Hacking Your ADHD

Before we get going here, I just want to make sure you know that I'm not a doctor, and while this episode is a lot about your health, it is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice. Just because I say something on this show doesn't necessarily mean it will be the best advice for you - be smart and be safe. And when in doubt always consult your doctor before changing your diet or exercise routine. Today's episode is a follow up to last week's on Energy Management, but this week we are just going to be going over the area of physical energy. When we think about our energy levels, our physical energy is what we tend to primarily think about. We think about being tired or just needing a quick pick me up to get through our day. And our physical energy tends to be a basis for all our other types of energy (quick reminder those were: mental, emotional and spiritual along with our physical energy) - when we're physically exhausted it's hard for us to draw on our other wells of energy. Have a bad night's sleep? You might be feeling that brain fog all-day - blood sugar low? You might be more likely to snap at a family member over something not that important. We need our foundation of physical energy to power our bodies and to let us fully engage with our other energy sources. In today's episode, we're going to be covering the three main areas that we get our physical energy from: sleep, diet, and exercise. Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/physicalenergy This Episode's Top Tips Getting enough sleep is one of the most important things we can do for our energy levels. To help get a good night's sleep make sure you are allowing yourself to get 4-6 sleep cycles of 90 minutes. You can improve your sleep quality with a dark, cool room and by creating a routine to get you ready for sleep by your bedtime. Instead of focusing on what foods you should or shouldn't be eating, focus on ways that you can make the habits of eating the right foods easier. By making the lifestyle changes you are more likely to stick to your new dietary plan - making mistakes isn't a set back it's just part of the path to changing your habits. Aim to get 20-30 minutes of moderate exercise per day - we're just trying to get our heart rate up here. If you are just starting up, then maybe try starting with a light 10-minute walk and work your way up. Along with getting enough exercise during the day, you also are going to want to be moving more throughout the day. During your breaks be sure to get up and stretch a little and don't let you're self stay in one position for too long.

It's an hour after lunch and your staring at your computer monitor. There are words in front of you, but you've read the same sentence over and over again five times in a row. Your eyes are glazed and curling up under your desk for a quick nap like George Costanza is seemingly a better and better option by the minute. Except you have things to do - you have stuff on your schedule and taking a nap is just not an option. Enter Personal Energy Management - this is an idea of scheduling your work around when you have the energy to do it rather than just when it's entered in on your calendar. Now to be sure this is more than just doing things when you feel like doing them - we know how that can turn out. Instead, this is about using your calendar and understanding that you aren't going to be at peak performance all day. 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. Find show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/energymanagement This Episode's Top Tips 1. 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. 2. 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. 3. Limit your commitments so that you have enough time to work on the projects that are important to you. 4. 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

Last week we started off our discussion of resistance - a term that I got from Steven Pressfield's book, the War of Art. While there are parts of the book that aren't that ADHD friendly, I do like this idea of resistance. And basically resistance is what is keeping us from doing our work. It's procrastination, rationalizations, comparison, perfectionism, and everything else that keeps us from working all rolled into one idea. It is the embodiment of the "I don't wanna's In part one I talked about some of the ways resistance keeps us from starting, how comparing ourselves to others slows us down, and what we crave and what we need to grow don't always match. Today we're going to keep exploring the idea of resistance. We'll be looking at ways we can work on overcoming resistance by planning, setting our intentions, and even calling in a little help. You can find the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/resistancepart2 This Episode's Top Tips Our first step in fighting resistance is accepting that we are always going to be facing resistance. Resistance wants us to believe it doesn't exist because when we don't believe we don't do anything to stop it. Planning is a critical part of overcoming resistance. Without a plan, it is easy for us to get off track and not even realize it. When we're creating our plan it also important to break down our tasks into their component parts so that we are able to clearly state our intentions when we start our work. We don't have to fight resistance alone, by enlisting the help of our accountabilibuddies we can get clear on our intentions and help strengthen our resilience in fighting resistance.

"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What's keeping us from sitting down is resistance." This is how Steven Pressfield introduces the idea of resistance in his book the War of Art, and to me, resistance is the root of the "I don't wanna's." While I don't agree with many of the things in Pressfield's book (I mean, he states that ADHD was made up by pharmaceutical companies), I do think resistance is a great way to express this idea. Because when I don't want to do something, it's not necessarily that I just don't want to do it - it's that I can't get myself to start. If I'm planning on going on a run, I know that I'll feel better once I start running - but it's in the starting that I feel resistance. It's putting on my exercise clothes and slipping on my shoes. It's the getting out the door. Once I start putting one foot in front of the other, it isn't so hard anymore. I mean, sure there is the physicality that can become difficult, but the mental block has lifted. And this is just going to be an introduction to this topic. While I was writing this episode I discovered I had a lot to say and so I've split it into two episodes. Today we're going to be exploring the idea of resistance and how it keeps us from doing meaningful work. We're then going to look at some of the ways resistance sinks its claws into us, but also how we can work on loosening up that grip. For show notes go to HackingYourADHD.com/resistance This Episode's Top Tips Resistance is the inertia that keeps us from starting. It is also the inertia that slows us down and stops us in our tracks. If we want to be doing meaningful work we need to look at ways we can fight our own internal resistance. Comparing ourselves to others is an exercise that is never going to lead us down a good path. We need to abandon struggle as a metric for success. Everything gets easier as we do it more and just because something is difficult to do doesn't mean it is more worthwhile. What we crave and what we need to grow don't always match. This means we have to work on rewiring our desires so we're not always fighting resistance to go on a walk. We can do this by being mindful and taking note of how we feel after we do things that are good for us.

