I just read Keppig's post Types of Jobs Good or Bad for ADHD's (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1820).

28.4. People with ADD/.ADHD should avoid the following jobs:
a. Managerial roles: desk-bound, little autonomy, need to focus on the detailed work of others (sub-ordinates)
b. Administrative/Secretarial jobs: desk-bound, little autonomy, focus on details of organising and scheduling,
c. Work that requires focus on details everyday (e.g. accounting, administrative, secretarial)
d. Desk-bound work that have little direct bearing on real-life activities (dealing with abstract theory).

I've been working as a staff assistant for the past year. Yes, I was fired in June, but I started a job in an Image Analysis Lab and I'm loving it! A few things are coming back up to bite me in the a** - mainly memory and losing things. Nothing huge yet.

Is there anyone out there who is in an administrative position and even remotely successful at it?

Hello Kelly,

I am the marketing manager for an industrial safety and maintenance supply catalog company. Among my duties are tracking product sales and determining what's making money and what's just holding its own. This involves dealing with a lot of numbers, charts & graphs. The good part is I am left to myself (no one else wants to go near the job), work for the most part at my own pace, and a couple of months ago got a good annual review, a raise and a nice bonus.

It's a desk-bound job, but either it or I am an exception to Keppig's post. I think perhaps it is the "little autonomy" Keppig mentions that may be the key. Although I do have deadlines, I determine what I need to work on each day and am able to hyper-focus on that which I have chosen to do. I have had days where I had trouble focusing on something and have just put it away, went outside and walked around the block, then returned and worked on something else.

My bosses are aware of my ADD, and although I don't think they fully understand what it is they do make attempts to provide me with what I need to perform my job to the best of my ability. I count myself fortunate in this as this has not always been the case.

Mark

Hey Mark -

I think I need to LEARN how to be autonomous. My parents pretty much made all my decisions for me when I was younger and now that I'm married - my hubby and I are both so indecisive...

I spent Friday putting out a couple fires - so hopefully that will help. It's taking ALOT of courage to go into work today.

I do get a wide variety of tasks in this position and lots of project - so if I get out of focus - I can move on to something else for a while. That's really good, unless I forget what I was doing.

Kelly

I know what you mean about forgetting what you are doing.

If I didn't finish what I was working on before quitting time I would come in the next day and have no idea what I had been doing or what step I had I left off on. That was especially true during all this holiday "work a couple days, off a couple days" stuff.

I started leaving post-it notes on everything telling me what I was doing, where I had stopped, the date I last worked on it, etc.

Mark