Which Jobs Suit ADHD Better?

One of the first things I looked for after the diagnosis was "suitable professions for people with ADHD." The lists I came across were copies of one another and none of them told me anything.

I understood the reason later: even within the same profession, jobs can be very different from one another. Two people can carry the same title and have completely different days. One runs from meeting to meeting, the other is alone inside a deep piece of work.

So I changed the question. Instead of "which profession," I started asking "which features of the work suit me," and this question really did show me the way.

Features that raise fit

Short cycles. Let the beginning and the end of the work be close together. In the middle of a six-month project my motivation runs out; the end of a two-day job is visible, and that visibility carries me.

Fast feedback. Seeing the result of what you did quickly. In work where the reward is far away, my energy starts to melt.

Variety. Changing tasks instead of the same thing every day. Novelty is the fuel of motivation.

Movement. Being able to move around instead of sitting fixed at a desk. Work in which I could think while walking always went better for me.

Real deadlines. Not artificial ones, but dates when something will really happen. This makes panic productivity functional. I stretch the dates I set myself; I cannot stretch a promise I made to someone else.

An area of interest. This is the most decisive item on the list. Working on a subject I am interested in lightens all the other difficulties. When setting up my own business, this is what I took into account most.

Crisis and emergency. In the qualitative study by Sedgwick and colleagues (2019) with professionally successful adults with an ADHD diagnosis, one of the traits reported again and again is being able to work well under pressure.

Features that strain

• Long, predictable and monotonous projects
• Heavy paperwork and routine data entry
• Low or no feedback
• Sitting still for long hours
• Constant stimuli in an open-plan office
• Instructions given verbally and not put in writing
• A day that is constantly interrupted
• Work that demands invisible effort that no one measures

Looking at this list, I noticed something: most of the items here are not about whether I am good or bad. They are about how the environment is set up, and most of them can be changed.

The same person can look inadequate in one job and very good in another. It is not the person who changes, it is the shape of the work.

Why profession lists mislead

I see three separate problems with these lists, and I tried all three on myself.

The same title, a different job. A list says "creative jobs." A creative job also involves reading contracts, tracking budgets and managing the calendar of ten people. The title does not say how the day passes.

It only looks at symptoms. Most lists are built on the logic of "you are energetic, so do an active job." Yet the same person has inattention, sensory sensitivity and emotional swings too. Choosing a profession according to a single symptom means ignoring the others.

It assumes the person is fixed. The environment in which I worked well at thirty was not the environment in which I worked well at twenty-five. My area of interest changed, my endurance changed, what I am willing to spend energy on changed.

Instead I started tracking my own day. For two weeks I noted after which task I felt exhausted and after which I felt alive. That two-week record told me more than all the lists I had read.

Adapt the current job first

Changing jobs is a big decision and is not always possible. The adaptations that can be tried are usually small:

• Asking for written instructions. "Could you send me the summary after the meeting by message?"
• One-channel rule. Having work come from a single place; work coming through three separate channels gets lost.
• Focus hours. Not taking meetings and messages in a certain interval of the day. Making this interval visible in the calendar makes it easier to protect.
• Headphones. The most practical intervention in an open-plan office, and it does not require permission from anyone.
• Breaking the long task into pieces. Putting in interim deliveries makes both starting and continuing easier.
• A flexible start time. If mornings are hard, this single change changes a lot.

None of these requests requires disclosing a diagnosis, and knowing this relieved me a great deal. I covered it in detail in the article on ADHD at work and accommodations. The European consensus statement (Kooij et al., 2019) also counts workplace accommodations as a support that stands beside treatment in adult ADHD.

Is freelancing the solution

A frequently given piece of advice, and it cuts both ways.

The good side: Choosing your own hours, taking on work you are interested in, escaping long meetings.

The hard side: The structure that comes from outside disappearing completely. Invoicing, tax, follow-up, writing proposals; all of these are the kind of work ADHD struggles with most. Also, irregular income makes money management much harder.

When I set up my own company I lived both at once. The work itself suited me very much; everything around the work strained me. Freelancing works not by removing structure but by building your own. If you cannot do that, a salaried job can be more protective; I wrote the details in the article on freelancing.

How common is struggling at work

The study by de Graaf and colleagues (2008), based on international workforce data, shows that ADHD has measurable effects on work performance and absenteeism.

So if you are struggling, it is not a personal inadequacy; it is a documented picture. This is also the ground for asking for accommodations. When I learned this, I stopped seeing asking as begging for a favor.

The career zigzag

Changing jobs often is common in ADHD and is usually read as a sign of instability.

Another reading is possible: leaving a structure that does not suit you and looking for one that does. In the glossary it appears as the career zigzag.

But to be honest, constantly changing also produces a cost: the loss of what you have accumulated and the tiredness of starting from scratch each time. Trying adaptation before changing often gives better results; I went into the details in the article on changing jobs often.

My own criterion

To understand whether a job suits me, I now ask a single question: does this job give me energy, or take energy from me?

The answer is not clear in the first week. It becomes clear in the third month, because the fading of novelty happens around then and what remains is the real shape of the work. In the jobs where I decided by the excitement of the first week, I was wrong almost every time.

I also accepted this: no job meets all the items. The point is not to find a perfect fit; it is to see which of the straining items I can change.