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Oct 9, 2019
Listened to all 3 immediately upon learning they were up from the ADHD Rewired community. Then, repeated... seriously around 3x each or more. Because, while they are short, they are packed with good info - some I've known about and some not (but regardless of knowing some, it still seems to take about 45x of relearning to *get* it). And also, ADHD...get distracted, lose track, rewind, start over. 🙄😂
So, thanks dude! Well worth the wait! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼💯
Episode | Date |
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The Joy of Saying No with Natalie Lue
3022
Hey team, this week I’m talking with Natalie Lue about her book, The Joy of Saying No. Natalie is the author of the popular relationship and self-esteem blog Baggage Reclaim, as well as the host of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions podcast. With ADHD, we can often end up as people-pleasers, always putting other people’s needs above our own. And while being helpful is a great trait, we also need to make sure that we’re taking time for ourselves as well. In our conversation today, Natalie and I discuss how to get out of people pleasing and work on setting up boundaries to help keep us on track with what we really want to be doing.
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Mar 20, 2023 |
Using Our Tools
1029
Hey team, this week we’re going to be talking about using our tools but, more specifically, getting back into the habit after we’ve stopped using them. ADHD has the tendency to make us consistently inconsistent, and that can lead us to finding ourselves having dropped habits, routines, and tactics that had been helping us. Sometimes we need to find new habits, but sometimes we need to look back and figure out why we stopped doing all those things that were helping us get through the day.
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Mar 13, 2023 |
Cleaning, Organizing, and Decluttering w/Roxie Martin
2202
Hey team, this week I’m talking with one of my favorite people Roxie Martin - I got to know Roxie back when I was doing ADDmin work for the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability groups. Since then we’ve become fast friends and frequently check in with each other. Recently we were talking about Roxie’s decluttering coaching, and I thought this would be an excellent topic for the show because cleaning and decluttering are things that just always seem to come up. In this episode, we talk about the difference between cleaning, decluttering, and organizing - we get into the specifics of how we can be more effective in our cleaning, how we can better approach declutting, and a whole lot more. |
Mar 06, 2023 |
Daylight Saving & Circadian Rhythms
1103
Hey team, this week we’re going to be talking about the upcoming change to Daylight Saving Time in the US - but don’t worry, if you’re not one of those places that experience a spring time-switch, there is still going to be a lot of great stuff we cover in this episode. Our natural sleeping and wake times are controlled by our circadian rhythm, so we’re going to be discussing that in some detail and what we can do to help get ready for the time change so that it doesn’t hit us like a ton of bricks.
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Feb 27, 2023 |
Burnout and Boundaries w/Skye Rapson
2569
Hey team - this week I’m bringing you a conversation I had with Skye Rapson about burnout and boundaries. Skye is the founder of Unconventional Organization - a New Zealand-based coaching group that specializes in online coaching. They focus on providing research-backed and strengths-based ADHD support to help you get unstuck in your life. You may remember Skye from a previous episode last year, but we had such a fun conversation then that we decided to have another round. In this discussion, we drill into what burnout is, how to work on getting out of burnout, and then also how setting boundaries can help us stay out of burnout in the first place. And really, this is a fantastic episode to help capstone this series on slowing down. |
Feb 20, 2023 |
Slowing Down: Activation Energy
986
Hey team, we’re back at it for another episode about slowing down, but this time we’re looking at activation energy, which is the idea we’re going to need to have a certain amount of energy available to get started on a task. When we’re getting ready to get to the next thing on our to-do list, sometimes it can feel like it’s just too much, and getting started is really going to be the hardest part. Activation energy is that minimum threshold for us to get going on that thing, and some days it just isn’t there, and so today, we’re going to be looking at ways that we make getting started a little bit easier.
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Feb 13, 2023 |
Slowing Down: Task Management (Memory)
1065
Hey team, this week we’re going to keep up our discussion of slowing down, but we’re going to be focusing on memory - well, kind of. With ADHD, it can be hard for us to remember all of the things that we need to do, so what comes into play is the good old to-do list. Because when we’re talking about memory, what we’re really talking about in this context is task management. How we’re going to remember the things we want to do and how we’re going to go about doing those things.
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Feb 06, 2023 |
Slowing Down: Time Management
864
Hey team, this week we’re going to be talking about slowing down. One of the worst parts of ADHD is that we often feel like we have to do all of the things right now. That if we don’t jump from task to task to task, we’re just not going to get anything done. We live a life where we only have two modes, doing nothing and super speed. It’s exhausting, and we often find ourselves missing important things because we can’t keep up that pace. In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about how we can work on slowing down and trying to find a more comfortable middle ground between those two modes.
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Jan 30, 2023 |
Important But Not Urgent (IBNU)
871
I’ve been thinking about the phrase, “I want to hit the ground running,” and how that’s kind of how many of us try and start the year. I know that’s how I felt - and honestly, in that first week of the year, I was doing great… but then I got covid. That really threw a snag into things. With ADHD we tend to like to go fast with things; we don’t want to wait around. But that’s usually not actually our best strategy. Going from one urgent task to the next can keep us motivated, but it can make it hard to get to anything that isn’t urgent. In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring how we use urgency as a drive to get more done but how we also need to learn to make time for all those important but not urgent tasks.
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Jan 23, 2023 |
What’s life like without ADHD?
785
Hey team, this week we have another listener question: Hi there. I just wanted to say thank you so much. I was riding my bike while listening to your podcast and that really helped my brain to be able to digest the information and I was audibly saying, “Yes. Right. Okay.” And it was like I was talking to you, so I just wanted to say thank you so much. I'm not even sure if I have a question, but today I did Google, “What's it like for people who don't have ADHD?”And in the three years of you having this podcast, forgive me if that's one that maybe I haven't listened to yet and completely ignore this and just take the compliment and the celebratory win of you are really affecting people's lives. I know that you've affected mine, and I know people have asked me, Hey, continue with your podcast, but because of some of the things I'm learning and managing with my own executive functioning, I haven't been as consistent with my own podcast. So it's really inspirational to know that you are out here doing it and honestly had such a wonderful structure and the music, and I'm like, wow, he really understands. He's really someone who actually understands what it's like in the brain and in the mind. So it was just such a pleasant experience to have found this podcast and I'm just so, so grateful. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Thank you so much for the kind words about the podcast and you know what, that isn’t an episode I’ve done - it isn’t even a question I’ve ever thought about that much, but it is an incredibly intriguing one. Often when we’re talking about ADHD we’re talking about what it’s like to have ADHD, but from my standpoint, well I already know what that’s like, so what would it be like if I didn’t have it? So that is the question we’re going to be looking at in this episode as well as looking into the terms neurotypical and neurodivergent as well as getting into a little bit about masking. |
Jan 16, 2023 |
2023
933
Hey team, Happy New Year! I’m excited to get going into 2023, but I also don’t want to just be doing everything by the seat of my pants, so it’s time to do a little planning and think about how we want this year to go. In this episode, I will be talking about rest and planning and getting into some of the things I specifically want to do with the podcast in 2023. |
Jan 09, 2023 |
Fresh Start: The Deep Clean (Rebroadcast)
894
One of the things I never quite got a grasp on is seasons... I mean I grew up in Hawaii and we basically had hot and not quite as hot. But this comes up for me because technically we're still in Spring right now so I guess this could still be a Spring Cleaning episode - officially Summer starts on the Solstice in June on the 20th... so I made in by like a week if you're listening to this when it comes out. Regardless of if this is Spring Cleaning or not, cleaning can be a great way to signal the start of something new. We all get used to the mess in our space and freshening things up can not only signal the start of something new but also shift our mindset. Today I'll be exploring the benefits of cleaning, how we can update our space, some tips on accountability, and then get into a few of the specific things that you can do.
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Jan 02, 2023 |
Listener Questions: Loose Ends
1001
Hey team, this week we’ve got a listener question: "My name is Mike and I have a question about wrapping things up. I have a really difficult time on the last lap of projects, or sometimes there is like a secret lap after what I thought was the last lap, which, you know, sometimes depending on the project includes like sending thank you notes or thank you emails or a bunch of stuff where I sort of feel like I already spent all of the dopamine and executive function of the rewards of a project. And then once I sort of feel like I reached that finish line, I realized there are a bunch of little loose ends that need tidying and I have a really hard time getting to them cuz it feels like it's over. Okay. Thank you very much."
In today’s episode, we’ll be looking at how we can clean up some of these loose ends and also how we can avoid getting into some of these situations. |
Dec 26, 2022 |
Understanding Nutrition and ADHD with Aleta Storch
2207
Hey team, this week I’m talking with Aleta Storch of Wise Heart Nutrition, a small nutrition practice made up of 3 neurodivergent-affirming dietitians. She is a Registered Dietitian, Licensed Therapist, and a Body Trust Provider. Many of us with ADHD face many issues around eating and feeding ourselves - from things that can arise from choosing what to eat, when to eat, or just not having the executive function to get ourselves to eat. In our conversation today, Aleta and I talk about some of these issues surrounding ADHD and eating, such as interoception, meal planning, and issues surrounding executive function. We also discuss intuitive eating and how we can modify those ideas to fit in with our ADHD. |
Dec 19, 2022 |
Should we even be setting Goals?
682
Hey team, as we begin to get ready to roll into the new year, we’re going to be seeing a lot more about New Year’s Resolutions and goal setting - but we’re also going to be getting a lot of pushback articles as well. Articles telling us how setting goals is only setting us up for failure and what we need to do instead. And the question is, who do we believe? In this episode, we’re going to be examining some of the arguments against setting goals and also looking at what we might want to be doing instead and how we can combine that all into one overall theory.
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Nov 28, 2022 |
Energy Drinks
932
Hey team, in this week’s episode, we’re going to be diving into energy drinks… well, not literally, that would be sticky… and well, that amount of caffeine would probably be lethal. Anyways… Our topic for the week is energy drinks, how they affect us and as I just mentioned, that means we’re also going to be talking about caffeine.
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Nov 21, 2022 |
How to Perform a Weekly Review
975
Hey team, this week we’re talking about our weeks and how we can get more out of them with a weekly review. The idea behind a weekly review is that we’re looking back on how things went and using that to help us figure out how we want our next week to go. In this episode we’re going to go over the benefits of performing a weekly review, look at some of the ways to make doing it easier and then get into the nitty gritty of how to actually perform it.
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Nov 14, 2022 |
Emotional Regulation
815
Hey team, this week we’re getting emotional and talking about the relationship between ADHD and our emotions. While emotional dysregulation isn’t part of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, some studies have found that 70% of adults with ADHD exhibit emotional dysregulation. In this episode, we’ll get into why it isn’t part of the diagnosis, as well as examine what emotional regulation is and what we can do to help ourselves keep our cool a little bit better.
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Oct 31, 2022 |
Coping with your ADHD
934
Hey team, this week we’re talking about coping - our ability to cope with stressful situations but more specifically, how we can work on coping with our ADHD. When we’re coping with something, we’re trying to figure our way through a tough situation. When we’re trying to cope with our ADHD, it is often less about our emotional response (although that is important too) and how we’re using our problem-solving skills to alleviate some of our ADHD mishaps.
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Oct 24, 2022 |
ADHD Management: Sleep and Exercise
1126
All right, back on track with this series on Getting Started with ADHD Management, and this week we’re going to be focusing on some of the more physical areas that can really help us get our ADHD under control, and those are sleep and exercise. During the monthly ADHD reWired Live Q&A, we frequently get questions about what are the top things that we all do for our ADHD, and inevitably the answers come back as sleep and exercise. It’s just that important. And also, it’s understandably hard for us to follow through on. So in today’s episode, we’re going to be discussing why these things are so important for our ADHD management, but also, just as importantly, how we better follow through on our intentions of getting better sleep and exercising more.
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Oct 17, 2022 |
Three Years of Hacking Your ADHD
961
Hacking Your ADHD just passed the three-year mark, which I’m just amazed at. Amazed with having stuck with it, amazed with how the show has grown and amazed with my wonderful audience. It also feels like I was just doing the 2-year episode not so long go… you know, like 12 months ago or so. That’s the funny thing about time, it just keeps marching on regardless of how well we’re paying attention to it. For this year's anniversary episode, I decided that I’d take a look back at some of the things I’ve learned about ADHD over the last three years. I’m going to cover some of the a-ha’s and misinformation that I’ve had and seen - as well; I’ll be looking at how my views on trying to be neurotypical have changed and some of the ways I’ve learned to better embrace my ADHD. And, of course, I just want to mention that this episode is just touching on this topic of what I’ve learned because, well, it’s been a lot. And I also just want to take a quick second to thank everyone who has decided to join me on this ADHD journey. I truly appreciate having you along for the ride.
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Oct 10, 2022 |
Getting Started With Your ADHD Management Part 2
938
As I was finishing up my Getting Started episode I realized that if I had been talking to someone I’d also still have a ton of questions and feel like that episode really didn’t answer anything for me. Or rather I think I’d have felt like it didn’t answer the question I thought I had asked. Now to be fair to past me, while, yes, I kind of did that, but also when we’re talking about where to get started with our ADHD management we really don’t know those things but nonetheless those are really important things for us to hear. And I still think those are the place we should get started with our ADHD management, but I also know that there are other places that people are going to have questions about, so in this episode, I’m going to try addressing some of those, specifically, therapy, coaching, and accountability. I may even have to slap on part three to address some of the lifestyle changes that can be incredibly helpful for managing your ADHD. Again, as I mentioned in the last episode, ADHD is a spectrum disorder and we’re all going to be starting at our places. We’re all unique ADHD snowflakes and we’re all going to have our areas where our ADHD affects us the most.
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Oct 03, 2022 |
Getting Started With Your ADHD Management
1153
One of the questions that I’ve been getting a bit more frequently recently is just trying to understand where to get started with ADHD - and I think this is a question that a lot of us have because there is just so much out there on ADHD and it’s hard to know where even to begin thinking about what you might want to be doing. In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring this idea by first looking at some of the areas that ADHD entails, how that knowledge can boost your ability to manage your ADHD, and also take a look another look at the Wall of Awful.
