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adhd brains are different, so they need different advice!

i relate to almost everything u said, i was unable to do anything until literally an hour before the due date. one thing i’ve learned over the years is that normal advice like “make a schedule” and “develop habits” do not work at all for adhd ppl, bc our brains are not made to do those things. this makes things difficult, but it doesn’t mean achieving our goals is impossible. here are some things that have helped me personally: - pomodoro method (there are timers on youtube). sitting down and actually timing myself has helped me a lot. also it helps me feel better with just how fast time goes by. working very hard and getting the notification that 15 minutes has passed, helps me to remember that sometimes small steps are easier than they feel like. - my therapist told me that instead of worrying so much about how much work i could be doing all the time, i should just work on it when i actually feel like doing it. so if i only have motivation an hour before, that’s when i would do it. the stress i used to feel a month before an assignment was due, significantly decreased bc of this new mindset, and it actually felt like my ability to do things increased. it’s not a good long term solution, but when ur in a tough spot, allowing urself to sacrifice some late time in order to not feel as much mental stress is worth it for ur mental health. - realizing that a lot of my motivation was based on what i thought would please others. i feel like this isn’t commonly talked about among ADHD circles, but once i learned about it, it kind of changed my life (fr). i realized that i couldn’t work the most productive way i could, if i was being watched or within someone‘s sight. i also procrastinate a lot in order to avoid being judged by others for how slow or disorganized i work. even then, procrastinating causes me to feel more judged by others bc im scared they are thinking im being lazy. so to avoid this, i try my best to work alone or ask someone to do parallel play instead of help me directly. however, i know some ppl benefit from the opposite, having someone around to keep them accountable. it all just comes down to personal preference. - making sure my needs are met. did i get enough sleep? have i eaten recently within the last 4 hrs? have i drank enough water? did i take my medicine? do i feel too overstimulated; if so, how can i change my environment? do i need headphones? do i need to wash my face or take a shower? do i need to change the lighting? is the temperature too hot or too cold? are my clothes too overwhelming / scratchy? these are some of the things that can keep me from working productively, so i have to keep track of these questions whenever i feel distracted. - don’t beat urself up. giving into shame and causing urself mental distress will only increase ur anxiety and make u more unable to work. remind urself that ur just now figuring urself out and u are trying ur best. plus, u have good intentions. ur just trying to figure out how to work better and more productively! i think thats all anyone can ask for. anyways i hope this helps maybe. everyone has a different way of getting things done, so not all things will help or apply to u (which doesnt mean something’s wrong with u, just that the advice wasn’t meant for u!). also seeking specifically adhd related forums / groups / blogs / youtube channels / etc. helps a lot when trying to find different types of advice other than “work harder” lol. good luck and u r not alone! 🫶🐛

@urbfbear

Mar 23, 2025

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some (hopefully) helpful tips from a formerly exhausted adhd student

ADHDer here who has tried so many different methods (and medications) over the years. what works for me doesn’t always work for my friends who also have ADHD, which means it’s kind of a treasure hunt to figure out what works best for you. i especially struggled a lot with executive dysfunction in college and had trouble forgetting basic homework and turning in writing assignments days or weeks (and, once, two months) late. there are a lot of simple tips that non-ADHD people will try to give you that can potentially help, but it’s not a cure-all for executive dysfunction. the big ones are planners (i have like 3-5 planners/calendars and todo lists which can help me keep on track at my current job, but that hasn’t always worked for me) and “have better time management” (and of course they never expand on that supposed advice). i’ve been diagnosed with ADHD since i was 7 years old, so i’ve heard and tried it all… here’s what works for me now as someone who works 40 hours/week and when i was in school: • BREAK DOWN TASKS INTO SMALLER BITS. this is my #1 go-to for any work or assignments involving writing. outlining, Extremely Rough drafts that i can tinker for a few minutes at a time when i’m feeling motivated, messy bullet points and half-baked opening paragraph sentences. even if i’m scribbling stuff that won’t end up in the final product, but you’re getting your brain in the habit of thinking about and planning your writing earlier in the assignment process. • LETTING GO OF IDEAL PRODUCTIVITY AND PERFECTION. this is more of a personal tip, but i think some of my procrastination and executive dysfunction when it came to assignments came from anxiety around how i was expected to perform productivity in a neurotypical fashion and my own crippling anxiety around perfectionism. this may not apply to you, but i think it’s always helpful to remember that you do not have to adhere to society’s ideas about what productivity “should” look like. this is also why the tip of trying to manufacture urgency or deadlines doesn’t work for me. • PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR BRAIN. learn what cues you to feel motivated. adjust your environment to incorporate those cues even more and reduce distractions or executive dysfunction. (for me, that includes having a clean workspace and some headphone or earbuds in even if nothing is playing. if i am playing something, it’s usually non-lyrical music at a low volume or a video essay i’ve already listened to 200+ times.) • TAKE A WALK. this is something that i started doing recently and i’ve found that it helps me feel more alert and my brain less muddled/unable to focus. • finally: TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. i definitely made my executive dysfunction worse in college by not eating well or—more specifically—not sleeping enough. speaking from experience, the psychological connection between your brain and body is critical in how effective these tips for dealing with executive dysfunction can be. this may not be as simple as you’re hoping for, but i do hope that this helps. ❤️

