For generations, adults with ADHD have struggled to find workplaces and career paths that allow them to succeed, and usually ended up feeling like a square peg in a round hole. 

Those who have been able to figure out where their ADHD strengths fit best often did so after years of trial and error or were lucky enough to have a coach, mentor or parent who pointed them in the right direction.  

But what if job crafting for ADHD strengths was accessible for all?  

I came across an article in ADDitude magazine about ADHD and job crafting and decided to reach out to the author. 

Mark is a licensed psychologist in private practice, a professor of psychology at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania and the lead researcher on an innovative project to help individuals craft careers in alignment with their ADHD strengths. 

He's currently working on a book that expands on these ideas, combining personal anecdotes, professional insights, and extensive research.

Episode Overview:

• Occupational Typecasting for ADHD: Mark discusses the myth that certain jobs naturally align better with ADHD traits, but this doesn’t mean individuals with ADHD can't excel in other fields.
• Job Crafting: Introduction of "job crafting" or "curating" as a method where individuals map out their job tasks to align with their strengths and seek support for more challenging tasks.
• Misinterpreted Symptoms: How symptoms like boredom and disengagement are misinterpreted as laziness rather than a need for more meaningful work.
• Underachievement Relative to Potential: The focus on disruptive behavior over subtle signs of ADHD in settings like schools and workplaces
• Delayed Diagnosis, Especially Among Women: Examination of how societal standards and internalized negative feedback can result in delayed ADHD diagnoses.
• ADHD as a Superpower: Critique of the "ADHD as a superpower" narrative and its oversimplification of individual experiences.

Mentioned by Dr Sciutto during the interview: 

Buzz: a Year of Paying Attention by Katherine Ellison

ADDitude magazine article on Scott Eyre, pitcher

Want to find out more about Mark Sciutto’s work or his upcoming book? 

Click here for his email address.

If your search for an ADHD-friendly career path has lead you to small business ownership or entrepreneurship, you are not alone. But are you using your ADHD strengths as business assets?

You are exactly who my coaching framework,  The Boss Up Breakthrough was designed for.  

Take advantage of my fast action bonus by booking a free consultation with me during the month of January. Click here to find out more. 

© 2024 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Outro music by Vladimir /  All rights reserved. 

H: So one of the things I asked you in our pre chat is, do you have ADHD? And it could have been a simple yes or no answer, but what it led to is what I think we are going to be experiencing a lot more of in all the best ways is it depends kind of thing. Because as we both know, many people who would qualify for the diagnosis don't have it, and many people who have learned how to fashion their life in such a way that they are aligned with their gifts and their struggles really don't need the diagnosis. So where would you like to start?

G: Well, I guess I would say, you know, I'm not a particularly, big fan of diagnosis. I think there's a lot of it there's definitely a need, there's a it serves a very important function, but I prefer to think of things along, facets or continuum of functioning, different traits or different characteristics that are fundamentally part of human experience right? So ADHD is part of who we are as people, whether we label a subset as having the diagnosis or not. So I am not formally diagnosed with ADHD.

I would not, qualify for a diagnosis of ADHD, but that doesn't mean that I don't exist somewhere along the continuum of the big 3, inattention, distractibility, impulsivity, hyperactivity. So I see elements of that in my life. I fall somewhere along the continuum, and that sort of waivers over time. But I would not qualify for a diagnosis. I don't think I've had this sense of, impairment. And I think there is a risk and, of people saying I have a little bit of ADHD or I have it, trivializing it.

Thinking that I wanna continue on like this but I also think it really is an avenue into empathy. And if you can see a little bit of this in yourself, you can sort of envision what it might be like for this to cause problems in relationships or workplace. So, I tend to in my work, in my teaching, my research, I tend to place less emphasis on, the yes or no of a diagnosis and more along where do people fall on the continuum of functioning and how does that help, you know, sort of, their daily experience.

H: Yeah. I would totally agree with that. As a matter of fact, I started using even when I was still functioning as a licensed therapist before I moved into coaching, I was in private practice, and I started just finding myself gravitating toward the use of terms like identity, identify, characteristics, traits, tendencies rather than symptoms and diagnosis. And I think not only because I have empathy for people with ADHD, and I am a person with ADHD, and I have 3 children with ADHD. But also because one of the main reasons, as you know, Mark, that people who want and need help, from a mental health professional, they're not going to get it because of stigma. So I think this more inclusive, accepting, empathic framework, I can't imagine that there's anything, negative about it other than if you're heavily aligned with the medical model and insurance companies and all that sort of thing. So how did you first decide to pursue the project that we are gonna be unpacking? What was the genesis for that?

