ADHD-Proof Your Life – Part 2
In part one of this series on ADHD-proofing your life we looked at setting goals, assessing your space, and the benefits of decluttering, changing your media consumption and diet.
Hopefully, the tips, suggestions and interventions included in part one made a positive change for you. If this is the case, avoid the desire to rest with moderate improvements when there is more that can be done.
Read on for even more ADHD-busting recommendations to make your home and your life ADHD-proof. The battle is far from over.
Clocks, Watches, Timers and Alarms
With ADHD, time management is a huge problem that is expressed in two ways. For one, people with ADHD have decreased patience to put towards activities that they are not interested in completing.
Whether it is a child being asked to do homework or an adult scrubbing the bathtub, your goal in any undesirable activity is to finish as quickly as possible. There is little interest in the quality of completion.
The second time management issue is that people with ADHD have an uncanny ability to hyperfocus on behaviors that interest them. Video games, social media, sports and exercising are some of the activities that will continue until something or someone interrupts.
How would you rate your time management? What people, activities and events do you want to move through as quickly as possible? Which ones take up too much of your time? Begin by identifying and assessing your tendencies to find your starting point. Next, think about how much time would be more appropriate for these activities.
After establishing your desired timeframes, begin to use the clocks, watches, timers and alarms in your home to give you feedback about your timeframes.
Clocks should be made available in all rooms of your home. Wearing a digital watch with alarms at all times can make keeping time more convenient. A new wave of wearable technology allows you to connect to your smartphone and send you multiple alerts and reminders with tones and vibrations. Leaving several kitchen timers around will increase the likelihood of their use.
As mentioned, people with ADHD seem to have decreased ability to accurately track time. Because of this, adding more visual, audio and tactile reminders will aid your ability to keep a schedule.
For example, you want to play video games for an hour. You know that your typical video game session is usually four hours so you place a clock in your field of vision to remind you of current time. You can glance down at your watch for another level of prompting, and the kitchen timer ticking beside you gives the audio cues.
