Product Description

Can drugs cure Attention Deficit Disorder? Why are some ADD children and adults more successful than their "normal" peers? What professions are best for ADD people? In this ground-breaking book, author Thom Hartmann presents a new and very welcome approach to Attention Deficit Disorder. His is the first book to explain clearly that ADD, rather than being a problem, may actually be beneficial. He sees ADD sufferers as "hunters", totally focused on movement, constantly monitoring their environment and exhibiting incredible bursts of energy. Correctly approached, these characteristics can be harnessed to create an overall positive effect. These "hunters" find themselves in our contemporary society surrounded by non-ADD sufferers or "farmers" cautious, slow and steady workers. This positive and long-awaited book explains how adults and children with ADD can adapt and function more creatively and productively in today's world. Thom Hartmann also identifies ADD individuals who have helped to change the world they lived in - Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143487 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

About the Author
Thom Hartmann is the former executive director of a residential treatment facility for abused and emotionally disturbed children. He is the author of five books on Attention Deficit Disorder.

Customer Reviews

Read and Believe - Think Different!
Hartmann is clearly not only an individual in his thinking, but is blessed with the talent to express, and enlighten us into no-nonsense solutions to fulfilment, not only for our own lives, but also for our brethren and future generation.

Just occasionally in our lives, you meet someone who inspires you. You latch on to their thinking, and get carried along with the obvious benefits that practising what you believe in can, and will, enhance your well being. Simply looking at the positive opportunity that is present at each moment of defeat or gloom makes you a better person. It makes you value yourself for who and what you are, rather than turning inwards to a life of self-destruction that is all too prevalent with ADD. Whether or not the author publicly admits to it, I sense that he too may have ADD. However, he has used it to his advantage, and most certainly to thousands of fellow sufferers, (not to mention those who care and educate ADDers too) who have the privilege of listening to, or reading his teaching.

If you are reading this, then you simply have to buy a copy, (or preferably two, and pass the other on). You owe it to yourself, and most probably also to those who surround you in your life. You will not be the same person again. As the recent Apple Computer advertising slogan said - think different. The author makes you realise that being yourself with ADD is no handicap, but merely a different person, thinking differently. Believe in it, and see the difference in yourself.

very readable and very encouraging
I suspect I have ADD so I bought this book as my second on the subject. I found the hunter and farmer analogies very useful and thought-provoking. That's what I really liked about this book. It's in parallel with how I like to think. He really has got a fertile mind and manages to bring together concepts that make a lot of sense. I would say that if you are a fervent self-help kind of person this is a great book for that. One has to still do the work of piecing a working program for yourself - I love doing that anyway.
What's been very frustrating for me is trying to improve my procrastination, organisational skills, mind shutdown, energy, paradoxes .. the list goes on. Relying on the overwhelming number of self-help books out there, especially books on getting things done just haven't worked. Now I know why.

This book will provide you a framework and an overview of pretty much what makes you tick. Especially how you think. The really encouraging part is Thom presents this as a gift. A way of seeing the world and how we live in it. Great inventors often had ADD. If medicated to single-focus mind they probably would have become very ordinary. Their brilliance dulled.

If medication isn't your way but meditation and other self-healing methods are then you'll find an enthusiast in this book.

The other most useful info in this book is that to get things done a ADDer needs the right environment. Once you are sure you have ADD then you can embrace this paradoxical self and get the most out of it. For instance to get things done there must be no distractions. Think CAT. A cat notices every movement, every new thing. You've got to take that all out if your in "open mind mode" to stop firing off into another direction. Also I'm now buying into making lists and using organisational tools. I've thought in the past surely I'll remember, but often I don't. Paperwork becomes invisible. To function optimally one has to accept how you think and then not fight it but accept certain ways have to be adopted to function best in our current world structure.

An example of thinking things through and being paradoxical is multi-tasking. A typical ADDer can do several things at once, yet a single distraction or two and he's lost his flow completely. I had to think about that one:)

Another is if your in the zone you can stay single minded for literally hours, days and weeks. Yet another time you can't even start because you have mind shutdown. The most frustrating thing for me at school and at work as a computer programmer I would look at words and information and it would just be a refection of those same words and information. The brain simply just doesn't react at all!! At work this would go on for weeks at a time.
Usually this happens when it's become boring to you. The brain simply says "its boring I'm not wasting a single twinge on it". I think CAT again when it finds you boring for some reason.


To be honest I'm not sure people without ADD will identify as much with this book as much as those with ADD. I understand Thom has ADD which explains why I and others with ADD relate to what he's saying.

This review doesn't do justice to this book. It's packed full of wonderful information, insights and encouragement, I hope you buy it and love it as I did.

Creator of the Beginner Tai Chi (DVD)

Spot on!
Every now and again you read a book which could have been written about you..and just recently, I have read two. This was one of them and explained beautifully something I have always really known, but having never actually been labelled with, you always question if it applies to you. Thom's explanation of how we have evolved and how some of us are more genetically connected to our hunter gatherer ancestors, than others, is absolutely spot on and something that I have believed in strongly through my work with helping others over the last few years.
I don't pretend to be an expert.. I don't have a degree in nutritional science or anything else either. I do how-ever, have a great passion for learning about food, good health and nutrition and over the last 5 years, have become very good at learning to listen to my own body. I know for example that the diet which I had as a child - full of sugar, fizzy drinks, e-numbers and lots of bread, pasta and grains, was a diet that served well for fueling my short temper and all the tantrums I used to have. I also know that if I ever creep back to that sort of diet, three or four days is all it usually takes for the moods and tantrums to start creeping back.
If I could advise anyone who might read this and recognise some of themselves, it would be to buy this book (because I believe he has got it just right) along with a book called The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain, Ph.D
If you are ADD and Thom's view about being a hunter type is right, then it makes sense that you may benefit from a hunter type of diet too.
This basically means less of the grains and a little more fat and protein.
It's worked for me. I'm now much more in control of who and how I am than ever before.