Master Your MoodsDepressing and bad moods are notorious thieves of time. In a depression or bad mood, many people stop doing anything productive and often do things that are destructive.

Even the most up-beat individuals must occasionally confront a wily time thief called depression. If you can learn how to fight off bad moods and keep them from making off with your day, you will have acuqired an invaluable ability. Here’s how:

Develop your willpower through exercise. The ability to keep going when it’s hard to keep going is the mark of a true pro. Ray Charles, the singer, once described how much he enjoyed performing before a crowd, how there was nothing like the exhilaration of being in front of a big crowd when it’s with you. I asked: “And what do you do when the crowd is small and isn’t with you?” Ray Charles replied: “That’s when you find out whether you’re a pro or not. That’s when you work harder than ever.”

– B. Eugene Griessman, in Time Tactics of Very Successful People (1994).

With this quote, Griessman shows what I think are both the strengths and weaknesses of his book as a possible resource for executives with attention deficit disorder.  On the plus side, Griessman demonstrates that even the greatest talents — like Ray Charles, or Mark Twain who is quoted on the next page — obtain some of their success by working very hard when they don’t really feel like it.  This is always good advice, perhaps even especially for the ADDexec whose first problem — attention deficit — can immediately derail the very idea of work, much less the actual doing.

At the same time, Griessman seems to oversimplify by putting “bad mood” and “depression” in the same basket, which they’re clearly not.  Same goes for clinically evident attention deficit disorder.

In “Master Your Moods”, Griessman offers fourteen different tips ranging from “Yield to temptation” (i.e., take some time off) to “Do low-priority items on your list” (i.e., knock out some easy tasks if you can’t do the hard ones) to “Pick a career that suits your temperaments”.  I suspect that an experienced ADD coach or an experienced ADD psychotherapist or psychiatrist would tell any client, “pick and choose carefully from this list.”  Some items might be useful.  Others entirely counterproductive.

In sum, I think that Time Tactics of Very Successful People offers both useful tips and real-life inspiration to the executive with attention deficit disorder.  However, the useful parts are mixed in with much information that’s either oversimplified, incomplete, or inappropriate for an ADDexec.  If you happen across this book, give it a skim and make note of any items that look useful to you.  But don’t rush out to buy it.

If time is valuable to you…it makes sense to look for people who value the same things that you do. This means that you will want to do business with people and companies that respect your time.

– B. Eugene Griessman, in Time Tactics of Very Successful People (1994).

Amen. Why should we work with people who don’t help us move forward? Such an important question — and yet it seems that many often forget to ask. They (or we?) assume that our surroundings are a given. But they’re not. We can change them.

Find Your Market Niche and Stay FocusedJim A. says one of the key things he’s done that has contributed to his success is finding a market niche that no other baker occupies. “We’ve positioned ourselves as having a unique product. We don’t have a lot of competitors, and that has allowed us to maintain fairly high wholesale prices.”

Though Rebecca S.’s company provides a wide range of food service-related products and services, they are all focused on pasta. “We have been asked to do a lot of things that are very far off our path,” Rebecca says. “We think the way to survive is to become an expert in something. We’ve seen places that go too far out on a limb from their core business and get lost, and then they can’t be distinguished from others in the marketplace.”

– Jacquelyn Lynn in Start Your Own Restaurant (and Five Other Food Businesses) (Entrepreneur Magazine’s Start Ups).

As these two food folks point out, focus is about marketing and focus is about management. The marketplace understands a focused business. When customers understand who you are, they know when to use you. If you’re too many things, the customers won’t understand any of them.

And management is stronger in a focused business. When your business is tightly defined, you can get very very good at what you do. When your business is a mile wide, you’ll never get more than an inch-deep of smart about any of it. And an inch-deep of smart usually doesn’t generate much profit.

Today’s blog at Eat at Joe’s has a useful observation for grownups with attention deficit disorder. From Joe’s notes on a Thanksgiving Day production schedule:

“One thing that’s not explicitly on my schedule is personal time: when do I eat, or take a shower, or whatever. It’s foolish not to allow for time when you know you need it. I’m hoping to shower either while the ham is in, or after everything is done. Most things are going to wind up going over cold and needing reheating anyway. I also built in time to run the dishwasher when I was cooking the ham. I should have run the dishwasher last night, but we’re having a drought locally, and I’m trying not to run it until it’s absolutely full. I also forgot about a social engagement last night, and didn’t do as much prep as I otherwise would have. I may pay for that later. But we’re supposed to be starting at 5:30 or so, with dinner actually going on the table around 7, so hopefully I’ve left enough time. I also fed myself and the dogs well when I got up at about 9:30, and worked through my morning routine of e-mail and blog-checking. But I’ve probably, as usual, slacked off too much”

– Liveblogging Turkey Day from Eat at Joe’s. With no assumptions or aspersions about the author’s possible ADD.

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Image: Library of Congress

A bargain is something you don’t need at a price you can’t resist.

– source unknown.

And a distraction is something you don’t need to be doing right now, but that’s too attractive to resist paying attention to. And our two options for dealing? Either (1) preventing the distraction from catching our eye or (2) learning to quit paying attention as quickly as we start. Option (1) is stronger but not always possible. Option (2) can be learned.

For people with attention deficit disorder, is compulsive internet surfing an example of no focus or an example of hyperfocus?  On the one hand, the addicted surfer is constantly moving from one website to another.  On the other hand, the addicted surfer is clearly focused on one thing: “the internet” and the computer he’s using to access it.

