Issue 11: Sweat
Invisible (Disability) Work
It takes a lot of work to look this lazy. Having ADHD makes everyday tasks like tidying up and sending emails a challenge, taking extra time to complete. The extra time and effort put into completing these tasks are not visible to those who witness the messy apartment or are inconvenienced by a delayed email response. They might perceive the ADHD person as not caring or being lazy, because the work does not translate to the outsider’s expectations. Having spent many years reading books on productivity and trying to invent systems to be more efficient despite my ADHD, I was naturally drawn to technology and how it might relieve me of some of the tasks I find so challenging. Modern organizational tools and smart devices have the potential to free me of these tasks I find so burdensome and time consuming, but in reality technology is not always as benevolent or easy to integrate as it seems.
Having been penalized in school growing up for having different needs, I tried to hide my struggles from outsiders as an adult. Later, I realized I was only hurting myself because people still witnessed the manifestation of my disability, but without knowing I had a disability it looked like I simply did not care. The term “invisible work,” introduced by Arlene Kaplan Daniels in the mid-1980s, was brought to my attention as I began unpacking how my attempts to make my disability as invisible as possible only harmed me further. Kaplan Daniels suggested that women’s work, as it was considered at the time, was devalued and unacknowledged because it was unpaid and existed outside of the economy. The problem with unacknowledged gendered work, as Kaplan describes, is that lack of pay creates a lack of value. I am appropriating Kaplan’s term invisible work as invisible disability work to describe the unacknowledged time and energy it takes a person with an invisible disability to do a task that other people may see as simple.
Rather than financial consequences, the invisible labor of disability has social consequences. With unsustainable levels of energy diverted towards basic functioning, their behavior might be perceived as laziness, standoffishness, or generally antisocial because of how their disability manifests. Another difference between what I will be discussing and gendered work, is that Daniels believes women are not rewarded for doing work that they have a “natural propensity” for like nurturing, providing emotional support, or creating a comfortable environment for others. Meanwhile, in my exploration of invisible disability, the invisible labor comes from a natural disinclination for tasks that are otherwise deemed basic and something that everyone is capable of. The work is invisible and devalued because one cannot grasp that what comes easily to them might be a great challenge to others.
The work of keeping a house clean illustrates the nuances of Daniel’s invisible gendered work and the invisible disability work, both literally and metaphorically. Invisible disability work accumulates sneakily, like dust inside a home. Someone without ADHD has a full time employee in their head, that is, their executive functioning, working memory, focus, follow through, and other things that the ADHD brain lacks. That employee takes some of the load off the person by helping them tidy up and keep track of their important documents.
Imagine someone who has always had a full time housekeeper, let’s name her Imogene. She is not the primary caretaker of her space, so she’s always come home to a clean house. Because of this, she doesn’t appreciate the rate at which dust magically manifests on everything. She knows what dust is- she sees it collect in the sneaky places that the housekeeper doesn’t always get to, inside light fixtures, or behind their knickknacks. But her housekeeper mostly takes care of the dust and Imogene doesn’t have to think much about it.
When Imogene’s friend without a housekeeper mentions how overwhelmed they are managing the dust in their house, Imogene empathizes, because there are days her housekeeper is sick and she has to take on more of that labor, but generally she simply can’t relate. Imogene and her friend have the same number of hours in a day, but she has a full time employee and the friend does not. Much of that work the friend without a housekeeper does is unseen by Imogene because she doesn’t know how much dusting her housekeeper is doing while she is out. She knows her friend does more housework, but she won’t understand how often baseboards must be wiped, or the legs of chairs, or how humidity in the bathroom mixes with the dust to form a sticky paste on the bottles, sink, toilet and walls. A neurotypical person can relate to having trouble focusing, or losing track of their belongings sometimes, but the housekeeper in their head is still working.
Someone without a full time housekeeper is still judged by the same standards as those who do have help. Similarly, someone with ADHD is expected to keep up with those who have full time help in their head to take some of that load off, even though they are doing all that work alone.This is how disability work becomes invisible. Many of the symptoms are relatable enough, but we generally only understand things from our own frame of reference. Imogene doesn’t comprehend the level of dust her friend is fighting against.
ADHD is more than a messy house and late emails; it affects regulating emotions, memory, sleep, sensory overwhelm, rejection sensitivity, makes maintaining friendships and relationships challenging, puts people at greater risk of substance abuse, car accidents, and twice as likely to be injured in general. The small things —writing an email, getting up in the morning, making sure you have everything you need when leaving the house — take their toll. The big things —the effort to mask and appear as capable as your peers to avoid any slip up that will ruin your reputation, and the work it takes to explain to a new partner or friend your needs and try not to feel like they are thinking that a relationship with someone else would be less work — hurt even more.
With all these micro interactions racking up steep energy bills every day, there must be ways to relieve some of that mental load. Has advancement in technology resulted in any profound quality of life improvements in those trying to compensate for ADHD? Can technology be my housekeeper? At first glance, yes, technology does make it easier to be organized, to stay on top of work and home maintenance, etc. But the real relationship between technology and ADHD is more nuanced than that.
