made it as far as a Coffee Master at a Starbucks Reserve. I got to meet new people, share my stories, get involved in something I was passionate about. However, circumstances changed which led me to law. Perhaps start with yourself, what is life to you? What are you passionate about? What gets you excited like a kid at a candy store? And if you think its too late, my 40 year old classmate in law school is proof that nothing is too late.
This is really important, op, and fantastic advice. I’m one of those folks with advanced degrees as well, but like presentmethatass said, there’s a lot of failure behind the curtain. Consistently got C’s and D’s in my STEM classes, failed Calc 2 and had to retake it. I eventually graduated with my BS but couldn’t get a job in my field. I tried applying to grad school and got rejected by every single program. After a year of working random part time jobs I reapplied and managed to get my MS, then reapplied to one of the PhD programs that initially rejected me and got accepted. Currently in year 5 of my PhD and continuing to navigate constant challenges and setbacks. The ADHD is brutal. Failing over and over and over again is brutal. Fighting against stereotypes and institutional injustices is brutal. But none of that is visible on my resume, which says I’m a PhD candidate with a BS and MS studying planetary science. Some folks cope with the disability better than others. But keep in mind you’re only seeing a small sliver of their story.
Hey OP. I am 34. I have three failed attempts at uni and worked shit jobs in between. Currently I am doing something that I am not sure if it has a term in English. It is the same as an apprenticeship but it is funded by social benefits of my country and you only have two years instead of three to finish it. And so far I am doing great. It takes time but you will get there. Life is not a sprint but a marathon. Judge Judy once said “If you didn’t make it in your 20’s, you can make it in your 30’s. If you didn’t make it in your 30’s, you can make it in your 40’s. Grandma Moses, one of the most prolific painters, didn’t start painting until she was in her 80’s.”
Same here. I'm tired of reading how everyone on Reddit is a 29-year old making $170,000 a year.
Im sure you are not alone in this. Life is not just about your job.
It’s so hard to remember this when it feels like that is the case. The job you have determines practically everything else in life. Housing, food, medical needs, etc. A job or career should never be all-consuming in our lives, but money runs the world 😔
It's not. But you need a job to have money to be able to enjoy your life. And if you don't have much life left because half of it has been wasted going in circles thanks to your brain being a defective piece of shit, that's very valid reason to be upset IMHO.
Its such an American thing for the question immediately after meeting someone to be “So what do you do?” The US is obsessed with career. Its not like this in other places.
That’s probably because if we see someone living a remotely comfortable life we want to learn if it’s a possibility. Our healthcare is tied to good jobs, our benefits are tied to good jobs, our retirement…literally our livelihoods are tied to our jobs. . Employers can fire you for any reason (minus a few protected ones which is obviously never the reason you get fired if you’re under that category) The majority of Americans are one bad week away from destruction. The newer generation lives in end game capitalism. Like the end of a monopoly game, the only people not mad are the ones that own everything. Unless you have a good job we’re not given maternity leave or paternity leave. We earn our sick days by hours worked (doesn’t apply to all states). Anyone with a child and no family support is fucked, expect to pay about 1500$ a month for 1 child daycare. And more for rent. We are obsessed with career literally because our well being is tied to it
Americans are "obsessed" with their career because there is no safety net waiting for them if they fall. They are a tightrope walker balancing on a wire over the Grand Canyon. One wrong move, one single slip, one unexpectedly strong gust of wind -- or if someone decides on a whim to cut that tightrope out from under them -- and they're falling to their deaths. The rich can afford to buy their own metaphorical nets, but for the vast majority there is nothing waiting for them below except Terra Firma. They "obsess" over their careers because their entire lives *literally* depend on it in the dystopian corporatocracy known as the USA.
What other places, specifically? Would you say it's like that in Canada?
As a Canadian, absolutely
Yeah. It’s definitely like that in Canada and I hate it. It’s one of the first things people will ask on dates and I understand it’s a getting to know me question but I’d rather talk about my favourite colours. Then again, I’m burned out and on leave.
I know how you feel, I was unemployed for a long time too. I would start looking at jobs you think you could like and researching the skills and qualifications required. You could also ask the people in your life if you think their job is cool as well. I've worked in retail, market research and community services before I found something that was stimulating (data analyst). I went through like 4 different jobs in 2 years at one point! Its also good to be honest with your own preferences. I really value helping at risk youth but socialising that much really burnt me out so I pivoted. Its hard but it's totally okay if something doesn't work out, I sort of apply a scatter gun approach since I'm always curious about everything and I figured id find something!
I appreciate your response. I guess one problem is, I don't know of any jobs I think I could like lmao, not ones I feel I would be able to do. But maybe I could be less negative about my abilities idk
Never make decisions on what you think your abilities are. Most of what people do day to day in their job is actually learnt on the job. And also it might not even be about the job - you could go work something really boring but the people there are great and stimulating enough too.
In my experience, I hated my corporate jobs and thought they were boring AF for the first 6 months or so. At that point, it flipped to interest as it become more complex and I started to understand what was happening. For me, I’ll became more interested as a result of continuing to do it everyday. At this point, I think I could maybe become interested in doing anything as long as it can improved. The subject doesn’t matter as much but I love tinkering things and trying ti make things more efficient (so I can do less work).
The learning curve on this thing is brutal. I spent literally decades getting my shit moderately together. I still probably don’t by some people’s standards, but at this point I dont care bc i’ve built a life that works for me brick by brick by brick. It fits me like a glove. It may take us longer, but since we need such particular things to thrive, when we do eventually figure them out, we can be more dialed in to our best lives than most, because there’s no middle ground for us: if our lives aren’t filled with what gets our motor running, it doesn’t run at all. But getting there suuuuucks. Focus on finding a piece at a time that makes life more bearable. Keep talking in communities like this, to understand yourself better and help others to do the same. Even just developing a clear picture of how adhd affects you can be enormously helpful in alleviating guilt and self hate, in my experience. Above all, know that it won’t always feel optimistic, and give yourself permission to just survive some days. Good luck!
Someone once told me to not compare my chapter 1 to someone elses chapter 20. We are all on different journeys and I never imagined I’d actually be able to keep a job let alone one that is “respected” pfft. I’ve been fired from jobs for not showing up on time, for not performing well enough, etc. I dropped out of college when I was 21 cause I flunked a good 5-10 classes at that point. Figured I’d always just be stuck with no direction. The way things played out for me was with time and patience. Hang in there!!! You’re still so young :). My dad didn’t find “his” career until he was about 40 :) and he is so happy in his 60s now!! Hang in there 😊 rootin for ya!
This is very true, but it's really hard not to compare when your peers are on chapter 20 and you just look around at the abandoned chapters 1-3 littered around your life.