G: That's a great question. And if I told you that it kind of started well, I'll age myself in doing this, but it started in my 1st semester of full time teaching, I believe, which was probably almost 30 years ago.

H: Wow.

G: Yes. I like to say that I started teaching at the age of 10, but that's not entirely true. But in my 1st semester, I was teaching a course in abnormal psychology, where I tend to emphasize these kinds of, you know, not just ADHD, but just viewing things on a continuum, and looking at the mental health as part of human experience. And a student came up after class and said very early in the semester, and I thought it was kind of an unusual initial conversation with the student.

He said I have to talk to you, I've been diagnosed with ADHD. And this was, you know, a time where I think the willingness to disclose was much less right? So this was kind of like this was kind of like unusual at that point. But he came up and he said, but I've come to realize that, you know, it's not all bad in a sense. I'm paraphrasing because my memory is bad, I barely remember what I have for breakfast. So but he said some he said something along the lines of so when I'm in a conversation and the conversation might go a, b, c, and d. I hear a and d, and I miss b and c.

H: Wow. Relatable.

G: He said, but I've gotten really good at filling in the gaps because I miss so much. And he said, I think that's really helped me in a lot of ways solving problems because, you know, problems are filling in gaps. And so that's sort of just that seed was planted many, many years ago. And I won't say now, but we'll come back to this person because they ended up being one of the people in my interview project.

H: I love this so much.

G: Down, 30 years or so later but that stuck with me as one of these initial, you know, sort of seeds. That's really kind of an interesting way of thinking about this and very mature to think about it at that age as, like, an 18 or 19 year old to, to do that. Had another student, almost the same thing maybe 10 years or so later, come up and say, I have ADHD. This conversation happens quite a bit and it's gonna look to you I'm gonna sit in the front row, and it's gonna look to you like I'm not paying attention, and I'm going to doodle. And I was like, okay, he goes, but trust me.

She said, trust me, I am paying attention. And sure enough, she had the most elaborate doodles in the margin and looked like she was not paying attention, but would raise her hand out of nowhere and ask the most insightful question. It had been a strategy she was using to sort focus. Fast forward a little bit later, I read a memoir called Buzz. I don't know if you've heard from Katherine Ellison, I believe.

Talking about her journey with her son for getting treatment for ADHD and how it led to sort of a self discovery of herself. And she sort of alluded to how being an investigative reporter was kinda well aligned with ADHD so all these things build up over the years. And then I stumble finally across an Attitude article on, the Phillies pitcher Scott Eyre, and reading the story of his sort of journey with ADHD diagnosis in adult. And he attributes much of his success to medication and supportive team, both of which were very important. But I noticed the detail in his in the story that was sort of jarring to me.

Like, it's sort of really like, one of those moments where I just sort of step back and said, hold on, I gotta drop everything and I promise I won't get too much. I'm a big baseball fan, but I won't get into because everybody will tune out. But and because it's not really about baseball, but he had his he started his career, but I didn't know. I knew him when he played for the Phillies. I didn't follow his career but he started his career as a starting pitcher but he had all of his success as a relief pitcher.

Now in baseball so starting pitchers have a they don't pitch as often. They have repeated times through the lineup. It rewards forethought and planning and working memory and patience and relief pitchers come in, and he might only come in for 1 batter, high adrenaline, high novelty, you know, high pressure, clear deadlines, clear outcomes, and all the things that are really well aligned with ADHD and so I was like, this is really fascinating. So I dug in, and I went and looked up all his statistics and he systematically does better. It almost looks like I fake the data.

He does systematically better in all of the situations that are better aligned with ADHD right? Late in game versus early in game. So he was the first interview for this project. I reached out to him and talked to him, and he had never made that connection. He had never sort of, you know, he had sort of attributed again, let rightly to medication and the other kinds of support that he had. But that alignment was really important, and it sort of triggered this process in me that our school systems and much of our workplaces are built for starting pitchers. And we're not particularly good at developing relief pitchers. So that's where the baseball metaphor ends, I promise.

