Do you have office A.D.D.?

By M H Ahssan

Mail inbox cluttered with last year’s spam. Juggling three phones at once. Getting frazzled looking at the number of messages that need a reply. If that’s your usual day, you may be heading for, or have already caught, that deadly workplace disease: attention deficit disorder.

Rahul Ahuja, a Delhi-based jeweller, told his girlfriend to meet him for lunch, only to discover, after she was already at the restaurant, that he had a meeting with some outstation clients, and they, too, had already reached the meeting place. Not a good day for Ahuja, but hardly an unusual day. Things slipping out of his mind moments after he fi led them in his brain had become a common occurrence...

Pradeep Mitra hasn’t cleaned his offi ce e-mail inbox in a long while. Not since early 2007, maybe. The message overload means that any new mail he tries to send refuses to make the trip. A fl ustered Pradeep has to quickly identify some useless (he hopes so) mail from his inbox and create a tiny opening for his new mail to zoom off. “Why,” his colleagues ask Pradeep, “don’t you clean the inbox out?” Um, because so many of them still need to be read and replied to....

These men have a condition that Dr Edward Hallowell, MD, would label as the upshot of 21st Century Information Overload. Dr Hallowell is one of the world’s most eminent experts in attention defi cit disorder and the symptoms displayed by Rahul and Pradeep are familiar to him: diffi culty in focussing, inability to complete a project, irritability, anxiety.

In many men, these symptoms can be explained away as a bad day at work. But in many others, they are a clinical condition.

EXCESS BAGGAGE
Very short attention spans have been traditionally associated with children. Until the mid ’80s, physicians and psychologists believed that A.D.D. was outgrown by the time a child hit adolescence. Surprise, surprise! It is now accepted by the medical community that childhood A.D.D. can continue well into adulthood.

The biggest prey group consists of young professional men, not equipped with the multitasking skills that evolution has given women. Two of the biggest tools of multitasking—the cell phone and e-mail—are also two of the biggest enemies of concentration. These fi rst came to India just over a decade ago, changing the way we work. And in the past few years, these have been the channels through which an avalanche of information has swamped users.

Every mobile phone interruption from a tele-caller peddling some scheme, some PR person selling a product, every e-mail message popping up on the corner of your computer screen is a hindrance to your concentration. Because, much as the modern young professional loves to believe that he is an effi cient juggler at work, study after study shows that the grey matter is not equipped to handle two complex tasks at once—at least not without slowing you down or screwing you up. That’s why, studies say, driving while talking on the cell phone is like driving after two drinks.

In a 2006 study published in Neuron, fMRI technology was used to show that an actual neural bottleneck occurs in the frontal lobes when you attempt to do two tasks at once. And when you are interrupted doing something, your brain can’t go back seamlessly to the job it was doing before the interruption. A study at Microsoft last year looked at how long it took people to return to a task when they were interrupted by an e-mail or a phone call. The average: an astonishing 15 minutes. The study authors found that people, once interrupted, take the opportunity to do other things, like check more e-mail.

PRIMED FOR IT
In some people, A.D.D. is inbuilt. They had very short attention spans as children. When they grew up, responsibilities increased, but their concentration did not get any better. This led to unfi nished jobs, rising stress and panic attacks, all of which coalesce into a psychological disorder. Dr (Prof.) Manju Mehta, clinical psychology, AIIMS, explains, “Often X Sharma in Class IV, who was unable to sit still in the classroom, becomes Mr X Sharma, who at age 30, is unable to sit through business presentations.” Dr Mehta describes the signs of A.D.D.: “His eyes dart around, his fi ngers drum continuously, his legs kick under the table, he stretches, sometimes even scratches and, of course, doesn’t grasp a word the presenter is saying...”

There is no question that A.D.D. can disrupt lives and reduce productivity. “It can be mild, moderate or severe and the symptoms vary from person to person—but they have some combination of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsiveness,” explains Dr Mehta. “For most people with A.D.D., their lives are fi lled with an overwhelming chaos—piles of stuff, never-ending tasks and out-of-control clutter. They are constantly behind schedule and frazzled.”

People teetering at the edge of an abyss will often fall into it, and this happens with A.D.D. sufferers, too. Dr Mehta warns, “In adults, the impulsive behaviour becomes more common; it is more dangerous, as this can lead to substance abuse and other risky behaviour.”

“Then there are some people who, along with a very, very short attention span, display hyperactivity,” says Dr Sandeep Vohra, senior consultant psychiatrist, Indraprastha Apollo Hospital, New Delhi. This is A.D.H.D., the nasty big brother of A.D.D.. “To a person with A.D.H.D., it feels as if everything is happening all at once. This creates a sense of inner turmoil, even panic.”

It’s like being super-charged all the time, but not in a good way. This is Dr Vohra’s picture of what goes in an A.D.H.D. sufferer’s mind: “You get one idea and you have to act on it. Then you get another idea, so you go for that. But a third idea interrupts just then… and pretty soon people are calling you disorganised, irresponsible and impulsive. But you know that you are trying really hard—yet not getting anywhere!”

E-MAIL ADDICTION
As Dr Ashima Puri, consultant psychologist, Aashlok Hospital, New Delhi, explains, like a wildly swinging camera lens, the A.D.D. sufferer’s constantly gyrating mind prevents him from focussing on the things that matter.

Why, for example, do you need to check every mail that pops up on your screen, even though you can see from the subject line that it’s nothing important. But most of you will, compulsively, drop the task you are doing, read the new mail, maybe follow a link, and then another and get caught up in what Dr Hallowell calls “screensucking”. He calls it a turbo-charged version of a natural human trait: procrastination.

What keeps you coming back to your inbox is the prospect of a thrill: information about a new project; great news about something; positive feedback from a colleague or the boss. This constant thrill-chasing keeps you, however, from fi nishing the less exciting but more important tasks. And when the task pileup begins to look scary, you fi nd escape in even more thrill-seeking in your inbox.

THE ROAD AHEAD
Offi ce A.D.D. can be controlled by training your mind and forcing yourself to stick to a new work fl ow plan until the habit becomes second nature. Clinical A.D.D., like any other clinical condition, needs diagnosis and treatment. “The diagnosis can be liberating, particularly for people who have been stuck with labels like ‘lazy’, ‘stubborn’, ‘wilful’, ‘disruptive’, ‘impossible’, ‘tyrannical’, ‘brain-damaged’, ‘stupid’ or just plain ‘bad’,” writes Dr Hallowell in his book Delivered from Distraction.

It’s not unusual for A.D.D. sufferers to taste success in an enterprise if they manage to focus their energies, say experts; but A.D.D. prevents them from becoming well-adjusted individuals. In the case of Chennaibased entrepreneur K Shashi, while his medical equipment business was smooth sailing, his relationships kept running into stormy weather. He could never settle in a relationship, let alone marry. This led to seeking psychological counselling. “The doctor put a name to my troubles. It’s been such a weight off my chest,” says Shashi, who is now on medication. “Now I know how to handle my situation.”

That’s the thing about this disorder. It takes a lot of adapting to get on in life living with A.D.D. “But,” stresses Dr Mehta, “it certainly can be done, and be done very well.”