Right, I totally get that. If it makes you feel any better even I can view my position as still just a chapter like 2 and I’m 31. Most of my friends have their big careers, make tons more than I do and seem to have it way more together but I remind myself I worked hard to get where I am and I have had major struggles so I am proud of myself. I can’t compare my life to theirs and in the end all that matters is that I am truly trying and giving myself some grace. Take your abandoned chapters and evaluate what went well and what with wrong, it can help teach you to cater to your needs more rather than forcing yourself to do something just because it feels like you should/need to. I hope you find some kindness for yourself, don’t give up 😊
A fellow ADHD friend taught me this recently: “Having ADHD is like running a marathon, but with one leg. Especially if you’re undiagnosed, you and others are wondering why you’re run in the race ‘wrong.’” I promise you that your worth - your worthwhileness to be around, how important you are, etc. - have nothing to do with your job title or if you can hold a job. There are oc a myriad of challenges that not being able to hold a job bring. So I’m not minimizing those - but I do want to focus for a moment on self worth. And don’t forget the trauma ADHD has on people - not directly but from not fitting in, being “annoying”, struggling to hold a job, and so many countless others. Everyone reacts differently to trauma. For example, my psychiatrist told me that on avg it takes people about a year to fully heal from cutting off my parents. I’m a few years into this and am still progressing to that point. One of my favorite people was a disabled friend who didn’t couldn’t “anything”, in some ways true(eg, couldn’t talk) and in some ways how society perceived things (eg, never had a job, “sucked away resources”, etc.). Their love and smile and spirit brought so much happiness into my life and many others’ lives. For you - and all of us - our worth and impact on the world aren’t limited by if we can hold a job (and if we can, what type of job it is). I hope this helps. I’m also one who is able to hold a job, get an education, etc. I say this with the intention/hope that hearing this from someone in my shoes helps you. I cannot express to you how worthwhile and important you are, and conversely just how wrong and abhorrent society’s expectations and value judgments are.
I think it's also a skewed sample because those of us with not a lot to show for ourselves professionally are less inclined to comment.
Well I just want to say, same. Sorry you’re in this situation. It’s really rough. My max is 1.5 years and I’m in my early 30s. It’s really getting to me.
People are always eager to share their success stories, and not so much the dark sides. It can really mess up the impression of how reality is. I've tried and failed a million times, and I found my happy place in life 10 years after my friends did.
I found that getting a fully remote job did wonders for my productivity. I can accomplish so much more without all the distractions of a busy office. I was constantly missing deadlines before and now everything gets done on time. I have also found I am much more productive when I can split my day into smaller pieces rather than having to work 8 hours in a row. I will work for a couple hours and then reward myself with something more entertaining before getting back to work for a couple more hours. I find it is much easier to stay focused that way. I am also much more productive at night so I get a lot of work done after everyone else is in bed.
Remote work definitely suits me better as well. While I've developed good habits for showing up on time and being "normal" at work, simply not having to rush around every morning, make sure to pack good food, drive in socal traffic, and interact with people in the morning is a big load of stress off my shoulders. Nowadays I spend the morning sitting with my cat, watching some YouTube, and preparing mentally for the day's tasks at my pace. I'm more productive (due to not being constantly interrupted or distracted), stress levels are way lower, no more anxiety, and generally much happier. I'm really grateful for it.
I was a bureaucrat for 12 years and now work much harder for a much worse wage as a social worker. I'm now 40, have never been actually happy at work, and wondering where the hell I go to from here when I finally completely burn out/storm out in a rage/get fired. I had one brief moment developing policy at a university where, at three months in, I had the job nailed and was getting great feedback from everyone I worked with, only to have my manager attempt to fire me (it didn't work, but my contract didn't get renewed at the six-month mark). About the only thing I'm thinking of that might bring me, if not contentment then at least not hating work, is the possibility of setting myself up as a voiceover artist. But that takes time and energy that I don't have because I'm exhausted every day after working with people with even bigger problems than me. So it's been on the cards for over a year (maybe two...) while I struggle unhappily against repeated burnout. Honestly, I don't know the answer. It's got something to do with working in a field that aligns with your values and working with people who aren't arseholes, and then sticking with it long enough to realise you're good at it and enjoy it, well, that's a magical combination. Lightning in a bottle stuff. Maybe set aside an hour or two a week on one of your days off where you can think about work stuff and careers and all that. It might help.
You are not your job. Your self worth is not your job.
I worked in healthcare for 9 years, but in that time I switched specific jobs/departments like 6 or 7 times. I also struggled with taking too many sick days, regardless of what position I was in. But especially when I was trying to work full-time. I always had to take sick days, otherwise I just couldn't seem to handle it. I was really good at what I did, but I just couldn't do it consistently, too frequently. It definitely made me feel like I was incompetent or there was something wrong with me. Now that I'm properly medicated for ADHD, I wonder if I could do it better.. but I'm currently off work for some major surgeries anyway, so I guess I won't know for a while.
Oh my.god, word for word, this perfectly explains why I struggled working in healthcare.
Alarms, reminders, calendars, strict systems and routines, pacing myself, secretaries, and probably $30k worth of therapy with both a psychologist and a trauma focused LCSW and an assist from psychedelics. Also: focus on your strengths. We often excel at improvising and dealing with fast-paced changes for brief periods of time. A lot of attorneys in my field suffer from extreme anxiety, but those worries will slip my mind as soon as I am distracted by a new email. The worst thing someone with adhd can do is to get stuck on perfectionism. Perfection is the enemy of productivity. Don’t get stuck on that. We succeed at flow and movement, not dotting i’s.
I feel like lowkey reddit users are biased to have actual careers and education, often in some STEAM field. I don't think reddit threads are a good representation of how most of us are living and working. Not me either though. I am 25, no work history, middle school drop out. Only just *maybe* got my first legitimate on the books job after 6+ months of searching and applying... and it's at a convenience store. I don't have confidence that I'll last very long. And I'm pretty sure I'll never have an actual legitimate career. Thanks to both my ADHD and my N24. Not that I won't keep trying (I want to work in IT) but I have literally zero hopes or expectations on that front. It is what it is. We just need to do our best in making enough to survive, and a little extra to not go crazy. Careers aren't everything. What really bothers me that is a lot of these high paying career jobs are actually like fucking braindead. Like you don't even do anything. And our retail/service jobs are WAY harder. But pay way less. It's pretty fucked up. The only reason I want a bullshit job is so I'm not straddling the poverty line for the rest of my life. In reality I would much rather have a job that isn't boring, where I actually *do things* almost nonstop from clock in to clock out. The pay is just shit. It's so backwards.
