Hacking Your ADHD

In a lot of my episodes, I have touted the virtue of asking questions - this is something that is embedded deeply in my philosophy. When we engage ourselves and others with curiosity we are able to solve problems more quickly and with better answers. One idea that I see pop up frequently is that questions are more valuable than answers - to some extent I agree with that idea, but I think it's a bit too hyperbolic. It feels like it stems from the counter-intuitive branch of self-help whereby saying the opposite of what people think you can get them to engage more. It gets clicks, but it doesn't always produce the best advice. Nonetheless, to get great answers you often need great questions. Your answer isn't going to matter if you're asking the wrong question, so it's important that we take the time to figure out if we're asking the right question. With ADHD we often want to just jump into the action and start doing - but this means that we need to be even more vigilant that we're asking these questions so that we know we're going in the right direction. But how do we ask great questions or even good questions? What even makes one question better than the other? In today's episode, we're going to explore that question as well as looking at the how and when of question-asking. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Twitter Tiktok or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/questions

Hey team this week I'm jumping on some listener questions - if you'd like to leave your own question for me to answer on the air just head over to HackingYourADHD.com/contact and leave me a message In today's episode, I'll be answering a question about procrastination and how we can work on getting past issues of low confidence, and then we're going to be dive into some ways we can take breaks when our mobility is a limiting factor. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Twitter Tiktok or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/lq3

Often when I think about productivity I envision something like a well-oiled machine - everything fits together, everything has its place and when it is running smoothly it produces amazing results. But the part that my imagination doesn't usually pick up is a few important words - well-oiled machine... what does it mean to be well oiled - well, for one thing, it means that there is someone maintaining the system. It means, that left to its own devices that the machine would break down - and for a machine like this, it means it's either running at peak capacity or not at all. As you can imagine this isn't exactly the route we want to be going - we're going to have setbacks in life and we're going to have times where we have to do less - we're not machines. In today's episode, we're going to be exploring this idea of capacity, as well as how we sometimes go above and beyond, and then also how we can work on building some slack into our systems. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Twitter Tiktok or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/buildingslack This Episode's Top Tips Always doing more isn't always our best option - it is easy for us to overreach our capacity and find ourselves doing more than we're able to handle. Once we get past capacity we're more like to drop the ball on everything we're doing. Giving ourselves breathing room isn't being lazy, it's a way for us to focus on what's most important. When we're in times of crisis many people with ADHD can thrive by using their surge capacity - however, our surge capacity is limited and we can only access it for so long before we start burning out. We can add more capacity to our schedules by adding more slack to our calendars - that is buffer time that allows us to "pick up the slack" when we're running overtime on something unexpected or just need more time to finish something than we thought we would.

We all know that one of the biggest hurdles from ADHD is starting, but paradoxically one of our other hurdles is stopping. Sometimes it feels like we're better off if we just power through until we're done, but if we really want to get the most out of our workdays, we need to have some breaks. In today's episode, we're going to be looking at the benefits of taking breaks, some different ways that we can take breaks, and also exploring going beyond breaks and actually taking some time off. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Twitter Tiktok or ask me a question on my Contact Page For show notes go to HackingYourADHD.com/breaks This Episode's Top Tips Taking breaks allows us to separate our work into more manageable chunks. They let us refresh and come to our tasks with more energy. We should be scheduling our breaks so that we don't forget to take them. To help out our future selves we should also be planning what we want to be doing on those breaks as well. As important as knowing what we are doing on our breaks, we should also know what we shouldn't be doing on our breaks. Avoid things like phone games and social media that are going to be hard to tear yourself away from at the end of your break. It's also important to take time off entirely from work to recharge your batteries. While it might be hard to take a traditional vacation right now, we can still work on thinking about other ways that we can take time off, like working on fun projects at home or just taking a few days to catch up on Netflix.

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: Twitter Tiktok or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/indicators This Episode's Top Tips When we're setting goals we should focus on the small changes we can make that we can keep up for the long term. When we're thinking about goals we need to 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. What we choose to measure matters and influences our future actions. Make sure that what you're measuring is incentivizing the outcomes you actually want.

This week I am talking with Dr. Norrine Russell of Russell Coaching - Dr. Russell has a Pd.D. from Bowling Green State University with a focus on psychology and education and began her ADHD coaching practice in 2009. In our conversation today, we talk about what you can expect to get out of coaching, how we can work on working with our brains, and ways we can help our kids with ADHD. Today's episode is focused more on children with ADHD, but I've always found that these are lessons that we can translate to our own experience. Get more information about Russell Coaching at RussellCoaching.com Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Twitter Tiktok or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/russellcoaching This Episode's Top Tips Learn about your ADHD - if you don't understand it, then they can't work it. Work on learning how your brain works so that you can best work with it. Give yourself permission to see what works. Often we get caught up in the idea that if we try something then we are going to have to do it forever - instead, we should be thinking about how we can make progress through trial and error. Work with others to Hack your ADHD, because while it's great to see what we can come up with on our own there are tons of resources out there that can also help you.

One of the easiest ways for procrastination to creep into our lives is through the thought that we just need to wait to do something until we feel like doing it. I totally get this. I feel this way all the time - it's super easy to put something off because we don't feel like doing it right then. But that's not always our best strategy - in fact, for a lot of things we're never really going to feel like doing them and so waiting for that inspiration to come means that we're never going to get to it. Today we're going to be looking at this idea of inspiration and some of the ways that we can try and get started anyway. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Twitter Tiktok or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/inspiration This Episode's Top Tips Before you can come up with a solution to your problem you need to know what your problem actually is. Some problems are just symptoms of other problems and if you can solve those root issues it makes everything else easier or unnecessary to fix. While gamifying boring tasks might seem like a great way to make your work more interesting it can also backfire and reduce motivation in the long run. It's better to just add in some small aspects of fun like listening to music or doing the task with a friend. Creating a warm-up routine can make it easier to get into your workflow, just make sure to make the warmup easy so you don't put it off as well.

