Etiquette mavens, too, have practical advice for an ADDexec:

The biggest mistake a meeting organizer can make is assuming that a well-planned meeting can run itself. That’s like assuming that if you peel the vegetables and cube the beef, the stew will make itself.

START ON TIME

A late meeting start sets an unfortunate tone, signaling to participants that you are not in control and that you’re not altogether respectful of their schedules.

KEEP THINGS ON TRACK

Use the agenda to keep your meeting on track… Be polite but firm. “That’s an interesting point, Sarah, and I’d like to discuss it with you after the meeting. But right now, I want to stay with the problem of…”

–Peggy Post and Peter Post in Emily Post’s The Etiquette Advantage in Business: Personal Skills for Professional Success, Second Edition (1999).

The game of Chutes and Ladders isn’t a bad analogy for an ADDexec’s day. A few moments of steady progress, alternating with dramatic climbs up the the productivity ladder and even faster slides down the “where the hell did my day go?” garbage chute.

But unlike kids playing a board game, we executives with attention deficit disorder have a little more control over how we move. If we know what our “attention escape chutes” look like, we can recognize and step around them before we go into the uncontrolled slide.

What do your chutes look like? Here are some common ones:

• surfing the internet

• reading and replying to non-essential and pseudo-essential emails

• errands after lunch

• interesting but non-essential tasks (e.g., helping select items for your company’s holiday gift baskets)

Even better, we need to know what things tempt us to step onto the chute. Here are some common causes for the four chutes, above:

• anxiety about an important task — which spurs us to find something less anxiety-inducing, like surfing the net

• electronic pings — like a “you’ve got mail” pop-up that interrupts your current task and draws you to your Inbox

• lack of a personal schedule — which allows us to forget that we have more pressing tasks for afternoon than picking up the dry cleaning

• an open office door and overly cooperative attitude — that makes us say “sure, why not?” when someone drops by and asks, “can you help us decide whether we should give savory snacks or sweet treats to our clients in this year’s gift basket?”

Naming our challenges and their causes isn’t the entire solution to our issues with time, but it’s a start.

Need some more Chutes and Ladders