What it’s like to work with ADHD

Text by AJ Willingham and photos by Brook Joyner, CNN

7 minute read

Updated 11:57 AM EST, Mon November 6, 2023

Editor’s Note: AJ Willingham is senior culture writer for CNN.

“When you move again, you are going to go downstairs, and you are going to collect the clean clothes from the dryer.”

This is what I tell myself as I sit at my desk and stare out the window, paralyzed by the mounting weight of this simple task. It’s the end of the workday, and my 3:30 p.m. Adderall is coursing through my veins like blue lightning.

If I don’t try to move now, I could find myself staring vacantly at a computer screen for the next two hours. I don’t want that. I want to go downstairs and gather the laundry that’s sitting in the dryer, because laundry is one of those things that I, a functional person, should be able to do with basic fluency.

“And, while you’re there,” my brain adds, “you can get a trash bag.”

A trash bag, to bring to my home office where I work as a senior culture writer for CNN when I’m not at CNN’s Atlanta offices. I have an Emmy on one side of my desk, and on the other, a list of tasks that looks like it was written for a middle schooler: “Remember to check your email! You have a meeting at 1 p.m.!” (That second one is in huge letters, circled and underlined several times, like a silent scream.)

I’m proud of the career I’ve built over 15 years at CNN. I’ve written about taxidermy and cosplay, nonlethal police munitions and “rapture anxiety.” My work has won an Emmy, a National Association of Black Journalists Award and some Webbys, and gotten to explore innumerable fascinating facets of humanity. I used to think I had done it all in spite of my ADHD, which was officially diagnosed eight years ago. But what if, laundry notwithstanding, some of my success is because of it?

Throughout my career, I’ve had the honor of speaking to several college journalism classes. Sometimes I mention my lifelong struggle with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, but I feel like it’s always a risk. Journalism is a discipline of details, a dance of deadlines. Admitting there’s something in my brain that makes those things difficult feels like calling my professional fitness into question.

But journalism is also an exercise in truth, isn’t it? While it would look more glamorous chattering in a newsroom or splashed across a web page, sometimes the truth is lying dormant in the dryer, waiting to be put away. Sometimes it’s hiding in a messy office between artifacts of a satisfying career and a mound of unfiled paperwork.

Cleaning the office is another task I wanted to accomplish today, or maybe have been wanting to accomplish for a week. It starts with the trash bag, which is downstairs, in the laundry room. One of the sad ironies for people who have ADHD is that we crave the order we can’t seem to create. Until the office is clean, I will always be a little distracted, surrounded by another task waiting to be done.

Now, instead of begging myself to “just do it,” I have a different note on my work laptop: “Do a good job.” That’s all I need most days. That, I can promise myself. I’ve written this story, so that’s one task off the list. When I finally do the laundry, I will do it so well.

It may not be today though.

I’m stuck with this brain for the rest of my life, so while I may do my best, sometimes, I’m trying to be happy with good. Journalism is about honesty, after all.