Any ADHD-ers on here with your best tips and tricks for living in a man's (*neurotypical) world?

Question

Sarah · Answer

numbering your to-do list: One of my biggest issues is getting distracted / procrastinating between tasks. My solution is to write out my tasks (by project) for the day, and then number them in the order I'm going to get them done. This helps me soo much to stop putting off the tasks I don't want to do because my brain hates skipping a number. I've been doing this for years and years, and the days I do it are much easier than those I don't.

Analisa Burns · Answer

ridiculously long walks: your friend's house is 6 miles away? cool go fill up your limited edition Owala and be on your way

Uri · Answer

Try “it” for 5-minutes: That task you’re putting off? Set a 5-minute timer and see how far you can get in that amount of time. I do this all the time with dishes and find myself on a roll by the time my phone goes off. More often than not, I’ll do all the dishes, but even if you only do 5 or 10-minutes, that’s better than none.

Tori Kornick · Answer

TimeTree Calendar App: My husband and I share a calendar on this app, and it's the only thing that keeps us organized. The interface is so easy to use - you can be notified when something is added, color code, add attendees. I recco to all my friends!

Tori Kornick · Answer

The 4-Quadrant Task Prioritization Method: I quad it out instead of writing to-do lists now. It's the only way my ADHD brain can attempt to prioritize properly. The key is to (eventually) spend 50% of your time in the not urgent, but important quadrant - and the remaining 50% of your time spread across the other three quadrants.

When I first started this system, 80%+ of my list was in the urgent and important section due to procrastination, needing pressure to get the job done, etc.

This is most popularly coined as the Eisenhower Matrix (also known as the Covey Quadrant). S/O to my therapist for the initial rec.

Quinn Trail · Answer

Lady Gaga and Northeastern University Researcher Agree: 'Just Dance': Ok hear me out…DANCING. I found a local dance class and it was super intimidating but damn….attempting choreography for one hour helps me to hyper focus. It has been the best weekly therapy for my adhd.

ALI D. · Answer

Chore Hack: SPECIAL DRINK in ONE LOCATION: okay, make a special drink, is it a soda on ice with a straw, or a spa water in a fancy goblet? Whatever, as long as you deem it SPECIAL. Then tackle one room, that is your base for the duration of that special drink. If you feel yourself wandering, bring yourself back to base, take a sip. I've used this trick for years and it works 50% of the time 🥴

Caroalbers · Answer

Label maker: So helpful- keeps our kitchen cupboards and medicine cabinet sooooo much more organized instead of just putting stuff where it fits at any given moment.

Ginny Branch · Answer

Phone Lanyard Crossbody with Leather Loop - Apricot: IDK if you're someone who has trouble with finding their phone, but I have the unfortunate habit of setting it down somewhere and not being able to retrace my steps, usually during the already frantic rush-to-get-out-the-door morning crush, adding another layer of dysregulation to the day. I recently bought one of these and just keep it on me at all times and boy has it helped with a decades long issue. Before this I also always inevitably dropped my phone so much more, especially getting out of the car. Not a magic bullet, but surprisingly helpful!

Jade · Answer

Montessori yourself to juggle passion projects: Put all of your active creative projects on trays on a little shelf. One project per tray. Put everything you need for said project on the tray and don’t have more projects than can fit on your shelf. It helps remove the friction of starting the project when you feel like working on it but can’t bring yourself to pull everything you need out, and it helps remind you of what you’re working on. Also, keep a project journal for new projects you want to work on but don’t have room/resources/time to start. Bonus points for having a time limit for each project or rotating projects on a monthly basis.

Jenn · Answer

The Great Big Wall Calendar: This is the only way my ADHD wife and I can keep track of our schedules and not double book friends/family/work. It’s big enough to write in sharpie and see from across the room. Nothing is booked without first checking the wall calendar!

Ginny Branch · Answer

Portable Chargers with option to plug directly into a wall: Boy do I love these! I like to have multiple charging at all times because I’m perpetually running on a low battery and having one of these I can grab and throw in a bag helps me tremendously.

Ginny Branch · Answer

Reminder App: I have found this to be particularly helpful for my brain. I always buy physical planners and notepads but inevitably I just lose them or lose interest in them. Using this very simple app and checking/adding to it daily has really helped. This plus putting screen limits on my phone (Screen Zen has been the best one yet) have unlocked something for my brain!

Lorzs · Answer

Pen and paper, notebooks: Not a planner not a ~tracker~ but whatever you want. Recommend keeping multiple in different sizes colors etc in various rooms. It could be a random idea that feels important, a reminder, an appreciation thought, a rando checklist, a DONT FORGET keeper who knows! keep in easy reach. I like to get a few Fringe noteboooks for $7.99/ea at HomeGoods/Marshalls.