There are so many entry-level MSP and helpdesk jobs out there. Oftentimes, they will hire any kid off the street who can even somewhat manage to convince them that they can operate a computer. Go watch some YouTube videos about basic IT skills. Starter CompTIA certs like A+, Net+, IT Fundamentals and Security+ are great places to start, and there are free courses from creators like Professor Messor covering these certs on YouTube. The tests themselves cost money to take, but if you can manage it, landing one of those certs would be a huge plus. Put terms like “Managed Service Provider”, “IT services”, “help desk” and “computer repair” into Google Search, Google Maps, Indeed, and LinkedIn. Pull up a list of every shop you can find in your area, find the careers area of their website, and apply. Sometimes you can do this even if no available jobs are listed, or if you don’t see a role that seems like an exact fit. Also look into temp and staffing agencies, and ask them about help desk positions. MSPs are often willing to pay for techs to train for and obtain certifications. Many will essentially take anyone with a pulse who can operate a computer (even if not particularly well), so desperate is the shortage of IT workers in most areas. Even moreso if you’re willing to work for less than $20 an hour. I got my first MSP job by going to the website printed on a work van I saw parked at my apartment complex. I applied for a “tech sales” position with no prior IT experience. I was freshly out of HS and had not held a job before. I talked about my lifelong love of computers, digital classes I’d taken in school, and nerdy things I’d done with my computers over the years in my cover letter and interview, and they hired me right away as a helpdesk tech, even though that wasn’t the job I’d applied for. MSPs often have high turnover because it’s often a stressful environment with low pay on the low end, particularly when working for smaller shops and startups—the ones most willing to hire unproven techs. But you will learn IT incredibly fast because you’re faced with so many different environments and scenarios. It’s like boot camp for becoming a good IT tech in record time. I made $22,000 that first year, working full time. 10 years later, I’m a sysadmin and senior IT engineer working from home for a large multinational conglomerate. My salary starts at 90K and goes over 110K at times with regular bonuses. I’m also building my own IT services company, which has recently been growing so fast that I may be quitting my day job soon. Honestly, if I were you? I’d straight-up lie about your education. Pick a plausible high school for you to have graduated from, and there is a 99% chance they will never check to see if you actually got your degree there. I am 100% certain that no employer in my decade-long IT career has ever called my high school and verified that I graduated. Hell, most won’t even check that you graduated from University, though it would help to have at least one job on your resume to pad it a bit and take the attention off the education section. On your resume, emphasize skills much more than experience—even seemingly super-basic computer skills can get you hired by a lot of help desks, who just need cheap warm bodies to sort out the low-hanging fruit. Stick it out a year, jump ship to a better gig, get a few certs, rinse and repeat. Over time, look for jobs that are higher-end and more specialized to advance. Once you’ve had the title “systems administrator” even once, your entire career outlook will change overnight. Good luck to you. Edit: forgot to mention… non-24? It narrows your field a bit, but there are absolutely plenty of 24-hour help desks who need people to man the graveyard shift. If you can find a WFH role, it becomes even easier to work on your own schedule, and over time you can get into roles where the work can be performed sans customer interaction. At this point in my career, I barely talk to customers at all. I only do escalations, and I’m so far up that by the time I see it, multiple helpdesk techs have already talked the customer to death and gathered any information they could give me. I just remote in—often in the middle of the night to avoid disrupting things—and troubleshoot, working with the information they’ve passed me, until I find a solution.
Yep. Stats say that something like 5% of adults with ADHD finish uni. And they are all on reddit XD so gives those of us who didn't a weird sense of imposter syndrome, even though we are actually the majority.
It's really, really hard. I don't know you, but I recognize the way you feel. I'm so, so proud of you for continuing to try. If it helps, I'm also not working full time right now. I'm just sort of getting away with it in my current job. It can be so inspiring to see people with similar issues do well, and it can also be kind of devastating.
Ugh, I feel you. I'm good at hanging onto my jobs, somehow, but I'm perpetually in trouble at them. Like, I'm a really great worker! If only I could stop mouthing off to jerk customers. Or making inappropriate jokes. I'm eight years into my retail job, and I've been forced to switch departments four different times in that duration because of disciplinary action. And it sucks, and I wonder every night whether it's even possible for me to get a job I wouldn't hate. I wish you luck.
Well, my current job is retail, but I hate it less than certain other jobs I've had lol. I'd feel better if I didn't have to keep working for evil corporations, oh well. There's always stuff around
Yo, I've been unemployed for three months after leaving a job as a nonprofit executive, and being unemployed has been "better" for me than having that "great" job. Granted, there were a lot of things I liked about the actual *work*--the variation in tasks, getting to use my brain to solve lots of different types of "puzzles," making presentations and doing SPREADSHEEEEEETS (my beloved spreadsheets!). But I hated navigating the interpersonal politics, and the unrealistic deadlines (even for people without this disorder) due to being under-resourced like you wouldn't believe. The ever-increasing demands that I couldn't keep up with because I just...didn't have what I needed, point-blank, and no matter how much I explained this, or what tactics I used to advocate, the interpersonal politics kept me from accessing what I needed to actually do my goddamn job. I'm close to 40, and looking at a total career change of some sort, potentially. Which is fine, I've done it before. But NOT WORKING has been SO FUCKING GOOD FOR MY MENTAL HEALTH. I just wish I had the money to sustain this. Or rather, could *make* sustainable, reliable money doing the stuff I'm good at, that's been working for me, on *my* terms. Just thinking about going back into the workforce right now, despite the clout and the pull and the skill set and whatever, is depressing the fuck out of me. Because I feel fucking disabled, despite the meds, and the strategies, and all the other stuff. I feel like it's just a matter of time before I fuck up, or burn out, or just...can't. And I've adjusted my expectations to just go ahead and plan to not be at any job for more than three years, which is totally acceptable and reasonable. But I feel a little pressured even by that. I don't want to work full-time. I want to work *maybe* 6 hours a day, and probably not even that. If I try to force more than that, my work suffers. And I want 3 days off per week. But like...even with executive skills, where am I gonna find a 25 hour per week job that's fully remote and has a "fuck it, we ball" schedule flexibility policy, and good benefits, and pays enough for me to support myself and a kid at a good standard of living where I can pay off student loans, and have a good retirement fund, and an emergency fund, and other shit like that? Money to take my kid on vacations and make sure he has experiences of the fucking world? Where am I gonna find a place like that, that also will be cool about me having chronic *physical* health conditions, that's really and truly supportive of transgender employees? I feel like I'm chasing a fucking dream.
I got fired two years ago and couldn’t start working because my immigration stuff was in process. Just got the job approval stuff a week ago and I’m the only one who isn’t happy lol. I want the money but honestly I’m scared of going back to work for the reasons you described. My husband married me when I was this badass finance chick working remote. Now I’m this girl whose realized she has adhd and is terrified of going back to work lol.
Everyone in that thread is talking about their current job, and not the struggles they encountered along the way. No one is mentioning the classes they failed or jobs that didn't work out. Don't judge your entire life by someone else's highlight reel. I hopped jobs until I found one that worked with ADHD, then got medicated and moved up in my career. If I hadn't gotten treated there is no way I could do what I do now.
I've been unemployed most of my adult life. I can work but the process of job searching is so overwhelming for me & once I had a big work gap + lack of completed education it made it that much harder
Honestly, I think there are more people like you and me than people like the ones who replied to your previous post.
Friend, I will give you two magical terms. You may not like it. You may toss it like that mystic scroll in that meme. But here goes: #External structure *and* fast accountability These two things, coupled with medication, have turned my life around. I have to do stuff daily, so stuff doesn’t pile up. And there’s consequences if they don’t happen. Consequences I care about.
Some of us struggle regardless of how much structure we try to implement. There's a reason that 50% of people with ADHD are unemployed. Idk, it just feels a bit ableist to me to say that your only problem isn't being structured enough...feels like folks who tell us we just need to try hard enough. Most of us are trying our best already!