This week I'm bringing back an episode from the archives while I'm working on getting some new content put together. One of the hardest aspects for me with ADHD is that I can quickly become overwhelmed when I can't find a clear path forward - I know I could do the research, but setting aside the time feels like it's going to be too much and so I just procrastinate forever on starting. For me finding a therapist was one of those things that seemed too murky to get started on. There were just so many things to consider and so many things that I don't know. Not only did I not know where to start, but I also didn't even know what questions I should be asking. In my mind, I knew it would be good for me, but the process just seemed too hard to get started on. Today, we're going to work on clearing a path on how to find a therapist - we'll be looking into a few kinds of therapy and what we can expect to get out of therapy - and of course, we'll also be walking through how we actually find a therapist that is the right fit for us. Find show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/findatherapist Hacking Your ADHD around the web: Tiktok Twitter Patreon This Episode's Top Tip Find out what your insurance will cover and go from there. If you don't have insurance or it isn't covered, there are still a lot of options like University Clinics, Online Therapy, Group Therapy, and therapy offered in your community. For help finding a therapist check out psychologytoday.com/therapists The most common type of therapy for ADHD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which focuses on changing your automatic thoughts. Another common therapy practice for ADHD is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) which focuses more on behavior patterns and mindfulness. Talk therapy is another common type of therapy, although it isn't specifically tailored to ADHD. When you go to your first session make sure you have a list of questions for your therapist - finding the right therapist is critical for you getting the most out of your therapy sessions.

While working on the last episode on laziness, one of the themes that came up was how we can become paralyzed when we don't know what our next step is - this can often be seen as laziness from other people or even ourselves. We know we should be doing something, we just don't know what. And this is where the importance of planning comes in. Today we're going to focus on how to plan our day because it's easy to let our days get away from ourselves when we don't plan them. It feels like we shouldn't need to do our planning because that's what we were going to do anyway. But planning lets us look ahead and fix problems before they come up. It lets us choose what we want to do with our time instead of just always putting out fires. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Twitter Tiktok or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/dailyplanning This Episode's Top Tips When we don't know what to do next we can get paralyzed with indecision from a lack of executive function - we can help alleviate some of this paralysis through planning. While doing our initial planning it's important that we also set aside time to regularly do our planning. If we don't build planning time into our schedule it's easy for us to skip doing it. When planning it's important that we're not just scheduling things on our to-do lists but our breaks and things that bring us joy.

In last week's episode, I talked about the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap and how it can be hard for us to really remember or predict how our state is going to affect our actions - one of the consequences of this is that we often label ourselves as lazy when we didn't do something. Our cold state brain tells us that we should have just done the thing, all the while neglecting how we felt. This disconnect is what leads to a lot of our self-judgment and in particular, those of us with ADHD often find ourselves labeling ourselves as lazy. Why didn't I walk the dogs? I was feeling lazy - or maybe I feel overwhelmed with work or maybe I couldn't find the leashes. When we don't do something it's easy to label it as lazy, but often that doesn't tell us what was really going on. Today we're going to be exploring the idea of lazy and how what we might want to start looking at it a bit differently. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Twitter or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/lazymyth

Why do we make bad decisions in the moment? We've all done things that we regret doing right? yeah me, neither - but let's say hypothetically there was something that we regretted doing - something that we said or did that we feel like doesn't really reflect on as a person. Why is it I can have the best of intentions and still when it comes time I still make the wrong decision? Today we're going to be exploring the hot-cold empathy gap and why it can be so difficult for us to predict what we're actually going to do in the moment. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Twitter or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/empathygap This Episode's Top Tips The hot-cold empathy gap occurs when we fail to predict how our emotions are going to affect our decision-making when we're in that state. This doesn't only apply to things like being angry or depressed but can also apply to our motivation or energy levels. Our ADHD can easily let us overcommit on projects because we fail to predict that we might have less drive and motivation when it comes time to actually do the task. We can work on mitigating some of the effects of the hot-cold empathy gap by making the decisions we want to make easier to make in the moment. We can also use tools like accountability and breaking down our tasks to keep us on track.

Hey team, good news, I am finally over Covid - it took me a bit longer than I would have liked but I'm healthy again and ready to get back at things. This is an episode that I started working on before I got sick, and one of the areas that we had been looking into was that of planning and goal setting. So I thought it was time to shift a bit onto an area that we often forget about - leisure time. Now, I want to be clear here, leisure time is not in opposition to goals and planning, in fact, it's just as important to our well-being. There are a myriad of health benefits we get from taking time off work, but not all leisure activities are equal. In this week's episode, we're going to be looking at how we can work on reframing the ways we look at our free time, how we can be a little more intentional with how we're spending that time, and then look at a few of the things we can do to make that time, time well spent. 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/leisure This Episode's Top Tips You don't have to earn your time off - denying ourselves real leisure time because we "didn't earn it" is counterproductive only leads to burnout. Don't rely on discipline to keep yourself from falling into low-quality leisure time like scrolling social media - use blocks on your phone to divert yourself from the path of least resistance. Our five pillars of quality leisure time are: Prioritize doing, over consuming Prioritize things that take some skill to do Think about making something Seek activities that foster social interaction Prioritize Self-Care

We've all got things that we think we should be able to just do - for example, I've had on my to-do list for weeks to make a phone call to the bank - it won't even take that long, but I keep putting it off. I keep finding reasons not to do it - what I've done is I've created a wall of awful around making this phone call (really most phone calls) and the more I put it off the more it builds it up. Today we've got Brendan Mahan from ADHD Essentials to explain what the Wall of Awful is and some ways that we can work on getting past it. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/wallofawful This Episode's Top Tips The Wall of Awful is the emotional impact of repeated failure and it makes activating on tasks even more difficult While our wall starts off being built up with failure bricks, it is also built with things like disappointment, rejection, and shame. It doesn't matter if these bricks are based in reality, it matters how you perceive them. There are 5 ways people try to get past the Wall of Awful, two don't work, one works, but is damaging to our relationships, and then two that work - the two that don't work are staring at it or trying to go around it - the one that works but is damaging is trying to hulk smash through the wall - the two that work that we want to focus on are climbing the wall and putting a door in our wall Climbing the wall is about sitting with the emotion that built up our wall and understanding what's stopping us - it can often look like staring at the wall, but it's more about gearing yourself up to get over the wall Putting a door in the wall is about changing your emotional state so that you can get past the wall - it could be doing things like taking a walk, listening to some energizing music, or watching a funny TV show to brighten your mood. Make sure that when you are trying to put that door in that you aren't actually just trying to go around the wall - it's easy to let that one TV show turn into four because you were just looking for a way to procrastinate.

