Practical Tips — At Work

For years I was the person with brilliant ideas who couldn't file a report on time. These are the things that have actually closed that gap.

Most workplaces are built around sustained, linear attention — long meetings, open-plan interruptions, vague verbal instructions you're expected to just remember. None of that plays to an ADHD brain's strengths. These are the adjustments — some tiny, some requiring a slightly awkward conversation — that have made the biggest difference for me.

Treat your inbox as an in-tray, not a to-do list. Emails are not tasks — they're requests to eventually turn into tasks. If a message needs action, pull it into your actual task system straight away. Otherwise it just sits there quietly generating background guilt.
Write down what you want to say before you forget it. In meetings, the thought you had thirty seconds ago has genuinely gone by the time there's a gap to speak. Jot a one-word trigger the moment it lands — it's usually enough to bring the whole thought back when your turn comes.
Block real focus time, and defend it. An empty calendar slot gets filled by other people's priorities within a day. Put recurring "focus time" in your calendar as if it were a real meeting, and decline things that land on it unless they genuinely can't move.
Turn vague instructions into a checklist immediately. "Can you sort the client report" is not something your memory can hold reliably for three days. The moment a task lands — verbally or in writing — convert it into concrete written steps. Future you will have no idea what past you meant otherwise.
Set yourself an earlier, fake deadline. Real deadlines don't feel real until they're dangerously close — that's just how ADHD urgency perception works. Give yourself an artificial deadline a few days early, and treat it as seriously as the real one.
Keep a "parking lot" for stray ideas. A brilliant unrelated idea mid-task is a genuine hazard — it can hijack the next two hours if you let it. Write it in one line in a running note and get straight back to what you were doing. It'll still be there later.
Batch similar tasks together. Switching between different types of work — admin, calls, deep work, email — carries a real cognitive cost. Group similar tasks into blocks rather than interleaving them through the day.
Consider disclosing, on your own terms. You don't owe anyone your diagnosis. But a good manager, told clearly what actually helps you (written instructions, agenda-in-advance, fewer last-minute changes), can make reasonable adjustments that make a genuinely outsized difference. Decide deliberately rather than by default.

Tips as an Adult → My Story →