What are some of the traits seen in people with ADHD?

Hallowell and Ratey, authors of an excellent text entitled Driven to Distraction, list 20 symptoms that are often evident in a person with ADHD.¹ They are:

1. A sense of underachievement, of not meeting one’s goals (regardless of how much one has accomplished)
2. Difficulty getting organized
3. Chronic procrastination or trouble getting started
4. Many projects going simultaneously; trouble with follow-through
5. Tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark
6. An ongoing search for high stimulation
7. A tendency to be easily bored
8. Easy distractibility, trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or a conversation, often coupled with an inability to focus at times
9. Often creative, intuitive, highly intelligent
10. Trouble going through established channels, following proper procedure
11. Impatient; low tolerance for frustration
12. Impulsive, either verbally or in action, as in impulsive spending of money, changing plans, enacting new schemes or career plans, and the like
13. Tendency to worry needlessly, endlessly; tendency to scan the horizon looking for something to worry about alternating with inattention to or disregard for actual dangers
14. Sense of impending doom, insecurity, alternating with high risk-taking
15. Depression, especially when disengaged from a project
16. Restlessness
17. Tendency toward active behavior
18. Chronic problems with self-esteem
19. Inaccurate self-observation
20. Family history of manic-depressive illness, depression, substance abuse, or other disorders of impulse control or mood

Endnotes
_{1. Hallowell EM, Ratey JJ. Driven to Distraction : Recognizing and Coping With Attention Deficit Disorder from Childhood Through Adulthood. 1995. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 73-76.}