So Much to Do. So Little Time.

From where I sit as an ADHD Coach, mom and wife of ADHD loved ones.


"I'm working so hard to get through the day, but I don't seem to get anything done.  Furthermore, no one seems to appreciate how busy I am."

"I get a lot of reminders from my boss about deadlines and unfinished projects. When I get home, my wife starts in about stuff that I've promised to do and haven't even started (like paying the bills this month, BEFORE they turn off the cable, again)."

"There just doesn't seem to be enough time."




The idea of being busy, and the evidence of getting timely results are often at odds when ADHD is in the mix. It can be a frustrating mystery to all involved as to why so much time can fly by with so little to show for it. 





Here are some clues:

• Clue #1. With ADHD, preparing to start the task is part of the actual execution. There's the talking about doing the task, the thinking time...thinking about starting the task, then the gathering of materials (sharpened pencils, paper, bills, checkbook, stamps, phone numbers, etc.), the coffee, water, snacks, the right lighting, chair, music, checking email, facebook, and... you get the idea. Whew! Exhaustion, boredom or distraction sets in before the actual task is begun.
• Clue #2. Having moved through the first phase of the task, it's time to actually initiate. Whoa, not so fast. There are plenty of reasons why pulling the trigger on the actual writing of the memo, proposal, presentation, research paper, bill payment, returning calls/emails, laundry, vacuuming, etc. fails to occur. Perfectionism (finding the right words to write), fear of the unknown (something scary might be in those billing envelopes), procrastination (it's not that important that I can't postpone it, or this is so important that I better wait until I can do it right and without interruptions), overwhelm (there's so much to do, I don't know where to start), and/or exhaustion, boredom or distraction. Hmmm. There's a pattern here.
• Clue #3. The chickens come home to roost, aka motivation. At some point in the process, there's an outside motivator that kicks things into action. Notice I said outside motivator. With ADHD the internal motivation driver can be inconsistent or non-existent except in unique circumstances. Someone/something has provoked action, usually in the form of a threat (spouse yelling, guests coming, job deadline, utilities turned off). The task gets done, but not without a lot of churning, stress and energy.

Mystery solved. 

Organize and Declutter Your Home for the Holidays

This article is from the 12.14.12 online issue of ADDitude Magazine.

How adults with attention deficit disorder (ADD ADHD) can organize and decorate the home at holiday time — without getting overwhelmed.

by Kathleen Nadeau, Ph.D.

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The holidays are upon us, and so is the pressure. It’s hard enough to be an adult with attention deficit disorder or a mom with ADHD during the rest of the year, but at holiday time, our stress and anxiety, sometimes triggered by seasonal blues or depression, often increase to the point where we can’t enjoy being with our family because we’re so busy cleaning and preparing for family gatherings or planning a party. Two things to keep in mind:

• You are not Martha Stewart! None of us is.
  
• You are not your mother! A generation or more ago, many women stayed home full-time and didn’t have to carpool their children from one activity to another. Suffice it to say, that era is over.

So instead of feeling overwhelmed this holiday season, get with the program — the one below.

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The Black Bag De-Cluttering Trick

1. In November — and perhaps again in December — set a goal to de-clutter your house in an hour. Supply everyone in the family, including the kids, with black garbage bags and grocery boxes, and have them deposit unwanted or unneeded things into them.
   
2. Use separate bags and/or boxes for each room — label them with masking tape and black marker, so that you know which room the items came from.
   
3. Use boxes to manage paperwork or anything fragile that might be damaged if tossed around in a garbage bag.
   
4. Place the labeled bags in your basement storage area or garage to be retrieved once the holidays are over.
   
5. Make it your New Year’s resolution to organize, give away, or throw away each one of the bagged items.

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Step-by-Step Tips: One Week Countdown

After de-cluttering, break down housecleaning and decorating into doable chunks. Each “chunk” should take no more than an hour to accomplish. Check it off the list when done.

• 7 Days Out: Gather and wash holiday serving plates, bowls, platters, and serving utensils for the big feast.
  
• 6 Days Out: Make room in the fridge for holiday dishes.
  
• 5 Days Out: Wash sheets, towels, and face cloths that guests will need. Stack them in the bedroom where they’ll be used.
  
• 4 Days Out: Vacuum and dust upstairs (the upstairs carpets won’t have time to get dirty again); dust main level.
  
• 3 Days Out: Clean all bathrooms. Start with the one that guests will use (do the master bathroom last).
  
