Transcription
Living with ADHD day-to-day feels like I'm 2 seconds away from losing my mind. It is hard as hell. So, to save my sanity, I've been experimenting with bunch of stuff. And I found seven stupidly effective, weird hacks that I've never heard anyone talked about. I seriously wish someone told me this earlier because I wouldn't have spent so much time suffering just trying to function like a responsible adult. So, if I can only teach you one thing, it's this: Stay vertical as much as you physically can during the day. Never go horizontal.
So what do I mean by that? Basically, staying vertical is like, you know, I'm currently vertical, right? But if I would lay down on a sofa or on a bed, I would be horizontal. So what we want to do is we want to stay vertical as much as we can during the day. Because when you just take a 1 second to lay on a sofa, right? Like a nice, comfortable sofa, and like doom scroll maybe, or maybe you're like some chilling watching Netflix or something, it just like starts that procrastination loop that I'm sure you know about, right? Like you start at you started as like 2 minutes rest, and it turns into 15 minute rest, and then suddenly an hour has vanished. And sometimes, maybe on a bad day, it's like multiple hours.
The reason I figured out is that it's already hard enough to do the thing. And when you lie down, you're essentially adding extra steps for your brain has to fight through, because now you have to go from lying down to getting up, reactivating yourself, right? Like firing up that engine, and then starting and doing the thing. You're essentially like piling on friction, and that tanks your odds of actually doing the thing, which was already very low. And as long as I'm vertical, I figured out that the friction, or like the activation energy that's required for me, is way less compared to if I'm like lying down and then I have to get up. It's almost like impossible. So either way, the whole battle during the day is just not get back onto that bed or onto that sofa, okay? Never ever lay down or take a rest horizontally like a normal person, unless you are winding down. Okay, put that in your mind.
But staying vertical sounds very easy, right? Until you realize the hardest part of the day starts actually before you're even standing and you're vertical. It is the moment you wake up. Waking up, honestly, is one of the biggest things that I struggle with ADHD. And I'm sure it's like that for most of you guys, as I see from the comments. Like, it literally takes me like three to four hours to fully wake up and like lift that brain fog in front of me, you know? Because when I wake up, it's not like I'm awake. Yeah, I am physically awake, but I'm in this like weird hallucination mode that it's literally in the middle of a dream in real life, and everything just like happens at me instead of me doing the thing, if that makes sense. There's, it's just like very foggy the first 3 to four hours of the day. Like, what the hell?
And it's not just about like feeling awake, but I have this weird ick towards mornings. Like, when I open my eyes, when I'm in the bed, and think about everything I have to do the second I get out of bed, it feels like too much. So I essentially like delay starting the day. I scroll in bed, I sleep in, and I waste a bunch of time. And I realized that the reason is some people are just more sensitive to inertia. So, like, transitions hit harder. And sleep to awake is actually one of the biggest transitions that we make throughout the day. It adds a lot of actually pressure to our regulation systems, right? And mine is messed up, and so is for many ADHD people out there.
So, what I do right now, one weird thing that I figured out, is I wake up and shower immediately. So instead of starting my day, like properly starting my day, you know, like doing the stuff that I'm supposed to do, I essentially shower to delay everything and warm the engine up. It almost like showering is like the cushion between waking up and me starting my day. It's like the part that I'm warming up my engine. So, I'm waking up my brain slowly. And for me, showering is like pretty fun. I like showering, and it's an acceptable activity that I can do even on like zero energy, and I always feel better after. So, it's a net positive for me. Like, it doesn't feel like a legit task. And I'm also super sensitive like to my how my hair and my skin and my like teeth feel. And if I'm not showered and moisturized in the optimized optimal level, I'm just so annoyed during the day, and it's just like disturbing, you know? Like, my hair just gets out of the way. Because as Newton said, "What's in the motion stays in motion, and what's in rest stays in rest."
So, do you notice the pattern? Every hack like so far is literally about killing friction. Whether it's staying vertical, or warming up the engine, slowly starting your day, all of it. And the next one is on the same idea, except now we stop fixing you and start fixing your space. Your life with ADHD is already hard enough, and there's no point making it harder.
