Part of what separates ADHD-havers from the merely forgetful is that for us, to use DSM parlance, the symptoms “have a significant impact on daily life and functioning.” When I was a kid “significant impact” meant being in perpetual trouble: always being late, never hearing the assignment, enduring depressingly frequent teen-magazine “It Happened to Me”–type moments (I was often surprised by my period’s arrival). Teacher’s pet I wasn’t: “Clearly Rae has not been,” snapped my sixth-grade math teacher, flinging an eraser at my desk, “PAYING ATTENTION, so the whole class will have to wait while I go over this again.”
By high school, I had fully internalized the fact that I was a screwup and began acting the part with teenage gusto. “Fuck you, fail me,” I spat at a particularly hateful teacher, middle fingers aloft. “It’s not my first time.”
Then I’d go home and cry. Repeated failure is destructive. It chips away at your self-confidence and eats at your resolve. It makes you hate yourself.
As a preface to this post, a couple things should be noted: I am definitely NOT the most organized, well-put-together, or successful person. I struggle with a lot of things, and a LOT of coping mechanisms are necessary to make up for that. However, some of the systems I’ve been forced to come up with because of my difficulty do help, and lately, I’ve thought I might share some of these tips with others who have some of the same problems.
One of the biggest difficulties I have with keeping track of my life is memory. I can’t remember anything I’m doing for jack shit, if you’ll pardon my French. I can remind myself a thousand times, but there is no way I’ll remember anything I’m supposed to be doing or thinking of unless it’s right there in front of me, in big black letters.
So, one of the most helpful things I’ve ever done for myself is: put it right there in front of me, in big black letters!
Basically, one of the best tips I can give anyone who struggles with remembering things is to quite literally put it right in front of your face. How do I do this? It’s a combination of Post-It notes, taped-up papers, and, my personal favorite, WHITE-BOARDS. (I am not kidding. White boards are a literal savior. Why are white boards so great, you ask? Because they’re stark, easy to write on, completely simple to alter or erase and change, come in all different sizes and shapes, and aren’t problematic to hang.)
Read on for some examples of my organizational solutions for an ADHD-er or Executive Dysfunction-er’s home.
Combeferre with a completely rubbish working memory who can tell you about the anatomy of moths in exhaustive detail but has to stop and think hard before he can say what he had for breakfast and needs to write down all homework assignments and other responsibilities immediately or risk forgetting them entirely.
Combeferre hyperfocusing on whatever book he’s reading and being impervious to outside distraction.
Combeferre having days when he can’t focus on anything at all and roaming through the streets because he can’t sit still and keeps noticing every single distraction around him when he tries to get anything done.
Combeferre toying with anything he can find to keep his hands busy so that he can concentrate on other things.
Combeferre with a complete inability to keep his room neat and organized.
Combeferre who got through school as a kid by being brilliant and now doesn’t know how to study and is having to cram the knowledge into his brain and feeling like a failure because he’s doing fine in his classes but he could be doing so much better if he just tried harder.
(Modern AU Combeferre finally getting an explanation for what’s wrong and it’s like a weight is lifted off his shoulders because it all makes sense now.)
#Combeferre did u finish that book u borrowed from me #oh I…………… started it but then I found this really cheap copy of grays anatomy….. #and what I’m saying is I ended up with Melville somehow and I’m sorry #Combeferre I thought we were going to watch project runway #oh I’m just…………….. writing a portfolio of letters to my representatives… is it Friday?? #I support this #he is largely inattentive #but will experience manic days #where he does PROJECTS #and loses all sense of time #and his keys #he’s always losing his keys #or his hat #or something #Combeferre more like king of library fines #Combeferre more like he’s very good in the kitchen but forgets an ingredient 30% of the time (via adhdronanlynch)
Combeferre with a completely rubbish working memory who can tell you about the anatomy of moths in exhaustive detail but has to stop and think hard before he can say what he had for breakfast and needs to write down all homework assignments and other responsibilities immediately or risk forgetting them entirely.
Combeferre hyperfocusing on whatever book he’s reading and being impervious to outside distraction.
Combeferre having days when he can’t focus on anything at all and roaming through the streets because he can’t sit still and keeps noticing every single distraction around him when he tries to get anything done.
Combeferre toying with anything he can find to keep his hands busy so that he can concentrate on other things.
Combeferre with a complete inability to keep his room neat and organized.
Combeferre who got through school as a kid by being brilliant and now doesn’t know how to study and is having to cram the knowledge into his brain and feeling like a failure because he’s doing fine in his classes but he could be doing so much better if he just tried harder.