But it sort of struck me as, like, he couldn't change the game of baseball, but they he found the role unintentionally accidentally in a sense that was really better suited. And so I got to wondering, what does this look like outside of baseball right? We don't have statistics to document in all of our and as your work as a therapist, you never had statistics on how well you were doing right? We don't get that kind of feedback right. But I said, I wonder what this looks like in other areas of work. And so we began this process of interviewing people from all different walks of life, all different professions, and asking a series of questions to try to get at this issue of alignment, as a dimension of ADHD.

H: This is I love this. I love the backstory and I gotta admit, I'm not a baseball fan, but you gave me just enough information. You gave the listeners just enough information that they can see themselves in this. Because when people say things like, oh, you have ADHD and you're an accountant, are you sure you have ADHD? It's not necessarily the specific career, profession. It's the way you do it that works for your brain and I think you're absolutely right. A lot of us stumble across what works for us largely through trial and error, lots and lots of error. And we can stumble our way into success and then not even attribute our success to that because we're just trying to figure out what makes things work for us. It doesn't feel like a system, but you have extracted the data from that.

And you've looked at different people and seen that when people are doing things that are in alignment with their particular ADHD strengths and struggles that they can win. We have to talk about the word that I think it's really a trigger word for me, Superpower. I come across because I largely work with entrepreneurs and creatives and people that are self employed with ADHD, ADHD-ish. They identify with the traits, diagnosed or not. They some of them see this and think, wow, you hear it's even Forbes Magazine, is ADHD the entrepreneur's superpower? There are other coaches who kind of make that their whole approach, make ADHD your superpower. Talk about trivializing people's lived experience.

But I think, to me, it's so much more nuanced, and I'd love to know your thoughts about that word because I personally do not believe it's a superpower. I also don't many people don't experience as a disability. I believe it is the source of both my greatest strengths and my greatest struggles in pretty equal measure. So it's up to me to align my life, my business, my lifestyle, my relationships with the strengths and do everything I can to manage the struggles so that they don't overtake the strengths. What are your personal thoughts about superpower?

G: So I'm glad you asked about that because this is one of those things that I can and you can feel free to cut me off if I did going too long. But, I mean, the phrase, if you, you know, cut this entire podcast and just summarize, it depends right?

H: Yeah.

G: And this notion of a superpower, I think, arose out of a desire to reduce stigma. And it was a giving voice that people with ADHD often feel that, like, they're not seen, that they feel sort of othered or different from everybody else. And so I think its origins came out of an important place. But it had it runs the risk of, again, this this sort of trivializing and to sort of just miss a whole facet of the person's experience so you talk about superpower, you know, I could fly right? It'd be great to have that superpower. But if you put me in a room that's really tight, it doesn't do me any good to fly.

And it actually may frustrate me. Especially if, I'm told I can't fly right? So if I'm in an environment, where I'm told I can't fly which is what our schools are for many kids with with ADHD. The kinds of things, that we maybe where they're most, drawn or most interested in are things that are often shunned or not sort of rewarded in our school system. So thinking of it as a superpower is just very sort of incomplete right? So I won't say that it doesn't have because we've had people talking about how the characteristics of ADHD can be a great advantage in some context.

H: Because it depends.

G: Right, it depends. In other context, not so much right? So I always use the example of 1, police officer. Again, a profession you wouldn't necessarily think particularly well aligned with ADHD, but we had multiple.

H: Lots of cops have ADHD.

G: Yep. And one in particular said, you know, my what we would call inattention or distractibility in the schools. You know, he alluded to it, and we talked about it more as a sense of vigilance right? So this same symptom looks like an attention distractibility in classroom. Why don't we call it vigilance? Isn't that really what it is right so it's a problem in a classroom, he said. So if I'm on patrol, vigilance or distractibility, like, noticing everything is really advantageous.

When I'm at dinner with my fiancee, noticing everything not so advantageous right? So almost no one that we talked to actually really no one we talked to, describe the characteristics of ADHD in universally good or bad ways. It was always this, it depends. And it looked at what it depended on varied from person to person. So I think the notion of a gift or superpower, even though people may use that language is important, but incomplete.

