Tips for Living With ADHD (From Someone Who Actually Has It)
There is a lot of advice floating around online for how to manage the symptoms of ADHD.Ā
A lot of the advice available for coping with ADHD has been written by people who donāt actually have it. Much of it is either aimed at parents raising ADHD children, or it simply amounts toĀ ājust try harder and figure out how to remember things betterā. Itās hard for people who donāt have ADHD to understand that thereās more to it thanĀ ābeing easily distractedā, and the advice they give for managing the disorder is sometimes woefully out of touch.Ā
Luckily, I have ADHD, and Iāve had to deal with it all my life. ADHD has not prevented me from getting a masterās degree, writing a novel, keeping my apartment clean or advancing in my career, because Iāve figured out some coping strategies like:
Train yourself to do the ākeys, phone, walletā dance.Ā Misplacing things sucks, and it happens a lot with ADHD. To keep at least the important things from going missing, I have taught myself to physically tap my keys, wallet and phone before I leave any location. Getting into this habit took a few weeks, but now itās muscle memory - and itās saved me a lot of headaches over the years.Ā
Start a Bullet Journal or find a good day planner. My bullet journal is my life. For those of you who arenāt familiar with them, bullet journals are basically grid notebooks written with a special system that lets you quickly keep track of and organize all the things you need to remember. Their customizability lets you organize things in a way that makes sense to your brain (and thereās no need to make them as fancy as the ones on Instagram). Plus, the fact that itās not an app or online tool helps me avoid distraction.
Do a daily 15-minute sweep of your apartment.Ā Household chores can quickly get away from you, until your apartment is so overwhelmingly gross that you donāt even know where to start. Keep things to a dull roar with a fifteen-minute daily sweep - bag up garbage, move the dishes to the kitchen, throw laundry into a hamper, wipe up obvious spills. When your space is less overwhelming, itās easier to tackle bigger chores when you need to.Ā
Set reminders to reply to emails and messages. If I donāt answer a message immediately, under normal circumstances, thereās a 50/50 chance Iāll never remember to answer it. If I know I need to reply to a message, Iāll set a quick reminder in my phone to respond - Siri can set reminders for me instantly, and it helps a lot with communication.Ā
Prioritize tasks and do the most important ones first. My brain has a limited ability to concentrate on tasks that Iām not hyper-fixated on. Attention is a finite resource for me - once I start to get tired or burnt out, the odds of me completing a task Iām not interested in drops to almost nothing. Order your tasks by importance, not difficulty; sometimes Iām only able to do 1-2 very simple things in a day, and itās important to make sure those are the things that most needed to get done.Ā
Use the Pomodoro method for getting things done. I need pressure and deadlines to get things done, which is sort of difficult to replicate after college - the only person who cares if I work on my art or write a novel is me. So I use the Pomodoro method - this is basically where you set a timer for 25 minutes, work until it goes off, set a time for 5 minutes, relax until it goes off, and so on. There are even apps likeĀ āFocus To-Doā that automatically use Pomodoro timers and can even track how many you do on each task per day.Ā
Put reminders of daily tasks in places where you can see them. I have several houseplants, and the only reason those houseplants are alive is because they have brightly-coloured sticky notes on them that say WATER ME EVERY FRIDAY. Putting up visual reminders might seem tacky or childish, but if thatās what works for you, then thatās what you need to do. Putting a chore chart for yourself on the fridge is way less embarrassing than getting a pest problem because you lost track of chores.Ā
Tackle chores and cleaning in stages. Deep-cleaning my whole apartment in one day is simply not going to happen. Itās just not. So when itās time to deep-clean, I spread it out in stages - one day is the day to tackle the fridge, the next day is the bathrooms, the day after that is closet organization, etc. Breaking things into manageable chunks is how Iāve tackled everything from my graduate thesis to moving - I accept that I need to spread big tasks out across more days than other people do, and adapt accordingly.Ā
Audiobooks and podcasts are your friend. If Iām doing a task that doesnāt require a lot of concentration - like mopping, or dishes, or walking the dog - my mind wandersā¦ and it often wanders to another task I could be doing, causing me to abandon what Iām working on. Iāve found that the best way to prevent that is to keep my mind occupied. Throwing on some headphones and listening to an audiobook (which I rent from the Libby app for free!) has been a win-win situation for me; it helps me stay on-task, and it helps me reach my reading goal every year.Ā
ADHD can make it difficult to thrive in a world that wasnāt built for our brains. But when you find the right strategies, itās possible to accomplish your dreams and navigate the world in your own way.Ā
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