Working With Your ADHD — Hacking Your ADHD

Oct 14

Oct 14 Working With Your ADHD

Despite my best intentions, I'll often find myself drawn to articles like "10 productivity tips that will change the way you work," and even though I know better, I'll think myself about how it seems like the author is speaking to me. That these are the problems I face every day, and I'll go, "well, if everyone is dealing with these problems, maybe everyone is a little ADHD. Yeah, I'm sure you've heard that phrase before. It's always a delight, right?

But then I remember, I'm not a little ADHD sometimes, I'm ADHD all day every day. The things I do to stay more focused are usually good ideas for everyone. But they aren't just a "good idea" for me, they tend to be a necessity for me. It isn't that without doing those things I'd get less work done, it's that I'd get no work done.

It's easy to get caught up in what neurotypicals do for productivity that we can forget that we're not neurotypical. We forget that sometimes we need to do things differently because our brains are wired differently. And it's exhausting trying to pretend that we're neurotypical.

Even though neurotypicals will struggle with a lot of the same issues that we are struggling with, it doesn't mean we should always be trying the same techniques to get over those hurdles.

Working with your ADHD brain is all about finding the strategies that work with your brain and avoiding the ones that are going to cause problems.

Easier said than done.

I consume a lot of information, be from podcasts or books or articles on the web. A good portion of that material is on how I can improve my life. While some of this stuff has been easy to implement, there has also been so much that I've just struggled to put into practice. I'm sure most of you have felt the same way and it isn't a problem unique to ADHD. Most people don't do all the things they hear about. But, there is an extra layer when you've got ADHD because many of these strategies we learn about just aren't going to work with our ADHD brains.

David Allen's Getting Things Done comes to mind (GTD for short). While I appreciate and use parts of the GTD method, there are other parts that are not that ADHD friendly. For example, when you are asked to identify tasks, if something is going to take less than 5 minutes, you are supposed to just do it when you think of that task - no writing it down, just do it. I can see some wisdom in this idea because it prevents you from building up a surplus of some of those small mundane tasks. But let's be honest here, what's your track record on identifying which tasks actually take less than five minutes. Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple that might count here, taking out the trash or maybe - but more often than not, those tasks take more than five minutes and sometimes lead to a series of tasks. Okay, let's take out the trash, okay, I need to replace the trash bag - and we're out of them under the sink, so let's just go into the garage, and oh the garage light is out, I should replace that too...

It doesn't take a whole lot to derail me, so I've got to focus on not getting derailed.

But my biggest struggle when I get too caught up in what neurotypicals are doing is that I find myself in a mentality that I just need to try harder. Now, while sometimes there really are issues of just needing to put in more effort, more often than not I'm already trying really hard. Just trying harder in those situations is just going to drive me crazy and probably kill myself esteem.

And I see this in so many areas of my life, from my sleep problems to my eating habits, to how often I'm going to the gym to how much work I'm putting into this podcast.

So how do we know when we don't just have to try harder?

That's a tough question. We've got a lot stacked against us here. I'm sure many of you have wrestled a lot with the word lazy. I don't know how many times I've been directly called lazy by others. Instead, I got the "you're smart, you just need to apply yourself more" - and so while the word wasn't used all that often, it was still the message I was getting. And enough so that it definitely became a defining part of my self-talk.

But even with dropping the word lazy from how I'd describe myself, I've still found myself struggling with the idea that if I just tried harder, I could do so much more. And I mean, I knew I could work harder. I could stop watching TV. I could get up earlier (let's just forget that I have sleep problems right? Get even less sleep and work even harder right?) Or I could work longer. I could will myself to stay focused longer and get more done. But you know as well I as I do that doesn't work.

So now I'm going to drop a phrase I've kind of learned to hate but does apply here - "you've got to work smarter, not harder." In this case, smarter means we're trying something different. We don't need to beat our heads against the wall, just trying to work harder. What I want to be able to do is to be able to follow through with the work I intend to do. When you've got ADHD, this means focusing on using strategies that are going to work with your brain.