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Sep 26, 2022 |
Listener Questions: Working from Home and Building Better Eating Habits
897
Hey team - thanks for sticking with me during my break and to everyone that filled out my survey a few weeks back. Your input was really incredibly kind and I’m excited to get back into the show. To get things going we’re going to come back at it with some listener questions - questions that I kind of let build up while I was on break, so I may be doing a few of these episodes to try and catch back up on things, although don’t be shy to drop a new question on me at hackingyouradhd.com/contact |
Sep 19, 2022 |
Energy Management: Spiritual Energy (Rebroadcast)
957
I know the term spiritual energy is going to throw a lot of people - so let's start off by getting clear on what I mean here. When I'm talking about spiritual energy I'm not talking about anything religious here, I'm simply referring to the idea that you have an energy reserve that you can tap into when you're doing something that matters. And specifically, something that matters to you - this doesn't have to be some higher calling type of idea. One thing that really illustrates the idea of digging deep into that energy reserve for me is when I'm doing something like weight lifting. As I get to the end of my set I can find myself flagging, I can feel like I'm not going to be able to push the bar the 3 more inches it needs to go to rack my bar - and yet I can have my spotter tell me "you've got this" and my brain hears that and I push just a little bit harder and I finish out. Where did that energy reserve come from? As far as I was concerned I was already pushing as hard as I could and yet, with just a few words I was able to find that motivation to push a little harder. Access to the human spirit isn't just limited to athletic endeavors. And our motivation to dip into this energy source often comes from doing meaningful work. Many people don’t recognize meaning and purpose as potential sources of energy, but when we're doing work that aligns with our values we are able to accomplish so much more. Today we're going to be looking at three areas that we can use to access our spiritual energy: living their core values in their daily behaviors, doing the work that we do best and enjoy the most, and allocating time and energy in our lives for the things we deem most important.
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Sep 12, 2022 |
Energy Management: Emotional Energy (Rebroadcast)
1000
Help me out by taking my podcast survey! Our emotions play a big role in our energy levels throughout the day. Just because we don't have a good way to measure them doesn't mean that we should write them off.
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Aug 29, 2022 |
Energy Management: Mental Energy (Rebroadcast)
995
Help me out by taking my podcast survey!
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Aug 22, 2022 |
Energy Management: Physical Energy (Rebroadcast)
1065
Before we get going here, I just want to make sure you know that I'm not a doctor, and while this episode is a lot about your health, it is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice. Just because I say something on this show doesn't necessarily mean it will be the best advice for you - be smart and be safe. And when in doubt always consult your doctor before changing your diet or exercise routine. When we think about our energy levels, our physical energy is what we tend to primarily think about. We think about being tired or just needing a quick pick me up to get through our day. And our physical energy tends to be a basis for all our other types of energy (quick reminder those were: mental, emotional and spiritual along with our physical energy) - when we're physically exhausted it's hard for us to draw on our other wells of energy. Have a bad night's sleep? You might be feeling that brain fog all-day - blood sugar low? You might be more likely to snap at a family member over something not that important. We need our foundation of physical energy to power our bodies and to let us fully engage with our other energy sources. In today's episode, we're going to be covering the three main areas that we get our physical energy from: sleep, diet, and exercise. Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/physicalenergy
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Aug 15, 2022 |
Creativity and ADHD with Saman Kesh
3240
Today we’ve got a bit of a different episode coming your way - in this episode, I talk with award-winning director Saman Kesh. Kesh is known for his narrative music video work with artists such as Basement Jaxx, Calvin Harris, and Placebo. In our broad-ranging conversation, we talk about the creative process and having ADHD, medication, therapy, and a whole host of other topics. This episode is a bit more of the practical side of managing ADHD, and there are great tips littered throughout the episode. |
Jul 25, 2022 |
Celebrating Your Wins (Rebroadcast)
957
I want to start this episode off by saying that this is something I'm bad at - and not in the sense that what I do to celebrate is bad or that I'm not celebrating the small wins throughout my day. It's bad in the sense that I almost entirely skip the whole thing. Recently this podcast tipped past half a million downloads. That's a pretty big milestone and is pretty indicative of how successful this endeavor has been. But it was barely a blip for me. I didn't want to acknowledge the success because it can be hard for me to acknowledge when I do things well. So this episode is as much for me as it is for all of you and in this episode, we're going to be exploring what it means to have small wins and also how we can celebrate them.
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Jul 18, 2022 |
Too Much
986
Over the last few weeks, I have hit a number of points where it all just felt like too much - now there are a number of things that have contributed to this, but one of the keys always behind when I get overwhelmed is doing too much. This is despite the fact that even when I have too much on my plate it always feels like I should be doing more. That I could squeeze in just a few more things and then… well then I’d probably also still be trying to add more things to do. In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring why doing more isn’t usually the best thing for us to pursue and how doing less can actually help us actually accomplish the things we really want to do.
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Jun 27, 2022 |
Unconventional Organisation with Skye Rapson
2218
Hey team, today I’m talking with Skye Rapson of Unconventional Organisation, a New Zealand-based coaching group that specializes in online coaching. They focus on providing research-backed and strengths-based ADHD support to help you get unstuck in your life. In our conversation, we cover a lot of different areas, including one that I’ve really been interested in recently, systems. We get into what systems are and how important it is to tailor these systems to our own ADHD and then how we can even do that. |
Jun 20, 2022 |
The Wandering Mind and Hyperfocus (Rebroadcast)
1390
One of the thoughts I kept coming back to while working on my episode's on multitasking was what it really meant to be multitasking. I settled on using the idea of doing two cognitive tasks at the same time, but that left me with another quandary - what about when I'm doing one thing and just thinking about doing something else. Surely just thinking about something else wouldn't count as multitasking. But still... There have absolutely been times when I've been thinking about something else and found myself getting engrossed in my thoughts and losing track of conversations or what I was doing. Clearly, my thoughts can play a big role in what I'm doing and if my focus is somewhere else then it certainly isn't here in the present. Today we're going to explore what our brain is doing here - how our thoughts can kind of run away with us. We'll also be looking at hyperfocus and then bringing together how these things relate.
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Jun 13, 2022 |
The Myth of Lazy (Rebroadcast)
1038
In last week's episode, I talked about the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap and how it can be hard for us to really remember or predict how our state is going to affect our actions - one of the consequences of this is that we often label ourselves as lazy when we didn't do something. Our cold state brain tells us that we should have just done the thing, all the while neglecting how we felt. This disconnect is what leads to a lot of our self-judgment and in particular, those of us with ADHD often find ourselves labeling ourselves as lazy. Why didn't I walk the dogs? I was feeling lazy - or maybe I feel overwhelmed with work or maybe I couldn't find the leashes. When we don't do something it's easy to label it as lazy, but often that doesn't tell us what was really going on. Today we're going to be exploring the idea of lazy and how what we might want to start looking at it a bit differently. |
Jun 06, 2022 |
Why We Make Decisions We Don't Understand (Rebroadcast)
848
Why do we make bad decisions in the moment? We've all done things that we regret doing right? yeah me, neither - but let's say hypothetically there was something that we regretted doing - something that we said or did that we feel like doesn't really reflect on as a person. Why is it I can have the best of intentions and still when it comes time I still make the wrong decision? Today we're going to be exploring the hot-cold empathy gap and why it can be so difficult for us to predict what we're actually going to do in the moment.
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May 30, 2022 |
ADHD, Psychology and Finance with Rick Webster of Rena-Fi
2598
Today I’m talking with Rick Webster of Rena-Fi - a psychology-based financial education platform. Rena-Fi provides ADHD-friendly ideas, articles, and materials to help with managing your finances. In our conversation today though, Rick and I cover a lot of ground outside of finances as well. Of course, we do talk about some ADHD financials as well, including that dreaded ADHD tax. I had a lot of fun during this interview and I hope you’ll enjoy it too. |
May 23, 2022 |
ADHD Success with MJ
1554
This week I had the pleasure of talking with MJ Siemens from the ADHD Diversified Podcast and what a conversation we had. In it, we talk a lot about the imposter syndrome that often accompanies success with ADHD and why we often don’t feel successful despite hitting all those metrics we were supposed to. We also talk a lot about how we can work on reframing our views on success so that we can feel good about all those things we accomplish. |
May 16, 2022 |
Self-Diagnosis
1009
Self-diagnosis has become a hot-button topic in the mental health world as social media has ramped up many people’s awareness of many of these conditions. But how valid is that self-diagnosis? Some people argue it's dangerous while others argue that self-diagnosis is as valid as a formal diagnosis. In today’s episode, we’re going to wade into this minefield and see what grains of truth we can pull out and where this tool is useful and where it isn’t. |
May 09, 2022 |
Executive Function
1031
Executive function is a hot topic around ADHD - and more specifically how we often have a deficit in it. One of the trickiest parts about executive function is that there isn’t a universally accepted model of executive functions - I know that feels kind of surprising because it seems like something that is talked about as much as executive functions is that we’d have something that is generally agreed upon. So for this episode, we’re going to be focusing on Russell Barkley’s self-regulation model - although I’ll certainly be pulling from other sources as well. I really like Dr. Barkley’s model of self-regulation, because in many ways we can actually look at ADHD as a disorder of self-regulation itself. And that’s exactly what Dr. Barkley proposes, that executive function and self-regulation are the same thing and that with ADHD we have a deficit in our executive functions and therefore a deficit in our self-regulation. As such, I’ll be using executive function and self-regulation interchangeably throughout the episode to help emphasize that they are the same thing. In this episode, I’m going to go into exactly what executive function and self-regulation are, how we use them and how we can get back on track when we find ourselves missing some of that self-regulation.
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May 02, 2022 |
Retrain Your Brain with Ben Ahrens
2294
Today I’m talking with Ben Ahrens the CEO and Co-founder re-origin which is a science-based, self-directed neuroplasticity training program. Ben was a former trainer and semi-professional surfer who became bedridden with Chronic Neurological Lyme Disease for over 3 years. In his search to help heal himself, Ben sought out and consulted with top neuroscientists and cutting-edge doctors from all over the world. His successful recovery led him to working with these same neuroscientists to develop the program that became re-origin. In my talk with Ben today we discuss how we can start with just one breath, the power of changing our beliefs and how important it is to embrace the process. |
Apr 25, 2022 |
Listener Questions: Doom Box Follow-Up
909
My friend and colleague, Bob Dietrich, is interviewing me and over 40 other amazing experts on The ADHD Toolbox LIVE! This FREE video series is packed with tools and strategies for overcoming overwhelm, anxiety, procrastination, executive function challenges, and much more. This is a must-have for any parent looking for solutions for their child. Join for FREE here |
Apr 18, 2022 |
Success with ADHD: Finding Balance with Brendan Mahan
1458
This week I’m coming in with my second episode in the success with ADHD series and I’m talking with Brendan Mahan. Brendan is a dynamic ADHD/Executive Function consultant, coach, and speaker. And he runs the ADHD Essentials Podcast on this network. Brendan is also probably one of the people I quote the most when I’m doing this podcast because he just has so many great ideas about ADHD and how to approach those issues. You may remember him from when I interviewed him a few years ago about The Wall of Awful - if you haven’t heard that episode go check it out, it’s a concept that’s definitely worth knowing about. In our conversation today Brendan and I talk about what makes us successful with ADHD and how we can reframe some of those ideas to fit with who we really are and how one of the biggest keys is finding that balance in our life and our work. |
Apr 11, 2022 |
An Even Deeper Dive Into Multitasking
1246
To recap from last week we learned that are there are three kinds of multitasking - Classic Multitasking where we're trying to perform more than one task at the same time. Rapid task switching where we're just going from one task to another in quick succession. And interrupted task switching where we're interrupted from one task and switch what we're doing without finishing what we were doing. We also covered how we're more likely to try and multitask with things we're familiar with but how that actually creates more of a cognitive penalty from breaking up our tasks and how we often just don't realize how much concentration we're using to complete a task - as evidenced with how dangerous texting and driving is. This week we're going to be exploring more of the cognitive and biological costs of multitasking, then get into some specific kinds of multitasking that can really drain us and we'll finish up with some ways we can work on reducing the amount of multitasking we do.
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Apr 04, 2022 |
Deep Dive Into Multitasking
1167
This week we're going to be deep-diving into multitasking - this is one of those topics that I frequently mention in episodes, but I've never featured before. Not because it doesn't deserve its own episode, but because multitasking is actually a fairly complicated issue and is going to take a bit of time to dissect. So this is actually just going to be my first episode in a series on multitasking and we'll really try and dig into the nitty-gritty of it. In today's episode, we're going to be talking a bit about what multitasking is and what it isn't - then we'll work on some ways to really drive home the time costs of multitasking and well finish up by looking at some of the ways that multitasking can actually put us in harm's way.
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Mar 28, 2022 |
Building Mindset and Fitness with Karen Broda
2090
In this week’s episode, I’m talking with Karen Broda, a Personal Trainer & Wellness Coach who helps ADHD-ers look & feel good naked! Her purpose is to have you thrive in your body, both physically & mentally so you can show up with confidence every day. The focus of her work is on uncovering & busting past the self-sabotaging beliefs that are causing you to get in your own way. Karen is a Pro Bikini Athlete, Circus artist & instructor, & lives in a Tiny Home she built herself! In our conversation today we discuss the importance of mindset, some of the ways we can reframe our views on exercise, and we also get into how we can set up systems that will keep us exercising even on those days when we don’t want to.
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Mar 21, 2022 |
Get Ready for Spring with Seasonal Planning
1049
One of the ideas that I’ve been playing with lately is how to go about my planning in a more natural way or perhaps a better phrase would be functional, because while I love the idea of planning it doesn’t always work out how I want to it to. And to be clear, I don’t mean that my plans don’t work out, what I’ve been grappling with is that often when I do my planning I’ve failing to do it in a way that encompasses both my professional and personal life. I think this is an aspect of layering on my personal planning over my professional planning - but really I should be doing it the other way around. It makes more sense for me to build my planning around things like saying when my kids are in and out of school. It should be based on what’s going on in my life around me. And so it dawned on me that one of the ways I could adjust this planning was to focus that planning that was seasonal - because with each season there are definite changes in how I go about my life. And so today we’re going to be exploring how we can look at planning with those seasonal changes in mind.
