The Invisibility of Thinking Labor: ADHD and Strategy Work

Recently in my diary I wrote about invisible labor: the result of a strategy being seen while the thinking process behind it is not. After finishing that piece, a question stayed in my mind. Is this simply the fate of strategy work, or does the way an ADHD mind thinks enlarge this invisibility?

This article follows that question. I do not want to repeat the feelings in the diary. I want to look at where they may come from and what can be done about it.

No work is visible on its own

The most explanatory text I read on this came from the sociologists Susan Leigh Star and Anselm Strauss. According to them, no work is by nature counted as visible or invisible. We always see work through selected indicators: tensed muscles, a product that emerges, a changed situation. These indicators also change with context, and what will count as work becomes a kind of negotiation (Star & Strauss, 1999).

When this frame is applied to thinking labor, the picture becomes clear. Thinking has no indicator. Muscles do not tense, no product piles up on the desk. The only thing with an indicator is the result: a page, a presentation, a decision. Yet in strategy work the result is often the smallest part of all the labor.

Behind every "let's do this" said in a strategy there are dozens of unspoken "let's not do this." The options that were eliminated are not visible anywhere. And the most valuable part of the work often stands exactly there.

In the glossary the general name for this is invisible labor. I described its form at home in the article on mental load. Its form in working life is a little different, because here invisibility directly affects the value placed on the work.

How my thinking looks

Thinking with an ADHD mind does not look much like thinking from the outside.

When I sit down with a problem, I do not move linearly. I open twenty tabs, I look at a data set, I slide into an article that seems unrelated, then I get up and walk. Someone looking from outside sees disorder. Sometimes I see it that way too.

Then all at once the pieces fall into place. Often while walking, in the shower or in the middle of another task.

There is a scientific counterpart to this, but it has to be said carefully. A meta-analysis examining the effect on problem solving of leaving a problem for a while and busying yourself with something else, that is, incubation, found an overall positive incubation effect. This effect was more marked in divergent thinking tasks, which require producing many possible solutions (Sio & Ormerod, 2009). So leaving and returning does not always mean escaping. Sometimes it is the thinking itself.

In a study looking at the relationship between ADHD and creativity, adults with ADHD showed more original thinking on a verbal task and higher creative achievement in real life; the study also describes differences in creative problem-solving styles (White & Shah, 2011). The sample is small and the findings are not valid for everyone with ADHD. I do not want to turn this into a strengths narrative. Its meaning for me is plainer: behind a process that looks scattered, there is sometimes really work going on.

My thinking looks scattered. That is one of the reasons it is not seen.

Double invisibility

Here I see the share of ADHD more clearly. Strategy work is already invisible by itself. When it is done with an ADHD mind it becomes invisible one layer more, because the process does not look like orderly work.

Someone sitting at a desk and writing for eight hours looks as if they worked for eight hours. My walking for three hours, reading for two and writing the whole strategy in one hour looks like an hour's work. In the eyes of others, and sometimes in my own eyes too.

For years, with the habit of masking, I tried to hide this process. To look orderly I kept a document open on the screen, I pretended to be typing even while I was thinking. Masking did not make the process more visible; it only made it more tiring.

Work that cannot be predicted

Invisibility has a time side too. The question "how long will this take" is almost unanswerable in thinking work.

People in general systematically underestimate how long a task will take. In the classic studies on the planning fallacy, when participants made estimates they hardly looked at how long similar tasks had really taken in the past, and focused on an optimistic scenario of how the work would go. An interesting detail is that when estimating other people's tasks they did not show the same optimism (Buehler et al., 1994).

In thinking work this fallacy grows, because in the optimistic scenario "the moment the pieces fall into place" always looks near. That moment does not look at the calendar. With time blindness added, the promise "I'll have it in two days" is easily given and hard to keep. And when it cannot be kept, the invisible work becomes visible as late work.

What happens inside

The heaviest side of labor not being seen is something I live on the inside.

A person who is not seen for a long time begins at some point to doubt their own perception. "Maybe I really didn't do that much work." "Maybe anyone could do this in an hour." In the glossary a close relative of this feeling is impostor feeling. It is not counted as an official diagnosis, but what it describes is familiar.

In ADHD the ground for this doubt is already prepared, because many of us grew up for years hearing the sentence "you have potential but." Thinking labor that is not seen is added to that old sentence like new evidence.

Making thinking visible

It is not possible to remove invisibility completely. Making it partly visible is possible, and it works both for other people and for me.

A decision log. While working on a strategy I write down briefly the options I eliminate: what I thought about, why I dropped it. Even if this list does not appear in the presentation, it is there. When someone asks "why didn't we do this," the answer is ready.

A "why this path was not chosen" page. Adding, next to the result presented, two or three paths that were evaluated and eliminated on a single page. This is the most visible form of the labor behind the result.

Speaking in stages. Answering the question "when will it be done" with stages: research, synthesis, writing. Sharing a short note at the end of each stage makes the work visible as it progresses.

Explaining the process from the start. When starting a job, telling the other side how the work will go. Saying at the very beginning that the invisible part exists is less tiring than defending it afterwards.

Making it visible to myself. At the end of the week, writing three lines: "what did I think about this week, which question did I solve." Even if nobody reads it, a record I can come back to on days when I doubt my own perception.

Do not delete eliminated options. Move the paths you gave up in the draft to a separate file. It both answers the later question "had I thought about this too" and stays as a concrete trace of thinking labor.

Counting thinking in my own calendar

Invisibility has a form in my own calendar too. For a long time I did not count thinking time as work.

In my calendar there were meetings, deliveries, writing hours. Sitting for an hour with a problem and thinking without writing anything did not enter the calendar. When that hour passed, I was left with the feeling of "I did nothing today."

Now I am trying to change this. I put blocks in my calendar named "thinking." Sometimes within this block I walk, sometimes I sit with a notebook, sometimes I only look at data. When the block has a name, what I do has a name too.

Here is a place where I need to be honest: not every scatteredness counts as thinking. Sometimes going for a walk is really incubation, and sometimes it is a polite name for escaping a hard task. To tell the two apart I ask myself a single question: before leaving, did I really load the problem?

Among the factors that change the effect in the incubation meta-analysis are the type of problem and the length of preparation before incubation (Sio & Ormerod, 2009). For me the practical counterpart of this is: when I go for a walk without opening the problem at all, nothing happens. If I have looked at the data, written the question and found where I am stuck, my chance of coming back from the walk with something is much higher.

That is why I build thinking blocks in two parts. The first half hour at the desk: writing the question, reading the data in hand, noting what I do not know. After that, free: walking, switching to another task, waiting. When I return, the first thing is to add whatever comes to mind to the same page.

This arrangement does not produce anything visible to the outside. But it leaves me a record with which I can say at the end of the day, "today I loaded this question, I worked through this much of it." It turns out that invisible labor first has to become visible in my own eyes.

Those who choose not to see

In the diary I spoke of the difference between being unable to see and choosing not to see. I want to add something here: making thinking visible may be my responsibility, but seeing is not always in my hands.

A decision log, a process note, a stage report is enough for someone who wants it. For someone who does not, no document is enough. Being able to tell the two apart helps me draw the line between defending my own labor and exhausting myself.

I wrote in the diary about what failing to appreciate is: On not appreciating.