Ever since I made the uncluttered space – uncluttered mind connection in my home, I’ve loved tidying up and paring down.

It’s still the most overwhelming project ever.

If you feel the same way and you’re looking for a different angle, try Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. For those who find typical minimalism or organizing self-help books off-putting, prepare for a breath of fresh air. Kondo helps readers deal with the guilt, emotional attachment, and indecision that prevents so many of us from cleaning up our homes.

That said, even though the author insists you not do this, I’m giving you permission to take this book with a small grain of salt. More on that later.

First, the good: Kondo anthropomorphizes pretty much everything, which — to our American sensibilities — can feel almost silly. This may strike a pleasant chord with quirky, abstract-thinking ADHD readers. It got me out of my rut and out of my head just enough to make some tough decisions about my stuff. It’s easy to think circles around your complicated relationship with an object, but what if you just asked the object? What if it had feelings? How does that affect your decision to keep it in your home out of a sense of guilt or obligation? You get the idea.

Likewise, Kondo’s central question — does it spark joy? — provides a refreshingly simple barometer, especially for sentimental items. Kondo gives the reader permission to let go. Those old love letters will live on inside us forever, and we don’t need to cling to them in the present.

The book’s prescriptive nature may put off some readers. Many of Kondo’s instructions sound like a tall order for larger families and/or people with small children. Including more of these families in the anecdotes may have made the book more approachable. From Kondo’s descriptions, most of her clients seemed like single people living on their own.

I wouldn’t write off the possibility of adapting the strategies to larger families, but Kondo insists on making no modifications to her program. I understand why  — she wants to promise her KonMari method will work for you — but I ended up feeling inadequate for the task. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, as they say, and people with ADHD must be especially creative with their solutions. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up promises to change your life, but only if you do things exactly as the author says. I’m not 100% sold on that.

For whatever reason — family, financial, or just because you have ADHD — you may not feel like you can achieve a flawless implementation of Kondo’s method. I think that’s okay. This book makes an excellent companion to other organizing books, including the more nitty-gritty, but also somewhat drier, ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up has, indeed, changed my life. It cleared some major roadblocks in my journey to a tidier home, and for that I’m quite grateful. It’s a fast and easy read, and well worth it for ADHD adults seeking a more tidy and tranquil home.

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If ADHD has ever cost you a job — or if it’s about to cost you one — you may feel like your employer fired you for having ADHD. That’s illegal, right?

Well, yes and no.

Wrongful termination suits are inherently complicated, and perhaps more so for adults with ADHD. Yes, it can be considered a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and no, an employer can’t discriminate against you because of your diagnosis.

However, ADHD isn’t always covered under the ADA. The burden of proof is on you to disclose your condition to your employer and demonstrate impairments rising to the level of an ADA disability. You can request reasonable accommodations, but you also need to be able to perform the essential functions of your job without them.

To get a clearer picture, let’s make sure we understand those three key phrases: reasonable accommodations, essential functions, and disability.

Disclaimer: I’m a blogger, captain, not a lawyer! This article is based on my own research and my experience as a human resources manager. If you’re dealing with a serious employment issue, use this only as a starting point for getting qualified legal help. A blog post should never be used as honest-to-goodness legal advice.

What is a disability under the ADA?

The ADA doesn’t have a list of qualifying mental conditions and disorders, just a loose guideline: you have a disability if your ADHD “substantially limits” a major life activity compared to the general population. A few examples of major life activities: interacting with others, concentrating, working, learning, reading, or communicating. If you can prove you have substantial limitations compared to your neurotypical coworkers, then you have a disability.

However, every case of ADHD is different, and every job is different. At age 16, I got my ideal job in a bustling copy center. Most people quit within two weeks. I thrived, for the same reason many ADHD’ers thrive as emergency room doctors: I loved operating in a perpetual state of crisis.

Did I have a disability at that job? Nope. Years later, working in a self-directed administrative job, I phoned our Employee Assistance Program and started stimulant medication. It all depends on your brain, your job, and how the two interact.

If your situation does qualify you for ADA protection, you’re entitled to request reasonable accommodations from your employer.

What are reasonable accommodations?

On-the-job accommodations can include:

• noise-canceling headphones
• higher cubicle walls to reduce visual distractions
• extra checklists and cheat sheets
• authorization to work from home under certain circumstances

You can get as creative as you want, as long as your requests remain reasonable. “Reasonable,” in this case, means they don’t cause undue hardship for your employer. Some requests may be cost prohibitive or otherwise infeasible.

These measures are intended to reduce distractions that keep you from working, not enable you to do a job you’re otherwise unsuited for. You still need to be able to perform the essential functions of your job — with or without accommodations.

What are essential functions?

Having a disability doesn’t entitle you to any job you want. Reasonable accommodations can level the playing field, but you also need to find a job that’s right for you and your ADHD self.

Essential functions are the basic things you must do in a job — in other words, the reason that job exists.

For example, at a job managing office IT, I had to know basic computer repair and server maintenance. I was incapable of remembering anything reported to me verbally, which led to a ban on ambushing me at the coffee station. Remembering what people told me wasn’t the reason I came to work every day. That gave me a right to insist that any problem worth solving be written down.

In contrast, an executive assistant’s job exists to keep another person organized. She may need to communicate on her boss’s behalf and manage an overwhelming email inbox and calendar. An overlooked detail, social misstep, or time management failure could be catastrophic. If these skills aren’t your strong suit, it’s not the job for you.

Can you make a case for wrongful termination?

Wrongful termination for ADHD requires a perfect storm of circumstances. Before pointing any fingers, ask yourself:

• Does your ADHD qualify as a disability according to the above definition?
• Did you officially disclose your ADHD to your employer? Is it documented in your file?
• Have you requested reasonable accommodations? Has this been documented (saved emails count)?
• Even without reasonable accommodations, are you qualified to perform the essential functions of your job?

A true wrongful termination case for ADHD is rare, and the downsides of officially disclosing your diagnosis often outweigh the benefits.

Some tips for the future

Losing a job is terrible. Rather than suffering in vain, try to use what you’ve learned to make your next job more successful. Some things to remember:

• If medication helps you manage your symptoms on the job, take it — and take it consistently
• Weigh your decision to disclose your ADHD to an employer — it may serve you better to ask for accommodations without using the official language. For example, “I work better in a quiet environment — may I move my desk to the corner, out of the thoroughfare?”
• Set yourself up for success. Find a job you like, one that allows you to capitalize on your strengths. Avoid jobs that place heavy demands on your weak points.
• Document, document, document. If you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation again, start being proactive right away. Save emails, save notes from meetings with your supervisor, and if you want a record of something that was said to you informally, ask for it in an email.

What have you done to prevent your ADHD from costing you your job? Have you ever been fired? How do you think your ADHD impacted your employer’s decision to let you go?

