ADDer – Page 2

ADHD Tips – Bookmark Day

Or Bookmark half-day or bookmark hour. Do you.

Even people without ADHD have a tendency to bookmark things in order to do them “later.” All too often later never comes. But what about those bookmarks? Was there a Tweet that had an answer to a question you have? Was there a link to something new and amazing? Or was there just a cartoon that made you laugh, and you wanted to share it?

Making Bookmarks Part of Organization

Let’s face it, organization tips for ADHD that you can actually use aren’t all that easy to come by once you collect the easy wins. This one could make a big difference.

It is often said that people with ADHD only understand two kinds of time: now and not now. That’s not 100% true for me. I also have wife will be pissed and wife will get it over it. The point is that bookmarking things for later is good. It means that you resisted the distraction and continued on. That is a solid skill for adults with ADHD. Let’s make sure you get the benefit.

Use your ADHD planner or calendar and mark off a time for you to go back to your bookmarks. Make sure there is some “space” around it. Don’t pick something you know will get scheduled over, and for the love of jeebus, don’t schedule it for the day before a deadline. (You know darn well that you will be using that time to avoid deadlines that you procrastinated on.)

I like to do a whole day, but my schedule doesn’t always allow for that. Like most adults with ADHD procrastination is a big problem for me. Knowing that I’m going to need the time right up until it is time to stop working, or turn in a big project, I schedule my half days for first thing in the morning. That way, the time slot won’t get stomped over by work or family deadlines.

Obviously, this technique works for other things. Notebook Day might be a nice thought. Go back through all of those ideas and thoughts you wrote down only to turn the page and forget all about them.

Do you do something like Bookmark Day? Let me know.

Watching Training Videos with ADHD

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You know the feeling. You are pumped to learn something new, or to brush up on your existing skills. Either way, chances are there is a company training video, a LinkedIn course, a Kahn Academy, or just some YouTube videos that can help you out. The problem? You have ADHD. It’s only been 20 seconds, and already that video is going too slow.

ADHD Mind and Videos

It is easy to make the mistake of thinking all ADD is like your ADD. Hang around long enough and you’ll find that nothing could be further from the truth. Just like some normals learn better by reading, and some learn better by hands on, some ADHDers learn better from reading than video. I’m one of them.

I read fast. Really fast. I used to think I was a fast test taker. Turns out, that I just read the questions faster than anyone else. As someone who reads and retains quickly, I hate video, especially when it could have been an article. I promise I can read your 5,000 words faster than I can listen to you say them to the camera. If that weren’t enough, I’m also a writer. You can about imagine how I feel then, about reading versus watching.

Check out my Plynk reviews.

But, sometimes the world doesn’t cater to you and sometimes the subject matter doesn’t lend itself to standard reading documentation. Whatever the case, sometimes you just have to watch the videos.

ADHD and 2x Speed

You know how training or informational videos work. The people introduce themselves and they tell you what letters they have after their name that proves they are an expert. If there are two of them there is some banter. I don’t think you need to have ADHD to be eye-rollingly bored at that kind of stuff. A fast forward or clicking down the video progress bar is easily done.

By now they have started covering the material and it is STILL not happening fast enough. You could skip or fast forward, but the point of this course is to fill in some gaps in your knowledge. Skipping ahead might mean skipping that information you need. At this point, your ADHD brain is clawing at the insides of your skull begging you to let it out. You pick up your phone, or your pen and paper and suddenly, you’re practicing calligraphy or scrolling and now, you might be missing something, and you don’t even get to skip ahead.

Enter 2X speed.

Click that 1x, change it to 2x, and change your ability to pay attention (for a while)

As someone with ADHD and all kinds of advertising and interface blindness I never paid any attention to the icons down in the corner. Sure, if you told me to look at them I would, and I know close captions is down there if I can’t understand someone, but I never mess with the video settings and I control the volume with my speakers, so you’ll forgive me if I never really paid any attention to that 1x down there.

