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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792 practices

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Some people are in this far enough that an hour a week will not reach them, and the places that could help are expensive or full. Saying so out loud is part of the work, not a failure of it.

Being honest early does two things. It stops you quietly concluding that you are not good enough, when what is actually happening is that the…

Five minutesScreens and attentionADHD skillsQur’an 2:286One line of research

Tell someone their phone is wrecking their sleep and you have handed them something to argue with. Ask instead what they notice on the mornings after a late scroll, and let them say it.

This is the difference between a conclusion arriving from outside and one a person reaches themselves, which they then have to take seriously because…

Five minutesScreens and attentionADHD skillsQur’an 17:36One line of research

What you are on there for matters more than how long you are on. Scrolling to keep up with people you love is a different activity from posting and then watching to see who approved.

Use aimed at status, at likes, at managing how you come across tends to sit alongside feeling worse. Use aimed at staying in touch and sharing what…

Five minutesScreens and attentionADHD skillsQur’an 57:20One line of research

Online you can draft, delete, reply an hour later or simply leave. None of that exists in a kitchen, and plenty of people now find real conversation unbearably fast.

So the ordinary friction of talking to someone in person, the pause you fill badly, the thing that comes out wrong, gets read as proof that you are…

Five minutesScreens and attentionADHD skillsQur’an 18:28

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

Cool the body first

Reading, numbers and learning differences

Structure and routine

The moment before you snap

Remembering to do it

Facing it a step at a time

Food, caffeine and fuel

When you use something to cope

When anger turns to harm

Making it stick

Righteous anger and perfectionism

Choosing your response

Self-compassion

Growing empathy

Emotions as signals

When everything feels flat

Tolerate distress

Being seen and judged

Shame

Getting assessed and diagnosed

Anger, alcohol and the body

Practising under provocation

Obsessions and compulsions

Use your strengths

Rest and pacing

Letting it out safely

Help someone grieving

Question the thought

Feeling from the inside

Touch and bodywork

Living with uncertainty

One line of research

Spend long enough in comment sections and cruelty starts to look like the normal way people speak. It is not. You are reading a very odd sample.

Rudeness online is loud, cheap and rewarded, so it fills the space out of all proportion to how common it is. The trouble is that we generalise.…

Five minutesScreens and attentionADHD skillsQur’an 4:140One line of research

Most children with ADHD grow into adults with ADHD. Some of it settles as the brain finishes developing into your late twenties, and adult life gives you more say over how your days are arranged, but the underlying difficulty tends to stay.

This is worth knowing because much of the improvement people do get comes from arranging things to suit themselves: the job that fits, the hours that…

Five minutesSelf-compassionADHD skillsQur’an 65:7One line of research

It tends to run the same way each time. You struggle with something, you feel awful about it, so you keep away from it, and anyone who raises it gets a sharp answer, which makes you keep away harder.

The relief when you avoid it arrives instantly, which is exactly why the loop tightens. Meanwhile the pile of unopened post has not moved, so next…

Five minutesSelf-compassionADHD skillsQur’an 39:53One line of research

The goal was never to enjoy the dull task. It is to arrive at something more like: I hate this and I can still do it well enough.

Both halves are doing work. Moving towards the thing you dislike, rather than away from it, is what loosens the avoidance. And well enough is what…

Five minutesSelf-compassionADHD skillsQur’an 94:5One line of research

It rarely stays a matter of attention. The difficulties shape what you come to believe about yourself, that colours how you are with the people closest to you, and their responses feed straight back into the original trouble.

Discouraging to read, and genuinely useful, because it means there are three places to work and they are not equally stuck. The wiring is the hardest…

Five minutesSelf-compassionADHD skillsQur’an 2:186One line of research

There is a difference between having ADHD and being ADHD. It sounds like word games until you notice which one you are living in.

Being it means the condition runs everything and explains everything, and there is a quiet relief in that which is hard to give up. Having it means…

Five minutesSelf-compassionADHD skillsQur’an 53:32One line of research

Work properly at the parts that can be managed, then be at peace with what is left over. The order matters more than it sounds.

Peace offered before any real effort is giving up with better vocabulary, and it never quite convinces the person saying it. Effort with no end point…

Five minutesSelf-compassionADHD skillsQur’an 22:78One line of research

Every list, timer and rule exists to buy you a life worth having. If the systems have quietly become the point, something has turned the wrong way round.

It is easy to end up managing your ADHD as a full time occupation and calling that recovery. A better test of a week is whether it held anything you…

Five minutesSelf-compassionADHD skillsQur’an 7:156One line of research

For a lot of people with ADHD there are only two times: now, and not now. A deadline on Thursday and one six months out sit in the same box until the day they suddenly become today.

This is worth knowing because it explains why being told the date again does nothing. You knew the date. What was missing was the sense of it coming…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 23:113One line of research

Spotting on day one that a procedure is pointless is a real skill. Saying so in the first meeting is the part that costs people the job.

The observation is rarely the problem. It is that it arrives before anyone asked, from someone who has been there a fortnight, often with the…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 20:114One line of research

Look back over your own history for the times you were knocked down and started something anyway. That pattern is common with ADHD, and it is easy to miss while you are busy counting the failures.

It may be a side effect of not weighting the future heavily. The past does not press down quite as hard either. People who have been sacked, dropped…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 25:47One line of research

Every trait worth having here arrives with its twin. A love of the offbeat and a real problem with deadlines are the same wiring seen from two sides.

Strength lists that leave the cost out are not believable and they do not help anybody. Pair them instead. If you are the one who finds the…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 36:38One line of research

A clever workaround can hide a difficulty for years. A child who memorises what he cannot read looks fine, right up until the amount to be read grows past what memory can carry.

So do not judge by output alone. Ask what it cost to produce. Someone keeping up but exhausted, dreading the reading, staying up late to cover it, is…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 2:189One line of research

Think of your sense of the future as how far out to sea you can spot a ship. How far depends on your eyesight, and also on how big and bright the ship is and what the weather is doing.

That last part is the useful bit. The same person sees a wedding six months off perfectly clearly and misses a form due on Tuesday completely,…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 36:39One line of research

How far ahead a person can hold in mind grows as they get older. A five year old on Monday does not care about Saturday, a fifteen year old should, and by thirty most people can worry about a pension.

Reading it that way changes what you are looking at. The question is not whether someone cares but whether their reach is what you would expect at…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 22:5One line of research

Short sight is a fair comparison. If you cannot see far, the ship has to come close before it exists for you, and no amount of trying harder brings it into view sooner.

Which is why glasses are the right idea rather than effort. For time, glasses mean anything that puts the future in front of you before it arrives:…

Five minutesYour sense of timeADHD skillsQur’an 21:37One line of research