Hacking Your ADHD

I've been thinking about the phrase, "I want to hit the ground running," and how that's kind of how many of us try and start the year. I know that's how I felt - and honestly, in that first week of the year, I was doing great… but then I got covid. That really threw a snag into things. With ADHD we tend to like to go fast with things; we don't want to wait around. But that's usually not actually our best strategy. Going from one urgent task to the next can keep us motivated, but it can make it hard to get to anything that isn't urgent. In today's episode, we're going to be exploring how we use urgency as a drive to get more done but how we also need to learn to make time for all those important but not urgent tasks. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/ibnu Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page This Episode's Top Tips Just because something feels urgent doesn't mean that it's actually important that we do it right that instant. We often have We often use deadlines to motivate ourselves into doing the important things, but living deadline to deadline only allows us to work on things that at urgent and let's many things that are important but not urgent fall by the wayside. Using accountability is a great way for us to follow through with our plans to complete all of our important but not urgent tasks. We can do this either through creating artificial deadlines or through co-working.

Hey team, this week we have another listener question: Hi there. I just wanted to say thank you so much. I was riding my bike while listening to your podcast and that really helped my brain to be able to digest the information and I was audibly saying, "Yes. Right. Okay." And it was like I was talking to you, so I just wanted to say thank you so much. I'm not even sure if I have a question, but today I did Google, "What's it like for people who don't have ADHD?" And in the three years of you having this podcast, forgive me if that's one that maybe I haven't listened to yet and completely ignore this and just take the compliment and the celebratory win of you are really affecting people's lives. I know that you've affected mine, and I know people have asked me, Hey, continue with your podcast, but because of some of the things I'm learning and managing with my own executive functioning, I haven't been as consistent with my own podcast. So it's really inspirational to know that you are out here doing it and honestly had such a wonderful structure and the music, and I'm like, wow, he really understands. He's really someone who actually understands what it's like in the brain and in the mind. So it was just such a pleasant experience to have found this podcast and I'm just so, so grateful. So I just wanted to say that. Thank you. Thank you so much for the kind words about the podcast and you know what, that isn't an episode I've done - it isn't even a question I've ever thought about that much, but it is an incredibly intriguing one. Often when we're talking about ADHD we're talking about what it's like to have ADHD, but from my standpoint, well I already know what that's like, so what would it be like if I didn't have it? So that is the question we're going to be looking at in this episode as well as looking into the terms neurotypical and neurodivergent as well as getting into a little bit about masking. Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/noadhd

Hey team, Happy New Year! I'm excited to get going into 2023, but I also don't want to just be doing everything by the seat of my pants, so it's time to do a little planning and think about how we want this year to go. In this episode, I will be talking about rest and planning and getting into some of the things I specifically want to do with the podcast in 2023. Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/2023

One of the things I never quite got a grasp on is seasons... I mean I grew up in Hawaii and we basically had hot and not quite as hot. But this comes up for me because technically we're still in Spring right now so I guess this could still be a Spring Cleaning episode - officially Summer starts on the Solstice in June on the 20th... so I made in by like a week if you're listening to this when it comes out. Regardless of if this is Spring Cleaning or not, cleaning can be a great way to signal the start of something new. We all get used to the mess in our space and freshening things up can not only signal the start of something new but also shift our mindset. Today I'll be exploring the benefits of cleaning, how we can update our space, some tips on accountability, and then get into a few of the specific things that you can do. Support me on Patreon Ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/freshstartcleaning This Episode's Top Tips You can help spur your fresh start by rearranging your space - this doesn't have to be a big move, but sprucing up your environment can help it feel new and like you are starting fresh. Getting rid of our old stuff can help lift mental burdens and take care of old open loops. Our accumulated stuff often carries more mental weight than we really know. To help keep on track during cleaning make sure you create some accountability. It can be a great way to help you follow through with your planning and also in the moment through body doubling. Leave yourself notes as to where you left off in your cleaning so when you come back you can pick it back up without having to try and figure out what you were trying to do. While it may seem like we wouldn't forget, it's easy to lose track of where we were at in our plans.

