stick around until you hear that music play again

The book will mostly be a synthesis of existing research, but presented for a lay-audience. I consider my job to be introducing the sources and scholarship in a digestible manner, and thus try to keep my own takes to a minimum. This is impossible. My own commentary is present.

My English is excellent. My French, Spanish, classical Greek, and Latin are bad. My Hebrew, Arabic, and German are worse. When I quote a source it is because I read an English translation. If I have to discuss a source I cannot read, I rely entirely on existing scholarship.

context: grew up in an abusive, controlling home, escaped to uni, had a prolonged mental breakdown, became a teacher and worked in a dysfunctional school with amazing kids and nightmare management for years. I did not realise I have adhd and autism for a long time. (You might even be able to scroll back through this blog to find the time around which I did realise lol.)

ANYWAY, things that have helped me because my body can no longer handle any kind of stress without flaring up:

If you’re doing anything that requires you to do a lot of prep before you begin the actual thing (e.g. cooking, deep cleaning a room, moving house), mise en place. That’s a fancy french way of saying get everything ready before you begin. So if I’m cooking idk spaghetti carbonara, that means fry and chop the bacon, separate the egg yolks from the whites, put water in the kettle, put dry spaghetti into a pan. Once everything’s ready, it reduces the mental load and means I can focus on the actual cooking and any clean up that I can do along the way. H/t to @ms-demeanor for this, you changed my life!

the Might As Well rule. This one works really well for me but you gotta be careful otherwise you’ll get sucked into the Vortex. Basically, let’s imagine you’re in the bathroom, brushing your teeth. You notice that the extra roll of toilet paper has been used. instead of thinking, “I’ll get to that later”, and then forgetting about it until you sit down on the bog (no judgement, we’ve all been there), you think “Might As Well put an extra roll while I’m here!” This tends to help with the little tasks that build up over time. This Does Not Work for big tasks.

Leading on from no.2, Do It Immediately/ASAP really helps me too. My current boss will email me on a Friday and say, ‘don’t reply to this now! Leave it til monday!’ But she and i both know that if i leave it til monday, I will forget and get stressed and this will make me Very Ill. So, instead, the moment i receive the email, I’ll either schedule in replying to it as soon as I’m done with my current thing, OR I’ll reply to it immediately.

Anything that can’t be actioned immediately, i mark as Unread. Anything Unread in my inbox is a future action, and i check those Unread emails/texts/whatevers Every. Day. To make sure whether today is the day i have the info to action it. (This also means i have to stay on top of my inbox. I read all my emails and then mark them accordingly. I’m also brutal with unsubscribing)

The House Always Wins. Both in a literal sense, because i am in a constant battle with keeping my house clean, and i know now that I’ll never get it as clean as i want it. It’s impossible, i no longer have the energy or stamina to vacuum and scrub everything. But also just in a life sense. I’m never going to achieve things to perfection, and perfect is the opposite of done. And getting things done is that much more important when you have limited energy and strength. Accept that you often have to half-arse life in order to Full-Arse the few things that really matter to you.

Have multiples of everything, everywhere. I wear support gloves, so i need to have handcream at every sink and everywhere i sit down in the house. I try to keep it unobtrusive, but it means i don’t have to trek upstairs just to moisturise my hands. Gum, phone chargers, pens and pencils, water bottles, hand sanitizer, whatever you need.

Work with people, even if it’s online. Body doubling actually works. Also I’ve found that if I’m working on assignments, taking myself to a library or study area that isn’t my bedroom helps so much.

Show off! Tell people on here or elsewhere in your life about the fact that you’ve just written 100 words! Or that you’ve cleaned the fridge and that’s a really big deal for you. Celebrate your wins, no matter how small.

Basically, you’re aiming to reduce the mental load as much as possible. Wear the same types of clothes all the time to minimise the amount of laundry. Eat the same three lunches so decision fatigue doesn’t take over.

For anybody looking for resources from someone dealing with actual ADHD, I have an incomplete but ever growing list of ADHD tips, tools, and suggestions on my website.

A lot of the pages on that site are adapted from my tumblr posts, for instance I'm adapting this post about car repair projects with ADHD into a guide on project management and completion with ADHD.

This is all good, actionable advice. I won't be able to do all it every day, but even the person giving the advice acknowledges that.

I am abysmal at making phone calls and doing life admin stuff at home(paperwork, emails, ect.) and after years of struggling I thought about it and remembered that I was actually always really good at getting my homework done...as long as I did it at school. I would stay an extra hour and hang out in the library and all my homework was super easy and barely took any time to finish.

If I went home, however, it was like my brain forgot school even existed, and no matter how hard I tried I could not get myself to do my homework at home, and sadly I am not the kind of ADHD where the deadline kicking in makes things happen, I just have to admit I couldn't finish and ask for more time.

So I thought...okay, the issue here doesn't appear to be interest or attention so much as context. I can do school things at school, and home things at home, but I cannot do school things at home and vice versa, not that the latter was really a factor ever.

So, context. I decided one day when I had a ton of life admin stuff to do, that instead of sitting at my desk smashing my head into the wall trying to figure out why I can't even call one doctor's office, why don't I just go rent a study room at the library. It's free. They're sound proof more or less, and you know what? I got it all done in like and hour and then as a treat played Pokémon Go and read a manga for a while before going home. I'd been trying to do all that stuff for weeks to no avail, but putting the tasks in a different context, in a building where you go to do things like homework and paperwork, suddenly made the executive function like...function. I don't know the real logic behind it, and it isn't possible to do this all the time, especially since I'm broke and disabled and live in a dinky apartment and have can't go outside alone safely disorder, but having spaces that have a context attached and moving to them for tasks that fit that context can help a lot.