As an ADHD project manager, you can become a success with ADHD by using tips such as writing your own job description, taking time to plan your top priority, minimizing distractions, keeping meetings short and focused, and more.
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Tips to Become a Successful ADHD Project Manager
Many people with ADHD find solutions to do their job effectively and efficiently. Typically, ADHD project managers face many problems when they do their job. Simply put, those are,
- Getting bored and start to feel burnt out
- Getting feeling unmotivated
- Unable to focus on priorities
- They start to think there’s something fundamentally wrong with them and more.
So, here are some helpful solutions to becoming a successful project manager with ADHD.
Write Your Own Job Description
If someone hasn’t given you a clear, structured job description, write your own job description. That will help you do your job effectively and efficiently. However, most employees have a clearly defined job description with specific goals and structured routines.
As an ADHD project manager, you can follow these steps to write your own job description.
- What are the most crucial responsibilities of your job?
- How much time do you need to achieve them?
- When do you allocate time for these crucial tasks in your schedule?
- How do you manage your schedule to ensure that crucial tasks get done?
- What specific performance goals do you try to meet?
- How do you regularly monitor and assess your progress?
Unstructured and unclear job descriptions may be a reason for your job to be unbalanced. Furthermore, it can be a reason to lose focus on your most crucial tasks.
Take Time to Plan Your Top Priority
Taking time to plan your top priority tasks is crucial because it will help you stay motivated. If you miss doing top priority tasks, it can negatively impact both you and your organization. So, as an ADHD project manager, you can create a list using tasks or notes in Outlook. Furthermore, you can use project management software to plan your top priority tasks to ensure you are staying on track.
So, take time to plan effectively long-term and short-term tasks, and through the whos, whats, and whens of a project.
On the other hand, during planning, you can naturally break down tasks into surmountable ‘bite-sized’ chunks.
Learn When to say ‘No’
There are two top reasons why many executives are overwhelmed by their jobs. Those are feeling overwhelmed and inefficient. The only solution is to minimize your workload. However, avoiding unmanageable workloads is not a good option. For example,
Claudia is suffering with ADHD, and she works as a project manager in an IT company. Several times, Claudia’s boss asks her to handle some problems without consideration of the current projects on her desk. Claudia’s other problem was too many requests from people who reported to her to reschedule phone meetings or other planned events. That was throwing Claudia’s own schedule into chaos, and she had to say no to such requests.
Minimize Distractions
Distraction can be the biggest problem in managing your project tasks effectively and efficiently. To prevent distraction, organize your work environment to track your work. As a solution, you can use scheduled task tools to minimize distractions. For example, Google calendar, Notion
Be a Good Leader, Not Perfect
As an ADHD project manager, once you have prioritized, reviewed, and planned your daily project tasks, give your best effort to complete the project tasks within the time.
Keep Meetings Shorts and Focused
As an ADHD project manager, whether you’re running an internal or external meeting, keep them short and focused because it will help you organize the information and save everyone time.
Furthermore, you can create an agenda to effectively manage your meeting and keep the meeting tightly focused on the related topic. That will help you stay on track without any delay.
For example, as an ADHD project manager, you can lose focus in meetings. Therefore, you can take detailed notes and use templates to complete them.
On the other hand, you can ensure your meetings are engaging and to the point. Moreover, you can assume everyone has your attention span and quickly gets to the important materials and the ask/do.
Be a Good Communicator
As an ADHD project manager, communication is crucial because you can discuss essential project details with your team via Teams, Skype, or face-to-face. Furthermore, communication will help you keep your mind at ease and aware of what needed to get done at the time.
Furthermore, as an ADHD project manager, you can use various software and tools to connect your project team members with the project.
Suppress emotional states
During such a situation, you need to be aware of your emotions and don’t try to react to this moment. So you can do some breathing exercises, walk away from your laptop, and respond when you can.
Schedule Routine Tasks
As an ADHD project manager, by scheduling routine tasks, you can save your time. Then, try to focus on one task at a time. If you stumble with a project task, you can research your issues or ask for advice from your seniors.
Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses
As an ADHD project manager, always don’t think of your ADHD symptoms because it can negatively affect your personality. Therefore, try to focus on your strengths. So, always think, ‘ Yes, I Can.’
This powerful word gradually helps you to become a strong person. Sometimes, you may think that this is a small thing. But believe me, and do it every day.
FAQs
Can Project Manager Success with ADHD
Yes, you can become a successful project manager with ADHD. But it takes a lot of discipline and isn’t always easy. If you want to become a successful project manager with ADHD, try to identify your shortcomings and weaknesses. Afterwards, you can prevent them by using many tips and tricks. Read More: ADHD project management Tips and Tricks for managing project efficiently
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