ADHD "Hack"

Because there's no better hack than a tool shared by a hack (and for that matter, there's no better tool than a hack shared by a tool) (AREN'T WORDS FUN???)

We interrupt this series of Very Personal Posts about things I’d like to tell my teenage self to bring you a special announcement: Josh has found something to help himself organize his life that actually seems to work consistently SOME OF THE TIME! And he wants to share it with YOU!

“27 out of 30 people who I just made up in my imagination say that this trick is the TRICK OF A LIFETIME and that it CHANGED EVERYTHING.”

Okay, okay. I’m being a bit silly of course. But that’s just because I’ve seen so many people out there peddling shit for ADHD (try this journal! Do this cleanse! Use this special number on your credit card to send me cash I MEAN help your mind memorize number sequences!!!). I think so much of that stuff is garbo. I mean, sure, if I find an actual product sometime I might share it in this space if I have tried it and it actually works—so I’m not trying to say I never would. But… yeah. I think a lot of the stuff proffered in this way is done so by neuro-typical or neuro-adjacent folks who are trying to “fix” us ADHDers, and, uh, we don’t need to be fixed. Kthxbai.

(Nb: I just looked up kthxbai out of curiosity just to see how cringey-millenial I am being right now and it turns out, first entry for it on Urban dictionary was 2003. 21 years ago. (Also, Urban Dictionary is ancient.) Anyway, gonna go die now, kthxbai.)

I’m choosing to share this little trick I found (adapted from a client) because it’s really cheap and pretty easy to do and it has actually… made a striking difference.

So, a lot of ADHDers struggle with list making. We have, a lot of us, tried different approaches to list making over the years and most of us seem to fall in one of two camps—some of us have given up largely on this idea (like me); others have become so reliant on lists that lists dominate their lives.

Neither is ideal.

It basically comes down to two conflicting issues: 1. we have the out-of-sight out-of-mind object permanence issue where if we aren’t looking at something we forget about it. So when we remember “take the laundry out of the washer” (JOSH, LITERALLY, DO NOT FORGET TO TAKE YOUR LAUNDRY OUT OF THE WASHER. I’M SERIOUS. I’M TALKING TO YOU, THE PERSON TYPING RIGHT NOW. DON’T FORGET) we find that we want to do something with that idea so it doesn’t just disappear into the ether. The idea of writing that thought down on a list so that it doesn’t just vanish into nothingness the moment our mind moves on to something else is very appealing.

PROBLEM SOLVED!

Exceeeept, the fly in this ointment is that, remember that whole object permanence out-of-sight/out-of-mind thing? Well, that applies to the list too.

Many, many are the scraps of paper that attempted to be lists but were then trashed like the worksheets that rotted at the bottom of my backpack in grade-school.

"I have a solution for you,” I can hear you saying now. “What about an online list! Like on your phone! It’s perfect because you always have your phone on you, and it’s as simple as making a note on your note-app!”

Oh, sweet summer child. VERY cute thought. But do you know what else is on one’s phone? ALL THE THINGZ!!!!! The texts and the games and the millions of other little buttony distractions that basically make your phone kryptonite. It’s not that an idea would never would make it to the list, it’s just that it would probably be unreliable enough not to be worth it. I’m not kidding when I say that probably at least once a day I am holding my phone, switching from one app to the next, and I ask the question out loud “what am I doing?” Because I have literally forgotten what I was switching my focus to. And then I repeat the question until I either remember what I was doing or… don’t, at which point, my old friend “Bobble” (a variation of Boggle I’m addicted to like I mentioned in an earlier post) gets opened and I get sucked in, or I end up going to Scroll-Town, USA for an indeterminate period of time.

Also, I just never remember to look at lists on my phone. I need something palpable. Something that exists in time and space.(But just set an alarm with a word cue to check the list on your phone! Just use EverNote2027! Just purchase this newfangled App that goes off like a siren…” ENOUGH. That’s the kind of hat-on-a-hat garbo I hate in discussions like these. We don’t need more innovation. People like me (or at least some of us—no monoliths in this group! ;-) ) need simiplicity.

