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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1709 practices

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An avoided task charges you rent even on the days nothing goes wrong. The low hum of hoping nobody asks is part of what it costs.

When we weigh up leaving something undone, we usually count only the visible consequences, the letter that might arrive or the person who might…

Five minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 3:133One line of research

A task you dislike needs a time and a place, not a place on the list. Tuesday at ten, at the kitchen table, is a plan. Soon is not.

Left in open competition, the dull job loses to everything more urgent and everything more interesting, every single day, and that is not a fault in…

Five minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 2:148One line of research

Put the thing you are avoiding early in the day. Anything you place late gets pushed out by whatever the day turns into.

Early has two advantages at once. It is less likely to be shunted, because the day has not yet piled up behind it, and if it does slip it only slips…

Five minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 62:10One line of research

Email is the easiest place to hide. It answers back, it never runs out, and by five o'clock it feels like you worked.

What makes it such a good stand-in for real work is that the rewards come in small unpredictable bursts and almost none of it asks much of you. Your…

Five minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 2:148One line of research

If you are helping someone get moving, start with the thing they mind about, even when you can see something else that needs it more. A goal a person picked for themselves is the only kind they will chase when you are not in the room.

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

Feelings and focus

Structure and routine

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Practising under provocation

Treatment and medication

The cost of avoiding

Being seen and judged

When you use something to cope

Remembering to do it

Facing it a step at a time

Feeling from the inside

Breaking the worry loop

What you are actually defending

Emotions as signals

Obsessions and compulsions

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Tolerate distress

Posture and how you carry yourself

Self-compassion

Shame

Anger, alcohol and the body

Use your strengths

When anger turns to harm

Question the thought

Living with uncertainty

Panic and the body

When you go numb

Rest and pacing

Keep that first target small and specific enough to finish: one drawer, one email, the bag by the door on Tuesday. The thing you can see needs…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 5:48One line of research

Sorting a pile of receipts is not difficult. Sitting with how dull it is, that is the difficult part, and it helps to say so out loud.

Once you know boredom is the real demand, you stop trying to simplify a task that is already simple and start making the dullness bearable instead. A…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 39:10One line of research

Sometimes the last minute really does produce your best work. Often it produces your worst, and those nights are much easier to forget.

That is what keeps the belief alive: it pays out just often enough. Rather than arguing about it, count. Take the last ten things you left to the…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 23:61One line of research

Paint the room is not a task. Fill the holes, tape the edges, buy the rollers, do one wall. That is four tasks, and each one ends.

A big undivided job sits in the head as one enormous demand, which is why looking at it tires you before you have lifted anything. Write the steps in…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 94:7One line of research

Promise yourself twenty minutes, or one podcast episode, rather than a finished result. Then the end is guaranteed however badly it goes.

Open ended unpleasant jobs are hard to walk into because you cannot see the far edge of them. A timer gives you one. Twenty minutes of receipts on…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 73:20One line of research

If a task gives you nothing, bring something to it. Ring the cousin you never speak to and paint while you talk. Do the filing beside a friend who has their own filing to do.

This is a design fix rather than a failure of discipline. Dull work asks your brain to stay somewhere that offers it no reason to stay. Pair it with…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 2:45One line of research

Go down the list and find the two items that have been sitting there for months. One of them needs doing this week. The other needs deleting, honestly and out loud.

A list full of things that never move quietly drains everything else on it, because you meet all of them each time you look. Clearing in either…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 39:10One line of research

Before treating something as your failure to get going, check whether you ever agreed it was yours. A job that bothers one person and genuinely does not bother the other has not been agreed by anybody.

That turns a stuck task back into a conversation, which is where it belongs. Say plainly that the unpainted wall does not trouble you, ask what it…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 5:48One line of research

Keep your clearest hours for the work that needs a clear head. Fold the laundry when you are half awake, not at ten in the morning when you have finally come alive.

Most of us have a window or two in the day when thinking is genuinely cheaper, and we spend it on email and tidying because those are easy to pick…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 20:26One line of research

Sitting exactly halfway between two options is its own kind of exhausting, and it produces nothing. If you have been weighing something for weeks, the weighing has quietly become the activity.

Give it a deadline and a method. One more week, the three things that matter most, and then you choose, knowing the choice will be imperfect. If you…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 20:25One line of research

When you are torn about something, get both sides out of your head and onto paper. Two columns, everything you can think of, no tidying as you go.

Holding both cases in mind at once is what wears you out, and it is why the same argument keeps starting from the beginning every evening. Once it is…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 20:114One line of research

Pick a system that is good enough, spend one evening on it at most, and then use it for a month without changing anything.

You can spend a very long time sharpening tools and never get round to the woodwork. An ordinary calendar used every day beats a beautiful one used…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 87:8One line of research

Sometimes the first job is working out what the job is. Go back to whoever asked, or spend twenty minutes finding out, and count that as the work it is.

Ask the plain questions: what is this for, who reads it, what matters most, how long should it be. People hold back because they feel they should…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 96:1One line of research

The other way through fog is to walk into it. Start badly, on purpose, and let the shape of the thing appear while you are working on it.

With some jobs you genuinely cannot know what you are doing until you are inside them, and waiting for clarity first just keeps you outside. Give…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 9:105One line of research

If the same three names keep coming up, compare those three and stop looking. Twenty options will not give you a better answer, only a later one.

Past a handful of choices, more searching adds very little while the cost of deciding keeps climbing, and if you are prone to circling it can stop…

Twenty minutesGet startedADHD skillsQur’an 23:61One line of research

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 minuteGetting assessed and diagnosedADHD skillsQur’an 91:8One line of research