In other words...

My name is Ken Phillips and I am 65 years old (Sep 97). I have been a victim of as long as can remember. Long before anybody knew that we weren't necessary a bunch of very smart but equally lazy boys. So maybe, just maybe some very open-minded and very curious researcher will listen to me and try what I am going to tell you worked for me for many years. We never heard of Ratlin or nay other of these zombie drugs.

First let's define the problem in some very simple terms and while we are at it we will blow-off some myths as well..

Let's start with the name of the disorder.. "Attention DEFICIT Disorder"... This implies that the ADD person is incapable of "paying attention". This is absolutely 180 degrees from the truth . The ADD person pays attention to EVERYTHING !!! and here is why.

Every organization that intakes amounts of work or information has an organized system for sorting, prioritizing, and acting on the work-load in and orderly manner. The normal human brain also has a triage system for handling the vast amounts of information that is fed to it every second of the day by every outside source imaginable. Some of the information is classified as junk and is discarded, some is informational and is filed away for future reference and the rest is recognized as task to be completed in a predetermined order.

The ADD person's brain does not have a working triage system therefore all data is received with equal importance and is to acted on in a like manner. Some examples of this inrush of data can be describes as follows:

When I am setting in the house I can hear everything that is going on whether it concerns me or not. I can hear the children playing , the TVs, and any other conversations that may be going on. In a restaurant I can hear all the conversations going on around me , all the dishes rattling as well as noticing almost all the movement going on around me. What is lost in all this is the conversations at my own table in my own group. Why?..... There is no filter system to screen out the junk !!!! What do my companions think?.... I am not paying attention !!!!

Now how does this translate to everyday work and school ? Because the ADD person cannot tell what is important and what is not we all act on the LAST IN LAST OUT system. If you are skeptical about this then closely observe the ADD person and see just how many times a minute the ADD person redirects his attention from one task to some other (this could be just responding to a noise in the other room) . Now think about how many times you have given the ADD person a laundry list to perform by saying ...."when you get through with what you are doing I want you to....." see what I mean.

Now how do you deal with this ??? Here is what has and still works for me.

1. Exclude as many distractions as possible. At work I wore industrial ear plugs and found that they were great at filtering out the distractions and allowing me to concentrate on the people that were talking.
2. At home I surrounded my self with "meaningless noise" I listened to music through headphones, here again, we are screening out distractions and allowing the brain to devote all it attention to the task at hand
3. I work on tasks only as long as I can make progress and when the "fog" closes in I quit.
4. I only read what I have to because I like most ADD persons I also am somewhat dexletic so reading is a real problem.

BTW did I tell you I have been a practicing Facility and Mechanical engineer for the last 35 years??? So not reading every little detail about every little subject will not stifle a career much to dismay and amazement of my High School teachers.

I also flunked every algebra, trig and physics course I ever took until I learned to do it different than the book. But my stress analysis always worked. ( at least no structure ever caved in)

OK I am tired now so let's recap and get out of here......

ADD is a information management problem not a lack of intelligence.
ADD Can be controlled by alienating the distractions.
ADD persons work on a "Last in -Last out" system.
ADD people are not well served by those who insist that they be trained "act normal"

Thank you for listening

Ken Phillips

P.S. This letter took me 1:30 to compose using all the features of MS Word 6.2