My ADHD Toolkit

I’ve recently discovered that I may have ADHD and while I wait for things to settle up and get a professional opinion, this is what has been helping me alleviate all the problems that come with ADHD, mostly Executive Dysfunction, Time Blindness and Hyperfocusing (the bad one).

This page started as a list of ADHD tricks but now has grown from that. I am thinking of renaming this list to something else. Perhaps in the future this will become my manifesto of living.

Please note that this is what works for me, and it may or may not work for you.

If you have ADHD, the How To ADHD YouTube channel and the book of the same name written by the host (Jessica McGabe) would be a better starting point for you.

Meta: It’s hard to remember to use all of this tools, so make sure to keep checking and keeping a copy of it somewhere accessible.

Table of Contents

• Mood and Emotion Regulation
• Time and Task Management
• Decision Making
• Motivation
• Impulse Control
• Hyperfocus
• Focus (the better one)
• Sleep

Environment Design#

• Timed routines for set days/weeks.
• Separate work phone & personal phone.
• Turn internet off when alone and not streaming.
• Scheduling beforehand. (cf. Justin Sung’s)
• Leverage the physicality of objects.
• Dietary restrictions => long term stability and happiness.

Mood and Emotion Regulation#

• Physical Health:
  • Minimum Viable workouts: yoga, pilates, cycling, anything works.
  • Use electrolytes after waking up / on summer days / heavy days.
  • Meds: L-Theanine, Vit B Complex, Magnesium, etc.
• Going out in the morning especially helps.
• Frequent Check-ins with oneself, preferably on one single analog place, like my bullet journal.
• Doing activities that are “restful” than “numbing”.
  TODO: walking, reading a book, playing with Captain (my pup), talk to a friend (not group), nap, etc. Exercise too can be helpful?
  TONOTDO: play Minecraft or games, play guitar (the very energetic one), start coding, working on ideas that really grab you, fixing that one Linux problem, implementing a new feature in a system, etc.
• Spending time away from screens and phones. When in doubt, step away.
• Meditating, ideally twice a day.
• Taking mindful breaths to re-center.
• Practice Niksen.
• Tracking emotions and responses.
• People matter to me. I enjoy being around people. It refreshes me.
• Doing intellectual activities that “open up the mind” and refresh you (eg. problems from Mathematical Circles, lateral puzzlers).

Time and Task Management#

• Alarms and timers everywhere. Make them visible, make them stand out, and there’s no limit to how many you should set up.
• Double, triple layer alarms.
  Example: Bigger alarm for a main task, smaller alarm for a subtask.
• Time Blocking tasks on a daily, weekly basis to keep things clear. Make sure to UNDERCOMMIT.
• Have a Master Task Inbox to keep things off of your brain and onto paper.
• Use a custom Eisenhower Matrix to categorise tasks and thus, prioritize better.
• Focusing on a single theme per week or month to prevent pile-ups. But do 60 (theme) - 40 (mandatory) division
• Timed routines for set days/weeks so you don’t have to make your own decisions.
• Aim for early, so that you can be late without actually being late.
• Time is easy to kill, provided you have the appropriate task (based on energy/cognition levels)
• Scheduling maintenance tasks beforehand.
• Transitions are demanding → use routines or checklists to make things easy
• Use commute time to catch up with people / or anything that doesn’t take up too much mental bandwidth and is interesting.

Decision Making#

• Separating cool and hot executive functions. Do all the choosing, deciding (what to do, etc.), when you’re in a cool, unexcited state and write it all down for the future, unclear self. That is, delegate decisions to the cool-self so the future hot-self won’t have to do it in a time crunch.
• Don’t take decisions without taking an inventory of current resources (willpower, time reserves, mental bandwidth, social battery, etc.)
• Use the Explore / Exploit strategy. Explore for some time, exploit for a long time.
• There’s no need to optimise everything. Let things slide.

Motivation#

• If it works, it works. It’s great. Follow that thought.
• Fill in the planks and jump!
  • Make it urgent: atomise and add deadlines
  • Make it novel. Add new things, recycle old things to make it new.
  • Make it personally interesting, lie to yourself to exeggerate its importance.
• Use Focumon / gamification for long-term motivation and focus.
• Leverage accountability and Hawthorne effect. Live streaming seems to work very well. So does the Study Together Discord server.
• It’s okay to lie to yourself to make things seem more important, and or, exciting.
• Creative hurdles:
  • When you don’t know how to start: BRAIN DUMP.
• Doing creative tasks keeps you happy for the long ter

Impulse Control#

• P*rn Impulse: ask why you want to: stimulation or relaxation?
  • Then find a more superior alternative. Example:
    • Stimulation: exercise, reading a book, watching a video on a thing that you like, reading a comic.
    • Relaxation: nap, walking, meditating, playing with Captain.
  • But don’t wait till the urge has hijacked your brain. Do it as soon as possible. RUN!
  • Usually, the triggers happen when you’re alone. So, simulate the scenario where you’re not alone.
• Make a Dopamenu, stop letting other things hijack your dopamine system and choose from the menu.
• Time the impulses, if they happen, to contain them as much as possible without suppressing the innate urge.

Hyperfocus#

• Random notifications for checking in.
• Schedule specific time for hyperfocusing in anything. “Garbage collection”.
• Don’t keep “doomscrollable” apps on your phone this includes [stock youtube, instagram, whatsapp (statuses), facebook].
  • Best prevention: keep them on your mom’s phone and don’t let her tell you the password!

Focus (the better one)#

• Wim Hof Breathing just before starting a session makes you more alert.
• Long, flowey, defragmented tasks are better for focus than short, fragmented ones. Try to batch things if they are very small tasks and do them in one go.
• Filling up the “stimulo-meter”. Fighting distractions with (healthier) distractions.
• Music works nice, but only if you dial it nice and based on context. Music with lyrics don’t actually help you much unless you’re doing menial chores.
• Using Third Time/Focumon for better tracking.
• 10 min rule: just start it.

Sleep#

• Ideal time: 10pm -> 6am (± 30m)
• Dinner served at ~8:45pm is nice.
• Today decides tomorrow, especially the night routines.
• Use melatonin with proper dose.
• Avoid stimulating tasks and discussions just before sleep. Example: playing guitar, having a fight with mom, etc.