And that brings me to the thing I stumbled upon that has actually worked weirdly well.

I would like to introduce you to….

A Piece of Carboardy-Stuff That You Can Write On!!!!!

AI is really bringing it lately! Too bad those aren’t actual human words.

I’m actually not kidding.

One day, during session a client showed me that they had begun writing lists on a piece of cardboard they had gotten from… something. I can’t remember what. But they had been able to keep track of their list over time, which is something, as I described earlier, that is pretty rare.

As they described this I wondered if this would maybe work for me? So that it didn’t slip away from my consciousness, I noticed that a magazine I subscribe to (Grit City Magazine—very cool mag; you should read it if you like Tacoma and/or the Pacific Northwest) was right there on my desk and was packaged in very thin cardboard.

I grabbed it and set it in my lap so I wouldn’t forget during the course of the rest of the session. Then, when the session was over, I tore that sucker apart and ripped it into chunks that could be folded in half.

Yes, that last to-do does say to scream. That was an assignment from my therapist (based on some HORRORS, literally, that I have had to face in the last five years) So just remember: sometimes a useful therapeutic tool is to *literally scream in horror*

And I started using them. And they stuck with me!

I don’t use them every day, and I kind of go in and out with them, but they have this gentle anchoring quality that allows me to track certain things that are important to me over time.

I date them at the top, and then I write down the things I want to keep track of. An important thing to remember is that for a lot of folks with ADHD, the pleasure of this doesn’t come as much from the checking-off of the list as from other things—I like the list creation, and I also the general feeling of having a continuous list. ADHD folks don’t often get a huge thrill from checking things off for some reason (whereas I can tell non-ADHDers seem to love that part).

Also, remember that we ADHDers don’t have much ability to gauge level-of-importance—all tasks feel similarly challenging. That’s why making a phone call can feel just as daunting as writing an essay. I like to think of these lists as just little anchors in time tying certain tasks I want or need to accomplish to a certain date. They are very loose reminders for me, and I don’t stress too much if I never get some of them done. Some weeks I look at the lists every day. Other weeks I choose not to look at them most days. But they are always in my bag, and I always notice them at least once a day as I get my stuff.

It was important to me to keep this a very low-stress thing so that I don’t use these lists as a battering ram to self-flagellate if I’m not “being focused.” By and large, just having that loose intention has worked well. And because they last a long time, I am often pleased to see I’ve done more of the things on the list than I had realized when I go for a little while without looking at them.

You can see on the one above that I tried to do a sequence of “daily” boxes. That was an ambitious idea, but because there isn’t *that* much dopamine for checking things off for someone like me, it wasn’t an ideal plan. Daily tasks (for me) feel better when they aren’t on a list like this and are just things I do. (And as you can see, even back then, posting on Substack every day was an ambition that I had. Little did I know the level of intense focus and near-daily-processing of fear that would accompany such a simple-seeming goal! However, I’m glad that I have been able to see that ambition through for the last 15—and now, today, 16! days. It feels really great to be starting the second half of my 30-day goal today. It gets easier and easier with every day that passes.)

Note: I didn’t do my Future Self Journal for the first time yesterday. I think I might revisit that for my post tomorrow if I don’t end up finishing one tonight. As a key feature of why this has been possible for me—and because I want to really solidify this practice and all I’m learning as a part of my identity—I want to make sure I keep it going.

All right, all. Hopefully that little cardboard tip is helpful for someone out there. I even went so far as to looking up what one might buy on amazon to get this same effect as the cardboard stuff I’m using—not sure if this is quite thick enough, but it might be just right. If anyone gives this a try, I would love to hear about it. (Especially if this particular tool form Amazon worked for you.)

Okay, Carlos has Drag-race queued up and ready to go! Time for me to have husby time!

With affection,

Joshua