Practices

Shrink the first step until it takes two minutes, and do only that.

The wall is usually the size of the first step, not the whole task. Make the step tiny enough to fall over.

Do not wait to feel ready. Say Musa's prayer, ease my task, and take one step; the wish to go on comes after.

Motivation usually follows action, not the other way round. Start badly if you must, but start.

If you are being assessed for attention, say something about your mood and your worry as well, even if nobody asks.

Anxiety and low mood sit alongside ADHD often enough that a thorough assessment will go looking for them anyway. But shame is quiet, and years of…

When someone says they feel restless inside, ask what the restlessness wants. Restless to move, or restless to do one particular thing until it feels right?

The two feel similar from the inside and point in different directions. With ADHD it is usually undirected: the legs go, the chair is wrong, you need…

A distracted person can be brought back with a nudge. Someone who has gone elsewhere cannot, and the difference shows itself in a couple of seconds.

Say their name, ask something simple, and watch what returns. Attention that has drifted comes back with a small apology and picks the thread up…

Try not to ask why. If the person knew why, they would probably have sorted it out already, and the question tends to land like an accusation.

Ask what happened just before instead. What was going on, what they felt, what came after, what sort of day it had been. Those answers can be worked…

If someone was adopted, or simply does not know their family history, say early and plainly that this is not a problem. It helps to have and it is not needed.

Otherwise the question lands as one more reminder of what is missing, and some people will spend the rest of the appointment feeling they brought the…

Some of what looks like muddle is the system's fault. Our tenth month is named for eight, because two months were added later and nobody renamed the rest.

Worth saying to anyone who feels stupid about dates and forms. A calendar whose numbers are out of step, a tax year starting in April, forms asking…

When someone says their heart races on their medication, ask whether it ever did before they started. It is the cheapest question you have and it usually sorts the answer out.

Go looking for the old settings: waiting to be called on in class, standing outside a room before a difficult conversation, three in the morning with…

While you are taking the family history, ask about seizure disorders and psychosis too, not only about attention. A family carrying other neurological or psychiatric conditions is worth knowing about whatever you end up concluding.

Keep the list short and ask it plainly: epilepsy, psychosis, learning difficulties, head injuries, anything neurological. Some of it will matter for…

Some people simply cannot get a family history. Refugee journeys, destroyed records, closed adoptions, families that did not survive. That is a gap in the paperwork and not evidence against the diagnosis.

Say so out loud, and write it in the notes as a gap rather than as a negative finding, so the next person reading does not mistake silence for an…

One man put his lamps on a timer so the room would go dark at eleven and send him to bed. It worked for a few nights. Then he simply carried on in the dark. A cue can tell you the time. It cannot make you stand up.

Worth remembering before you build anything clever. If the pull of whatever a person is already doing is stronger than the nudge you have designed,…

'I set a reminder and still did not do it' is not a story about a bad reminder. It tells you the missing piece was never information, and a bigger, louder version of the same thing will fail in the same way.

The reflex is to escalate: three alarms, a different app, an entire new system built on Sunday night. What is needed is a change of kind, something…

Give your spouse one genuine compliment today, specific enough that it could only be them.

Not nice shirt. The way you handled that call was so calm. Precise praise lands deepest.

When resentment rises today, name one thing you are grateful to your spouse for instead.

The mind can rehearse grievances or blessings. Choose the blessing, out loud if you can.

Thank them for one specific thing, today.

Not "thanks for everything." Pick one thing from the last two days and name it exactly: "Thank you for taking the bins out when I was on that call. I…

Thank them for something they do so routinely you had stopped noticing it.

The unremarked, dependable acts are exactly the ones that most deserve to be seen.

Say not just that you appreciated what they did, but what it saved you.

Naming the burden they spared you turns a thank-you into being truly seen.

Praise a quality of their character, not only something they did.

To be admired for who you are, not just what you produced, is a rare and steadying gift.

Send them a message today naming one thing you are grateful for, with no occasion.

Unprompted gratitude, arriving in the middle of an ordinary day, lands especially softly.