Imagine you’re playing your favorite video game. You’re deep into a level, everything is running smoothly, and then BAM—your character suddenly walks through walls, floats mid-air, or somehow skips ahead to the boss battle.
Broken? Maybe.
Brilliant? Absolutely.
Bug or feature? Depends who’s asking.
Welcome to the ADHD experience in the workplace: employees who seem to defy the usual game mechanics but somehow stumble upon warp zones of creativity, innovation, and mind-bending pattern recognition. The catch? You’ve got to stop trying to “patch” the glitch.
The Glitch That’s Actually a Gift
We’ve all heard the usual gripes: missed deadlines, zoning out in meetings, desks that look like a raccoon raided a filing cabinet. I say that with love—it’s me, hi! But peel back the chaos, and employees with ADHD aren’t broken—they’re modded. Think: cheat codes… just a little neurospicy.
Our so-called “glitches” are actually superpowers with cooler origin stories than most Marvel heroes:
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Hyperfocus: When they’re locked in, distractions cease to exist. Time slows. The Matrix is real.
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Idea Generation Mode: ON. Give them a challenge, and they’ll hand you 15 chaotic-but-genius solutions, three memes, and one borderline illegal idea that just might work.
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Pattern Recognition: While others are still highlighting bullet points, these folks are cross-referencing patterns like Sherlock hopped up on espresso.
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Risk Tolerance + Intuition: They’ll leap before they look—and somehow nail the landing. You’re welcome.
So, yes—they might occasionally forget to eat lunch or reply to your Slack message from 8 days ago, but they also might accidentally invent your company’s next big product.
The Problem with “Patching the Glitch”
Look, most workplaces were designed like old-school RPGs—linear, rigid, overly tutorialized. Great for neurotypicals. For ADHD brains? It’s like asking Mario to pause after every jump and update an expense report.
Trying to force ADHD folks into a box doesn’t just limit them—it nerfs their best abilities.
Imagine forcing Sonic the Hedgehog to walk everywhere. In khakis. With a clipboard.
When we cling to structure over flexibility, we’re disabling the very cheat codes that could carry your whole team to victory. And the kicker? We’re penalizing them for not playing by the rules of a game that was never designed for them in the first place.
Rewriting the Game Manual: How Employers Can Unlock ADHD Superpowers
If you’re an employer or manager, the goal isn’t to fix ADHD employees—it’s to optimize for them. Stripe did this beautifully during my time with them. They not only hired neurodivergent employees, they actively supported and optimized for us to do our best work for them. Here’s how you can unlock their hidden levels:
- Flexible Scheduling: Let them work when their brain says “GO” instead of when Outlook says “9am.”
- Project Autonomy: Set the goal, then get out of their way. They’ll either fail spectacularly or deliver pure gold. Either way—epic.
- Visual Tools & Kanban Boards: Colorful boards > 400-line email chains. Bonus points for emojis.
- Short, Action-Oriented Meetings: No one wants a cutscene before every decision. Just show us where to swing the sword.
- Celebrate the Weird Ideas: You never know—“rooftop goat yoga” might become your next viral campaign. Or HR’s worst nightmare. Win-win.
To the Professionals With ADHD: You’re Not Broken—You’re Modded
If you’ve ever felt like you’re playing a game where everyone else got the rulebook and you got a magic bean and a kazoo—congrats. You’re the glitch. And the glitch is glorious.
You’re not behind. You’re not a problem to fix. You’re a character running on a different physics engine, maybe even a different OS. You’re not lost. You’re exploring bonus levels no one else even unlocked.
Own your quirks. Lean into your pattern-hunting, your deep dives, your electric brain. Keep breaking stuff (metaphorically… most of the time). The world doesn’t need more perfect players—it needs more players who break the game in the best way possible. We all know it’s more fun that way, too.
Final Boss Thoughts
We don’t need to patch the glitch.
We need to equip, support, and celebrate it.
Because ADHD in the workplace isn’t a bug—it’s a hidden feature. And when you stop trying to turn power-ups into patch notes, you realize: this glitch? It might just be the key to beating the game.
So next time you spot an employee who’s “off-script,” maybe ask: What level are they seeing that I’m not?
Then hand them the controller and watch what happens.