Years ago now, before I started this podcast, I worked as a sports writer. It was fun work and I also found that a lot of the things I was writing about could be applied to real life. One of the areas that I really saw it was in the difference between teams playing offensively and defensively. No matter the game teams are going to be playing on both offense and defense, but what I often saw was that teams that had an offensive mindset often were able to take advantage and play better. What I mean by playing offensively is that you are setting the terms of engagement. Instead of reacting to what the other team is doing, you are making them react to you. It's easy to see how this works on offense, you control the ball the other team has to respond to what you are doing. But you can also do this while you are playing defense. A good defense dictates the ways that an offense can move the ball and once the defense controls where the ball is going they can force the turnover. Today we're going to be looking at how we can work on being more proactive than reactive. The role planning will play in the process and also how we can protect our time by saying no more often. Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/defensetooffense This Episode's Top Tips To focus on doing the right things, you have to know what your priority and goals are first. Planning doesn't have to be hard and we can focus on just planning one day at a time. We got to say no more often - especially ourselves. We tend to have more ideas than we can ever hope to complete. By saying no to some things we are leaving time for the things we really want to do. When we're telling someone else no we should focus on a simple no. When we try to hedge our no's it gives the other person the impression that we actually want to do the thing and they will always try and accommodate which will make future no's even harder.

Following up last week's rebroadcast about creating better reminders I thought I'd add in some more ideas on how we can remember things. One of the tools that I most often use is the camera on my phone. I think the first time I tried to use a photograph to remember something was when I was a kid and saw a commercial on TV for a bow and arrow and shield set - it looked like the best toy, but the only way I could think of to record the phone number to call for it (yes this pre-internet) was to take a picture of the TV screen. I of course forgot about it until the picture was developed several weeks later and then promptly told by my parents that they weren't going to order it anyway. Today we're going to be learning just how taking pictures can affect our memories, what things we can turn from physical to digital with pictures, and how we can use photos to assist with cleaning. Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/takeapicture This Episode's Top Tips When taking pictures we narrow our focus and this helps us remember more of the visual aspects of what we are photographing - however, this also tends to reduce the amount of information we can recall from what we heard. We can take pictures of our physical reminders like todos, grocery lists, and journal entries to create digital copies to take with us. Picture taking while cleaning can reduce the amount of input we're getting at one time by changing spaces from 3D to 2D. We can also benefit from having before and after photos to see the work we've done and to also create a reference of what a room is supposed to look like when it's been cleaned. We need to go through our photos periodically so that we don't get overwhelmed by having too many to sift through at once - we also want to create action items on our to-do list from the pictures we take so that we don't forget what we wanted to be reminded about.

When you've got ADHD making reminders is a given. There's just too much going on in any one given day for me to keep track of it all and without reminders I know I'm going to drop the ball somewhere. I've got reminders for big things like when I need to leave to pick up my kids from school and little things like having a cup of tea in the evening but not too close to bedtime. So when I get told I just need to create a reminder to remember something I just want to shout that I already am using a lot of reminders. A big problem with a lot of reminders is that they just aren't effective at getting us to do the things they are supposed to be reminding us of. Today we're going to be exploring the ways that we can make better reminders so that we're actually following through on them. We'll be looking at what we're creating reminders for. How and when we are getting those reminders and also look at how we are creating our system of reminders. Find the full show note at: HackingYourADHD.com/EffectiveReminders Today's Top Tips The most important aspect of a reminder is having it delivered when you can do something about it - you can do this by thinking through the context of a reminder. If you need a reminder at work make sure you are getting it when you are at work. Reminders are great for reminding you of things, but not for doing unscheduled tasks. Leave projects on your to-do list and actually schedule a time for them instead of creating a reminder that you are never going to do. Reminders can either be short-term or long-term but regardless of what kind of reminder you are creating you want to make sure you are giving yourself enough information to follow through on what you were trying to remind yourself about. Create a combination of physical and digital reminders so that you can get the most out of your reminder systems. Physical reminders tend to be faster to set up but digital reminders can be more robust in how they are reminding you.

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

This week we were supposed to have a new episode going up but I'm really starting to feel it. I feel like I've been stuck for a while now and pressing on the gas is just spinning my wheels, so I've realized that I need to step back and take a break. And I thought what better way to start off that break than rebroadcasting my episode on burnout. I know I'm going to have to work on picking up a few lessons from this episode again so I though you might appreciate them too. Exhausted, empty, overloaded, unable to cope - these are some of the words I'll find myself using when I'm feeling burned out or on the path to burnout. We tend to find ourselves in burnout after prolonged periods of stress - it isn't something that sets in all at once. It isn't that we finally have a straw that breaks the camel's back, instead we just eventually find ourselves waking up one morning and realizing we just can't even. We find that we've lost our passion and drive for everything in front of us. We might still find ways to be productive but we tend to be robotic about it and it just drains us more and more. Burnout is hard. Today we're going to start out by discussing what burnout actually is and I'm also going to talk about some of the times I hit burnout. We're also going to be looking at what we can do to prevent burn and then what to do if we still hit burnout anyways. For full show notes go to: HackingYourADHD.com/burnout Today's Top Tips Burnout consists of three parts - exhaustion (both mental and physical), loss of meaning in our work, and a feeling of ineptitude. Burnout is a slow grind and we've got to pay attention to why we're feeling unmotivated when doing tasks we normally enjoy. We want to prevent burnout by setting healthy boundaries around our work, prioritizing self-care, and remembering to take time off. Not comparing ourselves to others and accepting that our ADHD makes things hard will also help us with not feeling like we're so far behind everyone else. If we do hit burnout, we need to reassess what are needs are and identify what was causing us to burnout. Take some time off and figure out what really matters to you. We often hit burnout when our rewards don't match our efforts.