One of the hottest trends to come out of the self-help world over the last few years is gratitude. And it's no surprise, gratitude has been found to be one of the greatest indicators of overall well-being. I'm usually pretty skeptical about things that get hyped quite as much as gratitude has been - I mean when you see the list of things that a gratitude practice can help with it's pretty easy to roll your eyes. I mean can gratitude really do all those things that people say it can? Today we'll be exploring the mechanisms that make gratitude work - and also perhaps tempering some of the hype around it - then we'll be looking at ways we can find things to be grateful in our lives as well as looking at some ways that we can start a gratitude practice. And I'll admit, this episode is a little less ADHD-focused - but gratitude was something that was on my mind, for reasons that I get into during the episode. And so even though this episode is a little less ADHD specific I still think everyone can get a lot out of it. 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/gratitude This Episode's Top Tips Gratitude is showing thanks and appreciation and it has a tremendous impact on our brains. Gratitude can help us release build our relationships, regulate stress, improve sleep quality, build self-esteem and make us happier. One way we can practice gratitude is through mindfulness and seeing all the things in our lives that are going right. It's easy for us to latch onto the negative things that happen during our day. We'll miss all the things that went right because when things go according to plan they can often become invisible. We can also practice gratitude by journaling or writing a letter to someone in our lives that has greatly impacted us.

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 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. 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. 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. 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.

Hey team, I'm going to be taking a little time off in August and I thought that I'd dredge up a few episodes from the archives. Today we're going to be hitting on an idea that has been a reoccurring theme in the last few episodes and that's personal energy management. While many of us have realized that we only have so much time in our day, we tend to still believe that we're going to have the same amount of energy from sun up to sundown. But we know this isn't true. Our energy levels vary throughout the day and if we want to be getting the most out of our days we have to try and work with these rhythms of energy. Today we're going to be discussing how we can work on creating our schedules around when we do have energy instead of just when we've got a free spot on the calendar. We'll be looking at some of the different areas of energy management as well as how our energy levels fluctuate throughout the day. And we'll also spend a little time on how you can make a little more energy. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/energymanagement This Episode's Top Tips Energy management is about realizing it's not just about how many hours you have in the day, but also how much energy you've got during the day. Your energy levels are going to fluctuate up and down throughout the day, and if you want to get the most out of your schedule try scheduling your most important tasks during your high energy times, preferably early in the day. Limit your commitments so that you have enough time to work on the projects that are important to you. If you're low on energy try having some water or a healthy snack - you can also try to change your state by listening to some music or going on a short walk.

I want to start this episode off by saying that this is something I'm bad at - and not in the sense that what I do to celebrate is bad or that I'm not celebrating the small wins throughout my day. It's bad in the sense that I almost entirely skip the whole thing. Recently this podcast tipped past half a million downloads. That's a pretty big milestone and is pretty indicative of how successful this endeavor has been. But it was barely a blip for me. I didn't want to acknowledge the success because it can be hard for me to acknowledge when I do things well. So this episode is as much for me as it is for all of you and in this episode, we're going to be exploring what it means to have small wins and also how we can celebrate them. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/winning This Episode's Top Tips Celebrating our wins is a way to boost our confidence and it will actively encourage us to seek out that same success again. We can differentiate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation by thinking of intrinsic as what to do because it's interesting and inherently satisfying. Extrinsic motivation comes from rewards or from avoiding punishment. Both can be important parts of how we celebrate our success. Start celebrating your wins by acknowledging when they happen and then letting yourself do something fun to celebrate that success. Don't get down on yourself when the wins aren't coming - we're not always going to have smooth sailing, but only focusing on what didn't happen tends to make us overlook all the good things that did happen.

As we've been working on goals one place I want us to take a step back on and think about is meeting ourselves where we are. As we get going with our planning we tend to decide that well we want to do all of the things. And I mean why not, there are a lot of things that I want to do, if I don't start now, when am I going to start? I can't tell you how many ill-fated adventures I've started because of that whole "if not now, when?" line - there are so many things that I should be investing my time in now. I need to be meditating and exercising more and eating healthier and saving money and work on business and building my relationships and learning new skills and on and on and on. I'm sure everyone listening has that list of things they know that they should be starting on now because the sooner the better results you'll see down the line. But we're not starting on them... or when we do we don't stick with the changes. Today we're going to be looking at what it means to meet ourselves where we're at and then some of the ways that we can work on making that happen.\ Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/80 This Episode's Top Tips We only have so much time and energy we can put into any given day - giving ourselves the self-compassion to accept this is our first step in meeting ourselves where we're at. When we're trying to add things back into our life that we've previously done it can feel like we picked up the wrong puzzle pieces and this is because we often don't think about how our circumstances have changed. Just because we did something before doesn't mean it will be necessarily easy for us to just pick right back up. After we approach what we're capable of with self-compassion we need to decide on some of the things that we're not going to do. This gives us the mental space to focus on the things we can do right now. Celebrate your small wins because they are the stepping stones to reaching your goals.

