Gardening with ADHD: Building Routines and Having Fun

12 snips

Aug 12, 2024

Emily, a lifelong gardener from Chicago, shares her struggles with maintaining plant care routines due to ADHD. She discusses the challenges of hyperfixation and procrastination when it comes to her beloved plants. Strategies are explored to cultivate joy in gardening, with tips on creating enjoyable routines and utilizing self-management tools. The conversation highlights how to lower resistance to getting started and bring fun back into the gardening experience.

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ADVICE

Scheduling Fun

Schedule fun activities like gardening proactively in your calendar.
Treat this time as important and protected, not as an optional extra.

INSIGHT

Types of Fun

Type 1 fun is enjoyable in the moment, like playing video games.
Type 2 fun is enjoyable in retrospect, like hiking a challenging trail.

ADVICE

Reduce Resistance

Reduce resistance to starting tasks, especially enjoyable ones like gardening.
Make starting easier by preparing materials and planning shorter sessions.

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Hey team!

This week, we’re diving into another listener question.

“Hi, William. I'm Emily, and I live in Chicago, Illinois. I'm a lifelong gardener and love growing flowers, veggies, houseplants, and more. As someone with ADHD, plant care is something I either hyperfixate on or procrastinate and ignore because of all the things that my plants need to thrive. For some reason, creating routines around plant care has been really challenging for me.”

Hey Emily, I love this question because there are always all these things that we want to do that we find so difficult to get into unless we’re falling into hyperfocus. And really, I think that this addresses a key piece of ADHD: getting started can be the hardest part, even on the things that we want to do. So, I’m going to expand this to talking about more than just gardening, although I’ll try and keep your specifics in mind as I go. There are these things that we love to do yet find ourselves unable to do consistently. For a lot of hobbies, that isn’t always too much of a problem, but with plant care… well, I think we’ve all had a plant or two that we’ve lost because we forgot to water it for a week or two.

Honestly, as I started answering this question, I figured that I’d be adding a couple of other questions into this episode, but as I got going, there were a lot of things that I was able to get into. From the different types of fun, to blocking fun out on our calendars to how we can work on lower the resistance to getting started.

So, while gardening might not be your thing, there is still a lot you can get out of this episode because we cover a lot of ground.

If you’d like to send me a question answer on the show feel free to head over to hackingyouradhd.com/contact and click the orange button Support me on Patreon Ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/189 This Episode’s Top Tips

Block off dedicated time for gardening in your calendar to ensure it's prioritized and protected. Our brains are going to make time for us to take time off regardless, so be proactive and choose how you want to spend that time.
To balance enjoyment and satisfaction, differentiate between Type 1 (immediate fun) and Type 2 (retrospective fun) activities.
You can break down tasks into three parts: setup, doing, and clean-up to reduce resistance and ensure a smoother start (and finish).