So I Married an ADDer

Jennifer Koretsky Has Tentatively Accepted

Working with Jen has been a great experience so far, but I'm still trying to get used to the way she works. It's been impossible for me to connect with her face to face, which is ridiculous considering we live together.

First, I tried just popping into her office. That was a disaster. It would have been safer popping into a bear cave. I had some success with shower meetings (the only way I could get a captive audience with Jen), but there's only so much you can accomplish in the bathroom.

So I tried the corporate approach and sent a meeting request from Microsoft Outlook. I thought that was a good idea, to plan a meeting a few days in advance. The response I got? "Jennifer Koretsky has tentatively accepted your meeting request."

Tentatively?! Tentatively accepting something in the ADD world is the equivalent of totally ignoring it. So the meeting requests are out.

I decided to stop trying to have meetings with Jen. I wanted to see how much we could accomplish over email and impromptu conversations.

Then (and I kid you not) on Saturday night just after midnight, as we were getting ready for bed, Jen turns to me and says, "Can we have a meeting now?"

 

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That's Why It's Called Work

There was a great article in the parody newspaper The Onion this week that you can use to remind your ADD partner that everyone has aspects of their job that they hate.

New Lion Tamer Shocked By Vast Amount Of Paperwork

BARABOO, WI—Traveling circus performer Scott Mueller, who said he has dreamed of becoming a lion tamer since childhood, was dismayed Monday to discover that the most death-defying part of his new job is not putting his head into the mouths of ferocious animals, but the abundance of paperwork his profession requires.

"When you're a kid, you just assume it's all whips and chairs and keeping roaring jungle predators at bay," Mueller said. "But it's far less thrilling than it sounds. Do you have any idea how many forms are involved in transporting a federally controlled predator across state lines via train? And every county has a completely different set of health codes and what have you. Hell, just processing the immunization records alone takes me like six hours."

Mueller added that he sometimes wonders why he left the insurance business in the first place.

Even though this article is satire, it illustrates a good point. Every job, no matter how exciting it sounds, has some drudgery to it. Your ADDer may classify more things as drudgery than not, but it might help to remind them that work is work, even for lion tamers.

 

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Time is Not on My Side

You see this clock? This is the clock in Jen's office. It's a pretty big clock, kind of like the one you would stare at in high school waiting for the bell to ring.

I took this picture at 11:45 AM on July 31st. Please note that the clock says it's 1:50 PM on the 16th.

The clock doesn't need fresh batteries (we tried). It's just a dud. But rather than return it, or at the very least take it off the wall, Jen has chosen to leave it there.

She says she doesn't even notice it, so it doesn't bother her. Forget the fact that it's a huge clock right above her computer screen.

Every time I go in there (which is quite often), I get completely thrown off. Time holds no significance in that room. It could be 2:00 in the afternoon or 11:00 at night - the clock will be wrong, and Jen couldn't care less. Because when she's working, she's working. She's not looking at the clock, and she certainly doesn't care what time it is.

It drives me absolutely insane. Because in my non-ADD world, time actually means something.

 

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Let's Have a Meeting

Halfway through my second week working with Jen, I learned the hard way that she doesn't like meetings.

I can email her all the questions I want and she'll answer them almost instantly. But if I walk across the hall to propose a quick meeting, I get shot down.

When I was still at my corporate job and working on AMG part time, Jen and I had a long meeting once a week to go over everything. I would draw up an agenda, and we'd sit on the deck or go to Starbucks and painstakingly go through each item. After about two months of this, Jen finally said, "I don't want to have these meetings anymore. Just email me when something happens."

Apparently that's still the protocol even now that I'm across the hall. Any personal questions are eligible for shouting. "Did the dogs go out?!" is okay. Anything business-related is met with "I don't know, email me."

When she does agree to a meeting, I never have her full attention. While I'm talking, she's balancing the checkbook, catching up with Perez, or looking at kittens. I have to repeat myself three times.

But I've found a solution that works perfectly. Shower Meetings. Yes, Shower Meetings. When Jen is in the shower, she's a captive audience, and I've got her undivided attention. I stand outside the shower with my notebook and pen, and in 15 minutes I've got all my questions answered. It's brilliant.

I recommend Shower Meetings for all of you non-ADD spouses. It works just as well with personal conversations!

 

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Complicated

I'm into my second week of working full time with Jen, and she's clearly starting to get frustrated with the way I do things. She wanted me here in the first place because I'm organized and good with details, but she keeps accusing me of overcomplicating everything.

