People with ADHD often face deficits in executive functions. Planning, organizing, or simply remembering to act upon certain responsibilities are some very common issues that make the day-to-day of individuals with ADHD more difficult. One notable environment in which this impacts life is the workplace. Deficits in executive functions tend to predict not only job performance but also burnout and stress levels.

Unsurprisingly, people with ADHD are more likely to suffer from occupational burnout and, as a result, tend to also be less financially stable. This being said, challenges that were thought to be ADHD specific, such as overstimulation or an overburdened cognitive load capacity, are starting to extend to the general population.

A large study on more than 2.5 million people in 168 countries showed that the proportion of people suffering from stress in the global population went from 25 percent in 2009 to 38 percent in 2021. In just a bit more than 10 years, humanity became more stressed than ever. Mentions of burnout by employees on Glassdoor increased by 32 percent in just six years, and an increasing proportion of individuals mention difficulties concentrating, overwhelm, and emotional exhaustion in their day-to-day challenges.

What changed?

In recent years, our brains have had to process an increasing amount of information every day. From notifications to the rise of AI to social media, everything in our environment is fighting for our attention. Human brains, ADHD or not, have a limit to how much we can process in a given time window. While individuals with ADHD have a lower threshold of tolerance regarding the input of information from the environment, if there is too much to process every day, eventually, any brain can become overwhelmed, confused, and exhausted in the same way. Studies show that something as simple as being interrupted by a notification during a task increases cognitive strain and eventually decreases performance and increases fatigue.

Our attention is constantly being recruited by back-to-back meetings, e-mail notifications, calendar reminders, Slack notifications, and the eventual LinkedIn message that appears on the screens of our phones. Our attention has never been so demanded in all of human history, and many people seem to have reached the limit of what they can take in.

People with ADHD have been struggling with these issues long before the arrival of Instagram, but that also means that many have developed strategies to cope with these constant requests for attention, which could now be useful to everyone who is starting to experience the same level of stress and overwhelm:

Limit external demands

Reducing external stimulation can be helpful to help our brains take a break between two demands. Something as simple as having noise-canceling headphones in the subway or at work can already filter out a lot of auditory clutter and diminish the background processing tasks that our brains need to do at all times. People with ADHD concentrate better with music, and while that may not be the case for everyone, not having the noise of the office or the street at all times can definitely help in the long run.

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Don’t always be available

Mobile phones have given us the possibility to be available at all times and everywhere. But the issue with this is that we become interruptible at any time, with a small part of our brains that is always on the lookout for a possible interruption. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why we’re so keen to grab our phones and look at our notifications the moment we need to wait for more than 15 seconds.

Our brain needs time to fully concentrate on something without being interrupted. Putting your phone in airplane mode during that time, or simply leaving it at home when you go out for a walk, can help you stay fully in the moment. It also helps to know that some moments belong only to you, and that you, and not a small tin box, get to decide when you’re available or not.

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Space your tasks and meetings with some "buffer" time

Even just leaving 10 minutes between your meetings can improve your mental health and cognitive control. Every time we switch tasks or contexts, our brain pays a cognitive "toll" needed to adjust. Research shows that the performance of humans drops by 20 to 30 percent during the 5 to 10 minutes following a context switch. Intentionally leaving that time in between tasks of meetings as a "transition toll" will help you stay more focused during our meetings or tasks, and you’ll feel less stressed during your day as well. As a piece of advice, don’t use those 10 minutes to be on your phone!

Focus on your sleep

Our attention is so solicited every day that at night, we need more time to unwind. Many people—and this is a very common experience in people with ADHD—experience what is called "revenge bedtime procrastination." When your mind has been tense and busy all day, taking care of a thousand different things, it needs more time to unwind and relax. It feels robbed of the fun it could have had during the day, and so it takes that time back right before bed. But by doing so, you sleep less; you wake up more tired, feel more stressed, and at night need even more time to unwind. It becomes a negative cycle eventually when you’re looking at the clock on your nightstand and start mentally calculating how many hours of sleep you will have if you were to fall asleep right now.

People with ADHD have been there many times. The secret is to have a stable and strict sleep routine and to wake up earlier. By waking up earlier, you get more time for yourself in the morning before work, before anyone else is awake and starts demanding your precious cognitive capacity. It’s time where you get to experience life without stimulation, and you can fill that time however you want. The stability of a sleep routine then helps you re-synchronize your sleep pressure to your circadian rhythm, which improves sleep quality and helps you wake up feeling refreshed and in a better mood.

People with ADHD are not new to these challenges. We’ve experienced burnout and emotional stress long before overstimulation all over the world. But we’ve developed strategies and tools to still find a way to live in an interconnected world without losing our mental health completely.

We’ve been there. So, if you’re overwhelmed or burned out, even if you don’t have ADHD, but are feeling restless, distracted, or emotionally dysregulated, we have some tools. Just as we have been the canary in the corporate coal mine, we can show you the way out.

References

Turjeman-Levi Y, Itzchakov G, Engel-Yeger B. Executive function deficits mediate the relationship between employees’ ADHD and job burnout. AIMS Public Health. 2024 Mar 12;11(1):294-314. doi: 10.3934/publichealth.2024015. PMID: 38617412; PMCID: PMC11007411.

Fisher JT, Hopp FR, Weber R. Cognitive and perceptual load have opposing effects on brain network efficiency and behavioral variability in ADHD. Netw Neurosci. 2023 Dec 22;7(4):1483-1496. doi: 10.1162/netn_a_00336. PMID: 38144687; PMCID: PMC10727773.

Piao X, Xie J, Managi S. Continuous worsening of population emotional stress globally: universality and variations. BMC Public Health. 2024 Dec 23;24(1):3576. doi: 10.1186/s12889-024-20961-4. PMID: 39716139; PMCID: PMC11668040.

Ohly S, Bastin L. Effects of task interruptions caused by notifications from communication applications on strain and performance. J Occup Health. 2023 Jan-Dec;65(1):e12408. doi: 10.1002/1348-9585.12408. PMID: 37280752; PMCID: PMC10244611.

Muhmenthaler MC, Meier B. Task Switching Hurts Memory Encoding. Exp Psychol. 2019 Jan;66(1):58-67. doi: 10.1027/1618-3169/a000431. PMID: 30777509; PMCID: PMC6716143.