The idea of productivity in the first place is problematic. In Four Thousand Weeks, TIme Management for Mortals, Oliver Burkeman discusses the trap of productivity, and how technology does not ease our workload. Burkeman uses the washing machine, and its impact on womens’ domestic work, as an example. It was predicted that the invention of the washing machine would create more free time for homemakers. Hours of time should have been freed up every week that was previously spent manually scrubbing clothes. But, in reality, the standard of cleanliness just increased. Clothes couldn’t just be clean, now they had to be pressed. Freeing time just opened up a void to be filled with more intense home and childcare, rather than personal leisure time. He explains that it’s simply not possible to feel on top of your tasks. If you do manage to fit everything in, the goal post will shift. If you are known for being an efficient worker, your boss will give you more work. When you’re close to accomplishing your life goal of going to every country in Europe, you start worrying if you’ll have time for Asia. There are an infinite number of things someone would want to do with their life- If you don’t feel good about your productivity now, you won’t feel better if it is increased. He argues that we don’t need to increase our productivity, but rather reform our idea of productivity altogether. On a societal scale, our definition of productivity shifts as technology makes things easier. Despite technology’s rapid advancement, we don’t have more free time compared to people of thirty, fifty, or one hundred years ago. Work, like a gas, will fill up the space available to it.
Keeping Burkeman’s theories of productivity in mind, can technology that enables “productivity” actually lighten the mental load, decrease the invisible labor of someone with a cognitive disability? Productivity tools like the Apple Watch or the Roomba and organizational technologies like Google Calendar might help someone with a cognitive disability compensate, but because people without disabilities also have access, their existence doesn’t just bring those with disabilities up to par with everyone else. Based on Burkeman’s theory, if tools that increase productivity also increase the standards and expectations of work, efficiency tools do not boost up those of us with ADHD, they move the goalpost a bit further because society is creeping towards greater productivity as well.
Using technology can require a higher mental load than their lower tech counterparts, and someone with ADHD will have a harder time incorporating these technologies into their lives. I bought an Apple Watch to assist me by improving my time awareness, reminding me of my tasks, alerting me to appointments I otherwise would miss, and most helpfully, allowing me to ding my lost phone when I’ve shut it into my dresser drawer or put it in the freezer while digging for something in the back. But the barrier to entry is that I must remember to charge my watch, and once it’s charged I must also remember to put it on. Then I must charge it again the next day. And the next. Now, not only do I have a new chore, but it only takes one slip up for the whole watch wearing operation to fall apart.
The higher functioning of the apple watch is thus canceled out by the extra maintenance it requires. Would a roomba take the burden of vacuuming off of me and reduce some invisible work? A roomba’s entire job is to eat up dust. That’s almost like having a housekeeper, right? However, to benefit from a roomba, I would have to be someone who’s floor isn’t covered in a layer of things, so the roomba won’t choke on 6 hair ties and my tax forms before turning into another piece of expensive junk that sits there symbolizing my failures. Vacuuming is an easier task for me, organizing and putting away things is hard. The roomba won’t help me with what really matters– it won’t function in my space at all. Items that could act as tools to make me more functional are not accessible to me, while those who don’t struggle as much with these things become more efficient and even more on time to their appointments than ever before. The standard of cleanliness, productivity, efficiency, whatever else is expected of a functional adult, are raised and I am left behind with a dusty house and my dead Apple Watch.
Even the technology I have successfully integrated into my life comes with an asterisk. Something that aids with one symptom of ADHD, could make another symptom worse. My Amazon Alexa lets me pause and play the TV with voice commands. It reduces friction for me because my remote control vanishes every time I look away from it. With Alexa, I don’t have to frantically search for it every time I need to pause. She’ll pause it for me and I don’t have to search for anything. This helps with one manifestation of my ADHD- Losing track of all my things – but it becomes that much easier for me to smoothly watch tv, making the boring tasks I must do a little harder to reach. Burkeman also touches on this, saying “As for Apple Pay, I like a little friction when I buy something, since it marginally increases the chances I’ll resist a pointless purchase” (52) Apple pay is great because it lets me leave the house with my wallet, that’s one less thing to remember. Therefore, Apple Pay must be compensatory right? However, it does enable in whatever small way, more thoughtless purchases. Swiping a credit card already feels like fake money, tapping a phone is one more deviation away from the sensation of separating yourself from your money. For someone who struggles with impulsivity, but also struggles to keep track of belongings, is Apple Pay helpful or destructive? While they do reduce a bit of chaos for me, Alexa and Apple Pay aren’t able to be my surrogate housekeepers either. They help me be a more efficient consumer, from the convenience of my dust covered couch.
Technology that would relieve some mental burden or decrease work for me as someone with an invisible disability is not so easy to find. It might require too much maintenance to be reliably implemented in my life, it might harm me by making it easier to make bad decisions, it might even raise the standards and expectations of productivity and efficiency for society as a whole, still leaving me a step behind. How many gadgets must I buy before I can pretend I don’t have a disability and still not be seen as lazy or anti-social? We can infinitely innovate, pursuing greater and greater “productivity” but those who begin at a disadvantage can’t catch up. Because of this, technology does not so plainly eliminate invisible disability work– The work only evolves into another level of expectation.