H: I'm smiling so much, Mark, because in my 1st year in graduate school, my clinical professor, doctor Mitchell Maki, who I became very close to, I became his research assistant. He taught me so much. He really frustrated and annoyed the group of grad students because and I went to grad school in my thirties. I'd already had a whole first career, so I became a clinician as a second career. I had 10 plus years on most everyone else in my cohort. And they were seeking what like, if then. What do we do if this happens? What do we do when that happens? They really were wanting that sense of clinical competency and certainty and confidence without really understanding how complex human nature and human behavior and human motivations actually are.

And I remember every single question they asked that 1st semester mark, he would say, well, it depends and they will be like, oh, you know? And I'm thinking, well, yeah, absolutely because it does depend. And so I realized years later, I used that expression probably as often as you do because it is in the nuances. It is in the intersections. It is in, oftentimes, the exceptions that we realize this person is not impaired in this set of conditions and, and this scenario. So it absolutely depends.

G: Yeah. So I think that's where some of this comes from. And, again, out of good intentions to start to view ADHD differently, but nuance always gets lost, and I think that creates a blind spot of sort that we stop. We start thinking about ADHD in a very limited way that ends up being counterproductive, in different ways across a person's lifetime you know?

H: Well, and one of the ways I'm sure you and I will both easily recognize and agree to, I refer to this as you can't find what you're not looking for. And we did not identify multiple generations of women because we were not looking for the way ADHD presents in most females, which tends to be more the inattentive distractible subtype. We were looking for the hyperactive impulsive like we see in little boys.

So we'd have these girls just dreaming away and quietly underachieving for decades thinking I'm slow. I'm stupid. I'm lazy. I'm just not motivated. I don't try hard enough, yada yada yada. So they, especially, I think, were disenfranchised and completely left out of the equation. Now, as you know, the numbers of women that are being identified in their thirties, forties, fifties, sixties, and beyond is, like, that's the fastest growing group, but that's because they were overlooked for so long because of this narrow definition.

G: Yeah. And in schools, if it doesn't cause disruption, it doesn't get noticed right? So if you're looking for I also think I would add to if you don't you only find what you're you know, you don't find what you're not looking for. Even when we see it, you know, we label it differently right? So one of our interviewees said and every almost everyone had a person or 2 in their life that sort of, made a critical shift for them. It changed their perspective. And he and so he said, you know, he had a supervisor say look at him and say, you look bored right? Now that look of boredom, we tend to sort of look at it and say, they're lazy. They're not trying. They don't want to be here.

H: Disengage, disinterested.

G: Yeah. Disengage but this particular supervisor, you look bored. Would you like a challenge? I have this other job that we're looking for somebody for right? So we can look at the same symptom and see it, and we make we tell ourselves a different story about the why the person is that way. And so boredom can be laziness, or it can be disengagement, or it can be those things. But it can also be, lack of finding meaning in the work or, you know, not being challenged by the work.

H: Understimulated in whatever way.

G: Understimulated. And so we tend to especially in our school system, we tend to, miss those kinds of things easily if the child because the teachers understandably they have 20, 30 kids in the classroom. It's often difficult to sort of see that kind of, and take the time to dig, to see those kinds of things. But, yeah, I would wholeheartedly agree. We miss the things because of this incomplete picture.

H: And it's also to your point about impairment, Mark. It's that, the behavior of little boys that not surprisingly the first of my kids to be diagnosed was my hyperactive impulsive, highly distractible, aggressive, you know, squirmy, very bright little boy, my firstborn. My daughter didn't get diagnosed until she was in grad school so her underachievement relative to her potential was not a problem to the teacher. Wasn't a problem to the to the school. So I think it's the ways we think about impairment is how is this affecting others around you? And while that is completely valid, I think the most painful long term effects of unidentified, unaddressed ADHD is the underachievement relative to potential.

G: And so the relative to potential is just a critical piece there. I'm so glad you said that because what we typically do is under achievement relative to some university standard right? So a child who is getting by with C's or B's is not a problem on the surface unless you think that they are capable of getting better. But a child who's failing lots of subjects gets the attention or disrupting the classroom gets the attention. So impairment is always a moving target. It's relative, but we inevitably sort of judge it relative to some standard rather than to the individual's experience.

