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Focus, starting, and ADHD

Most advice about focus is written for a brain that starts easily. This area is not. It covers what ADHD actually is, how to make a start when starting is the hard part, how to bring a future consequence close enough to feel, and how to stop paying for it in shame.

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328 practices
ADHD skills remove filterFive minutes remove filterClear all
Theme
Getting assessed and diagnosed 49Your sense of time 38Systems for daily life 37What ADHD actually is 37Get started 35Bringing the future closer 27Shame and stigma 20Feelings and focus 20Structure and routine 16Remembering to do it 15Screens and attention 12Self-compassion 7Treatment and medication 6Medication and how it works 3Use your strengths 3Work with your brain 2Get it out of your head 1
How long you have · Five minutes
A minute 150Five minutes 328Twenty minutes 141Longer 45
Approach · ADHD skills
ADHD skills 328Medical and treatment 176Core 35CBT 17
When
Any ordinary day 257After a row 22Under stress 19In a change 19Coming and going 9When apart 2

Keep two or three trustworthy places to read about ADHD and go there first. Confident, tidy explanations online are easy to find, and most of them have nobody checking them.

Look for organisations that cite their sources and say when something is uncertain, and treat a personal account as a personal account rather than as…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 39:9

Explain ADHD to the child themselves, in words they can hold. Something like: your brain is brilliant at things it finds interesting and needs extra help with things it finds boring, and we are going to work out that help together.

Children build an explanation whether or not you give them one, and the one they build is usually about being bad. A short, matter of fact account,…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 23:12

ADHD tends to surface at the points where life asks for more organising: a new school year with seven teachers, the first term at university, a first job, a promotion into managing other people.

The pattern is always the same. Something that was holding things together is removed, or the amount you have to run yourself goes up, and what was…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 2:286

Girls get diagnosed later, and a good deal of the reason is social. A boy who plays the fool gets laughed with, while a girl who does the same is corrected by her friends within a week, so she goes quiet and disappears from view.

Referral usually follows disruption rather than difficulty, so anything that keeps a child quiet also keeps her unassessed. The point it finally…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 50:16

They are too clever to have ADHD is one of the more expensive mistakes in this field. Being able to understand something and being able to start it, order it and finish it are different abilities.

A very capable person can sit with a task they fully understand and be unable to begin, and then be judged for it far more harshly precisely because…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 16:78

Things often seem to get worse in the weeks after a diagnosis. Usually nothing has got worse. You are simply seeing what was always there, and now you have a name to hang it on.

You will start joining things up: the lost keys, the half finished projects, the reason that job ended. It can feel like the diagnosis broke…

Five minutesWhat ADHD actually isADHD skillsQur’an 51:21

Do one thing at a time. Finish or park it before you touch the next.

Switching feels productive and is not. Each jump costs you the thread you had just picked up.

Five minutesWork with your brainADHD skillsQur’an 94:7

A brain that struggles to start or follow through is not a lazy or bad one. Build supports, do not just try harder.

The problem is rarely that you do not care. It is the wiring of follow-through. Design around it.

Five minutesWork with your brainADHD skillsQur’an 64:16