School was so easy, why is work so hard?

School was always easy for me.

Work never has been.

My Brain on 'Hard'

The type of work that is hard for my brain isn't breaking down a project into small pieces and assigning them. It's not the 5-hour shift at Jo-Ann Fabrics as a young adult.  It is not the act of teaching swim lessons or coaching a workout. Those are 'Easy Buttons."

What's hard for me?

It's doing my pieces of that project puzzle before the other people need it to do their pieces. 

It's staying on task and not deviating from it.

It's trying desperately to not go down a rabbit hole and spending 4 hours on research for something not exactly relevant but kinda is relevant and you know you probably need the information for something later and having all this knowledge is why you're so gifted so why not go down the rabbit hole

It's being terrified to stop working because you may never get back to this project because its not finished and if you stop you may not be able to start again even if you take notes on where you left off

It's having 45 post its with random information on them, sometimes the same idea written over and over...and realizing you need someone to keep track of your ideas and tally how many times you mention and idea because those are the probably the ones you should work on, but not having the capacity to turn your 45 post its into something cohesive and when you finally sit down to do that you realize you've done 22 of the post it tasks already without them even being on your task list even tho you can't remember where you put your keys

It's thinking something takes 30 minutes when it takes 2 hours on a good day and not even being able to start the thing on a bad day

It's having business coaches/experts tell you to 'eat the frog' by doing the one big task you need to do FIRST but your brain being like "but you have 45 other small tasks. do them first. Then you can focus on the big task." but then your brain adds 52 more small tasks and you never get to the frog thing until its thedeadline and then you work in a panic until its done while berating yourself and insisting NEXT TIME YOU WILL DO BETTER but you can't because your brain is like but 52 tasks, Caroline. FIFTY TWO

It's constantly seeking better ways to keep your brain organized but realizing NOTHING WORKS and you just constantly try to make it better and nothing helps and its an endless loop of trying to master this thing because you should just try harder because you're so smart

It's people saying "you need to delegate"

It's those same people not understanding that in order to delegate you have to figure out what to delegate. and how. And then hope the person you delegate to doesn't see thru your façade of 'put togetherness' and how you're literally failing at life (but you really aren't failing at all it just feels that way because the people giving you advice are NT and they have no idea how hard it is for you to like...take a shower and get dressed let alone DELEGATE"

It's articulating what is hard for you. Then documenting the hard. Then delegating it. Then managing what you delegated. And trusting the person you delegated to do do it for you. All while still doing the hard.

But, school was easy for me.

School, in general, was an easy button. 

There was a clear path to a desired goal (the desired grade, typically an A or B)

Teachers TOLD you what to focus on and for how long you had to do it. 

They told you what you needed to have done and by when to get to your desired goal.

Spelling tests were ALWAYS on Fridays.  Art was ALWAYS on Tuesday.  Lunch was ALWAYS at this time. 

Especially in elementary school, I was bright and most work came easy for me and I could complete it quickly and accurately because of my processing speed, and often then got to help teach it to others (which then reinforced my own knowledge of the topic)

I had teachers that gave us spelling and reading contracts and allowed us to pursue our own individual interests while setting expectations of the work that needed done.

Didn't like calculus? Too bad. You were stuck there for 50 minutes. And if I had 30 minutes to work on homework I'd sit there and do it because it was better to do it when I had help from a teacher than on my own when I couldn't even remember how to get started. 

Deadlines were already set.  There were consequences if you didn't meet them.

I was really good at the game of school.  Not that I didn't have a challenging time in some subjects (we won't even go into how hard most of the sciences and parts of school that required memorizing were for me), but school in general had enough structure to provide rituals and routines that helped me manage my undiagnosed adhd. 

(Not to mention the gifted classes that allowed me to be with other nerdy, bright, quirky kids).

My ADHD flew under the radar until I was 36 years old. Some people mentioned to me in my early 30's I may have it but I denied it, mostly because the classic stereotype of adhd --the boy who is all over the place and can't sit still-- that wasn't ME. I was extremely driven and accomplished many things.  I could focus on piano for hours. I could read for hours. I was incredibly smart. I could come up with complex elaborate plans and systems and maintain them.  I could build something from nothing.  I was not what I knew ADHD 'was supposed to look like'

Not true for girls.

I'm writing about this because I see so many women in my adhd groups whose psychiatrists that diagnose them tell them "you can't have adhd because you did well in school" to which I want women to have the ability to articulate "I DID WELL IN SCHOOL BECAUSE IT PROVIDED THE STRUCTURE I NEEDED TO GET THINGS DONE".  And also because when you were in school you also didn't have to pay bills, clean your house, be responsible for other smaller humans that live with you. Your executive function wasn't taxed to the max!  

