Take physical care of your brain by getting enough sleep, eating healthfully, and exercising regularly. How to control ADT’s ravaging impact on performance? Foster positive emotions by connecting face-to-face with people you like throughout the day. As data increasingly flood our brains, we lose our ability to solve problems and handle the unknown. It’s our brains’ natural response to exploding demands on our time and attention. And it’s reaching epidemic proportions.ĪDT isn’t an illness or character defect. This insidious condition turns otherwise talented performers into harried underachievers. Marked by distractibility, inner frenzy, and impatience, ADT prevents managers from clarifying priorities, making smart decisions, and managing their time. They’re suffering from a newly recognized neurological phenomenon called attention deficit trait (ADT). If we don’t manage it, it will manage us.įrenzied executives who fidget through meetings, miss appointments, and jab at the elevator’s “door close” button aren’t crazy-just crazed. When managers assign goals that stretch people too far or ask workers to focus on what they’re not good at, stress rises. Leaders can also help prevent ADT by matching employees’ skills to tasks. The author recommends that companies invest in amenities that contribute to a positive atmosphere. Try keeping a portion of your day free of appointments and e-mail. Break down large tasks into smaller ones, and keep a section of your work space clear. Get enough sleep, switch to a good diet, and get adequate exercise. Make time every few hours for a “human moment,” a face-to-face exchange with a person you like. People with ADT have difficulty staying organized, setting priorities, and managing time, and they feel a constant low level of panic and guilt.ĪDT can be controlled by engineering one’s environment and one’s emotional and physical health. The result is black-and-white thinking perspective and shades of gray disappear. When a manager is desperately trying to deal with more input than he possibly can, the brain and body get locked into a reverberating circuit while the brain’s frontal lobes lose their sophistication, as if vinegar were added to wine. But it has become epidemic in today’s organizations. It isn’t an illness it’s purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live. They suffer from a newly recognized neurological phenomenon that the author, a psychiatrist, calls attention deficit trait, or ADT. Frenzied executives who fidget through meetings, lose track of their appointments, and jab at the “door close” button on the elevator aren’t crazy-just crazed.

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