Focus, starting, and ADHD

A wave across the road, a joke with the man in the shop, asking someone how they are and meaning it. These unplanned seconds count for more than they look like they should.

They are also the easiest place to start when arranging a proper meet up feels like too much. Almost nothing is at stake in a greeting, so a fear of…

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…

Put the reminder where you will physically see it: the keys on the bag, the pills by the kettle.

Do not trust future you to remember. Build the cue into the world so the world reminds you.

Rest a hand on your forehead for a second and ask where your attention is actually pointing right now. Not where it ought to be, just where it is.

Attention drifts quietly, so twenty minutes can go without you ever deciding anything. A small physical gesture gives the question something to hook…

Everybody finds unrewarding tasks harder to start. If yours seem to cost several times what other people pay, that is a real difference in how your brain handles reward, not a flaw in your character.

It shows up worst on the jobs with nothing built into them: the form, the receipts, the email you have already read four times. Knowing the cost is…

Before you decide, stop and picture Thursday twice: once having done a bit of this today, once not. Let both of them land properly.

The comparison is what does the work. A single imagined outcome is easy to shrug off, but holding the two side by side makes the cost of waiting…

Notice the question you are asking yourself. If it is do I feel like doing this, the answer will be no today, no tomorrow, and no on the day it is due.

A question that always returns the same answer is not helping you decide anything. Swap it for a plainer one: what are the first two minutes of this,…

You will not enjoy it on Thursday either. What Thursday takes away is the choice, not the dislike.

Underneath most delaying is a quiet hope that some future version of you will feel differently about the job. That version does not turn up. Once you…

One question to keep in your pocket: if I skip this now, how will I feel about it on Thursday? Ask it at the door of the task, then move.

It is a small swap and it takes two seconds, which is what makes it usable when there is nobody around to prompt you. It shifts you off how the task…

Make the first move small enough to be almost silly. Open the document and type the date. Put the trainers by the door. Everything after that is cheaper.

Nearly all the cost of a task sits at the entrance, so that is where your design effort should go. Decide the first physical action the night before,…

Take half a minute and see Thursday night in detail, both versions: the one where you did some of this today, and the one where you did not.

Knowing about a deadline does almost nothing. Feeling it does the work, and feeling arrives through detail. The lamp still on, what is open on the…

Ask a friend to be the person who knows. Send them a line on the days you went, with no reply needed. Being known about today is what does the work.

It only helps if you set it up yourself and say exactly what you want, otherwise it slips into being nagged. Keep it small and specific: one line,…

Everything you say about how much you hate this job is probably true, and saying it again makes the job heavier. Notice the second or third round and stop there.

Complaining once is fine and often useful. The loop is what costs you, since each pass makes the task feel worse and spends the energy you were going…

If some of your appointments make it into the calendar and some do not, that is still better than none of them. Half a system is not a failed system.

The usual way these things die is not gradual. You miss a few days, decide it is not working, and drop the whole thing, which puts you back where you…

I will remember that. I can do it later. I will work better after I have just checked my email. Three sentences that cost most of us a great deal.

Each one is true occasionally, which is precisely why it survives. You did remember something once, and you were productive after a snack that one…

The good news is that most of us only run three or four of these. A short list is something you can genuinely keep an eye on.

Notice your distortions is far too big an instruction to follow. Three named sentences in your own words is not. Write them on a card, keep it where…

Next time you tell yourself you will remember it, ask what you would bet on that. A month's rent, for or against. The answer usually arrives before you have finished asking.

Turning a comfortable belief into a wager makes its odds obvious, and it does it without a row. Keep it light and a bit silly, because the point is…

When you finish the dull task, give yourself something you actually like. A reward you do not really want does no work at all.

Choose it before you start and make it specific: the good coffee rather than whatever is in the cupboard, half an hour of the thing you keep…

When you get something hard done, resist waving it off with "anyone could have done that". Let it count.

That reflex is common in people who have spent years falling short of what they meant to do, and it quietly cancels the good of finishing. Try the…

There is a sort of avoidance that looks like getting things done. Sorting the drawer, clearing the inbox, any mildly useful job that is not the one you are dreading.

It is harder to catch than obvious time wasting because it leaves you nothing to feel guilty about. At the end of the day the shelf is tidy, the…

Rather than asking whether what you are doing is worthwhile, ask what it is keeping you away from.

