In today’s episode, we’re tackling the complex reality of ADHD management. Forget about finding a silver bullet; it's about piecing together a puzzle of habits, routines, and strategies that work for you. We’ll be exploring the mosaic of strategies that can help us navigate our days more effectively and how we can build our own personalized way to help us manage our ADHD.
One of the trickiest parts of ADHD management is that it isn’t just one thing. That is there is no one thing I can do that is going to solve all of my ADHD woes.
This often comes in contrast to the way that I want to treat my ADHD — because we are often looking for the one thing that is going to make it happen. The thing that is going to make it seem like hey, this ADHD thing isn't so bad. The thing where everything falls into place and we've done it, we're on our way to glory.The one system that is going to tie up all my loose ends and for lack of a better term, make me function like a neurotypical.
Now, this is a point I’ve hit on before, being neurotypical isn’t the goal. There is no amount of hacking our ADHD that is going to make someone neurotypical and even if we did manage to “cure” our ADHD we’d still have problems. Sure ADHD magnifies our problems, but nonetheless, we’d still have problems without said ADHD.
Unsurprisingly I've gotten a bit off track here because while these things are relevant, they aren't what I'm strictly looking to talk about, which is how success with our ADHD isn't about a singular winning factor. When we're trying to solve our ADHD issues in one fell swoop we're failing to see the bigger picture. A big part of this is because we don't have just one singular issue that we're dealing with. Nor do our symptoms only hit a singular part of our lives.
Let’s just take my poor working memory as an example - this doesn’t just mean I forget things like where I put my keys. It also means that I forget things that are on my calendar. It means I might forget that I put in a load of laundry this morning. Or that I was supposed to swing by the grocery store on my way home from work. Or that I need to take my ADHD meds in the morning.
Unfortunately, I can’t see a system that is going to work to help all of those different factors. Sure, reminders are going to play a large role in helping with following through with all my various intentions. But reminders can only do so much and there’s a big difference between reminding me that I need to change over the laundry versus making sure that I know what’s on my calendar for the day (and also making all those appointments). Additionally, I don’t exactly need reminders that I don’t know where my keys are, I need a routine place that I put them once I get home.
All this to say that even in one aspect of my ADHD, it isn’t so simple to just find a solution that is going to solve all my problems.
I don’t say this to try and demoralize you from trying to treat your ADHD - in fact I believe that in many ways this is a good thing for us.
For one, it means that we don’t have to try and solve all our problems at once. We don’t have to find that one system that is going to fix everything because it doesn’t exist and that means that we can just find the bits and pieces that work for us and cobble them all together.
That's a lot about what this show is all about, adding tools that help us manage our ADHD one step at a time. Because at the end of the day, despite everything that we do for our ADHD we are still going to have ADHD. We're still going to be at the mercy of symptoms regardless of how many hacks we add to our systems.
But that’s okay. Or even if it isn’t “okay”, it’s life and it’s important that when we’re working on our ADHD management that we’re trying to stay in the realm of reality.
Of course, there are also going to be factors in our ADHD management that are outsized compared to everything else.
Sure it’s great that I got a little key basket that I’ve trained myself to drop my keys in every time that I come in the door, but on the grand scale of my ADHD, that’s just a small piece of the picture.
The conception of this episode came about as I was thinking about how my habits and routines shape my ability to work with my ADHD. It also brought me back to a question I’ve heard a number of times, which is about what are the best things that I do to help manage my ADHD. And of course that question is what this episode is all about - about how that’s the wrong question, because there is no one thing that makes my ADHD all better. It is a confluence of things that make it so that I can get at my day to the best of my ability.
With that said, there are pieces of that confluence that play a bigger role than others.
For example, sleep is one of the biggest factors in my ability to function. I was recently reminded of this fact when I had kids up in the middle of the night and was unable to get back to bed myself. And for the rest of that day I was basically wrecked. I didn’t get anything done.