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Mar 07, 2022 |
Success with ADHD ft. Eric Tivers
677
This marks my 100th episode of Hacking Your ADHD and I’ve been thinking about how to celebrate this milestone for a while now. And along with this milestone, I’ve also been thinking about what it means to be successful with ADHD. In my initial ponderings I thought that this would be a fairly easy question to ask, but I also found that I was failing to come up with any easy answers. So I thought that I’d reach out to my fellow podcasters in the ADHD reWired Podcast network and see what they thought… and then it occurred to me that I run a podcast and I should leverage the format. And in my initial thoughts, this was just going to be one episode where I spliced all the interviews together... but I enjoyed my conversations with everyone else so much that I decided just giving each person a couple of minutes wasn’t going to work and so now this has developed into a series. Which means that we’ll be starting off this series celebrating a hundred episodes of Hacking Your ADHD with a conversation with Eric Tivers of ADHD reWired. |
Mar 07, 2022 |
Listener Question - Doom Boxes
902
In this week’s episode we’re going to be diving into a listener question about cleaning and specifically about doom boxes - and if you don’t know what those are don’t worry you’ll find out soon enough... and I’m sure you probably already have some around that house.
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Feb 28, 2022 |
How to Handle Low Capacity Days
1095
One of the ideas that I was presented with during the pandemic was that of surge capacity - this is the idea that we all have reserves of emotional energy that we can call on when we’re in a crisis situation. And this was an important idea for people to grasp as the pandemic wore on because people were finding themselves depleted. Despite having been able to handle everything they eventually came to a wall where they didn’t have any more to give. This is an important concept, but not specifically what I want to talk about today because what I want to talk about is what I gleaned from this idea. That we because we have surge capacity, we also have a normal capacity. This seems like a fairly obvious point, but also one I think that a lot of us with ADHD often overlook. Despite everything I know about planning it is still far too easy for me to try and squeeze too much into one day. And this isn’t just in terms of how much time I have or how much energy I have, but just how much I can reasonably take on. In today’s episode, we’re going to be exploring this idea of capacity and how it can impact our ability to get anything done. We be looking at what we can do on these days and how we can actually use them to help ourselves to recover.
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Feb 21, 2022 |
Your Brain’s Not Broken with Dr. Tamara Rosier
2671
Hey team, I’ve got a real treat for you today - as I mentioned earlier in the year I’m going to try and include a few more interviews on this podcast, and this month I’m bringing you my conversation with Dr. Tamara Rosier. I just had a blast talking with her and so this episode is a bit longer than I normally go simply because I didn’t want to stop the interview. Dr. Rosier is an ADHD coach and runs the ADHD Center of West Michigan. In this interview, we talk about her book Your Brain’s Not Broken: Strategies for Navigating Your Emotions and Life with ADHD. There is just so much good stuff in this interview we talk about emotional regulation, energy management, and a lot of the funny quirks of having ADHD. If you like the stuff I have on this podcast your honestly going to love her book and I think you’ll really enjoy this interview as well. Support me on Patreon |
Feb 14, 2022 |
How to do Hard Things - Part 3
1082
All right, I’m back from my little break and we’re just heading right back into the hard stuff - or at least how we can start getting it checked off our to-do list. Today we’re going to be looking at some more ways that we can adjust our mindset around doing hard things and also looking at some of the reasons we might be choosing to do certain hard things. Then we’ll finish up this series by digging into a few of the more concrete things that you can do so that you can tackle those hard things.
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Feb 07, 2022 |
How To Apply What You Learn
1125
One of the questions that I frequently get is how people can actually apply what they're learning - in this podcast and from all the other things we learn. I know this is a particularly pernicious problem for ADHD because often we see things that we think would really make a difference in our lives, and yet we can't seem to get ourselves to apply these ideas. Today we're going to explore how we can start working on getting a better understanding of what we're learning, why we might want to start limiting what we're consuming and how to solidify those learnings into our lives.
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Jan 31, 2022 |
Give Yourself Some Slack: Perfectly Imperfect
1208
One of the reasons that many of us have trouble giving ourselves slack is because of our internalized perfectionism - it's something that controls our workflow and prevents us from ever taking a break because in our head we know we could be doing more. Even during the writing of this episode I had to fight off some of this internal perfectionism - this episode wasn't supposed to be entirely about perfectionism, but it was going to take a lot more than just one section to really tackle the topic - so now what was just going to be a two-part episode on giving yourself some slack is a series - and had I come into this knowing it was going to be a series I would have definitely approached it differently, but that's okay, it doesn't have to be perfect. In today's episode, we're going to be exploring the idea of how perfection acts as a coping mechanism - and why that's not a great thing. We'll also be looking at some of the different types of perfectionism and then we'll be exploring some of the ways that we can start to work on conquering our own perfectionism.
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Jan 24, 2022 |
How to do Hard Things - Part 2
990
Last week we began this series on how to do hard things and looked specifically at how we define hard things and ways that we can work through some of our problems so that they can become more manageable. This week we’re going to be continuing that conversation but with a lens that focuses on why it can be so hard for us to even attempt to do hard things. We’ll be looking at some of the misconceptions we have about doing hard things as well looking at how acknowledging the hard things we’ve done in the past can help us do more hard things in the present.
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Jan 17, 2022 |
How to do Hard Things - Part 1
1023
One of my favorite sayings from Brendan Mahan of the ADHD Essentials podcast is that ADHD is life on Hard Mode. The executive dysfunction that comes with ADHD makes everything just a little bit more difficult. From doing the dishes to filling out tax returns we find ourselves needing to put in more effort than our neurotypical peers. But what’s important for us to remember is that while these things can absolutely be harder for us to do, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Today we’re going to be exploring this idea of doing hard things - what makes something difficult and how we can work on moving ourselves through that process.
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Jan 10, 2022 |
The Power of Accountability with Sharon Pope of Shelpful
1911
In this episode I'm talking with the CEO and founder of the company Shelpful, Sharon Pope - we've all had times when we needed a little help getting ourselves to follow a routine and sometimes we don't have the accountability in our lives to make that happen. Shelpful is all about solving that problem of getting that daily accountability. The program works through text messaging but you know what, I'm getting ahead of myself - this is all in the interview. |
Jan 03, 2022 |
The Dog and The Dragon
1035
As I’m getting ready to head into the holidays I thought I’d deliver you something a bit different in your podcast player - a story. I don’t want to give anything away so get snuggled in and prepare yourself for The Dog and The Dragon by Brandon Sanderson. |
Dec 20, 2021 |
Caffeine Deep Dive
863
Trimethylxanthine is the world's most popular psychoactive drug - for many caffeine is such a ubiquitous substance that calling it a drug seems like a misnomer. How could something so widely used that has so few regulations around it be a drug? But a drug is simply a chemical substance that affects our nervous system function and can result in changes to our perception, mood, cognition, and behavior. I feel like caffeine ticks the box pretty well on all those accounts. In today's episode, we'll be exploring how caffeine works - some of its benefits and negatives and then we'll be looking at what we know about how caffeine and ADHD mix.
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Dec 13, 2021 |
Comorbidity and Depression
880
Hey team, today's episode is coming in a bit more seriously than some of my others so I just wanted to give you all a head's up. In today's episode, we have listener questions dealing with depression so we're going to be talking about comorbidity in ADHD and specifically, we're going to be talking about how ADHD interacts with depression. comorbidity - this is a term that comes up with ADHD frequently enough and really what we're talking about here is two or more disorders or illnesses occurring in the same person at the same time or successively as in one condition that occurs right after the other. often when we're using the term comorbidity there is also the implication that the interaction between the two conditions creates worse outcomes for both. And the worsening outcomes make complete sense - regardless of what you're dealing with, having to manage two conditions is going to be harder than just dealing with one. Today we'll be looking at which comorbidities can affect ADHD, take a closer look at depression, and then talk about ways that they can interact and we can work on treating them.
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Dec 06, 2021 |
How To Think (Critically)
884
The ADHD brain has a strange relationship with thinking. One of my biggest gripes is that it often feels like I can't ever turn my brain off. No matter what I'm doing, I'm thinking about something. I could be washing dishes, but I'm thinking about what else I need to do before I go to bed. I could be walking to get the mail, and instead of wondering what's in the mailbox, I'm thinking about a conversation I had three years ago. Even when I'm trying to meditate, I'll often find myself thinking about what it means to be meditating. I'm not really sure that thinking about meditating while meditating is actually meditating - but hey, I'm still putting in the effort, it's called a practice for a reason.
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Nov 29, 2021 |
A Question Worth Asking
1037
In a lot of my episodes, I have touted the virtue of asking questions - this is something that is embedded deeply in my philosophy. When we engage ourselves and others with curiosity we are able to solve problems more quickly and with better answers. One idea that I see pop up frequently is that questions are more valuable than answers - to some extent I agree with that idea, but I think it's a bit too hyperbolic. It feels like it stems from the counter-intuitive branch of self-help whereby saying the opposite of what people think you can get them to engage more. It gets clicks, but it doesn't always produce the best advice. Nonetheless, to get great answers you often need great questions. Your answer isn't going to matter if you're asking the wrong question, so it's important that we take the time to figure out if we're asking the right question. With ADHD we often want to just jump into the action and start doing - but this means that we need to be even more vigilant that we're asking these questions so that we know we're going in the right direction. But how do we ask great questions or even good questions? What even makes one question better than the other? In today's episode, we're going to explore that question as well as looking at the how and when of question-asking. Support me on Patreon |
Nov 15, 2021 |
Listener Questions - Procrastination and Taking Breaks
729
Hey team this week I'm jumping on some listener questions - if you'd like to leave your own question for me to answer on the air just head over to HackingYourADHD.com/contact and leave me a message In today's episode, I'll be answering a question about procrastination and how we can work on getting past issues of low confidence, and then we're going to be dive into some ways we can take breaks when our mobility is a limiting factor. Support me on Patreon |
Nov 01, 2021 |
How To Give Yourself Some Slack
1154
Often when I think about productivity I envision something like a well-oiled machine - everything fits together, everything has its place and when it is running smoothly it produces amazing results. But the part that my imagination doesn't usually pick up is a few important words - well-oiled machine... what does it mean to be well oiled - well, for one thing, it means that there is someone maintaining the system. It means, that left to its own devices that the machine would break down - and for a machine like this, it means it's either running at peak capacity or not at all. As you can imagine this isn't exactly the route we want to be going - we're going to have setbacks in life and we're going to have times where we have to do less - we're not machines. In today's episode, we're going to be exploring this idea of capacity, as well as how we sometimes go above and beyond, and then also how we can work on building some slack into our systems.
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Oct 25, 2021 |
Taking Breaks
914
We all know that one of the biggest hurdles from ADHD is starting, but paradoxically one of our other hurdles is stopping. Sometimes it feels like we're better off if we just power through until we're done, but if we really want to get the most out of our workdays, we need to have some breaks. In today's episode, we're going to be looking at the benefits of taking breaks, some different ways that we can take breaks, and also exploring going beyond breaks and actually taking some time off.
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Oct 18, 2021 |
Measure What Matters
766
One of the most important aspects of planning is knowing where you've been and this typically comes from some kind of review process. The reason for the review is so that we can plan an accurate course based on where we are now. But that review is also a lot easier said than done. I've sat down for many a review sessions and realized that I don't have a great way to look back. I'll skim through my calendar and wonder what exactly happened over the last few weeks or months and kind of shrug and go... stuff? And what that means is that we want to look at how we measure our success - so today we're going to be talking about how we set our goals, how we can work on measuring their outcomes and also questioning what actually makes a good measurement.
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Oct 11, 2021 |
Coaching for your Brain with Dr. Norrine Russell
2195
This week I am talking with Dr. Norrine Russell of Russell Coaching - Dr. Russell has a Pd.D. from Bowling Green State University with a focus on psychology and education and began her ADHD coaching practice in 2009. In our conversation today, we talk about what you can expect to get out of coaching, how we can work on working with our brains, and ways we can help our kids with ADHD. Today's episode is focused more on children with ADHD, but I've always found that these are lessons that we can translate to our own experience.
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Oct 04, 2021 |
Waiting for Inspiration
1007
One of the easiest ways for procrastination to creep into our lives is through the thought that we just need to wait to do something until we feel like doing it. I totally get this. I feel this way all the time - it's super easy to put something off because we don't feel like doing it right then. But that's not always our best strategy - in fact, for a lot of things we're never really going to feel like doing them and so waiting for that inspiration to come means that we're never going to get to it. Today we're going to be looking at this idea of inspiration and some of the ways that we can try and get started anyway.
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Sep 27, 2021 |
How to Find a Therapist
967
This week I'm bringing back an episode from the archives while I'm working on getting some new content put together. Today, we're going to work on clearing a path on how to find a therapist - we'll be looking into a few kinds of therapy and what we can expect to get out of therapy - and of course, we'll also be walking through how we actually find a therapist that is the right fit for us. This Episode's Top Tip
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Sep 20, 2021 |
How to Plan Your Day
1081
While working on the last episode on laziness, one of the themes that came up was how we can become paralyzed when we don't know what our next step is - this can often be seen as laziness from other people or even ourselves. We know we should be doing something, we just don't know what. And this is where the importance of planning comes in. Today we're going to focus on how to plan our day because it's easy to let our days get away from ourselves when we don't plan them. It feels like we shouldn't need to do our planning because that's what we were going to do anyway. But planning lets us look ahead and fix problems before they come up. It lets us choose what we want to do with our time instead of just always putting out fires.
