ADHD and Careers: What Are Your Work Values
When looking for a job or more importantly a career, it is important to think about what are your work values. In a book written by Wilma R. Feldman, M.Ed., LPC, called Finding a Career That Works for You: A Step-by-Step Guide to Choosing a Career and Finding a Job 2nd Edition, she lists 64 job values. How she does this is by creating a chart with one value on one end and the opposite on the other end. In between are Very Important, Moderately Important, Not Very Important, Moderately Important and Very Important. So it is a value system of 3, 2, 1, 2, 3. The 3 being most and the 1 being least, some examples from her book are:
Very Important | Moderately Important | Not Very Important | Moderately Important | Very Important | ||
work alone | work with others | |||||
work for organization | self-employment | |||||
well defined duties | plenty of room for creativity | |||||
be my own boss | work under someone else | |||||
help others | work with things or data | |||||
close supervision | little or not supervision | |||||
low level responsibility | high level responsibility | |||||
no critical decisions | make key decisions | |||||
35-40 work week | 40+ hour work/weekends | |||||
guaranteed regular hrs | flexible hours | |||||
fix things | care for others |
And it continues with whether you are willing to travel, want to make independent decisions, dress codes, work with your hands, earning potential, travel, relocation, retirement and so forth.
I believe the complete list makes one think about issues we usually don’t think about when choosing a career or a job that are vital to our quality of life and satisfaction.
I highly recommend this book and use it with my clients. But make sure you get the second edition and I wouldn’t buy it used because there are lots of activities to do in the book and you might end up getting a copy that is already marked up. This book is a What Color is Your Parachute job book much condensed and explicitly for people with any type of challenge.
Abigail Wurf, M.Ed, CLC
ADHD and Executive Functions Coach
Abigail Wurf works with adults, couples and parents affected by ADHD or executive function issues (see definition below) in a coaching and/or consulting capacities. Her clientele also includes college and graduate students struggling to make it through their programs.
She conducts workshops and speaking presentations on executive function issues such as productivity, planning, prioritizing, goal setting, time management, task initiation, emotional regulation, focus, meta-cognition, working memory, self inhibition and flexibility/shift.
Abigail’s work also includes presentations on ADHD, specific executive functions or theories of executive functions, invisible disabilities, resiliency and motivation.