I was playing tennis today with my best friend and regular opponent, who asked after a while, “What’s wrong with you? It seems like on every other point, you’re turning your head away from the ball to look at something else, right before you start your swing.”

Granted, we were playing in a big park with lots of interesting to things to look at all around. But he was still right. My eyes went wandering when they still had a job to do.

What was happening? There are various explanations, but here’s an attention deficit disorder model: my mind had played through the point faster than the point was done in real life. And while real life was still happening, my mind was no longer paying attention.

But regardless of the model — the sports and business worlds are full of sayings like, “follow through”, “stay until the job is done” or “don’t snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

These sayings make sense for many reasons: when we don’t budget our time, energy, or money well, it’s easy to run out of the essential ingredient before the goal is reached. Attention is yet another ingredient.

If my attention is wandering, there is somewhere it wants to go, so obviously it does not want to be where I am holding it in the name of some self-styled obligation.

– Hugh Prather in Notes to Myself — my struggle to become a person. 

Prather isn’t writing about ADD, but it’s nice to remember that sometimes a wandering attention is just fine.

People with ADD can make things more complicated than they have to be.

Sometimes, this trait shows up in the products or services they try to sell.  “Blessed” with both smarts and many ideas, the ADDexec tries to create something of extraordinary value — several steps beyond what most people ever thought they could need, or refined to meet needs at an amazing level of detail.

Problem is — those products and smarts have a hard time getting off the drawing board.

Problem is — those products and smarts are often harder to sell.

Opportunity is — millions of customers are ready to buy common solutions borne out of common sense.  If you’ve got a plain-Jane solution that can save someone time or money, and if you can offer it with a modestly better price/service/packaging combination that will make your potential customer say “Hey, that’s nice.  that’s better than what I’ve got.  I’ll take it,” you may have everything you need.

Your customers might not need brilliance or a miracle.  What can you do to help them today?

This month’s issue of Entrepreneur Magazine talks about the costs of depression in the workplace:

“Entrepreneurs who run bars, restaurants and child-care or elder-care businesses have a new worry: depression. Their employees are more likely than those in other fields to get depressed enough to hurt productivity, boost absenteeism and deflate morale, according to a 2007 government study. And we’re not talking about a bluesy afternoon: A major depressive episode, as the 2007 “National Survey on Drug Use and Health” defines it, lasts two weeks or longer and involves a depressed mood, a general lack of interest and possible problems with sleep, eating, concentration and productivity. The annual cost to U.S. companies is $30 billion to $44 billion, according to the study.”

– Mark Henricks in The Moody Blues– Depressed workers bring the whole company down, so get them the help they need, Entrepreneur Magazine, April 2008

While Henricks  doesn’t mention attention deficit disorder, the points are clearly transferable: mental health problems affect everyone, and they affect the bottom line. For any business with more than a few employees, there’s a decent chance that some executives may have ADHD (or other mental health concerns) that are affecting the whole company.

The Entrepreneur article mentions several options that companies can consider, including mental health coverage, mental health advising, and access to free programs that may help. If you have staff who may have ADHD (yourself and/or others), look at the options for making things better. Compassion notwithstanding, the dollar math says you should.

“I don’t remember anybody’s name. Why do you think the ‘dahling’ thing started?”

- Zsa Zsa Gabor, quoted in The ADDed Dimension — Everyday Advice for Adults with ADD

From an ADDexecutive reader:

“If I have a clear set of tasks to do, a big cup of coffee in the morning is a great productivity-enhancer.  I get straight to work and stay focused for hours.  But if I don’t have a clear set of tasks in mind before I have the coffee, I’m just wired and rudderless.”

Many times there’s a sequence to doing things.  We ADDexecs have spent many years ignoring the steps, and sometimes that’s fine.  But sometimes we really need to know the 1, 2, 3…

Assembling “a clear set of tasks to do” may be a big challenge when we’re working on large, complex projects where the list of tasks and priorities is not easy to write.  But on many of our days, writing up a coffee-mug’s worth of priority tasks is pretty simple, and only takes a minute.

