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Meg Edwards
GTD and the ADD link
I presented at the 14th annual CHADD (Children and Adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder) Conference and received a big round of applause for how the Getting Things Done thought process can assist adults with attention issues.
I was asked to speak because of my previous experience in the ADD community. Before I joined the David Allen Company, I was an ADD coach for four years and had worked at Landmark College for three years (the only accredited college in the U.S. for students with AD/HD, dyslexia, and other learning disabilities) and experienced how the Getting Things Done methodology was transformative for individuals with ADD.
Current research emphasizes the importance of executive function as a core issue with adults with attention challenges and states that adults with AD/HD have difficulty getting organized and getting started on work-related tasks.
Tom Brown with Yale University describes executive function as the thought process that involves organizing, prioritizing, and activating the brain for work tasks. Does this sound familiar to those of you familiar with the GTD process? Dr. Brown continues describing the requirements of the higher order brain function inherent in creative and high-powered work that many of our clients excel at and are drawn to. The challenge these people face is the ability to plan, prioritize, strategize, make decisions and follow through to task completion.
Bright creative people who are in knowledge work and have attention issues are often on a collision course because of the challenges they face with executive function and the need to prioritize their tasks. The feedback that the David Allen Company has received is that the GTD methodology can provide the structure and the freedom to define our work. GTD is, in essence, learned executive function.
I searched for a solution for about a decade before discovering the ADHD/GTD link. Let me share with you the experience of one of the people that I coached:
“My Association with Meg Edwards goes back to when I began as an Admission Director at Landmark College. Therefore when Meg called me telling me that she was working with a very effective organization system I didn’t take it lightly. Meg knew full well, as does anyone who worked with me the extent of how organizational impaired I was. I’m just about constitutionally incapable of sticking to a process involving a sequence of steps. At the time of Meg’s call, I was at the twenty-year career mark; I had tried every system known, and had managed at best a barely functional approach to the information flow of my job.
“When Meg described the two day Workflow Coaching process to me, my first response was, ‘Meg, if I could stick to a system, I wouldn’t need a system.’ I had given up ever being able to comfortably manage the deluge of new information.”
I then explained to the client how Workflow Coaching is different and how applicable it is for people dealing with the types of issues which this client was facing on a day to day basis.
The client continued, “I couldn’t imagine how, but I knew Meg well enough and trusted that she knew my strengths and weaknesses well enough, that she wouldn’t say it if it weren’t true.
“After two days of working with Meg, and after five months of implementing the Workflow Process, I feel as though it’s the first system I’ve been able to maintain for more than two weeks. What’s more, since it’s designed around the way I process information, it’s absolutely natural for me to maintain.
“Since my weakness is following a multiple-step process, Meg showed me how to conceptualize every incoming piece of information: phone call, mail, and email, and the myriad of work tasks into single next actions. Then I record these next actions on one of five lists. Everything I need to do, but can’t complete right at the moment gets captured on one of these five lists. In five months nothing has gotten lost. As a result of knowing where everything is, I feel I now have an extra day and a half each week. When colleagues see my office for the first time since I did the Workflow Coaching with Meg, their jaw drops. It’s that amazing.”
The key here, and what lightens my own heart, is the description that the GTD process is so natural, and indeed it is. It captures the natural way that we all think and allows us to distribute our thoughts (cognitive distribution is now what this is called) into a system that we choose and trust. Yes, the GTD process is like any game of tennis or golf. It requires practice if you want to master the skill. It is a game that can be transformative and fun if you are willing to play, especially if you are a person with AD/HD.
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