My Blog: ADHD Since 1978-

ADHD Life Hacks, pt. 7: It’s still about time

I think we have established that time is weird for us. A big thing might not feel hard, if it’s a thing that lights our fire. And a small thing can feel overwhelming because it is boring or tedious. I have found one strategy particularly helpful when it comes to getting through those difficult-because-they-are-boring tasks in life. Put simply: know how long things take. I’m a guy who feels like he can get through almost anything, as long as I know how long it is going to take. Of course, I’m being hyperbolic. There is definitely a threshold at which I will endure only limited suckage. But I’ve found that most of the things that I have avoided in the past just aren’t that bad, once I know how long they will take. And my clients would agree. Here are two examples. On a more macro level, I used to avoid gathering all the paperwork and statements I need to send to my bookkeeper. It’s a tedious thing I need to do a couple times a year that saps my energy, yet requires attention and EF. Because it ranks pretty high on the suckage scale, I had gotten it into my head that it would take at least a whole afternoon of my work week. That just made it feel more awful. So, a few years ago, I timed it. It only took about 90 minutes, not the 4 hours it felt like it was going to take. I have never avoided it since and it if off the list of things that I dread. On a more micro level, the dishes. Usually, I cook dinner and do most of the cooking dishes as I go. Then my wife does the after dinner dishes. But, when she works nights, I’ve…

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ADHD Life Hacks pt. 6: Interval Timer

The aforementioned interval timer is a great tool. But it depends on how you use it. As its essence, it is an external reminder to be mindful of the passage of time. Whether you are distracted or hyper focused, the right interval timer, used correctly will help you to not get lost and to continue to move through your day with purpose. Interval timers are, just like it sounds, timers that go off at a regular interval. There are plenty of free options to download on your phone. Or you can get a freestanding one. The freestanding ones are great for kids. I’ve used this one with my kids. Ideally, your interval timer/app should be easy to set, have a chime that is not so intrusive that it totally derails you if you are on task, but loud enough to get your attention if you are off task. This is important because we want to notice the timer, no matter what the situation is, but we don’t want it to be disruptive or annoying. (But don’t blame the timer if you find time itself annoying.) If you are using an app, make sure the timer doesn’t stop when you phone screen sleeps. When searching for apps, it may help to look for HIIT (high intensity interval training – workout apps) or meditation timers. They are all basically the same thing. BUT DO NOT USE A KITCHEN TIMER. Forcing yourself to stop what you are doing to reset a timer every few minutes is my idea of hell. Not so helpful. This is where I shock you. Set the timer for six minutes intervals. I’m sure you think that is way too short and weirdly specific. But it’s not. Think about this: Let’s say your morning routine is an hour. If…

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ADHD Life Hacks, pt. 5: “It’s about time.”

Unless you are an astrophysicist, I think we can agree that time is a constant and represents an objective reality. But it certainly doesn’t feel that way when you are living inside an ADHD brain. We experience time as very… squishy. I promise you that whomever originally said, “time flies when you are having fun,” was an ADHD person. Similarly, I think it had to have been an ADHD person who first noticed that, “a watched pot never boils,” as they left the kitchen and gave up on ever having a hot cup of tea again. Of course, these sayings are indicative of the human condition as a whole. But they are a good example of how ADHD is a pathological extremity of the human condition. The up side is that you CAN get better at time. I am living proof. Here are a couple tips on how to do it, some deceptively obvious, some more subtle. First, have a clock in EVERY ROOM. Clocks are great. They are a measure of that good old objective reality that is time. But they only help if you have ready access to one. By the way, EVERY ROOM includes the bathroom… where you can see it from the shower. Of course the clock only works if you look at it. At least while you are getting used to being mindful of time, I suggest using an interval timer. More on that next week. When thinking about clocks, consider what might work best for you (or your kids,) digital or analogue. Choose a clock that is big enough to see and ready from everywhere in the room. And, consider picking analogue clocks that have all the numbers. Blank faces or those with only lines can lead to mistakes. Especially for kids, consider alternative/visual…

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ADHD Life Hacks, pt. 4: More Reverse Chunking

Here are some more ways to reverse chunk… and a word of warning. Mail is a pain. If you haven’t noticed, they seem to bring more of it almost every day. And, unless it is your birthday or anniversary, probably none of it is any good. I know I promised pithy, real life tips, but I’m going to squeeze in one really important concept here. Dealing with your mail is actually a pretty small task. It is really important to logistically and psychologically differentiate between dealing with the mail, and dealing with the tasks that are generated by opening your mail. If you want to know more about task management… you are going to have to hire me to teach you how to keep A Bad-Ass To Do List, or wait for me to finish my book, with that title. But, maybe you do have a system for task management. If so, why do you need to open your mail every day? Or feel bad for letting it pile up for a LITTLE while? I do think there is a value in triaging you mail daily. I generally look through it quickly to filter out the obvious junk mail to the recycling bin(s), pull out the ultra rare item that looks really important, and separate mine from my wife’s. This generally take almost no attention or EF and about 30 seconds of my life. And, honestly, once you separate the wheat from the chaff, there really isn’t that much. Certainly not enough to feel anxious about dealing with. Then I actually open the mail about every 10 days. I can’t think of the last time that I had an issue because something sat in my inbox for a week. Snail mail is rarely urgent. Two for one today. Let’s talk…

