Patience with Yourself when you have ADHD

Last week I discussed having patience with others who have ADHD. I do want to reiterate that you need to have patience with everyone. It can be also be challenging to have patience with yourself. If you are like me, I am easily impatient. To make matters worse if you have ADHD is that impatience is often a symptom. There are many reasons you require patience with yourself when you have ADHD. For example, even a focused and time orientated person like myself with ADHD will be late, go off track, and not plan properly or stick to the plan. Personally, it is a very interesting dichotomy of loving to plan, make and follow schedules, tracking time, budgeting time on one end and then the ADHD on the other side which involves impulsivity, disorganization, and inability to focus. As a person with both sides actively playing, I can go in either direction easily from day to day, hour to hour, and even minute to minute. While there are times where it is advantageous to be on either side (sometimes more impulsive and less scheduled can be more fun and spontaneous), the challenges that ADHD can create can definitely require more patient with yourself. Here are a few steps on what to do.

1. Acknowledge and accept your limitations. This is the most important step you can take to becoming more patience with yourself. We all have limitations, whether it’s from ADHD or somewhere else. We are all human and limitations to work with and stuff to overcome.

2. Schedule extra time. When you have ADHD, you may be over optimistic about what can be done and then get distracted while trying to achieve it. Don’t book yourself so solid that you have no wiggle room. As a bonus, this works very well for those without ADHD as well.

3. Know where your pitfalls are. If you get distracted under certain circumstances (such as time of day, locations, task structure, etc.) then it will do you a lot of good to take notes on yourself and when and how you work best.

4. Keep working at it. Persistence is important for everything we do. When things don’t go as planned and you are annoyed with yourself for not getting done what you planned on getting done, then it will do you the best to keep going and get better the next time, and the next time, and the next thousand times at least.

There will be no shortage of experiences that will allow you to become more patient with yourself if you allow yourself to learn from them. There are plenty of opportunities to know yourself better and know what works well and what doesn’t. That way if you run late to something after being busy for several days it’s no surprise. Having patience is difficult and is a challenge for everyone to some extent, so you are definitely not alone.

Patience with Someone with ADHD

Every relationship requires patience. This is true whether it’s a family member, friend, spouse, co-worker, boss, or even your doggie. You need patience for all types of things people do, both time management related and not. This post we will focus on the requirement for patience for people with ADHD and how they view time. People with ADHD view time in a different way than the rest of the world. In addition, this can differ from person to person with ADHD. I have always had an interest and fascination with time so that made my experience unique. So if you are wondering how that looks for me and you don’t know me already, it goes something like this. I am the same person who makes time budgets and schedules and still manages to run late sometimes. I have a clear and detailed list and sometimes randomly fail to check it. I know others as well as myself who have ADHD and how they think. This is similar to focus. Someone with ADHD is going to be able to manage time when it is something they are really into. What and when this is will differ from person to person, and the only way to figure this out is to know the individual, or yourself. Here are few steps to help you have patience with someone with ADHD.

1. Find out how they work. The most important step to having patience with anyone is understanding how they work. The leading cause of impatience is the lack of understanding. At least I can say that for my own experience. The phrase I say the most when I am impatient is “I don’t understand...why/when/where, etc.”

2. Check yourself. Take a look at yourself also. If you are like me, you may naturally get impatient. The problem may not always be with the other person, especially if it’s over a little thing. Also, if you tend to overreact, that is not going to help the situation at all.

3. Create a situation to work in your favor. If you are dealing with someone who is chronically late or moves slower than you would like, then allow more time. If they are always late, tell them to arrive earlier than you are expecting them to.

4. Remain calm. Like with any situation, freaking out and getting stressed out will not make the situation any better. Even the best case scenario involves you getting stressed out and aggravated. At the very worst, you can make the other person upset and both of you are angry at each other, or even worse upset a whole group.

To reiterate again, every relationship requires patience and can experience frustration. Since someone with ADHD may think differently than you (if you don't have it yourself) then it requires a bit of more understanding and patience to know how they think. Even if you have ADHD, it can be difficult to understand yourself even. I will get into that in my next post.

How to Tap into ADHD Hyper Focus

It is commonly known that people with ADHD to struggle with focus. As I said in my previous post, this is not the case with everything. There are several reasons why we may struggle to focus and several different tasks that we may not be able to focus on like someone without ADHD may. The largest reason to not be able to focus is that we are not interested in the topic. As I said in my previous post there are several reasons we may struggle with focusing on a specific topic or task and there are ways to help that. In this post I will discuss the other side of the coin where we can hyper focus on a task. The main reason for this to happen is that the individual is excited and interested about the topic or the task. Here are ways to tap into the hyper focus when you have ADHD for maximum productivity.

