ADHD and Work Performance: How Self-Awareness Drives Success

There’s no doubt that you want to do excellent work. You want to bring value to your profession.

And value for your profession means that you’ve thought deeply about every contingency. Every nuance in the law. Every detail and counter argument. And you’ve delivered all this on time too!

But you have ADHD.

And you received feedback that your last piece of work felt rushed and too thin – again. Yikes! That was not what you intended.

You’re committed to your firm and to producing excellent work.

So what happened?

How come you didn’t spot yourself repeating the same behaviour despite your best intentions?

What you already know that led to this result:

You committed to a timeframe that was too short to produce quality without panic.
You felt rushed and ‘just wanted to get it done’.
You over-estimated the clarity of your arguments.
You submitted the work before it was ready so you could tell yourself you met a deadline.
You simply didn’t notice any of this while it was occurring.

It’s this last point that frustrates you the most. You didn’t see yourself operating at a low bar while it was taking place. And you have no idea how you could possibly spot your own behaviour – in real time – in order to change it.

The key? Self-awareness.

When you’re deeply self-aware, you’re able to change your behaviour – at the right time.

But in adult ADHD, executive functioning delays tend to create lower self-awareness.

Here are the brain-based delays that undermine self-awareness:

Interoception – The ability to sense the inner self, physically and emotionally. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12402-019-00299-3 If you can’t have access to inner cues such as muscle tightness and breathing patterns, it’s harder to know where you need to adapt.
Self-monitoring – You don’t watch yourself ‘do’. If you can’t see it, you can’t change it.
Metacognition – The skill of using your thinking to cue your behaviour is less developed. In the case of ADHD, metacognition is usually fully developed by the late 20s.
Working memory – Working memory is impaired in ADHD. You can’t hold thoughts long enough to use them to reflect meaningfully.
Inhibition – ADHD brains are meant to be in action, not to stop and reflect. You may find you can’t inhibit yourself from slowing down, let alone stop. Many of my clients ask me, ‘How do you stop? How does anyone do that?”
Emotional dysregulation – Big emotions take center stage in ADHD. They drive reactive behaviours. Calm, goal-directed behaviour can feel out of reach.
Time blindness – You don’t see things in your mind’s eye across time. It all occurs at once. Time blindness makes it difficult to learn from past mistakes or see how to break down tasks across time.
Sustaining focus – You find it difficult to sustain your focus long enough to work through the deeper layers of thought.
Regulating speed – Pacing the speed at which you work is challenging. You rely on bursts of sudden motivation and inspiration. You move too quickly to slow down and reflect.

How do you feel reading this? Overwhelmed? Hopeless?

I want you to know this: You come by these challenges honestly. You are not lazy. You do not lack integrity.

None of this is your fault.

And you can do something about it!

Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to see yourself in the moment, and understand how your thoughts, feelings and actions impact your behaviour.

Self-awareness is the ability to see your relationship with yourself – how you treat yourself, how well you listen to yourself.

And it’s how you are with others, too. When you’re self-aware, you know how you affect others and the environment around you.

When you’re self-aware, you have an accurate sense of your strengths and weaknesses, and you know how to work with each of them.

Self-awareness is a powerful tool for goal-directed behaviour. It’s the skill for staying on track and actualizing your potential.

And there’s a reciprocal relationship between these executive functioning challenges and your self-awareness.

The better your Executive Functioning, the better your self-awareness. The better your self-awareness, the better your Executive Functioning.

When you’re self-aware in the moment, you can shift the way you work if you need to. You remember that you want to produce excellent work, and that you can seamlessly self-monitor, adapt and execute toward that goal.

Self-awareness supports you in performing at the high level you’re capable of – in spite of what the ADHD portion of your brain tells you to do!

Neuroplasticity and Self-Awareness

What you focus on grows. Decide to put your attention on yourself – differently.

You have the capacity to be self-aware, but you need to decide to pay attention to developing that self-awareness.

Every time you take a new action – and repeat it – you develop new neural pathways. Over time, it becomes a habit. Ingrained. Easier.

Develop Self-Awareness: 9 Keys

Pay attention differently – Shift your focus from autopilot to consciousness. Notice what you’re paying attention to. Allow yourself to move from the detail to the big picture and back again. Learn to see things from different angles.
Be present – Cultivate presence by putting your focus on body sensations such as breathing, tingling in the fingertips, or the space between your navel and your back.
When you’re present in the moment with nowhere else to be, you won’t be in a story about what you should be doing.
Observe your mind – Observe your thoughts like clouds in the sky. They come and they go. Notice how much spaciousness exists in your mind – without judging any of it. Being mindfully aware in this way gives you space between you and your thoughts, allowing you to direct your attention more powerfully.
Slow down to speed up – Deliberately decide to slow yourself down before you engage in a task. When you set an intention to be slower in your actions, you’re better able to see yourself in action.
Pay attention to time – Create ways to ‘see’ time. You’ll see yourself more clearly in your mind’s eye, and you’ll be better able to execute tasks on time. Our sense of self is built around time: memories and anticipated events. Setting aside time for observing, monitoring and adjusting is self-awareness in action! The more self-aware you are, the better able you are to manage time.
Reflect, reflect, reflect – Choose your favourite way to reflect. Journaling is one way, but ideally you want to be reflecting throughout your day. Ask yourself periodically, “What is my internal state? What might I need to adjust? What is my intention for the day? Do I need to slow down? Am I on track to deliver quality?”
Reflect on your new strategies – Commit to reflecting on your new strategies. Are they working? Were you engaging with them? Whether it’s a new checklist, schedule, or visual cue, did it do what you hoped it would do? What might you change so it works better? Something inside of you?
Ask for regular feedback – Get feedback regularly. Adults with ADHD often have difficulty estimating their own attentional capacities. They also tend to overestimate their cognitive abilities. Regular feedback is a way to check your perceptions of how you’re doing. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00702-020-02293-w
Be compassionate – Be compassionate with yourself. The strength of your self-awareness will be directly affected by how lovingly you allow and accept what you come to know about yourself. Judgment shuts down reflection, and it feeds unhelpful rumination. Compassion doesn’t let you off the hook, but it does set you up to adjust whatever behaviour doesn’t sit well with you. Compassion opens your heart, increases your flexibility, and enhances your confidence.

The next time you receive unfavourable feedback…

Next time you receive unfavourable feedback, use it to your advantage.

Own the lapse in attention. Acknowledge it.

Commit to being more mindful about the time frame you need to deliver excellent work.

Reflect on what other strategies you need to deliver your best.

Celebrate your openness and willingness to being more strategic.

This is the path. And it get easier – every time you repeat it.

To develop your self-awareness powerfully, consider executive coaching. Executive coaching illuminates all the corners of your internal world. You come to learn who you really are – compassionately and joyfully. You have a partner committed to walking the path with you, challenging you, supporting you, celebrating you.

Choose to give yourself this gift.

Ready to turn self-awareness into action? Let’s talk