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ADHD Life Hacks, pt. 3: Outsourcing

Life is often a balance of money and time. So, I understand that most of us aren’t in a position to outsource everything. But, if outsourcing frees you up to have the time to earn more, you could come out ahead. But, even if you pick your spots and outsource a few things, it can dramatically improve your stress level, make time for self care, or allow you to live in a way that is more aligned with your values by, for example, having more time to spend with family. Examples… My wife and I divide up the responsibilities around the house. I tend to do somewhat more because she’s the primary breadwinner. But we generally go with our individual strengths and likes. Be both really, really, HATE doing the regular house cleaning. The money we spend on cleaners every other week, may be the best money we spend on anything. I outsource some of the laundry. I do sheet, towels, underwear & sweatshirts. Everything else gets dropped off. So, about $55 saved me about two hours every other week. Worth it by far for me. I don’t outsource cooking. I’m a classically trained, former professional chef. We eat WELL. But we also eat value because I make my own stocks, do my own butchering, and grow my own organic veggies in the summer. But I’m the exception. For some folks, including many of my clients, meal kits are a great way to spend less time, both cooking and planning, to eat better, more nutritious meals. It’s often cost effective if it eliminates waste when things go bad in your fridge or reduces costly takeout nights. Professionally, the best money I spend is on my bookkeeper. It is a pitance compared to the torture that doing my own books is…

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ADHD Life Hacks, pt. 2: Reverse Chunking of Laundry

Reverse chunking is one of my favorite strategies. “Easy” can be hard for us. Regular, everyday tasks are often tedious and boring. Somethings we really need to do every day, like make food and clean up after ourselves. But there are a lot of things that don’t need to be done very often, provided we do them somewhat regularly. Here is one example. I do the laundry in our house. I HATE doing laundry. I also HATE being in the middle of doing laundry. So, I do all the laundry in the whole house every two weeks. Beds get changed, towels get done, everyone’s clothes, and everything else. Everything gets folded and put away. (The putting away is the part my wife does.) So, it’s not the best day of my life, every other Thursday. But it does mean that 13 out of 14 days I’m not doing laundry. That means that I only do laundry roughly 7% of my days on this earth. Life could be worse. Just make sure you have enough underwear.

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ADHD life hacks, pt. 1

Life has been challenging lately. It’s been tough to find the attention and bandwidth to post. So, I’m going to do a series of shorter posts with less philosophical musing and more quick, practical tips. Some will be things I’ve posted in the past, but probably not for a while. Most will be new. Some might even have pictures. (Exciting!) Hope you enjoy. Here are the first round of tips. Managing receipts. Use a receipt spike, usually referred to as a check spindle. They are a few bucks and are the best way to keep track of your receipts. It saved time and money to be able to locate receipts when you need to return things. And, for those of us with ADHD, any system that eliminates extra steps is golden. I have three spikes on my side desk. Personal receipts, things I will need for taxes at the end of the year, and business expenses. No scanning into a computer. No folders. No envelopes, (until the end of the year.) But don’t keep all your receipts. You wont’ need the one from five guys. But you might need the one from home depot. Then deal with them at the end of the year

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adhd, context & mindfulness continued

so do I mean by context? When my clients struggle with the anxiety of looking at their to-do list I always remind them that the things that they have to do exist in an objective reality. And their best chance of getting them done quickly, efficiently, effectively is to capture them on the list and utilize the list to manage and plan how to get them done. I 100% stand by that statement. But that statement doesn’t tell 100% of the truth. Because context is everything. I learned a lot of big lessons from the pandemic. I know I’ve written a lot about understanding the difference between being in thrive mode and survive mode. And of course, I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t point out that there’s a vast field of gray area in between those two extremes. And, frankly, whether we’re thriving or surviving can be a day-to-day or week to week situation. And there are a lot of different factors that go into our capabilities. Everyone has a certain number of hours in the day. But as people with adhd, we also have to be acutely aware of the number of hours of attention we have during the day, or what I might call our bandwidth. And many of us battle depression and anxiety. Both of those things limit your resources. And that’s just internal stuff. There are plenty of external things that are out of our control that can affect the resources we have available to be productive and efficient. and this is where the context connects to the mindfulness. We have to look at our to-do list for our calendar or whatever way we plan our time through the lens of looking at ourself. Because I always write from the heart and from…

