A lot of people treat rest like something they only get after every bill, deadline, errand, and problem is handled.

So instead of waiting for the perfect empty day, put a small break inside the mess.

Even 10 quiet minutes between tasks can stop you from carrying the stress of one problem straight into the next one.

The goal is not to avoid responsibility. It is to recover a little before you keep going.

"Can I ask you something seriously?"

"Sure."

"Do you ever feel like your brain keeps opening new tabs without closing the old ones?"

My coworker looked up from her work.

"Why?"

"This morning I opened the fridge and completely forgot why I opened it."

"Okay..."

"And yesterday I carried some paperwork across the house, then stopped and thought, 'Wait. Why am I holding this?'"

"That happens."

"No, listen."

I leaned closer.

"You know how you asked me to order medication this morning?"

"...Yes."

"I sat down to do it."

"..."

"And somehow ended up arguing in a pharmacist forum comment section."

"..."

"For almost thirty minutes."

"..."

"The medication order?"

"..."

"Never happened."

She slowly put down her pen.

"That doesn't sound great."

"Right? At this point it's looking pretty suspicious."

She thought for a moment.

"Maybe."

I sighed.

Then she pointed at my hands.

"What are you doing?"

"What?"

"With the pen."

I looked down.

Without realizing it, I had completely disassembled a ballpoint pen.

The spring chose that exact moment to launch itself across the desk.

ting

"..."

"..."

We both watched it disappear under a cabinet.

Then she looked at the pile of tiny paper scraps scattered around me.

"What's that?"

"What?"

"The paper."

I followed her gaze.

The medication order list.

Apparently while taking apart the pen, I had also shredded the note into dozens of tiny pieces.

"..."

"..."

"Well."

She nodded.

"Not saying it's ADHD, but..."

"..."

"You just destroyed the only copy of the thing you forgot to do."

Fair point.

I got down on my knees to look for the spring.

...

Wait.

...

Actually.

Tomorrow's my posting day.

Maybe the ending still needs work.

...

Hold on.

...

What was I looking for under here again?

1. Get medicated

Stimulants are usually the best option with the highest effect size

2. Correcting deficiencies

life changing, get a blood test, test for Vitamin D, B12, Serum Folate (B9), RBC Magnesium,Serum Zinc, and Ferritin especially.

optimal B12 range: 500-800 pg/ml in blood.

ideal ferritin range: 70-100 ng/ml in blood.

Ideal vitamin D range: 40-60 ng/ml

optimal magnesium range: 5.5–6.5 mg/dL

optimal zinc range: 80–120 mcg/dL.

optimal folate range: 13–15 ng/mL

The normal range in lab tests miss sub-clinical deficiency, you can be feeling shit yet technically not be deficient, most women especially are low in iron.

3. Light therapy

morning, after waking up, look at the blue sky for 10-15 mins, basically 10k lux+ light, fo not look at the sun PLEASE IT'S DANGEROUS!

4. CBT (skills-based ADHD management)

Basically get an ADHD-aware therapist, or better, get an ADHD coach, they are usually cheaper and a more practical solution.

5. Wake up and sleep at the same time every day

wake and sleep time within 1-hour variation daily, check out my post on sleep for how to fix your sleep

6. Exercise

even 5 mins a day is enough! I started with 5 minutes a day, now I am at 30 minutes a day.

7. Meditation

mindfulness, basically close your eyes, sit still, and count your thoughts, each count of thought is one mental push-up rep, do it for 5 minutes a day, add 2-3 minutes every week.

8. Use Serial Diverse Imagining to sleep (SDI)

basically imagine random objects like dog, cat, pencil, ball, objects that aren't emotionally charged, only imagine one object for 1-3 seconds, the goal is to think about random objects while lying down on the bed so your brain cannot get the fuel it needs to overthink and keep you awake for hours. Do this 20-30 minutes before designated sleep time.

9. Join a library or go to a café to work and study

when you see other people being quiet and hustling, you feel bad for being the one scrolling and you start working/studying, also others can see the stuff you are watching...

10. use an app to lock your entire phone AUTOMATICALLY

for 1 hour after you wake up, apps like StayFocused, Keep Me Out, and Lock My Phone (Zen Mode) have this feature

11. Remove distractions

uninstsall youtube, use youtube revanced, you can disable reels and recommendations and ads and whatever you want.

Use distraction-free instagram, you can remove reels and posts unless you click on a link your friend sent to you.

Disable all ads and recommendations and notifications on reddit, go to settings, then account settings, and scroll down and disable everything related to 'alllow ads' 'personalise ads' and ' show recommendations', if you are still seeing subreddits, go and mute 3-4 of those subreddits, reddit will never show you any recommendations ever again.

disable Google News, it is garbage meant to make you angry and make your ADHD worse. Best advice: do not read news at all, become apolitical and believe only in ADHD-improvement

12. Blue Light Filter Automated

Use a blue light filter and set a schedule like it starts automatically at 6PM at 50% and becomes more red like 70% at 9PM, use the colour 'red' for the best effect! most blue light filter apps allow scheduling daily like this, don't do it manually because you will forget after one day and using a blue-light filter all day is counter-productive.

13. make cooking simpler!

cook for the entire week in batches on the weekends, cooking daily is very hard for ADHD people, just cook once on the weekends and eat all week, and cook a lot of quantity, keep only like 3-4 dishes for the entire week! and make dishes in which you don't have to cut tomatoes/onions, just pureé them, it's easier, if possible, get a crock-pot, it helps a lot.