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As someone over 30 who writes about what it’s like to have ADHD, I sometimes assume I’ve run out of surprises. It’s easy to think I’ve learned all the little ways ADHD affects my behavior.

That’s simply not true. It probably isn’t true for any of us.

The other day, I had a revelation — an, “I can’t believe it’s ADHD” moment — while paying for food at a local cafe.

For some reason, I paid with cash — something I rarely do — and noticed I could give the cashier a few coins to round out my change.

Coins.

I’ve never been able to abide coins. In my retail days, I’d suppress the urge to yell, throw a stapler, or punch the cash register while watching customers pluck coins one by one from overstuffed purses.

It was excruciating. I wondered how they could inflict this kind of torture on another human being. From then on, I resolved to use coins as seldom as possible. I apologized every time I found myself breaking this rule. When I sensed people looking at me as I counted my change, I withered inside and berated myself for causing such a holdup.

On this day at the cafe, it hit me just as I muttered my reflexive, “sorry!”: the coins have never been the problem.

It’s me.

I feel this way — I’ve always felt this way — because I have ADHD. When I count out a few coins to simplify the change a cashier will give me, I’m not forcing an awful feeling upon her. She’s probably not about to start tugging her collar and frantically glancing around the room, as though her skin might leap off her body if she’s made to wait any longer.

Well, unless she’s a 17-year-old with undiagnosed ADHD. But I can’t assume that of everyone I meet. I should probably just stop feeling guilty about giving cashiers exact change.

How about you? What surprising manifestations of ADHD have you discovered lately?

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Sometimes — maybe even most times — we don’t realize we’re making a scene until it’s too late.

Many ADHD adults are plagued by emotional reactivity, impulsive outbursts, and overreactions. Dr. Michele Novotni, author of What does everybody else know that I don’t?: Social skills help for adults with ADHD, describes this behavior as “ready, fire, aim.” We progress so quickly from stimulus to response, we don’t understand the meaning of the phrase think before you speak.

This is a source of anger and embarrassment for our long-suffering spouses, especially in group social settings.

Angry outbursts at home leave our partners feeling hurt and confused. Paradoxically, these outbursts often lead to periods of calm, and we may not understand why our spouse is still hurting. “Your angry thoughts are like a flash flood,” writes Novotni, “rushing through gullies and then quickly drying up again.”

Granted, overreactions can be funny. I’ll never live down the time I placed my hands over my ears and wailed “I’m so confused!” in the middle of a discussion at the office. They can also propel a situation from mundane to catastrophic in a split second.

These moments don’t need to be a runaway train. You can install an emergency brake: a signal that communicates hey, you’re doing it again instantly and wordlessly.

Words can put an already volatile ADHD’er on the defensive, especially if you’re tempted to say exactly what you’re thinking. Look for a discreet hand sign or gesture. Make sure it’s something you both feel okay about and, ideally, will smirk at even if you’re angry. “Instead of criticism and belittlement, try humor,” suggests Gina Pera in Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?

Our outburst signal was born years ago, at the dinner table. I don’t remember what provoked me. Maybe I’d had a long day at work. Maybe the salt shaker fell over. It doesn’t matter. What matters is I pounded my fist on the table so hard, several months’ worth of crumbs ejected from the crack where the leaves join together.

A tense silence stretched between us as we stared at the line of food bits bisecting the otherwise smooth surface.

Then we laughed until our sides hurt.

Now, when my husband sees me start to tumble into meltdown mode, he makes a tabletop with one hand, looks me in the eye, and lowers his other fist onto it.

Signs are objective, general, and can remind us of a funny moment — even if it’s a dark comedy.

Have you and your partner tried signals to help derail bad behavior? How do you send a message without making things worse?

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I love using the line, “I’m bad at that” (or some variation thereof). The underlying message being, funny story: I have ADHD and I suck at some things.

I’m not proud of this.

In all fairness, it’s true. However, I suspect many of us use this mentality to avoid certain tasks and responsibilities. We use it as a reason not to challenge ourselves.

For years, I’ve proudly labeled myself “not a runner.” Though I might give you an excuse about sore joints, or a proclivity for excessive sweating, or the fact that running in hot weather makes me feel puffy, the biggest obstacle is in my head: I’m bad at creating and sticking to habits. I’ve long thought I could only maintain a running habit by running every day.

I never called this perfectionism because I thought it was just the cold hard facts. The first missed day marks the beginning of the end, and I don’t run again for years.

Then I picked up Stephen Guise‘s new(ish) book, How to be an Imperfectionist, and it opened my eyes to perfectionism’s toxicity for ADHD adults.

ADHD’ers seem like unlikely perfectionists. Our lives are swimming in imperfection, littered with screw-ups. And yet, perfectionism gives us an excuse, a reason to stay paralyzed.

Guise describes three primary ways perfectionism can paralyze us. All apply to my aversion to running.

• Context: without the perfect context, we can’t possibly succeed.
  “Running before breakfast is best for me, but it’s dark outside! Maybe after daylight savings time ends…”
  “I don’t own any running pants — only yoga pants.”
• Quality: we must make sure we’ll be able to do it exactly right.
  “Couch to 5K is embarrassing — there’s so much walking, I don’t even feel like I can say I went for a run.”
  “I don’t think I can commit to daily runs right now.”
• Quantity: we define success only as meeting or exceeding an arbitrary numeric goal.
  “I bet I can’t even run a mile without stopping anymore.”
  “If I don’t elevate my heart rate to 120 beats per minute for 30 minutes, I shouldn’t even bother.”

Quantifiable goals — like “I want to run for 30 minutes without stopping” or “I want to run every day” — give us something concrete to shoot for, but they also quantify failure. Not meeting your goal discredits all your hard work.

In the end, it’s easier to cling to my identity as someone who’s “not a runner” than to figure out how to make regular exercise work for me long-term.

Running, even under the guidance of a program like C25K, requires major league habit-forming skills. ADHD’ers endure constant blows to our self-image, and many of us will choose the couch as our fear of failure kicks in.

Guise points to insecurity as a major precursor to perfectionism:

Those who are secure in themselves are less perfectionistic because they have a positive affirmation bias, which means they’ll assume good things about themselves before considering negative things.

We’re so beaten down by a lifetime of failure, of broken (good) habits, of disappointment in ourselves. Why wouldn’t we turn to perfectionism for protection? Why wouldn’t we seek out explanations for why our failure — or failure to even try in the first place — was preordained, out of our control?

A week ago, I bought the C25K app. I went running in my yoga pants (a surprisingly good stand-in for running pants), in the dark, and I obeyed the app’s commands to walk and run in short intervals. I succeeded in running three times in one week, which is both trickier and more sustainable than running every day. I promised to be kind to myself, to accept any small step in the right direction as better than nothing.

Because it is. Even if we know we’re going to mess up, it’s okay to try. When we do mess up — and we will — it’s okay to try again.

