i love adhd. i have a lot to do at work today. i take my meds. i open the word document. i immediately misspell “benzodiazepines.” i go on tumblr to post “benzodiazepenis….” for the mutualés. and then it’s 45 minutes later and ive caught up on tumblr and checked the weather and read a fic and texted an ex and ordered new pens and looked up a recipe for chicken pot pie and posted about adhd and done zero work.

you CANNOT leave this in the tags that's so perfect and accurate

Yeagh for fuckin real...

[The image in the above post is a tag that reads "like I always say: adderall turns on the roomba but doesn't stop it from getting stuck under the couch."]

my life with ADHD

This is very true and a great post.

But low key makes me think about how people with adhd have been raised their whole lives to value a day based on what they accomplished vs what they experienced

I think your point is excellent. But also consider:

That list might say things like “Paint a picture. Go birdwatching. Finish that great novel I started reading. Call my grandma. Learn to bake a cake. Visit my sister. Play piano.”

For me at least, the good/fun things are harder without meds too. I can have the best intentions, but following through is hard.

This addition is so important.

My theory of adhd management is that in order to focus there are 4 things that need to be sufficiently occupied:

And if you aren’t occupying them enough or there’s too many things demanding the use of one, it’ll start to wreck havoc on your ability to do things.

So for example, listening to a podcast. This occupies your ears and brain as you focus on both listening and processing what you hear, but it leaves your hands and eyes completely without anything to do. If you tried to sit down and just listen to a podcast by itself you’d probably get unbearably bored and stop doing it.

But if you pair that activity with something that uses your hands and eyes, like a craft, household chore, or commute, suddenly you’re fully plugged in and can in fact focus better on both tasks than you could if you tried doing them separately.

It’s also why you can’t listen to a podcast while doing homework; you’re trying to use your brain for two different tasks. To occupy your ears while doing homework (which is already using eyes, brain, and hands) you need something for your ears that doesn’t require your brain: music. Specifically music that doesn’t use too much brain power, which is why some people prefer instrumentals or songs in other languages.

Hyperfixation and sensory overload change this by moving the threshold for how much sensory input you need to be able to function. If I’m extremely focused on a craft project (eyes, hands, brain) I might not even need something for my ears; my interest in the project makes up for it. If i’ve had a very overwhelming day, trying to listen to an audiobook while I do some stretches could be too much to process. My brain needs a break.

Video games, which pretty much universally occupy all 4 areas, are basically instant, easy focus wrapped up in a neat little bow. No wonder adhd-havers tend to love them.

If you’re struggling with a task, try looking at which areas it occupies and which are left unattended. Then try to find something enjoyable to fill those gaps, and see if that helps.

Pros of having a brain that makes very fast associations: Good comebacks and jokes.

Cons of having a brain that makes very fast associations: that story about how you broke your foot reminded me of a fun fact about lizards.

By the way, you can improve your executive function. You can literally build it like a muscle.

Yes, even if you're neurodivergent. I don't have ADHD, but it is allegedly a thing with ADHD as well. And I am autistic, and after a bunch of nerve damage (severe enough that I was basically housebound for 6 months), I had to completely rebuild my ability to get my brain to Do Things from what felt like nearly scratch.

This is specifically from ADDitude magazine, so written specifically for ADHD (and while focused in large part on kids, also definitely includes adults and adult activities):

Here's a link on this for autism (though as an editor wow did that title need an editor lol):

Resources on this aren't great because they're mainly aimed at neurotypical therapists or parents of neurdivergent children. There's worksheets you can do that help a lot too or thought work you can do to sort of build the neuro-infrastructure for tasks.

But a lot of the stuff is just like. fun. Pulling from both the first article and my own experience:

Things can be easier. You do not have to be stuck forever.

not to be insane but what is the evidence that executive functioning can be improved (in adults) in the first place? there is a difference between children and adults in personality trait interventions. to my knowledge EF is an essential personality trait related to conscientiousness that never changes (in adulthood until old age, where it slightly increases). research on personality traits shows that personality largely remains stagnant after young adulthood. all interventions to my knowledge are experimental and non-proven.

if there is evidence towards it being possible to improve executive functioning in adults, or research on personality change interventions working PLEASE let me know it would change my life. you don't know how much i want it to be true that EF can be increased

not to say the methods are inherently bad, or that they don't help! im just concerned with measurable change over long periods of time recorded in scientific literature.