Sam · Answer

Honor Your Own Values and Rhythms: Give yourself what you need and want, even in the smallest of ways, and know and honor what it is that you value, including the ways in which you go about living and doing. This makes it a lot easier to actually do things when they are aligned with who you are and what you care about. We all have different worldviews and life experiences and there’s no one way to be, even when someone insists there is know that they’re just making it up. Our power is in our creativity, not our conformity or consistency.

Art by Sam Brown

sunset strip mall · Answer

make your to-do list into a bingo card: i saw a girl on tiktok do this and it actually has really incentivized me to get things off my to do list because it's sooo gratifying to color everything in. if you want to really add to the reward you can choose something to do every time you fill in a row, but honestly i just like using all the different colors and markers along the way

Haley James · Answer

Daily List + Morning Walks + Frank Ocean Quote: (1) DAILY LIST: The most consistently I've ever functioned in the day-to-day (freelance singer/songwriter, money mostly made in web design, branding and photography work) is when I got a simple notebook I kept in my laptop bag and started every day with the date and a brain-dumped list of to-dos spinning around my head. Sometimes I wrote the same task for a week, but it lived better on the page than in my head.

(2) MORNING WALKS: I can't overstate how much going on a walk every morning changed my mental health and ability to deal with the day. I don't know the one-to-one correlation, but I feel a significant difference on the days I don't.

(3) FRANK: Although sometimes to my own detriment, I live life by the philosophy that all these rules and ways of being in the modern world are literally made up by someone else. (We all just get born into a planet floating in space.) Frank Ocean has a lyric that says "living in an idea — an idea from another man's mind". Sometimes that gives me a real "f*ck it" attitude, but oftentimes, I find some flavor of grace (for myself and others) in the concept.

Eliza R · Answer

Four Thousand Weeks: by Oliver Burkeman

Because I have ADHD, I of course listened to the audiobook (thank you, Libby!) while walking, biking, cleaning and gardening. It’s like getting well-researched advice from a friend.

Jess · Answer

Video game soundtracks for productivity: I read somewhere that video game soundtracks are meant to not be super distracting like regular music. I throw on the soundtrack of a game I like when I’m trying to get in the zone at work and it really helps. Also for some reason the genre of music called “shoegaze” has a similar effect.

ildi marie · Answer

Not every thought is real: ADHD + relationship OCD is real, but not every fear has to be verbalized. Your partner has chosen to be with you. Every sigh or perceived slight doesn't have to be deep. Sit with it. Let that shit go.

Jules · Answer

Notion, Rest, Brain Breaks, Nutrition, and Releasing Shame: My world got a lot better when I accepted I don’t work like everyone else. When I started to study decision-making and productivity frameworks (Cal Newport is a good place to start) I realized that for me, CAPTURE is my key struggle. You must not let your mind swing to other priorities and ideas without writing it down. Our brains have a hard time weighing priorities. This can make our days feel like 52 pickup. I use notion for management bc it allows for a lot of depth per task/idea/item but you can do this with any sort of tool. I am happy to give anyone who is curious a house tour of how I do this.

And btw I of course am not perfect, I take breaks from this system sometimes.

if you are rested, stress decently managed, and well exercised and fed, the above becomes easier. It’s hard to do these care things if you still think this is all your fault and if you could only be a different type of person life wouldn’t be so hard. for example, accepting that you’re not always going to have the tidiest apartment known to man makes it easier to actually be tidy. i know. it’s weird. ironic. but being hard on yourself creates blockages!

Sarah · Answer

Focusmate: This site pairs you with another person for 25, 50, or 75 min increments. You briefly share your objectives, mute yourselves and work for the duration, then check in at the end about what you accomplished. The body doubling and accountability are motivational to me. I don’t personally have ADD, but FYI I’ve noticed many of the people who use Focusmate list themselves as having ADD/neurodivergence.

Rachel · Answer

Take a nap: If I feel kinda overwhelmed or just like annoyed or maybe feeling a pull into hyper focus land, I really just try to take a nap. And it’s not always possible to take a nap… but I get creative. Since I work from home:

Lunch break can actually be a nap break.

Afternoon break can actually be a 15 min nap.

After work? I nap.

doesn’t need to be a long nap. Under an hour. Usually 30 mins or so. And then I am completely reset, like a new girl.

And I must nap with my dog. Duh. 🎈

Grace · Answer

Chore dice: I write down everything I want to do, then batch tasks in groups of 6 and roll the dice to determine which one I do. I bop around the different sets of 6 depending on how the dice roll (ex if I roll a 2 after finishing number 2 in the first set of 6, I do #2 in the second set). I break the chores into small chunks of zones so I can get the dopamine hit of checking things off the list often, and I also often put a break into each set.This helps cut down on paralysis that comes from decision making and makes the chores just gamified enough to get me going 🤸

Meaghan · Answer

Portable Brain Dump Notebook: Carrying a tiny, aesthetically pleasing notebook and a favorite pen in my purse/car and using it to dump out any and all thoughts as they come has been VERY helpful for me. No order, no organization just DUMP IT OUT. Ideas, to-do lists, worries, reminders, name of the neighbor I just met on my walk, anything. Clears much needed space in the ol’ noggin.

