

Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
TruStory FM
Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright offer support, life management strategies, and time and technology tips, dedicated to anyone looking to take control while living with ADHD.
Episodes
Mentioned books

Jun 14, 2016 • 22min
Making Difficult Decisions with ADHD
This week we offer a follow-up to our conversation on making decisions with a twist: what about all those decisions that are even more challenging to face, with consequences beyond our daily organizing challenges? How do we condition ourselves to move through them and discover what lies on the other side? This week is dedicated to processing, researching, and making the decision to act, and discovering the tools you need to employ to condition yourself to take action!
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Jun 7, 2016 • 24min
5 Minute Tech Tasks for Getting — and STAYING — Organized!
Do you find yourself sitting at your computer waiting for that next call? How about standing in line waiting for the next teller? Wherever you are, if you have five minutes and one of your devices, you can work on your digital organization. This week on the show, a sampler of activities and resources for you to use in those small windows and tiny breaks to keep your digital life straight.
Plus, follow up and a listener question from our organizing show with another take on decision-making.
Links & Notes
Alto’s Adventure
Hazel
File Juggler
Lumosity
Pencil by FiftyThree
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

May 24, 2016 • 44min
Listener Organizing Q&A
It’s Q & A day! From hyperfocus to distraction, information clutter to productivity at work, we power through your queries with our thoughts, strategies, and recommendations. Thanks to everyone who wrote in with your organizing ADHD questions. This week we’re taking on:
What's the best body double strategy?
How do you decide where and how to house things?
I don't have enough time to devote hours to organizing!
How do I set up routines that endure in the long term?
How do I nurture myself without going too far into hyperfocus?
I stay home while the family is at work/school all day. How do I not resent their messes when they leave?
Overwhelmed at work: how do I manage account management demands?
Information overload! Should I stress about disorganized journals and digital clutter?
How do I help my high school son remember and submit homework on time without organizing on his behalf?
How do I help my preteen with organizing fundamentals and managing/estimating time?
Links & Notes
Personal Kanban: Mapping Work | Navigating Life by Jim Benson & Tonianne DeMaria Barry
Trello
(00:00) - Welcome!
(03:47) - What's the best body double strategy?
(05:05) - How do you decide where and how to house things?
(06:34) - I don't have enough time to devote hours to organizing!
(08:37) - How do I set up routines that endure in the long term?
(10:51) - How do I nurture myself without going too far into hyperfocus?
(13:21) - I stay home while the family is at work/school all day. How do I not resent their messes when they leave?
(17:27) - Overwhelmed at work: how do I manage account management demands?
(24:32) - Information overload! Should I stress about disorganized journals and digital clutter?
(28:25) - How do I help my high school son remember and submit homework on time without organizing on his behalf?
(37:22) - How do I help my preteen with organizing fundamentals and managing/estimating time?
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

May 17, 2016 • 30min
How to Get Your Family Involved With Organizing
If you share space with another person, then organizing is a team sport. From defining the purpose of shared spaces to keeping one another accountable, you can’t build new habits if you don’t have the support of those who spend their time in your proximity. This week on the show, we’re talking all about how to engage your family in supporting organizing efforts.
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

May 10, 2016 • 19min
3 Reasons Why Your Organizing Efforts Are Not Working
We all go into our organizing projects with the best of intentions. Did you just open your closet to a pile of junk falling on your head? Did you turn on the light to your attic and finally register the disaster of boxes? Did you fall into the stacks of mail and bills on the floor of your living room? Wherever you are in your home, making the connection that you have a space to be organized, and then taking action to organize it, is a noble effort!
But taking that first step without thinking through the consequences could make the organizing job worse for you. This week on the show, we’re talking about the three reasons your organizing efforts may be losing focus and offering you a way to think about your projects before you start that may just save you time and frustration in the long run!
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

