Hacking Your ADHD

Last year there was a surge in the popularity of the game Among Us - 1000's of people jumped on to be funny little scientists running around there spaceship running various little tasks... all while trying to find out who among them didn't belong - the one who was trying to sabotage the mission. The one who was an imposter.

I definitely played my fair share of the game, but always felt like I didn't get to play as the imposter nearly as much as I wanted to... yet in real life, far too often I feel like I'm playing the imposter. I'm sure that many of you can relate to feeling like the only reason you are where you are is that you tricked people into thinking that you belong. Maybe you think that you're not really qualified for your job, or maybe you got into a program that you're sure someone else would have been better qualified for, or maybe you feel like you're friends are just pretending to like you.

This is called imposter syndrome and it is shockingly common - I say shockingly common because when you're feeling it, it's hard to imagine anyone else feeling quite like you do - and yet almost everyone feels imposter syndrome to some extent. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/amongus

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Imposter syndrome is the feeling of self-doubt around your skills, talents, or accomplishments where you fear of being exposed as a "fraud".
2. By understanding what causes imposter syndrome you can begin to work on overcoming it - understanding that it's not just you and that even if we're chalking up all our success to luck that we still had a hand in creating that luck.
3. Talking about and reflecting on our imposter syndrome is a great way to work on overcoming it - when we bottle up those feelings it can be hard to have real perspective on the situation. By acknowledging the feels and removing our beliefs about all or nothing success we can work through those feelings of being an imposter

Occam's Razor is a philosophical rule (and that's rule in a very soft sense) that we can use to help us with problem solving. In philosophy a razor is a tool used to eliminate (or shave off) options that might lead us astray.

Occam's Razor is one of the most popular examples and has made it's way into popular culture from the movie Contact to Sherlock Holmes to The Big Bang Theory.

I imagine that a lot of you have heard of the famous razor before, which states that: plurality should not be posited without necessity. Now I'm sure that's perfectly clear for most of you, but for my benefit I'm going to do a bit of unpacking on that phrase, cause plurality should not be posited without necessity seems a bit dense to me.

The basic idea here is that when we're looking at competing ideas we want to go with the one that has the fewest assumptions - or that the simplest explanation is often preferable to a complex one.

Of course the rule on simplicity also isn't as simply as it seems. Today we're going to be exploring Occam's Razor and also looking at how we can apply it to coming up with better solutions for our ADHD. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/occamsrazor This Episode's Top Tips

1. Occam's Razor states: plurality should not be posited without necessity - or more simply when we're looking at competing ideas we want to go with the one that has the fewest assumptions - or that the simplest explanation is often preferable to a complex one.
2. With ADHD we can use Occam's Razor to help when we're trying to overcomplicate something - often we go all in on ideas and don't let ourselves see the forest for the trees.
3. While the simplest explanation is often preferable we also have to keep in mind that we have ADHD - what might be a simple solution for a neurotypical might not be a viable solution for us.

I'm going to be diving into some more aspects of planning in the coming months - I know, shouldn't I have done this before the end of the year? Well I'm going to us my being completely unprepared for the end of the year to illustrate a great point - it's never too late to start working on planning.

One of the most important aspects of planning is knowing where you've been and this typically comes from some kind of review process. The reason for the review is so that we can plan an accurate course based on where we are now. But that review is also a lot easier said than done. I've sat down for many a review sessions and realized that I don't have a great way to look back. I'll skim through my calendar and wonder what exactly happened over the last few weeks or months and kind of shrug and go... stuff?

And what that means is that we want to look at how we measure our success - so today we're going to be talking about how we set our goals, how we can work on measuring their outcomes and also questioning what actually makes a good measurement. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/indicators

This Episode's Top Tips

1. When we're setting goals we should focus on the small changes we can make that we can keep up for the long term.
2. When we're think about goals we need see if we're measuring them lagging or leading measures. Lagging measures are the outcomes based on what's happening with our leading measures. The best goals have a mix of the two measurements.
3. What we choose to measure matters and influence our future actions. Make sure that what you're measuring is incentivizing the outcomes you actually want.