I challenge you to do something, anything, that you’ve been avoiding due to the kinds of perfectionism listed above. Give yourself permission to do a crappy job. Get out there and take one step closer to where you want to be. Eventually, you’ll get there, but only if you have the courage to start — and restart — an imperfect journey.

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People with ADHD forget a lot — a lot of things, and very often.

We frustrate ourselves. Even worse, we frustrate, hurt, and disappoint the people we love. ADHD is cruelly egalitarian, in that we forget our spouse’s birthday as easily as our dry cleaning.

Photo by isaacbowen

Even if we lived in total isolation, we’d still generate the same ideas over and over again, wishing we could remember them at the right time.

My solution: shorten the distance between myself and a good container for my thoughts. I call this “storing my brain outside my head” because my brain is such an unreliable container.

I’ve learned it the hard way, again and again: I need to write everything down. Everything. If I catch myself thinking, “that’s too important, I know I won’t forget it,” it’s a huge red flag.

Not only do I have to write everything down, I have to do this before I forget. It happens in a matter of seconds. As a result, I maintain writable surfaces all over my house: post-its, dry erase boards, chalkboards, you name it. Even the bathroom mirror. If there’s anyone out there who considers me a good friend, spouse, parent, or relative, it’s because I never trust myself to remember anything.

Instead, I remain vigilant for ideas — pen in hand.

Collecting ideas

There are some potty training methods that — bear with me here — require constant vigilance, so you’re ready to airlift your naked naked toddler to the potty just as he empties his bladder onto the floor. I picture my brain as this naked toddler. The moment it thinks of something — anything — I need to whisk it to a writable surface.

I should mention I use David Allen’s Getting Things Done system religiously to process all my notes. Allen insists that you need to be able to trust your system — or else you’ll get discouraged. “One of the main factors in people’s resistance to collecting stuff into ‘in,'” Allen writes, “is the lack of a good processing and organizing methodology to handle it.”

When I’m running a tight ship with my GTD system, I’m much more enthusiastic about writing down my thoughts. If you haven’t read Getting Things Done, I highly recommend it.

Our home’s writable surfaces

Bathroom mirror

There’s a reason you have so many ideas in the shower. You’re relaxed, relatively free of distractions, and experiencing a nice dopamine rush from the hot water. Your brain is primed for idea generation.

I keep dry erase markers near the bathroom mirror so I can write a quick note before I’ve even dried off. The mirror is also a great place to leave a loving note or drawing for your spouse. When I worked in IT, my mirror notes reminded me to do early-morning server maintenance from home. Visitors occasionally spot our markers and join the fun, too.

Pantry door chalkboard

Our home is on the small side, making a big, common-area dry erase board impractical. Instead, I created a cute and functional chalkboard on our pantry door. It’s not as easy as tossing a few dry erase markers in the bathroom, but it’s a project pretty much anyone can do. I sanded the finished wood lightly, added a couple coats of primer, then applied this Rust-Oleum chalkboard paint. My son has taken over the bottom panel, and we use the larger top panel for grocery lists, reminders, fledgling Spotify playlists, and anything in between.

 Small dry erase board

I purchased a small dry erase board for my dorm room door when I left for college. Somehow, I managed to keep it for over a decade and through several moves. This former clutter object now hangs on the side of the fridge and collects phone messages.

Post-its, post-its, and more post-its

I keep a pad of post-it notes in almost every room: on my nightstand, on my desk, in the basement, next to the coffee maker, in the car. I order sticky notes in bulk packages meant for large offices. Walking more than 10 steps to the nearest sticky note feels like too much.

Isn’t there an app for that?

I didn’t include any electronic note-taking tools here. There are some great ones available — Evernote, Toodledo, Google Keep, and PlainText, for example — but I find computers and smart phones too distracting. When I unlock my phone screen, I rarely make it to my note-taking app. Several minutes later, I realize I’m checking my Instagram feed and have no idea why I grabbed my phone in the first place. A simple pen and paper works best.

How do you capture ideas, especially when you’re in a place where you can’t easily write something down?

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Last week, I had corrective eye surgery.

When my husband first suggested this surgery years ago, I waved it off. I gave excuses ranging from, “I don’t want someone messing with my eyes” to “what if I was the only person in history who was incapable of keeping my eye still for the procedure?”

Really, it was a threat to my identity. Having exceptionally poor vision is part of who I am. It’s something I share with my dad. It’s a fashion statement. It defines how I see the world around me. It’s something that makes an impression and sets me apart. It’s part of the very fabric of my reality.

The same could be said for ADHD.

This relationship to identity can be terribly difficult for others to understand. My husband, born with 20/10 vision, can’t imagine why I wouldn’t want to be able to see like everyone else. Why I’d fear waking up in the morning and being able to see everything in my bedroom.

For those on the outside, refusal to treat crippling ADHD symptoms can seem like madness.

Despite our impairments from ADHD, treating and managing it can, to some, feel like a threat to our identity. It requires us to shed our skin, to give up membership in some kind of weird club. Many people — myself included — fear starting ADHD medication for the first time because we worry we’ll lose a part of ourselves we actually like.

Just because we have the means to improve our lives doesn’t mean the choice is always easy. Altering a fundamental piece of our identity is scary. Any change is scary. Even though removing a functional impairment should feel like a 100% win, it’s not always.

Because my glasses make everything appear smaller, I have trouble seeing tiny things. I almost always ask my husband to remove splinters for me. I like that. I don’t usually accept much help or care, but it’s nice to be cared for every once in a while.

Maybe some of us cling to the impairments wrought upon us by ADHD, too.

Maybe it’s easier for us to say “I have no social skills” or “I don’t care about stupid paperwork” or “I’m just a terrible friend.” Anything else would force us to admit we’re working hard — and still failing.

Sometimes our ADHD can provide a certain level of security. Others know what to expect from us. We know what to expect from ourselves.

But just because we’ve taught ourselves — or been told by others — this is how we fit into the world doesn’t mean we’re stuck here. Just because change is scary doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And if we’re disappointed in ourselves today, it’s okay to admit we’re trying.

Honestly, my adjustment to ADHD medication felt a lot more natural than my recovery from this surgery: more like putting on a pair of glasses for the first time. I’m trying to take the long view, though, tough as that may be for someone like me. In both cases, it’s a leap that leads to long-term quality of life improvement.

And if I can give that to myself…why not try?

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During an emotional meltdown, part of us really does disappear. My two-year-old gave me a powerful reminder of this while we were staying with friends for the weekend.

R — exhausted from days of fun and social interaction — totally lost it getting ready for nap. We were in full meltdown mode. I just sat in the middle of the room and tried to remain calm as he sobbed, crawled in circles, and screamed incoherent sentences.

The crying eventually subsided. R opened his eyes, looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time, smiled, and said…

“Hi.”

Hi. As though he had just returned from Somewhere Else. In a way, he had.

