Longtime readers will know I have been working on a better understanding of neurodivergence (ND) and PhD study. I’ve just started my third year of this research work and feel more comfortable saying stuff about the topic. At the end of this post I will give you a research update, including the status of our survey findings, but I thought I would start with a Whisperery Advice/Confessional Post.
With everything that is going on in the world, reading is hard and stamina in short supply… If you prefer, you can watch a version of this post on our YouTube channel (comments are on there too)
Before I started working on neurodivergence I thought I understood the word ‘Ableism’. I didn’t realise how pervasive it is, especially the internalised kind. A lack of self understanding and self acceptance one’s own ND traits is common in academia, especially amongst faculty.
Here’s some classic examples I have heard come out of my colleague’s mouths over the last couple of years:
- “I can’t be autistic – I’m comfortable in social situations” (said by people mostly hang out with other academics, amongst whom they feel comfortable because, well…)
- “It’s not ADHD – everyone has trouble with managing their phone use” (true, but if you also have trouble with deadlines and finishing things, it’s not just the phone)
- “It’s a Research Interest, not a Special Interest” (Is it really though? I have become quietly convinced that it’s hard to actually do the research part of academia without a “touch of the ’tism”, as my son calls it).
- “I’m trying to make things better by pointing out mistakes – why do people always get so upset?” (one of the best Spectrum traits on display there and one I am particularly prone to. Where would we be if people didn’t point out mistakes? But there’s a fine line between Speaking Truth to Power and Just Plain Rude)
- “OK, I’ve had seven episodes of burnout, but that’s just the demands of contemporary Academia” (maybe more accurate to say it’s ALSO Academia)
- “I’m very organised – I couldn’t possibly have ADHD” (you were taught systems that work, or you have a touch of Autism mixed in that sometimes – but crucially not always – helps you)
- “I’m too disorganised to be Autistic” (I beg to differ – you probably just have 15 elaborate different systems for organising yourself, some or all of which are not working well).
- “Oh Hyperfocus, what a buzz word. In my day we just called it Disciplined” (OK – you can keep telling yourself that. Also, there’s a reason we call them ‘academic disciplines’. I invite you to think about this for a moment.)
Now I know you clicked on this post because it had ADHD in the title – bear with me, we’re getting there.
Before I offer advice, I want to put this neurotypical vs not neurotypical thing in context. We call it The Spectrum for a reason. In fact, one of the symbols used for neurodivergence is an infinity rainbow – which I personally think is lovely:
Lovely but a bit limited as a metaphor.
A rainbow implies there are parallel tracks that you can ‘sit on’. In reality, everyone is an individual with their own blend of colours. I’ve struggled to visually represent my understanding of ‘The Spectrum” in my teaching (I often run workshops for supervisors on how to do a better job supervising PhD students). The diagram below is my latest effort. It’s not perfect (or even testable really), but good enough for our purposes:
My Venn-diagram-ish drawing represents ‘neurotypical’ as merely a common style of cognition within the broad range of human possibilities. The working hypothesis behind this diagram is the number of people with a ‘neurotypical’ style is so large we have made the category error of thinking they are a ‘baseline’ against which all human cognition should be measured, or, as Armstrong (2015) put it:
“Search as you might, there is no brain that has been pickled in a jar in the basement of the Smithsonian Museum or the National Institute of Health or elsewhere in the world that represents the standard to which all other human brains must be compared.”
My diagram is also an attempt to capture and explain how the medical model misleads and feeds this neurotypical vs non- neurotypical binary.
Most people are only referred for diagnosis if they are struggling with some aspect of their executive function or emotional regulation. That’s why I have represented the boundary around ‘clinically diagnosed’ with a dotted line. The rest of us who do not easily fit into ‘neurotypical’ are happily undiagnosed or, perhaps sit in the ‘high masking’ – thinking we are neurotypical but working damn hard, all the time, to appear this way. People who made the comments at the start of this post are likely to fall into this high masking category.
I speak from personal experience here – although I have many family members who are diagnosed, and could see these same traits in myself, I never seemed to ‘fit’ any of the available diagnoses. Early on in this research I accepted my ADHD side – basically by reading case studies for the literature review we completed on neurodivergence amongst PhD students last year. My husband confirmed the self diagnosis – he’s lived with me for 28 years or so and should know. A life partner’s opinion is one of the ways a psychologist will diagnose it anyway, so I haven’t bothered to follow the self diagnosis with anything formal.