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more on ADHD and a new way to think about mindfulness

hopefully you’re picking this up from last week and didn’t throw your phone or computer out the window when I left you with that cliffhanger. but to pick up where I left off, the mindfulness is about noticing to notice. I’m a big fan of external reminders. I love alarms, audible calendar reminders, interval timers, checklists taped to the wall, visual cues, and linked behaviors. All of that stuff is great. But the question is how do you remember to remember. And I don’t know if there is a good answer to that in a very practical sense. But in a more meta sense, I think it’s about cultivating your presence in the moment. So when you’re looking at your to-do list, you’re not just looking at a bunch of things. You’re assessing them. And you’re assessing how you’re assessing. I hope that last bit didn’t make your head explode. It sounds like a lot of work assessing your assessing. No value judgment here. It might be a lot of work. Until it becomes natural. I happen to be a pretty self-aware and introspective guy. I’ve also been a professional coach for 12 years. And I worked with a couple of therapists and a coach over the years. I think that leaves me in a pretty mindful space a lot of the time. Of course, managing my ADHD both pharmacologically and behaviorally is also a key component in me physically, neurobiologically being able to be present in the moment. but let’s think about that to-do list for a I’ve always talked to my clients about interacting with their to-do list. And I’m not sure until now I even fully knew what I meant when I said interacting with. The to-do list, which by the way I am still working on…

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ADHD and constant mindfulness

I had a really interesting conversation with a client today. This is probably going to be a little stream of consciousness. So bear with me. But you’re probably used to that if you read me regularly. Also, this is thinking of mindfulness in a different way from what I’ve written about before. You could almost replace the term mindfulness with presence in the moment. so let’s start thinking about mindfulness. When we talk about mindfulness these days, I think most of us think about it in terms of a “practice” of mindfulness. As in meditation, or a gratitude journal, or some other structured thing that we take time out of our day to do to get ourselves in a mindful place and thinking mindful thoughts. I’m a big fan. And I’m going to assume that this type of mindfulness contributes and builds towards the type of mindfulness I want to talk about today. as I’ve said many times, this is probably a human being thing. But I’ve only been in ADHD person. So I know it applies to ADHD people. And all my knowledge tells me that it applies more so to us than the average human. I think the goal is to be mindful throughout our day. I think we need to work towards being present in the moment and actively engaged in our life all the time. insane, right? That’s pretty much the antithesis of how we are wired. We spend a lot of time in our head. Thinking could be a good spin on that. Perseverating could be a less Rosy way to look at it. We often spend a lot of time rushing ahead because life is too slow and the current moment might not be super stimulating. I also think we can get in the…

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Stimulation seeking kung fu

One of my favorite parts of my job is when I learned something from one of my clients. That happened today and I wanted to share. I work with a couple who have a super hyperactive elementary school kid who is somewhat oppositional. This kid is smart and he loves to argue. In fact, a mother two ago he paused mid argument with mom to say, “this is fun.” I think that tells you a lot about what’s going on inside this kid’s brain he’s clearly getting a dopamine rush from the argument. So mom had the brilliant idea to feed this part of his personality in a more constructive way that caused less conflict. She started coming up with random topics to “litigate” that weren’t about daily life or functioning. They were just for fun. Like, what are better, dragons or unicorns? It’s unclear if there’s any long-term mitigation of the oppositional behavior. But it certainly not getting worse according to the parents. And it gives them an opportunity to, “celebrate this part of him instead of looking at it as a negative.” It gives him an opportunity to interact about something fun rather than something that is inherently contentious. I think this is absolutely brilliant parenting. I wanted to share the actual technique, but also spotlight brilliant and wonderful this outside the box parenting is. Not that any kid comes with an instruction manual… Wait a minute. They might not come with it. But how many books have been written about parenting? Some good. Some great. Some bad. Some insane. But if you have the wherewithal to filter out the bad stuff, there’s a lot of good information about how to raise healthy, happy kids who will eventually be able to pay their own rent. But for those…

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ADHD life is not fair & balanced

Well, life isn’t a balanced equation for anyone. The effects of that seem to be harder on us based on how we’re wired. Let me explain what I mean. There are some places in life where you get out what you put in in a very linear way. If you’re paid hourly and you work more hours, you make more money. Straightforward, simple, linear. On the other end of the spectrum are things that are almost speculative based on the inconsistency of how much result B comes out of effort A. Let’s say you’re in real estate. I have always thought of real estate as the ultimate hustle. You have to be moving and grooving and putting a lot of effort into the “machine” to get anything out. But what you get out and when you get it and how consistent it is may have very little to do with how much effort you are putting in… sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, you have to put the effort in. But that effort may not pay off for five years. Some of the effort may never pay off. Other times, simple things might pay off big. Of course you have to assess what you’re putting in. Can you be more efficient? Can you be working smarter? Those are things worth assessing. But if you ever think you’re gonna work a 40 hour week in real estate and guarantee that you’re going to close the deal every six weeks like clockwork, good luck with that. And now you were asking yourself how this relates to ADHD. Or maybe you’re really self-aware and you’re not asking. But thanks for reading this anyway. Well, he relates to ADHD because we are wired to be invested in the immediate. Neurobiologically we like instant gratification. Of…

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