Hacking Your ADHD

Years ago now, before I started this podcast, I worked as a sports writer. It was fun work and I also found that a lot of the things I was writing about could be applied to real life. One of the areas that I really saw it was in the difference between teams playing offensively and defensively.

No matter the game teams are going to be playing on both offense and defense, but what I often saw was that teams that had an offensive mindset often were able to take advantage and play better. What I mean by playing offensively is that you are setting the terms of engagement. Instead of reacting to what the other team is doing, you are making them react to you.

It's easy to see how this works on offense, you control the ball the other team has to respond to what you are doing. But you can also do this while you are playing defense. A good defense dictates the ways that an offense can move the ball and once the defense controls where the ball is going they can force the turnover.

Today we're going to be looking at how we can work on being more proactive than reactive. The role planning will play in the process and also how we can protect our time by saying no more often. Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/defensetooffense This Episode's Top Tips

1. To focus on doing the right things, you have to know what your priority and goals are first.
2. Planning doesn't have to be hard and we can focus on just planning one day at a time.
3. We got to say no more often - especially ourselves. We tend to have more ideas than we can ever hope to complete. By saying no to some things we are leaving time for the things we really want to do.
4. When we're telling someone else no we should focus on a simple no. When we try to hedge our no's it gives the other person the impression that we actually want to do the thing and they will always try and accommodate which will make future no's even harder.

Following up last week's rebroadcast about creating better reminders I thought I'd add in some more ideas on how we can remember things. One of the tools that I most often use is the camera on my phone. I think the first time I tried to use a photograph to remember something was when I was a kid and saw a commercial on TV for a bow and arrow and shield set - it looked like the best toy, but the only way I could think of to record the phone number to call for it (yes this pre-internet) was to take a picture of the TV screen. I of course forgot about it until the picture was developed several weeks later and then promptly told by my parents that they weren't going to order it anyway. Today we're going to be learning just how taking pictures can affect our memories, what things we can turn from physical to digital with pictures, and how we can use photos to assist with cleaning. Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/takeapicture This Episode's Top Tips

1. When taking pictures we narrow our focus and this helps us remember more of the visual aspects of what we are photographing - however, this also tends to reduce the amount of information we can recall from what we heard.
2. We can take pictures of our physical reminders like todos, grocery lists, and journal entries to create digital copies to take with us.
3. Picture taking while cleaning can reduce the amount of input we're getting at one time by changing spaces from 3D to 2D. We can also benefit from having before and after photos to see the work we've done and to also create a reference of what a room is supposed to look like when it's been cleaned.
4. We need to go through our photos periodically so that we don't get overwhelmed by having too many to sift through at once - we also want to create action items on our to-do list from the pictures we take so that we don't forget what we wanted to be reminded about.

When you've got ADHD making reminders is a given. There's just too much going on in any one given day for me to keep track of it all and without reminders I know I'm going to drop the ball somewhere. I've got reminders for big things like when I need to leave to pick up my kids from school and little things like having a cup of tea in the evening but not too close to bedtime.

So when I get told I just need to create a reminder to remember something I just want to shout that I already am using a lot of reminders. A big problem with a lot of reminders is that they just aren't effective at getting us to do the things they are supposed to be reminding us of. Today we're going to be exploring the ways that we can make better reminders so that we're actually following through on them. We'll be looking at what we're creating reminders for. How and when we are getting those reminders and also look at how we are creating our system of reminders. Find the full show note at: HackingYourADHD.com/EffectiveReminders Today's Top Tips

1. The most important aspect of a reminder is having it delivered when you can do something about it - you can do this by thinking through the context of a reminder. If you need a reminder at work make sure you are getting it when you are at work.
2. Reminders are great for reminding you of things, but not for doing unscheduled tasks. Leave projects on your to-do list and actually schedule a time for them instead of creating a reminder that you are never going to do.
3. Reminders can either be short-term or long-term but regardless of what kind of reminder you are creating you want to make sure you are giving yourself enough information to follow through on what you were trying to remind yourself about.
4. Create a combination of physical and digital reminders so that you can get the most out of your reminder systems. Physical reminders tend to be faster to set up but digital reminders can be more robust in how they are reminding you.