The first thing we've got to understand is that when we ask, when should I quit? We're also asking, when should I persevere? And they often serve as the same answer - I should quit when it doesn't make sense to keep going. I keep going when it doesn't make sense to quit. Unfortunately is really easy to get those messages mixed up and with ADHD we've all got a trail of unfinished projects and ideas that are weighing us down every time we need to make this decision again. 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/whentoquit This Episode's Top Tips We've got to give up the notion that winners never quit. Persistence doesn't guarantee success - we can persist at the wrong things forever and never make progress. There are two curves we've got to look for when starting something new - the dip and the cul-de-sac. A cul-de-sac is a dead end. The dip is the point where things start to get hard - we've got to stop quitting things when they get hard and embrace the dip. We'll often stick out things we should quit. There are a lot of reasons that we might stick something out like the sunk cost fallacy or the planning fallacy. Regardless of why we're sticking around, once we realize that we're in a dead-end we've got to accept that we need to quit and try something new.

Last week dove into how goals work and the science behind them - now we're going to be taking all of that and looking at how we can better create our goals through simple frameworks. A lot of these frameworks come from a business setting, but with a little tweaking, we can absolutely make them work for personal use as well. Today we're going to be looking at a few of the different frameworks we can use for our goal setting as well as hitting the why behind setting those goals. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/frameworks This Episode's Top Tips SMART goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. You can make them SMARTER by adding a step to Evaluate our goals and then to Readjust them. Using the Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework, we're looking for the specific things that we can do every day that will naturally lead us to reaching our goals. A big, hairy, audacious goal is something that exists on a large time frame and will push us out of our comfort zone. We can use these big goals to help guide our thinking behind the other goals we're setting. Ikigai is the Japanese ideology of finding the joy of life through purpose. We can use this idea to help create the kinds of big goals that are going to have real meaning behind them.

As we continue to think about our fresh start one clear area that we're going to hit is that of, well what should we even be focusing on. That's where goal setting comes into play and while I did touch on this in the original fresh start episode, I think it's worth giving more consideration. When we think about goals there's a ton of different ways to think about them, but at their basics, a goal is simply a future result that you are directing your effort. Now there are a lot of different ways that we can go about setting those goals and we'll get into that more next week when I go through some of the various frameworks. But before we get into those frameworks it's important to understand how goals actually work and why we even want to set them. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/freshstartgoals This Episode's Top Tips There are 4 mechanisms we need to keep in mind when trying to complete our goals, those are focus, effort, persistence, and strategy. We can think of goals fitting into three broad categories - outcome, performance, and process. Outcome and performance goals focus on things we can measure and process goals focus on the things that we do. With an any benefit approach to our goals we're going to end up trying to focus on doing everything - instead, we need to prioritize those things that are most important and do them before we even think about those lower priority goals.

One of the things I never quite got a grasp on is seasons... I mean I grew up in Hawaii and we basically had hot and not quite as hot. But this comes up for me because technically we're still in Spring right now so I guess this could still be a Spring Cleaning episode - officially Summer starts on the Solstice in June on the 20th... so I made in by like a week if you're listening to this when it comes out. Regardless of if this is Spring Cleaning or not, cleaning can be a great way to signal the start of something new. We all get used to the mess in our space and freshening things up can not only signal the start of something new but also shift our mindset. Today I'll be exploring the benefits of cleaning, how we can update our space, some tips on accountability, and then get into a few of the specific things that you can do. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/freshstartcleaning This Episode's Top Tips You can help spur your fresh start by rearranging your space - this doesn't have to be a big move, but sprucing up your environment can help it feel new and like you are starting fresh. Getting rid of our old stuff can help lift mental burdens and take care of old open loops. Our accumulated stuff often carries more mental weight than we really know. To help keep on track during cleaning make sure you create some accountability. It can be a great way to help you follow through with your planning and also in the moment through body doubling. Leave yourself notes as to where you left off in your cleaning so when you come back you can pick it back up without having to try and figure out what you were trying to do. While it may seem like we wouldn't forget, it's easy to lose track of where we were at in our plans.

In just one more month we're going to be coming up on the halfway point of 2021 — I know, I have no idea how it got here either. But with this mark in time we're starting to see a shift going on - while COVID certainly isn't a thing of the past, the vaccine role out has opened up a lot of possibilities for what we want our future to look like. At the end of 2020, I did some planning for 2021, but I knew that a lot of it was going to be uncertain so I didn't make too many specific plans. But now that I'm getting a better grasp of what the future might hold — although let's be honest, with ADHD we're always going to have a lot of uncertainty — I felt like it was time to go over those plans again and maybe give myself a fresh start. In this episode, we're going to be talking about the fresh start effect, go over some stuff on planning, and how we can work on sticking to those plans. Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/76 This Episode's Top Tips Fresh starts can help us let go of our past performance and embrace our new self. We can effectively create motivation with financial incentives, but often that isn't enough for us to follow through on some of the things that we really do want to do. We also need to create reminders and a plan on how we want to accomplish our goals. Don't try and do all the new things at once - pace yourself and create a plan on what you want to do first. Try and focus on doing the things that by doing them will make everything else easier. We need to be flexible with our plans because we are going to hit speed bumps - while we can't plan for everything we can work on ways to help us get back up when we get knocked down.

