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Boost Your ADD Mood By Moving

You have ADD. That’s tricky enough as it is, but ADHD often goes along with depression, or low mood.

It makes sense when you think about it. Unbalanced neurotransmitters are the root of both issues. However, not every slow, sluggish day is a result of off-kilter brain chemistry.

Moving to Boost Mood

One of the traps to avoid when you have ADD is the tendency to blame everything on your ADHD condition. Sometimes, the issue is just good old human imperfection.

For those days when you seem to be a little sluggish, or you just can’t get your brain into gear, and another cup of coffee isn’t helping, try moving around. Physically using your body switches up tons of systems in your body from rest to active. Doing so has a ripple effect on your body that can, and often does, include your brain functions.

Now, I know what you are thinking. This isn’t new news, and you know that exercise and diet can help your ADHD, because, by now, you’ve figured out that better diet and exercise helps literally everything. But, the key thing here, is how little movement is necessary for potential improvement. Sure, a 40 minute run would be great, but that may not be what is required.

Small amounts of movement can make a huge difference, especially if you have been sitting for a long period of time, or first thing in the morning when you haven’t moved much at all yet for the day. Try loading the dishwasher, or running something upstairs. The key is not so much the intensity of the activity, but the length.

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Stand up, walk down the hall, pour a cup of coffee, then walk back to your desk and sit down, and likely nothing has changed. The body takes a wait and see approach to kicking in extra systems as a way of saving energy. No since increasing energy use if this is just a quick blip.

That’s why a 15 minute chore, or other activity works, while a quick break doesn’t. You have to do something long enough to engage the body. Stay standing, and hopefully moving, for 10 minutes. Heck, sometimes, just 5 will do it. Just make sure it is longer than that quick standup and sit back down that doesn’t seem to be working.

Just Do Something

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Many people with ADD / ADHD develop certain behavioral deficits. Unlike ADD itself, these issues are learned behaviors, often caused by dealing with ADD, but they are not biological, like ADHD is. One of the common problems is procrastination.

Procrastination in people with ADD often develops from the constant switching of priorities in the executive center of the brain in response to unfocused brain activity. In some people, this can develop into a form of perfectionism where the brain can’t decide what activity to pursue because it knows that there is every possibility that it will not be pursued to the end. Add that to the fact that most ADHD folks have a to do list a mile long, and a full calendar, in order to keep everything straight, and there is a very real issue with what is the “right thing” to be doing right at this moment.

Just Keep Doing

As a father of younger kids, I have a certain fondness for the movie Finding Nemo. In it, a fish named Dory, who has short-term memory problems, gets through life by repeating the mantra, “Just keep swimming.” It’s another way of saying just keep going, but for fish. The best part, is she sings it. I’ll let you Google up a YouTube video to get the tune if you don’t already know it.

As it turns out, one of the best ways to fight procrastination, is to get started. This is a no-brainer, but when you deal with a non-optimal executive function in the brain, it can be easier said that done, especially, when you aren’t sure which of your important to-do tasks is the “best” on to start on. Even worse, this can lead to self-punishment or self-hate when you look back on your day, and instead of being proud that you accomplished some things, you beat yourself up because you didn’t do the right things (or enough things but that’s a another issue for a another time.)

You may be able to find some success by modifying Dory’s mantra a little bit and sing along in your head, “Just do something. Just do something.”

Now, it doesn’t fit the song, but the whole idea is to just do something important, or something that matters, or something that needs done. It doesn’t matter which. As long as what you are doing is not goofing off, or wasting time, you are winning. I’m sure you’ve noticed in your own brain that once you get started on doing a task, any task, that continuing forward becomes much easier than starting. This is a function of the process that sometimes leads to hyper-focus. If you can harness that momentum to move on to the next task, it’s that much better.

As it turns out, for most people –with or without ADD– it is impossible to do all of the important, must do, or needs done tasks in any one block of time. The key, is to not let those tasks build up to the point where not doing them affects your life, or to the point where the maximum tasks you can do is still not enough to move forward.

So, if you need to do laundry, write a paper, submit your time sheet, schedule the cat’s vet appointment, find your tax forms, and hunt for some new freelance writing clients, there is really no way you are going to sit down and do all of those things at once. (If you can, please do and stop reading this 🙂

What you need is to do SOME of those tasks so that the next time you sit down, you can do some of the others, plus whatever has come up since then. The key is to realize that doing ANY of those tasks is better than consternation about which tasks to do. Disaster comes from spinning your wheels so long that you only do one, or none of those tasks when you have the chance. To avoid that, just do something, just do something.

By just picking one of those activities and getting started, you’ll get momentum to no only possibly complete that task, but hopefully enough to keep going onto the next task as well. If you do three things off that list, your list is smaller for next time, no matter what those three things were.

Beat ADD Procrastination by Just Beginning

Written by ADDer 1 Comment

I’m currently reading a book called Do The Work. It moves fast. It makes sense. I’m really liking it so far, so much so, in fact, that I’m already taking its first major advice by stopping reading, and just beginning.

