Hey team, this week we’re going to be talking about using our tools but, more specifically, getting back into the habit after we’ve stopped using them.
ADHD has the tendency to make us consistently inconsistent, and that can lead us to finding ourselves having dropped habits, routines, and tactics that had been helping us. Sometimes we need to find new habits, but sometimes we need to look back and figure out why we stopped doing all those things that were helping us get through the day.
As I’m sitting here writing this I’ve got my headphones on and I’m listening to a playlist I created for working. I’ve got a time timer set for 45 minutes and it is sitting just a little ways up from my monitor on the right side, not quite in my constant view but close enough that all I have to do is glance up to see how much time has elapsed - don’t even have to move my head. I’m signed in the ADHD reWired Adult Studyhall room, I’ve got my water in arms reach right next to me and snack on the other side.
All in all, I’ve got quite the bevy of tools at my disposal to make sure that I’m staying on track and doing the work that I need to be doing.
I talk a lot about the various tools that we can be using in our ADHD lives to make things work for our brains, but the thing is that it is also incredibly easy for us to get out of the habit of using our tools. Yes, I’ve got all these things set up right now, but you know what? A few months ago I wasn’t using any of these and I was struggling with getting stuff done. And the reason that I say this is that I want to remind people that it’s okay if we find ourselves not using our tools. Yes, they’re great and ideally we’d be using them all the time, but we don’t need to shame ourselves when we find ourselves struggling. At some point another we all find ourselves falling out of doing particular things.
And I do find this a bit funny because often when I’m contemplating adding some new tool into my toolbox I come at it from the lens of that I’m going to be to doing this new thing forever. When in truth sometimes tools fall out of use for almost no reason at all.
But of course, there are reasons that we find ourselves not using our tools.
One of the most common reasons comes from boredom. This can come in a few different ways as well. The most easily identifiable is that we just find the tool boring to use. There’s no longer the stimulation that we originally got when we put that tool in place. That new workout routine isn’t quite so new anymore and the idea of going through those motions one more time actually feels painful. The note-taking app we’ve been playing with just isn’t quite as fun now that we’ve actually got everything set up. The water bottle that helps remind us to drink throughout the day just doesn’t feel motivating anymore.
And when this is the case we’re likely to go looking for new things to fill that void of novelty. This isn’t always the worse thing - take the workout example, it’s fine to rotate through different routines.
But this can also be a problem when we finding ourselves always looking for that new tool that is going to solve all of our problems once and for all. The note-taking app example is on point here - right now I do most of my writing in Notion. Now I’ll be the first to admit that it is not the perfect product for me to be using and so I could easily find myself trying to find something that works even better. Maybe Airtables, or Roam Research - maybe Obsidian or I could go back to using Evernote? Or maybe I really need to jump on google and find out what the hottest new notes app is. Let me tell it’s taking a lot of willpower to not do that very thing right now. But the truth is that it doesn’t really matter.
Because more than anything what we need to be doing is using our tools.
But let’s also temper this with the acknowledgement that the tools we’re using do matter. If I’m cutting vegetables with a dull knife it’s going to harder to do and take a lot longer than if I get a sharp one. The issue that we often have with ADHD, though is that we’re looking through that drawer of sharp knives and trying to pick the one with the handle that best matches how we’re feeling that day. Sure, that might matter to some degree, but we also have to acknowledge that those kind of choices aren’t making a big difference in our outputs. Because it’s not the tool at that point, it’s how we’re using it.
Our boredom from using tools can also manifest in us also feeling like the tools we’re using don’t matter. Take my time timer - this is a tool that is great for helping me visualize my time. It’s just a timer that has a red disc to show how much time has elapsed, as the timer counts down, the disc disappears. It’s a great way to create a visual for how much time you have left. It’s also a tool that I abandoned for a long time because, “well I know how long this is going to take.” And yeah, sure, it’s something I’ve talked about on the podcast a number of times because of how useful visualizing time is, but my brain argued that I had my time management down and I didn’t need it anymore.
Except it’s still incredibly useful for me to use. And it serves a number of purposes, because not only does it give me that visualization of time, but because I’m setting, it’s also forcing me to say how long I’m going to work for. It makes me define when I’m taking a break ahead of time. Those are also valuable tools to use that I had been skipping out on.
But there are plenty of tools that I’ve found myself skipping over using because the novelty factor has worn off and I feel like I can get by without them.
And sometimes we stop using our tools for far less - sometimes we just forget about what was working for us. Now I don’t mean that in the sense that one day after using something everyday that we just up and forget about it. Many of our tools don’t need to be used every day and we can end up finding ourselves stopping using these tools simply because they are out of mind.
But we can also find ourselves failing to come back to our tools after an interruption in our routine. This can come from a vacation, getting sick, or anything where we find ourselves having to change things up. Honestly, this is a big reason that I found myself off of some of my tools. I had taken time off from my regular work schedule for my kids winter break and then subsequently got sick. When I got back into a mode where I was trying to get working again I found myself scrambling to get things into place and as such didn’t think about how I wanted to get back into things, I just jumped right in and I forgot about how I want to implement my tools again.