• 2 Days Out: Vacuum and dust downstairs; clean kitchen (you’ll do a last-minute cleanup on the holiday).
  
• 1 Day Out: Empty trash baskets. Do a last-minute de-cluttering trip through the house with a black garbage bag.

Before company arrives, vacuum the main level and damp-mop the kitchen floor (save this for last, just before your guests arrive).

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Holiday Time Savers

1. Don’t waste precious time ironing a wrinkled tablecloth—throw it in the dryer, then shake out the wrinkles and put it on the table.
   
2. To provide instant ambiance, buy several pots of poinsettias and place them in the entry hall, living and dining rooms, and the guest bathroom. Arrange plain white pillar candles (they’re less likely to drip or tip over than tapers in candlesticks) on clear or holiday-colored plastic dessert plates. Don’t forget to arrange them around the fireplace, in the hall, and in the powder room.
   
3. Instead of wiping down a dirty oven, just clean the door with oven cleaner (after all, that’s what most people will see). Then line the bottom with fresh aluminum foil.
   
4. When company arrives unannounced, create a festive atmosphere by sticking one of those fragrant plug-ins into an outlet, lighting candles, and putting on a favorite CD of holiday tunes.

The four big sleep issues with AD/HD

This article comes from the February/March 2004 issue of ADDitude.

No scientific literature on insomnia lists ADHD as a prominent cause of sleep disturbances. Most articles focus on sleep disturbance due to stimulant-class medications, rather than looking at ADHD as the cause. Yet adults with ADHD know that the connection between their condition and sleep problems is real. Sufferers often call it "perverse sleep"—when they want to be asleep, they are awake; when they want to be awake, they are asleep.

The four most common sleep disturbances associated with ADHD are:

1. Initiation Insomnia
About three-fourths of all adults with ADHD report inability to "shut off my mind so I can fall asleep at night." Many describe themselves as "night owls" who get a burst of energy when the sun goes down. Others report that they feel tired throughout the day, but as soon as the head hits the pillow, the mind clicks on. Their thoughts jump or bounce from one worry to another. Unfortunately, many of these adults describe their thoughts as "racing," prompting a misdiagnosis of bipolar mood disorder, when this is nothing more than the mental restlessness of ADHD.

Prior to puberty, 10 to 15 percent of children with ADHD have trouble getting to sleep. This is twice the rate found in children and adolescents who do not have ADHD. This number dramatically increases with age: 50 percent of children with ADHD have difficulty falling asleep almost every night by age 12 ½ by age 30, more than 70 percent of adults with ADHD report that they spend more than one hour trying to fall asleep at night.

2. Restless Sleep
When individuals with ADHD finally fall asleep, their sleep is restless. They toss and turn. They awaken at any noise in the house. They are so fitful that bed partners often choose to sleep in another bed. They often awake to find the bed torn apart and covers kicked onto the floor. Sleep is not refreshing and they awaken as tired as when they went to bed.

3. Difficulty Waking
More than 80 percent of adults with ADHD in my practice report multiple awakenings until about 4 a.m. Then they fall into "the sleep of the dead," from which they have extreme difficulty rousing themselves.

They sleep through two or three alarms, as well as the attempts of family members to get them out of bed. ADHD sleepers are commonly irritable, even combative, when roused before they are ready. Many of them say they are not fully alert until noon.

4. Intrusive Sleep
Paul Wender, M.D., a 30-year veteran ADHD researcher, relates ADHD to interest-based performance. As long as persons with ADHD were interested in or challenged by what they were doing, they did not demonstrate symptoms of the disorder. (This phenomenon is called hyperfocus by some, and is often considered to be an ADHD pattern.) If, on the other hand, an individual with ADHD loses interest in an activity, his nervous system disengages, in search of something more interesting. Sometimes this disengagement is so abrupt as to induce sudden extreme drowsiness, even to the point of falling asleep.

Marian Sigurdson, Ph.D., an expert on electroencephalography (EEG) findings in ADHD, reports that brain wave tracings at this time show a sudden intrusion of theta waves into the alpha and beta rhythms of alertness. We all have seen "theta wave intrusion," in the student in the back of the classroom who suddenly crashes to the floor, having "fallen asleep." This was probably someone with ADHD who was losing consciousness due to boredom rather than falling asleep. This syndrome is life-threatening if it occurs while driving, and it is often induced by long-distance driving on straight, monotonous roads. Often this condition is misdiagnosed as "EEG negative narcolepsy." The extent of incidence of intrusive "sleep" is not known, because it occurs only under certain conditions that are hard to reproduce in a laboratory.