The idea –and it’s one I’ve long held on my own– is that, it is too easy to let resistance build up to any particular task, and that you will be much further ahead if you just begin… right now, without any preparation or planning, before you can find a reason to stop or back out.

(And it wasn’t easy, let me tell you. First, I noticed that the WordPress version needed updated, and so did the plugins, and the theme. Then, there were comments to approve, and then my main –and soon to be explored on this blog– type of procrastination kicked in, the “We have something we have to do in 3 hours, are you SURE this is the thing we should be working on”…. well, you get the idea.)

For example, I have on multiple occasions plotted out a long detailed publishing calendar for this ADHD blog of mine, but… I’ve never managed to get started on actually following that calendar.

Another example is, one of my major frustrations with ADD / ADHD is that I’ve spent a lifetime developing an almost terminal case of procrastination. As you can imagine, this is a focus of much of my research and effort when it comes to finding ways to live with ADD. However, you’ll notice there aren’t necessarily that many articles here about it. Why? Because instead of just writing an article about procrastination, I plot one out. You know, not some 300 word, 500 word, or even 5,000 word word article, but the end all, be all, of all procrastination articles ever written. But… I never finish the outline, let alone write the article.

The idea, at least so far, in the Do The Work book is that there is a thing called Resistance. This, of course, is not new, but if you start thinking of Resistance as a thing that is actively working against you, not because it’s malevolent, but because that’s just what it does (like gravity) then you can start steeling yourself against its force. You know it’s coming. You can feel it when it is acting on you, and so on.

The idea, is that if you just get going, then the energy of your soul and the universe get going too. That, over time, it will build up to overcome Resistance. But, to make it work, you have to start beginning, right away.

Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

-Goethe

And, so here we are, with a throw-away, not worthy, no one will ever read this, non-magnum opus, article about procrastination and a potentially helpful book.

Oh, and those criticisms there in the previous paragraph, those are some of Resistance’s tools. By believing those things, this never gets published, I never get started, and Resistance wins… well, not today.

Organization With ADD Getting Started

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Whether you were just diagnosed with ADD / ADHD, or if you were diagnosed a long time ago, organization is an ongoing challenge. Knowing yourself and reading about your ADHD is a good start. Whether you are taking ADD medication, or trying some alternative ADD therapies, you know that medicine alone won’t change your organization and time management habits.

So, what will?

Fake It Until You Make It

If you are an adult with ADD, chances are that you have owned more than your fair share of planners, calendars and organizers in your life. You may have even looked for a specific planner for people with ADD. The truth is that an organizer or calendar is essential for time management and organization. Just because it hasn’t worked before doesn’t mean it never will.

If you are successfully using an electronic organizer like your cell phone or Microsoft Outlook, or the like, then don’t mess with success. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

On the other hand, if you are still struggling with ADD organization and time management, I recommend getting a physical, paper calendar, organizer, or just a notebook. The reason is that you are trying to change an established habit. The best way to do that is to do something new. If you aren’t used to carrying around a planner, then starting to do so, is something new.

The catch, as you probably know, is that it won’t take right away. You’ll forget your planner at home; you’ll leave it sitting on your desk. Even worse, you’ll write things in it and then forget all about it, or you’ll forget to write important things in it in the first place. It doesn’t matter. Keep at it.

New ADHD Organization Habits

They say it takes six weeks to turn something into a habit. I don’t know if that is a solid number, but I do know that it takes time. The trick to developing an organizer, calendar, planner habit is to keep trying to use it.

Start by taking it with you. Throw it in your work bag. Carry it out and set it on the front seat of your car. Take it into a restaurant. Bring it with you to meetings. First, you might be developing nothing more than the habit of having it with you, even if you forget to read it, or write in it. But, don’t worry, that is step one.

Once you have a habit of carrying it with you, you will slowly develop a habit of using it. Maybe it will be when you have forgotten all about it, but you need a piece of paper and realize, “Wait! I have my planner right here.”

Maybe, you’ll need to remember something, or find a piece of information, and you’ll realize that you have your planner with you, and the data you need is right at your fingertips.

The key is to keep taking it with you, even if you don’t use it. Do TRY and use it, but make your focus just having it with you.

Just today, I realized that I needed a website that I had looked at but forgot all about. As a shot in the dark, I flipped through my notebook (and noticed TONS of great stuff that I forgot about. Need to remember to pull this thing out more often.) There it was, a quick note about the website, and it’s address. It saved me tons of online searching and wasted time.

The best part is, that’s one reward for my unconscious brain about the value of my notebook organizer. Enough of those, and instead of subconsciously forgetting about it all of the time, I’ll start subconsciously remembering it.

BTW, my latest notebook (not calendar, just notebook) is a Miquelrius. It has the subject sections broken out not by tabs, but by colors at the edge of the sheets. Not that I don’t have 50 other types sitting on my shelf right now. Perhaps a blog post about all my empty, and just barely started notebooks is in order 🙂