Sincere answer to your question: There is evidence that it is possible to improve executive functioning in adults, some of it quite significant.

Though my understanding is definitely that 1) a lot of hyped up methods for "brain training" don't do anything, and 2) the significance of results in research varies, and 3) there's much stronger evidence for EF improvement interventions in neurodivergent and disabled people than in people who don't have an EF impairment.

Executive functioning as a personality trait is definitely not a model that there is consensus on. The brain is too complicated for us to say for sure how a lot of things work; I have always been taught that executive functioning is a skill and a series of neurocognitive processes.

Look into cognitive, neurological/neurocognitive, and developmental perspectives on executive functioning; pretty sure you'll get much more optimistic results.

This book appears to be a very thorough overview of the field, and contains both advocates and detractors of cognitive training, for a balanced perspective. From the table of contents, I would really recommend jumping straight to Part 3: Developmental Perspectives, as it sounds like the first two parts focus on a very specific range of mostly commercial brain training methods (or "methods" in some cases), whereas part 3 focuses on EF interventions in a much broader sense and specifically evaluates evidence for which types are most promising and which are least promising.

Also certain therapy modalities are specifically designed for skill-building in areas like impulsivity, decision-making, emotional regulation, and cognitive flexibility, all of which are EF skills or very dependent on EF skills. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) is probably the best field to look at for these - skill-building in those areas is its core goal.

Some DBT workbooks from an extremely credible and evidence-based publisher:

There are also a lot of workbooks for ADHD that are sometimes more broad but also can help with executive functioning:

Time for an updated fidget collection inventory!

I've been using and collecting fidget toys for going on four years now. I am never without one. I keep stashes in each of our bedrooms, on my desk, in the bath, in my backpack, and even in the car. Doom Them uses them at work and can't go to sleep without a Tangle in hand 🥹

My favourite fidgets are: Tangles, Needoh, and Aaron's Thinking Putty.

The full collection 💖🥰

Bonus: I made each pair of my overalls it's own matching Tangle 🤩

this is your gentle reminder to stop fighting against your adhd and instead structure your life around it

buy a pack of chapsticks and put one in the pocket of all of your coats and jackets because you always forget to bring one and chapped lips is sensory hell

leave important things where you can see them. if they go in a box or a drawer you will forget they exist

put any appointments or deadlines in your phone calendar As Soon As you get them. set a reminder for a week before, a day before, an hour before, as many as you need as often as you need them.

when that little voice in your head says "i dont need to write that down, ill remember it" that is the devil talking!!! write it down anyway!!

plan for down time. have a few hours at the end of every day to just do fun stuff like engage in your hyperfixations. even if you didnt get all of your work done that day, have the rest anyway. you probably spent the whole day beating yourself up for not doing what you Should be doing, so you still need the break.

if you never eat vegetables because its too much effort to chop and cook them, get the frozen or canned shit. it doesnt go off for ages and you just have to microwave it. theres no point buying fresh vegetables if they just keep going off and being left to rot in the bottom of your fridge

if you struggle to decide what to have for dinner every day, take the decision out of it. choose a set of meals and eat those on rotation until you get sick of them, then choose some new ones and do it again.

its not stupid if it works! our brains literally have a chemical deficiency. you are allowed to accommodate yourself. go forth and stop making your life more difficult than it has to be because "this shouldn't be this hard". it is hard, so make it easier.

Neurodivergent reminder: Overstimulation feels a lot like anxiety, and understimulation feels a lot like depression.

More importantly, you don't need to know which it is to practice self-care.

Self-caring anxiety and overstimulation looks the same:

Self-caring depression and understimulation looks the same:

If you're neurodivergent and easily get stuck on labelling things — I see you.

I'm here to remind you that you don't need to know what it is to take care of it in the meantime.

You can — will — figure it out later.

yep.