The ADHD brain has a strange relationship with thinking. One of my biggest gripes is that it often feels like I can't ever turn my brain off. No matter what I'm doing, I'm thinking about something. I could be washing dishes, but I'm thinking about what else I need to do before I go to bed. I could be walking to get the mail, and instead of wondering what's in the mailbox, I'm thinking about a conversation I had three years ago. Even when I'm trying to meditate, I'll often find myself thinking about what it means to be meditating. I'm not really sure that thinking about meditating while meditating is actually meditating - but hey, I'm still putting in the effort, it's called a practice for a reason. But just because our brains are whirring away doesn't mean that we're producing quality thoughts. Today we're going to take a dive into how we can better direct our brains. We'll be looking at why we should stop multitasking. The value of critical thinking and then explore ways that we can improve that thinking. Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/criticalthinking This Episode's Top Tips Stop trying to multitask. Multitasking reduces the efficiency that we can perform any task and prevents us from really thinking through our problems. Critical thinking is valuable because it helps us make hard decisions and it makes us harder to manipulate. Ask yourself more questions to improve your critical thinking skills. Always challenge your assumptions. Find ways to help facilitate your thinking time such mind mapping or taking a walk.

I'd say I have a love-hate relationship with cleaning, but that implies that there is a part of me that loves cleaning. There isn't. I like having cleaned and having a clean home, but I seldom enjoy the actual cleaning part. ADHD tends to not make cleaning any easier. Time blindness makes me think most of the cleaning tasks I need to do are going to take forever. I have a natural propensity for clutter, and that clutter often fades into the background of what I notice - so I just stop seeing that stack of mail on my counter. Today we're going to be looking at why we should stop treating cleaning our house like a project. Ways that we can make consistent cleaning easier and also how we can get rid of some of the junk that has accumulated in our homes. Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/cleaninghouse This Episode's Top Tips Stop thinking of cleaning your house as a project - we've got to understand that cleaning is about the small tasks that we do consistently that is going to keep our house clean. Work on creating that routine of small tasks that you can do every day to improve the base level clean of your house - focus on starting small at first. Think about what you can do in the morning and what you can do right before you go to bed. Time your cleaning tasks so that you know how long they actually take to do - a lot of the tasks that we put off doing actually take way less time than we think they do. Use temptation bundling and listen to a podcast while cleaning so that you can stay motivated while tidying up. Make sure everything in your house has a place to live - it doesn't have to be an exact spot, but if you know where to put something then you won't waste mental energy figuring out where stuff needs to go when picking up. Spend some time decluttering your house by asking better questions about the objects you are thinking of getting rid of - if we can identify the reason we want to keep something it makes it easier to pare down what we have.

My desk usually has a least a few fidget toys on top of it. I say usually only because my children sneak into my office and steal them. But the rest of the time I have a couple infinity cubes, a tangle and a piece of sea glass I use as a worry stone. I love having them to play with as I think through sentences while I'm writing and also as something to keep my hands busy while I'm reading. Today we're going to talk about the rise of fidgets in over the last few years and then dive into how they are supposed to work. We'll also be discussing what makes a good fidget. Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/fidgetscience Today's Top Tips There are a lot of sketchy claims about fidget toys. Be wary of marketing claims, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - figure out which fidgets work best for you. Fidgets work by helping us manage our attention and focus. It can be hard for us to direct our attention when we're either over or under-stimulated. The best fidgets are things that we can do with our hands without looking at them - we don't want to be drawing too much of our attention to use them, just enough to help drown out the other outside stimuli around us.

Trying to plan in a pandemic has been... well really what's been a problem is all the plans that I made before the lockdown. Every week I look through my calendar and have canceled events and plans that just aren't going to happen. I mean this was the first Easter I didn't have to pretend to be sick during to avoid going over to the in-laws, but that's a pretty weak silver lining. We've got a lot going on so planning is more important than ever - I mean going to the grocery store takes a lot more forethought than it used to. But planning also seems harder than ever before as well, so today we're going to be looking at what to do when plans go awry and how to adjust our long-term planning. Find the show note for this episode at HackingYourADHD.com/BestLaidPlans This Episode's Top Tips No one really wanted to hear me read poetry. When our plans go wrong it can be frustrating and debilitating. We can mitigate some of this by thinking through what can go wrong with our plans and coming up with contingencies. Right now a lot of our long-term plans are disarray - while it is hard to plan for the future because when we are faced with uncertainty, we can still look at our underlying goals and base our planning around them. Give yourself a break - it's okay to do less. While it is still a good idea to plan our days, we can also just plan on doing less.

Going online has its perks - we've got a wealth of information at our fingertips - but with so much information it can be hard to find the truth. Often we can't find the signal for the noise because well, it is just really noisy. And by noisy, I mean there is a lot of bad information out there. In today's episode, we're going to be looking specifically at science journalism, but really most of what we're going to be talking about can be applied to everything that we read online. We want to be getting the best information and so we've got to be cautious about our sources. So we're going to be looking at ways that research can be manipulated to support a flimsy claim, why we've got to go beyond reading the headlines and what to watch out for when we are reading those articles. Find Today's Show Notes at HackingYourADHD.com/badscience Today's Top Tips While most scientist aren't trying to create bad science, lack of funding and time can make many studies suspect. To help validate claims, read into the study methodology and see what other research supports those claims. Make sure that you are reading beyond just headlines. Many over zealous reporters will embellish headlines to garner more clicks. Watch for words like "proved" about science. Science doesn't prove anything, it just creates evidence that supports a claim or refutes it. Be skeptical of claims that seem to good to be true, they usually are.