1. Find something you are interested in. You need to find something you are passionate about and enjoy doing. Once you do that you will likely be able to focus on it very well. Sometimes this is something that you can do for a living and other times it is something that can be a hobby.

2. Find the time of day when you are most effective. If you are like me with ADHD, there may not always be a consistent time when you do something best. There will also be times when that can change. However, there is going to be a time when you are more inclined to get into the zone.

3. Avoid Distractions. There are so many ways to be distracted that even people without ADHD are losing focus all the time. You will not even be able to get into the zone if you can’t focus to begin with. You can mute notifications by putting your devices on do not disturb mode, keep your room quiet for a time, and set yourself up for focus as much as possible.

4. Remember that your interests can change over time. If you have ADHD, you may not only have a short term attention deficit, but may also be the case for longer term focus as well. What you can hyper focus on today may not be the same thing you can hyper focus on in a year.

While there are many important aspects to managing time to the fullest, being able to focus is key. Finding the thing that you can focus on so well at the right time is even more effective. Everyone has a sweet spot for the right time for the right task and it does take effort to determine. However, all time and effort invested into this process will be well worth it.

ADHD Struggle with Focus

Hello all, as you may have noticed I have skipped a week this past week. I am doing well, but just had to catch up with a whole lot of other things.

One of the key aspects of ADHD is the inability to focus. This can be very misunderstood in several ways. One common misconception is that we struggle with focus with everything. Remember that we are all different. For anyone, it is easier to focus on something that we all enjoy. This is amplified for someone with ADHD. When someone with ADHD wants to do something a lot, they can focus better than anyone else. When it is something that they don’t enjoy, it can be impossible to focus. For the times when something you need to do is something you really don’t want to do, here are a few things you can do to get going when you have to.

1. Do it another time. Sometime, it may not be the task that you really don’t want to do and can’t focus. It is possible that just dropping it for now and doing it a different time can make a huge difference. Perhaps you can try doing a regular task at a different part of the day.

2. Make it interesting. There may be something you can do that can help you want to do something you can’t focus on. Perhaps, find a way to motivate yourself by giving yourself some kind of reward for achieving it.

3. Break the task up to something smaller. A lot of times when we can’t focus, we struggle too much because it is overwhelming to see so much to do. It is much easier to do something that is achievable.

4. Consider your alternatives. I have said this before in previous posts, but want to re-iterate this point. If you really have trouble focusing on something, and you have tried to get better at it or like it more and it still hasn't worked, then it is time to consider your alternatives of what else you can do. You are probably either having trouble because it is something you are not good at or something you do not enjoy, or in case.

What we must remember about anyone who has ADHD doesn't have a flat out problem with focus. It is more about what we can and want to focus on. We all have things that we have to focus on and not being to focus on something like that can make it difficult. I have been there several times and just not able to focus on something. Thankfully, I have used these steps to help me focus when I needed to. I hope they are able to help you as well, and again, thanks for reading.

ADHD Schedule Making

My situation with ADHD has been quite unique. At around age 15, I fell in love with making schedules. It is commonly known that people with ADHD can focus on what they are interested in. One of those things for me was making schedules (which is quite unusual for people with ADHD). One of the main reasons of doing this was to prove to myself and a few others that I could get organized, be efficient, get a lot of things done. Although scheduling is not usually an ADHD thing, when it is mixed with someone who does have ADHD it can be interesting. I have made several different attempts at finding a system that works well for my life. I have tried well over a dozen of different methods using datebooks, PDAs and Pocket PC’s, Apple iCal, Google Calendar, TimeTune, etc. I have tried extremely detailed to every minute schedules to almost not having a schedule at all. Even as I write this, I am experimenting with another type of scheduling, one that will hopefully work well after balancing several different aspects. Here are just a few tried and failed scheduling attempts.

1. The extremely detailed schedule. Scheduling every single minute of the day turns ADHD into OCD (which I believe I have a touch of as well). This process becomes too cumbersome and takes too much time. It is easy to tire of this method because life gets in the way and changes are always happening during the day.

2. Having nearly no schedule at all. There were times when I really just scheduled out when I had obligations. The rest was up to whatever I thought was best. You can easily see this method can be ineffective and much less can get done than could be.