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Sep 13, 2021 |
The Myth of Lazy
1038
In last week's episode, I talked about the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap and how it can be hard for us to really remember or predict how our state is going to affect our actions - one of the consequences of this is that we often label ourselves as lazy when we didn't do something. Our cold state brain tells us that we should have just done the thing, all the while neglecting how we felt. This disconnect is what leads to a lot of our self-judgment and in particular, those of us with ADHD often find ourselves labeling ourselves as lazy. Why didn't I walk the dogs? I was feeling lazy - or maybe I feel overwhelmed with work or maybe I couldn't find the leashes. When we don't do something it's easy to label it as lazy, but often that doesn't tell us what was really going on. Today we're going to be exploring the idea of lazy and how what we might want to start looking at it a bit differently. |
Sep 06, 2021 |
Why We Make Decisions We Don't Understand
848
Why do we make bad decisions in the moment? We've all done things that we regret doing right? yeah me, neither - but let's say hypothetically there was something that we regretted doing - something that we said or did that we feel like doesn't really reflect on as a person. Why is it I can have the best of intentions and still when it comes time I still make the wrong decision? Today we're going to be exploring the hot-cold empathy gap and why it can be so difficult for us to predict what we're actually going to do in the moment.
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Aug 30, 2021 |
The Trap of Low Quality Leisure Time
931
Hey team, good news, I am finally over Covid - it took me a bit longer than I would have liked but I'm healthy again and ready to get back at things. This is an episode that I started working on before I got sick, and one of the areas that we had been looking into was that of planning and goal setting. So I thought it was time to shift a bit onto an area that we often forget about - leisure time. Now, I want to be clear here, leisure time is not in opposition to goals and planning, in fact, it's just as important to our well-being. There are a myriad of health benefits we get from taking time off work, but not all leisure activities are equal. In this week's episode, we're going to be looking at how we can work on reframing the ways we look at our free time, how we can be a little more intentional with how we're spending that time, and then look at a few of the things we can do to make that time, time well spent.
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Aug 23, 2021 |
The Wall of Awful with Brendan Mahan
1170
We've all got things that we think we should be able to just do - for example, I've had on my to-do list for weeks to make a phone call to the bank - it won't even take that long, but I keep putting it off. I keep finding reasons not to do it - what I've done is I've created a wall of awful around making this phone call (really most phone calls) and the more I put it off the more it builds it up. Today we've got Brendan Mahan from ADHD Essentials to explain what the Wall of Awful is and some ways that we can work on getting past it.
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Aug 16, 2021 |
Building Gratitude
1176
One of the hottest trends to come out of the self-help world over the last few years is gratitude. And it's no surprise, gratitude has been found to be one of the greatest indicators of overall well-being. I'm usually pretty skeptical about things that get hyped quite as much as gratitude has been - I mean when you see the list of things that a gratitude practice can help with it's pretty easy to roll your eyes. I mean can gratitude really do all those things that people say it can? Today we'll be exploring the mechanisms that make gratitude work - and also perhaps tempering some of the hype around it - then we'll be looking at ways we can find things to be grateful in our lives as well as looking at some ways that we can start a gratitude practice. And I'll admit, this episode is a little less ADHD-focused - but gratitude was something that was on my mind, for reasons that I get into during the episode. And so even though this episode is a little less ADHD specific I still think everyone can get a lot out of it.
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Aug 09, 2021 |
How To Save Time with Sequencing
1046
Sequencing is all about the order in which we do things. Sometimes it seems like it doesn’t matter what comes first, but also try putting your pants on after you put on your shoes. Sequencing is something I’ve come to realize is a big deal with ADHD. The order in which we do things has a big impact on our overall productivity, but more than that, some of our other issues with ADHD make the sequence in which we do things much more important. Today we're going to be exploring how the order we do things is important for our ADHD brains and then we'll be looking at some ways that we can use sequencing to our advantage. Support me on Patreon
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Aug 02, 2021 |
Beyond Time Management
855
Hey team, I'm going to be taking a little time off in August and I thought that I'd dredge up a few episodes from the archives. Today we're going to be hitting on an idea that has been a reoccurring theme in the last few episodes and that's personal energy management. While many of us have realized that we only have so much time in our day, we tend to still believe that we're going to have the same amount of energy from sun up to sundown. But we know this isn't true. Our energy levels vary throughout the day and if we want to be getting the most out of our days we have to try and work with these rhythms of energy. Today we're going to be discussing how we can work on creating our schedules around when we do have energy instead of just when we've got a free spot on the calendar. We'll be looking at some of the different areas of energy management as well as how our energy levels fluctuate throughout the day. And we'll also spend a little time on how you can make a little more energy.
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Jul 26, 2021 |
Celebrating Your Wins
962
I want to start this episode off by saying that this is something I'm bad at - and not in the sense that what I do to celebrate is bad or that I'm not celebrating the small wins throughout my day. It's bad in the sense that I almost entirely skip the whole thing. Recently this podcast tipped past half a million downloads. That's a pretty big milestone and is pretty indicative of how successful this endeavor has been. But it was barely a blip for me. I didn't want to acknowledge the success because it can be hard for me to acknowledge when I do things well. So this episode is as much for me as it is for all of you and in this episode, we're going to be exploring what it means to have small wins and also how we can celebrate them.
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Jul 19, 2021 |
Meeting Yourself Where You're At
1014
As we've been working on goals one place I want us to take a step back on and think about is meeting ourselves where we are. As we get going with our planning we tend to decide that well we want to do all of the things. And I mean why not, there are a lot of things that I want to do, if I don't start now, when am I going to start? I can't tell you how many ill-fated adventures I've started because of that whole "if not now, when?" line - there are so many things that I should be investing my time in now. I need to be meditating and exercising more and eating healthier and saving money and work on business and building my relationships and learning new skills and on and on and on. I'm sure everyone listening has that list of things they know that they should be starting on now because the sooner the better results you'll see down the line. But we're not starting on them... or when we do we don't stick with the changes. Today we're going to be looking at what it means to meet ourselves where we're at and then some of the ways that we can work on making that happen.\
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Jul 12, 2021 |
When to Quit
1126
The first thing we've got to understand is that when we ask, when should I quit? We're also asking, when should I persevere? And they often serve as the same answer - I should quit when it doesn't make sense to keep going. I keep going when it doesn't make sense to quit. Unfortunately is really easy to get those messages mixed up and with ADHD we've all got a trail of unfinished projects and ideas that are weighing us down every time we need to make this decision again.
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Jul 05, 2021 |
Five Frameworks to Build Powerful Goals
965
Last week dove into how goals work and the science behind them - now we're going to be taking all of that and looking at how we can better create our goals through simple frameworks. A lot of these frameworks come from a business setting, but with a little tweaking, we can absolutely make them work for personal use as well. Today we're going to be looking at a few of the different frameworks we can use for our goal setting as well as hitting the why behind setting those goals.
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Jun 28, 2021 |
Freshening Up Your Goals
864
As we continue to think about our fresh start one clear area that we're going to hit is that of, well what should we even be focusing on. That's where goal setting comes into play and while I did touch on this in the original fresh start episode, I think it's worth giving more consideration. When we think about goals there's a ton of different ways to think about them, but at their basics, a goal is simply a future result that you are directing your effort. Now there are a lot of different ways that we can go about setting those goals and we'll get into that more next week when I go through some of the various frameworks. But before we get into those frameworks it's important to understand how goals actually work and why we even want to set them.
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Jun 21, 2021 |
Fresh Start: The Deep Clean
901
One of the things I never quite got a grasp on is seasons... I mean I grew up in Hawaii and we basically had hot and not quite as hot. But this comes up for me because technically we're still in Spring right now so I guess this could still be a Spring Cleaning episode - officially Summer starts on the Solstice in June on the 20th... so I made in by like a week if you're listening to this when it comes out. Regardless of if this is Spring Cleaning or not, cleaning can be a great way to signal the start of something new. We all get used to the mess in our space and freshening things up can not only signal the start of something new but also shift our mindset. Today I'll be exploring the benefits of cleaning, how we can update our space, some tips on accountability, and then get into a few of the specific things that you can do.
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Jun 14, 2021 |
Get Going With A Fresh Start
918
In just one more month we're going to be coming up on the halfway point of 2021 — I know, I have no idea how it got here either. But with this mark in time we're starting to see a shift going on - while COVID certainly isn't a thing of the past, the vaccine role out has opened up a lot of possibilities for what we want our future to look like. At the end of 2020, I did some planning for 2021, but I knew that a lot of it was going to be uncertain so I didn't make too many specific plans. But now that I'm getting a better grasp of what the future might hold — although let's be honest, with ADHD we're always going to have a lot of uncertainty — I felt like it was time to go over those plans again and maybe give myself a fresh start. In this episode, we're going to be talking about the fresh start effect, go over some stuff on planning, and how we can work on sticking to those plans.
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Jun 07, 2021 |
Exploring ADHD with Eric Tivers
1793
This week I'm talking with Eric Tivers - the host of the ADHD reWired Podcast and the head of our podcast network. He just opened up a new membership community for something called Adult Study Hall, which is an online accountability program to help you get stuff done. The way it works is that you enter a zoom room with a bunch of other people who are working - you state what you are planning to work on and get to it. It is pretty amazing how effective just having someone else there is even if it's just virtually. I actually use Adult Study Halls fairly frequently when I'm working on this podcast. In this episode, Eric and I talk about planning for the rest of this year, adult study hall, and his upcoming 25th season of reWired Coaching and Accountability groups. Also, there may be something in there about a book, I really wouldn't give it much thought. |
May 31, 2021 |
The Happiness at Work Business with Will Henshall of Focus@Will
1048
In this week's podcast, I continue my conversation with Will Henshall, CEO of the music service Focus@Will In this part of the interview we talk about how we can use music to affect our state of being → and to jump on this because I realized I didn't really hit this in the interview, by state of being I mean how you are currently experiencing things - so this encompasses your mood, energy level, and your motivation level - okay, back to our intro - we also discuss a number of various ADHD tips and how Focus@Will is really in the happiness at work business. And if you're wondering you don't have to have listened to the first part of the interview to enjoy this episode - in this part, we focus a lot more on ADHD and some of the ways that you can work with your ADHD to get more out of your day. |
May 24, 2021 |
Using Music to Create Focus with Will Henshall
994
Whenever I sit down to do some serious writing I always make sure to have something to listen to - music is often a key piece of how I keep myself engaged in the task I'm doing. In today's podcast, I'm going to dig into that idea, by I won't be doing it alone. I had a great time with this interview and I hope you'll enjoy it too. |
May 17, 2021 |
Habit Challenge: Obey Your Thirst
954
Today we’re going to be talking about a chemical that is responsible for countless deaths worldwide every year - a chemical so ubiquitous that it can be found practically everywhere - in the air, in our homes, and even in our bodies. I’m of course referring to dihydrogen monoxide or its more common nomenclature H2O Yes, we’re finally going to be talking about water. One of the tips I go back to over and over again to help manage ADHD is that of making sure you are properly hydrated. It's absolutely something that I have to constantly remind myself of because it seems just a little too easy. I mean just drinking water shouldn't have that big of an effect right? But as something that makes up 45-75% of your body weight and 80% of your brain composition, it is incredibly important. Today we'll be going over what hydration means, the importance of staying hydrated, and then some ways that we can be better at making sure we don't get dehydrated.
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May 10, 2021 |
Putting the Hyper in Hypersensitivity
1034
With ADHD we often have trouble filtering things out - we can't ignore the hum of the air conditioner, we can't ignore the scratchy tag on the back of our shirt, we can't ignore the fact it seems like the lady standing next to us in line seem to have marinated herself in perfume. We don't want to pay attention to these things, but we can't get our brains to focus on what we want to in the best of times, so how do we expect them to when something is calling for our attention so urgently. Many people with ADHD are hypersensitive (sometimes also called being a highly sensitive person) which means they are simply more sensitive to the things that stimulate our senses. So anything from touch, taste, smell, sound, or things we see. We can also find ourselves overwhelmed with emotions or too much information.
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May 03, 2021 |
Tweaking Your Habits for Better Results
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This week we're going to be exploring the power of habit and how small changes to our routines can have a big impact. One of the easiest ways we can help our ADHD is by working on routines and habits. It's easy to let our default habits run our lives but when we consciously choose what habits we actually want to cultivate we aren't hamstringing ourselves. In this episode we'll be learning why we don't need to use discipline nearly as much as we think, the importance of sequencing in our habits and how we can make tweaks in those sequences so that we can change our habits to the ones we actually want.
The ReWired Podcast Network
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Apr 26, 2021 |
Rationalization and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
917
Resistance is the embodiment of the I don't wanna's - the part of us that keeps us from doing our work - or anything for that matter. And a big part of resistance comes from our ability to rationalize what we're doing - I'll jump into one task and find myself doing something else and then my brain will come up with a reason why I needed to be watching youtube instead of working on this week's episode. In today's episode we're going to be exploring what rationalization is, some of the ways that we do it, and also some of the ways we can start working on reducing the amount of rationalization that we are doing.
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Apr 19, 2021 |
A Nudge in the Right Direction
872
Making the right choices isn't always easy - we've got so many options of what we can do and when I'm tired I don't want to weigh all my options. It would be great if I could just get a gentle push in the right direction. Something that would make the choice I want to make easier to make. What I'm talking about here is a nudge and that's what we're going to be talking about today. We'll be learning about what a nudge is, why they work, and when they don't. We'll also be looking at some of the various ways we can nudge ourselves and why it's so important for us to know when someone else might be nudging us. |
Apr 12, 2021 |
The Wandering Mind and Hyperfocus
1288
One of the thoughts I kept coming back to while working on my episode's on multitasking was what it really meant to be multitasking. I settled on using the idea of doing two cognitive tasks at the same time, but that left me with another quandary - what about when I'm doing one thing and just thinking about doing something else. Surely just thinking about something else wouldn't count as multitasking. But still... There have absolutely been times when I've been thinking about something else and found myself getting engrossed in my thoughts and losing track of conversations or what I was doing. Clearly, my thoughts can play a big role in what I'm doing and if my focus is somewhere else then it certainly isn't here in the present. Today we're going to explore what our brain is doing here - how our thoughts can kind of run away with us. We'll also be looking at hyperfocus and then bringing together how these things relate.
