Can you describe some of your coping mechanisms? I've been really struggling w/ ADHD over the past year. It's hindered professional and personal goals but seems virtually impossible to fix.
- I try to get myself to do recurring things at a specific time. It's too hard to wake up at say 7:00 a.m. The reason it's hard it because I forget to set an alarm clark. Instead I'd cope by just making sure I get a job where I don't have to be there before a certain time, and that time is after I'd naturally wake up.
- When I need to do something I on a recurring basis, I try to make the task visible. Like living a toothbrush lying by the sink, putting vitamins in a 7-day pill thing for the week, etc.
- I have have 11 bank accounts, each with a single purpose, and I have automatic transfers set up between all of them (it's not perfect, but it's pretty good). I prevent overdrawing a checking account by using a pre-paid debit card that won't let me take the balance below zero. When I have to buy something that requires a tip, where the tip will be subtracted from the bill later, I pay with a credit card and then immediately send a payment from the debit card to the credit card. I pay all my bills on the day I get paid, so I don't have to remember to do it later.
- I embrace trying new things, because if I'm wired to be attracted to shiny objects, I might as well find a way to enjoy them!
- lately I've been exercising a lot, and that seems to help
- medication, which may or may not help, but it doesn't seem to be hurting
- I plan as few things as possible, so I have less to remember
> It's too hard to wake up at say 7:00 a.m. The reason it's hard it because I forget to set an alarm clark.
That's only true if waking up at 7am is the exception rather than the rule. I've found that morning is by FAR my most productive hours, so I need to wake up early.
I bought a cheap, battery powered alarm clock[1]. Opened it up and cut the part of plastic pieces of the snooze buttons (on top) so they can't push the actual button underneath. Set alarm for 7am while it's open (the minute and hour buttons double as snooze, so we need to disable them, too).
This provides the three essentials of a functional alarm clock:
1. It's hard to change the time.
It's hard to enforce an early bedtime if you know you can always push back your alarm a bit. And it's hard to resist doing that when you know how tired you'll be in the morning.
Enforcing a wake-up time puts the right incentives in place. When I don't get enough sleep, my thought becomes "Why did I stay up so late, again?" instead of "Why didn't I let myself sleep in?". Making it a pain to change the time of the alarm provides enough time delay to ask yourself whether this is really what you want to be doing.
2. It can't be snoozed
Snoozing is terrible. It makes your body temperature drop back to sleeping levels, which makes it even harder to get out of bed next time. It also lets you waste away the morning with the assurance that you won't fall asleep and miss the time sensitive thing in a few hours. No snooze forces you to start your day immediately.
3. It's not on your phone[2]
Charge your phone away from your bed to avoid mindless browsing when you wake up. Better to start your day thinking about what you will actually do. A proactive start sets you up for fewer reactive distractions.
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[1] It's a generic model that can be purchased through many brands. I did a quick Amazon search to find the model; this was the first result I found: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B015MDVZI0/
>> This provides the three essentials of a functional alarm clock...
All good points. In my case, I left out the part about how I don't want a regular bedtime. When I have tried to sell myself on the idea of a bed time, I found it too hard to commit to the idea. Instead I usually just go to bed when I start feeling sleepy, which in typically in the 9p to 12a range.
If you want to cope without medication, you need to exercise a lot. The theory is that your dopamine levels are too low, and you need to boost them somehow. That's why medication tends to work for a lot of people.
Try to get exercise every day. Try to get intense exercise 2-3 times a week. Work your body to exhaustion, and your quality of sleep will improve as well.
Eat lots of protein and fat, and treat sugar like a toxin.
Other people report meditation helps, I suspect it probably would.
When things are going well in my life, meditation works. It makes it better. I am able to calm myself down deliberately, I am able to focus deliberately.
When ADD is acting up, I am not able to meditate.
Going to second the exercise advice. If I can get it started (just get out the door) I am always greatly rewarded.
* Have a calendar at hand everywhere -- on your computer, on your phone, everywhere. Enter stuff into it immediately. Live and die by the calendar, because you will never remember things on your own.
* Know what you're aiming to do on a day. Maybe you can cope with a to-do list, but speaking for myself they feel oppressive, like I am judging myself for all the things I've failed to do. But you can keep one thing in mind.
* Email yourself! I bat tasks back and forth between my home and work emails, based on where I can act on them.
* Exercise. It helps with a lot of things and research suggests it helps with ADHD as well.
* It's the morning. You've made coffee. You should be preparing to do some exercise. Don't open the laptop or phone. I know you're going to "just check". Don't. Don't start, you won't stop.
* When you learn about something that distracts you easily, either give up the addiction or accept the cost. I've pissed away thousands of hours of my life on websites like this one. I have mixed feelings about what I gained and lost. Right now I am noticing that Slack is becoming a problem for me.
* Read books. Physical books lack the ability to open tabs or follow links.