I hope everyone is staying home and staying safe. I know that everyone is going through a hard time right now and ADHD isn't making it any easier. So today we're going to be talking about what we can do to try and regain some of that control you may feel you have lost in your life. We'll be talking about staying in contact with friends, setting up routines and using accountability. We'll also be talking about ways to get in a little more self-care. For show notes go to HackingYourADHD.com/ControllingWhatYouCan Today's Top Tips Make sure you're scheduling time to be social - figure out ways to stay in contact while you are apart. Create a routine to follow and use accountability to help you follow through with your intentions. Prioritize self-care somewhere in your routine. Give yourself some slack.

When I'm working on this podcast sometimes I wish my boss would be a little harder on me because it can be easy for me to get behind - but my boss is kind of laid back and lets me get away with more than I should - and that's probably because my boss is me. When I can't count on myself to get the things I need to turn to others to help me out. A lot of us with ADHD can have trouble turning to others when we need help, but we don't have to do things alone. And one of the best ways others can help you is through accountability. Today I'm going to talk about what accountability is, what it isn't and ways that you can get some more into your life so that you can follow through with your intentions. Find the full show note on my web page: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/CompassionateAssKicking Today's Top Tips Accountability is about stating what your intentions are to someone else so that you can accountable to them about whether or not you followed through with those intentions There are a lot of ways that you can build accountability into your life - like body doubling and accountability teams When forming an accountability team make sure everyone is on the same page when you are starting up so that everyone knows what to expect and what is expected of them

This week we're going to be hitting Working With Your ADHD. One of my biggest struggles with ADHD often comes from my belief that if I just tried harder I'd be able to overcome anything that my ADHD was throwing at me, but surprise surprise that just isn't the case. In today's episode, we're going to be looking at why we don't want to just keep trying to do the same things as neurotypicals, why we struggle so much with the idea of trying harder and also some of the strategies that are going to support us the best. Find the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/WorkingWith Today's Top Tips 1. Pretending that we're neurotypical is exhausting and will lead us to use the wrong strategies for our brains. 2. We shouldn't focus on just trying harder. It's okay for us to just do less, especially when we are staying focus on what matters most. 3. The best strategies for working with your ADHD starts with accepting your ADHD. Make time to educate yourself about what's really happening in your ADHD brain and get involved with the ADHD community.

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. Check out the show notes 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.

Exhausted, empty, overloaded, unable to cope - these are some of the words I'll find myself using when I'm feeling burned out or on the path to burnout. We tend to find ourselves in burnout after prolonged periods of stress - it isn't something that sets in all at once. It isn't that we finally have a straw that breaks the camel's back, instead we just eventually find ourselves waking up one morning and realizing we just can't even. We find that we've lost our passion and drive for everything in front of us. We might still find ways to be productive but we tend to be robotic about it and it just drains us more and more. Burnout is hard. Today we're going to start out by discussing what burnout actually is and I'm also going to talk about some of the times I hit burnout. We're also going to be looking at what we can do to prevent burn and then what to do if we still hit burnout anyways. For full show notes go to: HackingYourADHD.com/burnout Today's Top Tips Burnout consists of three parts - exhaustion (both mental and physical), loss of meaning in our work, and a feeling ineptitude. Burnout is a slow grind and we've got to pay attention to why we're feeling unmotivated when doing tasks we normally enjoy. We want to prevent burnout by setting healthy boundaries around our work, prioritizing self-care, and remembering to take time off. Not comparing ourselves to others and accepting that our ADHD makes things hard will also help us with not feeling like we're so far behind everyone else. If we do hit burnout, we need to reassess what are needs are and identify what was causing us to burnout. Take sometime off and figure out what really matters to you. We often hit burnout when our rewards don't match our efforts.

When you've got ADHD making reminders is a given. There's just too much going on in any one given day for me to keep track of it all and without reminders I know I'm going to drop the ball somewhere. I've got reminders for big things like when I need to leave to pick up my kids from school and little things like having a cup of tea in the evening but not too close to bedtime. So when I get told I just need to create a reminder to remember something I just want to shout that I already am using a lot of reminders. A big problem with a lot of reminders is that they just aren't effective at getting us to do the things they are supposed to be reminding us of. Today we're going to be exploring the ways that we can make better reminders so that we're actually following through on them. We'll be looking at what we're creating reminders for. How and when we are getting those reminders and also look at how we are creating our system of reminders. Find the full show note at: HackingYourADHD.com/EffectiveReminders Today's Top Tips The most important aspect of a reminder is having it delivered when you can do something about it - you can do this by thinking through the context of a reminder. If you need a reminder at work make sure you are getting it when you are at work. Reminders are great for reminding you of things, but not for doing unscheduled tasks. Leave projects on your to-do list and actually schedule a time for them instead of creating a reminder that you are never going to do. Reminders can either be short-term or long-term but regardless of what kind of reminder you are creating you want to make sure you are giving yourself enough information to follow through on what you were trying to remind yourself about. Create a combination of physical and digital reminders so that you can get the most out of your reminder systems. Physical reminders tend to be faster to set up but digital reminders can be more robust in how they are reminding you.

Talking about video games so much last week got me thinking about games a lot and so I ended up getting a new game for myself called Stardew Valley. The game was originally released in 2016 but because it was so popular it has been released for a bunch of other systems - I got my copy on the Nintendo Switch. In Stardew Valley you escape the hustle and bustle of the city by moving to a farm you inherited from your grandfather. And then the gameplay is basically just running your farm. Clearing your land. Cutting down trees. Planting crops. Watering them. Talking to people in town. Upgrading your farm. I'm simplifying but honestly, the gameplay is pretty straight forward. I know, that doesn't sound all that engaging and yet I've gotten hooked on this game. And so have thousands of other people. Last week we spent some time discussing specifically why the ADHD brain can latch on to video games so well - this week we're going to veer into specifically how games can easily get me to do things that essentially are boring - like watering my crops - and trying to figure out how we can apply that to real life. For the full show notes go to: HackingYourADHD.com/VideoGameLessons Today's Top Tips Operant conditioning is a learning process in which the strength of a behavior is modified by reinforcement or punishment. We can use what we know about operant conditioning to help us modify our behavior by figuring out the right rewards and punishments we need to complete tasks. Video games make it incredibly easy for us to pick them up and play - for anything else in our life that we want to do more of we should reduce the steps it takes to start. Video games don't punish us harshly for messing up - in fact many video games make it easy to restart after we fail making it easier for us to learn from our mistakes. If we want to fail well in real life we've got to accept that we are going to screw up sometimes and figure out easy ways to dust ourselves off and try again.