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Apr 05, 2021 |
Multitasking Deep Dive Part 2
1246
To recap from last week we learned that are there are three kinds of multitasking - Classic Multitasking where we're trying to perform more than one task at the same time. Rapid task switching where we're just going from one task to another in quick succession. And interrupted task switching where we're interrupted from one task and switch what we're doing without finishing what we were doing. We also covered how we're more likely to try and multitask with things we're familiar with but how that actually creates more of a cognitive penalty from breaking up our tasks and how we often just don't realize how much concentration we're using to complete a task - as evidenced with how dangerous texting and driving is. This week we're going to be exploring more of the cognitive and biological costs of multitasking, then get into some specific kinds of multitasking that can really drain us and we'll finish up with some ways we can work on reducing the amount of multitasking we do.
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Mar 29, 2021 |
A Deep Dive Into Multitasking
1167
This week we're going to be deep-diving into multitasking - this is one of those topics that I frequently mention in episodes, but I've never featured before. Not because it doesn't deserve its own episode, but because multitasking is actually a fairly complicated issue and is going to take a bit of time to dissect. So this is actually just going to be my first episode in a series on multitasking and we'll really try and dig into the nitty-gritty of it. In today's episode, we're going to be talking a bit about what multitasking is and what it isn't - then we'll work on some ways to really drive home the time costs of multitasking and well finish up by looking at some of the ways that multitasking can actually put us in harm's way.
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Mar 22, 2021 |
How To Apply What You Learn
1155
One of the questions that I frequently get is how people can actually apply what they're learning - in this podcast and from all the other things we learn. I know this is a particularly pernicious problem for ADHD because often we see things that we think would really make a difference in our lives, and yet we can't seem to get ourselves to apply these ideas. Today we're going to exploring how we can start working on getting a better understanding of what we're learning, why we might want to start limiting what we're consuming and how to solidify those learnings into our lives.
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Mar 15, 2021 |
Understanding the ADHD Subtypes
1067
When it comes to understanding our ADHD it can be a bit of a minefield to navigate - one of our most pernicious problems is that often we're never really educated in what it means to have ADHD. And to top that off, what we learn from pop-culture just reinforces stereotypes that don't really reflect what ADHD is actually about. One of the most important ways to help manage our ADHD is to accept it, but that can be really hard to do if we don't actually have a good grasp of what having ADHD means. So in today's episode, we're going to be diving into the ADHD subtypes (or presentations as it's now being called) → there are the 3 kinds of ADHD that you might be diagnosed with, hyperactive-impulsive, inattentive, and combined. Today we're going to be exploring these presentations of ADHD and working on understanding how this can help define our own ADHD.
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Mar 08, 2021 |
Building Your Touchstones | Listener Q&A
1157
All right everyone, we've got another listener Q&A episode coming your way today with questions looking at ways we can declutter our phones, re-establishing our routines when life is in flux, and how to recover after taking on a heavier workload.
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Mar 01, 2021 |
Digital Declutter: Tabs, Tabs, And more Tabs
1017
Did you think I was all done with tabs last week... well I wasn't because there's actually a ton we can still talk about. Tabs are one of those small things in our life that can have a fairly outsized impact. Don't think so? Well, keep listening to find out why. Today we're going to be talking about how tabs can literally change the way our brain works, some ways we can cull having all those tabs open, and then talk a bit about those precursors to tabs... bookmarks. This Episode’s Top Tips
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Feb 22, 2021 |
Digital Declutter: Too Many Tabs
1109
A few weeks ago I asked around on Facebook the number of tabs that my friends had open at the time. Answers I got included: 500 on their phone and 20 on their computer, 50-60 across 5-6 windows, 4-5, 16, 3, 80 across 9 windows, 2, 4, 7, 45, 112 over 17 windows… and of course, at the time of my asking, I had 70 across 12 windows, although as I mentioned earlier I'm down to just a few right now - oftentimes these episodes are just as much about helping me as they are about helping you. Clearly, a lot of people use their browsers in a lot of different ways. Now one thing that was fairly apparent to me is that my more neurodiverse friends tended to be those people who had the most tabs open, although to be clear having too many tabs open isn't just a neurodiverse condition, anyone can easily find themselves overwhelmed by tabs. Today we're going to be looking at why we tend to have so many tabs open and then some of the ways we can work on reducing that number. This Episode’s Top Tips
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Feb 15, 2021 |
Decluttering Your Digital Life
1098
We all have an idea of what clutter is - it's just all that stuff. It's that frustrating feeling when you can't find something just because there are too many other things to look through. Clutter is disorder. While we typically see clutter as a physical thing - the junk on our desk. The pile in the corner of the room. The stuff spread out all over our counters - we can also experience its digital counterpart because we also amass a lot of stuff digitally. Today we're going to start our journey of working on our decluttering our digital lives - in this episode, I am going to be focusing on email and the files on our computers - next week we'll be continuing this series with an episode on all those tabs we have open in our browsers. I also considered doing an episode on our phones, but for now, I'm just going to direct you to Episodes 17 & 18, How to Make your Smart Phone ADHD Friendly - although I'm definitely going to have to update those episodes at some point.
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Feb 08, 2021 |
Masquerading As Adults
1100
#Adulting Now there's something a lot of us can relate to - or relate to the idea that adulting is something we sometimes do, but being an adult is not something we are. ADHD can make us feel like we're not really adults. An adult would get their bills paid on time. An adult wouldn't let their house get this messy. An adult would be eating healthy meals for dinner every night. Now it would be a stretch to say that I feel like an adult all of the time, but I'm certainly getting there. A big part of the is probably having kids - it can be hard to not feel like the adult when you are literally the adult in the room. Also, there's the whole losing track of what going on with slang - I mean I know what straight fire is and but I still have to look up what a VSCO girl was and I'm only mildly sure I understand what being on fleek means. Although really that's more of a confirmation that I'm old rather than I'm being an adult. Regardless - today we're going to be exploring those feelings of not being an adult and how that interacts with our ADHD. This Episode’s Top Tips
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Feb 01, 2021 |
The Surprising Magic of Setting a Deadline
897
When I was in school, I always wanted to be the kind of student who able to finish a project well before it needed to be turned in. I loved the idea that I could write a paper and still have a week left to polish it. Of course, I was never actually that student. For me to get started on a paper, I had to actually be able to feel that pressure from the deadline building up on me. That usually meant that I was mostly working on papers the night before - I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Since I was still able to get good grades with this strategy, I never really changed it - but I always wished that I wasn't always riding by the seat of my pants. Despite having a good track record, there were times that I missed those deadlines. And a funny thing about it was that I always wanted more time to write my papers. In my brain, if the deadline was pushed farther out I would have had more time to start, and yet experience has taught me that it really didn't matter how much time I was given to complete a paper. Given a week or month, I would still procrastinate until the last minute. When those deadlines were moving in on me, I was able to focus like no other. The time pressure allowed me to block out all those other distracting ideas vying for my attention. Today we're going to be exploring how we can use this time pressure to complete those nagging tasks that we otherwise might not get done and also those things we want to do but just can't seem to prioritize. We'll also be looking at better ways to set deadlines so that we can follow through with our intentions.
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Jan 25, 2021 |
Breaking Down the ONE Thing
923
In this week's episode, I am going to be going over the book The ONE Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan - I was introduced to this book by Eric Tivers through the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability groups. I can't remember if it was required reading or just strongly encouraged when I took the groups, but the messages in this book were key to getting through the coaching groups. My first reading of the book was on audiobook and since then I've listened to it three more and read the physical version of the book twice. The subtitle of the book is, "The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results" - and as I've mentioned before, just because something is simple doesn't make it easy. Each reading has helped me understand the concepts a little bit better and I was always able to pick up a few new things. Today I'm going to be going over the "surprisingly simple truth" in the book and discussing how we can better apply it for our ADHD brains.
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Jan 18, 2021 |
Among Us
1034
Last year there was a surge in the popularity of the game Among Us - 1000's of people jumped on to be funny little scientists running around there spaceship running various little tasks... all while trying to find out who among them didn't belong - the one who was trying to sabotage the mission. The one who was an imposter. I definitely played my fair share of the game, but always felt like I didn't get to play as the imposter nearly as much as I wanted to... yet in real life, far too often I feel like I'm playing the imposter. I'm sure that many of you can relate to feeling like the only reason you are where you are is that you tricked people into thinking that you belong. Maybe you think that you're not really qualified for your job, or maybe you got into a program that you're sure someone else would have been better qualified for, or maybe you feel like you're friends are just pretending to like you. This is called imposter syndrome and it is shockingly common - I say shockingly common because when you're feeling it, it's hard to imagine anyone else feeling quite like you do - and yet almost everyone feels imposter syndrome to some extent. This Episode’s Top Tips
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Jan 11, 2021 |
On The Razors Edge
1046
Occam's Razor is a philosophical rule (and that's rule in a very soft sense) that we can use to help us with problem solving. In philosophy a razor is a tool used to eliminate (or shave off) options that might lead us astray. Occam's Razor is one of the most popular examples and has made it's way into popular culture from the movie Contact to Sherlock Holmes to The Big Bang Theory. I imagine that a lot of you have heard of the famous razor before, which states that: plurality should not be posited without necessity. Now I'm sure that's perfectly clear for most of you, but for my benefit I'm going to do a bit of unpacking on that phrase, cause plurality should not be posited without necessity seems a bit dense to me. The basic idea here is that when we're looking at competing ideas we want to go with the one that has the fewest assumptions - or that the simplest explanation is often preferable to a complex one. Of course the rule on simplicity also isn't as simply as it seems. Today we're going to be exploring Occam's Razor and also looking at how we can apply it to coming up with better solutions for our ADHD.
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Jan 04, 2021 |
Lagging Indicators
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I'm going to be diving into some more aspects of planning in the coming months - I know, shouldn't I have done this before the end of the year? Well I'm going to us my being completely unprepared for the end of the year to illustrate a great point - it's never too late to start working on planning. One of the most important aspects of planning is knowing where you've been and this typically comes from some kind of review process. The reason for the review is so that we can plan an accurate course based on where we are now. But that review is also a lot easier said than done. I've sat down for many a review sessions and realized that I don't have a great way to look back. I'll skim through my calendar and wonder what exactly happened over the last few weeks or months and kind of shrug and go... stuff? And what that means is that we want to look at how we measure our success - so today we're going to be talking about how we set our goals, how we can work on measuring their outcomes and also questioning what actually makes a good measurement.
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Dec 28, 2020 |
Top 5 ADHD Tips
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Hey there team, we're nearly at the end of 2020 and I thought I'd deliver a bit of a shorter episode this week focusing on some of the strategies that I find are the most important for managing my ADHD. This is definitely not a definitive list and as for the order of things... well I moved things around a number of times trying to decide what the best order would be and honestly I'm not sure there really is an order or truly a most important thing. When we're trying to manage our ADHD an important to remember is that it's all connected - anyone step we take is going to make the rest of the steps easier and while somethings really are more important than others, what we've really got to focus on is doing what we can, because anything we do is going to be helping everything else. So while there may be things that might be more effective to do in managing your ADHD, don't worry if you're not there yet. Do what you can now and you'll get there eventually.
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Dec 21, 2020 |
Sequencing
1033
Sequencing is all about the order in which we do things. Sometimes it seems like it doesn’t matter what comes first, but also try putting your pants on after you put on your shoes. Sequencing is something I’ve come to realize is a big deal with ADHD. The order in which we do things has a big impact on our overall productivity, but more than that, some of our other issues with ADHD make the sequence in which we do things much more important. Today we're going to be exploring how the order we do things is important for our ADHD brains and then we'll be looking at some ways that we can use sequencing to our advantage. Support me on Patreon
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Dec 14, 2020 |
Even More Automations
988
Part of the reason that automations is such a ripe topic is that it can help in almost all areas of our life - this week we're going to focus more on the work side of things, because when it comes to our jobs there are a ton of things that usually can be automated fairly easily, because we all have those little tasks that we have to do all the time that aren't that hard but do require us to shift our attention to them for just a little bit. And that's what I think is the best benefit of setting up automations for our ADHD brains - we've only got so much executive function for the day and task switching can be such a drain on us. When we set up these automations we can make it so that instead of wasting our days doing little nit picky things, that we're actually focusing on the things that matter.
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Dec 07, 2020 |
More Automations to Make Your Life Easier
1223
In this week's episode we're going to focus on the money side of things and go into how we can use automation for our shopping and then also how we can use automations with our finances. And as a reminder, automations are things that we can set up in our life that are just going to happen regardless of what else we do. So think clicking a button and having a form filled out or even more basically think about something like your dishwasher, you put the dishes in, click a button and then all your dishes automatically get cleaned. Breaking down the dishwasher example, we still have to load up the dishes and we also have to unload them, but they take care of that process of actually getting them clean. And that's a huge part of automation - it isn't going to solve all of your problems, but often they're worth it because it takes care of those parts that are time consuming or that you just don't want to do.
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Nov 30, 2020 |
Automating Your ADHD Life
1144
One of the paradoxes of ADHD is how much work we can get done when we're interested in something... but then how little we get done when something is boring. Unfortunately in life there are a lot of things that are going to bore us. And this becomes especially true with those boring tasks we have to do over and over again. So this is where automation comes in - automation is simply something that accomplishes tasks for us without our intervention. Whether we know it or not, all of us already use a lot of automation in our lives already. We often don't think of simple things like setting an alarm as an automated process, but it's a way we can externalize a reminder that will go off with no other input from us. Today we're going to take a look at how automation can be helpful with ADHD, some of the ways that we can take advantage of automations and then go into some specific things we can look at automating. There was actually a lot to cover here so I'll be going into even more automations next week as well.
