Series: What are your ADHD Tools of Thumb?
Series: What are your ADHD Tools of Thumb?
By that I mean what are some powerful and simple basic applied techniques or behaviors that are really useful you've developed or discovered in your life that makes things work or improve.
Lets keep them simple and powerful 🧙♂️
Let people on the phone know that you don't mind if something is taking a bit longer and that you're cool and with them whatever happens. Say something like, its okay I'm not in a rush ☺️
They'll appreciate taking some of the pressure off and showing you are a receptive audience (you're rooting for them) and I've found it to get superior outcomes since I started doing it, even tho I was always generally polite previously
Don't take the appointment card from the doctor's office. Just put it in your phone calendar.
You might think if you take the card, you can refer to it later, or put it in the calendar later, but these are lies. LIES!!!
If it's not on the calendar app it doesn't exist
They already have our email addresses and our mobile numbers. They should be sending us calendar invites, not some scrap of cardstock I'm gonna lose. My therapist has a system that sends text reminders. Why is my doctor not up to speed.
Funny thing, I have an appointment on Monday and they've already sent me a text and email reminder, and a text and email to pre check in. It's kind of annoying, but that's what it takes sometimes!
And have a calendar app that lets you either or both:
- enter the appointment in text and it automatically recognizes the date and processes it (natural language entry)
- has buttons for easy tweaking of the day with standard units like 30 minutes/1 day/1 week/1 month that you can press in combination to easily taptically schedule it
Just a normal alarm timer app.
Forget appointments? Lose track of time when doing things? I set timers. Most apps allow recurring timers. For example I got one going off twice each day to remind me to drink some water.
I gotta leave in 40 minutes so I got some time to read or whatever. If I don't set an alarm I'll lose track of time and be late. Easy fix.
As far as habits go.
Be honest with myself about my shortcomings. If I start gaming at 9 pm it won't be half an hour. Be honest. Go to bed now or accept it will be midnight.
No, I won't just do that later. I will forget. Write it down or do it now. Else I will forget.
Very similar to what I was going to say.
One more I'd add is being honest with others. If I'm not writing it down or it isn't set as a reminder on my phone chances are very low it'll happen.
Prep Bags: I keep a bag for each activity i regularly engage in (work, theatre, choir, social clubs) and it holds my accoutrements for that thing. When I remember i need to bring something to the next meeting/rehearsal/whatever. I drop it in the bag. If I am doing a one off activity, I’ll start a bag a day or few ahead of time.
Small things have homes: Car/house keys live on key hook, other dailies live in bowls near my bed.
Multiples of things: I keep separate charge cables each for home, work, and car. I keep an extra, hairbrush and hair ties at work. My old earbuds live at work in case I forget to put my new ones in my work bag when i am done with them.
Multiples of things
God, yess! Same
Apple user here: Shortcuts.
Being able to design lil applettes that take a click or two out of doing a task is a lifesaver.
For instance, going into the clock app and setting a timer is at least a 9-step process (starting from unlocking your device). I made a shortcut to make it a 5-step process.
When I’m trying to hold something in short term memory (especially during a conversation), it’s a struggle
I’d recommend asking Siri for that.
Here’s my quick timer shortcut I built to keep on my Home Screen. Maybe it will be helpful to someone.
Edit: forgot to link the shortcut 😂
Since the calendar has already been mentioned, I'll drop another of my tools.
I check my pockets every time I leave a space, and confirm I've got Wallet, Keys, Phone. I do this at any transition: Leaving the house, a taxi, the office, a plane.
Got kick started into the habit when I lost a big (for a kid) chunk of money. Felt so bad that I started the checks, and haven't lost any of those three in many, many years (ง’̀-‘́)ง
Same, i keep forgetting my phone so that thigh slap is a must
In my head it does not exist. Never trust myself to remember anything, write everything down in a system you trust (TickTick for me). In the same vein when leaving tasks halfway I write myself what I had planned to do next and all the details I can quickly jot down, even if they seem obvious or like I won't forget them.
Alarms for everything!
And goblin.tools
Goblin.tools is the best! Are the best?
Am the best!!
Whats your favorite tools?
The formalizer is great when I don't want to think too hard to try and be polite (I can be pretty blunt).
The chef is great, too! I have trouble eating good things and coming up with meal plans.
The magic to-do list os my favorite. Breaks everything down into simple, manageable steps! Love it so much!
Write it down/put on your calendar now. You're not going to remember to do it later and then you'll completely forget it. Even if you're sure you'll remember it this time, you won't. Just write it down. And make a habit of checking your calendar frequently. Like multiple times a day. Putting it in your calendar and never seeing it again doesn't help.
Schedule just about everything. Even the things you didn't think you'll need to schedule. Schedule what time you're going to work out, or play video games. Put an event in your calendar to make that phone call to your insurance company at a specific time instead of remembering to do it after they're closed every time.
I love my phone for that.
Write it down, now!
I go by: when you remember it, do it. If you can’t do it now, mark it down in an appropriate manner: list, alarm, calendar, note, whatever. If you can’t be bothered to mark it down, it’s not important.
I keep a calander widget on my phone homescreen that shows my upcoming events.
Alarms on my phone to snap me out of hyperfixating on things to the point where time becomes meaningless.
I set an alarm that went off earlier today and I totally spent the next 5 minutes trying to figure out why I set it...
...which made me late for a meeting.
