When you live with ADHD, you may feel like your life is a constant battle against missed deadlines, piles of clutter around your house, and chronic lateness. You can see what needs to happen, but you just can’t seem to make it happen. This is normal and very common for adults with ADHD.
“There’s a famous saying that ADHD is not a disorder of knowing what to do, it’s a disorder of doing what you know,” says Ari Tuckman, PsyD, psychologist and author of The ADHD Productivity Manual. “It’s harder to convert intentions into actions.”
ADHD affects a set of mental skills called executive functions. These skills help you plan ahead, prioritize and follow through on tasks, and even regulate emotions. Executive dysfunction — trouble with executive function skills — is one of the common symptoms of ADHD. Because executive functioning is harder to achieve when you live with ADHD, everyday responsibilities often take more effort.
Many ADHD-friendly strategies focus on making tasks easier to start, reducing decision-making, and creating systems that work with your brain rather than against it.
Tips for Managing Your Time
If you’re often late or can’t seem to get tasks done in the amount of time you think you should be able to, it’s likely because of a concept called “time blindness.” When you have time blindness, your brain struggles to sense the passing of time correctly. Research suggests that people with ADHD often struggle more to estimate how long it will take to do a task than people without ADHD.
“We all have an internal sense of time, but some people have a much stronger sense than others,” Tuckman says. “Often with ADHD, time feels much more ‘slippery.’”
That can show up in several ways. You might underestimate how long it will take you to get ready for work in the morning (and be late). You might get pulled into an activity and lose track of the clock (and miss a deadline). You might choose a new recipe that takes much more time than you realized it would (and eat dinner close to bedtime).
“This is how people with ADHD often get burned by not tracking time well,” Tuckman says. “You might be blind to time but not to its consequences.”
Here are some ways to keep more accurate time as you move through your day.
Make the clock visible
If your internal sense of time is off, stop relying on it, says Tuckman. Take your internal clock and make it external with visible tools. Use the alarm on your phone, and set it to go off at important parts of your day. You can label the alarm with what you need to do. For example, “Leave for work in 10 minutes.”
You can also find apps that help you hear or see time pass. Some apps chime at intervals you set, such as every half hour. Others send full-screen notifications to your phone when something on your daily schedule is coming up soon.
Analog timers or clocks may be especially useful because they show time passing, says Tuckman.
“You see the actual sweep of time,” he says. “It makes it more tangible.”
Work backwards
When you have a specific time to be somewhere, start planning your preparation time by pinpointing the arrival time and go in reverse. Think through every step that needs to happen beforehand.
If you’re driving to your destination, how long will the drive take? (Use a GPS to help you estimate an accurate amount of time.) Before you get in the car, what do you need to have with you? How long will it take to get those things ready? What else do you need to do before you can actually leave?
“Really blocking it out is more helpful than just using a sort of vague notion of ‘I need to leave at 4 p.m.,’” says Tuckman. “Because then, inevitably, five minutes before four you’re running around trying to do 37 minutes' worth of stuff.”
Tips for Accomplishing Tasks
Having ADHD can make it harder to regulate your behavior in the moment for a goal that’s further away in the future, especially when there are more interesting or rewarding options in front of you, says Laura Knouse, PhD, clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Richmond.
“A lot of time management is really effort management,” she says. “It’s being able to ask yourself, ‘Am I directing my effort to something that is going to be the most beneficial in the long run?’”
To keep yourself on task and keep distractions to a minimum, try these tips.
Set timers for tasks you avoid. Often it’s getting started on a task that’s the hardest hurdle. Knouse suggests setting a timer for a short period rather than committing to the entire task. “You don’t want to wash all the dishes, but could you just do it for 10 minutes?” says Knouse. “The timer can be a huge help for getting started, and then you’re going.”
Break down tasks into small steps. An ADHD brain tends to respond strongly to immediate rewards, says Knouse, and you can use that to your advantage. The key is to break large tasks down into small chunks, so you’re checking your to-do list off in shorter intervals, otherwise you’ll get discouraged.
“I see this all the time with my students who will put on their to-do list, ‘Write history paper,’” says Knouse. “But you have to break it down smaller. So I suggest first steps like, ‘Re-read the instructions.’ Often they find that the assignment isn’t as hard as they thought when they do that, and it gives them new motivation. It’s simple, but it’s powerful.”
For household tasks like “Clean the kitchen,” that could look like: Load dishwasher, wipe counters, throw away expired food. The smaller and more specific the task, the easier it is to tackle.
Try body doubling. Body doubling involves working alongside another person, either in person or virtually. You and another person agree to work during a certain period and check in periodically. Simply having another person present can help you stay focused, says Tuckman.
“I think it’s a visual reminder as well as a bit of positive social pressure,” Tuckman says.
Pair enjoyable and non-enjoyable tasks. This strategy can work well for repetitive tasks like folding laundry, washing dishes, or cleaning. “It’s a term we call temptation bundling,” says Knouse. “It's sort of like leveraging rewards, but instead of doing the task before accessing the reward, you do the rewarding activity simultaneously with the avoided task.”
For example, decide you’ll only watch your favorite TV show or listen to a podcast you like if you're folding laundry at the same time. By pairing something enjoyable with something tedious, you make it easier to start and stick with the task.
Tips for Staying Organized
Everyday duties like sorting through mail, putting laundry away, or picking up after the end of the day often involves many small choices. If you put them off because you don’t want to make the choices, the problem (and the piles of clutter) gets bigger and bigger.
“Clutter is deferred decisions,” says Tuckman. “Often things pile up because you’re not entirely sure what to do with them.”
Certain methods can help reduce the daily stress that comes from visible clutter and disorganization.
Start with what matters most to you
The goal isn’t to overhaul your whole house or office with organization systems. Knouse suggests adopting a “pick your battles” mindset and prioritize.
“Pick those areas that you think will make the most difference in your life,” she says.
Look around your space and pinpoint the biggest source of mess or stress and start there.
Get curious about your habits and build systems around them
Before creating a new system, pay attention to what already happens. Instead of getting angry or frustrated about a disorganized area, Knouse encourages getting curious about your habits instead.
“If your mail is piling up, think about what it looks like when you get the mail every day. Do you just look at it and without thinking, sort of throw it in a certain place? Use that information to give you a clue about how that process could look different.”
And then instead of fighting your habits, build systems around them. For example, if clothes always end up on the bedroom floor, move the hamper closer to where you actually change clothes. If your keys always land on the kitchen counter, create a designated tray there.
Focus on Progress Over Perfection
New planners, apps, schedules, and organization systems can feel exciting at first. But it’s normal for your initial enthusiasm to fade and for it to get harder, says Knouse.
“You’re going to screw up,” she says. “But the result of the screw up is going to be data.”
Instead of viewing setbacks as failures, use them as information. If a system didn't work, ask why. Was the reminder in the wrong place? Was the task too big? Was the plan too complicated? And most importantly, celebrate your successes.
“I’m always struck when I work with clients about how they will tend to discount small changes,” Krouse says. “But you should strive to notice and give yourself credit for those little changes, because that’s how behavior changes happen.”
Show Sources
Photo Credit: iStock/Getty Images
SOURCES:
Ari Tuckman, PsyD, psychologist; author, The ADHD Productivity Manual.
Laura Knouse, PhD, clinical psychologist, professor, University of Richmond.
UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences: “Executive Functions.”
Understood: “ADHD and ‘time blindness.’”
Cleveland Clinic: “What Is ‘Body Doubling’ and Can It Help With ADHD?”
