Distracted by Design: The ADHD Brain in a Modern Maze

How primitive instincts clash with modern demands—and three people who reclaimed focus and success.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at last, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

—James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name, 1961

While distractability may be an asset to a hunter in a primitive world, helping them notice everything in their environment and thus making it easier to both spot food and avoid predators, it can be a real challenge in today’s Farmer’s worlds of school and the workplace. Here are three stories shared with me about overcoming this aspect of ADHD:

From Melissa, a junior high school student in Ohio:

When they discovered that I had ADHD, my mom didn’t want me taking Ritalin or anything because she’s one of those natural type of people. She’s mostly a vegetarian and everything. So she asked the doctor what else we could do.

He said that I should try to sit in the front row of the classroom.

That sounded kind of stupid to me, but Mom went in and talked to all my teachers (which was really embarrassing) and they agreed, and suddenly I was sitting in the front row of every one of my classes.

What happened was that when I was sitting in the front row it was a lot harder to see all the other kids, because they were sitting behind me. So it was easier to pay attention to the teacher, and when she noticed I was starting to space out, she’d walk over toward me to get my attention.

And this simple, stupid thing brought all my grades except math up by at least one grade. I’m still working on math, and mom says a tutor is what she’s going to try next.

Bill works in marketing for a medium-sized company in Los Angeles and tells me learned a similar lesson:

I have an office that’s all mine, but for years I always left the door open. I felt that if I closed the door, people would think that I was being antisocial, or that maybe I was goofing off or making personal phone calls or something.

I know there are people who do this sort of thing, but I’m not one of them.

So for years my door was open, and I was constantly being dis­tracted. Somebody would walk by whom I knew and I’d feel obliged to say hello, often leading to a conversation. I’d hear snippets of discus­sions from out in the hall and nearby offices (there’s one guy two offices down from me who talks so loud whenever he’s on the phone that we can all hear him). This really cut into my work, although I don’t think I realized it at the time.

Then when I learned about my ADHD from my son being diagnosed, one of the suggestions my son’s counselor at school gave us was that he have an interruption-free environment to do his homework. We’d always made him do it at the kitchen table, but he complained that there were too many distractions there, and that he wanted to do it in his room. We figured this was just an excuse to get out from under his mom’s watchful eye. But the counselor suggested we let him try it, and we did, and it worked.

So I thought, I wonder if that would help me at work? And I started closing the door to my office for an hour or two each day, during the time that I most needed to work on the most difficult things or those that required the most concentration.

The results were rather startling. I just about doubled my productiv­ity. I never realized it before, but now that I look around, I think it’s safe to say that most people in the workplace waste 80% to 90% of their day, and most of that waste is triggered by distractions. By reclaiming just two hours a day—just 30% or so of my day—I’ve been able to increase by more than 100% the amount of work I get done. And the quality of my work has improved as well.

I brought this idea home with me, too. When I have projects to work on at home, or when I want to spend high-quality time with my wife or son, I try to find a distraction-free place, or close the door.

So that’s my ADHD success story, and it’s really pretty simple: close the door and work, think, or talk in peace and quiet.

Samuel wrote from Salt Lake City about how he eliminates distractions when talking with his wife:

My wife loves to have the TV on, and she’s not distracted by it. But when it’s on in the same room, I must look at it. It’s like it’s some kind of a magnet, all those images flickering by.

Because my wife likes the TV on all the time, there’s almost never a time when we’re together and it’s not on. She has one in the kitchen, one in our bedroom, and one in the living room. Sometimes they’re all three on at the same time.

Now for years she’s complained that I don’t pay attention to her when she’s talking. When I learned about ADHD and realized that I had it, I realized that maybe she was right and wasn’t just being hypersensitive. I decided to start working on paying attention to her.

What I found out, though, was that I can’t pay attention to her—or anybody else, for that matter—when the TV is on in the room. For me, it’s like trying to eat soup out of a bowl when you’re underwater: it all sort of mushes together, her and the TV.

So I asked her if she would mind if I turned off the TV when we talked. Of course, she objected to that. So I said, what if I can pay attention to you better if the TV’s off? And she decided that it would be a reasonable compromise.

I’m here to tell you that that made an incredible difference. We now have discussions and I’m actually paying attention, because the TV isn’t distracting me. It’s made a big difference in our marriage, and I’ve learned a lot about how I pay attention to things. TV and ADHD are a bad combination, unless all you want to do is watch the TV!