I've played video games since before I was able to read - although that statement loses some of its weight once you find out that I didn't learn to read until I was in 4th grade - you know, dyslexia and all. Nonetheless, video games have been a part of my life for a long time. I mean, games are so ingrained in me that while I am writing this, I am listening to video game music - it's excellent for creating a relaxed focus. Video game music was specifically designed to help with attention - I'll link to some of my favorite game soundtracks in the show notes. Today we're going to be talking about why video games can engage the ADHD brain so well and how that can lead to video game addiction. We're also going to be discussing some of the more positive traits of video games as well as discussing some ways that we can cut back on how many video games we play. Check out the full show note at: HackingYourADHD.com/videogames Today's Top Tips Video games engage our brains through instant feedback and making us feel successful. Video games can be a great tool for learning and for your social life. We want to set sensible limits on video games in our lives - not all games are created equally, so choose what you play wisely. Be wary of the games you install on your phone. Game Addiction can be defined as problematic and compulsive use of video games that results in significant impairment in your life - if you're seeing signs of video game addiction in your life or you simply need help quitting playing so many video games I'd like to urge you to go check out GameQuitters.com

This week we're going to be jumping - yeah, jumping because we're talking about exercise. I hope you're ready for some Jazzercise - but if that's not your groove I've got some other options for you as well. Somewhere in our heads, we all know that exercising more is something we "should" do, but it feels like the easiest thing in the world to put off. I mean just because when I look out my window and I can see it's raining doesn't mean I need to stay on my couch right now. In today's episode, we're going to be learning some of the reasons exercise is great for our ADHD brain. How we can work on making it easier to fit exercise into our schedules so that we actually do it, some different ways we can get our blood flowing and our hearts beating. And finally a few things we can do to make sure that we are keeping up with our routines. Find the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/ADHDGym Today's Top Tips Exercise is great for our ADHD brains by increasing our levels of the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine. You want to try to get in 20-30 minutes of exercise a day, but if you're just starting out make sure that you're easing into it to avoid burning out. Find a type of exercise that you find fun and switch it up sometimes. A great way to do this is through sports and classes. Build-in some accountability for your exercise routines to make sure that you keep them going.

This is the second part of the series on how to better manage your smartphone with your ADHD - you don't have to have listened to part 1 to listen to this episode, but if you like this episode I'd definitely recommend going back and listening to last week's episode as well. In that episode, we covered how we can limit the distractions that our smartphone can present and also how to make it easier on our ADHD brains when we're setting up our smartphone. This week we're going in a bit of a different direction - while smartphones can be easily distracting and endless entertaining, they also provide us with some great tools to help us manage our ADHD. In this episode I'm going to be discussing a number of the apps I use to help me navigate my day - since I use the iPhone that means most of the apps I specifically discuss are going to be iPhone apps; however, I do try and provide alternatives for Android. Find the Full Show Notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/ADHDPhone2 Today's Top Tips 1. Make use of reminder apps on your phone - make sure to use lots of different sounds and to create recurring reminders for things that you need to be reminded of frequently. 2. Use your calendar as a reminder app as well - for important events make sure to have reminders well in advance so that you can plan for them ahead of time. 3. Get a good note-taking app for your phone and create a reminder to also look at the notes that you take throughout the day or week. 4. Take advantage of shortcuts on your phone so that you can do complicated tasks without getting distracted.

I've been carrying around a smartphone in my pocket for more than 10 years - I started off with the first iPhone and have since gone over to Android, dabbled with the Windows Phones for a few years and then ended back up with an iPhone again. Through my years with my phone I've learned that it can be a great asset and help me with a number of my ADHD difficulties; however, I've also felt the dark side of the phone as well. Games, social media, email and all those notifications. ADHD makes it really easy for us to get off track so we want to be making sure that we're not letting our phones dictate our next actions. Through trial and error phone designers have been making it harder and harder for us to put down our phone. Since we have ADHD this means that it is almost too easy for us to get distracted when we pop open our phone to just check the time. The screen lights up and suddenly we're hit with a hundred different ways our attention should go. This week we'll be focusing on ways to set up your phone to be less distracting and we're going to work on setting up our phones intentionally to make sure that we're paying attention to what apps we have on our phone and where those apps are located. We'll also be looking at other ways to reduce the constant stream of distractions that our phones can produce. Find the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/ADHDPhone This Episode's Top Tips 1. Purge any apps that you don't need on your phone - both unused apps and also apps that pull you in too much. 2. Organize your apps so that your most useful apps are easy to open and your distracting apps are hidden. 3. Turn off most of your notifications and make use of your Do Not Disturb feature. 4. Check out your phone's screentime feature and set some sensible restrictions on how much time you are spending on your phone.

Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/habits 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. 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.

Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/TheONEThing 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. 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.

