adhders shouldn't have to be constantly searching for productivity hacks on Instagram or Tik Tok or here on YouTube we shouldn't have to constantly ask ourselves if we're actually trying hard enough or if we are just lazy we shouldn't have to feel defined by our productivity or lack thereof and we shouldn't have to do any of that and we do we live in the world we live in and my goal is to change that world but also help you survive it until that change does come our bills relationships parenting and more is affected by our productivity it shouldn't be we should have way more support and way less dire consequences for when we lack productivity but that's not how things are right now so I want to teach you the productivity hacks that you need to work with your ADHD brain hi there my name is Megan and this is the neuroc Curiosity Club the only YouTube channel that I know of that is specific specifically made for people who think they might be autistic they might be ADHD they might be both but they're just not sure let's get curious about our brains together all right ADHD productivity hack number one is visual timers so a lot of adhders experience something that used to be referred to as time blindness although the Blind and Visually Impaired Community has asked us to move away from that term so instead a lot of us have started using the terms misperception of time or nonlinear understanding of time and what this is how this works is basically it's like being colorblind but with time instead of color it's not that we aren't checking the clock often enough or that we are late because we don't care it's that we do not perceive the passage of time in a linear way this is unfortunate because even though there is lots of interesting research about the passage of time and how it's actually far less linear than we think we live in a society that practices linear time and expects people to perceive time linearly and so we end up being late to things missing things entirely forgetting about things or rushing out the door at the last minute or in order to prevent all of that we end up in something called waiting mode this is where you have an appointment at 3:00 p.m. it's 9:00 a.m. and you can't do anything because you are so terrified of missing that appointment at 3:00 so you just kind of sit around afraid to get too engaged with anything so I love my visual timer but uh so does my four-year-old so I'm not totally sure where it is right now but this is what they look like this is a really cute rainbow one that I kind of wish I had but mine's just pink and purple and normal and it's fine um but visual timers basically allow you to set a timer and then as the time passes the colored section slowly starts to disappear in order to show you what passing time actually looks like I primarily use my visual timer in two main ways number one is to overcome the inertia that keeps me from starting a task in my head things take so much longer than they really take most of the time like cleaning the kitchen feels like a 4H hour thing for me but when I actually do it it usually only takes about 15 or 20 minutes but no matter how many times I clean the kitchen for some reason my expectation of how long it's going to take stays at 4 hours and that creates a lot of inertia a lot of resistance for me I don't want to start a 4-Hour task so what I'll do is I'll set my timer for a full hour which is the longest amount of time it can measure and I'll just start working and then when I finish I hit the little pause button on top and I look at the time and I see how long it took and I just I'm trying to train my brain that way to accept that this only takes 20 minutes and not 4 hours because it's not sinking in without the visual element but I'm hoping with the visual element over time I will start to absorb the knowledge that this only takes 20 minutes the second way that I use this is to kind of trick myself into working more or doing something for longer so basically I'll set the timer for 5 minutes and say you only have to do 5 minutes just 5 minutes and and then you're allowed to be done but the thing is the way a lot of ADHD brains work mine included is that uh we have a difficult time starting things but we also have a difficult time stopping things we have an inertia problem and um if I set my timer for 5 minutes and I tell myself I only have to do five minutes but then that 5 minute Mark hits and I'm in the middle of something I will likely keep going and finish whatever is I'm working on in order to get to like a good stopping point if that makes sense um so this can like trick me into working more than 5 minutes by saying I'm only going to work 5 minutes it's a little bit of self- reverse psychology ADHD productivity hack number two is body doubling if you haven't heard of body doubling yet you need to it is so helpful especially for ADH deers what is body doubling it's basically when other people just exist around you while you're trying to be productive these people don't have to help you with your task heck they don't even have to be doing anything productive themselves they just have to exist in your space this could mean your partner sits in your office with you just scrolling on their phone while you try to get a YouTube video edited or it could mean that you call your sister and you both kind of sit on the phone in silence while you do your taxes together now I would say that this only works because I'm such an extrovert and I just like love being around people but the ADHD Community actually seems to be pretty much in agreement on this that this is really helpful for many