For example, she asked me to make a contact sheet of phone numbers for people we call all the time. No problem. I made a very nice table in Excel. She hated it. "Why can't you just use Word?" So I made a table in Word. Apparently she doesn't want a table. She just wants a mishmash of tabs. Something that can't even alphabetize itself!

And that's only one example. I am struggling to find ADD-friendly ways to organize a business that still make sense to me. I know that I have a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be, but I underestimated the challenge of coming into an ADD-run business and having to make sense of it all.

Knowing what I do about adult ADD, I understand that it's critical for ADDers to do things their own way. Most of them have spent most of their lives conforming to standards that made absolutely no sense to them – standards that have caused endless frustration and feelings of failure. I don't want to be part of the problem. I want Jen to steer this ship. It would just be nice if I could find the rudder.

 

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Differently Organized

The chaos has died down and I'm settling into my new work environment. I love working from home (especially after commuting 5 hours a day for a year), but it's definitely going to take me some time to adjust.

In her newsletter yesterday, Jen had some nice things to say about my joining AMG:

"As the non-ADDer in the company, Erin adds strengths and skills that compliment the rest of us very well. She's highly organized and detail-oriented, and she enjoys managing projects and creating systems. Better her than me."

While I appreciate the kind words, I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to live up to them. This environment is very ADD, and trying to organize everything from the finances to the files is an enormous project. It can be done, but it can't be done in a day. And that's what I need to remind myself as I stare at the pile of papers breeding on my desk.

Jen has been organizing herself in ways that work for her, which is an absolute must for ADDers. A lot of people with ADD get criticized for being sloppy when they're actually just organized differently. Jen can tell you where every single piece of paper is, but her systems don't make any sense to me.

We need to find systems that work for both of us (which is essentially the point of this blog) and so far we've done so successfully in our home and in our relationship. Now we just need to come together on managing the business.

I'm going to start by removing all the coffee cups and water glasses from Jen's office...

 

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First Day on the Job

Jen has officially welcomed me into the ADD Management Group, and I couldn't be more excited. We've set everything up so that we don't drive each other crazy. We each have our own private offices and we're keeping different hours.

I got to my desk bright eyed and bushy tailed at 8:00 this morning, and it was all downhill from there. At 8:30, a caravan of shirtless contractors show up to work on the house. The dogs start barking themselves hoarse and don't stop for several hours.

I start to work on the company's finances, but Jen keeps interrupting me. She read something fascinating online, she can't find her pants, there's dirt coming out of the faucet... Suddenly I have to take an unplanned, 90-minute break to drive to the plumbing supply store for a new water filter.

When I get back, Jen is leaving for an appointment. I'm finally going to be able to work on the finances uninterrupted. But the minute I get to my desk, my stomach starts growling. I haven't eaten. I look through the kitchen and come up with frozen chicken nuggets and Triscuits. Not exactly the New York deli lunch I'm used to.

Then it's back to work. Not a minute later, the head contractor is ringing the doorbell. I find him sitting on my front porch with his ass crack completely hanging out of his pants. They're finished (and not a moment too soon), so now I can go change the water filter in the basement.

I am a better amateur plumber than most women, but that doesn't mean I'm any good. I unscrew the old filter and install the new one, but when I turn the water back on it sprays everywhere. Fine, it needs to be adjusted. But now I can't unscrew it. I made it too tight. My day is turning into an episode of I Love Lucy, and Ricky is on his way home.

I call Jen's father for help and before I can even get the words out, he's on his way over. But if he doesn't get here before Jen's phone session, the dogs are going to bark their heads off and disrupt her call. I decide to keep vigil on the porch to dry off.

The first one to show up is neither Jen nor her father. It's the guy who just bought the house next door. He wants to shoot the breeze. I am soaking wet and wild-eyed. Jen pulls up with only two minutes to spare before her call. I tell her that her father is on the way but I have a plan to keep the dogs quiet. The new neighbor wisely excuses himself.

Jen starts her call just as her father pulls up. I meet him outside and swiftly escort him into the basement, avoiding the dogs before they get a whiff of Grandpa. It takes both of us to unscrew the filter. He lectures me on why I shouldn't install plumbing fixtures like Superman. He escapes out the back while I distract the dogs with cookies.

Now it's 6:00, and I'm exhausted. I didn't accomplish everything I wanted to on my first day at AMG, which included not only desk work but an hour of house cleaning as well.

Jen has been laughing at me all day because this is what an ADDer goes through every day. I don't know how they make it out alive. With all the interruptions and disasters, it's a wonder anyone can get anything done.

I just hope Day 2 is better than Day 1.

 

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