Have you ever wondered how you can use ADHD to your advantage and be more productive? Let’s look at some strengths and weaknesses of ADHD and how you can use them to turn your to do list into a ta-da list!
Disclosure: I’m not a doctor or a professional. Just a person with ADHD trying to get stuff done. Please remember ADHD is a spectrum, and no two people will have the same experience. Use what works and leave the rest!
First, what are some weaknesses in tackling our to do lists?
- Focus: like the meme I saw today, we are squirrels trying to cross a road
- Impulsivity: sometimes, we just gotta do a project!
- Procrastination: we put off things because they are boring.
- Time blindness: we think everything will take 10 minutes.
And what are some strengths for getting stuff done?
- Creativity/problem-solving: we can come up with lots of ways to do things!
- Hyperfocus/flow: we can get into the zone when we love a task.
- Enthusiasm: when we LOVE something, we get super excited to work on it.
How do we take those strengths and weaknesses and use them to our advantage and get stuff done?
- Use hyperfocus.
- Don’t fight it; use it to your advantage, get in that hyperfocus mode, and finish the project (but don’t forget to eat and drink water!)
- Break it down.
- Take those large, overwhelming tasks and projects and break them down into smaller, easier-to-manage tasks.
- Start with the easiest or most enjoyable.
- Knock something easy off your list and pat yourself on the back! Use that motivation to tackle the next item on your list.
- Timers or power hours
- Set a timer or schedule a power hour where you know you will work for a solid 25 to 60 minutes.
- Reminders.
- Use tech to your advantage and set up Google/Alexa reminders when it’s time to do a task.
- Create visual time blocks.
- It might help to visualize how much time you have. Or you can block off a set time for whatever you need to get done that day.
- Estimate how long tasks take.
- Start estimating how long you think something will take, and give yourself more time than you think. Then, you can gamify it and race against the clock to get it done!
- Leave room in your schedule.
- You know you will impulsively want to do something. Make sure you have some cushion in your schedule to tackle those tasks!
- Tackle urgent tasks.
- Use that impulse to take care of items as they come up. But make sure you have a list or post-it with where you left off before you run off to do that impulse task.
- Reward yourself.
- If you’ve finished a tough task, give yourself a small reward like a coffee break or 15 minutes to scroll social media. Soon, you’ll start connecting that task with that reward and will get excited to do the thing!
- Pair tasks with something you enjoy.
- Only listen to your favorite podcast while doing the dreaded deed. Or create some productivity playlists you only listen to while doing some of those tasks you dislike.
- Turn off distractions.
- We all know how tempting social media can be. Put your phone on airplane mode or do not disturb while you take care of business!
At the end of the day, these are only some suggestions. You need to find what works for you through experimenting or combining some ideas. Don’t be afraid to change it if something stops working for you. We often need newness.
Lastly, recognize there will be setbacks. It happens to us all. You need to acknowledge it and keep moving forward.