So, one of the weird, specific rule that I have is that "convenient place beats the right place." Let me explain by this. So, let's say you have a trash can in your room, right? Like, maybe next to your bed, maybe next to your desk, whatever, like one of the acceptable places. But you find yourself throwing the trash not inside of the can, not inside of the trash bin, but maybe somewhere that's random in your room. And you sort of like blame yourself for not putting the trash can inside of the bin. And a lot of people, instead of moving the trash can to the place that the trash piles up, just keep it to the next where they are designated to be, that's accepted to be, and they blame themselves for being disorganized, right? This can be with like the clothing, laundry, or whatever that is. But the thing, one thing I realized, is that if I keep putting something in the wrong place, that's what is usually the most convenient place for me. So I started putting things where I naturally use them, not where they're supposed to go. That's why I actually have a trash bin literally in the middle of my room, which looks pretty weird if you come to my room. But it worked perfectly because that's a place that I found myself throwing stuff at. So, normally my room would be super disorganized. But after I started to put that trash bin in the middle of the room, my room suddenly got organized. Instead of like finding where things are supposed to be and like trying to force yourself to adjust to that, just put them in where you're already doing. Always design your life around it, not against it.
So, that was about like optimizing your environment. Right now, let's talk about optimizing for your memory and for your brain. I'm sure you're quite familiar with this if you have ADHD. Usually, like, when I come up with something, when I come up with an idea, or maybe I remember something that I shouldn't forget about, it just comes up at the worst times. Maybe I'm at the gym, or maybe I'm running errands, or I'm just like, you know, doing something, and I tell myself that I'll remember that. But the thing is, I never remember it. They always vanish from my mind, and I always forget about it, and I always spend the whole day thinking, "What was that? What was the thing that I was trying to remember?"
So, to solve this issue lately, I've been testing Soundcore Work by Ankor as my wearable brain. And it is a coin-sized AI note-taker and a voice recorder, which is super slim and only 10g. So, you can clip it to your collar or wear it like a pendant and forget it's even there. And the best part is that it has zero friction. When you're trying to like take a note, you need to pull up your phone and write it down. But with Ankor, you can just tap once, and it records anytime, anywhere. Whether it's a meeting or an idea that just popped up into your head, you can capture it instantly. And if something matters, you can just like double tap so that it flags that part, and you can jump straight back to it later. It transcribes everything into a clean, scannable, one-page summary. And if you need a specific detail later, you can just ask Anka to pull it straight from the recording. And it can even connect your notes across multiple sessions. So, it's not just one moment, but it's a searchable memory. It's originally built for inerson meetings, but it actually works for lectures, appointments, or catching ideas on the go, like I do. And it works offline as well. You don't need Wi-Fi to record. Is MFI certified, so it syncs to your phone while you're still recording. Meeting end, you open the app, and the audio is already there, and your data is encrypted with AES256 and stored locally on your device. Whenever you need to capture an idea, or a reminder, or maybe a verbal instruction that you heard of, I feel like this is one of the easiest ways to capture it and never let that vanish. It basically serves like an external memory. And if that's you, and if you're interested, there's link in the description below. And thank you, Ankor, for sponsoring the portion of this video.
