What was most startling, says [Microsoft executive Michael] Neal, was that Microsoft’s e-mail-centric culture extended into meetings. People would come into meetings with their laptops and would be reading and responding to e-mails while others were speaking or presenting. Neal says he was taken aback at first. His his initial reaction, understandably, was that such behavior was impolite. But then, he says, he realized that reading e-mails during meetings was a necessity due to the sheer volume of messages coming in. It’s nothing personal. It’s a survival strategy.

This is the phenomenon that once lead Microsoft executive Linda Stone to coin the term continuous partial attention.

Robert Mitchell in his Computerworld blog E-mail and Corporate attention Deficit Disorder, April 5, 2006

“I am inspired.
You are inconsistent.
He is flighty.”

How do you label yourself and your ADD?

And how do you label attention deficit disorder in others? Is your method fair? Is it useful?

Names and labels have power. Fortunately, we have the power to decide what we call things.

For naming and labeling our ADD actions, I think it’s more important to be constructive than it is to be consistent. Use the name or label that’s helpful at the moment — whether that label is praiseworthy or critical.

And take a tip from parenting books and relationship books — label the action and not the person (if you need to label, at all).