When your rational brain checks out

It happens to grownups, too. I especially like how Dr. Mark Goulston describes this phenomenon in his book Just Listen.  He refers to our “three-part brain” as:

• The lower reptilian brain (fight-or-flight),
• The middle mammal brain (emotions), and
• The higher primate brain (logic and rational thought)

These parts were added on sequentially as we evolved. For a real-life illustration, spend some time with babies and toddlers. In his classic Happiest Toddler on the Block, Dr. Harvey Karp compares toddlers to “primitive little cavemen” living a “superfast rerun of ancient human development.”

As adults, Goulston says, these three parts of our brain can work as a team. However, add a little stress and our old reptile brain takes over.

“If you’re talking to [someone] whose lower brain or midbrain is in control,” explains Goulston, “you’re talking to a cornered snake or, at best, a hysterical rabbit.”

The biggest mistake we make in our ADHD household? Assuming someone is thinking rationally — with our primate brain — when we’re not.

Your reptile brain deserves some space

When I’m feeling like that cornered snake or hysterical rabbit — not sure which is worse — the critical next step is telling myself, you’re not yourself right now. Or, more accurately, I’m the last person I want handling an important decision or conversation.

I’ve learned it’s best to honor where I am at the moment and give myself space to cool down. Naming feelings helps a lot. Try it next time you’re in emotional or fight-or-flight mode: say — aloud or to yourself — I’m feeling really out of control. That comment was really hurtful. Wow, I’m so angry. Listening to my child cry is sending my stress hormones through the roof.

It’s a hard skill to learn, and it requires practice. My brain loves to trick me into justifying extreme emotions or, even worse, sticking it out in an argument despite feeling hysterical.

This is almost always a terrible idea, especially given ADHD’s effects on emotional regulation. Emotional control is often lacking in ADHD adults. “Without well-developed verbal and nonverbal working memory,” explains Dr. Russell Barkley in Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, “you have less capacity for the visual imagery and self-speech that can help you calm your emotions.”

If you’re in a relationship with an ADHD adult, this emotional reactivity may be all too familiar. In Is It You, Me, or Adult ADD?, Gina Pera describes “a tendency to become easily frustrated and growl or blow up, but react 10 minutes later with over-the-top excitement to something else.”

This describes me to a T. My rational brain can be a real diva. It’s ready to walk off the stage at any moment, leaving me to yell the exact wrong thing at my husband, boss, or kid. Once I’m entrenched in a conflict, I forget how I even got there.

It’s tough to counter this. The first step is noticing it’s happening. Intense emotions are, most of the time, an indication that I need to back off. It’s not the time to work through an important issue with my husband, make decisions, or provide my opinion on someone else’s behavior. A poor grasp of time makes it tough to defer these things. Right Now can be the only time that feels real.

But defer we must, if we want to maintain healthy relationships. It’s okay to be upset, and it never hurts to ask, “can we talk about this a little later?” It’s not okay to explode at someone, say a lot of really upsetting things to them, and later claim you have no memory of what happened. My life has been a lot of the former and not enough of the latter, but I’m working on it.

How about you? How do you minimize the damage when your rational brain shuts down?

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Dr. Russell Barkley’s Taking Charge of Adult ADHD provides a rundown of adult ADHD basics that’s comprehensive, yet easy to read.

That said, I took it at a sluggish pace. It’s informative, conversational, and approachable, but the language often feels overwordy. I’m okay with this because the book’s true value isn’t in a one-time, sequential reading, but in the many times I’ll pull it off the shelf for reference. Taking Charge offers a wealth of facts as well as a handy reference section in the back.

Though Taking Charge is a critical volume in my ADHD library, it’s not the only one. Parents and married couples, especially, may want to investigate books that go deeper into those subjects.

I’ve heard Taking Charge described as an ADHD instruction manual. I agree. An instruction manual tells you how something works and provides basic troubleshooting tips, but you need a qualified professional for complex issues.

This holds true for your brain. Taking Charge won’t give you a step-by-step guide for repairing everything that’s broken in your life, but it will tell you where to start.

My biggest disappointment was the cursory mention — or, in some cases, omission — of alternative treatments and supports. Dr. Barkley is pro-medication, in that he believes medication enables us to create and maintain long-term coping strategies.

My own reading and personal experience back this up 100%.

However, exercise and diet are mentioned only in passing, and I didn’t see mindfulness meditation mentioned at all. It would’ve been nice to see a little more on the brain science behind why these things are so important. Where I felt like Daniel Amen’s Healing ADD went too far, Taking Charge may not go far enough.

Criticisms aside, Taking Charge is a necessary addition to your ADHD library. Dr. Barkley is one of the most respected experts out there, and he’s distilled his vast knowledge into language everyone can understand.

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I don’t believe in that “gifts of ADHD” stuff, but I still try to live a grateful life. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I’m starting a list of things I’m thankful for — simple things, funny things, and, by that token, maybe the most important things.

Please share yours in the comments. The world needs our positive energy!

I’m thankful for…

1. A husband who understands I’m trying my best, even if it doesn’t always look that way.
2. That kind bookstore employee who stood politely while I spaced out for what may have been minutes. I eventually realized I’d never handed her my credit card.
3. All the minimalist bloggers out there who remind me that simplicity can breed calm — even for me.
4. Tuesday night community yoga.
5. Email reminders from the library. I feel like a much better person when I actually return my books.
6. GTD.
7. Books that teach me about my brain.
8. My FitBit. It doesn’t just count my steps, it vibrates twice daily to remind me to take my meds.
9. A home and lifestyle just a little smaller and simpler than we can afford. It’s like buying ADHD insurance.
10. Mini Habits, which taught me to set the bar so low, even I can clear it — and I’d better not be too proud to do this.
11. Sticky notes (much more grown up than writing all over my arms).
12. A lovely online community of ADHD friends and advocates. You all are the best!

What are you thankful for today?

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Sometimes I ask myself: am I a good friend?

I don’t really know the answer, and that can be both frustrating and exhausting.

Social struggles are common for ADHD’ers. According to Dr. Russell Barkley in his book Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, we consistently report having fewer close friends than our peers.

I worry about this because I have nice friends. I like them, and I want them to continue liking me, but I fear no one really sees my best.

I’m getting better, though. Like anything in ADHDland, being a good friend takes learning, practice, and intentional strategies.