"Treating" AD/HD During the Holidays

During the extended days of family activities that occur in November and December, it's easy to walk away from our schedules, and ramp up our expectations. Wow, there's a recipe for disaster, even without the AD/HD component.

Why are schedules still important? Well, someone once told me that AD/HD doesn't go away during the summer. So true. Why then should we expect it to magically disappear during the holidays when the stress of anticipation and overwhelm seem to peak? If anything, it's even more important to keep our daily schedules in mind when we're planning long distance holiday travel, extended family meals, gift giving, shopping, worship and all of the other trappings that we cherish.

Schedules give us a sense of control and security, especially for those with AD/HD. We know what's happening next. No surprises. No lengthy transitions. If the schedule includes medication, make sure that it's available and given on time. Young and old alike, don't forget the meds. Schedules can help us anticipate the oncoming of certain behaviors that can blow up Thanksgiving Dinner, or start an argument on Christmas Day. Having a plan (have the kids take a break during Thanksgiving Dinner to run a Turkey Trot around the outside of the house; everyone is a winner) in place to help "side-step" a disaster is proactive and will minimize the chaos.

Holiday expectations can be a real source of heartache, meltdowns and anger. It may be time to more closely match your holiday visions with what you can more realistically expect from your family. Sitting in a pew for an hour for a midnight candlelight service may sound like a nice tradition, but for little kids it may be too much. Waiting to serve a luscious holiday brunch after all of the gifts have been opened and the paper cleaned up may result in a bunch of crabby, hungry people. Put out some breakfast snacks like fruit to munch on.

And, if your expectations aren't met according to your script? Figure out ahead of time what you can let go of if there's a time crunch, or your sister-in-law wants to do something her way. Or better yet, let others know what you envision and get some feedback. Realistic? Overwhelming? "Are you kidding me?"

The holidays are supposed to be a time of sharing, loving and realizing our blessings. Isn't that a better tradition than your kids remembering how mom yelled a lot and dad hid out in the basement until January 2?

Tis the Season. It’s all About the Expectations.

With the long commercial ramp-up to the holiday season comes the retail decorations and music blitz just after Halloween, beautiful holiday decorating magazine covers and cable specials, invites to parties (“please bring 12 dozen of your favorite cookies to share at the annual neighborhood cookie exchange”), school performances, church pageants, getting the decorations up, gifts purchased and wrapped (mailed too?), along with the immediate food shopping and preparation. That’s on top of the everyday stuff we have to manage. In homes where AD/HD is a factor, the “ho, ho, ho” can quickly become a high-pitched scream of frustration, sadness and anger.

After years of dealing with this myself, I offer a few suggestions.

Stay alert during the holidays. It's the time for people to revert to their familiar behaviors, both good and challenging. Assumptions, mind-reading, cherished family traditions that others may not know about, or may not agree to honor. The expectations are generally set pretty high. I can remember many celebrations with family where my then sister-in-law would start to fume within an hour of our arrival. By the end of our visit (we had to travel and spend a night or two) she had morphed into a screaming maniac. Why? She had a script (in her head) about how her perfect holiday celebration would come off, but hadn’t shared it with the rest of us. It’s really not that uncommon an occurrence, but when you throw AD/HD into the mix, out goes the script, and in comes a lot of improvising.

Don’t ignore the signs of overload. Potential landmines of emotional energy are lurking at every corner. Lots of excitement, stress, overwhelm and lack of sleep are like logs on the fire. Some simmer, while others immediately burst into flames and have to be addressed immediately. On the other hand, a little surprise here and there (thoughtfully created and executed) can bring in an unexpected element of fun. Just make sure that you are reading the situation right and are aware of the schedule of events and expectations before hand.

Mind yourself. In other words, this is a great time to practice your self-regulation and coping skills. Think ahead about what has worked well for you in the past, and what hasn’t. Write it down and keep it handy for a quick review over the next couple of weeks. Whenever you feel stressed, or are starting to feel like people (your partner especially) are being overly critical or short with you, it’s time to review the list and self-correct.

Have a Happy Holiday season!

Making Decisions that Stick

Trying to make effective and timely decisions with AD/HD can present a major hurdle in successfully managing day to day situations. Sometimes a simple yes or no question can become so complicated and fraught with anxiety that the opportunity to decide (and take control over the issue) is lost.