Find show notes for this episode at HackingYourADHD.Com/DearADHD Thanks for joining me for the very last episode of 2019 - in this episode, I'm writing a letter to my ADHD. This is an exercise I got from Eric Tiver's ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability groups. I'll be honest, I wasn't all that keen on writing a letter to my ADHD when I first heard about the exercise, but it was surprisingly refreshing to address that part of myself. Since my first letter to my ADHD I've tried to write another one about four times a year. When I write these letters it gives me an excellent chance to check in with how my relationship with my ADHD is going. Sometimes it's going really well, while other times I've found myself to be really struggling. If you'd like to write your own letter to your ADHD, just set a timer for 10-15 minutes and write whatever feels right to say to your ADHD. There's no wrong way to write your letter - and don't worry, I've heard a number of these that start with Dear ADHD, F - you. The great part about doing this exercise is that you get a nice record of how your relationship with ADHD is going - I can look back and see how I was doing mentally when I last checked in.

Be sure to check out the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/planning2020 Today we're going to be working on planning out our 2020. If you haven't given much thought to planning your year before I think you'll get a lot out of this episode - planning is one of those things that we sometimes think doesn't play well with ADHD, but I've learned that planning is actually one of the most effective ways to manage my ADHD. We're always going to be impulsive and that's not a bad thing but sometimes we want to want to rein that in and our best chance at reining in impulsivity is forethought. In our session today we're going to be going over how to set goals without making them too challenging, figuring out where our focus is going to be next year, updating our calendars with the most important stuff first (you might be surprised with what that is) and then going over why we want to be doing our most important goals first. This Episode's Top Tips Find your Goldilocks Zone of Challenge for Goal Setting Examine your life domains and choose one to focus on this year Re-write your goals from outcome based goals into process goals Once you have set dates scheduled into your calendar, schedule out your vacation and planning time before anything else Plan to do your 2-3 most important goals in the beginning of the year

Today we're going to be walking through the process of how to conduct an end of year review by letting you in while I went through my own review. Head over to the show notes page to grab a copy of the Review Your Year PDF that I use in this episode: HackingYourADHD.com/2019Review Since I've started doing yearly reviews, I've realized that I'm pretty bad at looking back. Often I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels, but it turns out that it's just that my rearview mirror is broken. The problem is that when I look back I tend to only remember a small fraction of what went on over the year. I mean even when I've tried doing a weekly review I find that I can't actually accurately remember what went on that week. But that doesn't mean that we can't do something to help jog our memories. This Episode's Top Tips List out your goals for 2019 and see which ones you completed (and it's okay if you didn't get them all - I didn't hit many of mine this year) Go through your calendar week by week and find all the things that you've forgotten about over the year Separate everything you did this year into their various life domains so you can see where you've spent most of your time Using all the information you gathered, spend some time writing and reflecting on how your year went Keep all this information handy for next week when we start planning our year And be sure to connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to let me know what your top takeaway was from this episode.

Let me ask you, what's the most important thing on your to-do list? What the thing that if you did it would make you satisfied with what you accomplished today? Sometimes we've got a clear picture of what our most important thing we've got to do is - usually it's something that's due that day - maybe even something that was due, yesterday. But we can't always rely on urgency to be our guide for prioritization. If you're struggling to figure out what's the most important thing to do, you're not alone. Picking out the tasks that are going to make the biggest difference is a hard thing to do and something that we're kind of just expected to understand - yet often there's no clear reason why doing task A is better than doing task B. As we are approaching the end of the year I've been thinking about what I want to do next year and what things are going to make the most difference in my life. So today I'm going to be exploring how we can determine what those most important tasks are and how we can make them a priority. Check out the full show notes and episode transcript at: HackingYourADHD.com/Priorities This Episode's Top Tips To really get the most out of setting your priorities you've first got to understand what your values are You can use the Eisenhower Priority Matrix to separate your tasks into Important and Urgent, Important but not Urgent, Urgent but Not Important and Not Important and Not Urgent Large projects should be broken down into their component parts, once they are broken down look for tasks that are bottle necks or that will make other tasks easier to complete - those should become your priorities

We all picture different things when we think about the holidays. Some people think about family and food, others think about putting up all those sparking lights and some people think about the shopping - but one thing we all probably think about is all the things we have to do. Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/holiday This Episode's Top Tips Pick and choose your events - let your mantra become "I'll have to check my calendar" Prioritize self-care by adding it to your calendar Have escape routes planned for events that might overwhelm you - identify your co-conspirators to get you out of the worst situations Your best weapon against impulsiveness is forethought - knowing when you are most impulsive let's you come up with strategies to curb that impulsiveness Be kind to yourself and cut yourself some slack

When I'm working on this podcast sometimes I wish my boss would be a little harder on me because it can be easy for me to get behind - but my boss is kind of laid back and lets me get away with more than I should - and that's probably because my boss is me. When I can't count on myself to get the things I need to turn to others to help me out. A lot of us with ADHD can have trouble turning to others when we need help, but we don't have to do things alone. And one of the best ways others can help you is through accountability. Today I'm going to talk about what accountability is, what it isn't and ways that you can get some more into your life so that you can follow through with your intentions. Find the full show note on my web page: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/CompassionateAssKicking Today's Top Tips Accountability is about stating what your intentions are to someone else so that you can accountable to them about whether or not you followed through with those intentions There are a lot of ways that you can build accountability into your life - like body doubling and accountability teams When forming an accountability team make sure everyone is on the same page when you are starting up so that everyone knows what to expect and what is expected of them

Last week was all about getting there and this week we're focusing on what to do when you get back. Travel disrupts our routines and habits - and we should take those disruptions seriously. One thing that I've had to learn over and over again is that ADHD makes transitions hard - and coming back from a trip is a big transition. This Episode's Top Tips Identify your routines and habits before your trip so that when you get back you know where to pick things back up. Make sure you are paying special attention to your While you are traveling try and keep up as many of your habits and routines. If you need to, you can make small tweaks to them to make them easier while you are away. Make sure you are planning your days and regularly checking that plan once you get back. You can use a habit tracker to make sure you are follow through with all of your intentions. Find all the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/RefocusedVacation