Here are the most valuable things I’ve learned:

1. I contribute what I can, where I can.
   To make up for the times when I do weird stuff, don’t know the right thing to say, or just go off the radar for a while, I capitalize on the good things I have to offer: a loaf of homemade bread just because. A magazine clipping in the mail. A ride across town in the middle of a work day. I go for the little things and hope they add up.
2. I’m honest about my foibles.
   In his book Just Listen, Dr. Mark Goulston calls this the “stipulation gambit.” I’m forthright about character flaws that might create misunderstandings. For example, I’m terrible with the phone. If it rings unexpectedly, I’m unlikely to answer it,  and I’m not shy about sharing this anxiety. I’d rather people think I’m neurotic than unconcerned. Likewise with forgetfulness, interrupting, speaking with too much intensity, and monologuing.
3. I spend less time on Facebook than I used to.
   Scrolling through my news feed fools my brain into thinking I’m connected when I’m really not. It also sucks time away from more meaningful, one-on-one connections: writing emails and texts, arranging visits, or just having dinner together.
4. I’ve stopped waiting until I feel less overwhelmed.
   It won’t happen. I have ADHD. It’s hard to do, but I try not to let myself use overwhelm and “being too busy” as a reason to defer social plans.
5. I accept that my friends are a project.
   It feels like cheating to use my calendaring and task management apps to manage friendships. I hope my friends don’t figure out we’re only hanging out because I made our dinner its own project in Toodledo. Including time to think about friends and family during my weekly review feels cold. Then again, I use these systems for everything else I think is important. Why not afford friends and family the same consideration?
6. I write down gift ideas year-round and squirrel them away in Google Documents.
   I don’t know about you, but I’m far more likely to think of the Best Gift Idea Ever in July than the week before Christmas. My brain isn’t good at generating lots of new ideas under pressure. If I give a home run gift, it’s probably something I wrote down several months earlier. Maybe I even wrote it on the bathroom mirror as I stepped out of the shower.
7. I’ve read several books on communication and brain science.
   I read to learn about my brain, others’ brains, and how to show my best self to the world. There’s no shame in acknowledging I’m not good at something and working to get better. In Your Brain at Work, David Rock suggests learning to recognize your brain’s inherent weaknesses so you can say, “that’s just my brain” instead of going into freakout mode. It helps. Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to those big ADHD emotions that shut down your rational brain.
8. I try to be a good friend to myself, too.
   Being kind to myself has — I begrudgingly admit — made me more attractive to others and allowed me to fill my life with good people who care about me. Mistakes happen, though, and it’s easy to become consumed by negative self-talk. In Women with Attention Deficit Disorder: Embrace Your Differences and Transform Your Life, Sari Solden advises against “over apologizing or putting yourself down.” I’ve tried to take that to heart and keep apologies simple, heartfelt, and proportionate to what happened.

How about you? How do you keep ADHD from getting the best of your personal relationships?

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“Our family needs a homemaker.”

I love to be needed, but those words stung.

I was trying to convince my husband to keep our twice-monthly cleaning service, but he wouldn’t budge. It was a temporary arrangement for a tough time: during the first nine months of our son’s life, my husband finished a master’s degree and broke his collarbone.

I needed help.

The problem was, once things returned to normal, I viewed this extra help as a small price to pay to get my writing business off the ground. My husband reminded me of our agreement that one of us would be a stay-at-home parent. It didn’t seem fair for me to claim I “didn’t have time” to clean the house.

Maybe it wasn’t, but providing sanity and order to an ADHD household, day in and day out, is exhausting.

Because it’s true: our ADHD family does need a homemaker. We need one adult holding down the fort full-time to keep everything from exploding (or imploding) into chaos.We need someone cleaning, coordinating home repairs, paying bills, opening the mail, and making sure everyone eats — among many, many other things.

But I have ADHD, too, and I have big plans for my life. Specifically, I want to do all the things, and I want to do them yesterday.

In the two years post-cleaning lady, I’ve found a better groove. I’ve forced myself to keep trying. I figured out a way to keep writing while (usually) keeping the house (relatively) clean. R. grew up into a little boy and stopped nursing, which meant I could resume taking my ADHD meds. I’ve mapped out a longer-term plan for my writing that allows me to feel like I’m making daily progress. I’ve learned to accept incremental progress, even if I want instant gratification.

Being the homemaker is still hard. I wouldn’t have it any other way, for more reasons than I can count. My husband has unbeatable job security, and my salary wouldn’t have supported us. I prefer to be in charge. I’m better at structuring my own projects and time.

Our family doesn’t just need a homemaker, we need me. And to be there for our family, I need to be there for myself, too. That means making time for my writing, but also taking care of our home and family. Taking time for myself, but not leaving everyone else to pick up my slack.

It’s a lifelong pursuit, finding balance. I’ll never quite get there. I’ll never perfect the art of slowing down, of accepting imperfection, of resting, of moderating — in any of my roles. All I can do is try.

Lately, I’m trying to be honest with myself about what it means to be a workaholic homemaker with ADHD.

And what does that mean, exactly? If you have ADHD and you’re a stay-at-home parent, I’d love to hear about your experience. How do you make it work? Have you struggled to reconcile your partner’s expectations with your own? What are some of the most important things you’ve learned?

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I keep trying to convince people that gifts stress us out too much, but it’s a tough sell at Christmas. Here are a few suggestions if you’re shopping for someone with ADHD.

FitBit activity tracker

Don’t let the gadget factor fool you — the FitBit is more than just a fun toy. Of course, the fitness-features — including activity and sleep monitoring — will come in handy for anyone hoping for better self-care in 2016.

However, I love my FitBit most for its silent alarm. It’s the only way I’ve found to remember my twice-daily ADHD medication without disrupting anyone else. Using my phone alarm for medications has always felt awkward to me, but my FitBit‘s vibrating alarm gives me a reminder without attracting unwanted attention.

Pill case (or timer cap)

A minute after I take my medication, I start thinking, “did I remember my meds today?”

Accidentally double-dosing is no good, but missing a dose can be just as bad. While I see timer caps for pill bottles recommend all the time, you can save money with an old-fashioned plastic case from the drug store. I prefer these anyway because when I load mine up at the beginning of the week, I get an early warning if I’m running low.

A timer or two

The Time Timer can help combat ADHD’s “time blindness”

We use timers a lot in our house: for the Pomodoro Method, potty training, Facebook,wrapping up in the workshop before dinner, remembering something’s heating on the stove, and much, much more. Tools like the Time Timer represent time visually, which can be a godsend for the particularly time-blind. It works great for kids, too, because you can introduce the concept of time as a little red pie slice that gradually disappears.

Because timers are so critical for us, I love Suck UK’s Kaboom! timer because it looks cool enough to leave it out downstairs. The loud bell is impossible to miss and its cute design makes it a conversation piece.

Document scanner

I rolled my eyes when my husband ordered this because we already own a nice flatbed scanner. However, I now use it almost daily. It’s fast, easy, and has allowed me to eliminate most of our paper filing. If you go the scan-and-shred route, make sure you have a backup service like Dropbox or Crashplan.

P-Touch labeler

A fancy label maker felt extravagant at first, but I’m now sold on the benefits — espoused by organizing guru David Allen — of printing labels for file folders instead of hand-writing them. The labeler makes this quick and easy, which makes us more likely to file documents in a timely manner.