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Nov 23, 2020 |
Fighting Resistance (Rebroadcast)
1040
"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What's keeping us from sitting down is resistance." This is how Steven Pressfield introduces the idea of resistance in his book the War of Art, and to me, resistance is the root of the "I don't wanna's." While I don't agree with many of the things in Pressfield's book (I mean, he states that ADHD was made up by pharmaceutical companies), I do think resistance is a great way to express this idea. Because when I don't want to do something, it's not necessarily that I just don't want to do it - it's that I can't get myself to start. If I'm planning on going on a run, I know that I'll feel better once I start running - but it's in the starting that I feel resistance. It's putting on my exercise clothes and slipping on my shoes. It's the getting out the door. Once I start putting one foot in front of the other, it isn't so hard anymore. I mean, sure there is the physicality that can become difficult, but the mental block has lifted. And this is just going to be an introduction to this topic. While I was writing this episode I discovered I had a lot to say and so I've split it into two episodes. Today we're going to be exploring the idea of resistance and how it keeps us from doing meaningful work. We're then going to look at some of the ways resistance sinks its claws into us, but also how we can work on loosening up that grip.
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Nov 16, 2020 |
Cleaning House (Rebroadcast)
1232
I'd say I have a love-hate relationship with cleaning, but that implies that there is a part of me that loves cleaning. There isn't. I like having cleaned and having a clean home, but I seldom enjoy the actual cleaning part.
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Nov 09, 2020 |
One Year of Podcasting: Interview with Kari Gormley
1309
This week's a little bit different - today you're going to be hearing an interview I had with my friend Kari Gormley - now I say interview with a bit of hesitation because our conversation absolutely did not start out that way. Kari is a Certified Applied Positive Psychology Practitioner, Coach, and Trainer as well as a fellow podcaster - her show is The Flourishing Experiment. but so, I was having a zoom call with Kari and we were just chatting to catch up on a few things and I had mentioned that I had just passed the one year mark on my podcast. She started asking some questions and then went wait wait wait, we need to record this and so we shifted into recording mode and went from there - I know, that's a pretty ADHD way to record a podcast. In this episode you get to hear about some of my lessons learned from podcasting for 1 year - we talk about some of the systems I use, gratitude, and get into something like how long it takes me to produce an episode from start to finish. |
Nov 02, 2020 |
Give Yourself Some Slack: Self-Compassion (Part 2)
1088
Last week we started our journey of self-compassion. Self-compassion is key part of cutting ourselves some slack - it's the combination of empathy and action. We're doing the things that'll let us put ourselves at the front of the line when it comes to self-care. But self-compassion isn't easy. When we're being self-compassionate we're trying to relate to ourselves in a way that's forgiving, accepting and loving - many of us have grown up with the view that the only way for us to push ourselves forward is by being overly critical of ourselves. A typical self-compassion practice has three parts:
In this episode, we'll be going over Self-Kindness and Common Humanity as well as looking at how we can combine all three of the ideas. This Episode's Top Tips
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Oct 26, 2020 |
Give Yourself Some Slack: Self-Compassion (Part 1)
1143
In this episode we're going to focus on the difficulties of self-compassion and then talk a little about mindfulness - next week we'll be going into the ideas of self-kindness, common humanity, and some other ideas I've been playing with.
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Oct 19, 2020 |
Q&A: Writing Past the Hard Parts
1131
In today's episode, we have a listener question about writing and how to get back into it after quitting at the hard parts.
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Oct 12, 2020 |
Give Yourself Some Slack: Perfectly Imperfect
1166
One of the reasons that many of us have trouble giving ourselves slack is because of our internalized perfectionism - it's something that controls our workflow and prevents us from ever taking a break because in our head we know we could be doing more. Even during the writing of this episode I had to fight off some of this internal perfectionism - this episode wasn't supposed to be entirely about perfectionism, but it was going to take a lot more than just one section to really tackle the topic - so now what was just going to be a two-part episode on giving yourself some slack is a series - and had I come into this knowing it was going to be a series I would have definitely approached it differently, but that's okay, it doesn't have to be perfect. In today's episode, we're going to be exploring the idea of how perfection acts as a coping mechanism - and why that's not a great thing. We'll also be looking at some of the different types of perfectionism and then we'll be exploring some of the ways that we can start to work on conquering our own perfectionism.
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Oct 05, 2020 |
How To Give Yourself Some Slack
1088
Often when I think about productivity I envision something like a well-oiled machine - everything fits together, everything has it's placed and when it is running smoothly it produces amazing results. But the part that my imagination doesn't usually pick up are a few important words - well-oiled machine... what does it mean to be well oiled - well, for one thing, it means that there is someone maintaining the system. It means, that left to its own devices that the machine would breakdown - and for a machine like this, it means it's either running at peak capacity or not at all. As you can imagine this isn't exactly the route we want to be going - we're going to have setbacks in life and we're going to have times where we have to do less - we're not machines. In today's episode, we're going to be exploring this idea of capacity, as well how we sometimes go above and beyond and then also how we can work on build some slack into our systems.
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Sep 28, 2020 |
Building Gratitude
1189
One of the hottest trends to come out of the self-help world over the last few years is gratitude. And it's no surprise, gratitude has been found to be one of the greatest indicators of overall well being. I'm usually pretty skeptical about things that get hyped quite as much as gratitude has been - I mean when you see the list of things that a gratitude practice can help with it's pretty easy to roll your eyes. I mean can gratitude really do all those things that people say it can? Today we'll be exploring the mechanisms that make gratitude work - and also perhaps tempering some of the hype around it - then we'll be looking at ways we can find things to be grateful in our lives as well as looking at some ways that we can start a gratitude practice. And I'll admit, this episode is a little less ADHD focused - but gratitude was something that was on mind, for reasons that I get into during the episode. And so even though this episode is a little less ADHD specific I still think everyone can get a lot out of it.
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Sep 21, 2020 |
When To Quit
1095
The first thing we've got to understand is that when we ask, when should I quit? We're also asking, when should I persevere? And they often serve as the same answer - I should quit when it doesn't make sense to keep going. I keep going when it doesn't make sense to quit. Unfortunately is really easy to get those messages mixed up and with ADHD we've all got a trail of unfinished projects and ideas that are weighing us down every time we need to make this decision again.
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Sep 14, 2020 |
Rationalization and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
932
Resistance is the embodiment of the I don't wanna's - the part of us that keeps us from doing our work - or anything for that matter. And a big part of resistance comes from our ability to rationalize what we're doing - I'll jump into one task and find myself doing something else and then my brain will come up with a reason why I needed to be watching youtube instead of working on this week's episode. In today's episode we're going to be exploring what rationalization is, some of the ways that we do it, and also some of the ways we can start working on reducing the amount of rationalization that we are doing.
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Sep 07, 2020 |
How to Find a Therapist
955
One of the hardest aspects for me with ADHD is that I can quickly become overwhelmed when I can't find a clear path forward - I know I could do the research, but setting aside the time feels like it's going to be too much and so I just procrastinate forever on starting. For me finding a therapist was one of those things that seemed too murky to get started on. There were just so many things to consider and so many things that I don't know. Not only did I not know where to start, but I also didn't even know what questions I should be asking. In my mind, I knew it would be good for me, but the process just seemed too hard to get started on. Today, we're going to work on clearing a path on how to find a therapist - we'll be looking into a few kinds of therapy and what we can expect to get out of therapy - and of course, we'll also be walking through how we actually find a therapist that is the right fit for us. This Episode's Top Tip
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Aug 31, 2020 |
Energy Management: Spiritual Energy
957
I know the term spiritual energy is going to throw a lot of people - so let's start off by getting clear on what I mean here. When I'm talking about spiritual energy I'm not talking about anything religious here, I'm simply referring to the idea that you have an energy reserve that you can tap into when you're doing something that matters. And specifically, something that matters to you - this doesn't have to be some higher calling type of idea. One thing that really illustrates the idea of digging deep into that energy reserve for me is when I'm doing something like weight lifting. As I get to the end of my set I can find myself flagging, I can feel like I'm not going to be able to push the bar the 3 more inches it needs to go to rack my bar - and yet I can have my spotter tell me "you've got this" and my brain hears that and I push just a little bit harder and I finish out. Where did that energy reserve come from? As far as I was concerned I was already pushing as hard as I could and yet, with just a few words I was able to find that motivation to push a little harder. Access to the human spirit isn't just limited to athletic endeavors. And our motivation to dip into this energy source often comes from doing meaningful work. Many people don’t recognize meaning and purpose as potential sources of energy, but when we're doing work that aligns with our values we are able to accomplish so much more. Today we're going to be looking at three areas that we can use to access our spiritual energy: living their core values in their daily behaviors, doing the work that we do best and enjoy the most, and allocating time and energy in our lives for the things we deem most important.
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Aug 24, 2020 |
Energy Management: Emotional Energy
816
Emotional Energy isn't as cut and dry as physical energy - there are no emotional calories that we can track and measure. And while there is no scientific delineation of how to measure emotional energy it’s still something that we can all feel - we're not robots. We know that when we're feeling those positive emotions that sometimes we can barely contain the energy we're feeling - when we're seething with rage it can feel like we're going to burst. When we're sad it can feel like we want to melt into our beds and never be seen again. When we're overstressed it can feel like if we don't do something our skin is going to crawl off but even the idea of attempting that first step still feels like too much Our emotions play a big role in our energy levels throughout the day. Just because we don't have a good way to measure them doesn't mean that we should write them off.
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Aug 17, 2020 |
The Wall of Awful with Brendan Mahan
1170
We've all got things that we think we should be able to just do - for example, I've had on my to-do list for weeks to make a phone call to the bank - it won't even take that long, but I keep putting it off. I keep finding reasons not to do it - what I've done is I've created a wall of awful around making this phone call (really most phone calls) and the more I put it off the more it builds it up. Today we've got Brendan Mahan from ADHD Essentials to explain what the Wall of Awful is and some ways that we can work on getting past it.
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Aug 10, 2020 |
Energy Management: Mental Energy
811
Today we're going to be looking at ways that we can work on cutting down distractions and staying focused. We'll also be looking at ways that we can better schedule our time to focus on when our brain is going to be working best and we'll also be looking at better ways to end our workday.
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Aug 03, 2020 |
Energy Management: Physical Energy
1065
Before we get going here, I just want to make sure you know that I'm not a doctor, and while this episode is a lot about your health, it is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice. Just because I say something on this show doesn't necessarily mean it will be the best advice for you - be smart and be safe. And when in doubt always consult your doctor before changing your diet or exercise routine. When we think about our energy levels, our physical energy is what we tend to primarily think about. We think about being tired or just needing a quick pick me up to get through our day. And our physical energy tends to be a basis for all our other types of energy (quick reminder those were: mental, emotional and spiritual along with our physical energy) - when we're physically exhausted it's hard for us to draw on our other wells of energy. Have a bad night's sleep? You might be feeling that brain fog all-day - blood sugar low? You might be more likely to snap at a family member over something not that important. We need our foundation of physical energy to power our bodies and to let us fully engage with our other energy sources. In today's episode, we're going to be covering the three main areas that we get our physical energy from: sleep, diet, and exercise. Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/physicalenergy
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Jul 27, 2020 |
Personal Energy Management
775
It's an hour after lunch and your staring at your computer monitor. There are words in front of you, but you've read the same sentence over and over again five times in a row. Your eyes are glazed and curling up under your desk for a quick nap like George Costanza is seemingly a better and better option by the minute. Except you have things to do - you have stuff on your schedule and taking a nap is just not an option. Enter Personal Energy Management - this is an idea of scheduling your work around when you have the energy to do it rather than just when it's entered in on your calendar. Now to be sure this is more than just doing things when you feel like doing them - we know how that can turn out. Instead, this is about using your calendar and understanding that you aren't going to be at peak performance all day. Today we're going to be discussing how we can work on creating our schedules around when we do have energy instead of just when we've got a free spot on the calendar. We'll be looking at some of the different areas of energy management as well as how our energy levels fluctuate throughout the day. And we'll also spend a little time on how you can make a little more energy. |
Jul 20, 2020 |
Taking Breaks
814
We all know that one of the biggest hurdles from ADHD is starting, but paradoxically one of our other hurdles is stopping. Sometimes it feels like we're better off if we just power through until we're done, but if we really want to get the most out of our workdays, we need to have some breaks. In today's episode, we're going to be looking at the benefits of taking breaks, some different ways that we can take breaks, and also exploring going beyond breaks and actually taking some time off.
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Jul 13, 2020 |
A Nudge in the Right Direction
853
Making the right choices isn't always easy - we've got so many options of what we can do and when I'm tired I don't want to weigh all my options. It would be great if I could just get a gentle push in the right direction. Something that would make the choice I want to make easier to make. What I'm talking about here is a nudge and that's what we're going to be talking about today. We'll be learning about what a nudge is, why they work, and when they don't. We'll also be looking at some of the various ways we can nudge ourselves and why it's so important for us to know when someone else might be nudging us. |
Jul 06, 2020 |
Fighting Resistance - Part 2
915
Last week we started off our discussion of resistance - a term that I got from Steven Pressfield's book, the War of Art. While there are parts of the book that aren't that ADHD friendly, I do like this idea of resistance. And basically resistance is what is keeping us from doing our work. It's procrastination, rationalizations, comparison, perfectionism, and everything else that keeps us from working all rolled into one idea. It is the embodiment of the "I don't wanna's In part one I talked about some of the ways resistance keeps us from starting, how comparing ourselves to others slows us down, and what we crave and what we need to grow don't always match. Today we're going to keep exploring the idea of resistance. We'll be looking at ways we can work on overcoming resistance by planning, setting our intentions, and even calling in a little help.