If you're already working hard and not getting the results, working harder isn't going to solve your problems. You can't just apply more effort and magically create results that weren't happening in the first place, something needs to change.

For me, that means I can't just try and brute force myself into doing a task. I've got to find other solutions. I've got to plan ahead and leave more room in my schedule than I think I'm going to need. And it means accepting certain limitations in what I'm doing. It doesn't matter if I want to do it all if I can't manage to do it. It might feel unfair sometimes, but those are the cards I got dealt. If I'm not working with what I have, I'm just going to be sabotaging myself.

And you know what, it's okay to do less. You don't always have to be doing more. We've got this idea in our head that there always has to be more. When I started really planning my days using accurate time measurements (see episode 2, Timing Your Day), one of the things I was forced to realize is that there is only so much time in the day. It seems obvious now, but honestly, I used to try and pack so much into my day that no amount of time management would have made it work. Time blindness makes it really easy to completely over schedule our days. We don't need to do that.

I'm not going to tell you that when we do less that we are going to do more - what we are going to do however is more of the stuff that matters because when you are making the hard choice of doing less, you are going to focus more on what matters most to you.

To get the most out of your ADHD brain, the most important thing you can do is embrace that you have ADHD. Accepting your ADHD isn't always easy - it certainly hasn't been for me. I've struggled a lot with accepting my ADHD - it mostly comes out with what I've described earlier where deep down, I feel like it really is just that I'm not trying hard enough. But that belief has never served me. It just makes things worse, and it is just taking me in the wrong direction.

But there are ways we can help ourselves accept our ADHD.

First, let's talk about education. Understanding how our brains works allows us to arm ourselves with better strategies. And I do mean strategies with a plural - we aren't always going to be the same strategy for everything. Sometimes strategies need to change. For example, sometimes I need to spend some time journaling before I start writing, while other times, I'm better served by taking a walk first or talking through an idea with a friend. No one strategy is going to be our ultimate strategy.

This podcast has been an excellent way for me to educate myself even more on ADHD. There is so much to keep learning about what's going on with our brains that we don't even know about. Those unknown, unknowns.

These episodes take a lot of time to research, and then when I'm done with that research, I have to break it down into ways I can explain. One of my biggest goals for this podcast is to be a place that people can find reliable information because, unfortunately, there is also a lot of bad info out there as well.

But even more than education, the best thing I've found for accepting my ADHD is community. I was 26 when I got diagnosed, and I remember at one point, my doctor asking if I thought I had ADHD, and it kind of stumped me. I just thought everyone's brain worked the way mine did. Or at least I didn't think I was that drastically different. Like sure, I'm pretty weird, but we all process things the same, right? Apparently not.

It wasn't until years later when I went in the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability groups that I found myself in a group where I could be like, oh, hey, everyone's brain here is just like mine. The mirroring effect of seeing people dealing with the same problems I dealt with was just so reassuring that I wasn't broken. And it was that "hey me too" that really got me over the hump of accepting my own ADHD.

There are a lot of places where you can not only get education, but also community. You can find a local CHADD group - that's Children and Adults with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder - which is a nationwide support and advocacy group for ADHD. And you can also find groups on places like meetup.com - or on Facebook - and reddit.com has a great active community on the ADHD subreddit.

Although let me temper excitement for some of these online groups - without proper moderation, online groups can be a mess and even more so for a group with ADHD. If you can find a private group like the one Eric Tiver's runs for the ADHD reWired Facebook group you are going to be much better off than a group that is open to anyone that can join. I know it is an extra step to get into those groups, but it's often worth it.

This Episode's Top Tips

1. Pretending that we're neurotypical is exhausting and will lead us to use the wrong strategies for our brains.
2. We shouldn't focus on just trying harder. It's okay for us to just do less, especially when we are staying focus on what matters most.
3. The best strategies for working with your ADHD starts with accepting your ADHD. Make time to educate yourself about what's really happening in your ADHD brain and get involved with the ADHD community.