Find the right partner and the right job, and you’ll be happy. At least that's what Freud said. But what about people with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD), who often have trouble choosing suitable work?

ADHD career advice is simple: The best job for adults with attention deficit is the one that lets them do what they do best and love most. I’m talking about work that makes use of an ADDer's strong points, like energy and creativity, while minimizing demands upon areas of weakness, such as organization.

How do you find such a job? What if you’ve tried several jobs -- perhaps several different lines of work -- and nothing was a good fit?

First, take stock of your unique abilities. Don’t focus on the things you have trouble with, but on the things that you do well. If you need help identifying your skills, take a look at What Color Is Your Parachute?, by Richard Nelson Bolles.

Next, make sure you are able to tell prospective employers what you do well and what you want to do. Get them so excited about your strengths and passions that they’ll have no choice but to hire you.

No matter what happens in your search for work, you must be persistent. The celebrated political strategist James Carville certainly was. Carville, who happens to have ADD, flunked out of college. After seriously considering what people had always told him — that he was a “good talker” and that he “ought to be a lawyer” — he found the motivation to finish college and go on to law school.

He started working on political campaigns after he graduated. Carville says politics is a great career choice for people with ADD because it’s fast-paced and constantly changing. Since there’s no such thing as a “typical day” for Carville, he never gets bored.

For Clarence Page, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Chicago Tribune, journalism was the perfect fit. The frequent deadlines stimulate his creativity, and he enjoys the fact that he can write about anything that catches his interest. He thrives in the high-energy newsroom environment.

Sometimes, a career that's less than a perfect fit can be made to work just fine. Janet Bergdorf, an ADDer who works as a corporate marketing director in Houston, is passionate about design. But when it came to being organized, she had difficulties, missing appointments and misplacing important items. Now she compensates for these weaknesses. To make sure she shows up for appointments, for example, she programs her computer to send her pop-up messages. She keeps backup copies of keys, headsets, phones, and so on. (See more gadgets for getting organized at work.)

As Janet’s story makes clear, you don’t have to do everything well in order to succeed at (and enjoy) a job. But you must find ways to get all the important tasks done — even the tasks you have trouble with. So anytime you find yourself pondering possible jobs, consider what type of support you’ll be able to get at each.

It’s easy to get discouraged when thinking about the type of work you might do well, particularly if you’ve suffered setbacks in school or in other jobs. But don’t lose hope. For ADDers, the route to success often comes in a roundabout way — and not always on the expected timetable. Determine your strengths, pursue your passions, become an ardent networker. Perhaps David Neeleman, the ADDer who founded JetBlue airlines, put it best: “Try every day to take steps toward achieving your goals. And, most important, believe in yourself!”

This article comes from the October/November 2006 issue of ADDitude.

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