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
7 practicesThe conversation only counts if the decisions end up in the calendar. 'You take Tuesday, I'll take Thursday' has to be written down or it did not really happen.
Both of you were relying on the same tired memory that caused the trouble in the first place. So do the writing during the conversation rather than…
Running late is one thing. Running late with no message is two things. If it is the text that keeps going missing, put a small cost on the text specifically: no message, you do the washing up.
Worth separating, because they really are separate problems and the second is much cheaper to solve. Remembering to send something while you are…
Put the uncertainty at the front. Not Thursday, possibly Friday, most likely Monday is worth far more to the other person than a confident yes you cannot keep.
It feels worse to say, which is why people avoid it. But a hedge given early costs you nothing, while a promise broken later costs twice: the thing…
Turning the volume down on a feeling in front of the wrong audience is not being fake. Being annoyed with your manager and raising it mildly is a skill, and it keeps you employed.
There is a version of honesty that costs people jobs and friendships. What you feel and how much of it you show are two separate decisions, and the…
The big promise is usually made in a rush of love rather than after a calculation. It is meant sincerely, which is exactly why it keeps happening, and why the disappointment keeps landing.
The gap here is between feeling something and announcing it. Try a rule: nothing involving money, dates or other people gets said out loud on the day…
A thought you have in the car about something to say at home is worth nothing until the person is actually there in front of you. Cues have to sit where the action becomes possible, not where you happened to think of it.
Picture where you will be at the moment the thing can be done, and put the reminder there: a note on the front door for something that happens on the…
By response rate, extended release stimulants are among the most effective medicines in psychiatry, and most people tolerate them well. That is worth hearing plainly, particularly from people who are not generally keen on medication.
What the long acting form buys you is coverage. A dose that has faded by four in the afternoon leaves the evening bare, and the evening is where home…