(Modern AU Combeferre finally getting an explanation for what’s wrong and it’s like a weight is lifted off his shoulders because it all makes sense now.)
what you say: go get a glass of water when you’re thirsty
what i hear: recognize your body’s signs of thirst before you’re extremely dehydrated, somehow get up in the middle of your current task before you forget that you’re thirsty, leave your room, walk down the hall, go into the kitchen, find the cupboard, choose a cup, put water in the cup, and go back down to your room. do all of this without forgetting what you’re doing in the middle of the process and without getting distracted, keeping everything in your working memory and not getting stalled between any of the steps. then, smoothly resume the task where you left off (which requires remembering what you were doing before), and sip from the glass periodically until it is gone or you are no longer thirsty (which requires remembering that the water is there and repeatedly interrupting yourself to get a sip, while monitoring your body’s signals). i expect you to do this multiple times every day, automatically, on a fixed schedule that aligns with your body’s needs
(#nope#I thought so too#but what you should hear is ”just carry a bottle of water with you everywhere you go”#do it enough and even at home you’ll find yourself reaching for it as a fidget thing#ADHD tips!!!!! via @thehumantrampoline)
Thing #1 that frustrates me about ADHD/Executive Dysfunction advice:
“Oh, you have a mental/neurological issue that makes it difficult for you to be organized, follow routines, stick with systems, maintain a schedule, do your work, etc.? Well, what you need to do is GET ORGANIZED! Schedule everything! Find a system and stick with it! Maintain a schedule! Do your work as it comes in!”
It’s like that Allie Brosh comic where her fish are dead, and everyone’s offering to help find them, or advice like “feed them!” Or “make puppets out of them!” And she says, “No, see, that solution is for a different problem than the one I have.”
Yes, I would love to do those things! I have tried to do those things! I am still trying to do those things! But it’s like that post about how you’re going through an invisible obstacle course, and what looks like a block to everyone else seems like a wall to you. Instead of saying, “it’s a block! Go around!” It would be much more useful to hand me a bag of flour so I can see the obstacles for myself and how to get around them.
I keep looking for something I can do. I can’t maintain an agenda- closest I can do is lot appointments into Google Calendar. I can’t use to-do lists- they overwhelm and freak me out and I end up doing less than before. Breaking down a task into a bunch of tiny pieces should work in theory, but again, freaks me out, and I usually end up spending an hour planning and then I never actually do. I can’t set deadlines for myself. Whatever part of the brain allows other people to say, “yes, it’s due on the 29th, but I want to be done on the 25th” just doesn’t work. I can’t make my brain think something needs to be done until the last minute. This is especially bad in classes where everything is due at the end of the semester. I end up doing what I just did, and having to do two whole classes worth of work in two days. Oddly, once that level of desperation kicks in, I’m capable of sitting down and pounding through the material- but for some reason, I can’t tap into that level of focus without a short, urgent, important deadline. Maybe one day I’ll figure it out.
Thing #2 that bugs me about all self help: Don’t wait for motivation! Just do it!
I think my definition of “motivation” is different from the usual. Most people see “motivation” as meaning something like “wanting to do something, looking forward to doing something, doing the thing with energy and happiness because it is the thing you want to do.”
My definition is closer to “having enough willpower to make myself do the thing despite everything in my brain begging me to go watch Netflix instead.” So when people say, “you don’t need motivation!” What I hear is “everyone else seems to have this source of willpower they can eventually learn to tap into that just doesn’t exist for me.” My best technique for doing stuff is having other people make me do it. Which freaks out my social anxiety because then I feel like I’m intruding on their time to make them help me with mine.
The thing is, I’m not lazy. If I were just lazy this would all be easier to cope with. I WANT to be doing things, I WANT to be successful, I WANT to be productive. I even try, really hard, and the effort that exhausts me seems to be so much lower than the typical threshold. But every time I try to be as productive as I want to be, I burn out in a couple days.
I am on the verge of tears because this is everything that frustrates me about my own ADHD. Every word of this reflects my experience.
i’m so bad today i can only read every fifth sentence and it STILL hits me in the gut. well expressed.
my executive dysfunction lately has been so bad i can’t even work on my hobbies. i can’t even stim right. one of my favorite stims is to lay out a textile work in progress and play with the pieces, rearranging them and finishing their edges and doing all the fiddlybits. lately, even though i have a nice clean worktable and my quilt pieces all laid out by color, i have managed to iron a grand total of like… 6 of them. in three days. i like ironing quilt pieces. it’s satisfying to me. but it just… doesn’t seem to be happening.
people who’ve never experienced executive dysfunction seem to think our disability only applies to things that are hard or unfun, and therefore suspect we’re just making excuses not to do stuff we don’t want to do. but it’s not like that. i have trouble doing stuff i enjoy doing. i have trouble doing stuff i have to do to live, like eating. sometimes the stuff i get distracted into doing is less fun than the thing i was trying to do – plenty of times i go to get food and get distracted and fold laundry instead. because folding laundry is a routine, it’s an organizing task, which takes less executive function than making food, which requires making a lot of little decisions and judgement calls based on what’s in the fridge, what dishes are clean, etc.
if you had something wrong with your brain that forced you to fold laundry when you wanted a sandwich, wouldn’t you call that a real disability?
…..well this all sounds painfully, painfully familiar
eirenical17 