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 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…
People stop telling the truth to anyone who argues with it. Being easy to be honest with is a skill, and it has to be visible from the outside.
Notice what you do in the first three seconds after hearing something you did not want to hear. The explaining, the yes but, the small correction of…
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…
If the same crunch arrives every month, another talk about it will not shift next month. It was never a shortage of information.
For partners this is a hard one, because the frustration is completely fair. But a lecture adds shame to something that already feels unpleasant, and…
Once a week, both calendars open on the table. Who is doing scouts, who has football, what is happening on Thursday. Twice a week if the house is busy.
The point is finding the collisions while there is still time to sort them out, rather than at eight on Thursday morning with coats half on. Keep it…