Lack of ability to focus causing trouble at work

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Hey, I work for my father, from my own PC. I have ADHD and Aspergers and I'm 20 years old, 21 soon. I've been constantly called "Lazy" or told "I don't get enough work done". All this negativity toward me and my performance isn't helping. Its rather difficult for someone with ADHD and Aspergers to focus on working from their PC putting things on EBay when they also have access to the entire internet...I admit to the fact I do lose focus, but I am NOT lazy. I have difficulty focusing on work, and every time I get told I don't do enough work, I get incredibly depressed. I can't keep dealing with it. I have self-esteem issues, and being told my effort is poor or that I'm lazy is only hurting. Frankly it can often cause me to give up. If anyone can help me, that'd be great.

Sorry your dad doesn't care enough to put forth the effort to understand your disability. I know what that feels like, because when I was younger, nobody knew I had a disability, so everything they couldn't understand about me was all my fault.

You need to look for a job doing something that interests you. My experience has been that I can't stay focused on any job that I have no love for. If there's not a passion driving me to do it, my ADHD has my mind wandering to Venus and back as though my brain were actively avoiding it. That is not laziness, that is a neurological disorder and you have no control over it. Neurotypical people can't conceive of that because the view from inside their heads is completely different.

If you do not need the internet for work and know how to do it disconnect your computer from the internet.

I am a Mac person, but is there a way to see only what you are working on currently on your PC?

For help, you'll need to try little "tricks". Here are some ideas:

-Use a timer. Google pomodoro technique, or try something similar.

-Write a daily plan/schedule before you begin each day and check it often to see how on track you are.

-Compete with someone or yourself.





While I agree with Willard, working on something you aren't passionate about can be excruciatingly difficult at times, I think if you desire independence that comes from having a job/income, you'll need to find some way to do things you don't want to. It sucks. It completely, totally, sucks. Get mad, vent, whatever, but keep trying and keep finding new ways to try.

What are some of your strengths and how can you apply them to your job?

Sound advice!

I work as a computer programmer, and I have a really hard time focusing on the task at hand. My mind is most times on other things like politics, religion, or something else that grabs my interest. I am really more of a retro-geek anyway, and have a distaste for computers..well not totally, but I only like computers on a hardware micro-level. I have no interest in learning new computer languages..I'd rather be learning Latin and archaic things.

Anyway, my boss recently got mad at me because he asked me for an update as far as how far I had gotten with testing programs, but he was asking me about source code that I hadn't visited in about a month, and I couldn't give him a figure percentage wise. He embarrassed me in front of the other programmers, and this job has me thinking that maybe I should just change careers! (--Well I have been thinking that for a very long time!)