ADHD loves novelty and what could be more novel for an ADHD brain than going to a new place? While you might love the destination, getting there can be really hard for those of us with ADHD. The process of traveling some place new takes a lot of work and a lot of attention to detail that can even escape neurotypicals. Recently my wife was booking our tickets to go visit family during Thanksgiving - except after she booked the tickets she realized she booked them for the wrong weekend. Fortunately she caught it early and it wasn't too hard to fix. But travel is a lot more than just booking tickets and getting to the airport on time. The entire process of getting out the door with all your bags to sitting wait for your plane to leave takes a lot of executive function and we can really find ourselves wiped out just thinking of everything we're going to need to do. With a little bit of planning ahead though we can make traveling a lot easier on our ADHD brains. Here are my top seven tips for smoothing out your travel plans. #1 - Making a list and checking it twice #2 - Drink More Water #3 - Bring a fidget toy for down time #4 - Avoid overbooking yourself and schedule breaks #5 - Get comfortable #6 - Be mindful of traveling with your Medication #7 - Take Advantage of Your Apps Check out the full show notes and all the tool mentioned in this episode on the show notes page: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/TravelHacks

Find the Full Show Notes: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/journaling This Episode's Top Tips Journaling allows us to think through our problems and improve our emotional well being You've got a lot of options for how to journal - be it with pen and paper, digital, or an audio or video journal make sure you are choosing the option that is best for your ADHD brain. To be successful at journaling we've got treat it like any other habit that we want to form and start off easy - by thinking ahead we can come up with strategies that will make it easier for us to sit down and actually write. Remember to approach your journal with compassion - you're not going to be solving any problems just by beating yourself up.

Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/GST Today we're going to be exploring the differences between goals, strategies and tactics. Simply put: Goals are a desired result we want to achieve. Strategies are the processes we use to achieve goals. Tactics are actions we take to implement strategies. Let's take a look at an example. A while back I decided to set the goal planning my week every week. My strategy at the time was to do my planning on Monday's right when I started work. This was a bad strategy, but it was compounded by the fact that I didn't have any specific tactics to make sure that I was doing my planning right when I got in. Coming in on Mondays I'd find myself just jumping into whatever needed to be done first and telling myself that I'd get to my planning right afterwards. That rarely actually happened. And while it might have been a good idea to actually try some different tactics here I didn't realize that was the issue, so I instead opted to change my strategy. I decided that I wanted to try and start planning my week over the weekend. This was a great idea in theory but ended up being a mess because I again didn't implement any solid tactics to make sure that I was getting my planning done. With all my family commitments on weekends I found that I had trouble finding time to do my planning. I liked the results when I did manage to plan on the weekend but I wasn't able to do it consistently. I ended up changing my strategy again and was able to get it to stick, because this time I also decided to add some tactics. Now I plan my next week on the Friday afternoons and instead of just trying to find time on Fridays, I created a reoccurring event on my calendar specifically for planning on Friday afternoons. By blocking off that time ahead of time I couldn't schedule any other projects then without moving that time block (which sometimes I do have to do). The biggest reason this has worked for me is because let's be honest, you never just find time to do things - if it isn't in your calendar it probably isn't a priority. When I'm at my office I'm able to respect my time blocks a lot more easily. When I'm at home with the kids they are my priority and so I can't rely on having as consistent time blocks - and this comes back to the idea of working with your ADHD and what works for you. Sure I'm "sacrificing" my Friday afternoons to make my planning happen, but planning is important for managing my ADHD and so it is totally worth it. SMART Goals Now that we've got a better understanding of the differences between strategies and tactics let's talk a little bit about goal setting. There are a lot of ways to set your goals but today we're just going to be talking about SMART goals. SMART stands for: Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant Timely When I'm sitting down during the goal setting process I'll often start with a nebulous goal such as: I want to get in better shape. To gain clarity on what I actually want out of this goal we'll run it through the SMART goal methodology. We'll start by getting specific. What does getting in shape mean? For me getting in shape might mean getting to the gym more and eating healthier. The key when making things specific is to also focus on making them into ways that can also be measurable. Looking at that first part we can say I want to go to the gym at least 2 times a week. This makes it both specific (we know exactly what needs to happen) and measurable (we know the frequency, twice a week). Eating healthier is a lot harder to quantify, so we're going to have to change the wording so that we can make this measurable - let's go with I want to eat 3 healthy meals a week. If we want to get real nitty-gritty we might also want to define wh

It's easy to get caught up in what neurotypicals do for productivity that we can forget that we're not neurotypical, we have ADHD. And when you've got ADHD sometimes you need to do things differently because our brains are wired differently. Even though neurotypicals sometimes struggle with a lot of the same issues that we are struggling with it doesn't mean we should always be trying the same strategies and tactics to get over those hurdles. What we need to do is find ways to work with our ADHD brains. Working with your ADHD brain is all about finding the strategies that work with your brain and avoiding the ones that are going to cause problems. This Episode's Top Tips Working harder isn't always our best option - more often than not we just need to take a different approach It's okay for us to just do less - especially when are staying focus on what matters most to us The best strategies I've found for working with your ADHD are education and community For all the tools and other goodies mentioned in this episode, check out the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/WorkingWith

