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 practicesRather than arguing that someone ought to get organised, ask one question. Would your life be better if fewer things slipped, fewer people were annoyed with you, and you spent less of the day worrying about what you had forgotten?
The answer is nearly always yes, and it lands differently when the person says it instead of hearing it. Keep the list concrete and drawn from their…
A child who cannot yet catch their own drifting needs somebody close enough to catch it for them. Where they sit does a lot of that work quietly.
From nearby a teacher sees attention go before the work is lost, and can bring the child back without stopping the lesson for everyone. Proximity…
Bring a child back with the smallest signal that does the job. A tap on the desk, a hand on the shoulder, or simply standing beside them will usually be enough.
Say a child's name across a room and everyone turns to look. Do that twenty times a day and the child learns something about themselves in front of…
Get the child's eyes first, then give one instruction. The page, how much, and by when, and then stop.
An instruction thrown at a busy room never reaches the child who most needs it, so the name and the eye contact come before any content at all. Then…