How to view a messy desk, describe an orange, or understand someone’s desperate need for “alone time”? Learning about traits of adult ADHD and about Myers-Briggs personality types can reduce friction, generate acceptance, and improve environments for work and friendship among very different kinds of people. Despite a dearth of scientific evidence, most anyone who finds out about ADHD traits and systems of personality types is surprised at how useful, even revelatory, they can be.
“Organized chaos [can represent] a trail of ideas and projects to get back to,” writes Jacalyn Wetzel about adult ADHD on Upworthy. Creativity-sparking chaos ranks number one on the “10 Weird Habits” of highly intelligent people list, created by the YouTube channel “Slightly Smarter.” Wetzel explains that, while many see disorganized clutter as chaos, for those with ADHD “it serves a function.” (ADHD, for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, includes what used to be called ADD, now considered an outdated term.)
“Alone Time is… Best” ranked number two on the “Slightly Smarter” list, Wetzel reports: “Social situations require reading expressions, interpreting tone, and following multiple conversations [and] for active minds, this is exhausting. Solitude [makes way for] your brain’s default mode network, where your mind wanders, processes experiences, and makes connections.”
Alone-time needs also apply to the “introvert” described on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Extroverts, by contrast, recharge by spending time with others. At a Myers-Briggs executive seminar with her boss, “We learned how one person’s insights felt overwhelming to the other,” reported M.A., a child-care director in the DC area. “We [also] learned why one wasn’t giving and the other wasn’t receiving desired feedback and support, [as well as] what we excelled at and how to work together better.” Because it was a formal seminar, M.A. said, “You don’t take [what could sound critical] personally.”
Myers-Briggs revelations about oneself and others can occur even for people who don’t fit well into its 16 type groupings. Said DC-area lawyer H.S., who considers herself borderline on most M-B types, about one seminar exercise, “I was outraged by both [groups’] approaches.” The exercise involved two groups of people — coming from opposing categories on the M-B axis — who were asked to record responses to a giant poster of an orange. One group chose a leader, who waited for consensus before recording anything on the poster, but everyone in the other group took their own marker and, according to H.S., “wrote all over the poster! I saw how people within the two groups were on the same wavelength with each other. It was my big revelation.”
A different look at personality differences comes from descriptions of ADHD in adulthood — on the rise with a “massive increase” of diagnoses between 2020 and 2022, and a near doubling in the number of women between the ages of 23-49 receiving this diagnosis, according to National Geographic. In a survey by Epic Research, because girls are less likely to be hyperactive and thus often not diagnosed as children, “most of the increased incidence in the adult age groups can be attributed to increases in new diagnoses for females.”
“I feel incapable of keeping up with paperwork,” writes Monique El-Faizy on her “Midlife in Paris” Substack. El-Faizy works best using a timer that looks like a small tomato, which has spawned the Pomodoro Technique for dealing with the “time blindness of ADHD,” according to lifeskillsadvocate.com. The technique is a “timeboxing tool that can make it easier to start, stay with a task, and come back after a break.”
“People with ADHD have interest-based nervous systems as opposed to the importance-based nervous systems [of typical people],” according to Denver psychiatrist William Dodson. Dodson created the PINCH framework to explain the five motivators for people with ADHD: “The intrinsic motivation [that] makes challenging or mundane tasks manageable” are Passion, Interest, Novelty, Competition, and Hurry.
Daydreaming, number three on the “Slightly Smarter” list, “doesn’t necessarily mean [someone isn’t] being productive; in fact, they’re often problem-solving for something they feel is more important.” Next comes “Rabbit-hole addiction,” which can mean deeply researching obscure topics; followed by “Overthinking,” which is described as thoroughness, not indecisiveness; and after that, “Seeing patterns everywhere [which] can mean you’re picking up on subtle patterns others miss.”
A potential downside of hyperfocus in people with ADHD is hypersensitivity, especially to sounds, such as another person chewing, according to a report from ADDitudemag.com. “Chewing or slurping causes a misophonic brain to freeze out all other sensory input: It is a nightmarish hyperfocus.”
In fact, “75% of adults with anxiety actually have ADHD as the cause,” according to Wetzel. Treatment with psychostimulant medication, like Ritalin or Adderall, can help with ADHD. In addition, drug treatment appears to stave off dementia for those with ADHD in adulthood—when it appears to “take a toll on cognition,” writes Richard Sima in The Washington Post. Notes Toronto cognitive neurologist Sandra Black, “If you do have [ADHD], you’re going to have more trouble with normal brain aging.” In an Israeli study of more than 100,000 adults ages 51-70, those with untreated adult ADHD were almost two times more likely to develop dementia than those with the diagnosis who were taking a psychostimulant.
Revelatory experiences about behaviors of mine that I worried appeared unfriendly and messy were life-changing. A Myers-Briggs seminar taught me about being an introvert; and I learned about a common trait, often linked to ADHD, when a realtor visiting my house saw my desk covered with work projects and piles of sweaters on top of my bureau, and said, “Oh, you’re one of those people who needs to spread everything out.” Over the years, friends seem less critical about all of our individual differences — and to behave in ways that are freer, more relaxed, and sometimes weird.
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