Living with ADHD can involve a frustrating gap between knowing what you need to do and being able to make yourself do it.
You can know the email needs answering. You want to answer the email. You can have the laptop open, the email staring directly at you, and somehow find yourself reorganising a drawer instead...
That isn't necessarily a lack of motivation, effort or care. ADHD can affect executive functioning, the collection of processes involved in starting tasks, shifting attention, organising, remembering, regulating impulses and following something through to completion. Supports and scaffolds can play a big role in making those processes more manageable.
The aim is to find practical supports that make it easier to work with your brain. There isn't one ADHD toolkit or strategy that works for everyone, so what helps can depend on the person, the task and even the day.
Here are a few things I personally have found helpful.
1. Give your body something to do
Fidgeting isn't always a distraction. For many people, movement or tactile input can support regulation, alertness and attention. That might mean clicking a pen, moving a foot, twisting a ring, doodling, standing, pacing or using a purpose-designed fidget tool.
The useful part is finding the right kind of input for both the task and the person. If you're listening in a meeting or classroom, you might prefer something quiet, discreet and repetitive that doesn't demand much visual attention. When you're trying to regulate while overwhelmed, you may want something with more resistance, weight or Safe Ouch input.
There is no universally perfect fidget. A more useful question than "What's the best fidget for ADHD?" is:
"What kind of input helps me do what I'm trying to do?"
2. Borrow another person's presence
Body doubling can sound slightly ridiculous until you discover that it works for you. Body doubling simply means doing a task while another person is present. They don't necessarily need to help. They might be doing their own work beside you, sitting at the kitchen table while you sort paperwork, or joining you on a video call while you both tackle completely different jobs.
For some ADHDers, that little bit of external structure can make starting and staying with a task significantly easier.
You don't necessarily need someone to do the task with you, although I won't lie, that can be an added bonus. Sometimes you simply need someone to be there while you do it.
A variation that I find incredibly helpful is when someone else starts doing the "thing", and then I join in. Sometimes seeing someone else begin creates enough momentum for my brain to find its own way into the task.
3. Make the task smaller
"Clean the kitchen" sounds like one task, but it can actually contain a whole series of smaller actions:
- Take the cups to the sink
- Put rubbish in the bin
- Load the dishwasher
- Wipe the bench
- Put away five things
When a task feels enormous or has no obvious starting point, breaking it into tiny, concrete actions can reduce some of the executive-function load. If your supposedly "tiny" first step still feels impossible, make it tinier. "Do the laundry" can become "put the basket beside the washing machine".
That's allowed. Starting counts.
4. Add novelty on purpose
Sometimes the thing your brain needs is a little more interest. Try changing location, putting music on, racing a timer, working outside, using a ridiculous pen, turning something into a competition or doing the boring job in an unusual order.
Novelty isn't a magic ADHD cure, and what works one day may do absolutely nothing the next. That's okay. The goal is to have enough options available that when one stops working, you have something else to try.
5. Get it out of your head
Working memory can make "I'll remember that" an occasionally optimistic strategy. Externalising information can help. Reminders outside your head might include:
- visual timers and alarms
- calendars and whiteboards
- sticky notes and checklists
- baskets where things actually get used
- leaving an item somewhere visible
A support doesn't have to look beautifully organised to be useful. If putting tomorrow's medication beside your coffee cup means you remember it, that system is doing its job.
6. Reduce the number of steps
Sometimes making a task easier starts with looking at how many steps sit between you and doing it.
- Could the thing live somewhere else?
- Could you have two of them?
- Could the lid come off the basket?
- Could the supplies stay where you actually use them?
- Could something be automated?
- Could someone else do that particular job?
Removing one tiny piece of friction can sometimes achieve more than another elaborate productivity system.
7. Use timers differently
A timer can create an edge around something that otherwise feels endless. You might try:
"I'm going to do this for five minutes, then I can stop."
You may continue, or you may not. Both are fine. For brains that struggle to estimate or feel the passage of time, visual timers can also make an abstract concept like "15 minutes" much more concrete.
8. Build transition supports
Sometimes the difficult part isn't the activity itself. It's switching. Leaving the house, getting into the shower, stopping work, going to bed, moving from gaming to homework, finishing one project and beginning another can all involve a transition that needs its own support.
Warnings, countdowns, routines, music, timers, a sensory tool or simply allowing more transition time than you think you "should" need can help.
The transition is part of the task, so it deserves to be planned for too
9. AI can be a useful support
As a very non-techie human, this feels slightly strange to say, but I find ChatGPT incredibly helpful for scaffolding my ADHD brain.
One of the biggest things for me is that I don't have to organise my thoughts before I start. I can simply talk into it, often in a completely jumbled stream of consciousness, and it can help me sort those thoughts into something I can actually work with.
I use it to brain dump, organise ideas, break overwhelming tasks into smaller steps, make lists, prioritise what needs doing, draft things when I'm stuck at the starting line and remind me about things I know I'm likely to forget.
I also use it for everyday ADHD things. I can tell it what's in my fridge and pantry and ask what I could make for dinner. I can photograph something I've bought and forgotten what I intended to do with it. I can ask it to turn a huge job into the first three manageable steps, give it a ridiculous list of things I need to get done and ask where to start, or turn a rambling voice dump into an organised document.
It can also help when I know exactly what I mean but can't quite find the words to explain it. I can throw the half-formed thought at it and work backwards and forwards until we've landed on what I was actually trying to say.
And I can come back to things. That has become surprisingly valuable for me. My ChatGPT has become a bit of a brains trust. I can return to an idea, project or decision we've worked through before and pick up the thread again, rather than relying on my brain to remember every detail or starting from scratch each time.
That continuity can take a surprising amount of load off my working memory. Sometimes I even use it almost like a form of body doubling, working through something alongside it step by step instead of trying to hold the entire task in my head at once.
You don't need beautifully constructed prompts either. Mine are frequently just me talking. For my ADHD brain, that's the real value of AI. It gives my thinking somewhere to land, helps me sort through it and gives me somewhere to return to when my brain has already moved on to the next 47 things.
10. Stop judging the "weird thing" that works
This might be one of my favourites. If you need shoes beside the front door, put them there. If you concentrate better while moving, move. If you need three alarms, use three alarms.
If folding clothes means they'll sit in a basket for three weeks, but unfolded clothes in labelled tubs actually get put away, perhaps labelled tubs are the system that works for you.
A useful support doesn't have to look conventional. It simply needs to support you.
Your ADHD toolkit should look like yours
Fidget tools can be an incredibly useful part of an ADHD toolkit, but they're only one part. Your toolkit might include movement, sensory input, body doubling, timers, medication, headphones, checklists, routines, novelty, environmental changes, technology, professional support or something wonderfully specific that you've discovered through trial and error.
And it will probably change. The tool that works brilliantly this month may suddenly lose its appeal. Another one might become indispensable. That change is useful information about what your brain needs at that point in time.
|
Sometimes the most useful question isn't "Why can't I just do this?" It's: "What could make this easier to do?" |
Keep noticing. Keep experimenting. Keep the things that help.
- Jo