Whatever ADHD traits I have don’t affect my life too much. I certainly don’t think I need drugs to cope. A lot of the adjustments I’d made to my working style were ADHD friendly anyway. But the Autistic side of me is a bit more subtle and honestly, confronting.
I had a lot of internalised ableism that was negative towards autism – society is not kind about autistic people and stereotypes abound. The more I learned about Autism however, the more I could see it in myself and longed for a diagnosis of some sort, despite knowing all the limitations of medical models and a fear of stigma. Thanks to Dr Helen Kara and Dr Diana Tan, I did a few tests with friendly, understanding souls who reassured me that I was still ‘me’, whatever a test said. Then Diana pointed me the CATTI online test for autism, which finally had a set of dimensions that made sense to me.
The results show me sitting far along the ‘indeterminate’ part of the spectrum, but veering into the autistic for some key aspects:
But at my social camoflauge score: talk about high masking! This explains so much about my life and was quite relieving. I feel deeply uncomfortable in unfamiliar social situations (even familiar ones sometimes if I’m honest). My coping strategy is to observe and work out ‘rules’ I can follow, which explains my communication score. I also love to share these insights to help others cope: see here, here, here, here … and basically every second post on this blog.
There’s a reason people started calling me Thesis Whisperer. I didn’t give myself the nickname!
I have successfully leveraged my neurodivergent traits into academic career success – not without episodes of burnout. ‘High Masking’ used to be called ‘high functioning’ – it’s a much better term. The sociologist Erving Goffman said something like: ‘beware the mask because it can become your face’. You can be so used to the masking you think it is ‘normal’, but you are burning loads more emotional energy than other people.
High masking people may not realise they do not fit into neurotypical thinking styles and – crucially – need to adopt different strategies to managing work.
If you keep trying to be ‘neurotypical’, and using neurotypical ways of managing yourself, you will most likely fail. And worse – feel a deep sense of shame for failing. Being a good academic, you will probably harder, fail again and then – well… burnout. If you identify as having ADHD, Autism or both, and are wondering why you are not coping despite your best efforts, here’s some things to try:
Think ‘laundry basket’ not filing cabinet:
A lot of productivity advice assumes your brain wants to sort everything neatly into labelled drawers and then retrieve it in an orderly way. If you have ADHD traits, filling systems need careful thought. You buy the folders (or the apps), make the categories, colour-code the system … and then almost immediately stop using it because the system requires for too much invisible labour.
Filing cabinets require repeated decisions. Laundry baskets do not. By ‘laundry baskets’ I mean each piece of information, be it a website, a paper or a note you have written, is chucked in a ‘spot’ (physically or digitally). Use search functions – or rummage through your ‘in tray’ to find it later. More than 10 years ago I wrote a post about being a piler or a filer, which didn’t reference ADHD, but could have.
ADHD people bloody love a pile.
However, separate laundry baskets for different types of information keeps my autistic side, which craves order, happy. I gave up filing email over a decade ago. I put everything that is finished in a “done” and email forward everything else to Omnifocus, my task management system. This is a low effort system where any ‘live email’ that needs a follow up is in one place, but out of my inbox so I don’t get overwhelmed.
Similarly, I use Apple Notes to save weblinks and random thoughts. I chuck everything in here – from ‘to do’ lists to a new bra brand to look up:
I have some smart folders which organise things by tags. I tag stuff every now and then, but honestly the Search function works even without those. I do get in there to tag and ‘weed’ occasionally – usually when waiting in a coffee queue or at the doctor’s surgery (a healthy alternative to scrolling). If you haven’t already, explore a Bullet Journal, which was designed by a person with ADHD. Try Obsidian as a database for your writing projects.
There are many options – my main point is this: big visible ‘containers’ you can rummage in beat elaborate nested structures every time.
Work multiple projects at the same time
This sounds like terrible advice in a culture obsessed with focus, but for many ADHD-ish people, monotony is the problem, not busyness. Sometimes the brain needs novelty, contrast and movement in order to stay engaged. Working on only one thing can make that thing feel impossibly heavy. Working on a couple of related things can create just enough variety to keep the engine running.
I worked this way for years until someone sent me an old webpage on Structured Procrastination by John Perry, which he followed up with a book called ‘The Art of procrastination’. Well worth a read.