Notes on the alarms to remind me what the alarm was for is number 2.
Whenever I close something that locks, I touch the key that unlocks it first. This has saved me many times from locking myself out of the house and locking my keys in the car or trunk
Online calendar with a widget on my phone's homescreen that shows the upcoming week's appointments, so that I constantly see them by accident. And a habit to always put important appointments in the calendar immediately when I'm made aware of them or plan them.
And always have the calendar open in a browser on the computer.
My way: Notifications for an appointment. Depending on how far in advance, I will put 2-3 reminders in one appointment.
Its good to have a calendar with a good relative week view tho. Check it everyday and (while you should still set alarms as best practice) it'll be like waking up before your alarm clock cuz you'll know 2 days before it, you'll 1 day before it, you'll know day of (kinda like an attentional factorial!) 😂
Yes, I do that too. And if I have to prepare something before an appointment I might make preparation its own calendar event, with reminders.
Getting rid of as many time wasters as possible. Reddit, Instagram, etc. They never, ever end. With Lemmy, I’m done my feed in five minutes. YouTube is still a challenge though.
Two things for me… pomodoro method and the mantra “Don’t put it down. Put it away.” Pomodoro got me through college and made hyperfocusing on assignments seem like more of a choice. The mantra? It is part of my inner dialogue all the time lol. I tend to put things where ever and wouldn’t you know it? In a day my home is a mess. So once I heard the suggestion I took it to heart and it does actually really help me remember WHY to put things away. Because the “oh I will grab it and put it away later” is a lie.
Garbage in, garbage out. First come, first served is how I put it. Everything has a place and everything back in its place, I'm just renting it, gotta return the video to the store
I realised just after decades that some things that tend to fly around all the time over and over again have no defined place. My solution: There needs to be an all-default trunk. Old rubber bands, Covid tests, screws from an old laptop I'll totally reassemble one day, socks with holes that are not broken enough to throw away, ...
Also, recycling is nice in general, but in a cleaning frenzy, all garbage needs to go into the bag. If future-self wants to recycle, have fun with the bag in the basement.
It works!
I'm currently shooting low, and one pomodoro unit per day already makes a productive day. So much better than nothing! I think of it like squid game: I got 50 minutes to study, then they shoot the ones with the least knowledge on the subject. That means no glance at the phone even when it makes a sound, no toilet breaks, no water breaks (water that is in direct reach may be used while one hand is free).
If I had done even 25 minutes per day after official education, I'd be such an expert 15 years later!
My current goal is to become an absolute unit within 8 years. My CV looks like one, but I'm not.
When I'm at my doc for refill or something similar, I always book the next appointment before I leave. And every appointment is written on the calendar app with alarms. No I don't need you to write me the next appointment on paper, your paper doesn't have glow light and sounds so I won't look at it.
I keep notes in the calendar entry for the appointment to so I don't forget all the talking points or requests like refills, tests, etc)
Oh that's not a bad idea!
Always determine the first action or step to a task/project to give you a specific, predetermined place to start on the task and get your first "win" towards completing it before you add it to your task list
You can decide on the rest later but get your subconscious working on it by making that first decision and the rest you can leave until you've completed step 1
Making lists and time blocking
Or time boxing. I think they're quite similar
I think realising when to back off doing what Im doing because im putting off another task. I feel like since I started taking breaks between activities to let my mind "reset" has helped me transition to more boring tasks.
Im constantly watching films, listening to podcasts or music, so I have to take like a small 3-5 minutes of silence to unload what I was doing before loading in what I need to do.
Also taking this time is not at all wasting it. Ive become mindfull about how much "waste" ive been "doing" and stopped keeping it against myself so its been way more liberating. When you do that, its easier to justify schedualing, and not keep cranking the productivity knob to the max to make up for time.
Finally, I try to make things pretty, to get back to it with lesser resistance, like coding better looking functions, writing less hurriedly, cleaning my instruments for cooking etc with more minutia but taking my time with it.
Also, I stopped trying to multitask stuff to the extreme. I refuse to listen to music while im reading, I refuse to watch a movie and study, watching a stream and gaming at the same time.
This seems like obvious stuff, so the TLDR is take your time, don't find ways to blame yourself but concentrate on how to move on. And take breaks ppl, we are not robots.
Notifications from Google calendar - if it's not there, I will forget.
Also, in terms of motivation - if I don't have a purpose and a goal (however small or insignificant it may be) - then I will be stuck and won't be able to do literally anything. So I always need something to work towards.
Keep things actionable.
- Things you need go where they are useful or where their presence is a reminder not to forget them.
- When relaying things, it doesn’t need a story if the story isn’t actionable.
- When planning things, plan out the actions, and leave as much of the rest to the experience as you can, lest you get overwhelmed, frozen, and wind up with no plans.
Key and wallet discipline. Made me appreciate the benefits of a sacred place for those 'emergency' aka "Just Go" items.
...and no, I didn't increase my pants' pocket sizes to justify more clutter at these places...
For me, I make things like key and wallet discipline a muscle memory. I literally practiced putting my keys where they belonged like it was some sort of challenging skill to learn. As a consequence when I put my keys down without thinking as normal, they always end up where they belong.
Whenever I need to do something and I don't want to note it down, I count the things I have to/bring with me. Afterwards I check if the numbers are the same.
Feels like I look crazy when you keep whispering "three, three, three" to yourself.