of us introvert or extrovert ADHD productivity hack number three is procras working if you absolutely cannot stand the task that you're supposed to be doing and you cannot make yourself do it no matter how many of these hacks you try there's a really nice SL terrible thing about being an adult and that is there's always more [ __ ] to do don't want to clean out the garage how about you do some meal prep laundry sounds like a nightmare maybe it's time to go through the mail this doesn't always work if the task that you want to avoid is time sensitive but if it's just another one of those tasks that yeah it needs done and it probably needs done soon but I can convince myself to get into work mode by working on something else first again we have an inertia problem if you can overcome that not through sheer force of will because that's nonsense but if we can overcome that by doing something that has a lower barrier to entry because it interests us more or it just sounds less terrible for some reason do that ADHD productivity hack number four write a to-do list but only five items the problem so many adhders have with to-do lists is that they quickly spiral out of control and lead to so much overwhelm that we end up doing nothing I am the queen of this my to-do lists are like 40 items long and like part of me expects myself to get this done in like 2 days I'm one person one person taking care of three little humans and managing a household and running a business like and I have 8hd it's not going to happen so when I look at my 40 item to-do list I just feel discouraged so what I've started doing is making five item to-do lists I don't try to pick the most important things by the way or try to do them in the most efficient order like oh okay I'll have a 40 item to-do list and I'll just chunk it up into five and I'll go in order of like the most important and then the most urgent and then you know all of that with like the Eisenhower Matrix I don't do any of that I just write down the first five things that come to mind that I know need done again this won't always work if you do have time-sensitive things that need done and you do need to find ways to prioritize them but in unless something is truly times sensitive don't arbitrarily make it time sensitive do things in an order that feels good I think this is something that comes up a lot for adhders so like autistic and ADHD folks the autistic part of our brain really wants to do things the most efficient way like I don't know about you but for me that's a huge part of my autism is like I get so stuck when I can't do things the most efficient way and this kind of list helps me break out of that because it's like okay I'm just going to write down five things that come to mind and it's like but what if that's not the most efficient order it's more efficient to start than to do nothing that has been a huge breakthrough for me and that leads to ADHD productivity hack number five do it inefficiently sometimes I go out of my way to do a task or a series of tasks in the most inefficient way why would I do that you ask and it's because I get so stuck and hung up on doing things efficiently that sometimes it's helpful to be like no I'm going to do this in the most backwards kind of way that I can let's say I know I need to work out well in my head that means okay I need to work out that means I need to shower after I work out I can't shower until I work out and then I get stuck right I get stuck in this Loop of I have to work out I have to work out I have to work out I have to work out if I don't work out I can't shower and I really want to shower cuz I feel gross but I can't work out because I feel gross and I just get so stuck so what I will do is I'll shower first and then I'll work out which makes no goddamn sense right no sense at all completely nonsensical but I actually go work out whereas I wouldn't go work out before and then I wouldn't shower and then the next day would come and I would get stuck in the same Loop and I would go far too long without showering like I would just be uncomfortable and why am I doing this to myself when I could just do it inefficiently ADHD productivity hack number six throw your distraction what do I mean by this I mean literally take whatever is distracting you and Chuck it across the room now this is not me advocating for you to throw your laptop across the room so please don't take it that way but what I mean is whatever is distracting you get it physically away from you for me this does sometimes look like physically throwing my phone I mean I gently toss it onto a blanket or something I don't just like Chuck it at the wall but I do physically throw my phone a little bit away from me just so that I can like Escape its grip this is another example of reducing the barriers to getting started with whatever it is you want to get done distractions serve as barriers because ADH deers often have trouble regulating our attention it's not that we have a deficit it's that we have a regulation issue so if there are four things that we can see that we want to do but the task we need to do we can't physically see we're going to run into a lot of barriers because we're going to have to get through all of those visual cues to do something more interesting now if we can remove those visual cues by say throwing your phone gently onto a blanket that's slightly out of sight you're going to reduce the barriers ADHD productivity hack number seven is June bugging now I did not invent June bugging I found it on Tumblr back in the day actually and I will go ahead and tag in the description the link to