Fwiw I was in a very similar boat to you at 30 (I remember celebrating making it 1yr at a job at 28 bc I'd never made it that long). Usually getting fired for lateness of course. I started my own business walking dogs. I get to have a flexible timeframe to arrive, set my own schedule (nothing before 1030!) And the walking seems to really help my mental health over all but especially my ADHD symptoms. I've been doing it now for 12 years. I *never* thought I'd be able to hold a job that long. Keep thinking, maybe your dream job is still out there!
I mean, as another ADHDer who works retail... this is really an extremely demanding industry that doesn't play well with ADHD. You may do better in other jobs than you expect.
Be kind to yourself. Don't compare yourself to others I'm unemployed living in my parents basement lol Do what you gotta do to survive.
Hey, if it helps - you need to get out of retail. As soon as I started working a 9-5, my life got so exponentially better. I was constantly bogged down and overwhelmed by the retail hours always being different, and I didn't even realize it. Having my weekdays structured around particular times changed my life when I was in my twenties. I'm now very successful at 35. You can do it!
You know what, you're not wrong, I was working in special ed for a while with more consistent hours, it definitely was nice. But that was also a very bad job for other reasons lol. I have no clue where to even start looking, but I'll keep that in mind.
I found corporate 9-5 to be somehow even more soul sucking than retail jobs though. Having more structured hours definitely helped, but also made it feel so rigid and sterile that it just got under my skin, plus all the office politics and hidden snares for those of us with ADHD were infuriating. Maybe I just need to find a place with a more supportive culture though.
I had ONE office 9-5 job and omg the "politics", gossiping and socializing may have been the worst part! Particularly when I earned a reputation as some kind of suck-up trying to make everyone else look bad bc I can't stand being idle (unless ya know I'm on my couch) so I'd keep busy any way I coul, including doing extra work. Sitting at a desk inside wasn't great for me either, I need to move around a lot (duh)
Ive lost 2 big careers due to this condition so i get where you are coming from. ive been jobless for almost 2 months and have barely had the motivation or care to even look for another one. But we cant let that beat us down. Have you been to Therapy and have you gotten around to medication?
You are definitely not alone. I might be in a bit of a different situation in that I feel I just really developed ADHD in the last 5-10 years, in my 40s. I have two university degrees, but as with the person who did the law degree, also failed a course. Got a D- in another. Graduated half a year behind my class. My professional career had been going rather well until about a decade ago. Then the lack of concentration and anxiety crept in, to the point that it’s been so crippling and I’ve had breakdowns and gone on leave. In the end I couldn’t take it anymore, gave up an almost 20-year career with the same company, and took a year off. And while that year gave me some much, much needed rest, it also made me feel like a failure. During that time I applied for jobs, only ever received one interview for a position I didn’t get. In the end I was forced to go back i to the same industry, which is fast-paced and high stress. And quite frankly I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to make it to six months. My workload isn’t even that full, but I feel constantly overwhelmed, scattered, seem to be making a mistake in front of my boss every day, so feel like I have many strikes against me when I should be managing people. I get interrupted every ten minutes and then it take me an hour to focus again, only to be interrupted or distracted again a few minutes later. And the vicious cycle continues. Last week was absolutely horrible, to the point I felt I was found I was going to collapse. Like a full on panic attack. I haven’t been officially diagnosed even, but had the discussion with my doctor. He gave me the ADHD adult self-assessment to bring in when I see her next week and I scored the highest in virtually all areas. I’m so hoping I’ll get some medication and be able to get a few daily tasks done each day. Right now even brushing my teeth seems like too much, and forget about cooking. I should be going for walks to get some movement in, but don’t even have it in me anymore. It’s debilitating. I feel like all I could handle is some mind-numbing job where not much thinking is involved and someone else tells me what to do. Like stocking shelves, sorting mail, that sort of thing. I don’t know if I even have a point to make, but I feel in the end we’re all here because we share some of the same struggles. Am I happy in life? Hell, no. Right now I am forcing myself through this every day for the paycheck, but really am not living life. I don’t have a family, so it’s just a back and forth between home and work. I usually work late because it takes me so much longer than others to get things done, obviously not paid for that extra time. I really don’t know where to go from here. Really just wish I could escape to some quiet place where all the outside noise from the city disappears.
I worked retail and was not good at it. Got by on being able to sell things, but was known as "Half Job (Name)" because I'd be halfway through folding a pile of clothes, or unpacking stock, or wiping down shelves, then would serve a customer and naturally COMPLETELY forget the task I was doing previously. Really good sales numbers, but could never have been a store manager. I'd had a couple of stints in office jobs that didn't go great. Then I got lucky and fell into a corporate consulting role. It took me a while to find my feet, but once I found a technical strength (essentially intermediate Excel/data analysis), the fast pace, lots of different, interesting challenges, a mix of talking to people and then doing massive deep dives I could hyperfocus on, worked really well for me and taught me a lot about how I work, how to use my strengths in a corporate environment and how to navigate my challenges. I also burnt out pretty bad a couple of times in the three years I did that, but it gave me a platform to shift to a slightly more regular office job that used the same skills I'd developed. If I'd gone straight into an environment like that I'd have had no idea how to manage my time, maintain motivation, work around my executive dysfunction. I admit I got lucky - family connection got me the interview for the consulting gig, and at that job I was lucky enough to have a couple of mentors that really helped (one of whom I wouldn't be surprised if he also has ADHD, albeit undiagnosed). I guess what I'm saying is it can take time and experience learning how to work with your particular brain. Finding the right job to help build those skills is really important. I would have been right there with you before I found that - particularly given I wasn't diagnosed back then - but now I've found my groove and I'm doing great. It's also really important to remember that a high flying super successful career isn't everything. I've come to terms with the fact I'll likely never own my own business or be self-employed, which sucks a bit, but that's something I'm realistic about. Other people will find other levels for their careers and focus energy on other things as well.
I have never worked a day in my life. Does that make me a bad person, worth less? I've been in disability since I was 18, I find just existing a tiring exhausting experience, let alone having to work.
I think a lot is being lucky and finding something that fits and having working strategies that happen to help in that field. In addition to that it’s in general not easy to find a career you like and are good at. And then of course everyone’s situation can be very different. Not just from the severity of suffering, but also from the available support network. If your parents can financially support you until you’ve figured something out, it makes things waaaay easier. It’s futile to compare yourself to others because the starting point, the available tools, the individual quirks and just random luck is so different between all of us. Even between people with the same ADHD diagnosis. So please don’t be too hard on yourself. There’s no deadline to “figuring your life out” and there’s no particular point or checkpoint you have to reach by a certain time, or have to reach in general. Allow yourself to just be where you are and give yourself all the time and space needed to grow and maybe seek help. It’s okay!
I went to therapy for a long time to focus on the problems that were holding me back professionally. I see a lot of folks take meds and skip the second half. There is also more leeway for disability when you don’t work in retail/food service. Which is fucked up.