One of the things I want to look at while I'm taking my break is what my prioritizes are - it's easy to let yourself just get pulled along with the flow of things and often that means you aren't following your prioritizes. What you end up following is the path of least resistance and overtime you going to find that you just aren't able to make the time for the things that are important to you. So during this break I thought it would be a great time to revisit this episode on how to set your priorities. I know that we're not going to be able to do everything that we want to right now, but we certainly work on finding at least a little time to work on our most important projects. Let me ask you, what's the most important thing on your to-do list? What's the thing that if you did it would make you satisfied with what you accomplished today? Sometimes we've got a clear picture of what our most important thing is - usually it's something that's due that day - maybe even something that was due, yesterday. But we can't always rely on urgency to be our guide for prioritization. If you're struggling to figure out what's the most important thing to do, you're not alone. Picking out the tasks that are going to make the biggest difference is a hard thing to do and something that we're kind of just expected to understand - yet often there's no clear reason why doing task A is better than doing task B. Today we're going to be exploring how we can determine what those most important tasks are and how we can make them a priority. Find the show note for this episode at HackingYourADHD.com/priorities Today's Top Tips 1. To really get the most out of setting your priorities you've first got to understand what your values are 2. You can use the Eisenhower Priority Matrix to separate your tasks into Important and Urgent, Important but not Urgent, Urgent but Not Important and Not Important and Not Urgent 3. Large projects should be broken down into their component parts, once they are broken down look for tasks that are bottle necks or that will make other tasks easier to complete - those should become your priorities

This week we were supposed to have a new episode going up but I'm really starting to feel it. I feel like I've been stuck for a while now and pressing on the gas is just spinning my wheels, so I've realized that I need to step back and take a break. And I thought what better way to start off that break than rebroadcasting my episode on burnout. I know I'm going to have to work on picking up a few lessons from this episode again so I though you might appreciate them too. Exhausted, empty, overloaded, unable to cope - these are some of the words I'll find myself using when I'm feeling burned out or on the path to burnout. We tend to find ourselves in burnout after prolonged periods of stress - it isn't something that sets in all at once. It isn't that we finally have a straw that breaks the camel's back, instead we just eventually find ourselves waking up one morning and realizing we just can't even. We find that we've lost our passion and drive for everything in front of us. We might still find ways to be productive but we tend to be robotic about it and it just drains us more and more.

Burnout is hard. Today we're going to start out by discussing what burnout actually is and I'm also going to talk about some of the times I hit burnout. We're also going to be looking at what we can do to prevent burn and then what to do if we still hit burnout anyways. For full show notes go to: HackingYourADHD.com/burnout Today's Top Tips

1. Burnout consists of three parts - exhaustion (both mental and physical), loss of meaning in our work, and a feeling of ineptitude. Burnout is a slow grind and we've got to pay attention to why we're feeling unmotivated when doing tasks we normally enjoy.
2. We want to prevent burnout by setting healthy boundaries around our work, prioritizing self-care, and remembering to take time off. Not comparing ourselves to others and accepting that our ADHD makes things hard will also help us with not feeling like we're so far behind everyone else.
3. If we do hit burnout, we need to reassess what are needs are and identify what was causing us to burnout. Take some time off and figure out what really matters to you. We often hit burnout when our rewards don't match our efforts.