3. Recurring activities. Schedules with recurring activities tend to fail for me because I rarely follow the same schedule every day. If I wake up just 15 minutes later that meant fiddling around with several events to get them to adjust to the different day. It took more time than it was worth saving. Keep in mind how much less effective this can be when life becomes more involved (for example someone with kids). It is beneficial to still have recurring events set up like that like regular commitments like work or something you have committed to weekly like church or a volunteer group.

4. Too many different apps. Quite recently, I was using Google Calendar for main events, TimeTune for a really detailed approach, Nozbe for To Do’s, etc. I will still continue to use these apps, because that part does work for me, but tweaking the process a bit would be beneficial for most. I would love an app that can cover all of these functions, but right now that does not exist.

I have been around the world and back with scheduling strategies. However, now I am tweaking it a bit more. The common thread was feeling pressured to stick to a particular system. My new approach is more free and less structured. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 9 with a pen and it can write notes. For me it is easier to just jot down a time and an activity. This is less time intensive, less systematic, yet still effective. I see this as sustainable approach as it is not something that will be too difficult to keep up with. I can cross out activities if I don’t get to them, and easily change times. This will be my daily approach as for what I am doing in the day. I will follow up as to how I am doing here and hoping that I did find something that works well. What do you do for your scheduling to get the most done? Please feel free to share your thoughts and suggestions. Thanks for reading!

Getting Back to People

I remember a time around 10 years ago when I couldn’t phantom why people would not respond back to emails, texts, phone calls, Facebook activity, etc. However, over the years it has become more common place for people to be reaching out to me for all kinds of things. I have since worked jobs that require follow up and responding to various types of communications and requests. There is now so much correspondence that it is helpful to use a software just to manage the inflow of requests (I use Nozbe for all my task-management). There are so many things that one could possibly do that things come from all directions and we can get distracted and easily forget to respond to something. I am no longer and have not been recently living in a world where I wait for someone to call, text, or email me. With that being said, here are just a few reasons you may miss responding to people and how to fix them.

1. You are just too busy. This one is simple, you are too busy doing too many things at once that things fall through the cracks. The solution to this is to work your way towards a more manageable schedule so that you are not running around like a chicken without your head.

2. You don’t have a system in place. Everything can have a system to make it more efficient and effective. For example, you can set a time every day to review texts, emails, etc. if you find yourself forgetting. You can set multiple check points throughout the day if that makes it better.

3. It is about priority. You have all kinds of priorities. This is the same for communications. Frequently there is communication that does not seem important and that is what falls through the cracks. Also, when something urgent comes up that can derail us and we can forget a piece or two of communication.

4. You don’t want to be bothered. I figured I would throw this one in. There are times when we are not in the mood to be bothered with a certain person, a certain topic, a certain organization, etc. You do have a choice here. Maybe it is time for you to make a decision to stop communication with something that may not be beneficial overall. This could just be a mood that you are in at the time and you need to remember later on.

We all have had these times where we forget a message here and there. Some people are much better at getting back to you than others. Some of us change over time. I’ll be honest, I am not as good as I used to be at this. I occasionally miss communications all together, but try to make that a rare occurrence, and I usually do. I should also mention that sometimes a person may not see a need to respond while another does. That isn’t time management related at all, but rather just a point of discussion that you have. Please feel free to share your thoughts regarding getting back to people. I know that ADHD does play a role in this as well for me and it is easier for me to get distracted and to forget things when a lot is going on.

Having a Schedule with ADHD

I have frequently commented on the value of making a schedule. A quality schedule will benefit anyone who makes one which fits their life situation. For those with ADHD, it is even more beneficial. For example, before I made a schedule of any type of schedule, I didn’t get that much done. Even with ADHD, I did make schedule and when I did it has helped immensely. Here are just a few examples of what I did and how it helped me.

1. It got me organized. When you have ADHD you have constant and racing thoughts. Ideas fly all over the pace. This is no different with schedules. Our minds can be all over the place with what we need to do.

2. I got a lot more done. With ADHD, it is much better to do something or understand something when it is written down or typed out. With a schedule, we have a visual of what needs to be done.

3. I developed more executive functioning. Executive functioning is a brain function that people with ADHD are deficient in. While we may be weak in that skill, like anything it can be developed and strengthened. We just have to work harder at it.

4. I learned to enjoy planning more and scheduling more. When you find yourself getting better at something, you have a higher chance of enjoying it.