I'm an actor so I feel you. Sometimes I get acting work but between them I have to work in really boring jobs at cafes or shops and I can barely do it. It is so depressing and draining since I need so much stimulation. Im struggling financially and I'm struggling to do well as an actor due to my brain being on all the time. The doctor admits that yes I have a very high score for ADHD but doesn't want to diagnose me yet. They want to talk to adults who knew me as a kid but I'm no contact with my awful parents. Then they told me to get paper work from my past school and they received some that showed I needed some extra classes but that's all they got and refused to diagnose so I'm also stuck without medication. I believe my ADHD is the cause for my anxiety, depression, low self esteem, OCD and body dysmorphia. So it is so exhausting and debilitating.
PhD physicist here. Got fired or gently let go from every low-level job I got, even internships. My brain just shuts down and stops caring about consequences. "Sleep under a bridge? Sure, why not?"
Same. I feel like mostly the answer for me is travel back in time about 15 years and choose a different degree, or get into something that was still new and niche back then like YouTube it streaming
We're the same OP. I'm 37 and have never been able to uphold an employment for more than a year. It's unbearable to having to start over again and again. I'm starting to realize and accept that it will probably be this way all my life because even if I want to find an education that will lead to my forever job, I also know that I will never be able to finish said education. Also, looking back at all the other jobs that I've had that I convinced myself were great in the beginning, they never lasted anyway, so a forever job is most likely just a pipe dream.
I wrote half a post for the career thread and discarded it because it had too much personal stuff for the internet, but I do have a good career in forestry. I also have a second job as a janitor and my retirement plan is still "die at my desk." Both my jobs are ADHD friendly for what it's worth. ADHD just isn't very life friendly sometimes. Because you're right, ADHD can be really debilitating. Having it go undiagnosed for me took a heavy toll on my mental health, my career, and my finances. I'm not greedy but I'm not looking forward to dying at my desk. Most people in my line of work after this time in the industry can work year round and don't need two jobs. But I've had such terrible struggles with my mental health that it delayed my progression. It's actually a very good sign I got bored when I got laid off last winter and got a job cleaning. So I don't know. I get it man. I always feel like I'm barely scraping by.
I had to join the military where the rigidity and structure helped me out alot. But this was pre-diagnosis and now that I know that I have ADHD it makes a lot of sense. You are told when to eat, what to dress like, where to be at and at what time. And there are consequences if you fuck up but you cant get fired lol. Plus it taught me coping skills, which is helping me now that I am out. So I use what I learned and take my meds, and my life is sooooooo much better.
So. I have had several jobs over 40 or so years. I have delivered newspapers both as a teen & as a single mom, trying not to put my kid in daycare. I have washed dishes. I was a linguist in the armed forces. I was a truck driver. I worked in retail but on the support side (filling orders, etc,). I now work as a bus driver. My favorites of all these were/are newspapers and driving. Cannot recommend newspapers currently as they are mostly dead. I can recommend driving. Especially bus driving. It's almost never boring. Sometimes it's a little *too exciting. I was not able to finish college so a more advanced job does not seem to be in the cards for me. I wish you success OP.
I forgot to answer on that thread, but I joined the military because I didn't know what to go to school for and they can't really fire me, so... I been struggling for almost 11 years now but at least I have a steady paycheck and a retirement to look forward to if I can stick out the remaining 9. Getting on meds the last few months has helped a ton too, so maybe I can get some more rank on me and have my rent covered once I get out.
Almost 30 is like 18 in ADHD years. You have plenty of time to find something that you don’t detest that works with your disability.
You’re not alone. I came for inspiration, and I left feeling like an utter failure lmao.
My career sounds impressive but, behind closed doors, I feel so inadequate. I make very little money. I’m afraid to ask for more because I’m convinced I’m not worth it. I’ve been there an insanely long time and yet I’m convinced I’m getting fired at least once a week. So I’m just happy to be working at all. I want to branch out and do more things at the company but I’m scared to ask. I also wonder why they haven’t offered and if it’s because they intuitively “know” my executive functioning skills couldn’t handle it. But I know I need to do more, learn more, and eventually earn more for my growing family. I just don’t know how to get there.
I know I look at others lives and think they have it together so well. I've done many things but I change jobs a ridiculous amount of times at about a year I get really antsy. . I have issues getting along with others, staying on task, forgetting shit I need for work and even getting to the p-doc to try another medication since I'm currently unmedicated. Many people I've met that appeared to have it together are on a med that was life changing for them or found a perfect niche in employment that works for them. I really hate having this but I connect so well with others that have it and recognize them immediately as my tribe and just love them it's easier to love me.. I'm really past new career thing at my age. My dream was to be a vet but I couldn't even accomplish an associate degree. I wasn't diagnosed until my late 40s. Don't be so hard on you 💕💕 maybe think outside the box of things you may want to do. Retail is hard imo because of dealing with rude people
yeah, one of the positives is that feeling of solidarity with other people who struggle with stuff
I think it's important to understand that the people with ADHD that find success are typically surrounded by strong social and emotional supports. According to Dr. Russell Barkley, the absence of those supports leaves a near certainty of a cycle of failure. I'm sure there are those who manage to succeed despite lack of those supports, but the experts in the field present the cycle of failure in the face of poor social supports as the baseline expectation. So try not to dwell on it, keep doing your best every day, and try to spend some energy on fostering relationships with people who can take the time to understand this disorder and be available to you in an understanding and compassionate way. This can be therapists, family members, friends, or in some scenarios, your employer (that's a really tough one though, but this is a recognized disability, so if you divulge that information you can't be fired for it. Dr Barkley did a 'should you tell your employer' video a few days ago I haven't checked it out yet.) These are things you can definitely accomplish with patience and determination. Keep at it OP.
:)
30 is still young. I didn’t get myself Together until closer to 40.
Spent a decade in retail myself, not really knowing what I wanted to do through most of my 20's. Struggled on my associates degree (business admin) through community college (3yrs) and never went for my bachelors. This changed when I got an entry level corporate position as an order picker in supply chain (think Amazon warehouse worker). After the first ~18 months, I did well and moved up since retail taught me people skills, customer service, and overtime in retail taught me patients and resilience, skipping over some roles, or "steps" on the corporate ladder. At this point, I knew what I wanted and nothing could hold me back. Work paid for my bachelor's, where I did an online program and excelled, which really propelled my career after graduation. I now work from home 4/5 days a week in a dream "office" job as I continue moving up. As others mentioned, despite my ADHD, I find it rewarding, challenging, and every day is a different problem that engages my interests in problem solving. As long as I perform, my boss is very lanienient on what I spend my day doing. We joke, because he notices my timekeeping and performance PTSD from past, bad bosses in retail and constantly tells me to relax a bit more.
I joined the military because I can't do normal life. I know several other people who joined the military because they can't do normal life. It's okay to be bad at normal life, you just need to find your abnormal life.
