There’s a Reason I Asked

On Tuesday I can clear my inbox, finish a proposal, and answer the email I’ve been avoiding for a week. On Thursday I can stare at one message for forty minutes and not send it.

Nothing changed in between. Same desk, same coffee, same inbox. Same guy.

If you’ve worked with someone who has ADHD, you’ve probably seen some version of this and wondered what happened. Honestly… so has every version of me.

It’s not one thing, and it’s not the same thing twice

Two people with the same diagnosis can look nothing alike. One is late to everything. The other shows up twenty minutes early because being late feels like a disaster. One can’t sit still in a meeting; another sits perfectly still and doesn’t hear a word of it. Add in anxiety, autism, depression, or whatever else came along for the ride, plus the coping systems each of us built over the years (some good, some held together with tape), and “ADHD” starts to describe a category more than a person.

Then there’s the variation inside one person. Sleep, stress, how interesting the task is, how loud the room is, how many open loops are already running in the background- all of it moves the needle. Russell Barkley has described ADHD as a problem with doing what you know, not with knowing what to do. That’s the part people miss. I know how to send the email. Thursday me knew it too.

Most people treat “you did it last week” as good evidence you can do it again. For a lot of us, it lands as a reminder that we’re failing at something we already know how to do, and that makes the next attempt even harder.

You don’t have to understand it

I’m not asking anyone to understand ADHD. Researchers have studied it for decades and are still working out how it works, why it shows up so differently, and why the same brain behaves differently from one day to the next. It would be strange to expect a coworker to have it figured out.

I can’t always explain it to myself, either. Some days I know exactly why something is hard. Other days it just is. So if I have to explain the reason before a request gets taken seriously, you’re asking for something I often don’t have.

The requests that sound dumb

Some of what we ask for sounds obvious, or a little silly:

• “Can you send that in writing?” We talked five minutes ago. But spoken information fades fast for me, and a written note is something I can come back to.
• “Can you put it on the calendar?” It’s tomorrow. How could I forget? Easily. If it isn’t on the calendar, it doesn’t exist.
• “Can you text before you call?” A surprise call pulls me out of whatever I’m holding in my head, and getting back into it costs more than the call did.
• “Can I have the agenda ahead of time?” It’s a thirty-minute sync. Knowing what’s coming lets me spend the meeting thinking instead of catching up.

Things in writing, calendar entries, an option to join online, flexible hours… this is the scaffolding I keep talking about. It holds the work up so I don’t have to run on willpower, which (as Thursday shows) isn’t something I can count on. Take the scaffolding away and you get the same person doing a lot less.

When those small things don’t happen, most of us don’t stop working. We mask. We act like we’re keeping up, re-read the thread three times so nobody notices we lost it, and stay late to rebuild what we missed. It works for a while, but it’s exhausting, and it shows up in the work: slower, sloppier, and with less of whatever made us good at the job in the first place.

I gave you the reasons for these. Next time someone asks, you won’t need them. The request is the information. There’s a reason we asked, even if we don’t say it, and even if we couldn’t put it into words if you asked.

If you manage people, this matters more. Saying yes to a small request usually costs very little. Making someone justify it every time costs a lot, and they’ll eventually stop asking.

And to be clear, I’m not asking for special treatment. Written follow-ups, real calendar invites, agendas ahead of time, and some flexibility in when and where the work happens help everyone. Plenty of neurotypical people forget what was said in a meeting, too. Honoring different work styles isn’t an ADHD accommodation so much as a better way to run a team.

If you’re the neurotypical friend

Reaching out is one of the things that varies, too. I think about the people I care about all the time. The thought shows up, and then it’s gone before I pick up the phone. Or, it happens at night when the midnight version doesn’t want to wake you, and the noon version is busy staring at a blank work email. A week goes by, then three, and now it’s been long enough that reaching out feels awkward, which makes it even harder to do. (Add guilt and shame and, honestly, I’m surprised we’re still friends.)

That silence isn’t a measure of how much I care. It’s out of sight, out of mind, working exactly the way it always has.

So if you’re the neurotypical person in the friendship, consider initiating more often. This isn’t about keeping score. It doesn’t let me off the hook, either. I have my own systems for staying in touch, and they still need work. But meeting in the middle sometimes means you take a few more of the steps. A quick text, a “saw this and thought of you,” an invite we didn’t have to organize. Most of us will appreciate it more than we let on (partly because we’ll forget to tell you, or haven’t recognized the problem yet).

Tuesday and Thursday

Tuesday me and Thursday me are the same person. You don’t need to understand why they work so differently. I don’t fully understand it either.

Just know that when either one of them asks for something, even something that sounds small or obvious, there’s a reason. Honoring it is one small way to help your neurodivergent friend or colleague skip some of the exhausting work of masking just to fit in.