Notes on Managing ADHD

Summary

The pleasure is in foreseeing it, not in bringing it to term. — Jorge Luis Borges, Selected Non-Fictions This post is about managing ADHD. It is divided into two sections: “Strategies” describes the high-level control system, “Tactics” is a list of micro-level improvements (really it should be called “stratagems”, since most are essentially about tricking yourself). Contents Strategies Chemistry First Memory Energy Procrastination Introspection Time Tactics Task Selection Visual Field Management Project Check-Ins Centralize Your Inboxes Inbox Zero Inbox Bankruptcy Do It On Your Own Terms Replace Interrupts with Polling Accountability Buddy Plan First, Do Later Derailment Using OCD to Defeat ADHD The Master of Drudgery Thrashing Put Travel in the Calendar Choice of Tools Resources Acknowledgements Strategies High-level advice, control systems. Chemistry First ADHD has a biological cause and drugs are the first-line treatment for good reasons. There is no virtue in trying to beat it through willpower alone. The first-line treatment for ADHD is stimulants. Everything else in this post works best as a complement to, rather than as an alternative to, stimulant medication. In fact most of the strategies described here, I was only able to execute after starting stimulants. For me, chemistry is the critical node in the tech tree: the todo list, the pomodoro timers, etc., all of that was unlocked by the medication. Some people can’t tolerate a specific stimulant. But there are many stimulant and non-stimulant drugs for ADHD. I would prefer to exhaust all the psychiatric options before white-knuckling it. A lot of people don’t want to take medication for shame-based reasons. There is a lot of pill-shaming in the culture. You must learn to ignore it: we are automata, our minds are molecules in salt water. Example: Melatonin As a motivating example for the “salt water automaton” view: I struggled with sleep hygiene for a long time. It felt like WW1: throwing wave after wave of ...