In this week's podcast, I continue my conversation with Will Henshall, CEO of the music service Focus@Will In this part of the interview we talk about how we can use music to affect our state of being → and to jump on this because I realized I didn't really hit this in the interview, by state of being I mean how you are currently experiencing things - so this encompasses your mood, energy level, and your motivation level - okay, back to our intro - we also discuss a number of various ADHD tips and how Focus@Will is really in the happiness at work business. And if you're wondering you don't have to have listened to the first part of the interview to enjoy this episode - in this part, we focus a lot more on ADHD and some of the ways that you can work with your ADHD to get more out of your day. You can check out Focus@Will at https://www.focusatwill.com/ Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/focusatwill

Whenever I sit down to do some serious writing I always make sure to have something to listen to - music is often a key piece of how I keep myself engaged in the task I'm doing. In today's podcast, I'm going to dig into that idea, by I won't be doing it alone. Today I'm joined by Will Henshall, CEO of Focus@Will which is kind of like Spotify for concentration music. In this episode, I talk with Will about how music can be critical in our ability to focus while working, how ADHD brains need a certain level of stimulation to really get engaged, and you'll get a taste of what you might hear on Focus@Will I had a great time with this interview and I hope you'll enjoy it too. You can check out Focus@Will at https://www.focusatwill.com/ Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/focusatwill

Today we're going to be talking about a chemical that is responsible for countless deaths worldwide every year - a chemical so ubiquitous that it can be found practically everywhere - in the air, in our homes, and even in our bodies. I'm of course referring to dihydrogen monoxide or its more common nomenclature H2O Yes, we're finally going to be talking about water. One of the tips I go back to over and over again to help manage ADHD is that of making sure you are properly hydrated. It's absolutely something that I have to constantly remind myself of because it seems just a little too easy. I mean just drinking water shouldn't have that big of an effect right? But as something that makes up 45-75% of your body weight and 80% of your brain composition, it is incredibly important. Today we'll be going over what hydration means, the importance of staying hydrated, and then some ways that we can be better at making sure we don't get dehydrated. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/hydration Today's Top Tips There is no set amount of water that you need to be drinking every day because our water needs are going to vary with things like gender, age, activity level, temperature, humidity, diet, and any medications we're taking. Our best bet is to follow our thirst and keep water available to us throughout the day. Symptoms of mild dehydration include fatigue, brain fog, headaches, mood swings, and poor decision-making. We can often identify dehydration from dry mouth, chapped skin, or those headaches. To help us follow our thirst we can work on setting up a mindfulness practice that helps us identify what proper hydration feels like. Track your water intake throughout the day for a few weeks and journal about how you feel when you've been drinking various amounts. Remember we're not trying to hit any number here, we're just trying to find what the right levels are for us.

With ADHD we often have trouble filtering things out - we can't ignore the hum of the air conditioner, we can't ignore the scratchy tag on the back of our shirt, we can't ignore the fact it seems like the lady standing next to us in line seem to have marinated herself in perfume. We don't want to pay attention to these things, but we can't get our brains to focus on what we want to in the best of times, so how do we expect them to when something is calling for our attention so urgently. Many people with ADHD are hypersensitive (sometimes also called being a highly sensitive person) which means they are simply more sensitive to the things that stimulate our senses. So anything from touch, taste, smell, sound, or things we see. We can also find ourselves overwhelmed with emotions or too much information. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/hypersensitivity Today's Top Tips Many people with ADHD also report being hypersensitive (or being a highly sensitive person), which means that they process certain emotional and/or physical stimuli more intensely or thoroughly than others. It also means that we tend to process more aspects of our environment than other people. To help limit all the stimuli we receive we can do things like wearing comfortable tagless clothing, using noise-canceling headphones, and use proper lighting to help reduce the number of distractions we get in a day. Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria is extreme emotional sensitivity that can be triggered by the perception of rejection or failure. The intense feelings can even manifest as physical pain. RSD isn't easy to deal with but can be worked on with the understanding that the feelings won't last forever and knowing you can get past them.

This week we're going to be exploring the power of habit and how small changes to our routines can have a big impact. One of the easiest ways we can help our ADHD is by working on routines and habits. It's easy to let our default habits run our lives but when we consciously choose what habits we actually want to cultivate we aren't hamstringing ourselves. In this episode we'll be learning why we don't need to use discipline nearly as much as we think, the importance of sequencing in our habits and how we can make tweaks in those sequences so that we can change our habits to the ones we actually want. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/habits Today's Top Tips Don't rely on discipline, instead use your habits to help you navigate the hard stuff. Our habits are so ingrained that we don't always realize what we're doing while we're doing them. Our habits follow the path of least resistance - if you want to change a bad habit, add resistance. If you want to form a new habit, reduce the resistance to that habit. You can automate processes in your habit sequences so that you aren't relying on discipline. The ReWired Podcast Network ADHD reWired with Eric Tivers ADHD Essentials with Brendan Mahan ADHD Diversified with MJ The ADHD Friendly Lifestyle with Moira Maybin

Resistance is the embodiment of the I don't wanna's - the part of us that keeps us from doing our work - or anything for that matter. And a big part of resistance comes from our ability to rationalize what we're doing - I'll jump into one task and find myself doing something else and then my brain will come up with a reason why I needed to be watching youtube instead of working on this week's episode. In today's episode we're going to be exploring what rationalization is, some of the ways that we do it, and also some of the ways we can start working on reducing the amount of rationalization that we are doing. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/rationalization This Episode's Top Tips Rationalization is our brains attempting to explain or justify our behavior or an attitude with logical reasons. The difference between reasoning and rationalization is that with reasoning we are trying to apply logic to come to a conclusion, when we're rationalizing, we have a conclusion and we're making up reasons for it. One way we use rationalization is through the stories we are telling ourselves - we come up with reasons to explain why someone is acting the way they are (which we have to because we don't have access to their thoughts) but we're not always very accurate in our assessment as to why people act the way they are acting. We can use the phrase, "the story I'm telling myself" to help navigate the reality of a story. We also tell stories about ourselves - these are often based in fear and lead us to create more and more rationalizations. Use getting upset as a signal to get curious and explore these stories - and remember that you don't have to do it alone. One of the easiest ways to make rationalizing harder is to have a clear goal - this means knowing what the goal is and also knowing the reason why behind the goal. Since we have ADHD we've also got to work on making sure that we are creating reminders about what our goals are - just because a goal feels important when we make it doesn't mean we're going to remember why we're doing it 2 weeks from now.