So much of the "advice" given to people with ADHD is just like

Step One: Become neurotypical

i feel like for a long time i was looking at my ADHD as a moral failing, but after talking to my therapist and venting about it a little im realizing hey, no, like this is still in some part in my control, yeah, but I'm doing my best and I have a fucking disability and it's not immoral to have a disability. I'm working a lot harder than the regular person to get the same results and I shouldn't think of that as some sort of ethical failure when i don't match that.

YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAH THIS EXACTLY

I felt the same way for so long about my autism- to the point that I would tell people I was “misdiagnosed” and “couldn’t have it” as I doubled down on masking, all the while ignoring the ways it made my life harder. I wasn’t fooling anyone but myself, but therapy and getting older helped me begin to understand- as you said- that it’s a disability, and it’s kind to myself to acknowledge that it makes a lot of things difficult, but it doesn’t make me a bad person. And once I began to show myself that care, that love- well!!! Things have gotten way better!!!

It took me 30 years to accept that my ADHD is not something I'm going to get over, or grow out of, or cure, or overcome through enough guilt and shame. It's just how my brain is built, and it's actually a disability, at least in the world we live in today. Going to the disability accommodation center at my grad school was essential to actually finishing my degree. I asked for and received:

If any of those sound like they might help you *on your worst day,* you should talk to a therapist and get a letter to bring to your school's disability center. They are legally required to provide you reasonable accommodations so you can get your work done.

I see a lot of people joking about the adhd thing of "I have a appointment/phone call at 3pm, guess I won't do anything all day!"

But no one seems to make the connection that it's a time blindness thing. One of the symptoms of ADHD is not having a good and accurate sense of time. And not doing stuff prior to an event with a hard deadline is an obvious coping mechanism for that.

Can I go to the store? It's 10am and the appointment is at 3pm. How long does going to the store take? An hour? Three hours? Five hours? I DON'T KNOW!

I get anxious trying to do things before appointments because I'm aware that I don't know how long those things take, and that if I think I do, I may be very wrong. Too often I've been like "hey I can walk to the corner store and grab a drink, that'll take like 15 minutes!" and then an hour later I get back and whoops my rice has burnt.

Plus there's also the fact that ADHD people know that motivation and focus is a two-edged sword.

Like, let's say you decide to play a video game. You've got time, you can pause/save whenever, so this should be a perfect fit to make good use of your waiting-time. So you start playing and WHOOPS you get really focused for some reason today (because people with ADHD do not get to pick when their brain decides to focus) and the next time you look at the clock it's 2:49 and you haven't showered or dressed and the appointment is 30 minutes away. Fuck. (you could have set an alarm, but now you're asking people with the forgetting-things-and-time-ignoring condition to remember it set alarms)

And with motivation, it can be almost worse. Instead of playing a game, you so something useful or creative. You clean your room or fix your plumbing or write a story or draw a picture. And suddenly it's great. Your brain is firing on all cylinders. You've got all the motivation you can ask for, and you are FLYING. the ideas are brilliant, your hands are nimble, you're getting stuff done you've been putting off for weeks or months. And then the alarm goes off. Time to go to your appointment. Fuck.

You drive there, your brain still full of ideas and plans. But by the time you get back, the motivation is gone. You may still have the ideas but you don't have the drive to write them down. You can't force yourself to do it. Your sink is still in pieces. Your room is half-cleaned, and you have to shove all the sorted clothes into one big bin just so you have somewhere to sleep. You've left things half finished again, in a cycle that has been repeating your whole fucking life. It seems sometimes that nothing ever gets finished.

So next time you don't even start. There's not time. You've been burnt too many times. Why add another half-completed project to your pile of shame?

My point is that people seem to be going "lol I can't do anything all day if I have an appointment at 3pm" like this is a quirky "oh I'm so scatterbrained!" weirdness they alone have, and not a major complication of a disabling mental illness.

(and that's not even getting into the secondary effects. If you know that having an appointment ruins your whole damn day, you're going to avoid them. Even when it's things like "going to that party" or "meeting your friends for a drink/game" or "going to a movie with that cute girl from your math class". Things you should enjoy. Things that'd help you be social. Things that make you feel human.)