Hey there team, we're nearly at the end of 2020 and I thought I'd deliver a bit of a shorter episode this week focusing on some of the strategies that I find are the most important for managing my ADHD. This is definitely not a definitive list and as for the order of things... well I moved things around a number of times trying to decide what the best order would be and honestly I'm not sure there really is an order or truly a most important thing. When we're trying to manage our ADHD an important to remember is that it's all connected - anyone step we take is going to make the rest of the steps easier and while somethings really are more important than others, what we've really got to focus on is doing what we can, because anything we do is going to be helping everything else. So while there may be things that might be more effective to do in managing your ADHD, don't worry if you're not there yet. Do what you can now and you'll get there eventually. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/topfive This Episode's Top Tips

1. Work on Accepting your ADHD and giving yourself what you actually need to thrive.
2. Realize we're all snowflakes and that our ADHD is unique - what works for me might not work for you.
3. Learn about your ADHD by embracing your ADHD community and finding out what it means to have ADHD.
4. Don't rely on willpower for the things that are really important - set up systems that will work even when you don't want to.
5. Work on creating realistic expectations - too often we overestimate what's possible and end up feeling like we let ourselves down just because we couldn't actually juggle all 100 projects we wanted to do.

Sequencing is all about the order in which we do things. Sometimes it seems like it doesn't matter what comes first, but also try putting your pants on after you put on your shoes.

Sequencing is something I've come to realize is a big deal with ADHD. The order in which we do things has a big impact on our overall productivity, but more than that, some of our other issues with ADHD make the sequence in which we do things much more important.

Today we're going to be exploring how the order we do things is important for our ADHD brains and then we'll be looking at some ways that we can use sequencing to our advantage.

Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/sequencing This Episode's Top Tips

1. Sequencing is order in which we do things and it matters because it can have a big impact on how we remember things and execute our plans.
2. Planning can help with our ability to sequence things properly - one technique that can be especially helpful in making sure we don't forget steps is to start our planning from the end and working our way backwards.
3. Part of sequencing is making sure that we're paying attention to tasks that will get us off track and making sure we're not putting those right before things we actually want to do.
4. Batching tasks is a great way to make sure we're not getting ourselves off track - but remember we don't have to an entire batch at once, we can still break batches into reasonable chunks.

Part of the reason that automations is such a ripe topic is that it can help in almost all areas of our life - this week we're going to focus more on the work side of things, because when it comes to our jobs there are a ton of things that usually can be automated fairly easily, because we all have those little tasks that we have to do all the time that aren't that hard but do require us to shift our attention to them for just a little bit. And that's what I think is the best benefit of setting up automations for our ADHD brains - we've only got so much executive function for the day and task switching can be such a drain on us. When we set up these automations we can make it so that instead of wasting our days doing little nit picky things, that we're actually focusing on the things that matter. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/evenmoreautomations This Episode's Top Tips

1. Use programs like Zapier or IFTTT to create connections between other programs to help automate some of your workflow.
2. The first step in making your inbox more manageable is unsubscribing from all those newsletters you don't read and then setting up filters to direct the rest of your mail to various folders.
3. You can use predictive text and canned responses to reduce the amount of time it takes to respond to your emails.

In this week's episode we're going to focus on the money side of things and go into how we can use automation for our shopping and then also how we can use automations with our finances.

And as a reminder, automations are things that we can set up in our life that are just going to happen regardless of what else we do. So think clicking a button and having a form filled out or even more basically think about something like your dishwasher, you put the dishes in, click a button and then all your dishes automatically get cleaned. Breaking down the dishwasher example, we still have to load up the dishes and we also have to unload them, but they take care of that process of actually getting them clean. And that's a huge part of automation - it isn't going to solve all of your problems, but often they're worth it because it takes care of those parts that are time consuming or that you just don't want to do. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/moreautomations This Episode's Top Tips

1. The best tasks to automate are tasks that don't require higher-level thinking, things you do regularly and that take away from what you really want to be working on.
2. Automating everything isn't always the right answer, we need to make sure that we're still thinking about our transitions.
3. There are tons of ways we can automate our shopping from using meal planning to know what we really need to creating reoccurring purchases for all those things we regularly need.
4. We can automate our finances with things like direct deposit, automatic bill pay, using budget tracking and making sure that we're putting away money for the future.

One of the paradoxes of ADHD is how much work we can get done when we're interested in something... but then how little we get done when something is boring. Unfortunately in life there are a lot of things that are going to bore us. And this becomes especially true with those boring tasks we have to do over and over again. So this is where automation comes in - automation is simply something that accomplishes tasks for us without our intervention.

Whether we know it or not, all of us already use a lot of automation in our lives already. We often don't think of simple things like setting an alarm as an automated process, but it's a way we can externalize a reminder that will go off with no other input from us.