Making the right choices isn't always easy - we've got so many options of what we can do and when I'm tired I don't want to weigh all my options. It would be great if I could just get a gentle push in the right direction. Something that would make the choice I want to make easier to make. What I'm talking about here is a nudge and that's what we're going to be talking about today. We'll be learning about what a nudge is, why they work, and when they don't. We'll also be looking at some of the various ways we can nudge ourselves and why it's so important for us to know when someone else might be nudging us. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/nudge This Episode's Top Tips 1. At its basics, nudging is an attempt to change someone's behavior by changing the environment or conditions. A nudge shouldn't alter the incentives, it just makes the option we want to pick the easiest option. 2. Nudges works because our decision-making isn't rational, in reality, we actually usually just take the path of least resistance. 3. We can nudge ourselves in several different ways. One way many of us already use nudges is through reminders. We can also alter our environment (like having a water bottle on our desk to nudge us to drink more water) or we can change our default options (like having our web browsers default to a blank page instead of opening up to countless tabs). 4. It's important to be aware of nudges because many companies use them to influence our behavior. When we know that we're being nudged we can decide if that's really the decision we want to be making or if there is actually a better option for us.

One of the thoughts I kept coming back to while working on my episode's on multitasking was what it really meant to be multitasking. I settled on using the idea of doing two cognitive tasks at the same time, but that left me with another quandary - what about when I'm doing one thing and just thinking about doing something else. Surely just thinking about something else wouldn't count as multitasking. But still... There have absolutely been times when I've been thinking about something else and found myself getting engrossed in my thoughts and losing track of conversations or what I was doing. Clearly, my thoughts can play a big role in what I'm doing and if my focus is somewhere else then it certainly isn't here in the present. Today we're going to explore what our brain is doing here - how our thoughts can kind of run away with us. We'll also be looking at hyperfocus and then bringing together how these things relate. 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/wanderingmind This Episode's Top Tips The Default Mode Network is a collection of brain regions that are responsible for daydreaming, mind wandering and are primarily active in our wakeful resting state. In neurotypical brains the Default Mode Network disengages when we start working on task-specific work - this relationship doesn't hold up in ADHD brains and is why we can drift off in thought while trying to do complex tasks. Hyperfocus is when our concentration engages so much that we kind of just tune out the rest of the world. It can be a double-edged sword, however, because we can also miss cues to eat, use the bathroom and overuse our executive functions, and leave us completely drained when we come out of it. We can help both our default mode network and our hyperfocus by taking breaks throughout the day. We can go further by using those breaks for positive constructive daydreaming where we let our minds wander with purpose.

To recap from last week we learned that are there are three kinds of multitasking - Classic Multitasking where we're trying to perform more than one task at the same time. Rapid task switching where we're just going from one task to another in quick succession. And interrupted task switching where we're interrupted from one task and switch what we're doing without finishing what we were doing. We also covered how we're more likely to try and multitask with things we're familiar with but how that actually creates more of a cognitive penalty from breaking up our tasks and how we often just don't realize how much concentration we're using to complete a task - as evidenced with how dangerous texting and driving is. This week we're going to be exploring more of the cognitive and biological costs of multitasking, then get into some specific kinds of multitasking that can really drain us and we'll finish up with some ways we can work on reducing the amount of multitasking we 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/multitaskingpart2 This Episode's Top Tips Multitasking has both cognitive and biological costs that accumulate as we do more and more task switching. These costs can be especially hard on those of us with ADHD because they can serve to drain our executive functions. Multimedia multitasking is one of the worst ways we can multitask because often we're essentially binge multitasking where we multitask for a sustained period and really drain our systems. One of the biggest appeals to multitasking is that we don't have to prioritize what we're doing, we can just choose to do both. To help stave off multitasking work on knowing what your priorities are and create systems where you can focus on just doing those things. One of our best defenses against multitasking is mindfulness - if we can be specific about what we want to do and then become aware of what we are doing throughout the day we can help ourselves focus on doing just one thing at a time.

This week we're going to be deep-diving into multitasking - this is one of those topics that I frequently mention in episodes, but I've never featured before. Not because it doesn't deserve its own episode, but because multitasking is actually a fairly complicated issue and is going to take a bit of time to dissect. So this is actually just going to be my first episode in a series on multitasking and we'll really try and dig into the nitty-gritty of it. In today's episode, we're going to be talking a bit about what multitasking is and what it isn't - then we'll work on some ways to really drive home the time costs of multitasking and well finish up by looking at some of the ways that multitasking can actually put us in harm's way. 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/multitasking This Episode's Top Tips There are three kinds of multitasking - Classic Multitasking where we're trying to perform more than one task at the same time. Rapid task switching where we're just going from one task to another in quick succession. And interrupted task switching where we're interrupted from one task and switch what we're doing without finishing what we were doing. When we're talking about multitasking we're primarily concerned with doing two cognitive tasks at the same time that require sustained attention. This means something like walking and listening to a podcast is fine to do because neither carries a huge cognitive load. We often try to multitask with things that we're already fairly practiced at, but this means that we're going to suffer even more of a penalty as we try to combine doing them with other things. Don't text and drive - or even just play with your phone while behind the wheel. When we're mentally juggling all of these different things we're dividing our attention and it takes time for us to refocus on what we need to be doing.

One of the questions that I frequently get is how people can actually apply what they're learning - in this podcast and from all the other things we learn. I know this is a particularly pernicious problem for ADHD because often we see things that we think would really make a difference in our lives, and yet we can't seem to get ourselves to apply these ideas. Today we're going to exploring how we can start working on getting a better understanding of what we're learning, why we might want to start limiting what we're consuming and how to solidify those learnings into our lives. Check out the next registration event for ADHD reWired's Coaching and Accountability groups on Thursday 2/18 at 1:30 PM CT - coachingrewired.com 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/learningtoapply This Episode's Top Tips When writing notes from books, podcasts or videos create summaries and write them down in your own words to solidify your learnings. Be discerning about the media that your taking in so that you don't overwhelm yourself with too many topics. We can only work on a few ideas at any given time, so you've got to be choosy about what you want to work on. Create a plan to follow through with what you're learning and use an accountability system to help you stay on track with your plan.