Not only that, I’ve started labeling every storage container in our home. My husband (like many ADHD spouses, I’m sure) doesn’t always intuit where something goes, even if it seems obvious. I’m even guilty of forgetting my own organizing systems. Tidy-looking printed labels help everyone stay organized.

The new Getting Things Done

Confession: I bought this as a gift to myself already, though I haven’t cracked it open yet. My ADHD made me disorganized on every level as a young adult: from my physical surroundings to my thoughts to my long-range plans (such as they were). We all know we need to be more organized. David Allen’s GTD system answers the question, “but how?” The original book saved my hide as I left full-time employment and created my own structure as a stay-at-home mom and writer.

A helping hand, or a few more minutes in the day

Yes, I’m serious. No one in our family excels at a.) coming up with gift ideas or b.) waiting for Christmas instead of running out and purchasing everything for ourselves.

If more stuff is the last thing your favorite ADHD’er needs, is there a way you can give him something more valuable? I’d give up all my Christmas gifts for someone else to do my top five most-procrastinated housekeeping tasks. Just once! Or how about this: two days of babysitting so I can catch up on…whatever?

Other ideas include: a few hours of cleaning or organizing help (from a professional or, if you’re good at it, from you for free!); a meeting with a financial planner; a few sessions with an ADHD coach, personal trainer, or nutrition counselor; a thrill-seeking day of skydiving, hot air balloon rides, or rock climbing; or a special yoga workshop.

What about you? What do you want for Christmas this year? Are you planning anything special for an ADHD family member?

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I’ve recently taken up knitting again, and not because I’m a naturally crafty person. Knitting helps me keep my mouth shut. With three family Christmas dinners coming up, the timing is right.

My heart sinks every time I describe myself as quiet to a new (or new-ish) friend and she responds with, “what? You?”

I can’t imagine a reason to be anything but quiet — that feels like the real me — but I come from a long line of verbal fidgeters. This is a nice way to say that many of us chatter, argue, criticize, or even yell in a subconscious effort to balance out our brains’ dopamine supply.

Before any social gathering, I promise myself I won’t talk too much. I won’t interrupt, won’t argue, won’t interject non sequiturs. I can’t remember ever having success with this.

Michele Novotni describes a poignant conversation with her then-five-year-old son (prior to his taking ADHD medication) in her book, What Does Everybody Else Know That I Don’t?

I explained to him that once you have a thought, you need to stop and decide whether or not it is a good idea before you say it or act on it. Jarryd looked puzzled, “There’s no place to stop it, mom. It’s just all one step. That part of my brain must be broken.”

I know exactly how little Jarryd felt. Fortunately, I have my knitting, which gives me a fidget outlet besides my mouth. Knitting is way more socially acceptable than staring at my phone, and it provides a handy conversation piece to break the ice.

Of course, knitting isn’t my only line of defense against myself. Here are some strategies from our family’s toolbox. On a truly lucky day, we remember and follow one of them.

1. Do something with your hands (knit, doodle, crochet, or find some other small, portable craft); this is what I call “getting your fidgets out,” and it’ll also provide a visual reminder of your goal.
2. Avoid your traps. My husband has a terrible habit of arguing with his father after a couple glasses of wine. Neither of them needs to feel impaired for a lively debate to spiral out of control. If someone points out a pattern like this to you, listen!
3. Give up on changing hearts and minds. Challenging someone’s political views in front of an audience won’t help your cause. Ignoring an inflammatory statement and gently changing the subject (or even just finding an excuse to leave the room) removes the offending person’s soapbox.
4. Watch the booze. It worsens ADHD symptoms and…I needn’t say any more.
5. Take those meds. They may keep you from making poor choices on the aforementioned points.

If you see me knitting during our conversation, take it as a compliment. It means I care about having a conversation with you. I’m trying to learn to listen more than I talk, and make sure the words I do say are more than just auditory clutter.

How about you? What kind of conversationalist do you want to be, and how are you getting there?

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I feel good about 2015. It’s been a year of learning to pace myself, of actually finishing a few projects, of falling off the wagon and getting back on again. For this ADHD household, I call it a success.

What do you hope to accomplish in 2016?

As we turn the page, I’m hoping for more teamwork, less clutter, and a fresh coat of paint in every room. I’m hoping to help my husband troubleshoot a few habits and goals, not just focusing inward on my own work and well-being.

I’m also hoping for more great connections like the ones I made in 2015. This blog has helped me reach thousands of people. I have a lot of ideas for 2016, and I owe you all a few book reviews (they’re going to be good ones!).

If you have a question or conundrum weighing on your mind, please share in the comments or via the suggestion box. Chances are you’re not alone and I’ll put it in my queue of future post topics!

In the meantime, here are your favorite posts from 2015:

The only early childhood activity worth my money

Fired for my ADHD: have you been wrongfully terminated?

 Falling through the cracks: one ADHD girl’s story

Use a signal for bad ADHD behavior…and don’t forget to laugh.

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When we think about New Year’s resolutions, we imagine ways we’d like to improve. Things we promise ourselves we’ll do better this year than last.

But why?

Really, why do we want to change? Specifically?

Because it’s a good idea? Because we know we’re not perfect? Because our spouse asked us to?

Not good enough.

In my experience, change doesn’t happen when motivation to do so is abstract.

One of the most powerful agents of change for me — and the beginning of my journey toward proper ADHD treatment — was an exercise from Marilyn Paul’s It’s Hard to Make a Difference When You Can’t Find Your Keys. Paul (no relation to me) challenged readers to inventory the real costs of disorganization and personal ineffectiveness.

My list looked a little like this:

• Money
  • Late fees on bills I forgot to pay (despite having enough money in the bank)
  • Lost interest on checks I forgot to deposit (or lost money entirely if the check was so old the bank wouldn’t take it)
• Health (medical appointments I forgot to schedule)
• Hobbies (never have/make time for them)
• Piece of mind in relationships (anxiety, guilt, feeling others’ trust is misplaced)
• Serenity (no calm, orderly place to retreat to in my home or office)
• Social outlets (never have/make time for friends)
• Personal and professional skill development
• Long-distance friends and family (didn’t keep on top of correspondence)

When I took stock like this, my heart felt heavy. I feared I’d never reach my potential. Worse, others would see me as aloof, uncaring, disorganized, and irresponsible.

But it was kind of like the time I multiplied the cost of my daily latte habit over the course of a year: the process necessitated an “oh, s&$#” moment.

There’s a famous Maya Angelou quote, “do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”

It’s easy to brush off an overdraft fee here or lost check there. One failed friendship might have any number of explanations. But taken together, I couldn’t deny the pattern. My ADHD — though that’s not what I called it at the time — was costing me a fortune, in more ways than one.

And once I really knew better, I resolved to do better.

It’s been a long road, fraught with switchbacks and wrong turns, but I think I’m getting somewhere.

Have you ever tried to quantify the costs of ADHD? Has it helped keep you motivated, or just demoralized you? (I definitely experience both on a regular basis!)

