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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.
Narrowed down
7 practicesTheme · Feelings and focus
How long you have · A minute
Approach · ADHD skills
A wave across the road, a joke with the man in the shop, asking someone how they are and meaning it. These unplanned seconds count for more than they look like they should.
They are also the easiest place to start when arranging a proper meet up feels like too much. Almost nothing is at stake in a greeting, so a fear of…
A small child does not have a feeling, they are the feeling, entirely, until it passes. Growing up is largely a gap opening between feeling something and doing something about it.
If that gap is narrower for you than for other people your age, it is a lag on a road everyone is on rather than a defect. The framing is worth…
Turning the volume down on a feeling in front of the wrong audience is not being fake. Being annoyed with your manager and raising it mildly is a skill, and it keeps you employed.
There is a version of honesty that costs people jobs and friendships. What you feel and how much of it you show are two separate decisions, and the…
A strong feeling makes the rest of your life go quiet for a while. That is when people resign, send the message, or start something they cannot undo, for reasons that seem good and are not enough.
So make a rule now, while it is calm, about which decisions are never made on the day: leaving a job, ending a relationship, spending a large amount,…
The big promise is usually made in a rush of love rather than after a calculation. It is meant sincerely, which is exactly why it keeps happening, and why the disappointment keeps landing.
The gap here is between feeling something and announcing it. Try a rule: nothing involving money, dates or other people gets said out loud on the day…
A small annoyance can be steered. A full blaze cannot. Nearly all of the winnable work happens in the first thirty seconds, before the feeling has finished arriving.
Which means the skill to practise is noticing, not calming down. Learn your own early signs: the jaw, the hot face, talking faster, the flat voice,…
Halfway up the argument, ask yourself one question. What do I want here, and who am I trying to be. Winning the sentence is rarely worth what it costs by bedtime.
It is a simple move and it is genuinely hard, because the moment is loud and the long view is quiet. A short version helps. Not in front of the…