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Jun 29, 2020 |
Fighting Resistance
974
"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What's keeping us from sitting down is resistance." This is how Steven Pressfield introduces the idea of resistance in his book the War of Art, and to me, resistance is the root of the "I don't wanna's." While I don't agree with many of the things in Pressfield's book (I mean, he states that ADHD was made up by pharmaceutical companies), I do think resistance is a great way to express this idea. Because when I don't want to do something, it's not necessarily that I just don't want to do it - it's that I can't get myself to start. If I'm planning on going on a run, I know that I'll feel better once I start running - but it's in the starting that I feel resistance. It's putting on my exercise clothes and slipping on my shoes. It's the getting out the door. Once I start putting one foot in front of the other, it isn't so hard anymore. I mean, sure there is the physicality that can become difficult, but the mental block has lifted. And this is just going to be an introduction to this topic. While I was writing this episode I discovered I had a lot to say and so I've split it into two episodes. Today we're going to be exploring the idea of resistance and how it keeps us from doing meaningful work. We're then going to look at some of the ways resistance sinks its claws into us, but also how we can work on loosening up that grip.
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Jun 22, 2020 |
Moving From Defense to Offense
757
Years ago now, before I started this podcast, I worked as a sports writer. It was fun work and I also found that a lot of the things I was writing about could be applied to real life. One of the areas that I really saw it was in the difference between teams playing offensively and defensively. No matter the game teams are going to be playing on both offense and defense, but what I often saw was that teams that had an offensive mindset often were able to take advantage and play better. What I mean by playing offensively is that you are setting the terms of engagement. Instead of reacting to what the other team is doing, you are making them react to you. It's easy to see how this works on offense, you control the ball the other team has to respond to what you are doing. But you can also do this while you are playing defense. A good defense dictates the ways that an offense can move the ball and once the defense controls where the ball is going they can force the turnover. Today we're going to be looking at how we can work on being more proactive than reactive. The role planning will play in the process and also how we can protect our time by saying no more often.
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Jun 15, 2020 |
Take a Picture, It'll Last Longer
974
Following up last week's rebroadcast about creating better reminders I thought I'd add in some more ideas on how we can remember things. One of the tools that I most often use is the camera on my phone.
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Jun 08, 2020 |
How to Create More Effective Reminders (Rebroadcast)
932
When you've got ADHD making reminders is a given. There's just too much going on in any one given day for me to keep track of it all and without reminders I know I'm going to drop the ball somewhere. I've got reminders for big things like when I need to leave to pick up my kids from school and little things like having a cup of tea in the evening but not too close to bedtime. So when I get told I just need to create a reminder to remember something I just want to shout that I already am using a lot of reminders. A big problem with a lot of reminders is that they just aren't effective at getting us to do the things they are supposed to be reminding us of. Today we're going to be exploring the ways that we can make better reminders so that we're actually following through on them. We'll be looking at what we're creating reminders for. How and when we are getting those reminders and also look at how we are creating our system of reminders.
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Jun 01, 2020 |
How To Make Time For The Important Stuff (Rebroadcast)
1126
One of the things I want to look at while I'm taking my break is what my prioritizes are - it's easy to let yourself just get pulled along with the flow of things and often that means you aren't following your prioritizes. What you end up following is the path of least resistance and overtime you going to find that you just aren't able to make the time for the things that are important to you. |
May 25, 2020 |
Burnout (Rebroadcast)
949
This week we were supposed to have a new episode going up but I'm really starting to feel it. I feel like I've been stuck for a while now and pressing on the gas is just spinning my wheels, so I've realized that I need to step back and take a break. And I thought what better way to start off that break than rebroadcasting my episode on burnout. I know I'm going to have to work on picking up a few lessons from this episode again so I though you might appreciate them too. Burnout is hard. Today we're going to start out by discussing what burnout actually is and I'm also going to talk about some of the times I hit burnout. We're also going to be looking at what we can do to prevent burn and then what to do if we still hit burnout anyways.
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May 18, 2020 |
How to Think (Critically)
828
The ADHD brain has a strange relationship with thinking. One of my biggest gripes is that it often feels like I can't ever turn my brain off. No matter what I'm doing, I'm thinking about something. I could be washing dishes, but I'm thinking about what else I need to do before I go to bed. I could be walking to get the mail, and instead of wondering what's in the mailbox, I'm thinking about a conversation I had three years ago. Even when I'm trying to meditate, I'll often find myself thinking about what it means to be meditating. I'm not really sure that thinking about meditating while meditating is actually meditating - but hey, I'm still putting in the effort, it's called a practice for a reason.
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May 11, 2020 |
Cleaning House
1170
I'd say I have a love-hate relationship with cleaning, but that implies that there is a part of me that loves cleaning. There isn't. I like having cleaned and having a clean home, but I seldom enjoy the actual cleaning part.
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May 04, 2020 |
The Science of Fidgets
789
My desk usually has a least a few fidget toys on top of it. I say usually only because my children sneak into my office and steal them. But the rest of the time I have a couple infinity cubes, a tangle and a piece of sea glass I use as a worry stone. I love having them to play with as I think through sentences while I'm writing and also as something to keep my hands busy while I'm reading. Today we're going to talk about the rise of fidgets in over the last few years and then dive into how they are supposed to work. We'll also be discussing what makes a good fidget. Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/fidgetscience
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Apr 20, 2020 |
Best-Laid Plans and COVID-19
964
Trying to plan in a pandemic has been... well really what's been a problem is all the plans that I made before the lockdown. Every week I look through my calendar and have canceled events and plans that just aren't going to happen. I mean this was the first Easter I didn't have to pretend to be sick during to avoid going over to the in-laws, but that's a pretty weak silver lining. We've got a lot going on so planning is more important than ever - I mean going to the grocery store takes a lot more forethought than it used to. But planning also seems harder than ever before as well, so today we're going to be looking at what to do when plans go awry and how to adjust our long-term planning.
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Apr 14, 2020 |
When Good Science Goes Bad
856
Going online has its perks - we've got a wealth of information at our fingertips - but with so much information it can be hard to find the truth. Often we can't find the signal for the noise because well, it is just really noisy. And by noisy, I mean there is a lot of bad information out there. In today's episode, we're going to be looking specifically at science journalism, but really most of what we're going to be talking about can be applied to everything that we read online. We want to be getting the best information and so we've got to be cautious about our sources. So we're going to be looking at ways that research can be manipulated to support a flimsy claim, why we've got to go beyond reading the headlines and what to watch out for when we are reading those articles.
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Apr 06, 2020 |
Controlling What You Can When Everything Feels Out of Control
677
I hope everyone is staying home and staying safe. I know that everyone is going through a hard time right now and ADHD isn't making it any easier. So today we're going to be talking about what we can do to try and regain some of that control you may feel you have lost in your life. We'll be talking about staying in contact with friends, setting up routines and using accountability. We'll also be talking about ways to get in a little more self-care.
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Mar 31, 2020 |
Compassionate Ass-Kicking For The Win (Rebroadcast)
874
When I'm working on this podcast sometimes I wish my boss would be a little harder on me because it can be easy for me to get behind - but my boss is kind of laid back and lets me get away with more than I should - and that's probably because my boss is me. When I can't count on myself to get the things I need to turn to others to help me out. A lot of us with ADHD can have trouble turning to others when we need help, but we don't have to do things alone. And one of the best ways others can help you is through accountability. Today I'm going to talk about what accountability is, what it isn't and ways that you can get some more into your life so that you can follow through with your intentions. Find the full show note on my web page: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/CompassionateAssKicking
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Mar 23, 2020 |
Working With Your ADHD (Updated and Rebroadcast)
720
This week we're going to be hitting Working With Your ADHD. One of my biggest struggles with ADHD often comes from my belief that if I just tried harder I'd be able to overcome anything that my ADHD was throwing at me, but surprise surprise that just isn't the case. In today's episode, we're going to be looking at why we don't want to just keep trying to do the same things as neurotypicals, why we struggle so much with the idea of trying harder and also some of the strategies that are going to support us the best. |
Mar 16, 2020 |
The Surprising Magic of Setting a Deadline
925
When I was in school, I always wanted to be the kind of student who able to finish a project well before it needed to be turned in. I loved the idea that I could write a paper and still have a week left to polish it. Of course, I was never actually that student. For me to get started on a paper, I had to actually be able to feel that pressure from the deadline building up on me. That usually meant that I was mostly working on papers the night before - I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Since I was still able to get good grades with this strategy, I never really changed it - but I always wished that I wasn't always riding by the seat of my pants. Despite having a good track record, there were times that I missed those deadlines. And a funny thing about it was that I always wanted more time to write my papers. In my brain, if the deadline was pushed farther out I would have had more time to start, and yet experience has taught me that it really didn't matter how much time I was given to complete a paper. Given a week or month, I would still procrastinate until the last minute. When those deadlines were moving in on me, I was able to focus like no other. The time pressure allowed me to block out all those other distracting ideas vying for my attention. Today we're going to be exploring how we can use this time pressure to complete those nagging tasks that we otherwise might not get done and also those things we want to do but just can't seem to prioritize. We'll also be looking at better ways to set deadlines so that we can follow through with our intentions.
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Mar 09, 2020 |
Getting off the Hamster Wheel (Before You Burnout)
949
Exhausted, empty, overloaded, unable to cope - these are some of the words I'll find myself using when I'm feeling burned out or on the path to burnout. We tend to find ourselves in burnout after prolonged periods of stress - it isn't something that sets in all at once. It isn't that we finally have a straw that breaks the camel's back, instead we just eventually find ourselves waking up one morning and realizing we just can't even. We find that we've lost our passion and drive for everything in front of us. We might still find ways to be productive but we tend to be robotic about it and it just drains us more and more. Burnout is hard. Today we're going to start out by discussing what burnout actually is and I'm also going to talk about some of the times I hit burnout. We're also going to be looking at what we can do to prevent burn and then what to do if we still hit burnout anyways.
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Mar 02, 2020 |
How to Create More Effective Reminders
972
When you've got ADHD making reminders is a given. There's just too much going on in any one given day for me to keep track of it all and without reminders I know I'm going to drop the ball somewhere. I've got reminders for big things like when I need to leave to pick up my kids from school and little things like having a cup of tea in the evening but not too close to bedtime. So when I get told I just need to create a reminder to remember something I just want to shout that I already am using a lot of reminders. A big problem with a lot of reminders is that they just aren't effective at getting us to do the things they are supposed to be reminding us of. Today we're going to be exploring the ways that we can make better reminders so that we're actually following through on them. We'll be looking at what we're creating reminders for. How and when we are getting those reminders and also look at how we are creating our system of reminders.
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Feb 24, 2020 |
Life Lessons From Video Games
941
Talking about video games so much last week got me thinking about games a lot and so I ended up getting a new game for myself called Stardew Valley. The game was originally released in 2016 but because it was so popular it has been released for a bunch of other systems - I got my copy on the Nintendo Switch. In Stardew Valley you escape the hustle and bustle of the city by moving to a farm you inherited from your grandfather. And then the gameplay is basically just running your farm. Clearing your land. Cutting down trees. Planting crops. Watering them. Talking to people in town. Upgrading your farm. I'm simplifying but honestly, the gameplay is pretty straight forward. I know, that doesn't sound all that engaging and yet I've gotten hooked on this game. And so have thousands of other people. Last week we spent some time discussing specifically why the ADHD brain can latch on to video games so well - this week we're going to veer into specifically how games can easily get me to do things that essentially are boring - like watering my crops - and trying to figure out how we can apply that to real life.
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Feb 17, 2020 |
ADVGD: Attention Deficit Video Game Disorder
1111
I've played video games since before I was able to read - although that statement loses some of its weight once you find out that I didn't learn to read until I was in 4th grade - you know, dyslexia and all. Nonetheless, video games have been a part of my life for a long time. I mean, games are so ingrained in me that while I am writing this, I am listening to video game music - it's excellent for creating a relaxed focus. Video game music was specifically designed to help with attention - I'll link to some of my favorite game soundtracks in the show notes. Today we're going to be talking about why video games can engage the ADHD brain so well and how that can lead to video game addiction. We're also going to be discussing some of the more positive traits of video games as well as discussing some ways that we can cut back on how many video games we play.
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Feb 10, 2020 |
ADHD in the Gym
1064
This week we're going to be jumping - yeah, jumping because we're talking about exercise. I hope you're ready for some Jazzercise - but if that's not your groove I've got some other options for you as well. Somewhere in our heads, we all know that exercising more is something we "should" do, but it feels like the easiest thing in the world to put off. I mean just because when I look out my window and I can see it's raining doesn't mean I need to stay on my couch right now. In today's episode, we're going to be learning some of the reasons exercise is great for our ADHD brain. How we can work on making it easier to fit exercise into our schedules so that we actually do it, some different ways we can get our blood flowing and our hearts beating. And finally a few things we can do to make sure that we are keeping up with our routines.
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Feb 03, 2020 |
How to Make your Smart Phone ADHD Friendly (Part 2)
941
This is the second part of the series on how to better manage your smartphone with your ADHD - you don't have to have listened to part 1 to listen to this episode, but if you like this episode I'd definitely recommend going back and listening to last week's episode as well. In that episode, we covered how we can limit the distractions that our smartphone can present and also how to make it easier on our ADHD brains when we're setting up our smartphone. This week we're going in a bit of a different direction - while smartphones can be easily distracting and endless entertaining, they also provide us with some great tools to help us manage our ADHD. In this episode I'm going to be discussing a number of the apps I use to help me navigate my day - since I use the iPhone that means most of the apps I specifically discuss are going to be iPhone apps; however, I do try and provide alternatives for Android. Find the Full Show Notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/ADHDPhone2 |
Jan 27, 2020 |
How to Make your Smart Phone ADHD Friendly (Part 1)
1044
I've been carrying around a smartphone in my pocket for more than 10 years - I started off with the first iPhone and have since gone over to Android, dabbled with the Windows Phones for a few years and then ended back up with an iPhone again. Through my years with my phone I've learned that it can be a great asset and help me with a number of my ADHD difficulties; however, I've also felt the dark side of the phone as well. Games, social media, email and all those notifications. ADHD makes it really easy for us to get off track so we want to be making sure that we're not letting our phones dictate our next actions. Through trial and error phone designers have been making it harder and harder for us to put down our phone. Since we have ADHD this means that it is almost too easy for us to get distracted when we pop open our phone to just check the time. The screen lights up and suddenly we're hit with a hundred different ways our attention should go. This week we'll be focusing on ways to set up your phone to be less distracting and we're going to work on setting up our phones intentionally to make sure that we're paying attention to what apps we have on our phone and where those apps are located. We'll also be looking at other ways to reduce the constant stream of distractions that our phones can produce. |
Jan 21, 2020 |
Tweaking Your Habits for Better Results
828
Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/habits In this episode we'll be learning why we don't need to use discipline nearly as much as we think, the importance of sequencing in our habits and how we can make tweaks in those sequences so that we can change our habits to the ones we actually want.
