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 practicesWhen you genuinely cannot know what someone thought of you, the harsh guess is no more accurate than the kind one. Since you are inventing either way, invent the version that lets you carry on with your day.
This is not positive thinking. It is noticing the moment you moved from evidence to invention, because at that point you get a say. A short reply…
Picture spilling coffee down your shirt on the way in. One version: the day is ruined and everyone will see. Another: this is going to be a good story by eleven. Same coffee, two different days.
The part that decides is the sentence you say about the event, and it usually arrives so fast that it feels like part of the event itself. Slowing…
When you wave off what your child is into, they rarely hear a comment about gaming. They hear something about themselves.
At that age a good part of who someone is gets built out of what they love, so a shrug at the thing usually lands as a shrug at the person. You do…
If mindfulness is going to help with ADHD, the version with a chance is small and spread out. A few seconds of noticing, several times a day, rather than one long sitting you come to dread.
A forty five minute block asks you to get settled in one place and then somehow carry that into the afternoon, and the carrying is exactly what tends…