When it comes to understanding our ADHD it can be a bit of a minefield to navigate - one of our most pernicious problems is that often we're never really educated in what it means to have ADHD. And to top that off, what we learn from pop-culture just reinforces stereotypes that don't really reflect what ADHD is actually about. One of the most important ways to help manage our ADHD is to accept it, but that can be really hard to do if we don't actually have a good grasp of what having ADHD means. So in today's episode, we're going to be diving into the ADHD subtypes (or presentations as it's now being called) → there are the 3 kinds of ADHD that you might be diagnosed with, hyperactive-impulsive, inattentive, and combined. Today we're going to be exploring these presentations of ADHD and working on understanding how this can help define our own ADHD. Check out the next registration event for ADHD reWired's Coaching and Accountability groups on Thursday 2/18 at 1:30 PM CT - coachingrewired.com 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/subtypes This Episode's Top Tips ADHD is a spectrum disorder, which means that it includes a wide list of conditions and severity which means that your ADHD is just that, yours. No one is going to have the exact same symptoms that you do, so don't worry about comparing yourself to others even if you do resonate with a lot of the stories you hear in the community. The three presentations of ADHD are Hyperactive-Impulsive, Inattentive, and Combined. We can roughly estimate that about 10% of diagnoses are hyperactive-impulsive, 30% are inattentive, and 60% are combined. I know this was basically in the first tip, but it bears repeating - we're all going to be ADHDing in our own way - make sure you're not going to struggle with all the same things that everyone else does so focus on what's going to make the biggest difference for you.

All right everyone, we've got another listener Q&A episode coming your way today with questions looking at ways we can declutter our phones, re-establishing our routines when life is in flux, and how to recover after taking on a heavier workload. Be sure to checkout ADHD Diversified with MJ 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/buildingtouchstones This Episode's Top Tips A lot of our digital clutter comes from stuff that we just build up over time - one of the easiest ways to reclaim some of that space is to go through and look for those Keepers, Maybes, and Rejects. It's easy to get rid of the keepers in the first step and then go through and decide on the maybes after we've cleared some stuff out. Once we've clear out that space it's also important to back our data up - and the name of the game while backing up that data is redundancy. I use Google's Cloud service for my first level and then also have an external hard drive that I keep more of my files. Routines can be really helpful for creating structure for our ADHD brains and so when our structure needs to change for things like school or work we need to look for touchstones in our schedule that we can keep the same and then build out our schedule from there. Remember that when we're trying to do new things that we're not always going to be 100% successful at implementing our strategies. That doesn't mean that we failed, it's often actually a sign that we're heading off in the right direction. We want to think about iteration and what went well and what didn't and then try and build on that stuff that did work for us.

Did you think I was all done with tabs last week... well I wasn't because there's actually a ton we can still talk about. Tabs are one of those small things in our life that can have a fairly outsized impact. Don't think so? Well, keep listening to find out why. Today we're going to be talking about how tabs can literally change the way our brain works, some ways we can cull having all those tabs open, and then talk a bit about those precursors to tabs... bookmarks. 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/tabstabstabs This Episode's Top Tips Tabs can serve as an easy way to try to multitask - however, multitasking is just task switching. As we switch from task to task to task we're actually decreasing our overall productivity, not increasing it. Switching tabs can give a hit of dopamine, which only increases our desire to switch tabs more often. We can work on this by being mindful of what kind of tabs we leave open. A great way to limit tabs is to use services like Pocket or Instapaper that allow us to save articles we want to read for later. By storing them in an external system we remove the temptation to just switch to those articles in the middle of other tasks. Another alternative to just leaving tabs open is to use your bookmarks for sites that you either visit frequently or just sites that you know you're going to have to come back to eventually. What we don't want to do however is create bookmarks for sites that we just need to keep open temporarily.

A few weeks ago I asked around on Facebook the number of tabs that my friends had open at the time. Answers I got included: 500 on their phone and 20 on their computer, 50-60 across 5-6 windows, 4-5, 16, 3, 80 across 9 windows, 2, 4, 7, 45, 112 over 17 windows… and of course, at the time of my asking, I had 70 across 12 windows, although as I mentioned earlier I'm down to just a few right now - oftentimes these episodes are just as much about helping me as they are about helping you. Clearly, a lot of people use their browsers in a lot of different ways. Now one thing that was fairly apparent to me is that my more neurodiverse friends tended to be those people who had the most tabs open, although to be clear having too many tabs open isn't just a neurodiverse condition, anyone can easily find themselves overwhelmed by tabs. Today we're going to be looking at why we tend to have so many tabs open and then some of the ways we can work on reducing that number. 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/digitaldeclutter This Episode's Top Tips We tend to trying and use tabs as an extension of our working memory, but as we open more and more tabs we stretch our mental resources and it can become overwhelming to figure out what we need to take care of. One of the reasons we open so many tabs is that we're afraid of missing something - be it an article to read, a video to watch, or something in your social feed, our brains tell us we want to see it all. Unfortunately, we're never going to see everything so we've got to work on being choosier about what we focus our attention on and be okay missing some things. We can install extensions into our browsers to help limit the number of tabs we have open, or install a tab manager to help us keep better track of everything we have open.

