Adults with ADD/ADHD

What would be your response?

What are your biggest challenges that you can attribute to ADHD and how do you overcome them?  What are your "tricks" so-to-speak?

My favorite tricks are my calendars and to-do lists.  My list goes far beyond the to-do list.  I need to schedule out time slots and set a timer to help me stick to it.  It works by forcing me to be accountable for how I spend my time.  If I give myself an hour to complete a task, and the alarm goes off and I haven't done anything, it doesn't feel too good.  So this self-imposed deadline really helps keep me on task.

The calendar is a constant reminder of things I have coming up in the days to come.  Without it, I'd be sure to miss appointments and payment due dates!

To begin, thanks to the other Cl for trying to guide me since I've changed my browser, but...

Anyway, here are some aids I've learned over the many years to help deal with the ADD, and I hope and pray you won't take much of them too seriously:

 1.  Laugh at the antics your brain decides to pull unless it's time to be serious.

 2.  Talk to yourself out loud (when alone usually) to guide yourself to keep focus.

 3.  In large department stores or parking lots, note the section, clothes around where you came in, etc. That is if you don't forget because you're daydreaming about something else.

 4.  Make notes before you call people, so when they ask what you've been doing, you don't draw a blank.

 5.  Start over each day to ask God or whatever force you believe in to give you grace to get through the glitches in your day.

  6. Be careful about expectations for almost everything.  My daughters claim I'm too negative on this, but I say if you stay open, you can always cheer if things turn out well anyway.  The ADD bible by Hallowell says to just plan on a certain percentage of lost jobs, relationships, etc.  It goes with the territory.

  7. Gratitude journals

  8.  Acceptance Commitment Therapy helps me.  ACT.  Lots of books on this, but it helps you accept yourself, feel the emotion, make a choice, and work toward your values.  It helps get you out of the 2-hour functs where you are lost to the world in your own negative thoughts, to be able to focus on the world out there.

  9.  And when you're on one of your perpetual searches for the lost, if you don't need it right away, give up soon.  It'll turn up.

I know ADD has a different face for all of you, but this is what works for me, but I'm not exactly a huge conventional success in my career or socially.  But I'm old, and the consolation is, I can live for intergrity and my own values more now, so look forward to your old age!

Cheers,

Mig58

1. I have day planners and paperclips galore. I own about a million colored pens.
2. Whenever I feel like I want to have a discussion with someone, even about the weather, I always play through the conversation in my head and even talk out loud about what I would say. Helps me when the time comes when I can easily divert the conversation endlessly to other topics. I also have a problem of talking really, really fast. (Gotta love ADD.)
3. I live in book stores now, and whenever I actually don't have something to occupy my time and I get restless, I read a lot. Self help books kill two birds with one stone. ;)

Those are some of the things I do most often.