Posts Tagged: add tools

ADHD Traits — 4 Comments
29
Oct 10

Dealing With ADD Procrastination in ADHD Adults

When it comes to ADD, there are plenty of co-morbid indicators. That’s a fancy, psychological jargon way of saying that ADD occurs in conjunction with other psychological and mental issues. For example, people with ADHD are more likely to also be diagnosed with depression. Whether depression is caused by ADD, or ADHD is caused by depression, or whether there is no casual relationship at all, is unknown. But, a person with ADD and depression has depression as a co-morbid indicator of ADD — or vice versa.

Another very common condition that often occurs in people with ADD is procrastination.

While everyone procrastinates sometimes, there are people, both with and without ADHD, for which procrastination is a very big problem that constantly threatens their lifestyle, rather than an annoyance. Unfortunately, adults with ADD are more likely to fall into the former category.

In fact, many undiagnosed adults with Attention Deficit Disorder never consider undergoing an evaluation for ADD because they believe that their "problem" is actually just with procrastination as opposed to a potential case of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Among those diagnosed with ADD there is an ongoing difficulty in reliably distinguishing between issues that may be symptoms of ADD and those that may be more closely related to chronic procrastination. What makes determining where the obstruction to success lies so difficult is that most adults with ADHD developed procrastination habits and coping mechanisms simultaneously over the course of their life making the symptoms of ADHD indistinguishable from plain procrastination.

Books To Help With Procrastination

Books about procrastination and dealing with procrastination litter the shelves of the bookstore. Some books are better than others, but I’ve always found one very frustrating detail about procrastination help books is that they all seem hell-bent on tying procrastination to perfectionism, and therefore procrastination is caused by fear that what you do won’t be perfect.

This rings about as hollow to me as possible, and yet, it seems like many books about procrastination spend more pages on trying to "prove" that procrastination is caused by fear of failure. If you think that you do not have a fear of failure, then you just don’t understand that you are a perfectionist, and that not living up to being perfect is your problem. Therefore, procrastination is caused by perfectionism (which is just a form of fear of failure) and by the time they are ready to move on, I really don’t care what that book has to say because it no longer has any credibility in my mind. At the very least, whatever kind of procrastination that author is talking about, is not related to the procrastination from ADD that I might have.

I recently picked up a book about procrastination on a visit to the Tattered Cover bookstore. I do this all the time when I go into bookstores. I find a topic that might interest me and then I read a page or two from the book to see if it sounds like something that I might give enough weight to to actually read the book instead of dismissing it as some self-help guru’s attempt to make money off of some newspaper column or TV show appearance that they have. Most of the time, I just put the books back on the shelf. Something makes me roll my eyes, or think that it won’t resonate with me.

This time, however, I grabbed a copy of The Procrastinator’s Guide to Getting Things Done. I don’t really care about the title, but I happened to read a page near the beginning of the book where the author states that your inner procrastinator’s voice is very seductive, saying things like, "Oh, you can get that done later. You have plenty of time. You work better under pressure anyways." All of this sounds very familiar. But, what pushed it over the edge for me was the next paragraph which basically said, "You’re smarter than that. Don’t play the fool to that voice."

Now, THAT definitely resonated. In face, as I stood there with the book in my hand I actually felt like a fool who had been played for years by my inner procrastination voice. I’ have never really thought of it in those terms, but it has definitely given me a tiny handhold in my daily battle against procrastination, which is more than I can say for any other book about procrastinating, or focusing, or buckling down, or building new habits, that I have read in a very long time.

I haven’t read much of the book yet, so a whole-hearted endorsement of The Procrastinator’s Guide to Getting Things Done is a ways off, but I did manage to get to Chapter 3, which is titled, "What Are You Afraid Of?" — Check out the ADD tools and ADHD tips for those.

Uh, oh. Another book ruined by a tunnel-vision author who cannot let go of their "shocking, earth-shattering, enlightenment" that all procrastination is really just fear of not being perfect. But, then, just as the storm clouds gathered, something happened.

The author has a checklist that is designed to help determine if fear (of perfectionism or of failure) is your problem. That’s fair. It’s not like it is not one possible cause of procrastination, it’s just that it is not the ONLY possible explanation for why people procrastinate.

The book’s author, Monica Ramirez Basco, has a six point checklist to help determine if fear of failure / perfectionism is the issue causing your procrastination. The very next thing, is a different checklist. This procrastination checklist determines if fear of failure is NOT your problem.