So everything so far has been about starting, right? Next one is actually about what happens after you start. When you were in the zone like few seconds ago, and you're like suddenly distracted, that happens to me all the time. And interestingly, though, this is the part that I feel like a lot of people misunderstand about ADHD and focus. Most ADHD advice only like optimizes in one direction, which is removing the distractions, right? Like, "Get rid of that, get rid of this, like remove your phone," blah blah blah, so that you can focus. Actually, it's not about removing distractions, but finding the optimal stimulation level, optimal arousal level, because actually stimulation can work in two ways. You can be either overstimulated, where there are many distractions around you that you need to remove, but you can also be understimulated, where you are bored so that your brain starts to seek for stimulation and starts to do things. Maybe it's fidgeting. Maybe it's actually the reason why you grab your phone and scroll because the task at hand is too boring, too like a, so the stimulation is so low that you're trying to raise the bar up, or basically whole goal is to find that optimal level of stimulation and that arousal level. So, almost think about it like a knob, like a sound knob, right? Like, on the speaker or maybe on the radio or something, but maybe you're too young to understand radio. I mean, I've never also used it as well, but anyway, it's almost like a knob. You're trying to find the optimal part that where you can listen to that song. If it's too much, then you are overwhelmed and too stimulated to focus. And if it's understimulation, then you're now bored and seeking for stimulation. So you grab your phone or maybe you do something that's going to give you more dopamine, right? But we need to find that optimal level. A lot of people talk about only removing the overstimulation, but we also need to account for the understimulation because I never, never, no one told me that before. And after I realized it, whenever I do not want to do the thing, or whenever I'm procrastinating, I started to ask myself, "Am I overstimulated or understimulated? What is the reason I'm avoiding this thing?" If I'm overstimulated, maybe it's because there are many things that I need to do, and I'm overwhelmed, and I don't know how to start. Then what I do is I do a brain dump, and I get everything out of my head so that I remove that stimulation. I reduce that stimulation so that I'm not overwhelmed anymore. But if I'm understimulated, and if I'm bored, I ask myself, "How can I make this more stimulating?" So if I'm working alone, let's say in my room, it's probably too boring, right? That's why I like to go to libraries, maybe at cafes, or maybe I like to work with other people and our friends because it increases the stimulation. Or I might listen to a brown noise or maybe like some beats in the background to increase the stimulation. So, depending on which reason why you're not able to focus, you need to like move the dial up. And the interesting, actually, thing is most people with ADHD needs more stimulation on average to reach that like optimal level of arousal. That's why actually, like body doubling, or, you know, going to co-working spaces works a lot for ADHD people because it increases the baseline stimulation even though the task at hand didn't change. So you got to always ask whether you're understimulated or overstimulated.
Another thing that's quite interesting that I figured out recently is changing the unit of time. Okay, it sounds very weird, right? But I realized that most of us, I mean, at least me, I measure time like hourly. So I think about time, and as an hourly blocks. So there are like 24 blocks in a day, right? But when you treat it like an hour. So, let's say I need to reply to an email, I assume that it's going to take me an hour or so. Or when I'm procrastinating, and let's say it's like 12:20 or something, I tell myself I'm going to start at 1:00 p.m. because it's the measure that I use, right? It's almost like having a ruler. So I tell myself I'm going to start in 40 minutes. And then once 1 p.m. comes, now I tell myself, "Okay, I'm going to start at 2 p.m." And if I have, let's say, like under an hour of time before two tasks, let's say I have a meeting and another meeting, and there's like 45 minutes, I waste that 45 minutes. It's because under the unit that I use. So what I started to do is, instead of treating time as hourly blocks, I started to think about everything in 15-minute blocks. It's almost like I started to treat time as mini chunks. So, in an hour, I actually have four blocks. And whatever that takes me, let's say it's showering or getting back to emails, I think, "How many of 15-minute blocks would I need?" so that I can measure the actual amount or actual length of the time, which actually helps a lot with time blindness. A lot of us with ADHD have this time blindness, right? Like, we don't really have a good sense of time, so like a 2-hour thing and a 5-hour thing just feels exactly the same. But when I started to use these like 15-minute micro measurements, now it became way more clear which one is longer and which one is shorter, which might sound crazy if you don't have ADHD, but I think you get what I mean. And the great thing about shrinking your time of unit to 15 minutes is that first, you get more starting points, right? Like four times as many, because whenever you're procrastinating, you, you don't say, "I'm going to start in 1 hour," because it's four blocks away, but you start in 15 minutes later. And the second is tasks actually shrink, right? Like, when you think, when you measure time as an hourly blocks, you think, "What can I do in this hour, right?" Maybe you can fit in like one or two things. But when you start to think in 15-minute blocks, suddenly you have four different blocks that you can fill into. And I realize I'm way more productive that way because I feel like doing it for 15 minutes, or having only 15 minutes, feels less overwhelming, and it's way more achievable. I know it sounds crazy, and it might not make sense to a lot of people. I hope I articulated well.
