So okay. When you have ADHD, one thing your brain is very very good at doing is making connections between things- ideas, concepts, people, states of mind, etc. This can be a superpower- if most people wouldn’t think to make a connection between doing a) and b), and you make that connection, sometimes you can outthink people who aren’t as good at snapping things together.
The problem comes in when you start connecting things that you don’t need to connect, like “mild displeasure” with “OH GOD EVERYONE HATES ME” or “I feel a little crummy” with “I AM THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD”.
So when we’re talking about Life Skills/ADLs, you gotta use that power to make your life easier, not harder. You gotta connect things when it makes your life better and NOT do it when it makes your life harder.
Here’s an example of the habits:
I had a stretch of time where I was too sick to do much of anything. I could barely get out of bed to get to the bathroom. I was walking with a stick and generally just… le dead. And one of the problems I had was that I could almost never remember to take my morning meds.
I decided that the first time I got up to use the bathroom every day, I’d take my meds. That way I was taking them no matter how crap I felt- I had to get up to pee, like it or not- and it was getting done pretty early in the morning.
Getting up to pee meant taking my meds; they were the same thing. I didn’t have to remember to take my meds separately, or set an alarm to remind myself, or anything like that. I just did it as part of something I had to do anyway.
As time went on and I started getting better, I realized I could do the same thing with other parts of my routine. If you connect something you need to do with something you have to do, the thing you need to do gets done.
So like… say I’m already in the habit of getting up to take a shower. I’ve lived in crappy apartments my entire life, so the water takes a minute to warm up. Since my countertop dishwasher is right outside my bathroom door, I’ll take a second to empty and load the dishwasher while the water’s still heating up. It just becomes part of the routine of taking a shower.
You don’t have to think about Doing The Extra Thing. Connecting it to something you’re already doing means that, after a certain point, it just… happens, automatically.
The problem comes in when you start trying to do this with tasks- things that you only have to get done once, that already have a fair few steps to them. Especially if that task is has a lot of steps, has a time limit, or is otherwise Hard for you.
Figuring out tasks with dependencies (I have to do this before I can do this!) is already hard for us ADHDers. Sometimes what happens is that you bundle two tasks together- you decide you can’t do something until you’ve done the other thing, even though these tasks are in no way connected.
I have three packages I need to mail. One of them is a gift for a friend in Australia, which costs a lot of money; one of them is a package for my Etsy store which is Not Finished Yet, and one is a very late Christmas package.
I might decide, “hey, I need to mail all three of these packages together! I can’t mail any of these packages until I bundle all of them!” But it’s probably smarter to mail them separately! I don’t want to make my friend with the late Christmas package wait any more, so I can mail that first, and then mail the Australia package when I have the money and the Etsy package when it’s finished.
But if I insist that I have to bundle these tasks… I won’t get any of them done. I’ll be too stressed out about the Etsy package not being done to mail the other two packages, and then I will run out of money for the Australia package, and the Christmas package will not get sent til Labour Day.
If you’re stressed out about a task with a lot of steps, sometimes it’s worth it to check and make sure you’re not bundling multiple tasks together. Can you do the thing without doing the thing that comes before? Do you have to do the other thing immediately after?
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