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
4 practicesA screen is a privilege, not something a person is owed. Food, clothes, a warm home, medical care, school, being loved: those are owed, and a phone is not on that list.
Saying this plainly gives a household something firmer than mood to stand on when limits are set. It also keeps two things apart. The care and the…
When someone misuses a device, sending explicit messages or piling on to someone or going where they should not, the useful read is that they were not ready for that much freedom yet. Not that they are a bad person.
Readiness gives you somewhere to go. You can name the skill that was missing, hand back a smaller amount of access, and set out what would show they…
Tell someone their phone is wrecking their sleep and you have handed them something to argue with. Ask instead what they notice on the mornings after a late scroll, and let them say it.
This is the difference between a conclusion arriving from outside and one a person reaches themselves, which they then have to take seriously because…
There is a rough ladder for tech overuse. Build a schedule together with some outside control at first, add substitutes once the person can stop for a while, then more intensive care, and residential only when someone is entirely taken over by it.
The order matters more than the rungs. You cannot install a better alternative in someone who has no capacity yet to put the thing down, so a bit of…