The ADHD brain has a strange relationship with thinking. One of my biggest gripes is that it often feels like I can't ever turn my brain off. No matter what I'm doing, I'm thinking about something. I could be washing dishes, but I'm thinking about what else I need to do before I go to bed. I could be walking to get the mail, and instead of wondering what's in the mailbox, I'm thinking about a conversation I had three years ago. Even when I'm trying to meditate, I'll often find myself thinking about what it means to be meditating. I'm not really sure that thinking about meditating while meditating is actually meditating - but hey, I'm still putting in the effort, it's called a practice for a reason. But just because our brains are whirring away doesn't mean that we're producing quality thoughts. Today we're going to take a dive into how we can better direct our brains. We'll be looking at why we should stop multitasking. The value of critical thinking and then explore ways that we can improve that thinking. Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/criticalthinking This Episode's Top Tips

1. Stop trying to multitask. Multitasking reduces the efficiency that we can perform any task and prevents us from really thinking through our problems.
2. Critical thinking is valuable because it helps us make hard decisions and it makes us harder to manipulate.
3. Ask yourself more questions to improve your critical thinking skills. Always challenge your assumptions.
4. Find ways to help facilitate your thinking time such mind mapping or taking a walk.

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. 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.

My desk usually has a least a few fidget toys on top of it. I say usually only because my children sneak into my office and steal them. But the rest of the time I have a couple infinity cubes, a tangle and a piece of sea glass I use as a worry stone. I love having them to play with as I think through sentences while I'm writing and also as something to keep my hands busy while I'm reading.

Today we're going to talk about the rise of fidgets in over the last few years and then dive into how they are supposed to work. We'll also be discussing what makes a good fidget.

Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/fidgetscience Today's Top Tips

1. There are a lot of sketchy claims about fidget toys. Be wary of marketing claims, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - figure out which fidgets work best for you.
2. Fidgets work by helping us manage our attention and focus. It can be hard for us to direct our attention when we're either over or under-stimulated.
3. The best fidgets are things that we can do with our hands without looking at them - we don't want to be drawing too much of our attention to use them, just enough to help drown out the other outside stimuli around us.

Trying to plan in a pandemic has been... well really what's been a problem is all the plans that I made before the lockdown. Every week I look through my calendar and have canceled events and plans that just aren't going to happen. I mean this was the first Easter I didn't have to pretend to be sick during to avoid going over to the in-laws, but that's a pretty weak silver lining.

We've got a lot going on so planning is more important than ever - I mean going to the grocery store takes a lot more forethought than it used to. But planning also seems harder than ever before as well, so today we're going to be looking at what to do when plans go awry and how to adjust our long-term planning. Find the show note for this episode at HackingYourADHD.com/BestLaidPlans This Episode's Top Tips

1. No one really wanted to hear me read poetry.
2. When our plans go wrong it can be frustrating and debilitating. We can mitigate some of this by thinking through what can go wrong with our plans and coming up with contingencies.
3. Right now a lot of our long-term plans are disarray - while it is hard to plan for the future because when we are faced with uncertainty, we can still look at our underlying goals and base our planning around them.
4. Give yourself a break - it's okay to do less. While it is still a good idea to plan our days, we can also just plan on doing less.

Going online has its perks - we've got a wealth of information at our fingertips - but with so much information it can be hard to find the truth. Often we can't find the signal for the noise because well, it is just really noisy. And by noisy, I mean there is a lot of bad information out there.

In today's episode, we're going to be looking specifically at science journalism, but really most of what we're going to be talking about can be applied to everything that we read online. We want to be getting the best information and so we've got to be cautious about our sources. So we're going to be looking at ways that research can be manipulated to support a flimsy claim, why we've got to go beyond reading the headlines and what to watch out for when we are reading those articles. Find Today's Show Notes at HackingYourADHD.com/badscience Today's Top Tips

1. While most scientist aren't trying to create bad science, lack of funding and time can make many studies suspect. To help validate claims, read into the study methodology and see what other research supports those claims.
2. Make sure that you are reading beyond just headlines. Many over zealous reporters will embellish headlines to garner more clicks.
3. Watch for words like "proved" about science. Science doesn't prove anything, it just creates evidence that supports a claim or refutes it.
4. Be skeptical of claims that seem to good to be true, they usually are.