ADHD: The Hotel Lobby Analogy
Making Sense of ADHD:
Many analogies for the ADHD mind explain it as multiple monitors, tabs or television screens operating simultaneously: making noise, flashing colors, adding distractions, and eventually straining the attention span of the individual.
While these are indeed great depictions for how thoughts present themselves, what is missing for me is Discourse.
In this analogy, I would like to not only describe the nature of how an ADHD brain functions for some — including myself, but spread more awareness on the upsides of what the mind offers its owner, society, and possibly an open-minded employer.
There’s serenity in chaos, especially in our new turbulent and uncertain times.
The Hotel Lobby:
Envision a tiny but busy hotel full of lonely business and eccentric travellers and the occasional oddballs, brimming with stories, ideas, and in need of engagement. While these hotel guests occupy spacious rooms (or so we would like to believe) they still have a deathly desire to exchange, and so, they end up spending most of their time at the lobby.
This hotel isn’t impacted by seasonality, runs 24/7, and though has some regulars, many of the clients come and go.
You are the manager/receptionist, listening in to their loud or nimble conversations, learning, and interacting with guests. The guests are relentless, they like you, and always want to engage with you — that’s the discourse.
Since this is a tiny hotel, the receptionist handles all incoming requests. Some days the lobby is calm with a conversation here and there, and on some occasions, the loudness takes over the whole place.
The reception is located right by the lobby, the nature of the environment affects the receptionist’s functions:
- It becomes too loud to focus on some conversations, even if they hold more priority down the line.
- As you’re about to do something, someone pops up, and you lose track of what you were about to do. It takes you time to remember what you were doing before they came up to you, if ever.
- The confusion adds more to your prioritization system, and you may prioritize the wrong tasks over other important ones.
- You’re asked to perform a task, but due to the loud, simultaneous, and stimulating conversations, you may misinterpret the request.
- You’re always on your feet, on the go, either trying to maintain mounting tasks, incoming requests, or engaging with guests.
The Interpretation
The hotel as whole is your brain, and while you’re the owner of your brain, you manage more than own what goes on in it. That’s why you’re more of a manager/receptionist, dealing with internal and external requests coming at you all at once.
This is an important differentiation, because you can’t just “stop fidgeting”, “just focus”, or “stop day dreaming” — you don’t ‘own’ what happens in your head, it’s part of your biology, your neurodiversity, and the best you can do about it is properly manage it, and that sometimes is a lifelong learning, i.e.
If you don’t learn how to manage your ADHD — or diagnose it, while young, your life’s gonna suck as an adult.
The guests are a set of different thoughts which come and go, but some are persistent, and some more intense than the others. They’re contained in a definition of a guest because many thoughts can be bucketed into different categories and even have different characteristics, much like a separate personality in some cases, and no, it’s not multiple personality disorder, but it gives a lot of people with ADHD discourse with a plethora of different ideas, making them, usually, less bias than their counterparts.
The discourse or interaction is both the curse and the cure. whilst it could be distracting and indeed unhinged, it’s the birthplace of great ideas.
Back to the Analogy:
That lobby was the birthplace of new businesses, jobs offers and future collaborations between customers.
It’s a place where people felt anything was possible, nothing was too boring, nor too impossible. They enjoyed trying out new cocktails and foods at the lobby, they came up with their own and brought discussions if their favorite distilled alcohols and the stories that follow.
It was a place of many starts, even if not many of them finished
it’s a place where problems got solved thanks to the diversity of all those involved.
The discourse could be envisioned as a sort of infinite neural network, where the cross pollination of different ideas, thoughts and information, gives a person with ADHD a kind of super power:
They are a natural systems thinkers
They analyze information faster
They see patterns quicker
They offer concrete and fullrounded solutions
These are amazing skills to have, not only does it help with better strategy design, smooth process improvement, and continuous ideation, but come with infinite energy, creativity, and automatic desire to see the world better.
… what not to like?
