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 practicesLight movement while you work is not stolen from the work. Rocking a foot, standing up, a slow circuit of the room on a call: for many people the concentration goes up rather than down.
Worth testing instead of assuming. Take one task you always do sitting still and do it moving gently: read on your feet, take the meeting walking,…
Do not leave it to eleven at night to decide whether to close the tab. Set the block in the afternoon, while you are still the version of yourself who wants it set.
A browser extension that shuts certain sites between certain hours, a router on a timer, mobile data off after a set time. Pick one, set it once, and…
Set the room up so that movement is already there for the taking: somewhere to stand, something to hold, a chair that lets you shift. Then nobody has to decide in the moment whether it is allowed.
This is a change to furniture and habit, not to willpower. A standing spot for part of the day, a wobble cushion, knitting or whittling while you…
Difficult things come out more easily when your hands are occupied and you are not looking straight at the other person. Walk side by side, drive somewhere, wash up together, keep the sewing going.
If you are the one listening, offer it first. Most people assume that picking something up would look rude or half interested, so they sit still and…
If you are pulled towards risk, you will do better giving that pull somewhere with a floor under it than trying to switch it off. Fast, high, cold, loud: choose the planned version rather than the one that turns up at two in the morning.
Work out what the appeal actually is. Speed, height, cold water, a crowd, the edge of fear. Then find the form of it that has brakes: a climbing wall…