Tag: ADHD

ADHD Productivity Tips Video

by hkatz, posted in Struggling Striving Healing

If you have ADHD, typical productivity advice may not work well for you, as discussed in this YouTube video. For example, breaking a larger project into a list of smaller tasks may make you feel even more overwhelmed with all of the steps you need to take, or you may wind up just wasting time writing lists of what you have to do.

Starting around 12 1/2 minutes into the video, there’s a discussion about different components of motivation followed by some productivity suggestions that may be more useful (although, as with any advice, effectiveness isn’t always the same for each person or for each set of circumstances).

One example is working in brief “micro commitments” – instead of declaring that you’ll clean your whole kitchen in a single day, start by saying that you’ll put away three dishes. Don’t think about or list all of the things you need to do. Just tackle one small commitment. Maybe doing this will lead to a buildup of momentum, and if it doesn’t, at least you got something done. Other pieces of advice include making a particular task more like a game or using a Pomodoro timer with a work-break ratio that’s calibrated to you.

Also, even if you don’t have ADHD, it may be worth checking out the suggestions, because maybe they could still be effective for you.

Deficits in working memory – but not ADHD

by hkatz, posted in Psychology, Readings

The go-to diagnosis for kids who have trouble learning, focusing and following directions in school is ADHD. Even leaving aside official diagnoses, when we look at the way parents and teachers talk about these children, it doesn’t take long for ADHD to pop up as the label of choice regardless of the actual problem.

In The Learning Brain by Torkel Klingberg, the author points out that kids who have deficits in working memory may be misdiagnosed with ADHD. People with ADHD often have problems with working memory, but not everyone with working memory issues has ADHD.

What’s working memory? There’s a colorful description of it here: “your brain’s Post-it note.”

Working memory helps you retain and process incoming information, such as a set of directions with multiple steps, the thread of a conversation, unfolding stories, math problems and other academic exercises. Even if most of this information never makes it to your long-term memory, you need to hold onto it for the present time to carry out different tasks successfully.

You can see why kids with working memory deficits struggle at school. And given that working memory and attention are closely intertwined, the label of ADHD hovers over these kids. It doesn’t help that when kids are struggling with schoolwork and falling behind their classmates, they often get restless, act out, or let their attention wander – which further reinforces the notion in people’s minds that they have ADHD.

And in kids with both ADHD and working memory deficits, the concern is that people will focus on controlling (medicating) any hyperactivity, at the expense of addressing the working memory problems.