6 Mindset and Behavioural Hacks for High-Performing ADHD’ers

Life-changing hacks I wrote in early 2024 about how to thrive despite having an Inattentive-type ADHD.

(1) Too much on your plate? “Recharge” instead of “Destress”

You cannot avoid stress if you want to achieve lots of things. What you can do is recharge yourself by making a pause, retrospect, and resolution so you can handle healthily these things that stress you out. Instead of going through the same pattern again, look at what you think can be improved as you face those things again — Is it how you manage your time? Is it because apparently you have previously formed a habit that turns out an anti-pattern* to what you are doing now? Maybe a simple “you just failed to get proper rest” made these things stressful, etc. One thing for sure is once you have a resolution the moment you start things again, you probably won’t need a break at all because it’s already too easy to handle these things.

*This is a software engineering terminology.

(2) Obligated to learn things? Have a Teacher or a Coach’s attitude.

Learning things can be overwhelming especially when we are obligated to do it — e.g. studying to get a license, reviewing requirements at work, learning at school, etc. Then, because the mental demand is too much, you don’t realize that you have stopped learning them or procrastinated. You probably have moments telling yourself “Oh, I need to take a break.” Yet that break took hours. Then days. Until you just stopped learning at all. Only until you were reminded that you are obliged to do it. Then it becomes a cycle of procrastination.

But there is one technique that makes this less overwhelming. This is by having a teacher or coach attitude when learning things. When there’s too much information, having a teacher or coach attitude automatically prompts you to sort new information in a way that you are wired to make it make sense for potentially sharing what you have learned with another person. This makes learning less mentally demanding because instead of focusing on “being obliged to learn it”, you are now focused on sorting things out.

*We hate the idea of “authority” or being boxed into a system.

(3) Forgot things again? It’s definitely the “Object Permanence Deficiency.”

The concept of “Object Permanence Deficiency” is unique to the “Inattentive” type of ADHDers which makes it hard for you to manage things if it’s outside your peripheral — and I mean it literally. Not because you are blinded by its non-existence but because there are too many things that pop into your mind that have a tendency for you to forget things.

What you can do is design a fool-proof and fail-proof habit by making a structured and compact system for each thing you are doing and making sure that you are religiously doing and updating them. If it feels too much updating it religiously, then maybe restructure that system you have made. The key here is it should be easy and effective — and only you know your cadence to create a routine that suits you.

(4) Angry? Write a poem.

There are times that you get really angry. That reacting only makes things worse. There are times when the best thing to do is not react at all. But this is difficult especially when you get so emotional. You need some release, right? Emotional dumping is valid but what if you dump them to the wrong person? It will make it worse. The healthiest and safest way is to write your emotions down as a poem. If you are not a writer, you can express it to any artistic expression. Trust me it works. It also help you realize your truest feeling i.e. are you really angry? or are you just hurt?

(5) Frightened after a success? Take a breath, maybe you are just “fibbing.”

Ok. Calm down. People are celebrating. But you think you made a mistake. You think you missed something. Oh dear, you might be fibbing.

New things can make you happy — well, ADHDer’s loves novelty. But if your goal is really to thrive, it is for sure that you would commit to a thing that has a significant impact. Of course, a significant impact comes with a significant list of problems. And tied in with this is that not all problems are handy to solve — which makes the struggle more painful. Thus it can get overwhelming once you are there doing the work. That the feeling of being overwhelmed lingers despite being able to pull it off and deemed successful by people. They start celebrating while you are there frightened. You start thinking “wait, what if this is not right?”, “it feels like we missed something, it took too easy!?”, etc. It feels like the struggle is not ending. Which is by the way, not totally not true, but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it. Don’t let this anxiety consume and shift your energy, especially the efforts you already made that made things happen.

Read this article: Fight, Flight, Freeze… and Fib

(6) Messy mind? Walk and write to hold and articulate thoughts, respectively.

Disclaimer: This is based on what has been the most effective for me. Not everyone is a writing person and more of a verbal person.

Walking helped me hold my thoughts for a long period of time without getting distracted, while writing helps me articulate these thoughts better. Using the concept of mind mapping while going through what’s on your mind can be also helpful. The most important thing you have to do here is to decide which of the thoughts is the key idea. Then starting from the key idea, decide (1) which are irrelevant — forget about them and (2) which are relevant — make sure you hold them long in your mind.