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
2 practicesTry not to ask why. If the person knew why, they would probably have sorted it out already, and the question tends to land like an accusation.
Ask what happened just before instead. What was going on, what they felt, what came after, what sort of day it had been. Those answers can be worked…
The checklists were built around the loud version of this, and girls are more often the quiet version. If she is struggling and nobody has ever suggested an assessment, that is worth pressing on.
Defiance in girls can look like refusal, withdrawal or a long-running argument about friendships rather than the disruption a teacher would report.…