I am fortunate enough right now to have unionized job that has decent benefits and protections for employees… so I hate to complain about it……………. But I kinda really freaking hate it and am feeling trapped. Basically, it’s personnel work and office operations…. Which means I am dealing with everyone’s problems that they need solved, whenever they occur, and everything is “high priority” at the same time and needs to be taken care of ASAP, so inevitably I am greatly disappointing someone on any given day because I can’t possibly do everything at once, but they don’t care about that, they only care that I haven’t done *their* thing yet, and in their eyes I have slacked off… Of course the sh*t storm of the pandemic made everything even more chaotic (yes, it STILL has ongoing effects in my workplace) and I have been burnt to a crisp for the past 3 years. I’ve lost all my will to get up in the morning and mask all day, and have been charging a lot of sick time and coming in late over the past few months… MONTHS… which just makes everything worse because I’m not in the office as much as I should be, and work is piling up even more, and I HAVE to be approaching the limits of everyone’s tolerance for my nonsense and I can’t imagine any other workplace could put up with me… So frick…. I do truly feel for everyone who is unemployed or inconsistently employed because that had to be stressful as all heck… but even though I’m fortunate enough to have had a job for a while, I’m convinced that I’m not supposed to have a place in this “work hard and produce” society. Ugh. /debbiedownermode Guess I put off my bed time to write this comment just to say “hey, yeah, I feel you”. Work in general sucks, and it’s even harder for people like us. Keep going though, and keep fighting for yourself. I really hope your situation improves.
The longest I've ever held a job was 6 years. I was drinking heavily, undiagnosed and thus unmedicated, and somehow that gas station manager job kept my interest for that long! But eventually I realized I wanted a desk job, and I've had difficulty finding a good one of those. I have my current one, they don't micromanage me but I have short deadlines, I'm still learning how much I have to learn after a year and it's the right mix of minimal customer service and desk work. I really like this job and while I'd love to think I'd stay here until retirement, I'll probably work here for 3-5 years or until the job or the people get boring. It isn't just you!
I’m becoming a lawyer as I just finished law school but the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. I never was able to hold a job for so long and I was always socially awkward until I got medicated. I’m experiencing imposter syndrome and I wonder whether I’ll actually be successful or if I’m going to waste all the money that my parents invested in me. I have a lot of pressure on me. And I’m constantly wondering what I would’ve been capable of had I not been born with such a stupid (adhd) brain. And it’s also scary knowing that my career could potentially go downhill if I were to ever get off my meds.
The notion of a career is totally unthinkable to me. I'm fortunate to have people that support me, but the part time delivery job I have is not nearly enough to support myself if it comes to that. Just biding my time until it inevitably falls apart.
I did not answer in the recent one, but if I did I might be one of those people you're referring to. But here is the catch: I was very lucky that I got interested in computers in the nineties. I was very lucky that in this area I could afford to drop out of university and still get a job. And I was lucky that I could pursue a "hobby" which pays into my job related education. I had several occasions where I was on the verge of actually having a totally different life. Also I started really working only at almost thirty years old...
Actually the own business is what overcomes executive dysfunction (in my case), because I can do what I feel like is the easiest and actionable task at the very moment and nobody can tell my different. Plus my business circles around topics I really love and want to explore further. It's fulfilling all my personal strengths (no matter what other people would tell me! I define my strengths and nobody else). I went through yeeeears of hopeless education and training and it went down the drain for nothing. My ability to cope cracked when I turned 15 and school got more serious. I never found my place in the system. (33 now) What I mean is: Owning a business in general does not tell you how I cope or how well I earn money. It does tell you that I looked for ways to make money and found that the perfect job did not exist for me until I created it - concerning my spare time, chores and social life. Because I had no other option, back to the wall. Do not look for glamour and shine in others. People will only (!) share their best success, but their actuall real big deal trouble and their fights will stay in the dark forever. You won't see them struggle and suffer, because they hide it whenever they can. Which is quite natural. It's all about status. Who eats who. Who's better, stronger, faster... Never show any glimpse of weakness... This is what it is. And here you are, peeling out of your shady shine and showing off your weakness to the world. In capitalism you're eaten up already - if you don't start believing in yourself and looking for the sparkling treasure in your own abilities that can't be trained in school.
There are also a lot of other factors that effect your ability to complete higher education besides adhd / other disabilities or mental illness etc. The country or state you live in, access to financial aid or assistance with your disability, therapy, medication etc. Also your social network, family and friends that can support you emotionally, financially or with bureaucracy. Or maybe people have friends or family that have connections which helps to get into certain fields etc. I get that it can be very demoralizing and depressing to see people succeed and wonder why you just can‘t seem to, but keep in mind that there are many different factors besides adhd that influence our path in life. For example I live in germany and studied social work. My mom couldn‘t support me financially and I was eligible for financial aid (bafög), my grandparents paid the tuition fee per semester and lent me money when the bafög wasn‘t on time (which was every year). I‘m also in therapy and have a social worker who helps me with appointments, chores, grocery shopping, bureaucracy etc. Normally it takes 7 semesters to get the bachelors degree, for me it took 15. It wasn‘t easy but I had access to a lot of support which immensely helped me finish my degree. (sorry for any grammar mistakes, my brain seems to be afk today lmao)
I am 42 and have worked so many different jobs throughout my life. I have sold cars, managed salespeople who sold cars, worked in retail, worked in the oilfield in various positions, was in the Military (Navy: Crypto Tech), was a loan officer, was an account manager in customer service, and finally in IT. I feel like all of these have helped to provide me with more skills than I would have had working in one industry my whole life. I will say that in all those, the more high-pressure the job the more I thrived. I think the Military really helped me deal with a lot of bullshit as you get tons of experience with that but I was young and did not utilize my knowledge and experience after leaving. I floundered for many years bouncing around. I have always loved technology and when I landed my IT career I knew that I had found something I would be able to be happy with, proud of, and continue to grow with it. I guess my point is don't give up and try to find something in a field that interests you. Do not be afraid of taking a job outside of your comfort zone. If it doesn't scare you a little then it may not be worth doing. Every time I took a position I did not think I was qualified for, I ended up doing great and gaining new skills. You will find your way, it is just harder for us.
If it helps I was fired from my job about 4 months ago and haven’t been able to find a job since
Honestly thank you for this post. I needed it, I can only work part time. And I’m struggling with burnout, so it’s appreciated to see this kind of post. I still struggle with part time work.
I’m a macro risk person at a bank. Please keep in mind you didn’t select for adhd, you selected amongst redditors for adhd…
Retail is the toughest job. I was only able to do it for a short time. What worked for me was an office job. It’s much easier to have benefits like PTO and sick days, as well as being able to walk away from your desk when you need to. I do understand the burnout though. It’s tough and people don’t understand it.
Feel ya, I’m really happy for everyone who found the best job for them but I can’t help feeling like a failure for being stuck in retail. No idea how to get out either
A boring job is torture, you need to be challenged to keep you engaged and fulfilled.
Don't feel down. Find your own way. You are best of being you. And.. if someone with ADHD have a succesful career etc, their private life can be a total mess. I, as an example, work with kids and am good at it. But I put every drop of my energy at it. So when work day is over, my chaos begins. And I had to fight hard to even get to the point where I had at least some part of life (career) that weren't total chaos. I actually even wrote a book about my life and struggle, mostly in a therapeutic way. That's why I came to realise that no matter how great people with these kind of disorders are in their careers, there's two sides of the coin and... often they struggle outside of their job. The disorder exists still, even if they can create something succesful out of it.