And so almost all of our interviewees, like, were diagnosed later, said it was there. But I was, you know, doing well enough to sort of mask it, or I was doing well enough that it didn't cause problems or they wrote it off as something else. So the student who I mentioned who talked about dropping in and out of conversations, so I was just written off as, you know, lazy. Everybody said, oh, you're super smart if you just tried. And so if I had a dime for every time or it was it was like people looking back to say, I you know, that's not it at all. But that's what it shows up to other people if we're not willing to look differently at the person's experience.

H: I'm just thinking about a t shirt line that says, I am trying harder. And I love that the students that approached you. And I'm just thinking 30 years ago, a young, barely an adult, barely legal, who has both the self awareness and the agency to approach a professor. And I mean, you were pretty wet behind the ears yourself 30 years ago. There probably wasn't entirely different, but still you were an authority figure and someone who had some degree of control over or his life and saying, here's something I know about myself. I'm curious, what your thoughts are in this.

One of the things that frustrates a lot of people who work with, live with, are partnered with, run a business with, our neighbors with, folks with a or siblings with, the folks with ADHD is that they will often say we lack self awareness. Now I wanna share my thought about this, and I'd love to hear your reaction. I don't know that we are intrinsically lacking in self awareness. But what I have seen many times is self awareness feels risky. Self awareness feels scary. We all have I wouldn't say all many of us have so many internalized, negative voices, negative feedback.

Why can't you just? Your sister doesn't. What's the matter with you? And then we internalize those voices. And what's the matter with me? Why can't I ever get it together and so forth. So self awareness can feel like a dangerous prospect, when we actually look at our behavior, look at our choices, look at the impact that we have on others because oftentimes that's gonna trigger a shame spiral that doesn't lead to any changed behavior. What do you think?

G: Yeah. I think self awareness, the disclosure of the kinds of things are is risky. And so I agree that the student was, you know, was unusual, especially at that point in time historically that would have that level of self awareness. And I think, you know, you know, all of our interviews, I think there was this emergence on some level. People would say, I always knew this, but it's not the story that that narrative is not out there right? There's no real road map for understanding some of this, because it's not the typical story. It's not what the narrative we're told about, what success looks like, what thriving looks like. And so the self awareness is kind of a part of the puzzle, but there's the willingness to disclose that understanding.

To people who may not understand it or, where it might not it's not clear if it's safe because of, you know, authority differences as you mentioned. But the people who we interview so we defined we look for people who would be considered thriving in some way, And, we purposely looked at thriving. It doesn't mean, you know, fame or tangible success. It means a person who is, finds meaning in what they do, they're driven to wanna continue, doing it. They feel like they're making, an impact on what they do. So thriving doesn't always result in notoriety or fame and which I think the gift superpower narrative kind of sometimes feeds into.

So, yeah, I think the self awareness, seem to develop with each of these people, but almost on a parallel path with the willingness to disclose that understanding and share it. So several of the people that we talked to said, I've come to a point where I kinda get this now. I understand it better. I understand myself better, and I wanna do that for other people. I want to sort of explain this. And so they were very grateful to be able to tell their story and have that potentially be that, you know, another child growing up hears a different kind of narrative or at least a more a diversity of narratives, rather than just, you know, what was traditionally the case with ADHD.

H: I see that with the people I've worked with over the years as a therapist, as a coach, and now working with business owners. it's like a developmental process. And I think of it as sort of the development of your ADHD identity. And if you are a person who's diagnosed, identified, self identified later in life, the trajectory that I've observed is you always knew you were different. I've never had a person say, no, I did. I never thought so. You always knew you were different. You you went through a variety of attributional theories.

Well, that's because that's because or you had those things thrust upon you by others. You don't try hard enough. You know, you're a middle child, whatever and then you decided what that means about you. It's like, I'm different, I'm different because of this. What does that mean about me in terms of my worth, my value, my potential, my opportunities, my limitations? And then you tend to live up or live down to that unless something happens. And what often happens is people continue because we tend to be curious people.

And we tend to try different things. If something's not working, we tend to try something else and something else and something else, and eventually stumble across this ADHD information. And for many people, they describe it as like a light bulb moment, this tremendous sense of, like, oh, now I understand. Relief, then grief. And if they don't get stuck in the relief and grief, then it's like, well, now that I know, now what? I'm sure you heard a lot of stories like that. You probably heard some stories that were maybe surprising in ways that I can't even predict.

