Revealed: Secret hacks for dealing with dyslexia in the workplace
Did you know that from the 3rd to the 9th of October 2022 is Dyslexia awareness week ?
In tribute to dyslexia awareness week, I've put together a short article sharing a few of the secret hacks I've learned over the years that have helped me overcome my dyslexia in the workplace. So scroll down and read through; if you have dyslexia, hopefully, you'll find these tips helpful too!
First off, it is worth noting that some incredibly inspirational people have achieved great things despite struggling with dyslexia. Did you know, for example, that Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Jamie Oliver, Florence Welch, Agatha Cristie, and Lewis Hamilton have all admitted to struggling with dyslexia?
Although this is reassuring to know, it doesn't feel very useful for the everyday dyslexic in their 9 - 5 job who isn't a famous entrepreneur, celebrity, singer, author, or F1 world champion. So for us everyday dyslexics, I've jotted down my secret hacks below. Let me know if you can relate to these in the comments!
Reading
Most people with dyslexia take longer than average to read a page of text, document, or PowerPoint slide.
So why not just read faster? If I try to read quickly, I'll often lose my place on the page, skip words without realizing it, and sometimes miss the context entirely. This is a classic dyslexia problem and a big disadvantage in a work environment, especially when working at companies like Amazon, where meetings often begin with a written document that everyone is expected to read in silence before any discussion begins.
(Fun fact – according to Bill Carr and Colin Bryar in their book 'Working backwards ,' Jeff Bezos would often be the last person to finish reading in such meetings, as he'd scrutinize every sentence on the page).
However, for most of us, slow reading in the workplace is often met with passive-aggressive micro-aggressions from smug colleagues who'd inevitably finish reading before you and impatiently wait for you to hurry up!
So what's the secret hack to overcome this??I haven't mastered how to read faster and still absorb the info, but the first hack is to not be embarrassed by your reading speed.
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Reading hack 1:?Tell your colleagues you need more time to finish. Then take your time to absorb all the content and ask intelligent questions in the discussion.
Reading hack 2:?The next secret to success is requesting that the meeting organizer share an agenda and any notes at the time of the meeting invite to allow you to read and prepare in your own time before the meeting. Of course, sometimes a peer might say in response to this request, "No agenda. We're just going to wing it". But trust me when I say that usually translates to a disorganized mess. In that situation, use your judgment and, if needed, politely decline the invite if you think it could turn out to be a chaotic waste of your time!
Writing
When I was a child in school, I had extra spelling and handwriting classes during my lunch breaks while my friends played football. My writing was so terrible at primary and middle school that the only advantage was my friends couldn't copy my homework because they had no idea what I'd written!
Fast forward 20 years or so, and I've landed myself in a profession where I'm privileged to use a Macbook at work. This brings me to my next best-kept secret for people with dyslexia in the workplace.
Writing secret 1:?Grammarly is your best friend. Not the free version. Get the premium version. Use it to write emails, messages, documents, and anything else. It'll teach you to write better over time. Its AI tech is constantly improving and will save you time!
Writing hack 2:?Write, edit, look away for a few minutes, revisit what you wrote, and do one more final edit. Being dyslexic means you miss mistakes because you don't realize they're mistakes in the first place. Taking a break, resting your eyes, and revisiting your content allows you to spot errors you otherwise might have missed.
That concludes it for now!
Are you dyslexic too? Why not share in the comments hacks and secrets that have helped you battle dyslexia at work?
Data Engineering @Meta
2 年Thanks for sharing! I didn't know there was a dyslexia week. I actually had a similar experience in school. Retaining information from reading a long, complicated document start to finish can be tricky and doesn't always feel like the best approach for me. Something that helps me digest reading material and actually retain the information is trying to zoom out. I think about how the document is structured and what message the writer might be trying to convey. If I can find a structure then often the rest of the details sort of fill in naturally and somehow stick better in my memory. For example, people usually start a document with a problem statement so I'll look for that first. The problem statement probably needs some supporting context for it to make sense so that comes next, and so on. Parsing through material in this fashion is basically just taking a formula I'm already very familiar with and filling in the blanks.
AE@ Plooto | Making Bookkeepers' and Accounts' lives easier ????????
2 年I absolutely adore Grammerly! (Still trying to get my company to pay for it ??)