But of course sleep is somewhat of a funny example because sleep is also one of those things where you’re not going to be able to fix your sleep by doing just one thing. Although, again there are factors that are going to have a bigger impact than others - for me it had to be creating a bedtime routine that got me into bed at a reasonable time so that I was giving myself that opportunity to get the amount of sleep I need.
But as I’ve been saying over and over in this episode — ADHD management isn’t just one thing. Even if I get the best sleep I’ve ever had and get my sleep debt down to zero, it doesn’t mean I’m going to have a productive day. It puts me on the right path and when I don’t get enough it makes everything else harder, but by itself it isn’t going solve everything.
This is where something like planning comes in because if I'm not planning or I don't have any tasks that feel like they need to get done, it can be hard for me to follow through with... well if I'm not planning I guess I didn't have any real intentions for that day - but you get my drift.
To follow through with intentions I need to be clear about what those intentions are. While it isn’t hard for me to fly by the seat of my pants on things, it’s also really easy for me to jump in on a new project and then halfway through get reminded, oh I should be working on this other thing because it’s actually due at the end of the week.
I mean this is how I can get to the end of the week, month or even year and go, well what did I even do that was important? I just went from one emergency to the next. While prioritizing isn’t easy it’s a vital skill to work on.
But as we all know, getting things done is also more than just putting something on our calendars. We also have to have the motivation and energy to work on something when it’s time to do it.
And I think this factor can be one of the most confounding ones when we first start trying to manage our time better. We put something on our calendar and have every intention of doing that thing at that time, and yet that time rolls around, we get the reminder of what we’re supposed to be doing but can’t seem to draw on the necessary resources to make it happen.
Again this is going to be a number of factors - as I mentioned earlier, sleep is going to be one of those things that determine if I’m going to have the energy for that follow-through, but there are so many other things that could be affecting me here. Did I eat enough today? How much other stuff have I done today? Am I emotionally regulated? Are there other distractions in my life that are pulling my attention? Is this task god awful boring?
All things that are going to affect how well I am going to be able to follow through on what I planned to do. And there are things on that list I don’t have direct control over - while I like to think I’m a fairly level headed person I know it’s also not that hard for my emotions to get hijacked. Maybe I had an argument with my spouse that morning or maybe it was just that my favorite sports team lost in a spectacular fashion the night before. That’s going to make it harder to stay on task.
And I guess that’s also the other side of the coin here, we have a confluence of factors that are going to be distracting us throughout the day. It isn’t always going to be one thing that knocks me from my intentions.
It becomes about mitigating the factors that are distracting me and trying to maximize the things that are helping me focus. And knowing that it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition. Because as I said, it’s about minimizing those things that are distracting me, not eliminating them because there are always going to be things that are unpredictable.
And then on the other side it’s about doing the things that are going to help us function our best in that day. I don’t have to do everything on my laundry list of items that are helpful for focusing. Especially because our tools aren’t always going to work the way we want them to. We need to have a variety of strategies that we can pull on because we’re always facing new challenges and not every strategy is going to be right for the situation.
But what’s the takeaway here? Just that having ADHD is hard and can really suck some days? Well yes, but also I feel like it’s important that we’re keeping in mind everything that goes into our ADHD management and that we build up an understanding that it is going to take a lot of different strategies to keep on top of everything. And we’re also not going to be on top of everything all the time - no one is. And that’s okay. The point here is that we want to be able to embrace the small changes that we make in our lives because they make up the bigger whole of what it takes to manage our ADHD.
This Episode's Top Tips
Embrace small changes and focus on incremental improvements in your daily routines that can collectively impact managing ADHD. We don’t need that silver bullet that is going to fix everything.
Just because our ADHD management is going to rely on a lot of different strategies it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a plan of action - it’s still important for us to be focusing on those strategies that are going to be giving us our biggest bang for our buck like getting better sleep.
Adaptability is key; it’s important to understand that not every strategy will work all the time, and be open to adjusting your approach as needed. We’re not always in control of everything going on in our day and we have to work around that as best we can.