What are the four landmines that can influence your ability to control your decision-making process, and how do you manage them?

Perfectionism. Based on a belief system that it is unacceptable to make a mistake, perfectionists are ruled by lots of “shoulds” and “what if” thinking. It is the all or nothing choice for many with AD/HD. The ultimate in self-defeating behavior, perfectionism is based on unrealistic standards by which these individuals measure their ability to make the “right” choice.

If perfectionism gets in your way, what can you do to minimize the impact?

1. Set realistic goals: what is doable right now? If you are trying to decide how many books to take on vacation, how many can you reasonably read in 7 days?
2. Eliminate the “shoulds”: this is the voice of others; what do you enjoy reading?
3. Minimize the “what ifs”: what if you bring the “wrong” books? What’s the worst that can happen? You go to the store and buy something else.

Procrastination. While this can also be linked to perfectionism, we’ll talk about it in relation to time management. “Why make the decision now, when I can do it later?” The concept of time passing can be so intangible to someone with AD/HD that the idea of forever takes precedent. It’s not until you run up against a deadline that you are able to act. Frequently that results in chaos, tension and a feeling of failure.

How can you begin to get hold of procrastination?

1. Practice taking action at the time. Any time you find yourself saying, “I’ll think about it later,” stop and think about it right then and there. Even if you don’t make a final decision, move on to step 2.
2. Create a daily list of decisions you need to make before the end of the day. Cross them off as you complete them. Check the list at the end of the day and finalize any open decisions.

Too Many Choices. People with AD/HD often find themselves facing what seems to be a sea of endless choices, leading to the internal struggle of how can they possibly narrow down the field. In actuality, they really don’t have that many options, it just seems that they do because again, the phrase “what if” is used too frequently, without boundaries.

If you are overwhelmed by all the choices that you think you have, consider your options.

1. If you could select only 3 choices today, what would they be and why?
2. What would you lose if you limited yourself to those 3; what would you lose if you postponed making the decision?
3. On a scale of 1-10, rank your 3 choices and pick one that has the best score (10 being best)

Distraction. Finally, don’t underestimate one of the basic forms AD/HD takes in pulling your attention away from the decision at hand. You may find that distractibility causes you to forget that you have a decision to make, or when you need to make it.

1. Use your agenda or organizer to post the decision opportunity as soon as you know about it.
2. Monitor the list daily and check off the decisions as you make them.
3. If you need to take some action as a result of your decision, make a note to do it by a certain time (agenda/organizer).

Getting comfortable with the idea that you can make decisions that you can live with takes time and practice. Just like any change, it won't happen overnight. In time, however, you'll be able to add effective decision-making to your list of strengths.

Back-to-School Organization for Adults

As we head into the month of August, even as adults it's hard to avoid connecting with those familiar, yet distant thoughts of "back to school" and fresh beginnings. New backpack, pencils, folders, cool clothes; it's a time to think about the endless possibilities that get us back into the groove. And certainly new "stuff" is a great way to help us realize success by reigning in the challenges that come from the threat of disorganization.

Or is it?

How about those cute little boxes that come in multiple sizes and colors (stacked in the corner of the closet), the gigantic plastic bins that hold (and hide) everything, a colorful floral collection of file folders (still sitting in their tidy little pouches on the kitchen counter), the right pens in your favorite colors (with the perfect grip, still in the package), the best Dymo label maker with personalized labels (how do you work that thing?), the snazziest little Kate Spade personal pocket agenda (it's around here somewhere)? Won't they help? Sadly, more STUFF is not going to result in conquering your issues with clutter, missed appointments, unpaid bills, lost time looking for missing items.

It's not the what, it's the how.

Here are 3 quick and easy steps you can take to start getting organized NOW:

1) Identify a clutter "hot spot" and set a timer for 15 minutes during which time you'll attack the clutter. When the timer rings, either quit, or assess your progress and decide if you want to spend another 15 minutes (don't forget the timer!).

2) Create a family calendar with different pen colors for each member (yippee, get to use the cool pens!). Record activities as they come up, and check the calendar each morning to set the structure of the day.

3) Designate an area by the door (where you and your family frequently leave and enter the house) where family members know that they must "park" their belongings (keys, cell, wallet, purse, backpack, etc.) upon entering, so that they can find them the next day. If something gets moved (backpack with homework), it needs to go back to the spot before bedtime.

Is there more to organizing than 3 steps? Sure, but this is a great start for now.