G: Yeah. I think, you know, what surprised me, on one level was actually the consistency of the kinds of it looked different in every person, but there were some fundamental consistencies. And, I think what was really sort of enlightening was just almost seeing the person in the process of discussing it start to you like, you could see the understanding emerging as they were discussing it right? Which tells you that they've been thinking about this a lot, but there's some value in telling those stories and walk as we're doing right now, walking through it together. We start to all of a sudden, you start to see, things together. It's like after you watch a movie and you go back and you watch it again, you start noticing different things.

Yes, like and all of a sudden, things start to click together. And I think, it helped to for me to undermine that notion that there's a single path for people with ADHD that's linear. I have one of our interviewees said, nothing about me is linear except my drumming. He was a drum, which I don't think is a coincidence. But there's nothing about me is linear, and I thought that was just a great way of describing it. And I think, more than anything else, I was surprised at the nuance of the different stories, and how different they were, but yet they all told a common story in a sense right?

There was some commonality to it that made it understandable. That was really just reward. And I love I mean, you're doing this as a podcast, so I imagine the same issue. I just love hearing people's stories. I have people tell their story of how they got from, you know, a to b. And, it's just fascinating to hear that and to sort of piece it together. And so we really got some, I think, useful themes that came out through each of the stories, that I hope start to shift some of the conversation or can help us shift the conversation about ADHD.

H: Where are you in the process of the research? Are you done interviewing all of your subjects? Are you sorting through the data? Are you in the publication phase? Where are we?

G: So I don't think we'll I don't intend to ever be done. I think we're gonna continue to do it. It's so it's very funny you mentioned this. It's like every time I talk about this project, I get a referral.

H: I wanna volunteer.

G: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You need to talk to so and so, and then, we'll be with friends and, you know, and I'll be talking about this right? And then they'll you know, one of the members of the couple or one of the people in the group will just sort of look at me and they'll tilt their head and say, you know, you should talk to them. And, you know, almost every time I mess up, it brings so I think there's I don't think I'll ever have a complete enough picture. So we're gonna continue to do the interviews, I just think, for fullness of understanding and we just completed, data collection.

We're trying to look at some of this alignment in the workplace in a more quantitative survey based study looking at people with ADHD and people without and how important are things like novelty, when it's there, does that it is actually lead to greater job satisfaction, more so than it does for people without ADHD. So, we're trying to work on that as well. I wish I had more time to work on this, but I get pulled in a number of other directions, but it's gonna continue to, be a project that I work on. So we're gonna continue with the interviews. I'm gonna probably put that out in a more substantial form. The attitude article was a great sort of entry into it, but it really is a very condensed part of the full research and then supplement it with some of these other, quantitative studies.

H: There's so much potential for this, Mark. I mean, there's clinical potential putting this information into the hands of therapists, psychiatrists, counselors of all types, school counselors, you know, college guidance counselors, companies that are open minded enough to recognize that you may actually want to recruit neurodivergent talent, but you need to offer them these things for them to be able to thrive here and make their best possible contributions. Obviously, academia. I mean, there's so many ways that this information would benefit people individually, but also our and of course, the body of knowledge in our respective field of psychology.

But I think there's I work primarily with self employed people, and you will not be surprised to hear that many of them decided to go out on their own because they were not able to find what I call a hospitable work environment for their unique gifts and, you know, attributes. And so many people just thought, well, screw it. If I can't find a place where I can thrive working with or for others, I'm gonna do my own thing. But being self employed is very challenging for many people with ADHD traits, and many of them go from being adequately employed, but struggling to really struggling on their own because they are now absent the structure, supports, and supervision and accountability that workplaces provide.

G: Yeah. And so we saw that we had lots of, it was not hard to find entrepreneurs to talk to for this project. I don't think that's a coincidence, because it allowed going out on your own, doing that kind of thing allows you to sort of we talked about it as there's an organizational psychology as this concept of job crafting.

H: Yes.

G: But it's a you know, it can there's a danger of viewing it as sort of, like, occupational typecasting. Like, so ADHD people are good at this kind of thing, which there are some jobs that are probably inherently better suited. Like, I think accounting is a particularly difficult one to fit, but it doesn't mean you can't right? So job crafting or I like the term curating a little bit better, is it can be the type of role right? So Scott Eyre, the Phillies pitcher, a shift in the type of role. They didn't change the roles of baseball for him right? So he shifted into a role that was more aligned. And but there's also sort of crafting the types of tasks.

