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By:Donae Cannon, OTR/L
I have some coaching advice: Don't just look for ADHD life hacks. I know that this seems like an odd statement coming from an ADHD coach, so let me clarify. Of course you are going to look for the hacks and strategies that make parts of life easier (or even just doable) for you, BUT, the real value of these hacks is recognizing why they work for your brain. When I work with my coaching clients, I'm not just listing off a dozen "kitchen" hacks or "calendar" hacks, I'm working with them so that they become experts on their own unique brains and with that foundation, they are often the ones who come up with the most brilliant hacks.
Have you ever heard the proverb "Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime." ? Our ADHD hacks are those fish. They're great-we need them and they support us, but if we deepen our knowledge about how and why they work for us, we have a skill that we can use for a lifetime.
Here's the reality for many of us- No matter how genius a strategy is, there is still the possibility (probability?) that it will get derailed in the wacky and wonderful world of life with ADHD. Maybe you crave novelty and get bored of the hack. It could be that life gets in the way and you simply don't have the bandwidth to maintain it. Or perhaps the hack helps, but it isn't powerful enough for you to remember to do it consistently. If you grasp why you connected with the strategy in the first place, it's no big deal if you take a detour. You still know how ADHD shows up in your life as well as the kind of support that works best for you. That means that you can hunt for a different strategy, return to the abandoned one, or create a different one altogether. You are empowered to "hack away" at your life, because you have the skills, not the product.
Let's take an example from my own life. Two of the ways ADHD shows up for me is wicked working memory issues and super-duper visual distractibility (professional clinical terminology here). That can be an unfortunate combination because 1) I need to see things in order to remember that they are there and/or to do them (due to my working memory deficits) but 2) If I see too many things, I get completely overwhelmed visually and shut down. You can see the struggle, right?
When I'm looking at how I can organize my space with those two things in mind, my mantra is "Visible, but contained". What does that look like for me? Luckily for you, I'm avoiding an extremely boring financial task that I need to complete today, which means I've just spent 45 minutes on Canva making this little collage to illustrate:
The picture above shows some strategies that are working for me for now in order to compensate for my working memory deficits and visual distractibility. These same difficulties may require different strategies for different people. My daughter has similar struggles with working memory and visual distractibility. When she was younger, we labeled the outside of her drawers with labels that said "shirts", "shorts", "underwear" etc., because that concrete visual reminder helped her remember the homes for her things. It also saved her from the visual overwhelm of heaps of clothes spilling out of her drawers and cut down on the time she time spent hunting for clothing.
I worked with a client who was completely visually overwhelmed when she attempted to clean out a room that was her "catch all" spot. Since it was clear that the visual overwhelm was paralyzing her, we decided to try the "blanket method" (this involved physically covering the areas she was not working on with large blankets so they weren't visible to her. This helped her to free up her attention for the space that she was tackling in the moment). The blanket method was the perfect fit for my client. It knocked out the visual overwhelm of seeing ALL of the other tasks she "should" or could be doing and allowed her to complete them one at a time.
Now, let's look at my kitchen set up. If I'm working with someone who doesn't have my working memory issues but is visually distractible, my approach may be a dud for her because it creates too much unnecessary visual information. Or, let's look at someone whose primary challenges are executive functioning skills like initiation, sequencing and planning. For her, the more valuable strategy to implement in the kitchen would be one that helps her initiate tasks or simplify steps when cooking. This was the case for one of my clients who had an extremely fast paced, mentally taxing job. Preparing food at night was a high priority for her, but she was having a hard time making that happen at the end of her demanding day. We looked at her kitchen and tried to analyze the space, already knowing some of the ways that ADHD showed up for her.
As we problem solved, she decided that grouping ingredients into small bins according to her "go to" recipes made sense for her. That way, if she was making a certain meal, she pulled out the bin and didn't have to deal with planning and locating/retrieving different items. I could hear the relief in her voice when she came up with the idea. That approach would have never occurred to me, but the best part of this is that she didn't need it to occur to me. She was becoming an expert on her own brain, and she was applying that expertise to adapting her space in order to support her. Maybe circumstances will change in her future and this adaptation won't be the right fit, but then she'll be armed with the understanding of why it worked for her brain in the first place.
There's no need to re-invent the wheel, so by all means, look for the strategies that others are using and experiment with applying them to your own life. Just remember that understanding your ADHD brain is a lifetime pursuit. Our lives are constantly changing, so it makes sense that our strategies will, as well. You don't need your favorite hack to last you the next 20 years, but knowing the reason why it works for you today is knowledge that can shape your life for the next 20 years and beyond.
If you would like to learn more about coaching or are interested in working with me, you can contact me on my website or reach out to me for a free discovery session here:
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