Okay, so the last one is the thing that ties everything into together, and that's actually about obeying the clock. So time is a societal concept, right? I always struggled with time, and how we measure time, and how I'm supposed to do things at designated times in the day because I don't work like that. And I realized a, for ADHD brains, the clock is a real problem. And when we use like traditional advice of using a calendar, planning things out, blocking things out, etc., we usually ping-pong between rigid schedules we never follow and chaotic to-do list, when where we do random crap all day. And underneath both failure is the same mistake: We're trying to run an ADHD brain on a clock. Instead of that, instead of telling myself, "I'm going to do this from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.," we actually need to focus on running our day with our energy and aligning with it. Okay, I know it sounds woo-woo, but let me explain.
So when you try to follow a traditional advice of blocking your calendar, time blocking, and planning your entire day on a Google calendar in an aesthetically pleasing way and having these fancy to-do lists, the issue is that it basically fails on two false assumptions. The first one is that your energy is stable, and the second is that that your sense of time is decent, which, yes, we lack both of them. I literally am going to cry. Why is living so hard? Anyway, that assumption is not true for us because the same task can feel completely different depending on the day. Like, texting it back a friend that you love takes maybe two seconds, but texting back to cancel plans you're dreading can sit unread for weeks, and you can literally hate yourself for that. I literally have like unread messages. So many of them on my phone right now. So instead of batching, like, with an activity and telling yourself, "I'm going to do this from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.," something like that, I actually started to batch it by feeling. And I call them sprints, where I match the tasks that have the same type of energy into one sort of like sprint that I do all of them at the same time. And I have four sprints: Urgent, Deadline, Admin, and Creative. Because I realize that there are four different energies that requires for me. And when I'm going through a task, I basically try to figure out what kind of energy I'm in. Whether I'm in a creative energy, whether I have very like pushing deadlines, and I feel it. And that like sudden guilt, you know, like activates my last-minute hyperfocus, and I do the thing. Or maybe I'm like, I just want to, I don't have that much energy, so I'm going to do admin tasks or something like that. And when you match your energy with the task given at your hand, you basically build this momentum because it's way easier to do the thing that you're in the mood for right now rather than switching up the gears like a normal person. It's basically the opposite of eating the frog, where you're supposed to start with the most important thing, where we match our energy with the similar task so that the transition is way smaller. It doesn't mean you're not going to do the important thing, but it's more like gradually building up that engine.
And I actually built a system that applies this into real life. And I call this my Kaizen system, which helps you to organize your days, your task, your projects, and allows you to match it on your energy and actually function like a responsible adult with ADHD. Like, obviously, you can build this all of it yourself, right? My 80, my a Kaizen system is hosted in Notion, and you can create it your own version, obviously, but it took me so long, and realistically, I know that 0.1% of you are actually going to build it and use it, right? It's probably never going to happen. But with Kaizen, it's already built in, and you can started using it from the day one, and you can learn more about the ADHD-friendly time management methods by getting the system and applying it actually into your day-to-day life. We also have a Discord where other ADHD people share their tips and tricks around how they manage their time, which I'm also a part of the group. If you're interested, you can check out my Kaizen system from my website durioama.com. Or, if you want to learn more in detail about how it works, how you can manage your time better with ADHD, then watch this video next.
And honestly, one reminder is that you really need to stop trying to mold yourself into the shape that society wants you to be like. A lot of us struggle with the shame and guilt of not operating the way that we're supposed to be. But I want this video to be almost like a permission for you to design your life around it because it took me so many years of denial, and it took me so many years of like grief to finally accept this. And I see it all the time in the comments as well. Like, a lot of you guys lived so many years trying to become like someone else because that's how you're supposed to be, instead of just accepting the way you are and design your life around it. Trust me, it becomes way easier to live in that way. So I want this video as a permission for you to live the way that you normally function. And if you want to learn more about how I manage my time with ADHD, watch this video next where you can also learn more about the Kaizen.