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 practicesNot every reminder is the same kind of reminder. Call at three is a clock job, when I next see my manager is a person job, and that thing at the conference next year is a diary job.
Mixing them up is where a lot of honest intentions leak away. A note on the desk will not survive until next March, and an alarm cannot tell you your…
Some things can be done a day late with an apology, and others cannot: the ticket doubles, the window shuts, the form is simply gone. Sorting your obligations into those two piles tells you where the effort is worth spending.
Lateness tends to get treated as one big failing, which makes every missed thing feel equally awful and gives you nowhere to aim. Go through what is…
A sticky note is fine for something happening within the hour. Anything further out needs something that goes off by itself, because holding a plan in mind for three days is not a thing memory does.
Most reminder failures are this mismatch rather than a lack of trying. Someone uses a note where an alarm was needed, it fails, and they conclude…
Anything that comes round every month should be leaving your account without you. Direct debits and standing orders take the remembering out of the job altogether, which beats any reminder you could set.
It is worth an afternoon. List what recurs, automate what can be automated, and put one calendar note to check the statement each month instead of…
Every extra step in a task is another place to lose it. Three clicks and done beats a process with a form, an envelope and a walk to the postbox, even when the second one saves a little money.
Before you commit to a routine, count its steps, then take some out. Bin bags stored next to the bin, stamps kept with the envelopes, paying on the…