The first question is too easy to pass. Almost anything you are doing can be defended as useful, which is why it never catches you out. The second…

Shrink the first step until it takes two minutes, and do only that.

The wall is usually the size of the first step, not the whole task. Make the step tiny enough to fall over.

Do not wait to feel ready. Say Musa's prayer, ease my task, and take one step; the wish to go on comes after.

Motivation usually follows action, not the other way round. Start badly if you must, but start.

When someone says they feel restless inside, ask what the restlessness wants. Restless to move, or restless to do one particular thing until it feels right?

The two feel similar from the inside and point in different directions. With ADHD it is usually undirected: the legs go, the chair is wrong, you need…

A distracted person can be brought back with a nudge. Someone who has gone elsewhere cannot, and the difference shows itself in a couple of seconds.

Say their name, ask something simple, and watch what returns. Attention that has drifted comes back with a small apology and picks the thread up…

Try 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…

Some of what looks like muddle is the system's fault. Our tenth month is named for eight, because two months were added later and nobody renamed the rest.

Worth saying to anyone who feels stupid about dates and forms. A calendar whose numbers are out of step, a tax year starting in April, forms asking…

While you are taking the family history, ask about seizure disorders and psychosis too, not only about attention. A family carrying other neurological or psychiatric conditions is worth knowing about whatever you end up concluding.

Keep the list short and ask it plainly: epilepsy, psychosis, learning difficulties, head injuries, anything neurological. Some of it will matter for…

Some people simply cannot get a family history. Refugee journeys, destroyed records, closed adoptions, families that did not survive. That is a gap in the paperwork and not evidence against the diagnosis.

Say so out loud, and write it in the notes as a gap rather than as a negative finding, so the next person reading does not mistake silence for an…

One man put his lamps on a timer so the room would go dark at eleven and send him to bed. It worked for a few nights. Then he simply carried on in the dark. A cue can tell you the time. It cannot make you stand up.

Worth remembering before you build anything clever. If the pull of whatever a person is already doing is stronger than the nudge you have designed,…

'I set a reminder and still did not do it' is not a story about a bad reminder. It tells you the missing piece was never information, and a bigger, louder version of the same thing will fail in the same way.

The reflex is to escalate: three alarms, a different app, an entire new system built on Sunday night. What is needed is a change of kind, something…

You can screen for a processing difficulty with no test at all. Just notice, in ordinary conversation, whether the child is answering what you actually said.

A child who drifts off topic, answers a slightly different question, or needs things said twice may not be avoiding you or daydreaming. The words may…

Behaviour is usually the visible end of a skill that has not been built. What you are watching in a classroom is the shape of the difficulty rather than the shape of the child.

It is a single sentence you can say in a meeting, and it tends to move the conversation away from what to do about the behaviour towards what the…

More of the medicine is not automatically better. What you are looking for is a level that sits inside the working range, and going past it usually brings side effects rather than sharper thinking.

It is a natural thought that if some helps a little, double would help twice as much. In practice people describe the higher dose as flat, or wired,…

If sleep has gone since starting, look at what time the dose is being taken before deciding the medicine is the problem. A long acting dose swallowed at one in the afternoon is still working at bedtime.

Extended release preparations are built to cover eight to twelve hours from whenever they are taken, so a late start pushes the whole thing into the…

Do not compare your dose with anybody else's. Two milligrams of one medicine and a hundred milligrams of another can both be perfectly ordinary, because strength per milligram differs from molecule to molecule.

This comes up in waiting rooms and family group chats and it causes real alarm about being on a lot. The number on the box only means something…

If a young driver in your house takes medication, the dose and the car keys belong together. Driving is the everyday task where one lost second costs the most.

The gap tends to open at weekends and in the holidays, when the dose gets skipped because there is no school and then someone drives anyway. Make it…

If you open atomoxetine capsules to mix the contents into food, keep it away from your eyes and wash your hands afterwards. The powder stings badly.

The molecule is acidic and cannot be softened without falling apart, so the fix is in the handling rather than the chemistry. Take it with something…

Stand up slowly. Getting off the floor after an hour of gaming, or out of bed in the morning, is where the dizziness tends to catch people.

A drop in blood pressure on standing is common enough with these medicines and it frightens people, because a near faint feels like something serious…