Try to listen, cooperate, and be gracious. Agree ahead of time that this is unacceptable behavior, and ask them to remind you whenever necessary.Īlso, remember: you’ve asked this person for their help and support because you’re struggling with self-regulation. Tell them to be persistent, even if you resist, make excuses, or tell them to go ahead to the meeting and you’ll be right behind them. Make agreements with family, colleagues, or helpful friends. It’ll break the spell and remind you of the real world - and the people in it who count on you. Whatever you do, get up and stretch for a few minutes every half hour or so. The Time Timer provides an excellent visual representation of time, and its ending bell is soft enough to use in a shared space. At home, we love Suck UK’s adorable - and very loud - bomb timer. If you share an office space, you may want to use a desktop app like Tomighty. Don’t trust yourself to watch the clock, or even to remember time exists. Read up on the Pomodoro Technique, which advocates a system of regularly spaced short and long breaks to keep your brain functioning at its peak.

You also need breaks - ideally, before you think you need them. There will always be one more thing, even after that one more thing. “It’s only 25 more minutes, and we need to watch the resolution of this cliffhanger.“If you sew this side seam, you’ll just have the bottom hem to do tomorrow”.“If you just do this one little thing, you can get the program working”.Don’t start a new computer programming task within one hour of bedtimeĭon’t let your brain talk you out of it.Only one one-hour or two half-hour television shows per night.In other words, set boundaries ahead of time and commit to sticking to them. In her habits book, Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin tells us to “decide not to decide.” Know when you’re more likely to lose control, even if you don’t necessarily feel like it’s a bad thing (“sure I went to bed at 3:00 a.m., but I got so much done!”) Limit time spent on high-risk activities When I’m tired or frustrated, I’m more likely to waste time on Facebook because my brain can’t get in gear. For example: I don’t particularly like sewing, but it’s one of the few projects that gets me out of control, always wanting to eliminate one more rough edge. What time of day was it? What else was going on?Įventually, you’ll see a pattern. Keep a log of activities that run away with you. It’s not easy, but here are some tips to get you started. The good news is, you can learn to let your hyperfocus run wild in a controlled environment. Health may decline due to frequent all-nighters and missed meals (have you ever gotten in the zone and forgotten to eat?). Work, school, family, or romantic relationships may suffer. Unchecked, hyperfocusing ADHD’ers neglect all other responsibilities.

Capable of an amazing state of flow, we’re unstoppable, and it’s easy to get ‘sucked in.’ That’s why it’s so important to reign in our hyperfocus: unstoppable even to ourselves, we become a runaway train…and we all know how that ends. That’s because ADHD isn’t an attention deficit, but a broken attention regulation system. People with ADHD can achieve almost superhuman levels of focus (referred to as hyperfocus ) in some situations, yet none at all in others.

Hyperfocus adhd