Do you hate your job? Do you intensely dislike the people who work with you? Do you put things off until your boss roars because you've not gotten a project done? Are you just totally and horribly unhappy? If you have adult ADD, this could easily be true.

Though you may be finding a structured 9 to 5 work life difficult, realize that your ADD brings many wonderful, creative qualities into your job on a day-to-day basis. Not only that, but you have the ability to be laser-focused or hyperfocused on things that you really love to do. So, where you might be great at coming up with an idea and focusing on that end of the project, you may not be into implementation, especially if it involves some kind of boring process, like data entry or analyzing financial stats. You just can't bring yourself to do them.

There is help! What you need is a job that can be ADD-friendly, a job that you can love and that can be enriched by the power of your ADD brain.

The most obvious solution seems to be running your own business. This is a good situation for someone with ADD, who can organize and plan things, or if they can hire someone or have a partner who can do these things for them. This won't be the ideal situation for everyone with ADD, but it does allow you to unleash your creativity and to function on your own terms.

But adults with attention deficit love nothing more than action. Being in a fast-paced career, like police officer, fire fighter, or EMS technician, might be the ideal situation for you if you're a high-energy person. But the truth is that adults with ADD are in countless number of jobs, and they have found ways to succeed.

Impulsivity can have you taking off on tangents, just because something other than what you're supposed to be doing interests you. One major problem with ADD is that we try to do too much. Someone asks for another project to be done or task that needs accomplishing, and we say, "Of course, we can do that." Learn to hold back a little. Don't overwhelm yourself, just because you want to try new things. But instead of overloading yourself, try to underload yourself. Do less than you think you can do. When you try to handle too much at once, you might make yourself much more unhappy in the long run. Besides, when you find yourself with free time, you can always work in other tasks as time permits, rather than making another ongoing committment.

ADD adults are also often distracted. Try setting a timer that will beep periodically to help you remember to stay on task. Or, break up your work schedule. Do ten minutes of the job you hate doing or is boring for you, then, do 10 minutes of something else you like to do. You can fit as many as 6 activities into an hour, and rotate through them. That way, you'll never be bored, and you'll always be on task because your attention span is accommodated. If your attention span is longer than 10 minutes, perhaps you'll rotate 4 tasks per hour, but try this and see what span of time works for you.

Boredom is hard to deal with for most adult ADD-ers. We just can't stand to be bored! The rotating tasks technique can work for you, if you are easily bored, but you should also try to do the boring things you have to do when you're at high energy times of the day. And never hesitate to delegate whenever possible. What's boring to you might be someone else's fun.

But whatever you do, don't procrastinate. Jump in and get the hard parts of whatever it is you don't want to do done first. That makes the rest of the job easier in comparison. You have to realize that the quicker you get into something, the quicker you can forget about it instead of having it hang over your head. If you still can't get into a job, find a good accountability partner, someone who will jump on your case if you don't have something done on time.

If it's people that you're having trouble with, did you ever consider that your ADD might be the issue? If you constantly interrupt people who are talking, that could raise some hackles. When you find yourself doing that, stop talking and apologize. Learn to listen. Also learn to be more diplomatic. Honesty, though an admirable quality, isn't always appreciated in social situations.

Any of these ADD-related situations can cause work problems. But don't jump to another job, just yet. Try some of these strategies and see if they don't help you to be more productive and more sociable. Yet, if you can't, if you're still that square peg, find a more flexible job that will suit your ADD abilities and make yourself a happier person.