Steve Allen is best known as a comic and as creator of the Tonight Show, but he’s also an intellectual and teacher whose books include Dumbth — The Lost Art of Thinking.  In Dumbth, he offers “101 Ways to Reason Better & Improve  Your Mind.”

Here is one in particular for the executive with attention deficit disorder:

Rule No. 22.  Know that reason need not be the enemy of emotion.

When some people hear reason being endorsed they assume that, if the amount of rationality in the world is increased, it must inevitably follow that certain increments of sensation and emotion will decrease.

Entirely false, of course.  Reason helps us know which plans and ideas are truly strong or even great.  Knowing that, we are encouraged and at liberty to pursue them with gusto, excitement, delight.  Fully and without nagging doubts born out of uncertainty.  That sounds like a nice emotional mix to me.  If ADDexecs enjoy excitement perhaps even more than regular people, then it makes all the more sense that we should pursue it.  When it makes sense.

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Bonus: Steve Allen also suggests Rule 99.  “Be humble when consulting your memory.”  No explanation needed on that, right?