Structured Procrastination does not mean juggling ten major commitments with no plan. It means giving yourself permission to rotate. When you get stuck on one task or project, move sideways rather than collapsing altogether. Progress is still progress, even if it is not linear. The trick is to have a small menu of meaningful options so that when attention shifts, you can redirect it rather than lose the whole afternoon.
I like to have high focus tasks (like writing) and low focus, non work related tasks (like looking up that bra shop) to give my brain a break. When working from home I always empty the dishwasher without feeling guilty – you can think about problems while you unpack glassware.
Crucially, this structured procrastination approach only works if you have what I call ‘cognitive anchors’ – ways of reorienting back into the task at hand. Just like hand holds in rock climbing – they are small openings that offer you a way in to a larger task, without overwhelm. In writing, this can be simply leaving the document open with a note at the end of a paragraph saying what the next paragraph needs to do. Or you can try writing a set of ‘ugly sentences’ to quickly capture your thinking for when you return. In data analysis, insert a comment near the top where you just jot down thoughts as you work – this note can help you pick up the ‘breadcrumbs’ of your thinking when you return.
Make space for stimming. (Ugh – I hate that term).
I dislike the word stimming, but it is the handiest label we have for repetitive, regulating behaviours: pacing, fiddling, tapping, chewing, rubbing fabric, doodling, rocking, walking while thinking, even talking things through out loud. Many people are taught to see these habits as signs of distraction, immaturity or lack of professionalism. In fact, they are often ways of concentrating, soothing the nervous system, or keeping a thought moving.
A lot of academic work is built around the fantasy of the still body and the orderly mind: sit upright, face the screen, keep your hands typing quietly, concentrate properly. But some of us think better when we move a little, or when part of the brain is occupied by a small, rhythmic task. Some behaviours we are told to suppress are actually forms of cognitive support for academic work. Since learning about my own traitsI have a small array of fidget toys on my desk for this purpose: check out Kaiko Fidgets for ‘grown up’ versions of the kid stuff.
Thought about more broadly, stimming can include research tasks like cleaning data, coding text, fixing citations, formatting references, or sorting notes. These jobs are often dismissed as mechanical or secondary, but they can play an important cognitive role. Sometimes these little jobs create momentum when a more demanding task feels impossible to start. I find these tasks give my mind just enough rhythm and structure to let more complex thinking emerge in the background. I suspect a lot of us have had the experience of “just” tidying up a dataset or doing a round of coding, only to realise that we were also solving a conceptual problem at the same time.
What doesn’t work
In my opinion, it’s a road to nowhere if you keep on following advice designed for neurotypical thinkers. People offer well meant advice about following a set schedule, producing a set number of words a day, eliminating distractions and so on. Some of these may work for you, but if they don’t, look elsewhere. Join reddit forums where people discuss tricks and hacks: some of the suggestions may seem unorthodox, but you won’t know if they work until you try!
Research Update
In this post I talked about my interest in neurodiversity and gauge interest from the community – big thanks to the 1000+ people who signed up to the email list since then. It’s quite some time since I updated you all on my progress, which has been relatively slow. Partly this is due to universities in crisis and six months of a big health crisis in my immediate family.
In other words: life.
I’m only working part time at the moment, so the pace will continue to be slow.
I have, however, joined up with a diverse team with neurodivergent academics and we have been getting to work, despite having zero funding right now. Aside from the literature review we completed on neurodivergence amongst PhD students last year, we are working on editing a special issue of a journal on neurodivergence in PhD study (here’s the call for papers). I will also be part of a round table on the intersection between neurodivergence and twice exceptionality (‘giftedness’) at the upcoming QPR conference in Adelaide.
AI declaration
Most of the writing here is mine. I used ChattieG to make the rainbow infinity image. I gave Google LM and ChatGPT all my project notes to help me structure the advice bit. These two tools helped me find order in the chaos of random bits of writing and thinking that ADHD Inger left for me to work with. (Thanks ADHD Inger – you are creative, but a pain in the ass sometimes).
Interested in what I had to say here?
Dr Jason Downs and I teach academic productivity amongst other things in our On The Reg Team workshops. We are still taking bookings for next year and are working on other exciting ideas. Find out more on my Workshops page or visit us at On The Reg Team.
Related Posts
Is your PhD Supervisor neurodivergent?
On Neurodiversity and the PhD: the silence is deafening
What do neurodivergent PhD students need?
On the Pod
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