We all have an idea of what clutter is - it's just all that stuff. It's that frustrating feeling when you can't find something just because there are too many other things to look through. Clutter is disorder. While we typically see clutter as a physical thing - the junk on our desk. The pile in the corner of the room. The stuff spread out all over our counters - we can also experience its digital counterpart because we also amass a lot of stuff digitally. Today we're going to start our journey of working on our decluttering our digital lives - in this episode, I am going to be focusing on email and the files on our computers - next week we'll be continuing this series with an episode on all those tabs we have open in our browsers. I also considered doing an episode on our phones, but for now, I'm just going to direct you to Episodes 17 & 18, How to Make your Smart Phone ADHD Friendly - although I'm definitely going to have to update those episodes at some point. 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/digitaldeclutter This Episode's Top Tip Digital clutter is just all that stuff that builds upon our devices. It can have a real effect on our mental health and is something to be especially aware of with ADHD because it can create a lot of distractions. To help manage our email we want to work on processing our email only a few times a day and then making sure that when we do that we're not treating our email as a task manager → don't leave things in your email to do later, either put them in a real task manager or deal with them right then. Work on creating actual organization for your files → by keeping your files in places that are logical for your brain to find them you make accessing your files easier when you need them. Back up your files. Seriously, you don't want to lose something you've been working on because your computer crashed. There are a ton of services that make this process easier than ever now.

#Adulting Now there's something a lot of us can relate to - or relate to the idea that adulting is something we sometimes do, but being an adult is not something we are. ADHD can make us feel like we're not really adults. An adult would get their bills paid on time. An adult wouldn't let their house get this messy. An adult would be eating healthy meals for dinner every night. Now it would be a stretch to say that I feel like an adult all of the time, but I'm certainly getting there. A big part of the is probably having kids - it can be hard to not feel like the adult when you are literally the adult in the room. Also, there's the whole losing track of what going on with slang - I mean I know what straight fire is and but I still have to look up what a VSCO girl was and I'm only mildly sure I understand what being on fleek means. Although really that's more of a confirmation that I'm old rather than I'm being an adult. Regardless - today we're going to be exploring those feelings of not being an adult and how that interacts with 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/adulting This Episode's Top Tips No one has everything in their life together all of the time - instead of focusing on what your missing try giving yourself credit for the things you are doing. ADHD can amplify these feelings of not being an adult because we're not neurotypical - there are absolutely things that are going to be harder for us to do, but we can do hard things. To help celebrate everything that you do throughout the day try creating a ta-done list → this is just a list of everything that you do throughout the day, from filling up the dishwasher to making a call to a friend to sending those emails you need to send. It's easy for us to forget what we've actually accomplished in a day and a ta-done list can help remind us that, yeah, we actually did somethings today. At some point all of us find ourselves doubting our ADHD, it's okay - ADHD is a spectrum and you're never going to have all the symptoms that everyone else has. Be reassured that you're not alone in this feeling and that even if you didn't really have ADHD, you're still doing the right things to help your brain.

When I was in school, I always wanted to be the kind of student who able to finish a project well before it needed to be turned in. I loved the idea that I could write a paper and still have a week left to polish it. Of course, I was never actually that student. For me to get started on a paper, I had to actually be able to feel that pressure from the deadline building up on me. That usually meant that I was mostly working on papers the night before - I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Since I was still able to get good grades with this strategy, I never really changed it - but I always wished that I wasn't always riding by the seat of my pants. Despite having a good track record, there were times that I missed those deadlines. And a funny thing about it was that I always wanted more time to write my papers. In my brain, if the deadline was pushed farther out I would have had more time to start, and yet experience has taught me that it really didn't matter how much time I was given to complete a paper. Given a week or month, I would still procrastinate until the last minute. When those deadlines were moving in on me, I was able to focus like no other. The time pressure allowed me to block out all those other distracting ideas vying for my attention. Today we're going to be exploring how we can use this time pressure to complete those nagging tasks that we otherwise might not get done and also those things we want to do but just can't seem to prioritize. We'll also be looking at better ways to set deadlines so that we can follow through with our intentions. 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/deadlines Today's Top Tips Time pressure from deadlines allows us to focus on the tasks in front of us and distill our work down to the most important parts. When setting deadlines we want to make sure that they are relevant to either us or the project. A great way to do this is through accountability and getting someone else to check in on your progress. Deadlines need to be realistic if we plan on meeting them. Time blindness can make it hard to know how long something is actually going to take, but if we break down our projects into chunks we can work on hitting milestones with mini-deadlines.

In this week's episode, I am going to be going over the book The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan - I was introduced to this book by Eric Tivers through the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability groups. I can't remember if it was required reading or just strongly encouraged when I took the groups, but the messages in this book were key to getting through the coaching groups. My first reading of the book was on audiobook and since then I've listened to it three more and read the physical version of the book twice. The subtitle of the book is, "The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results" - and as I've mentioned before, just because something is simple doesn't make it easy. Each reading has helped me understand the concepts a little bit better and I was always able to pick up a few new things. Today I'm going to be going over the "surprisingly simple truth" in the book and discussing how we can better apply it for our ADHD brains. 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/theonething Today's Top Tips Use the focusing question to help you determine your one thing - the focusing question again is: "What's the ONE Thing that you can do such by doing it that everything else is easier or unnecessary?" Change your thinking and value your time by saying "no" more and time blocking time for your ONE Thing You can have a ONE Thing for each of your life domains, but they should all be working toward a common purpose If you liked this episode I'd recommend you check out the book the ONE Thing and read through it on your own - I skimmed a lot of parts for this episode so I'm sure you could get a lot more out of it. You can find a link to the book on the show notes page.

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 Imposter syndrome is the feeling of self-doubt around your skills, talents, or accomplishments where you fear of being exposed as a "fraud". 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. 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 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. 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. 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 When we're setting goals we should focus on the small changes we can make that we can keep up for the long term. 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. 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 Work on Accepting your ADHD and giving yourself what you actually need to thrive. Realize we're all snowflakes and that our ADHD is unique - what works for me might not work for you. Learn about your ADHD by embracing your ADHD community and finding out what it means to have ADHD. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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 Use programs like Zapier or IFTTT to create connections between other programs to help automate some of your workflow. 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. 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 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. Automating everything isn't always the right answer, we need to make sure that we're still thinking about our transitions. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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.