May 3, 2016 • 23min
The Secret to Organizing with ADHD
It’s true, if you’re struggling with getting organized and you’re living with ADHD, there’s likely a key challenge holding you back. It lurks there, in the back of your mind, an invisible standard to which you will never live up. We’re taking on this subconscious demon on the show today, kicking off a series on ADHD organizing principles that will help you get on track, stay on track, and recover when you fall down.
Links & Notes
Avoid These Five Organizing Mistakes Plus 5 Organizing Worksheets
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Apr 26, 2016 • 30min
Checklists, automated checklists, and REALLY automated checklists with Pete!
We all have repetition in our lives. But until you stop and think about all the things that repeat around you, you may not know what you’re missing. So, it’s through the lens of task lists that we’re going to talk about some of the options for using technology — the simple and the advanced — to build our checklists quickly and efficiently and ensure we’re not missing a single step in the otherwise invisible processes we take on each day.
Links & Notes
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
Text — The TXT format on Wikipedia
TaskPaper from Hog Bay Software
Markdown: “Markdown is a text-to-HTML conversion tool for web writers. Markdown allows you to write using an easy-to-read, easy-to-write plain text format, then convert it to structurally valid XHTML (or HTML).” Markdown is practically a prereq for TaskPaper only because the philosophy of using certain indicators in a text file and allowing a client application to act on those characters in a specified fashion is the same in both. Markdown is stupendously useful in my work. If you write a lot, it’s worth taking a look. Hit me up with Markdown questions and we might do an episode on it soon!
2Do
Workflow: Powerful automation made simple.
Background and download for CGPGrey’s sample Workflow Template for 2Do
Automation in OmniFocus 2.14 (now in TestFlight)
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Apr 19, 2016 • 30min
Turn Strategy into Action — Blocking and Gating your Time!
We’ve had some great questions and feedback on our last few episodes around ideal schedules. This week, we’re taking this concept a bit further. How do you take a new strategy and implement it to turn it into a lifestyle? How do you handle less desirable tasks — gating and focusing even on the stuff you really don’t want to do? How do you decide what to work on first? These are deceptively simple questions with answers that we often make more complicated than we need. We’ll do our best to untangle them on the show this week!
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Apr 12, 2016 • 26min
Setting and Living your Priority
Today on the show we’re digging into just one aspect of the book Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown: Priority. This is the act that puts constraints around our ADHD, allowing us to see the forest for the trees, but to exercise our focus on a tree, too. We talk about the power of focus and clarity, how living in accordance with a clear priority strategy can lead to greater productivity and balance, and how developing your ideal weekly schedule can help you truly visualize the hidden opportunities that exist in your own personal sea of time.
Links & Notes
Essentialism: The Disciplines Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★

Apr 5, 2016 • 22min
Dealing With Procrastination One Hour at a Time!
As it turns out, productivity and procrastination are two sides of the same coin. Depending on the day, your toss might yield unparalleled output, focus, and attention. Then again, it could yield a rousing binge session of Top Chef.
Because of the inherent unpredictability of this productivity/procrastination calculation, it becomes so important that you build in the systems and gates that allow you to focus when you really need to focus, and the freedom to let go and relax your brain when you’re finished.
This week on The ADHD Podcast, we’re talking about the systems and processes that might help you beat procrastination, from focus sprints to setting a real, rational priority for your time. Join us!
Links & Notes
Google Ngram Viewer: priorities
🎓 College Coaching for ADHD Students is Now Enrolling!Starting college with ADHD? Don’t go it alone. At Take Control ADHD, we offer two personalized coaching options to help students thrive both academically and emotionally. The Roadmap Planning Package includes two pre-semester strategy sessions to build custom calendars, break down big assignments, and create ADHD-friendly systems for success. For ongoing support, our Weekly Coaching Package offers one-on-one accountability throughout the semester to stay focused, flexible, and in control.Learn more and find the right fit at https://takecontroladhd.com/college.
★ Support this podcast on Patreon ★