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 practicesThe unkind thoughts tend to arrive in a handful of familiar shapes. One friend is busy so nobody wants you. One bad mark so you are going to fail everything. Someone did not say hello so they must dislike you.
Rather than fighting the content, try naming the shape: that is the all or nothing one, that is the mind reading one. Most people find they only have…
Setting out to get rid of worry altogether sets you up to fail twice, first at the worry and then at the failing. A kinder aim is to change how you sit with it.
Anxiety and ADHD keep close company, and for most people some background hum does not go away. What can change is what happens next: whether you…
Some of what you believe about yourself is not a distortion. Things really did go wrong, often for years. What can be argued with is the conclusion you drew from them, that this is simply what you are.
Try separating the record from the verdict. The record might be missed deadlines, jobs that ended badly, friendships that faded. The verdict is 'so I…
Worry does two things at once. It makes the problem bigger than it is and it makes you smaller than you are. The second half is the one that usually goes unchallenged.
After years of being told you get things wrong, a low estimate of yourself does not feel like a distortion, it feels like the evidence. So argue with…