Just for today — try this for a late-afternoon task: write down your priority items for tomorrow morning.  Then when you get to the office, you’ll know.  Before the caffeine boost.  And before the interruptions start coming over the transom (or through the email, or in your office door).

“Yeah, we know we want to chase after every shiny penny.” That’s what one of my clients used to say, sheepishly, every time I’d remind them to focus.

There’s so much business to chase after, and every shiny penny looks like it’s worth chasing…

Try this today: when you feel the urge to do something big (like bid on an RFP you just saw) or even something small (read a trade journal article that caught your eye), ask yourself, “is a shiny penny pulling me away from what I really ought to be doing?”

You might do it anyway, but at least you’ll know

“Is that your dinner? Do I need to call your mom?”  Shay the bartender asked me that back in ‘99 when I sat down at 6 p.m. for two packs of peanuts, some Nabs and a Diet Coke.  I had an office next door and was pushing hard to get something out by late that evening.

And she was right, of course.  That was my dinner.  And if I made a habit of that diet, she was going to have to call my mom.

I’ll write in another post about diet and brain function with specific regard to attention deficit disorder.  But it doesn’t take a PhD neuroscientist to know that we’re not going to be at our best on peanuts, Nabs, and a Diet Coke all day long.

Meanwhile, here are some general food/brain links for you:

“Eleven Steps to a Better Brain” at The New Scientist.

“Diet and the Brain” at The Society for Neuroscience

“Food for Thought” at The Diet Channel. 

By the way, if one of your New Year’s Resolutions is “Eat Better During the Work Day”, good for you.

As a “brain personality,” attention deficit disorder drives people into executive positions and business ownership via its strengths (e.g., ability to multitask) and its weakenesses (e.g., lack of patience). Research just reported in the New York Times looks into the role of dyslexia as a similar driver, particularly for its role in causing people to develop “compensatory skills”:

Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia
By BRENT BOWERS

It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought.

The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.

The article also quote the well-known Kinko’s founder Paul Orfalea:

Mr. Orfalea, 60, who left Kinko’s — now FedEx Kinko’s — seven years ago, and who now dabbles in a hodgepodge of business undertakings, is almost proud of having dyslexia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

“I get bored easily, and that is a great motivator,” he said. “I think everybody should have dyslexia and A.D.D.”

Full article here: Brent Bowers, Tracing Business Acumen to Dyslexia. New York Times. December 7, 2007.

For a preliminary copy of the 2004 research report from Julie Logan, click here for a .pdf on dyslexia and entrepreneurship (at her research institute, Simfonec at the Cass Business School in London).  Click here for Julie Logan bio.

Some naysayers argue that attention deficit disorder isn’t a real problem, or that it’s only a problem for people who fail to take personal responsibility for their brains and behaviors.

Admittedly, many past ADD-management have relied too broadly on medication with little focus on self-management. Things are better today with greater use of additional techniques such as cognitive-behavioral therapy. But what about good old fashioned “willpower”? It looks like it’s on the comeback to an active role in personal health management. This from the New York Times:

Every day, we are tested. Whether it’s a cookie tempting us from our diets or a warm bed coaxing us to sleep late, we are forced to decide between what we want to do and what we ought to do.

The ability to resist our impulses is commonly described as self-control or willpower. The elusive forces behind a person’s willpower have been the subject of increasing scrutiny by the scientific community trying to understand why some people overeat or abuse drugs and alcohol. What researchers are finding is that willpower is essentially a mental muscle, and certain physical and mental forces can weaken or strengthen our self-control.

Studies now show that self-control is a limited resource that may be strengthened by the foods we eat. Laughter and conjuring up powerful memories may also help boost a person’s self-control. And, some research suggests, we can improve self-control through practice, testing ourselves on small tasks in order to strengthen our willpower for bigger challenges.

– Tara Parker-Pope on Health, How to Boost Your Willpower, New York Times.  December 6, 2007.  <– Click title for full article.  Registration may be required.