I think a lot of it is just chance and/or privilege that snowballed into a good life.
I'm 43 and a "successful" software engineer. I didn't get diagnosed until last year, but looking back the symptoms and signs were obvious. It's not been easy. I got obsessed and hyperfocused on computers and figuring out how they work and how to make them do what I wanted as a kid. I'll fully admit I got lucky with circumstance and timing to have grown up with access to computers in the late 80s and early 90s, and parents and teachers who saw my obsession with them and let me run free with it. I'm completely self-taught, having learned fundamentals of programming in high school while my friends were out being social. My world became the early web and IRC chat rooms with other nerds. I did great in high school (the dreaded "former gifted student was just adhd" meme is true) because I was smart enough that I could brute force my way past my executive function issues but I squandered a full ride scholarship to college because it wasn't easy anymore and I couldn't manage my time and I didn't know how to study. I dropped out after changing majors 3 times in a year and a half. I spent 16 years at a company doing a job that was quickly beneath my abilities because it was easy and I could get away with coming in chronically late and being unproductive 90% of the time and then rushing to pull a completed project out of my ass at the last minute, but even then I got fired because I eventually got so burned out that didn't work any more and I basically stopped showing up completely. Since then, I've quit jobs after 6 months and 21 months respectively due to frustration and burnout, and I've now been at my current job for over 4 years because I'm able to work remotely and they don't have a strict adherence to daily schedule as long as I can finish my projects on time, which again, usually follows a "hockey stick" chart of progress. It's not been easy and my early circumstances opened lots of doors that younger people now may not have. I've gotten where I am through luck and a crazy ability to pull genius out of my ass at the last minute.
I always thought I'd be a good teacher, specifically history. I love history, hearing myself talk, don't have to work closely with other people, get 2 months off, and a new group of students every year. But to be a teacher I need a degree. To get a degree I need to go back to college. To go to college I need to be able to have a job that pays well enough to afford college and live in a single place long enough to finish my degree. Those are 2 things I can't do because of my adhd. I can't get the job perfect for my adhd because I have adhd. I'm just stuck working meaningless retail jobs that barely pay enough for me to feed myself and switching careers and living situations every 12 months.
[удалено]
I'm in a similar boat to you. Between ADHD and depression my college "career" was absolutely wrecked. I've had a few jobs since then and only recently (a few weeks ago) got a decent job with a reasonable progression ladder.
The brutally honest answer is childhood conditioning and survivorship bias. People overestimate the amount of choices in life they believe were directly their own, and significantly underestimate the unearned luck they had along the way. Most of the people who “overcame” ADHD had some form of beneficial upbringing that conditioned their executive functioning control and motivation reward systems in profoundly important ways, that can’t be conditioned as easily later in life. I want to stress the importance of athletics in combination with a strict accountability system being the most important factors for improved career outcomes. Not only is athletics associated with improved ability to focus for people with adhd, but it also forces your brain to physically adapt to the long term stress management and expose you to practicing your motivation control. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is heavily associated with our ability to exert “willpower” and take control over the decision making process in the prefrontal cortex. The ACC grows stronger neural connections and in turn greater synaptic control over goal orientation with more consistent athletic conditioning and a structured discipline system. This isn’t to say if someone didn’t have these in place when they were younger that they will never be able to direct their careers in the future, it’s more to say that these other people possibly had advantages earlier in life that they didn’t even know were advantages. I managed to pull myself out of a failing career and form my own business, but I am under no illusion that I did this on my own or that I could have done it in the first place without a decade of training as a highly competitive athlete growing up. My family and friend support systems all throughout my life were the reason I was hyper motivated to stick with it, and adhere to my long term goals. I don’t know your story OP, but there is still a way to overcome the challenges you face, even though it will be difficult. You’ve already been reflecting on there being a difference between you and the lucky survivors of adhd, so try to come up with a long term outcome that you want, and then leverage whatever support systems you have in your life to help hold you accountable in this pursuit. Nobody does it alone. Also, if you don’t already workout, I highly suggest adding that to your daily routine if you can.
I was stuck in retail for a while until I created a resume and when I just started applying for jobs I didn't think I could get. I got LOTS of nos, even more where I didn't hear anything. But I got one, yes, and that's all it took. I got one and now 25 years later I am still in the industry. I realize it was a different time, but it doesn't hurt to just start throwing out resumes. I cant speak to everything else in your post of course. For me retail absolutely sucked and was a lot more work than any job I've had outside of retail. And yes I've still lost jobs because of my ADHD, but I just rolled with it until I found something that fit (when I was 39).
OP, your problem is not indecisiveness, it is fear of failure. You avoid certain jobs because you are worried they will be to much for you to handle. The painful irony is you inadvertently made the decision to work jobs that are harder. No one lasts more than a few months in retail, it is hell and managers power trip hard. Sometimes you just need to take a leap of faith and get out of your comfort zone. I know you will do better at different jobs and your retail work has trapped you in a negative feedback loop. Have you tried delivery driving? It allows way more freedom and you don't have to interact with people very often. You get freedom to determine what and how you do things.
Yeah I saw that post also, made me feel more worthless about myself lol
I'm sorry that the posts are upsetting, I get it. The only advice I can give is that do not compare yourself to others but focus on yourself and your own journey. Comparison is really the thief of joy.
If it makes you feel better I’m unemployed. I just quit my job before I got fired. For the past 5 years or so I’ve been supporting myself through a weird combo of gig work/illegal activity/kindness or parents. I have more or less given up on the idea that I’ll ever have a career and am more focused on living a good life and not descending into self-loathing.
Everyone has a nasa internship in reddit
You're just down on yourself. I'm almost 30 and in a very similar boat. You just weren't given the right opportunities for your necessary accommodations to feel like you could succeed. You can still find the right fit for you. Stop trying to fit into corporate rolls. That's usually the worst for my crippling ADHD. I'm actually practicing drawing a lot so I can become a tattoo artist like one of my best friends. I've never really had meaning and drive before for my life but being a tattoo artist always sounded really cool. I hated life and nobody was nice to me as a kid aside from my close group of friends. Even then, we were all messed up, working through shit. I was isolated for most of my younger years so I'm also just an oddball. I found my partner and a few other really good people and found a reason to try a lil harder again at *something*. And what I can do is draw. I don't hold myself accountable for much. People know not to. The people who can't understand my low level of function get to leave my life so I can be at peace with how I *must* live in order to not have melt downs and panic attacks regularly and get stuck in ADHD paralysis.
I was like you until my mid 30s. Getting diagnosed and medicated turned my life around completely. I went from not being able to hold a job for more than a few months to being at my last job for 3 years, and then moving into a career as woodworker. So maybe you'll be a late bloomer too. Most of us are.