@eiza

Mar 23, 2025

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finding the right tools and METHODS that are for you

oh lord this is going to be so dorky. there's a lot of productivity tools and techniques out there and believe me when i say that i have read a bazillion articles and tried at least 50 apps and methods, but these are the ones that have truly helped me: TOOLS 1. Apple Reminders & Calendar – ngl i used ot underestimate these two apps, but they work really great because they have an acceptable natural language input, comprehensive and simple user interface, seamlessly syncs across multiple devices(if you're an apple user), and they work with siri. the only problem is that these two lack integration features. so to solve that... 2. Fantastical Calendar – i use another calendar app is to see all my tasks on apple reminders and events on my calendar app in a single calendar and to-do list, and yes, this app does that! it's great because it also has natural language input, enables me to view all my tasks and events in different ways like a calendar or list, and it has many functional widgets. 3. Obsidian – oof, i am found guilty. i built a second brain with obsidian which is basically like a system of knowledge and data mainly in the form of markdown files (a text document that has formatting) with internal links. i write down as much as i could – recipes, minutes of meeting, takeaways from articles, ideas for projects, trivia, literally anything! i also have a daily journal to reflect on the stuff i do, write down random thoughts and ideas blah blah you get the point. the purpose of all this is to have a centralized and organized system of information with links to each other and make it easy to retrieve information you may need for later. TECHNIQUES 1. Prioritizing my tasks – when there's too much that needs to be done and i feel overwhelmed, i set priorities with the built-in feature of apple reminders. if im having difficulty setting priorities and want to get a clearer vision, i organize them by using the kanban plugin for obsidian. 2. Timers for when i feel lazy – basically the pomodoro technique but more flexible. i can set the timer for 20 mins or 2 hours or don't use a timer at all depending on how lazy i feel that day or how forced i feel on the task. the more i hate the task, the shorter the timer is, cause get this–i dont want to disrupt my flow state when im doing something i really want to do. why would i work on someth for 20 min and take a break when i love doing it so much i could go on for hours. also an important note...do REALLY boring things during breaks to make the task more interesting or enjoyable – avoid triggering dopamine as much as possible. 3. Establishing scheudled habits – this helps me build consistency with the things i want to do more of. for example, i have a daily wake-up and wind down routine which consists of really simple things like washing my face and brushing my teeth, stretching for 2 minutes, drinking water, journaling. i also set a goal for myself to read a book and learn french every day. think of anything you want to do more of and set a schedule for yourself when you should be doing it and stay consistent with that schedule so your body and mind would get used to it. 4. Setting up a distraction-free environment – this is pretty self-explanatory. throw your phone away, paint the walls white, and get sound insulation for your room. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING SELF-CONTROL – without it, nothing is really going to work smh

@wolfinwhitevan

May 27, 2024

Top Recs from @alaiyo

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Using the word “gauche” instead of “cringe”

it’s so them-coded

@alaiyo

Mar 23, 2024

🦥

How to do nothing by Jenny Odell

a treatise on the attention economy - checked it out on libby and got through it over the course of a work day, a lot of really interesting social and cultural explorations about how time itself is the final frontier of hypercapitalism and what decommodification of our attention and time should look like the book starts with a story about the oldest redwood tree in oakland and how the only reason it’s still standing is bc it’s unmillable, and how being uncommercializable is essential to our survival. it ends with an exploration of alt social media platforms (mostly p2p ones) and what keeping the good parts of the social internet and rejecting the bad ones should look like all in all a super valuable read; my only nitpick with the book is that odell isn’t just charting the attention economy but also attempting to “solve” it and relate it back to broader concepts about labor and social organizing, but her background is in the arts which leads to some really wonderful references to drive the points home while also missing some critical racial + socioeconomic analyses that one would expect (or at least really appreciate) from the book she promises to deliver in the introduction. but this does also make the book easier to read which is good because everyone should definitely engage with what she has to say will definitely be revisiting

@alaiyo

Mar 25, 2024

🫓

Hummus

when i tell you the first sixty seconds of this video changed my life i need you to believe me. 10/10 strongly recommend especially amidst boycotting for palestine

@alaiyo

Mar 21, 2024