My name's Penny Jarrett,
I'm a business developer, youth mentor and blogger
and I have ADHD which is attention deficit hyperactive disorder.
ADHD is a mental disorder which causes behavioural issues.
A lot of people think that people with ADHD can't pay attention
but the thing is, is we can just pay too much attention
so paying attention to the wrong things or a lot of things at once.
Sometimes I feel like I've got eight brains
and each one has 40 tabs open.
I can be talking to someone
and then another tab opens and I just start thinking about something else
and I give it my full attention,
like I feel like I have to give it my full attention,
for like three seconds.
People with ADHD have a lot of energy.
So there's a lot of fidgeting, we can't keep still.
We usually have struggles following instructions.
We get distracted a lot,
so it means that we don't finish things
and sometimes don’t even start things.
There are loads of good things about ADHD too.
So an ADHD brain is usually creative,
there are loads of artists, comedians...
singers, yeah, there's loads of creatives.
We've got great imaginations which lead to a good sense of humour,
so we're funny.
And I think that's a lot to do with just doing funny things all the time,
like I sometimes find my remote in the fridge.
Managing ADHD includes managing your environment
so you're not always gonna have control over where you are.
For instance, if I'm in a white room, just completely bland,
I find that I start getting breathless and panicky
and looking around and just can't focus on anything.
But if I'm somewhere which is colourful and vibrant,
I feel calm.
And I think that's why my house is quite colourful,
I didn’t realise it before
but when I got diagnosed I looked around me and I was like, "OK".
Managing and holding down a normal nine to five job is mad.
I've even walked out of meetings,
I've been in meeting rooms and just had the urge to just walk out.
I didn’t even notice until I was halfway down the corridor that,
"Was I just in a meeting?"
It's just the brain under-stimulated,
it just searches for stimulation in any way
and if that has to be outside of that room
then yeah, meetings getting left.
When I'm selling to customers on the phone,
I make affirmation cards, handmade with Sharpies and pencils,
and they have positive words on.
Things that I can look at and remember
when I'm having anxious thoughts or just not feeling good.
Even if I'm not trying to focus on something in particular,
like a phone call,
I need to be changing what I'm doing
so that I can give enough energy to all my tasks.
So if I had a to do list with ten things on it for the day
where a neuro-typical person might do each one at a time,
maybe even put them in order of priority,
I can't always figure out which one I should prioritise
and that's interesting actually
because people with ADHD have an interest-based nervous system
so, yeah, we find prioritising hard.
If I timebox myself and give 15 minutes to each thing
and keep coming back
then I'm stimulated enough to complete all of them
and at a high level.
I was only diagnosed with ADHD last year, when I was 30.
So at first it was such a negative to me.
After doing a lot of research,
I stopped feeling negative about ADHD
because I learnt about all the good things.
The best thing about having ADHD, I think, is hyperfocus.
And what that means is that
we can actually zone in to that thing for several hours
and it not feel like several hours
and we go in so hard, masterpieces come out of it.
And that's why a lot of creatives
they master what they do if they've got ADHD
because when hyperfocus kicks in nothing will distract you.
Not even hunger or sleep.
ADHD is manageable so it doesn’t have to remain negative,
and it doesn’t have to define you in a negative way.
The symptoms of ADHD are with me, and always will be,
but they don’t have to define me in a negative way.
If I learn how to manage my ADHD then I learn how to manage my life.
And I can be just as productive and successful as I want.
Just not every single day.