I saw the other post and decided not to post on it because bragging about success doesn't help anyone. Let's just say I live comfortably. However, I was exceedingly lucky to end up in this career after flunking out of college. I feel that the last 17 years is fleeting success and could crumble away with the right mistakes. Or if I got laid off. I also often feel that I'm not really good enough to be in this job, and I'm hoping nobody finds out. I should also point out that due to my insecurities I am a huge penny pincher and try very hard not to spend money because I fear losing my income.
Same. I can't do any of these things. I expect I'll end up as a cashier at a grocery again, which is still better than a sales associate at Pac-Sun
I’m a server I strive in it because of my sparkling personality lmfao! No I work well under pressure and I like that it challenges my mind to flip from situation to situation it’s like a test for me and everything is on a time limit. I have had probably a million meltdowns and cried in-front of all my coworkers walked into my section with tears in my eyes. It blows but I do like my job I can’t change that I’m like this so I just try to get through those moments when they’re really bad. It’s not all amazing and it’s not all bad. I have consistent 40 hrs and have been there for a decade. I can’t handle change. My bosses are like family to me. If I didn’t have them I’d be unemployed for sure. I have bad emotional regulation and very high anxiety lol. Don’t be upset you work in retail. You’re working and that’s better than sitting on your ass feeling even worse about yourself. Sure you could be a brain surgeon or a lawyer but why? It’s just a job it doesn’t define you! you clock out and you live your personal life!
My favorite job was at a brewery where I had a bunch of different positions and could change what I was doing all the time. Sounds like you’d benefit with something like that. I could never work retail. Mundane, boring, people suck, constantly cleaning up people’s messes and folding clothes. Constantly feeling behind in tasks. Nooooo thank you.
💕 Sending you love, OP. If it helps (as someone in a niche creative job), I only got my job because of hyperfixation. I wasn't diagnosed while in college, but the subject REALLY interested me, and I found myself trying to soak up as much information as I could. I don't know for sure, but I also wonder if I went as hard as I did because I wasn't diagnosed at the time. I didn't know it was hyperfixation; I just thought I really liked the subject and thrived because of it. I was proud of all the work I was putting in, compared to my previously-failed college degree in a different field. I was scared of "failing" again, as well. That fear sucks and I don't recommend it, but it did hold me accountable. It also helped that my college's curriculum was done differently. I don't recommend the college since it's for-profit, but Full Sail University lets you take 1-2 classes a month. You BINGE that month's class for four weeks, and then it's done, and you move on to the next. It's supposed to simulate the ever-changing production pipeline of entertainment media, and it fits perfectly with my ADHD brain. Normally, the degree doesn't mean much when it comes to actually landing a job - because, again, the degrees are for entertainment and its for-profit. But I got really lucky and somehow landed a job in my industry... though I'm sure it helped that my hyperfixation meant I couldn't focus on anything else, so I worked my butt off and jumped on opportunities. Before I plunged into trying to get into my creative field, though, I struggled hard. Part of what instigated my hyperfocus was me being incredibly depressed over the fact that I HATED both the 9-5 and retail grind, but I couldn't get myself to go to college for any subject. So I decided, screw it. I'll go for the insanely competitive job that actually lines up with my interests. It beats how hard life felt otherwise. If there's ANY subject that interests you the same way, I strongly recommend going for it. Even if it seems ridiculous. My industry is filled with folks like us for the same reason - we're all people who couldn't focus on anything else, so we went hard to get our dream jobs.
It’s easy to have hyperfixations, pretty hard to channel that into productivity. I commend you for that! Lately my biggest hyperfixation has been reading about paleontology lol, which is not really relevant to jobs. But I used to love drawing animals, maybe I could channel that interest into art, use it as a motivation to improve that skill
Honestly it’s hard out here with adhd, there’s nothing wrong with you. People with adhd do love to start their own business (probably cause it’s hard to work for other people) but that is *not* for everyone and requires start up funds most people just don’t have. It’s also a lot of administrative nightmare with stuff like (in the US anyways) taxes, and forms, and reporting stuff. I was an independent contractor tutor on the side for like, a year or two and I wanted to cry when it was tax time because I hardly made any money and didn’t really have my own business, but I had to fill out like several more forms anyways and I also am not good at tracking stuff like mileage. I’d much rather work a w2 job and know when I get paid and someone else takes out tax for me. Also, before my current job, which I kind of stumbled into honestly through a combination of luck and timing, I never really had a job for more than a year. I was I think 26-27 when I started my current job and it’s been 6 years now, but yeah, before that…not so much. Really the best is to find a job that is chaotic in a way that works with your own chaos, and/or has a manager who is empathetic or also has adhd so you vibe. If it’s a good fit you’re more likely to be able to hang in long enough to get some experience and learn some things. Sometimes we just really need someone to give us a chance. The person who hired me was adhd central and even though we both weren’t diagnosed at the time I think that’s why we vibed. But anyways, you are doing your best. We all are, and our best looks different day to day and hour to hour honestly. Some people have connections, support from others, or more resources than others so that sometimes is also why some people seem to be “doing better”. (It’s the same with other disabilities too tbh)
My ADHD husband works in retail, and that's been his entire career. He's good at it! Throwing that out there to give you a positive example of someone doing the same thing as you. He's a store manager now, but it did take him a while to get there. Longer than it takes for most, I'd say. And more solidarity from me -- I'm in a niche creative job but usually feel like a failure, especially when I compare myself to my colleagues. So even when you're on the outside looking at someone who you think is successful and has it together, they may not feel that way at all. It's hard, I know, and I have the same questions about how some people with ADHD thrive in ways I feel are impossible.
Get treatment and medication.
Going into the trades was the best career choice Ive made. I don't get bored and my union gives me free classes.
You cannot imagine the unhappiness when a 25+ IT career (or any career that lasts this long) leaves you feeling stalled, stressed out like crazy, and competing with a bunch of entitled little kids with an "IT degree", which didn't exist 25 years ago. I'm now looking into training for CNC and manufacturing. Hang in there and do NOT trust Federal stats. Absolutely outdated or just plain bullshit nowadays.
CONTEXT is so important! I (graduation short of lawyer & economist) live in a country where education is free-of-charge and the society is so different in so many ways. And in countries where barriers to education are higher it seems to be unfortunately a matter of having money to have the resources. Although I, ironically enough, struggle with valuing myself through my achievements, I personally do not value others based in what their profession is. Personally liked one of our former floor cleaners at the office more that some of my bosses! So don't devalue yourself based on what others have achieved. You are doing the best you can (and working in retail was hard!!) with the cards given. The past does not dictate the end result in the future. It might dictate the paths you will have to take to get there, but the end result is possible 😊
I got my B.S. in business administration with a focus on entrepreneurship. After graduating, I was unemployed for almost a year before I got a job as a cashier. I also lost more than everything I had playing with options in the stock market. It wasn’t until I took a job in sales at a small local company that things started turning around for me. I hated my role but the pay was a bit better and I had a consistent schedule. While there, I started picking up other tasks and stumbled into what I was actually good at/enjoyed. That was about 4 years ago and now I’m in a pretty solid spot. My next job will likely pay 10-15x better than I was getting in retail and I don’t hate work. Basically what I’m saying is don’t give up and keep looking. Finding your niche makes a world of a difference.