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Full disclosure: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review, but all opinions here are my own.

Part of me is always looking for the perfect ADHD book, even though I know it doesn’t exist. I need a whole shelf full of them to cover every angle.

ADHD: What Everyone Needs to Know may, however, be the perfect ADHD overview book. When the publisher contacted me about doing a review, the title made me skeptical. It’s a bold claim.

However, once I started reading, I felt so fortunate to have found this book. It’s not all there is to know, but it is, as the title suggests, what everyone needs to know about ADHD. Not only that, it’s easy to read and weighs in at just under 200 pages.

The greatest value of ADHD: What Everyone Needs to Know isn’t even the ADHD crash course the authors so skillfully provide. The FAQ-style format will prepare readers with responses to others’ questions as well as their own. Remain open about your or your child’s ADHD for long enough and you’ll know exactly what I mean. With so much conflicting information and sensationalist reporting out there, a reasonable and comprehensive layman’s overview is long overdue.

I especially appreciated the nuanced perspective on recent surges in ADHD diagnoses among American children. The chapter exploring “who you are and where you live” leaves no room for black-and-white arguments. A close read reveals no single truth: yes, accountability laws that defund failing schools are correlated with increased ADHD diagnoses, not to mention increased use of stimulant medication. Yes, diagnosis rates dropped when the carrots of Race to the Top replaced the sticks of No Child Left Behind. However, that data is open to interpretation, and while overdiagnosis is certainly possible, it doesn’t delegitimize ADHD.

This balanced presentation of facts won’t validate any battle cries, but it may be our best bet for responding to those extreme viewpoints. Like most issues, ADHD — and our knowledge of it — contains many gray areas. I found it impossible to maintain a bias while reading this book. Hinshaw and Ellison offer their own interpretations, but they also explain why certain areas remain gray. For example, sometimes ethical issues prevent the controlled studies that would answer some of the toughest questions.

That said, I struggled with the authors’ treatment of ADHD in women and girls: specifically, the suggestion that boys with ADHD outnumber girls two or two-and-a-half to one, with the gender gap closing by adulthood. But perhaps this is informed by my own experience as a girl who struggled from a very young age, suffering in increasing silence as I reached middle and high school.

I’ve also read conflicting information on some forms of behavior therapy for children. Specifically, my personal experience and research discourages the use of external rewards and punishment, sticker charts, etc. (For an excellent, concise illustration of this point, check out Vicki Hoefle’s Duct Tape Parenting.)

The authors do acknowledge this problem, saying “the difficulty for children is to maintain their progress [outside] the tightly managed environment.” I myself excelled in the structured environments of grade school, college, and family. Shedding these supports in my 20s, I had no capacity to cope with my ADHD as it affected my adult life.

In this behavior therapy chapter, the authors’ well-rounded approach becomes confusing. While it begins by offering behavior therapy as a possible substitute for medication, it ends by saying most of us really need both. This latter point is weakened by ambiguous language earlier on.

Overall, ADHD: What Everyone Needs to Know is an essential read for any educated consumer seeking ADHD diagnosis and treatment. The book focuses more on childhood ADHD than adult ADHD, but there’s enough general information to give both groups an excellent foundation. If you’re struggling with questions about your or a loved one’s ADHD — including your response to others’ unsolicited questions and opinions — this book is for you.

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Sometimes it’s hard to keep trying.

January should be all about resolutions and new beginnings, but it doesn’t always sparkle for ADHD’ers. Something I read on Penny Williams’ Keeping It Real Parenting ADHD & Autism hit the nail on the head: Penny lamented “experiencing the same crap, year after year.”

New Years resolutions, support systems, a new way of organizing our lives — all can remind us of failure, past or still to come.

Some ADHD’ers dread sitting down to talk about goal-setting. Some of us get all jazzed about a new to-do list app, but hesitate to use it.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep trying.

Many adults with ADHD are dealing with years of accumulated failures. Even if a new idea seems great, we may say, why bother?

Obviously, this is no way to live. How do we keep going, keep trying, keep believing in our own capacity to succeed? We can start by rethinking our idea of progress.

Scale back

2015 was one of my most successful years yet. I solved more problems than I created around the house, moved forward on a major redecorating project, got rid of a ton of clutter, facilitated a monthly fiction critique group, and maintained a regular blogging schedule (among other things).

I did it all by lowering my expectations.

ADHD brains think big. When we bother to set goals, we want them to be ambitious, exciting, sparkly.

At the same time, we struggle to estimate how long tasks will take, and we often forget steps when we’re thinking through a process. Our brains don’t connect past outcomes with future ones. Wasn’t it Einstein who described insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results? That’s us.

If we set the bar too high, we’re destined to fail. When I read Stephen Guise‘s Mini Habits last year, I adopted his too-small-to-fail philosophy. I started setting embarrassingly low goals. I wouldn’t commit to working on my novel every day, I’d just open the file. I wouldn’t do a full yoga practice every day, I’d just get into downward facing dog. I didn’t need to prep the whole dining room for painting, I just needed to touch my sandpaper to one spot of spackle.

And things started getting done like magic. Once I got a taste of success, I gained confidence, and I started retraining my overambitious brain.

Accept small progress

When I set the bar lower, I took on a whole new challenge: I had to become okay with the mundane. People with ADHD don’t like this. We like to bite off more than we can chew (when we bite off anything at all). As I get older, the binge-then-neglect style of working on home improvement projects — or any projects, really — isn’t working. I’m convinced our 30s exist to teach us the art of juggling more responsibilities with less energy and idealism.

I not only had to [force myself to] set lower goals, I had to make peace with this new idea of success. Yes, I can open my manuscript, close it, and feel okay. Yes, I can run only one mile and feel okay. I can paint a room over the course of four days instead of in one day.

A thousand small steps will get us to the finish line. One or two giant steps, followed by burnout and complete inactivity, will not.

Quantify

My ADHD gives me a poor sense of time and an even worse memory. If I feel like I got nothing accomplished at the end of the week, it says more about my mood at that moment than my actual productivity.

I’ve started keeping track of small victories: writing a list in my notebook, or even on a sticky note. I want to remember, moments of low confidence, that I checked off an overdue task today, put my kid to bed on time, or invited a writer friend to attend a conference with me.

My husband, a software engineer, set up a ticket tracking server for our house. It sounds weird and nerdy, and maybe it is, but I love logging in and seeing a visual reminder that I’ve resolved more problems than the house has thrown at me. When my husband gets discouraged about the number of things still left to do, I point to it and remind him that we’re making progress.

You could accomplish the same thing with a piece of loose leaf on the fridge or, if you’re feeling fancy, a spreadsheet.

The point is, in addition to scaling back expectations, it’s important to keep track of your progress — however small. It’s so easy to lose touch and, in a moment of weakness, assume you haven’t accomplished anything.