I have frequently shared the benefits of making a schedule, and more importantly a schedule that suites you. It may not be the best for you to schedule out every single minute of your day. Maybe, just the main events is enough for you. After all, you are going to know what you need to do and what will work best.

ADHD Themes

I want to take time to say thank you to whoever has read my blog over the past 26 months. So far I have discussed all types of time management techniques that I have found helpful to maximize the use of my time and to make time for purpose. So far the direction of this blog has been focused on various aspects of time management, but did not have a central theme. Now I intend to take to take this blog and everything else with Time is Me to a new focus. The focus will be focused on how to manage your time when you have ADHD. As I mentioned in my previous post and a few posts prior to this, I have overcome many time management/productivity struggles while struggling with ADHD. As a child, I did not have the ability to think ahead and just wanted to do what I wanted to do. There are many methods that I have mentioned over the past two years that have I employed to overcome my struggle with ADHD. I would also want to add that we are all different. What worked for me may not work for you. I understand that and would like to invite as much as feedback as possible regarding how you get your maximum productivity. There are several factors that come into play for each of us and for what works best for you.

Looking ahead, here are some topics that I intend to cover regarding my productivity journey with ADHD.

1. How important having some kind of schedule is. Whether this was a datebook that I brought everywhere, a schedule on a pocket PC, various apps that sync across devices, etc.

2. Why tracking time is important to knowing where you actually spend time. Especially when you have ADHD, this is not something that is natural to you so that way you will be unaware of where your time is going. Even when you do track your time, there may still be surprises in store for you just like they are for me quite frequently.

3. Why it’s OK to switch methods. Especially if you have ADHD, you may not have difficulty sticking to one thing. I have switched method countless times and will continue to switch to whatever works best.

I will share plenty of more concepts and ideas as well as personal experience. Also, don’t feel that you have to have ADHD to continue to get value out of this blog. I would like to reiterate that any topic suggestions are welcome. I look forward to hearing more from you and thank you for reading.

Time Management with ADHD

If you know me you may be aware that I have grown up with ADHD. It was especially obvious if you have seen me as a child. I was a very hyper kid who did not have a great attention span. As I grew up, I have improved from what I was I as a child, but still do have some symptoms as an adult. What I do want to comment on here is the strategies that I have used to effectively manage my time while being officially diagnosed with ADHD.

1. Find a way to make it interesting. I always needed to be engaged and interested in what I was doing to do it effectively. Whenever I wasn’t interested, I would end up not being focused and not productive.

2. Develop a structure. There needs to be some kind of structure to make it effective. For me it was making schedules and following them as well as tracking time. It may be a different case for you.

3. Be aware of how you work. Whether you have ADHD or not, you need to be aware of how you work and what makes you more or less effective in productivity.

4. Make each task manageable. One struggle I run into the most is being overwhelmed by a large project or to do list and end up not getting anything done because it is difficult to even determine the next step.

I have made a strong effort to be as productive as possible and have came a long way from where I was. It can be a challenge trying to figure out how you work and what strategies work best. As my life changes, I am still working on finding the best methods to follow and they do change from time to time as well. I intend to comment more on my experience with ADHD and time management in the future. Please let me know your thoughts and thanks for reading.

Why a Consistent Schedule May Not be Necessary

Nearly two years ago I made a post about why keeping a consistent schedule is productive. I still do believe that it does and that is a goal that we should strive to. However, I do want to emphasize that we all have different life situations and at some points in our life, it may not be necessary to have a consistent schedule. In fact, there are several reasons why you either may not be able to have a consistent schedule or it is not practical to have one.

1. You work a job with inconsistent hours. When you have a job with different hours from day to day and week to week, then it may not be possible to have a consistent schedule. In this case you do your best to be as productive as possible.

2. You have kids. If you have kids, for the most part you schedule will be more dynamic and and not always consistent. I don’t have kids of my own, but can imagine that this is a good reason to not have a consistent schedule.

3. You don’t work well with schedules. You may not like schedules. Maybe for you a schedule is counter productive. If that is the case and it’s working, keep doing what you are doing.

4. You are in an unique life situation. Sort of like I am right now, where my schedule can vary from week to week. Whenever there is a large variance from one week to the next, it may not be beneficial to make a consistent schedule. 

The main takeaway that I want you to take away here is that there is not always a need to have an extremely consistent schedule. If you are in a situation as such, it may still be a good idea to have some routines that you stick to, even if the actual time each day varies.