School also was for me:

• Getting lost in a book for hours and not noticing that the class moved on to other subjects
• Talking to a peer on the playground (and soccer field, ha) about nerdy stuff. (We still do this when we get together) vs interacting with peers (helllooo interest driven brain)
• Really not understanding the social cues that were happening with females especially 6th-10th grade or so)
• Forgetting to ask my friends to be my roomate after my freshman year of college
• Finding the sport of swimming which is a whole host of reasons its adhd friendly
• Friends with guys because they were easier to 'understand'
• Most of my friends were outside my school, and I never dated inside my school/team (except like 1 or 2 times which I realized why I do NOT date inside my school/team)--out of sight, out of mind is the easiest way for someone with ADHD to get over someone....you know, its like the fridge drawer where produce goes to die. That's where my ex's live.
• Never checking into the office when I arrived after college classes because I would forget and/or the walk to the office was way out of the direct, most efficient path to the classroom. (Sorry Mrs Wilms!)
• Preferring individual projects unless we were working in pairs in a classroom setting without outside work
• In HS being really emotionally dysregulated and processing it by spending class periods working in the darkroom with Deftones blaring (to this day, deep bass of Deftones, Tool, etc is a huge regulating factor in my body)
• Fidgeting by the way I sit in chairs. I still prefer to sit on the floor at a conference.
• Being identified as gifted and spending one day a week in 5th and 6th grade with my peers that were also weird and quirky like me and gave me space to belong when I didn't understand why the kid I liked dumped me for the girl with big boobs
• Not understanding why if we made plans to go to the movies, sometimes we didn't end up at the movies. What is going on? Why did we deviate from THE PLAN
• The sport of swimming providing a TIME CONSTRAINT on my after-school hours, forcing me to get my homework done before practice (hello deadline dopamine) so I could swim (hello regulation, repetition, and exhaustion to sleep better), very little social interaction, the ability to just be in my own head, and a REASON to eat well.
• Winning the invention convention in 6th grade, coming out with a 2-sided mailbox BEFORE Step 2 launched theirs.
• Forgetting to do the study cards we were allowed to prepare and use during a the test, but breaking the curve (unintentionally) of everyone that prepared...oops
• Convincing history professors to let me write research papers on a special interest topic they sparked during class-because I knew I could get an A on the paper (it interested me!) and I didn't have to memorize arbitrary dates that were meaningless to my brain. 
• Being able to drop classes in college that I THOUGHT would be interesting but after getting to class realized 'OH HELL NO"
• Getting A's in my major classes and highly interesting classes, (plus the ability to take classes of interest!) in college, B's and C's in the rest, because, 1-I didn't know how to study, and 2-Why bother putting all that energy into something that I already knew wasn't applicable to my goals in life. I was perfectly happy with a 3.0-3.5 GPA, because I was busy swimming, sports editor of the school paper, spending hours in the darkroom on campus, spending hours learning photoshop in a digital photography course, and working both on and off campus as a lifeguard and swim instructor.  

Work is FUCKING HARD.

Work has always been hard.  I'm just now, at 39, realizing how hard work has always been for me.

I can't set my own deadlines. I have to come up with the project, the outline, and get it done.

There aren't terribly a lot of outside consequences as an entrepreneur if you don't get your work done on time except potential lost income but even that can be justified. You can constantly push deadlines back.  You can do things JUST before the deadline. You can work odd hours that work with your brain. You can come up with all these ideas and start them without finishing others. Even with programs like focusmate, there's not any consequence except my own guilt for not staying on task.

I'm luckily also gifted in the ability to create systems so I don't have to use so much brain power.  I built software in the early 2010 era to manage lesson scheduling because the back and forth of dealing with parents and schedules was too much. My adhd got in the way and I never finished the project to what I had intended it to be, but the software functioned well enough for YEARS to where now other software exists to do the same job. I spend hours coming up with systems. Most of the time they work out pretty damn good.

Where I'm at

Sometimes I wish I could hire someone to be my 'teacher'. To be like "OK Today's assignment is this. Let's go over the steps you need to accomplish.  The bell rings in 45 minutes, lets see what you can do in that time. Then we'll go over it, I'll give you some positive feedback and then refocus your attention to complete this or move forward to something else. And if we move forward, I'll tell you later where you left off and your next steps."

Honest.

That feels like heaven. 

Can I hire someone like that? That's their job. They take all my ideas and get them into workable tasks with clear directions and then I execute them. 

I'm great at ideas. Systems. Organization. Not day-to-day work. For that I need a person to execute for me.

OR 

I need a 'teacher human' to take those things I need and give them back to me as 'assignments' to complete. With a rubric telling me what grade I will get based on the level of work I want to complete. I can decide how much brain power I want to put for that particular project.

But they also can't tell me what to do or how to execute it. They just need to tell me the end result and their expectations and the time I have to do it.

Maybe one of my former teachers who is retired is up for the task?

 

Side quest: The JoAnn's I worked at in my hometown was a dopamine seeker's heaven: Only 2 staff members running the whole store between stocking, cutting fabric, ringing out checkout, straightening, back to cutting fabric, back to stocking, check this person out, and eventually you could circle back to 'stock this box of stuff you left out all day' .... all while leaving an acceptable trail of half finished tasks and projects behind you that you can eventually finish before leaving for the day, because, you know, you only get paid to work so long and your shit has to be done before you clock out ( helllllo deadline challenge accepted!)