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
8 practicesGive the later self a name and be a bit silly about it. Is Thursday you going to be furious with Monday you again? Is Thursday you always the one clearing up?
This lands with teenagers and with anyone bristling at being told what to do, because it is funny and the joke is what does the work. Turning the…
If the deadline is six weeks off and you can really only see three days ahead, do not try to grow the horizon. Move the deadline closer with a checkpoint.
A five minute catch-up with someone every couple of days does more than a beautifully drawn plan for the whole six weeks. In work with little…
When you ask a manager for regular check-ins, ask for them as a way of staying pointed in the right direction. That is a different conversation from asking to be watched.
Something like: could we take five minutes twice a week, so I can be sure I am working on what matters most to you. You are the one proposing it, so…
'It's bad for your health' and 'grades matter later' move nobody, least of all someone who has never seen what either one looks like.
If you want a future to carry any weight, it has to be pictured rather than stated. What does the day look like. Who is in the room. What is…
A consequence has to cost the person whose behaviour it is, in something they actually care about. If missing the bus mildly annoys your teenager and wrecks your morning, the cost is landing on the wrong person.
So move it. A few pounds for the lift, or the phone for the day. Say it plainly beforehand, then do it without the lecture attached. What counts as…
Ask people how it went. How was that meeting, how am I doing, what did you make of it. Nobody enjoys asking, and the information is not available any other way.
Ask one specific person about one specific thing rather than the room in general. If your read on yourself has been bent out of shape by years of…
Someone who will tell you the part that was not good is someone whose 'that was fine' you can believe. That is what settles the doubt, not reassurance.
Blanket praise carries no information, so it slides off and the doubt is back within the hour. If you tend to worry about how you came across, ask…
If the only real deadline is the fortnightly meeting, invent some smaller ones. A couple of short catch-ups a week will do more for the work than the formal review ever does.
Ask for them as something that helps you, because it is true and it also lands better: five minutes on Tuesday and Thursday keeps me pointed at the…