Practices

Every practice in the library, in one list. Narrow it by how long you have, who it is written for, and where you are right now.

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38 practices

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Good help leaves you more able to do it yourself next time. If the whole thing only works while the other person is in the room, something has gone sideways.

There is a real difference between someone building your schedule for you and someone sitting beside you while you build it. The second is slower and…

Five minutesSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 18:95One line of research

If a course has no fixed time, give it one. Write down which day and which hour you will watch it, put that in the calendar as though somebody else set it, and tell one person.

Five minutes every Sunday: when am I watching this, and when am I doing the work that comes after it. Then one short message midweek to whoever is…

Five minutesSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 2:282One line of research

When you agree to something, agree who follows up. Do you tell them if it slips, or do they check in with you?

Most of the hurt around late work comes from nobody having said. You assume they will ask, they assume you will speak up, and the silence in between…

Five minutesSystems for daily lifeADHD skillsQur’an 42:38One line of research

Worry done on your own goes round in circles. Said out loud to one other person, it usually turns into a problem with edges, and sometimes into a next step.

The rule is short enough to remember at midnight: never worry alone. It does not have to be someone who can fix anything. A friend, a colleague, your…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 9:40One line of research

Looking for a whole subject rather than a single practice? Start from the nine areas.

Partners of people with ADHD tend not to name the lateness or the lost keys as the real injury. It is the size of the reactions. That is where the damage collects.

Annoying is survivable and frightening is not. If you are working through things in a rough order, the temper comes before the calendar, even though…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 8:46One line of research

Being good at apologising is a real skill, and it loses value each time the same apology comes round. After a while what repairs things is something visibly different, not a better sentence.

So keep the apology specific and small. Name the thing, do not explain it away, say what you will do differently, and then let the doing carry the…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 41:34One line of research

Do not walk into a hard event and improvise. Ten minutes beforehand, work out what is likely to happen, what you will do about it, and how you get out if you need to.

If someone is coming with you, make it a shared plan. What the signal is when one of you needs air, who says what to whom, when you leave. The point…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 16:98One line of research

The reason your partner follows you out of the room is usually not control. It is the fear that if you leave now, this will never be finished.

So say the return out loud and mean it. I am not dropping this, I will be back at nine and we will finish it. Then be back at nine. A few kept…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 9:40One line of research

A real apology has no because in it. I would not have shouted if you had not looked at me like that is the argument again, wearing an apology's clothes.

Name the thing you did, own it flatly, and stop there. Then do something that shows it: the phone call you dodged, the mess cleared up, the thing you…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 39:53One line of research

You may not get to be a calmer person any time soon. What can change quickly is what you do in the twenty minutes after you lose your temper, and that is the part people remember.

Reactivity shifts slowly if at all, while repair is a skill you could be noticeably better at by next week. Go back sooner than feels comfortable.…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 42:37One line of research

Tell your partner, on a good day, that the things you say at full volume are not a fair record of what you think. Not as an excuse. As information about how you work.

It changes what lands. If they know in advance that the heat is real but the words are unreliable, they can wait for the version that arrives twenty…

Five minutesFeelings and focusADHD skillsQur’an 3:134One line of research

Hypervigilance after trauma and ADHD scanning look much alike from outside. Often the honest answer is that both are present, and the real question is how much of each.

Watching that comes from threat is aimed at something and tends to switch on in particular situations. ADHD distraction is not fussy about where it…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 49:6One line of research

Damage to the front of the brain can produce something that looks a great deal like ADHD: poor impulse control, blunted judgement, a person their family says has changed.

The nineteenth century railway worker who survived an iron rod through the frontal lobes is the standard illustration, and what altered in him was…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 58:11One line of research

Not every bout of eating too much belongs to an eating disorder. Ask whether how the body looks is part of it, because that is where the two paths separate.

When bingeing comes out of ADHD it is often boredom, or the food simply being there with nothing stepping in to stop it, and the person is not…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 95:4One line of research

When you need a date, hand people events rather than months. Was that before or after the holiday? Same year as the move?

Asking whether something happened between October and January invites a guess. Asking whether it was before or after a wedding, a house move or a…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One line of research

Ask for a number first, then go hunting for exceptions. How is today on a scale of one to ten, and when was it last higher than that?

An assessment can turn into an hour of everything that is wrong, which leaves a person flatter than when they arrived. Exception questions do the…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 94:5One line of research

Find out what they have tried before that did not work. It saves everybody from a plan that failed this person two years ago.

Most people arriving for an assessment have been trying things for years: apps, alarms, lists, an early night, a course somebody recommended.…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 42:38One line of research

Run a short anxiety and depression screener alongside the ADHD measure at every intake, not only when someone mentions their mood.

Mood and anxiety sit beside ADHD often enough that leaving them out means guessing about the concentration difficulty in front of you. Doing it as…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 21:83One line of research

A tick beside 'does your mind race' means less than it looks like. Someone whose mind has raced since they were nine has nothing to compare it against, so ask what changed and when before you let the score speak.

Take the endorsed items one at a time and put a period of time around each one. When did this start? Was there ever a stretch when it was not there?…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 49:6One line of research

Both people will tell you they were up for three nights. The useful question is what they did with those hours: driven and busy points one way, wired and wrecked points another.

In mania the need for sleep falls away and the activity has a purpose behind it, however unrealistic that purpose looks from outside. In ADHD the…

Five minutesGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 20:114One line of research