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Jan 13, 2020 |
Breaking Down The ONE Thing
923
Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/TheONEThing My first reading of the book was on audiobook and since then I've listened to it three more and read the physical version of the book twice. The subtitle of the book is, "The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results" - and as I've mentioned before, just because something is simple doesn't make it easy. Each reading has helped me understand the concepts a little bit better and I was always able to pick up a few new things. Today I'm going to be going over the "surprisingly simple truth" in the book and discussing how we can better apply it for our ADHD brains.
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Jan 06, 2020 |
Dear ADHD
504
Find show notes for this episode at HackingYourADHD.Com/DearADHD Since my first letter to my ADHD I've tried to write another one about four times a year. When I write these letters it gives me an excellent chance to check in with how my relationship with my ADHD is going. Sometimes it's going really well, while other times I've found myself to be really struggling. If you'd like to write your own letter to your ADHD, just set a timer for 10-15 minutes and write whatever feels right to say to your ADHD. There's no wrong way to write your letter - and don't worry, I've heard a number of these that start with Dear ADHD, F - you. The great part about doing this exercise is that you get a nice record of how your relationship with ADHD is going - I can look back and see how I was doing mentally when I last checked in. |
Dec 30, 2019 |
How to Plan Your 2020 Without Getting Overwhelmed
1078
Be sure to check out the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/planning2020 In our session today we're going to be going over how to set goals without making them too challenging, figuring out where our focus is going to be next year, updating our calendars with the most important stuff first (you might be surprised with what that is) and then going over why we want to be doing our most important goals first.
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Dec 23, 2019 |
Looking Back on 2019 for a Great 2020
791
Today we're going to be walking through the process of how to conduct an end of year review by letting you in while I went through my own review.
And be sure to connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to let me know what your top takeaway was from this episode. |
Dec 09, 2019 |
How To Make Time For The Important Stuff
1098
Let me ask you, what's the most important thing on your to-do list? What the thing that if you did it would make you satisfied with what you accomplished today? Sometimes we've got a clear picture of what our most important thing we've got to do is - usually it's something that's due that day - maybe even something that was due, yesterday. But we can't always rely on urgency to be our guide for prioritization. If you're struggling to figure out what's the most important thing to do, you're not alone. Picking out the tasks that are going to make the biggest difference is a hard thing to do and something that we're kind of just expected to understand - yet often there's no clear reason why doing task A is better than doing task B. As we are approaching the end of the year I've been thinking about what I want to do next year and what things are going to make the most difference in my life. So today I'm going to be exploring how we can determine what those most important tasks are and how we can make them a priority. Check out the full show notes and episode transcript at: HackingYourADHD.com/Priorities
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Dec 02, 2019 |
Prioritizing Your Needs For a Better Holiday Season
474
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Nov 25, 2019 |
Compassionate Ass-Kicking For The Win
863
When I'm working on this podcast sometimes I wish my boss would be a little harder on me because it can be easy for me to get behind - but my boss is kind of laid back and lets me get away with more than I should - and that's probably because my boss is me. When I can't count on myself to get the things I need to turn to others to help me out. A lot of us with ADHD can have trouble turning to others when we need help, but we don't have to do things alone. And one of the best ways others can help you is through accountability. Today I'm going to talk about what accountability is, what it isn't and ways that you can get some more into your life so that you can follow through with your intentions. Find the full show note on my web page: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/CompassionateAssKicking
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Nov 18, 2019 |
How to Get Refocused After Your Vacation
810
Last week was all about getting there and this week we're focusing on what to do when you get back. Travel disrupts our routines and habits - and we should take those disruptions seriously. One thing that I've had to learn over and over again is that ADHD makes transitions hard - and coming back from a trip is a big transition. This Episode's Top Tips
Find all the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/RefocusedVacation |
Nov 11, 2019 |
Seven ADHD Friendly Travel Hacks For An Awesome Vacation
982
ADHD loves novelty and what could be more novel for an ADHD brain than going to a new place? While you might love the destination, getting there can be really hard for those of us with ADHD. The process of traveling some place new takes a lot of work and a lot of attention to detail that can even escape neurotypicals. Recently my wife was booking our tickets to go visit family during Thanksgiving - except after she booked the tickets she realized she booked them for the wrong weekend. Fortunately she caught it early and it wasn't too hard to fix. But travel is a lot more than just booking tickets and getting to the airport on time. The entire process of getting out the door with all your bags to sitting wait for your plane to leave takes a lot of executive function and we can really find ourselves wiped out just thinking of everything we're going to need to do. With a little bit of planning ahead though we can make traveling a lot easier on our ADHD brains. #1 - Making a list and checking it twice |
Nov 04, 2019 |
How to Journal Even When You Have ADHD
921
Find the Full Show Notes:
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Oct 28, 2019 |
Goals, Strategies and Tactics
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Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/GST Simply put:
Let's take a look at an example. A while back I decided to set the goal planning my week every week. My strategy at the time was to do my planning on Monday's right when I started work. This was a bad strategy, but it was compounded by the fact that I didn't have any specific tactics to make sure that I was doing my planning right when I got in. Coming in on Mondays I'd find myself just jumping into whatever needed to be done first and telling myself that I'd get to my planning right afterwards. That rarely actually happened. And while it might have been a good idea to actually try some different tactics here I didn't realize that was the issue, so I instead opted to change my strategy. I decided that I wanted to try and start planning my week over the weekend. This was a great idea in theory but ended up being a mess because I again didn't implement any solid tactics to make sure that I was getting my planning done. With all my family commitments on weekends I found that I had trouble finding time to do my planning. I liked the results when I did manage to plan on the weekend but I wasn't able to do it consistently. I ended up changing my strategy again and was able to get it to stick, because this time I also decided to add some tactics. Now I plan my next week on the Friday afternoons and instead of just trying to find time on Fridays, I created a reoccurring event on my calendar specifically for planning on Friday afternoons. By blocking off that time ahead of time I couldn't schedule any other projects then without moving that time block (which sometimes I do have to do). The biggest reason this has worked for me is because let's be honest, you never just find time to do things - if it isn't in your calendar it probably isn't a priority. When I'm at my office I'm able to respect my time blocks a lot more easily. When I'm at home with the kids they are my priority and so I can't rely on having as consistent time blocks - and this comes back to the idea of working with your ADHD and what works for you. Sure I'm "sacrificing" my Friday afternoons to make my planning happen, but planning is important for managing my ADHD and so it is totally worth it. SMART Goals Now that we've got a better understanding of the differences between strategies and tactics let's talk a little bit about goal setting. There are a lot of ways to set your goals but today we're just going to be talking about SMART goals. SMART stands for:
When I'm sitting down during the goal setting process I'll often start with a nebulous goal such as: I want to get in better shape. To gain clarity on what I actually want out of this goal we'll run it through the SMART goal methodology. We'll start by getting specific. What does getting in shape mean? For me getting in shape might mean getting to the gym more and eating healthier. The key when making things specific is to also focus on making them into ways that can also be measurable. Looking at that first part we can say I want to go to the gym at least 2 times a week. This makes it both specific (we know exactly what needs to happen) and measurable (we know the frequency, twice a week). Eating healthier is a lot harder to quantify, so we're going to have to change the wording so that we can make this measurable - let's go with I want to eat 3 healthy meals a week. If we want to get real nitty-gritty we might also want to define wh |
Oct 21, 2019 |
Working With Your ADHD
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It's easy to get caught up in what neurotypicals do for productivity that we can forget that we're not neurotypical, we have ADHD. And when you've got ADHD sometimes you need to do things differently because our brains are wired differently. Even though neurotypicals sometimes struggle with a lot of the same issues that we are struggling with it doesn't mean we should always be trying the same strategies and tactics to get over those hurdles. What we need to do is find ways to work with our ADHD brains. Working with your ADHD brain is all about finding the strategies that work with your brain and avoiding the ones that are going to cause problems. This Episode's Top Tips
For all the tools and other goodies mentioned in this episode, check out the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/WorkingWith |
Oct 14, 2019 |
How to Remember Anything
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ADHD can make it hard to remember all the things that you need to remember on a daily basis. Things get forgotten and we end up missing important appointments because they simply slipped our mind. While everyone can have trouble with memory, it can be especially hard on those of us with ADHD because of how memory works with executive function. When we are thinking about memory it is important to distinguish between long-term memory and short-term memory. Long-term memory holds memories from weeks, months or years ago - while short term memory is all about the now with those memories lasting anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of days. Short-term memory is also sometimes also referred to as working memory To keep the information we store in our working memory we must put in effort to keep it there. If we don't put in effort to retain those memories they will be forgotten. We can hold about 5-9 memories in our short-term memory. It is important to note that when we are holding things in our working memory we are using our executive function. Since ADHD can also be considered a disorder of the executive function this means that it is harder for people with ADHD to use their working memory. To be clear we can simply define executive as what controls our ability to get thing done. It helps with things like time management, paying attention, remembering details and planning. You can think of executive function kind of like a well that you draw out of every time you do these things. Our reserve of executive function has ups and down with things like sleeping and eating helping to restore that reserve. We rely on executive function for a lot of thing so we don't want to drain it unnecessarily. The easiest thing we can do to reduce the strain on our executive function is to stop trying to store these memories in our heads and instead write them down. When we are writing down these reminders to ourselves we need to focus on creating reminders that are specific so we actually know what we were supposed to be reminded about. The second key is to create cues for these reminders so that we get reminded about these things when the information is actually relevant to us. In the instances where a written reminder isn't warranted such as going into another room just to get an object we can also struggle with remembering things. In a study from psychology Professor Gabriel Radvansky of Notre Dame found that doorways "serve as an 'event boundary' in the mind." In his study Radvansky found that subjects were more forgetful after walking through a doorway compared to when they walked the same distance across a room. To help with these instances of forgetfulness we can implement solutions like vocalization and visualization to help us remember what we needed. This Episode's Top Tips
For all the tools and other goodies mentioned in this episode, check out the full show notes at: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/RememberAnything |
Oct 07, 2019 |
Timing Your Day
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ADHD can make it very hard for us to accurately tell what time it is now, how much time is left, and how quickly time is passing. This is referred to as time blindness and it creates a host of issues for those of us with ADHD. When you are unable to accurately tell what time it is, you are going to be late. When you don't know how long something is going to take, you are either going to take too long to finish or finish well before you predicted. When we are unable to accurately gauge how much time has passed we often are going to be late and when it comes to time predictions we often find ourselves woefully inaccurate, either predicting we can finish a task in no time at all or deciding a task is going to take way more time than it actually will. Our brains are great at confusing large and small tasks, making us think that doing the dishes will take an hour while figuring we can type out that ten-page paper in the same hour. We can work on our time blindness by making predictions of how long a task will take and then taking accurate measurements of how long it actually takes to do. As we do this more often and learn how long things actually take we create time wisdom. Often we will find ourselves falling to time blindness because of the invisible parts of a task. One common example is parking. If we have a 2:00 PM appointment and it takes 30 minutes to arrive at our destination we can't just allot 30 minutes for the drive. Once we arrive we still have to find parking and go into the building - both of those tasks take time that is usually unaccounted for. One of the causes of these invisible parts is because we tend not to acknowledge that a task is built up of three parts - set up, the doing of the task, and clean up. In the going to an appointment example, getting ready to go and getting in the car could be considered the set up, driving to the appointment the doing part, and the parking and going into the building is the clean up. When you start timing yourself you need to get an actual timer that counts up like a stopwatch so that you can create accurate time measurements. Once you have your timer create reminders about what you want to time and also reminders to turn off your timer once you've finished the task. Also remember that you don't need to judge yourself if you aren't hitting your time predictions. This is called time blindness, which means we have trouble seeing time, so sometimes our time predictions are going to be fairly inaccurate. Timing yourself is about helping you correct your bad predictions and creating time wisdom, not about telling yourself you should be doing things faster. This Episode's Top Tips: 1. Get yourself a timer, you don't need anything fancy, but try and find something that isn't your phone and that counts up. 2. Tasks are made up of three parts: the set up, the doing, and the clean up. 3. When you are timing yourself make predictions on how long your tasks are going to take - accurately predicting time is a skill and the more you practice the better you will get. |
Oct 07, 2019 |
Building Your Toolbox
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ADHD can make it hard for us to work on our intentions. This is even harder when we forget the things that we want to do. When you are learning about new ADHD strategies while reading books or listening to podcasts (like this one!) it is really easy to forget your intention of implementing those strategies. In these instances when we learn about a new tool, what we can do is write down our intended strategy and put it into our ADHD Toolbox. Our toolbox is simply a way for us to record the strategies and ideas we have for working with our ADHD - a place we can go and look at our intentions when we are off track. While new strategies are fun to add to our toolbox, we should also focus on adding things that are already working in our life to our toolbox. If you've found a great bedtime routine? Stick it in your toolbox. Figured out a great way to plan your upcoming week? Stick it in your toolbox. Found a great tool for keeping you focused? Stick it in your toolbox. Just creating a toolbox for yourself isn't enough. We all know that we forget things. That we get off track. And sometimes when we are off track it takes us a while to realize what we are doing wrong. Use your toolbox to speed up the process of getting back in the groove of things. To do this you've got to set up regular times to check your toolbox. But we also know that sometimes even when we set aside time to check something we aren't always going to get to it, which means we've got to set up redundant reminders for ourselves to make sure we don't miss out on our most important intentions. This Episode’s Top Tips
For all the tools and other goodies mentioned in this episode go to the full show notes on our web page: HackingYourADHD.com/podcast/Toolbox |
Oct 05, 2019 |