Once you free yourself from your expectations to dream big, you may find yourself recording a flood of tiny achievements.

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Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

The Insider’s Guide to ADHD presents a unique perspective on parenting young ADHD’ers. Through a  survey of 95 ADHD adults, author Penny Williams shares dos and don’ts from those who should know best.

I expected Insider’s Guide to read like a collective memoir, but it’s more informed by survey responses than driven by them. You won’t find case studies or lengthy anecdotes. Direct quotes from the survey are generally short.

Williams has built a successful brand by writing from her perspective: a dedicated mom without ADHD, learning obsessively through research and real-life experience. She retains that voice in Insider’s Guide, drawing heavily on her own experiences along with survey responses.

Insider’s Guide teaches solid parenting strategies and steers readers away from the old-school parenting style many of us grew up with.

Williams offers these critical messages for parents of kids with ADHD:

• Even lovely, supportive parents can unwittingly leave their kids feeling doomed to failure.
• All kids need to learn self-sufficiency, and helicopter parenting sabotages future success.
• Shame and punishment aren’t effective for creating long-term positive change.
• Figuring out the right medication and dosage can be a life-changer.

Depending your current parenting and communication skills, Insider’s Guide may or may not help you. It’s a crash course, and Williams covers many of the same points as previous books I’ve reviewed — How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk and Duct Tape Parenting — but in slightly less depth.

These books pack more concrete examples, high-impact testimonials, and quotes from parenting experts, but Insider’s Guide makes an excellent sell to the skeptical or uninitiated. Williams offers testimony from real people who’ve lived through a childhood with ADHD. There’s overwhelming consensus on what works.

I especially appreciated this quote from a mom with ADHD: “I never liked the thought of medication for my child, but it made such a difference in my own life, I could not hold that back from maybe giving my child a chance to feel like days can be easier.” Parents are faced with overwhelming, complex choices. This illustrates beautifully what ADHD adults bring to the table.

One cautionary note: Williams represents survey results with visual aids throughout the book, but don’t extrapolate these to all adults with ADHD. The survey’s sample size is relatively small, at 95, and overwhelmingly female (78.1%). While it’s great to see women with ADHD represented, this doesn’t reflect the overall demographics of ADHD adults.

That’s not to discredit the insights Insider’s Guide has to offer. It’s just important to consider sample size and methods used when applying survey results to the population at large.

Insider’s Guide starts a necessary conversation. Awareness of ADHD is growing, and those of us who attended elementary school in the 1980s and 1990s — when ADHD and stimulant medications really became household names — now have children of our own. It’s time to explore how our childhood experiences can influence our parenting. I’m glad to see a book on this topic, and I hope it opens the door to bigger and more ambitious projects in the future.

Bottom line: if you’re stuck in a negative parenting rut and haven’t enjoyed books targeting neurotypical kids, Insider’s Guide is a great place to start. If you’ve already read How to Talk and Duct Tape Parenting, expect a repackaging of those ideas through the ADHD lens.

How about you? Have you read Insider’s Guide, or do you have another book to recommend? Please share your thoughts!

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I hate knowing I have tons to do, yet blanking when I try to think of specific tasks. This feeling defined my mid-20s, just before I started learning about and treating my ADHD.

I existed in a constant state of stress and anxiety, but I couldn’t articulate — even to myself — what exactly I needed to do.

Medication helped settle my thoughts. Next, I needed a system to organize them.

My salvation came in the form of David Allen’s Getting Things Done. If you haven’t tried GTD or if you find the whole system too rigid, allow me to share one of the most important concepts:

Context is everything.

Why traditional lists and planners failed me

To-do lists never worked for me until I sorted them by context — that is, the location or resources they require. This was a major paradigm shift. I spent years struggling with calendar-based personal planners and daily to-do lists, recopying incomplete tasks from one day to the next.

Of course, some tasks need to happen on a specific day, like paying rent or turning in kids’ summer camp registrations. I still write those on my calendar. Others just require the right environment: a phone, a quiet room, a computer, or a specific person. For those, I keep context-based to-do lists in an app called Toodledo. Toodledo’s web and mobile apps keep my lists at my fingertips everywhere I go. Here are my contexts:

I also generate contexts as needed for my mom, husband, grandmother, and anyone else I converse with regularly.

If you dislike apps, try a sheet of loose leaf paper or a page in a notebook for each context. Anything that keeps your lists separate will do just fine.

Still wondering how this beats one neat, centralized list?

Allen claims, and I agree, that a single list would make it “too difficult to see what you need to see; each time you got any window of time to do something, you’d have to do unproductive re-sorting.”

Consider this alongside ADHD’s inherent working memory weaknesses. As Russell Barkley explains in Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, we use working memory to organize and prioritize tasks, hold multiple things in mind, and figure out what to do next.

For someone with unreliable working memory, a poorly-organized to-do list isn’t just “unproductive,” it’s paralyzing.

“It’s not that you’re incapable of logical analysis or you lack intelligence…” Barkley writes, “it’s just that you need to make the process tangible and external…so your emotions don’t erupt with the frustration of trying to do it all in your head.”

Externalizing tasks into contextual ‘buckets’ takes a huge load off your working memory. This makes it easier to get into your productivity groove (sometimes known as hyperfocus).

Hyperfocus for good

Hyperfocus has a bad reputation in our household. It makes it hard for ADHD’ers to change gears and switch tasks. However, with context-based to-do lists, we can use hyperfocus to our advantage.

I may put phone calls off as long as possible, but by the time I force myself to do it (usually a deadline is looming), I settle in and finish them all at once. My husband calls this “task inertia.”

Here’s the thing: I’d freak out if I tried to comb through my to-do list (usually 60+ items long) for the three phone calls I need to make. A separate, ready-to-roll, phone-calls-only list enables me to make more than one of the dreaded calls. It removes obstacles to task inertia.

Reclaiming lost time

In Getting Things Done, Allen stresses the importance of capturing “weird little windows” of time. Most of us use 10 minutes in a waiting room to cruise our smart phone. What if you check two small items off your to-do list instead? My “any computer” (a definition that includes my phone) list contains tasks like “make dinner reservations” (easy with the OpenTable app), “look at calendar for game night dates,” and “use quilt tutorial to make a list for the fabric store.”

These are the baby steps that move me from Point A to Point B, from “we should get together soon” to “see you on Friday night for dinner and board games.” They’re also the details that can slip through my fingers and make me feel like a major flake. ADHD doesn’t change society’s expectations, but it sure makes it tough to keep up.

Experience has taught me, when I receive one of those “weird little windows,” I need to be ready. I need to know what one tiny thing I can get done with the resources at hand. Organizing my to-do list by context has been the key to making that happen — and to tricking people into thinking I have it together.

How do you organize your to-do list? Does it work for you? Please share in the comments!

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The post For a better to-do list, just add context. appeared first on The ADHD Homestead.