ADHD can make it hard to remember all the things that you need to remember on a daily basis. Things get forgotten and we end up missing important appointments because they simply slipped our mind. While everyone can have trouble with memory, it can be especially hard on those of us with ADHD because of how memory works with executive function. When we are thinking about memory it is important to distinguish between long-term memory and short-term memory. Long-term memory holds memories from weeks, months or years ago - while short term memory is all about the now with those memories lasting anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of days. Short-term memory is also sometimes also referred to as working memory To keep the information we store in our working memory we must put in effort to keep it there. If we don't put in effort to retain those memories they will be forgotten. We can hold about 5-9 memories in our short-term memory. It is important to note that when we are holding things in our working memory we are using our executive function. Since ADHD can also be considered a disorder of the executive function this means that it is harder for people with ADHD to use their working memory. To be clear we can simply define executive as what controls our ability to get thing done. It helps with things like time management, paying attention, remembering details and planning. You can think of executive function kind of like a well that you draw out of every time you do these things. Our reserve of executive function has ups and down with things like sleeping and eating helping to restore that reserve. We rely on executive function for a lot of thing so we don't want to drain it unnecessarily. The easiest thing we can do to reduce the strain on our executive function is to stop trying to store these memories in our heads and instead write them down. When we are writing down these reminders to ourselves we need to focus on creating reminders that are specific so we actually know what we were supposed to be reminded about. The second key is to create cues for these reminders so that we get reminded about these things when the information is actually relevant to us. In the instances where a written reminder isn't warranted such as going into another room just to get an object we can also struggle with remembering things. In a study from psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky of Notre Dame found that doorways "serve as an 'event boundary' in the mind." In his study Radvansky found that subjects were more forgetful after walking through a doorway compared to when they walked the same distance across a room. To help with these instances of forgetfulness we can implement solutions like vocalization and visualization to help us remember what we needed. This Episode's Top Tips Storing things in our working memory relies on us using our executive function and we don't want to unnecessarily drain our executive function to just try and remember everything When we are creating reminders for ourselves we need to make sure that they have a good cue for us and that they are specific enough that we will actually know what we were supposed to be reminded of Doorways serve as event boundaries in our mind so we need to be mindful of trying to remember things when we are going to be going through a doorway. For all the tools and other goodies mentioned in this episode, check out the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/RememberAnything

ADHD can make it very hard for us to accurately tell what time it is now, how much time is left, and how quickly time is passing. This is referred to as time blindness and it creates a host of issues for those of us with ADHD. When you are unable to accurately tell what time it is, you are going to be late. When you don't know how long something is going to take, you are either going to take too long to finish or finish well before you predicted. When we are unable to accurately gauge how much time has passed we often are going to be late and when it comes to time predictions we often find ourselves woefully inaccurate, either predicting we can finish a task in no time at all or deciding a task is going to take way more time than it actually will. Our brains are great at confusing large and small tasks, making us think that doing the dishes will take an hour while figuring we can type out that ten-page paper in the same hour. We can work on our time blindness by making predictions of how long a task will take and then taking accurate measurements of how long it actually takes to do. As we do this more often and learn how long things actually take we create time wisdom. Often we will find ourselves falling to time blindness because of the invisible parts of a task. One common example is parking. If we have a 2:00 PM appointment and it takes 30 minutes to arrive at our destination we can't just allot 30 minutes for the drive. Once we arrive we still have to find parking and go into the building - both of those tasks take time that is usually unaccounted for. One of the causes of these invisible parts is because we tend not to acknowledge that a task is built up of three parts - set up, the doing of the task, and clean up. In the going to an appointment example, getting ready to go and getting in the car could be considered the set up, driving to the appointment the doing part, and the parking and going into the building is the clean up. When you start timing yourself you need to get an actual timer that counts up like a stopwatch so that you can create accurate time measurements. Once you have your timer create reminders about what you want to time and also reminders to turn off your timer once you've finished the task. Also remember that you don't need to judge yourself if you aren't hitting your time predictions. This is called time blindness, which means we have trouble seeing time, so sometimes our time predictions are going to be fairly inaccurate. Timing yourself is about helping you correct your bad predictions and creating time wisdom, not about telling yourself you should be doing things faster. This Episode's Top Tips: 1. Get yourself a timer, you don't need anything fancy, but try and find something that isn't your phone and that counts up. 2. Tasks are made up of three parts: the set up, the doing, and the clean up. 3. When you are timing yourself make predictions on how long your tasks are going to take - accurately predicting time is a skill and the more you practice the better you will get. For all the tools and other goodies mentioned in this episode, check out the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/timing

ADHD can make it hard for us to work on our intentions. This is even harder when we forget the things that we want to do. When you are learning about new ADHD strategies while reading books or listening to podcasts (like this one!) it is really easy to forget your intention of implementing those strategies. In these instances when we learn about a new tool, what we can do is write down our intended strategy and put it into our ADHD Toolbox. Our toolbox is simply a way for us to record the strategies and ideas we have for working with our ADHD - a place we can go and look at our intentions when we are off track. While new strategies are fun to add to our toolbox, we should also focus on adding things that are already working in our life to our toolbox. If you've found a great bedtime routine? Stick it in your toolbox. Figured out a great way to plan your upcoming week? Stick it in your toolbox. Found a great tool for keeping you focused? Stick it in your toolbox. Just creating a toolbox for yourself isn't enough. We all know that we forget things. That we get off track. And sometimes when we are off track it takes us a while to realize what we are doing wrong. Use your toolbox to speed up the process of getting back in the groove of things. To do this you've got to set up regular times to check your toolbox. But we also know that sometimes even when we set aside time to check something we aren't always going to get to it, which means we've got to set up redundant reminders for ourselves to make sure we don't miss out on our most important intentions. This Episode's Top Tips Set up a toolbox for yourself containing any tools or strategies you are currently using in your life Set up times to regularly read through your toolbox Create automated systems of redundant reminders so you don't forget about your toolbox For all the tools and other goodies mentioned in this episode go to the full show notes on our web page: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/Toolbox