Cut to a few months later and I found myself struggling, because while at first I was able to get all those things done that I needed to I also was mostly relying on willpower to get through those things. That willpower was only going to last for so long.
And this example also illustrates another point, which is that not all of our tools are going to be serving us all of the time. Many of our tools are going to be somewhat seasonal in terms of what we’re doing. I might like taking long afternoon walks in the summer to get through my backlog of audiobooks - that probably won’t work in the same way for me in the winter when it’s getting dark at 4 PM. Our lives are rarely static and so our tools need to evolve with us as our circumstances change.
So how do we deal with this? Because we don’t want ourselves to be finding tools, stop using them and then find ourselves needing to scramble for new tools because we’re struggling again.
This goes all the way back to the very first episode of this podcast, Building Your Toolbox.
In that episode, I talk about how we need to work on creating a repository of the tools that we’re using because just keeping them in our memory isn’t a great strategy. When you think about it, with ADHD, we really never should rely on “just remembering” something - even things that we feel are too ingrained for us to forget. And that’s exactly what I was talking about earlier in this episode - we have these habits, tactics and other tools that feel like they are just part of our everyday life but when our routines get interrupted, it can be incredibly easy for us to drop those habits that we thought we’d have forever.
And my primary suggestion in that episode is to create your own ADHD toolbox with all those things that you do that make your ADHD life easier. And this is something that I still absolutely agree with.
Additionally, we need to be looking over these tools on a semi-regular basis because we aren’t going to remember when we forget about them.
And of course, this isn’t a perfect system - we’re still going to have ADHD and ADHD can make it really hard to do some of these steps. I mean I’m talking about this stuff because it fell off for me.
And a big part of that was me moving away from the systems that I originally set up. Things that I had been regularly doing I wasn’t doing quite as much anymore and when it came time to review my systems… well, that step just wasn’t on my radar anymore.
And while I could sit in judgment about that fact, I don’t think that is a particularly good use of my time. However, it is a good use of my time to still think back on how those systems failed me because I want to try and avoid that happening again in the future - the key difference being that I need to do so openly and with curiosity because the judgment piece isn’t going to help me find new solutions.
Now there is also a very obvious change in my life since the start of this podcast, and that’s the emergence of COVID. There is no question that a global pandemic is going to change my working habits - 3 years ago, I was working from an office most of the time, whereas now I’m working exclusively from home. That’s going to have a big impact on my habits, routines, and how I approach work.
But I also don’t want this to just end up as an excuse as to why I didn’t do follow-ups on my toolbox. I want to be the explanation - I want it to help inform me of how I’m going to be trying to do things differently in the future.
The big piece that’s coming to mind for me right now is that I let a lot of my planning slide because I honestly have little idea of what the next few months, let alone next year, were going to look like. And while I certainly still did certain pieces of my planning, it wasn’t as systematized as I used to do it. Being at home with kids all the time had left me with far more fragmented time, and as we got into the new normal, I wasn’t shifting back to my old habits. Partially because those habits wouldn’t fit into my new life now, but also because I wasn’t even thinking about how I could re-adapt them.
And that’s on me. But again, we’re trying to stay out of judgment here. I absolutely could have approached things in a better way, but that doesn’t mean I’m bad or that how I handled the situation was wrong. It would be incredibly easy to look back at the last few years and be overly critical of the choices I made. Putting on rose-tinted glasses and forgetting about the stress I was going through. Forgetting about the adjustment of working from home. Forgetting about the two times I caught COVID. I don’t need to latch onto the negative of what I didn’t do because I still have a lot of positives I can look at. I was still able to keep putting out this podcast. In fact, I was able to grow the podcast. I was able to strengthen my relationship with my kids. And I was able to develop some new habits that are working for me now, even if I had times when I was struggling.
And identifying that piece of the puzzle, I can use that information on how I want to move forward.
One of the keys for me is going to be working on setting up better support structures for myself so that when things are in flux that I more able to bounce back. But more than that I want to be working on setting up systems that are going to be more flexible and that let me approach struggle with compassion. I don’t need to be a rockstar all of the time and I don’t want systems that expect me to be that way. This means I want to be looking at ways that I can do this same kind of planning that works for me long term, but in ways that I can do when I’m having low-capacity days. Basically, creating systems that require less upfront effort for me to get through.
The point being that I want to lower that barrier to entry for doing the things that support me best.
And that means what I’m asking of you today is to take some time to look through your tools, or at the very least schedule a time to do so and then give yourself a little audit one how you can make this same process easier for the next time.
This Episode's Top Tips
There are a lot of reasons that we might stop using a particular tool, from boredom to forgetfulness to changes in our life circumstances. It’s okay for us to change how we’re using our tools, but it’s also important that we’re making that decision consciously.
One of the best ways to make sure we’re not losing track of our tools is to create an ADHD toolbox where we’re keeping track of all the tools that we find helpful in our lives.
When we’re looking to reinstate some of our previous tools, it can be important to look back and figure out what caused us to stop using them in the first place; however, when we’re doing this, it’s important that we stay out of judgment and approach the question with curiosity.