5 Important Tips For Managing Adult ADHD:

Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has a subtle way of ravaging everything in your life — from your tightly scheduled work meetings to your attention demanding relationships. And to make matters worse, your family and friends may not understand what you’re dealing with.

People with ADHD are often labeled as lethargic, scatterbrained, and spiritless. Not only does this turn treatment into a stigma, but also make simple tasks ten times harder for the diagnosed.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental condition characterized by persistent problems like hyperactivity, lack of focus, and impulsive behaviour. Symptoms develop in early childhood and continue into adulthood.

People suffering from ADHD are not lethargic or spiritless. They are constantly fighting with a disorder which makes everyday life feel like an unscalable mountain.

However, there are many ways to manage ADHD and live a normal and happy life. These tips highlight ways in which you can make those pending bills and social obligations feel a lot less daunting.

1) Tips For Staying Organized

The task of staying organized can be bedeviling for the ADHD mind, but basic organizational skills, contrary to common belief, do not involve owning one-fifty drawers, each to house a different file or sock in silk bedding.

You just need to be organized enough to eat the elephant one bite at a time.

a) Declutter Your Work Station:

Imagine this: You get up at 6 in the morning, feeling ready to take over the world with a strong cup of black coffee. When you get to the office, the smile on your face turns upside down. Your desk is a mess! You’ve no idea how you’ll find anything in that toppling mass of brown envelopes.

Now imagine this: When you get to the office, exchanging merry bonjours with equally enthusiastic colleagues, the smile on your face turns into a sigh of contemplation. Your pristine desk is a sight to behold. It feels warm and welcoming. Everything is where it should be and not a pin or pen is out of place.

The latter scenario would actually motivate you to take over the world. While the former would only give you a migraine.

Nobody likes a mess, but cluttered work stations are particularly vexing for the ADHD mind.

Takeaway: Take five to ten minutes to clean your desk everyday before leaving the office.

b) Prioritize Your Tasks On A Weekly Basis:

To avoid feeling all over the place, make a weekly to-do-list, covering only the most important of tasks. Daily to-do-lists have a way of becoming unnecessarily overwhelming since you cannot instantly see the importance of grocery shopping or doing laundry, and feel tempted to procrastinate. Weekly to-do-lists, however, give you a clear vision, and they are far more palatable as you can actually see yourself making progress.

c) Color Coding: People with ADHD are often visually oriented, and colours have a natural way of lifting the work spirit. It doesn’t have to take hours though. Just code everything with a different colour: Memorandums, files, emails and schedules.

d) Deadlines: The importance of deadlines cannot be emphasized enough. If you don’t have a deadline, you will fall prey to perfectionism, which is your mind’s way of fooling you into procrastination. Set a deadline, and get the work done!

2) Prioritize Your Tasks: So, you’ve always wanted to write a book, but you’re waiting for the right moment. Or maybe you’ve had this dream of launching a clothing brand since high school, but … life happens.

There is no need to beat yourself about it. We all do this. Get so caught up in urgent calls, urgent meetings, urgent dinners, urgent parties, and basically just the urgency of everyday life that the things that actually matter to us get pushed aside.

Stephen R. Covey, in his book The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People, described this as Principles Of Personal Management. The idea is that we naturally hustle harder towards tasks that are or seem urgent. Like replying to 38 voice mails of an old friend. Or catching up with work emails at lunch when they can actually be taken care of before going to bed. In the frenzy of everyday tasks, we keep burying those life long dreams and aspirations under a mountain of excuses. I’ll do it tomorrow.

But tomorrow is only an illusion.

If you want to write a book, make time and write a few pages or even a few paragraphs everyday. Quantity doesn’t matter. Consistency does.

If you want to launch a clothing brand, make time and do your research. You don’t have to have the entire future of your brand planned out. A little everyday will do.

The key is to start and be consistent.

This is called prioritizing your tasks. Those 38 voice mails may seem urgent, but they are definitely not as important as your book or kickstarting a business. So why not catch up on them after you’ve knocked over your daily to-do-list of important tasks?

3) Manage Your Finances: This is an issue that everyone struggles with, and it can be particularly frustrating for people with ADHD.

The key to financial freedom is not bathing in billions. It is to manage what you have, no matter how modest a sum.

Here are five tips that can help you manage your finances in an effective manner:

a) Create a budget: If you don’t create a budget, you will probably end up spending more than necessary on Cheetos and video games, and then those Ferrari dreams will succumb to resting in peace.

b) Pay your bills on time: Delaying them will only mess up your financial planning.

c) Create a fund for emergencies: Being prepared for the unexpected is extremely important. Loans are never a good idea.

d) Save 10–15% for retirement: Because you wouldn’t want to survive on noodles when you are 65.

4) Chose productive hyperactivities: Hyperactivity is one of the most common symptoms of ADHD. You can take advantage of that by directing your focus and energy into something you really enjoy doing, and the compulsive side of ADHD will make you a natural at it. For example, when you feel the surge of hyperactivity kicking in, go for a walk. Exercise. Paint. Sing. Do what you love and turn it into a habit.

5) Join a community: People with ADHD might feel lonely at times, especially when no one can really understand what they’re up against. Consider joining a group where you can interact with people who also have ADHD. Such groups are really supportive, and you can get better at dealing with ADHD by learning how others are doing it.

Conclusion:

Change does not happen overnight. Habits take discipline and persistence. So, take your time with them, see what works for you, and ask a friend or relative to keep a regular check on your progress.