Adult ADHD: Are You An Idea Machine?

Chances are, if you have Adult ADHD, you're an "idea machine"--you come up with great new ideas all the time, maybe several in a day! 

Problem is, the ideas are often unrelated to what you already decided to work on, and so each new idea becomes a distraction that takes you further away from your larger goals. What can a person with Adult ADHD and too many good ideas do?

I have Adult ADHD myself, and I have 10 great ideas a day, minimum, that are "million-dollar ideas." How do I actually implement one of them and get something done? I don't want to just stop having great ideas. I love thinking about new ideas. It's one of the things I'm best at doing. 

I say, "Okay, when I have a great idea, it's my job to figure out how I can take what's really great about that idea, and apply it to what I'm working on--that is, working on ALREADY." This is something every person with Adult ADHD needs to train themselves to do. 

Here's how it works :

Let's say I'm working on a website about Attention-Deficit Disorder. What happens if I have a great idea about a restaurant they should open up in my local town? I know it would be a great idea. Why don't I just go out and open a restaurant? 

Well, I don't really want to open a restaurant. I've worked in a lot of restaurants, and I know that I don't want to deal with the restaurant business. For one thing, it's boring, and boredom kills people with Adult ADHD. But still, it's a great idea. 

So what I say to myself is, "What's so great about this idea, and how can I apply the essence of what's so great about this idea to my Adult ADHD website? 

Do you see how that works? 

As people with Adult ADHD, we tend to think in an all-or-nothing, black-or-white kind of way: "Do I follow the entire idea and go open a restaurant or not?" 

But what you really want to say, to make your Adult ADHD work for you, instead of against you is: "How can I apply this great new idea to the project I'm working on already?"

You train yourself to do this over time. You can even do it in conversations when you're brainstorming with friends or business partners or whatever. 

When random ideas come up, just say, "Hey, that's a really good idea. How do we apply that to what we're working on? What makes that idea so good? Why am I so excited about that idea?" 

In the case of the restaurant idea, the original idea was, "It would be great to have a Mexican Restaurant here because there isn't one in town and everyone wants one."