But, one day while watching some college admissions thing, I sat there as my daughter clicked that 1x and something magical happened. It turns out you can watch online videos at twice the normal speed. And the best part is that most of the time, you can still understand what they are saying. In fact, your ADHD mind is basking in the glow of someone, anyone, finally talking fast enough for your brain.

It doesn’t have to be 2x. Depending on what you are watching, you can do 1.25x or 1.5x, whatever speed keeps your mind behind your eyeballs where it belongs while still letting you follow along. Unlike skipping, you see everything, so nothing slips by, and you still get to finish the video in half the time.

Finding ADHD tricks like this makes living with ADHD better turning it into the oft desired advantage ADHD can be if you can understand it and feed it properly. Try watching your next training or video at 2x speed. You’ll be surprised how little it changes your understanding, but don’t expect miracles. Your brain will soon adapt to 2x speed and find it too slow. So far, none of the things I need to watch offer 3x speed, so don’t chuck that ADHD medication yet.

2x Speed and Accents

There is a funny bit I wanted to relate. I have been watching this one lady’s training course. It’s a series of several videos and I have watched them all on 2x speed. Then, we hit a bit that I wasn’t quite getting. So, I went back and then selected 1x speed. I was shocked to find out she had some sort of Australian or British accent. It turns out that speaking faster eliminates accents.

Who knew?

Best ADD Tip Ever – The Only ADHD Advice You Need *

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Are you ready for the best ADHD tip for overcoming ADHD symptoms? It is surprisingly easy, and once you see how this powerful attention deficit disorder tip can be for managing ADHD at work or school, you’ll want to use it all the time.

Is there a catch?

Well, did you see that asterisk up there? That means that there is a catch.

Overcoming Distraction to Get Work Done and Be Most Productive

The key concern when it comes to attention deficit hyperactivity disorder is how constant distraction can be overcome in order to be more productive at school, more productive at work, and more productive at home. All the other ADHD symptoms are sort of secondary. If ADDers could just get a handle on increasing productivity in the face of having ADD, everything else would be a little easier to manage. (If you were as productive as you are capable of at work and around the house, do you think it would matter as much that you occasionally tune out or interrupt your spouse during conversations?)

To become more productive and improve your standing at work or improve your grades at school, the person with ADD needs only do just one little thing: keep working.

See, I told you there was a catch.

However, hear me out. For those of us with ADD, the symptom of distractibility is one that keeps us from focusing properly on important tasks. When a major report is due the next day, we find ourselves intrigued by something else entirely. When this happens, there are only two choices. One choice involves using all of the ADHD tips and ADD tools that one can muster to overcome one’s natural tendency to have attention wander from the important tasks at hand, to those of lesser importance, or even no importance at all. The second choice involves just going with the flow or allowing the mind’s attention to wander as it sees fit.

* The Catch: (That asterisk does indeed mean that there is a catch. Typically, it means a footnote, which is where some company uses really small fonts to explain how they are going to screw you over, and therefore cover themselves legally by “disclosing” the information that you need to realize that the whole thing is a scam. Here on Addessories, we have no reason to trick our fellow ADDers, so this explanatory asterisk is in full-size font type.) The catch is that in order to follow the path of least resistance and give into your mind’s typical urges to find ever more interesting things to focus on, you have to keep working longer than you would if you went the other route.

How much longer?

That is the essence of the catch. You have to keep working until you have finished that important task. That major report, or that semester-long project that you just started and is due tomorrow, must be finished before you stop working, whether that takes four hours or thirty-four hours. You’ll find that you are happier along the way, but the destination will end up being much further away than it should have.

Whether or not this is a good ADD trick for you depends entirely on whether you are the type of person with ADD who finds the journey more important than the destination, or whether you are the type of person with ADHD who finds crossing the finish line the most satisfying.

Which one are you?

Do One Thing – Overcoming ADHD Once

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Depression and ADHD are comorbid indicators. They often go together. Adding the apathy of not wanting to get started on anything, along with the inherent procrastination that comes with ADHD, and sprinkling on a top of distraction just waiting to happen and it is no wonder that many adults with ADHD find it difficult to get things done.