That’s better than I have gotten out of any procrastination self-help book I’ve found in recent memory, so I’ll keep reading. In fact, I was so excited, I came right to Addessories to share my find with others who have ADHD and procrastination issues and might like to have a possible ADD and procrastination resource.

Ironically, it’s near the end of the month and I have tons of writing projects due, so technically, this who post is procrastination. But, at least I’m writing :)

Is Fear Causing My Procrastination Checklist

Fear is not your problem if:

  • You are feeling lazy
  • You are tired
  • You are discouraged
  • You just can’t concentrate
  • You would rather be doing something else

Hello, #4 and #5! Come to Pappa!

ADHD-ADD Tips — 1 Comment
24
May 10

ADHD Tip for Time Management

There are a lot of tips out there for time management, and even more time management advice. Most of it is aimed, of course, at the public at large. After all, time management is one of those things that plenty of people have trouble with whether they have ADHD or not. Like many other symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, the difficulties of time management with ADD are often extreme versions of the the issues non-ADD folks have with time management. However, many of the time management tricks used by the general population can be very useful ADHD tricks for ADDers as well.

adhd-tool-timer-time-management This post will be very short because, as a follow-up post will show, I have already spent way too much time "off task" today. I haven’t been screwing around, per se, nor have I been wasting my time. Most of the tasks and functions that I have tackled this morning have value and will benefit me in one way or another. However, as is often the case with focus problems, there are other very important tasks that I should be doing right now instead. In fact, when I sat down this morning there were some "must do" tasks on my plate that have not yet found their way to my fork – metaphorically speaking.

One of these many sideline tasks that have been distracting from important tasks is re-finding, downloading, and installing an old ADHD tool that I used to have on my computer that I forgot about when I did my upgrade to a newer, faster system with Windows 7 installed.

ADHD Tools Timers

One of the tough things to swallow about all of the ADHD advice and ADD tools or tricks thrown around is their mind numbing similarity. After a while of reading about attention deficit disorder and the research being done for ADD, as well as the number self-help books and other books for ADHD, you start to see a lot of the same things mentioned over and over again. Sometimes, that is for good reason. Many of the ADHD tips given by these resources are good ones that are particularly effective. Sometimes, on the other hand, it seems that the conventional wisdom is just being repeated within the mental health community echo chamber and that all innovation in the realm of helping with ADHD symptoms has ceased.

Using a timer is one of the most common suggestions for help managing ADHD time management issues. This tip occupies both of the realms mentioned above, being both a good tip, and one so rote as to be wholly unhelpful to many people. Which is why I wanted to pop up a post about one computer-based ADHD tool that has proven helpful for me to some degree.

There is a small Windows utility called Multi-Timer 1.1 which is freeware. The guy who developed it has also written a fancier, nicer looking version, but that one is not free, and as ADHD tools go, sometimes simpler is better.

What makes Multi-Timer so useful for ADHD time management is that it shows multiple timers at once. Obviously, the ADHD mind likes to do more than one thing at a time. Sometimes this stream of multitasking works well, and other times, not so much. Either way, it is very likely that while working, an adult with ADHD will encounter another task that is just as important or more important than the one being worked on. Having multiple timers allows for the original timer to keep running (or be paused) while the timer on the next task starts.

Even more useful, this timer utility allows for both count up and count down timers to be used simultaneously. This provides the ability to both time how long something takes, as well as provide a time structure for something that should take a certain amount of time. By default, Multi-timer displays 10 timers at once and each time can be selected individually via a tab. I like to set the 5 timers on the right side to my most common count down timer periods. For example, I have 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 5 minutes, and 1 hour as my count down timers. (The last timer is the one I use for variable times like 25 minutes if I need that for some reason.)  I use the timers on the left as my count up timers, starting one for each change of task or setting as appropriate.

Ironically, some of the best ADHD help comes not from the timers themselves, but from seeing the timer application on the screen counting down (or counting up) and become embarrassed, upset, or disturbed by what is showing on the timer. This can be a stunningly effective way to refocus. Imagine that you have a writing project that  should take 30 minutes. You start a timer and hammer away. Later, you get distracted by other tasks. Eventually, you close enough windows that the timer shows through and you notice that the time spent on the task so far is 55 minutes. This can make you stop looking for that Jim Croce song you just remembered you love so much and get back to finishing the writing, because you aren’t going to let it go over 1 hour!

Try downloading the timer and see if it works for you. Often the toughest part of using it is remembering to start it up in the first place and then remembering to trigger the timers themselves. Even so, it may work just often enough to make your days more productive.