In any case, South Korea is doing something about it.  From the New York Times:

Compulsive Internet use has been identified as a mental health issue in other countries, including the United States. However, it may be a particularly acute problem in South Korea because of the country’s nearly universal Internet access.

It has become a national issue here in recent years, as users started dropping dead from exhaustion after playing online games for days on end. A growing number of students have skipped school to stay online, shockingly self-destructive behavior in this intensely competitive society.

They spend at least two hours a day online, usually playing games or chatting. Of those, up to a quarter million probably show signs of actual addiction, like an inability to stop themselves from using computers, rising levels of tolerance that drive them to seek ever longer sessions online, and withdrawal symptoms like anger and craving when prevented from logging on.

…To address the problem, the government has built a network of 140 Internet-addiction counseling centers, in addition to treatment programs at almost 100 hospitals and, most recently, the Internet Rescue camp, which started this summer. Researchers have developed a checklist for diagnosing the addiction and determining its severity, the K-Scale. (The K is for Korea.)

In September, South Korea held the first international symposium on Internet addiction.

“Korea has been most aggressive in embracing the Internet,” said Koh Young-sam, head of the government-run Internet Addiction Counseling Center. “Now we have to lead in dealing with its consequences.”

– Martin Fackler, “In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession”, New York Times, 17 November 2007.

I learned that quality requires minute attention to every detail, that everyone in an organization wants to do a good job, that written instructions are seldom adequate, and that personal involvement needs to be frequent, friendly, unfocused, and unscheduled—but far from pointless. And since its principal aim is to seek out people’s thoughts and opinions, it requires good listening.

–Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard, in The HP Way.

For an ADDexec, “MBWA” may have as much benefit for managing their ADD/ADHD as it does for managing their staff. Executives with the “H” in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder need the movement.

So how do we get more movement into our days? Fidgeting is one obvious outlet, but do we have others? Management By Walking Around sounds like a good one, as long as it isn’t aimless or hyperactive motion. Pre-work or mid-day exercise may be another, for the deskbound among us.

But picking a walking-oriented career may be even better. A recent CareerBuilder.com listed ten fields “considered to have the best physically active job opportunities, based on information from the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Census Bureau”:

1. Registered nurse
2. Physical therapists
3. Physician assistants
4. Elementary school teachers
5. Radiologic technologists and technicians
6. Kindergarten teachers
7. Occupational therapists
8. Secondary school teachers
9. Police and sheriff’s patrol officers
10. Veterinarians.

Granted, most of those jobs aren’t considered “executive” positions. But you might find more in Laurence Shatkin’s 175 Best Jobs Not Behind a Desk. In the CareerBuilder article, Shatkin says,

“The shift to an information-based economy has meant a constant increase in the proportion of workers who manipulate data for a living, and who therefore spend most of the workday behind a a desk…. Fortunately… there are still plenty of high-activity jobs for people who prefer them… active jobs that have good earnings and are expected to have good job opportunities. They allow you to use your brains as well as muscles and involve the kinds of people and problems that can keep you interested in your work.”

– from “Out in Front”, in the News & Observer careerbuilder.com section, 4 November 2007

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Amusing related quote: “MBWA is a hyperactive, out-of-the office, interventionist top management practice.” –Vadim Kotelnikov

I’ve just done a cursory web search to see if there’s any research on the use of music as a moderating stimulus to help with attention deficit disorder.  To my surprise, I saw almost nothing.

Does music help or hinder your ability to stay focused when you’re working?

I find that reasonably “calm” music can help me stay focused while working.  But zippy music (or any music with lyrics that I know) are guaranteed distractions.  How about you?

On advice-giving:

People don’t care what you know until they know that you care.

– source unknown

One of my favorite Far Side cartoons shows a man in his bedroom getting dressed for the day. A sign by his mirror reminds him, “First Pants, Then Shoes”.

As this cartoon and the above quote remind, there’s often a sequence to things. Knowing how to do the last step and knowing that the last step needs to be done are not enough if other things have to happen first.

For executives with attention deficit disorder, our ability to take mental leaps is both blessing and curse. On the one hand, we can sometimes see more quickly than others what can or ought be done. On the other hand, we sometimes miss the steps that ought be managed in between.*

Have you ever announced a plan publicly before thinking through all the details? Started writing a proposal before writing an outline? Asked a prospect for business before establishing some level of trust (both their trust of you and your trust of them)?

One last example of someone getting ahead of himself: Not long ago I was helping a client with an executive search. On one interview day, I escorted a job candidate to a meeting with two of his prospective future colleagues — one man and one woman. The candidate entered the room briskly, swept by the woman (within inches) and enthusiastically introduced himself to and shook hands with the man. “Typical”, the woman muttered to herself and me. Take a wild guess whether this guy got hired.

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*Related blog: David Maister on Being Helpful

It hit me today that “I’m afraid I might miss something” is closely tied to many of my ADD triggers.

• Some folks are laughing down the hall? Of course I go visit — I might miss something!
• Channel surfing because there’s nothing on? Sure I could turn off the TV, but I keep clicking because — I might miss something!
• Stick with a job I like and get better at every year, or go work somewhere else that just made a shiny new offer? Better take the new job — I might miss something!

The opportunity for something “new” can trigger ADD from many different angles: departure from boredom, curiosity, the excuse to physically get up and move, etc. But add another angle to the story: the fear we might miss something.

We’ve talked earlier about the “regular” kind of fear at “Fear is the Mind Killer“. But this “fear that I might miss something” is more subtle — a different kind of anxiety. We’ll take a deeper look at this in later posts, one of which will be titled “The Grass is Always Greener…”