Jessica Mueller · Answer

Accepting when today isn’t the day and other strategies that sometimes work:

Is there a thing you need or even want to do but can’t seem to get started despite trying very hard to will it into existence? Might I suggest making Not Today an option? A wee bit dangerous because obviously everything can’t work this way but when I’m staring at my computer with a blank, smooth brain and the work just won’t happen, I try to recognize that I could spend 8 hours trying and failing to make my brain do the thing, or be kind to my brain and set that particular task aside for the day and come back to it [insert future time]. Sometimes just the permission to not do the thing today helps me get going and if it doesn’t, I at least don’t spend the full work day feeling like a failure.

Today must be the day, you say? The thing still feels impossible but time has run out? Tell someone you’re stuck. Ask them to check in on you in x minutes (20 minutes is the minimum IMO). The goal isn’t to have finished or even started when they check in, it just helps tether me to the present and reminds me that I’m a person. I’ve seen this work well via calls, texts, even in supportive online communities, so you don’t even need it to be an IRL person!

Ask yourself, what would Hazel do? Hazel will tell you - Go outside. Sniff the air. Bask in the sun. Channel your inner lab pit bull mastiff mix.

Kat (they/them) · Answer

Create friction for the easy distractors: ADHD psychologist here! So often I have folks who think they can stop doing the things they don’t want do and start doing the things they do want to do with will power alone. Having worked with hundreds of folks with ADHD, and also having had a diagnosis since the age of eight, I can say that that is confidently a fools errand. What I have found that works best for folks is things that make the easy grabs harder. For example, I use the Bloom card on my phone to block browsing. The card is always in my kitchen drawer, so I can get it whenever I need it, but mostly throughout the days I have 2 5 minute breaks per day that gives me Internet access, but other than that, my phone is mostly a phone. I also have a physical lock that locks my laptop in my office, which requires me to do my focused work there so I can enjoy life in the rest of my house. Often the need for a dopamine hit is not worth getting up and changing activities or rooms, and so you end up finding other ways to fill that need that are more nourishing.

Dylan · Answer

Giving your cat 500 forehead kisses: i don't make the rules, this is just a legal requirement in my house.

Dylan · Answer

Pleasure, pain, dopamine + the brain: A podcast episode exploring the tangled relationship between pleasure, pain, & dopamine — unpacks compulsive overconsumption & how our brains process addiction & reward. ADHD baddies, this one is for us!

Dylan · Answer

Stop over-explaining yourself to people determined to misunderstand you: Sometimes I notice myself reverting to old people-pleasing patterns and extreme hypervigilance.

So I remind myself that it's important to practice sitting with the discomfort of the knowledge that some people may not like me or understand me.

And that's ok. It's not my job to convince them of who I am. I know who I am!

Dylan · Answer

Attention-Deficit Neuropsychology (ADHD) with Russell Barkley: This took me a long time to finish because, hilariously, they’re very long episodes for someone with ADHD to pay attention to. Irony not lost on me!

Part 2 is here.

Dylan · Answer

Going potato mode: Did you know that humans share about 50% of our DNA with potatoes because we use the same basic genes for cellular function? This is what Reddit told me, anyway, which is obviously the most reliable source of scientific knowledge.

With this in mind, I highly recommend transforming yourself into a human potato by getting into the comfiest clothes possible, surrounding yourself with pillows and blankets, and merging your body with your couch.

Allow any freeloaders (pets, kids, etc) to nuzzle in your nooks. Put on your favourite comfort movie/show/podcast or read a cosy book.

And remember: rest is not earned, rest is not "laziness", rest is a basic need and simple pleasure.

Dylan · Answer

Slinky: Ahh, the humble slinky. A childhood simple pleasure and an adulthood stim toy. I personally love the sound and feel of the metal ones, but you can also get plastic ones, which my cats are very fond of.

Dylan · Answer

"Because of who I am as a person": As a recovering people pleaser who is trying to stop overexplaining myself, saying "because of who I am as a person" as an explanation might just be the perfect solution.

Highly recommended for all my ADHD and autistic hotties out there who sometimes ~simply cannot~ gather the executive function required to achieve a supposedly simple task, such as arriving on time or having a tidy house.

You're welcome <3

Mindy Shapero · Answer

Rewards! Treats!: I make the same systems I give my kids. When I finish the task I can watch or read or get a snack….

Soph · Answer

Body doubling: I get together with my other adhd friend and we get so much done… after we distract each other for an hour (which I set a timer for). We usually tell each other what we want to focus on and for how long and then we just do the thing.