There are many methods of time management out there for people ADHD. They range from great ideas like Eating That Frog to dumb ones, like blaming everything on perfectionism. The reality, however, is that you are unique, you always were. You were unique before you realized you had ADD, you were unique when you started treating your ADD, and you’re unique now, when you are living with ADHD. It’s not wonder then that other people’s solutions don’t work for you. You need your own unique solutions to living with adult ADHD.

Just because you need to build up your own unique ADHD tips and tricks to get through a life that requires you to things and to do them on a schedule doesn’t mean that other ideas won’t work for you. You just have to find your arrows and load them up in your quiver, metaphorically speaking.

Sometimes, the stock photography gods smile upon you 🙂

Do One

One method that with my ADHD that I am tinkering around with is the idea of doing one thing. Similar to the concept detailed in Eat That Frog, the idea is to commit to doing one thing from a list of dozens or even hundreds of things. Unlike the eating that frog, where you jump in with the worst, or most dreaded task of the day, I’ve had some success working with my brain instead of trying to force it to do something it doesn’t want.

As I arrive at my desk each morning, or even upon returning from a trip to the coffee pot, or from lunch, I often find that my brain looks around and has one thing that it wants to do. Many times, that one thing is something productive. Rather than trying to save that motivation and harness it later, I jump in with both feet.

My brain feels like finally cleaning up my desk? Let’s clean my desk.

My brain feels like writing that technical writing proposal? Let’s write the proposal.

My brain feels like rescheduling the dentist, ordering my meds, or filling out this month’s writing calendar? Let’s do those things.

My brain feels like writing an article on doing one thing? Hey! Inception!

How To Do One

If I were trying to turn this one idea into a book, as so many time management, and organization self help books are wont to do, I would add a swear word and start writing the 150 pages of backstory, history about myself, and obtaining the epiphany that goes into turning an idea the length of a pamphlet into a 300 page book that you can stick on the shelf at Barnes and Noble (irritation Segway!) A name like Do One Damn Thing! or maybe One F*cuking Thing!

You’ve seen the books. You know what I’m talking about.

Instead, let’s just keep it real among fellow adults with ADHD, or those of you without ADHD who have reached the intelligent conclusion that if it works for people with ADD, imagine how well it would work for someone without ADD.

The secret to how to do one thing is to let yourself. Give yourself permission to do what your brain wants to do. Often, you will find that the one thing is not what you should be doing, or what would the the most productive thing you should be doing. That is okay. You can come back to that thing later. Heck, if if works for you, promise yourself that that will be the very next thing you do.

The point of doing one is to harness your motivation if only for a moment. Finding motivation with ADHD can be really, really, hard. Give yourself permission this one time each day (or a few times, however, you want to use this) to enjoy the motivation. You will find that much like procrastinating forward, doing one thing results in more things being crossed off your ADHD to do list than fighting against it. After all, a list with 30 things on it gets shorter whether you cross off #1 or #28.

Me?

Well, I broke my own rule.

My brain wanted to clean up my workspace and I was going to let it, but then I thought about what I was doing and got distracted (nach) by the thought of writing up an article about using your motivation to do that one thing and here we are. Writing about ADHD when you have ADHD is a nonstop adventure in inception.

Try doing just one thing and let me know how it goes for you.

BTW, I ended up cutting and pasting a bunch of what I originally wrote here into a new article where I have noticed that I can write for clients about the same topics I write about for my own websites much faster. The differing factor that I’m noticing is that I write their stuff in Word and then just send it off to them. Maybe, just maybe, there is something about writing inside of WordPress that stifles my brain or otherwise slows it down.

It might also be that without thinking, even in the back of my head, about linking, SEO, keywords, length, or finding stock photography that my brain just cranks out text further. So, I’m trying something that I am very, very nervous about. I created an “In Progress” folder where I can do the Just One Thing when it is writing something.

My fear, which I’m sure that many of my adult ADHD tribe can relate to is that many “in progress” things end up becoming “never finished” things when our ADHD brains move on. But, I crave more success than I have been having and doing more/getting better requires trying new things, so here we go.

As always, wish me luck. I do the same for you.