* Have times of day when you ignore things. At work I generally ignore messages on my phone. At home I ignore emails from work. In particular, there is no way for my work to reach me on my phone. No email, no slack, nothing.
* Work in pairs! This has been phenomenal for me.
* Do you take shorter-acting medication, like I do? Set an alarm for the doses you need later in the day. Left to my own devices I can easily sail past 2pm and then at 4pm wonder why the hellSQUIRREL I can't conCLANGcentrate on my wWIKIPEDIAork.
* You will struggle with impulse buys. Rehearse in your mind what it will be like when you get the thing. Think about the regret of having given into the impulse. Even a few seconds of delay can break it.
There are probably other coping mechanisms I don't realise are coping mechanisms.
These are not enough by themselves. Not even close. Almost every one of these is only possible because I am taking ritalin, and every one of them is necessary because ritalin can't do everything by itself.
* Routine! Having a reliable routine means I am never lost for what I should be doing or where I should be. I don't organise because I am prone to perfectly planning everything -- I organise because I'm dysfunctional without it. For example: every Friday is laundry day. Anything that misses the Friday slot has to wait for next Friday.
* Don't stock your favourite foods. Everyone lives with temptations, but ADHD makes it that much harder to resist. I have a number of foods which I love and which I simply do not have in my home. No chocolate, no peanut butter, no bread, no pasta. I have these occasionally and as a treat. But if they are around they will get eaten. So I just don't keep them.
* Don't know your passwords. Use a program like keepass. If you know the passwords for sites and apps, you will log into them from more places.
* Go to an office to work, whatever "office" means to you. Make the hours regular. Try to create a distinct physical separation. The difference makes it easier to enforce rules about what you can do when.
* You see a topic on reddit, hackernews etc that you deeply care about. Don't open it. Don't read the comments. You'll struggle to stay out and -- as you can see from my comments elsewhere under this post -- struggle to control your emotions. Just stay away. That's what I should've done with this one.
* Don't take breaks if you're making forward progress. People say to take breaks, but in my experience it pretty much ensures you will derail the rest of your time. Right now, for example, I'm in about the 4th hour of a 5 minute break.
* Do your best on sleep hygiene. Being tired weakens your ability to resist impulse still further. You will say and do more things you'll wish you hadn't.
* Get a filing cabinet. Add folders. Get stuff off your desk as fast as you can. Empty your email inbox as completely as you can.
* Subject to your finances, pay your bills ASAP. You will forget them. Or worse: forget them, remember them, feel stressed about forgetting them, then forget them, over and over until they're paid.
Between ADHD, anxiety and depression, just being alive is exhausting. But I have gotten better at playing through the basic levels over time.
WRT emptying the inbox as completely as you can: Unsubscribing everything you can that you receive e-mail is a big deal. I don't even care if you're a fan of the product or blog, unsubscribe from the mailing lists. Just do it. You won't appreciate it initially, but give it about two weeks. It's like the TiVo effect: you don't realize how nice it is until you have let the process incubate for a period of time.
Combined with how well anti-spam has been working for e-mail I am amazed at how useful e-mail has become again. There was a time when I would have received 30-50 "extra" e-mails a week that I would have to spend micro-calories ignoring until I decided to clean the inbox. If you can keep them out of the inbox to begin with, do it.
Nothing, but it's difficult to buy them in single servings.
If I buy a block of chocolate or a jar of peanut butter, I won't be eating them regularly. I'll be eating them that day. I will feel shitty afterwards, I will berate my lack of willpower, blah blah blah, none of which changes that it did happen.
- Having some constant amount of structure in my life. Always having some activity schedule for 945 am and attending it without exception has forced discipline on my day as early as possible. In college, I chose one class to attend per quarter and always showed up. If I can fixate on one thing to center a schedule around, I find keeping plans much easier.
- Exercising for 30 minutes or more everyday, as early in the day as possible. This is key to calming me down and also gives me measurable goals that I can pursue and achieve
- Medication. As much as I hate admitting to myself that I need to be medicated, I think staying on my prescription has served me well
- Automating as many important things as possible. Credit card payments are the biggest thing here for me, I don't trust myself to remember recurring events on a horizon longer than a week so being able to automate utility bill pay (could backfire, but better than slipping up) and credit card balance pay off has been a relief
- If you're a developer, pair program as much as possible. The pressure of needing to show someone else that you're competent gets to you. You have someone else to call you out when you're going on a tangent that you'd walk back a few hours later.
All of these strategies that everyone has listed in response are making me wonder if I might be a bit ADHD. I've implemented a lot of these myself without any diagnosis, just because they seemed to help me with things I found difficult. Lots of other people, including coworkers and my spouse, don't seem to understand that I seriously can't handle certain things without these mechanisms.
Its only been alluded to, a time or too, but never explicitly stated (unless I missed it). But, sleep. Getting >=7 (preferably 8+) hours is paramount. (Also, just about everything else listed in this thread).