14. Supplements for ADHD

best supplements with strong evidence: 1-2g EPA per day, caffeine + l-theanine pills

best brands: Naturaltein, MyProtein, Sun Pharma, NowFoods, Nutricost, Nordic Naturals

Weak evidence but may be useful: Saffron extract, Panax Ginseng, Bacopa Monnieri, Panax Ginseng, L-tyrosine.

15. JUST STAND

literally, that's the entire tip, just stand, sit down = ADHD, task paralysis, executive dysfunction, All I do is, i tell myself to stand up, I stand up and walk around = in 30 seconds I am automatically doing the task I had been dreading for 5 hours

16. break everything down into small chunks

don't make a goal like 'bath', make a goal like 'remove clothes'

do not make a goal like 'brush', make a goal like, 'touch the brush'

every goal must be as small and simple as possible, you will end up doing more than the simple task you planned most of the time, and it is better than nothing

17. Five-Second Rule

Spot the moment you have an impulse to act on a goal or task before your brain starts making excuses.

Count backward specifically from 5-4-3-2-1 to interrupt your habit of overthinking and focus your mind.

Physically move the second you reach "1" to kickstart your momentum and break through task paralysis.

>HOW TO IMPLEMENT THESE TIPS:

> only add 1 tip from this list to your life in 2 WEEKS, if it is not automatic in 2 weeks, give it 1 month.

>only after the implementation of 1 tip feels easy, implement another tip.

>if you are wondering what tip helped me the most, it is 'same wake up time and light therapy for 10-15 minutes immediately after waking up', nothing comes close for me

ok so this started as a joke and now it's the only thing that works.

i was doing the classic — standing in the kitchen for 20 minutes, fully aware of the dishes, brain refusing to send the signal. you know the wall. knowing exactly what you need to do and just... not.

so out of pure self-mockery i went, in a david attenborough voice:

"here we observe the ADHDer in its natural habitat. it approaches the sink. remarkable."

and my body just??? did the dishes???

been doing it a week now:

• "the creature attempts laundry, a task it has avoided for four days"
• "against all odds, it opens the email"
• "it has been distracted by its phone. a tragic setback. but wait — it returns"

i think it works because the task becomes content for the bit, so my brain gets the dopamine from the joke instead of demanding it from the task. also you cannot take the wall seriously while attenborough is talking.

it's free, it's stupid, and it works like 70% of the time, which by my standards is a miracle.

someone try this and report back. and what's the dumbest trick that actually works for your brain?

so i'm standing in the kitchen at 11pm and i have this incredibly clear, specific thought. it's a good one. maybe the best one i've had all week. it connects two things i'd been stuck on for months and i can see the whole shape of it, start to finish.

i do not write it down.

i think about writing it down. i look at my phone. i decide the thought is too big and complete and obvious to forget. i think, there's no way i lose this one. this one is different.

(it is not different.)

by the time i reach the bedroom it's just... texture. a feeling that i had a thought. like trying to remember a dream where you can only remember that it was vivid. i stand there for a second doing that thing where you retrace your steps mentally, except the steps are entirely internal and they lead nowhere.

the worst part isn't forgetting it. the worst part is knowing, with full certainty, that i'm going to do this again tomorrow. that i have already done this hundreds of times. that somewhere in my life there is a graveyard of thoughts i was absolutely sure i would remember.

i downloaded four notes apps this year. i have used them to write: two grocery lists, a reminder to call someone i never called, and the word "umbrella" with no context.

the thought always feels too alive to trap in a phone screen. and then it's just gone. and i'm left standing in a room i walked into for a reason i no longer have.

:c

I call this the 'N-of-1 randomized, single-blind crossover trial'

how it works:

Have someone else prepare capsules and give them to you while your eyes are closed, you swallow them at the same time daily, tell them to mark on which days they gave you placebo and which days they gave you meds.

Some days: medicine

Some days: placebo

You don't know which is which, only they know.

Randomize the order.

Example:

day 1,5,9,12 = med

day 2,3,4,6,7,8 = placebo

ideally, do 30 days of placebo, 30 days of meds.

Only after collecting data does your friend/partner/parent reveal which was medication and which was placebo.

This removes a huge amount of expectancy bias.

then do X-CPT each day at the same time

Same laptop

Same room

same desk

Same time (e.g. 5 PM)

no caffeine

you can choose any app or any website for X-CPT, it's free, I use the 'focus pro' website

then at the end, after recording your scores on each day and knowing which is placebo and which is med

compare the scores with each other and average them, this measures sustained focus

Record potential confounders each day:

Hours of sleep

Time the capsule was taken

Time of testing

Illness or unusual stress

Whether you guessed you received medication that day

note: this only works for STIMULANTS (amphetamines and methylphenidate), it won't work for atomoxetine and bupropion

I have ADHD and possibly autism (highly suspected by my treatment providers but I don’t want to pay to get officially diagnosed). My job is very systems oriented so I naturally good at it and it feeds my need for affirmation. I also work with vulnerable populations so I deeply care about my work. That being said, I get into a hyperfocus mode where I am really good at my job but it’s awful for me. I don’t take my breaks and I just burn myself to the ground. I know I need to take breaks because then I can fill my cup and do the things I need to be healthy. The thing is I can’t stop. I’m so locked in that I will literally bleed myself dry of all energy and be useless for my family. I’ve tried alarms to signal me that it’s break time but that doesn’t seem to work either. I have a pattern of burning myself out so completely that I have large mental health repercussions where I have to take medical leave, and I just don’t want to do that anymore because I know what I need to do take care of myself but I just can’t seem to access it.

Anyone else have this? And how did you break the cycle? All insight is very appreciated.