So if you take your job and you map out all the kinds of things you need to do for your job, some of those are really well aligned with the things we know benefit people with ADHD, novelty, you know, sort of energy, that sort of vigilance that we talked about. And there's some tasks that don't the mundane. I think one of our, participants he said the mundane is torturous. So most people can't just sort of do only the things they enjoy. So job crafting or curating is kind of saying, well, these are the things that align well, and then build in the structures, build in the support for the things that I know are going to be more difficult for me. And a surprising number back to back to your other a surprising number of people talked about how their partners or their coworkers were part of that alignment right?

So it's not just the job. It's like, I am depending on people that I work with that I know are gonna be better at this kind of thing to support the things that don't align well. It's not like they go away, and then not you know? So part of curating or job crafting is, interpersonal as well. You know, so within a task, across task, things like that. So I found that really interesting, and it's a way of thinking about work that's quite different. We tend to think if you ever read a especially in higher a job description has, like, 15 bullet points of very specific things that the job require rather than talking about the kinds of things or the or the, and that the same person has to sort of fill all of those kind of equally.

And I just think it's a very, difficult way to think about, work. So all of our interviewees talked about how they were able to sort of craft or curate their job in ways that sort of aligned well with ADHD. And then where it didn't align, they had built in supports, for that. So the other 2 the way we typically think about ADHD is, sort of intervention, which is modifying this the quote, unquote symptoms of ADHD right? So doing medication, you know, behavior therapy, also mindfulness kinds of things, all things that will help the person individually adapt.

And then we do accommodation, which is, like, change the setting, you know, distraction reduce setting or time accommodations for exams and things like that. Both of those are still gonna be important especially at younger ages. But we almost never sort of think about this alignment piece, in a more nuanced way. It depends kind of way. And almost every one of our participants talked about their journey to thriving in that way, that sort of nuance that it depends.

H: I know that listeners are going to want to follow along on this journey, learn more about it, and see what you're up to. What is the best way for them to do that, Mark?

G: That's a great question. So I'm hoping to have a longer version of this come out at some point in book form and, that would be one. But I'm also gonna sort of do this in pieces. I think I'm gonna put more of a sort of expanded version of what was in the Attitude article available, and then continue with some of those, those pieces in the research piece. But I'll be honest, this has just been a sort of a labor of love in a sense. I've been really fascinated by it. I'm not so, focused on sort of what the end result is.

H: I think the best projects are like this. It's almost like when people say I don't know if you're a dog lover, but I am. And many people who are dog lovers say you don't choose your dog. Your dog chooses you. And I have a very strong feeling that this project chose you, and I think, the intelligence of the universe was well placed in you. I love how it's really developed organically. I love how you have learned as much from your students as they no doubt learn from you. And, it gives me a lot of optimism that there are people like you doing this kind of work, because I happen to think that people with ADHD who are not yet able to fully express themselves and their gifts, it's a collective loss to humanity.

It's not just an individual struggle of people who happen to think differently. Some of the best ideas, the most innovative ideas, the most original and creative ideas come from these people. But we need to be in environments where we can truly thrive. So I really appreciate all you're doing to bring that to pass. And for the time that you've spent with me today, please stay in touch because when you have done that book, I don't think it's hope. I think it's commitment, and I think you will do it. And, I would love to have you back as a guest to share the book when the time is right.

G: I would love to. I'm not gonna let you off the hook quite yet. I wanna give you that student I talked about in the very beginning.

H: Yes.

G: Can you imagine what kind of pathway he ended up in?

H: Tech?

G: Great, he started his own tech, IT. So novel, new problem every day. He can hyperfocus. All the things we know about AD, he can hyperfocus on our problem. You know, he was given a chance to do that in college, and it sort of set him on this path. He started his own business. He creates his own schedule, and he said something really important. He said I have now I'm at a point where I've hired people to do the mundane, repetitive things. He's crafted that.

And then I go home, and I have so endless energy. I do all these other things to keep from driving my spouse crazy. So, it was really fun to hear the bookends to his experience as a way of validating this, but I'm just appreciative that you gave me a chance to join you today and start telling the story, that I hope will continue.

H: We will be back. Thank you, friend.

G: Thank you.