Lots of creative people have ADHD. ADHD challenges, like impulsivity and risk-taking, could lead to creative thinking. If people with ADHD follow through on ideas, their creativity can flourish.
Overall, these findings suggest that adults with ADHD are able to generate more original ideas with higher motivation from competing for rewards, and that motivational factors may also underlie the higher creativity of individuals with ADHD in everyday life.
Inattention, which occurs more frequently in those affected with the disorder, likely leads to mind wandering, or the drifting of thoughts from an activity or environment. Such drifting can lead to new, useful and creative ideas.
Conversational skills and humanity
Another study highlights that people with ADHD may have higher levels of social intelligence, humor, and recognition of feeling, or empathy.
The five gifts of ADHD include creativity, emotional sensitivity, exuberance, interpersonal empathy, and being nature-smart (The Gift of Adult ADD, 2008).
Does ADHD affect IQ? A popular misconception is that all children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are naturally smarter and have a higher IQ than children without ADHD. However, there is no correlation between this condition and intelligence.
While many experts agree that these children do exist, there is currently no formal criteria to identify giftedness in children who are ADHD or to identify ADHD in children who are gifted.
People with ADHD have a hard time staying in the moment, predicting the outcomes of their current actions, and learning from past experiences. Their impulsive behavior often makes them risk without thinking. Their hyperactive minds keep switching from one task to another.
Why Are There So Many Successful People with ADHD? It is known that people with ADHD have specific strengths, as a result of their brain functioning difference. They are more spontaneous, creative, energetic, intuitive, imaginative, and inventive.
Entrepreneurs. There are some well-known very high-achieving ADHD entrepreneurs including Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Walt Disney. Richard Branson had no interest in anything academic. Still, once he was able to harness his talents and imagination in his own way, he began to build a phenomenal business empire.
Many people with ADHD are extremely creative and imaginative. They are often graced with tremendous originality and expressiveness. Their fresh, inventive imagination is a powerful tool!
High IQ may “mask” the diagnosis of ADHD by compensating for deficits in executive functions in treatment-naïve adults with ADHD.
The mind of a person with ADHD is full of the minutiae of life (“Where are my keys?” “Where did I park the car?”), so there is little room left for new thoughts and memories. Something has to be discarded or forgotten to make room for new information. Often the information individuals with ADHD need is in their memory…
A high achiever's ADHD can look like being plagued with feelings of boredom, requiring work that feels stimulating and starting projects with intense excitement to then lose focus or motivation soon after. The challenges high-functioning individuals face can cause their ADHD to go undetected or unnoticed.
Consider these advantages afforded to those with ADD or ADHD: They excel in unstructured situations and conversations. They tend to be more intuitive. They tend to be much more creative.
The controversy comes in part from the fact that so many people with ADHD struggle mainly because the idea of it being a disorder gets in the way of them moving forward. Many people become shocked by hearing that it is actually a gift. It is true that while some people with ADD have lives that work well, others don't.
Highly intelligent children and adults with ADHD have been shown to rely on more efficient parts of the brain to make up for the weaker executive functioning associated with ADHD. So, people with high IQs tend to perform better in school and in life despite their ADHD.
They keep their things fairly organized and try to avoid making a mess. But many kids and adults with ADHD are the opposite — they're messy most of the time. And it can cause problems at home, school, and work. For example, kids might miss a field trip because the permission slip got lost in their overflowing backpack.
What is the Rarest Type of ADHD? The rarest type of ADHD diagnosed is the hyperactive-impulsive type with no indication of inattentive or distracted behavior, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
But also notice how generous they are to the ones they care about the most. This can also apply to adults with ADHD. Basically, individuals with ADHD care about other people. They want to make the people around them happy, whether it's by sharing a lunch box or providing a shoulder to cry on.