Today we're going to take a look at how automation can be helpful with ADHD, some of the ways that we can take advantage of automations and then go into some specific things we can look at automating. There was actually a lot to cover here so I'll be going into even more automations next week as well. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/automation This Episode's Top Tips

1. Automation is a way for us to frontload our work so that we can save time in the future - it can be helpful for ADHD because it can reduce decision fatigue, reduces chances of us forgetting a step, and just saves us time.
2. When we're thinking about automating a process the first things we need to think about are how to systemize the task and then if we can reduce the number of steps it takes. Sometime during this process, we find that maybe we don't need to use automation but we still find a better way of doing the task.
3. We can use automation to help with accountability by setting up automations that will let our teammates know when we have (or haven't) done what we said we were going to do. This can be helpful because it takes the reporting process out of our hands.
4. There are a ton of things we can do around our house to automate our everyday tasks that will make our lives easier - from automatically locking the doors at night, to getting notifications that we left the garage door open, to getting a smart speaker to read out our daily schedule - our biggest limitation is usually just what we think is possible, so go explore some options.

"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What's keeping us from sitting down is resistance."

This is how Steven Pressfield introduces the idea of resistance in his book the War of Art, and to me, resistance is the root of the "I don't wanna's."

While I don't agree with many of the things in Pressfield's book (I mean, he states that ADHD was made up by pharmaceutical companies), I do think resistance is a great way to express this idea. Because when I don't want to do something, it's not necessarily that I just don't want to do it - it's that I can't get myself to start.

If I'm planning on going on a run, I know that I'll feel better once I start running - but it's in the starting that I feel resistance. It's putting on my exercise clothes and slipping on my shoes. It's the getting out the door. Once I start putting one foot in front of the other, it isn't so hard anymore. I mean, sure there is the physicality that can become difficult, but the mental block has lifted.

And this is just going to be an introduction to this topic. While I was writing this episode I discovered I had a lot to say and so I've split it into two episodes.

Today we're going to be exploring the idea of resistance and how it keeps us from doing meaningful work. We're then going to look at some of the ways resistance sinks its claws into us, but also how we can work on loosening up that grip. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page For show notes go to HackingYourADHD.com/resistance This Episode's Top Tips

1. Resistance is the inertia that keeps us from starting. It is also the inertia that slows us down and stops us in our tracks. If we want to be doing meaningful work we need to look at ways we can fight our own internal resistance.
2. Comparing ourselves to others is an exercise that is never going to lead us down a good path.
3. We need to abandon struggle as a metric for success. Everything gets easier as we do it more and just because something is difficult to do doesn't mean it is more worthwhile.
4. What we crave and what we need to grow don't always match. This means we have to work on rewiring our desires so we're not always fighting resistance to go on a walk. We can do this by being mindful and taking note of how we feel after we do things that are good for us.

I'd say I have a love-hate relationship with cleaning, but that implies that there is a part of me that loves cleaning. There isn't. I like having cleaned and having a clean home, but I seldom enjoy the actual cleaning part. ADHD tends to not make cleaning any easier. Time blindness makes me think most of the cleaning tasks I need to do are going to take forever. I have a natural propensity for clutter, and that clutter often fades into the background of what I notice - so I just stop seeing that stack of mail on my counter. Today we're going to be looking at why we should stop treating cleaning our house like a project. Ways that we can make consistent cleaning easier and also how we can get rid of some of the junk that has accumulated in our homes. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/cleaninghouse This Episode's Top Tips

1. Stop thinking of cleaning your house as a project - we've got to understand that cleaning is about the small tasks that we do consistently that is going to keep our house clean.
2. Work on creating that routine of small tasks that you can do every day to improve the base level clean of your house - focus on starting small at first. Think about what you can do in the morning and what you can do right before you go to bed.
3. Time your cleaning tasks so that you know how long they actually take to do - a lot of the tasks that we put off doing actually take way less time than we think they do.
4. Use temptation bundling and listen to a podcast while cleaning so that you can stay motivated while tidying up.
5. Make sure everything in your house has a place to live - it doesn't have to be an exact spot, but if you know where to put something then you won't waste mental energy figuring out where stuff needs to go when picking up.
6. Spend some time decluttering your house by asking better questions about the objects you are thinking of getting rid of - if we can identify the reason we want to keep something it makes it easier to pare down what we have.