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 practicesBefore handing anyone a new system, make sure they can say back why it should work better than what they are doing now. A strategy with no reason attached gets dropped the first time it is inconvenient.
Ask them to explain it to you in their own words and listen for whose reason it is. If the logic is only yours, it will hold for about a week. It is…
Ask what they think this will cost them in effort, then say what you think. People rarely give up because a strategy failed. They give up because it turned out to be harder than anyone had told them.
Be specific about the first fortnight, since that is when it is worst and the payoff has not arrived yet. Someone who expected a small effort and met…