The ADHD Hack for Every Situation

Costumes can help.

Neurotypical folks organize their decision making, task management, and general doing based on three primary factors: importance, rewards, and consequences. ADHD-ers do not naturally use this metric, which is why a lot of teaching methods, organizational strategies, and environments can make them feel stuck rather than focused. In fact, it’s very challenging and exhausting to use a prioritization method that doesn’t come naturally to us. So how do we help our ADHD brains move fluidly in a world that wasn’t built for us?

Know these four key words, and you will be able to tap into your natural resources when needed:

Interest

If an ADHD-er is interested in a topic, their brain will pull them in and want to engage. How can we create interest? Find parallels to special interest areas and use those topics to increase engagement. What activities, topics, or ways of thinking are interesting to you? Use them to approach a problem and see if it becomes easier.

Challenge

We can also engage our brains by making a task challenging. Working on building a running habit? Choose a route with a little extra challenge every now and again. You’re totally bored by cooking dinner for yourself? Maybe it’s time to try adding baking your own bread to the process- it might build energy for making the rest of the sandwich. Need to practice spelling words? Boring! Until you do it standing on one foot, giving your best flamingo impression. The challenge is increased, and so is the engagement!

Novelty

New is exciting, motivating, and interesting! We can make old things new by rotating. This works well with toys, clothing, and even executive function and organization skills. We can also make things feel new with a little refresh- changing the background color on a computer desktop or using a new pen with a nice grippy pad. Try working at a standing desk instead of a sitting desk, or a new recipe for meal planning. Novelty doesn’t have to be expensive or flashy to work for an ADHD brain.

Urgency

This is why ADHD-ers are so good at problem solving under pressure and succeeding, even when procrastinating. ADHD-ers can create planned and healthy urgency by using artificial deadlines, timers, or by making challenges for themselves. Cleaning the bathroom is boring until the focus of the task becomes: :”How fast can I clean the bathroom? Can I beat last week’s time?” For more on creating artificial deadlines and how to chunk out work, take a look at this resource.