Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD
Focus, starting, and ADHD
Most advice about focus is written for a brain that starts easily. This area is not. It covers what ADHD actually is, how to make a start when starting is the hard part, how to bring a future consequence close enough to feel, and how to stop paying for it in shame.
What works for this
Implementation intentions
Putting things off is mood repair rather than laziness: delay removes the bad feeling straight away and the cost lands later. So the move is not more willpower, it is a plan specific enough to run without a decision.
One move, today
Write one sentence: when it is [time] and I am at [place], I will [the first small action]. Naming when and where is the part the evidence supports.
What matches
5 practicesFeeling bad about being late is a consequence you can talk yourself out of in about four seconds. Telling a friend you are buying dinner if you are late is not.
Pick something small and real, and pick a person who will hold you to it without being unkind about it. Dinner, the coffees, the taxi fare. The size…
The conversation only counts if the decisions end up in the calendar. 'You take Tuesday, I'll take Thursday' has to be written down or it did not really happen.
Both of you were relying on the same tired memory that caused the trouble in the first place. So do the writing during the conversation rather than…
Put the stake outside your own head. Tell a colleague that if you are late to the meeting, lunch is on you.
The link between being late and buying lunch is arbitrary, and that does not matter at all. What matters is that it is real, it happens soon, and…
Say the plan out loud to somebody. A manager, a colleague, your wife, a coach. Hearing yourself explain it does something that turning it over privately does not.
The listener does not need to be an expert in any of it. Talking forces you to put things in order, and the gaps tend to announce themselves halfway…
Once a week, both calendars open on the table. Who is doing scouts, who has football, what is happening on Thursday. Twice a week if the house is busy.
The point is finding the collisions while there is still time to sort them out, rather than at eight on Thursday morning with coats half on. Keep it…