Hey team, this week we've got a listener question: "My name is Mike and I have a question about wrapping things up. I have a really difficult time on the last lap of projects, or sometimes there is like a secret lap after what I thought was the last lap, which, you know, sometimes depending on the project includes like sending thank you notes or thank you emails or a bunch of stuff where I sort of feel like I already spent all of the dopamine and executive function of the rewards of a project. And then once I sort of feel like I reached that finish line, I realized there are a bunch of little loose ends that need tidying and I have a really hard time getting to them cuz it feels like it's over. Okay. Thank you very much." Hey, Mike, thanks for the question; I'm sure this is something that a lot of people deal with, I know I certainly do. It can feel incredibly disheartening to finish a task and then find out that, oh wait, there's just a little bit more to do. In today's episode, we'll be looking at how we can clean up some of these loose ends and also how we can avoid getting into some of these situations. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/125 Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page

Hey team, this week I'm talking with Aleta Storch of Wise Heart Nutrition, a small nutrition practice made up of 3 neurodivergent-affirming dietitians. She is a Registered Dietitian, Licensed Therapist, and a Body Trust Provider. Many of us with ADHD face many issues around eating and feeding ourselves - from things that can arise from choosing what to eat, when to eat, or just not having the executive function to get ourselves to eat. In our conversation today, Aleta and I talk about some of these issues surrounding ADHD and eating, such as interoception, meal planning, and issues surrounding executive function. We also discuss intuitive eating and how we can modify those ideas to fit in with our ADHD. If you're interested, be sure to sign up for the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability Groups at coachingrewired.com Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/wiseheart Be sure to checkout Wise Heart Nutrition on their website: wiseheartnutrition.com or on Instagram

Hey team, as we begin to get ready to roll into the new year, we're going to be seeing a lot more about New Year's Resolutions and goal setting - but we're also going to be getting a lot of pushback articles as well. Articles telling us how setting goals is only setting us up for failure and what we need to do instead. And the question is, who do we believe? In this episode, we're going to be examining some of the arguments against setting goals and also looking at what we might want to be doing instead and how we can combine that all into one overall theory. Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page This Episode's Top Tips Regardless if you want to call something a goal or not, breaking down a goal into its component parts and focusing on the process that's going to get you there is a better way to approach goal setting. We don't want to be striving for arbitrary numbers goal setting needs to have a why behind it to have any meaningful impact. We don't need to always hit our goals to be successful with them. Goals are often just targets we're aiming for, and we can always learn from our failures.

Hey team, in this week's episode, we're going to be diving into energy drinks… well, not literally, that would be sticky… and well, that amount of caffeine would probably be lethal. Anyways… Our topic for the week is energy drinks, how they affect us and as I just mentioned, that means we're also going to be talking about caffeine. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/123 Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page This Episode's Top Tips The main concern with energy drinks is how quickly they can provide a high amount of caffeine into your system. Typical energy drinks have 160-250mg of caffeine, compared to about half that for an 8-ounce cup of coffee. The biggest concern with large amounts of caffeine is its 3-7 hour half-life, which means that if we're having multiple energy drinks in a day, we can build up quite a lot in our system. With ADHD, it can be easy to view caffeine as a way for us to help manage our ADHD, but with how quickly we develop a tolerance to caffeine, that can easily get out of hand.

Hey team, this week we're talking about our weeks and how we can get more out of them with a weekly review. The idea behind a weekly review is that we're looking back on how things went and using that to help us figure out how we want our next week to go. In this episode we're going to go over the benefits of performing a weekly review, look at some of the ways to make doing it easier and then get into the nitty gritty of how to actually perform it. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/122 Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page This Episode's Top Tips The point of a weekly review is for us to not only look back at what happened last week, but use that knowledge to help us plan out how we're going to approach our next week. It allows us to gain clarity over what we've done and what we want to do. When we're performing our weekly review it is important to keep ourselves out of judgement - we're not trying to beat ourselves up over anything we didn't get to, we're just looking to make next week better. One of the most important things for making sure we complete our weekly review is to actually build in the time to perform it on our schedule. By building in and protecting our time to perform a weekly review we are far more likely to follow through on our intentions.

Hey team, this week we're getting emotional and talking about the relationship between ADHD and our emotions. While emotional dysregulation isn't part of the diagnostic criteria for ADHD, some studies have found that 70% of adults with ADHD exhibit emotional dysregulation. In this episode, we'll get into why it isn't part of the diagnosis, as well as examine what emotional regulation is and what we can do to help ourselves keep our cool a little bit better. If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/121 Support me on Patreon Feel free to ask me a question on my Contact Page This Episode's Top Tips Emotions are short-duration and are often in response to specific situations. Emotional regulation is our ability to control our emotional response to those situations, usually through down-regulation. Emotional impulsiveness and deficient emotional self-regulation were both parts of an ADHD diagnosis but were removed from the DSM in the 1970s because we can't easily measure emotions. We can help down-regulate our emotions through mindfulness, being aware of how we are physically feeling, slowing down, and removing ourselves from difficult situations.