the original post so that the original creator of the term gets full credit so wait what is June bugging it's a cleaning strategy that works exceptionally well for ADHD folks but also anyone else who struggles with executive functioning the gist is this basically June bugs when they try to get through a screen door they kind of pick a spot and then they'll like Adventure away but then they come back and they Adventure away and then they come back it's like they think this spot is how they're going to get through the screen somehow but they keep like looking for other Alternatives our brains work much the same way if we gently focus them on one task right so let's say you're trying to clean your bedroom way too big of an area that would be like if the June bug was like I'm just going to try to get through this whole door you know no the June bug picks a specific spot and so should you so instead of your whole bedroom maybe you're just like okay the top of my dresser is a wreck I just want to clean the top of my dresser okay so that's your specific spot you're going to keep coming back to you but let's say you're looking at the top of your dresser and there's some clothes so you go to the closet to put those away and in the closet you find an old purse and you go through it because you know you left something important in there that you forgot about and so you find the important thing but you also find some concert tickets and that reminds you you were going to make a really cool shadow box for all the concerts you've been to so you pull out your phone and you get on Amazon you start searching for shadow boxes do you see the problem this happens to so many of us and it makes cleaning really hard what June bugging does is it basically gives you permission to get distracted but it also encourages you to gently return to your area without shame when you find yourself on Amazon searching for shadow boxes instead of saying well I'm already this far I might as well keep going don't get into the sunk cost fallacy just acknowledge that you're not doing what you set out to do and that's okay set down your phone and return to the top of your dresser if you want to learn more about June bugging and how to implement it as an ADHD I have a whole module on it in my get [ __ ] done program which you can check out more about in the description below ADHD productivity hack number eight is EFT tapping so if you haven't heard of EFT tapping at first it's going to sound very out there but I'm telling you it is scientific supported both according to traditional Chinese medicine and traditional Western medicine so EFT stands for emotional Freedom techniques and EFT tapping is when you tap really specific spots mostly on your face um while talking yourself through a difficult emotion my therapist likes to say it's kind of like an exposure exercise you expose yourself to really difficult or frustrating emotions that you would normally bottle up or repress or you know project onto other people and instead you really allow yourself to feel them which can feel deeply scary but because you're tapping these really specific spots you actually are calm while you're going through the difficult emotion instead of getting really amped up the way this works according to traditional Chinese medicine is that the places you're tapping are Meridian points where energy tends to get stuck and the thesis of traditional Chinese medicine is that the flow of energy is what keeps us healthy and happy and so by tapping these areas you are encouraging Flow by the way I'm not a traditional Chinese medicine expert that's just like my paraphrasing my understanding of how it works if you have a better understanding of traditional Chinese medicine please please please share what you know about EFT tapping in the comments according to Western medicine the spots that you're tapping help stimulate the vagus nerve and it helps stimulate your parasympathetic nervous system which is the part of your nervous system that helps you calm down it's like the anti fighter flight so as you tap these spots you're getting calmer and calmer which helps you deal with a difficult emotion through a calm lens instead of through a distorted very high emotion lens so what does this have to do with productivity exactly everything literally everything emotions are amazing and I don't think they're bad at all but they can very much get in the way of getting [ __ ] done because our emotions demand to be felt and when we refuse to do that it's kind of like sticking some gum in the gears right everything just kind of gets stuck and it's really hard to move forward even with non-emotional tasks because part of your brain is using tons of energy to shove your emotions away so when we take the time to process our emotions especially through something like EFT tapping where you can do so without getting super super amped up and freaked out um something that helps you feel calm and feel your difficult emotions it can help the gears keep moving forward so you can do some EFT on a difficult emotion and then you're like okay I have brain power freed up in order to do this like basic cleaning task and ADHD productivity hack number nine is to celebrate your wins as you go the ADHD reward system in our brains does not work the same as a non ADHD reward system delayed gratification just isn't very much a thing for us and I don't mean that in a super like entitled Millennial kind of way like give me what I want right now it's not like that it's that the way dopamine releases in our brain is different compared to the way dopamine releases in a non-adhd brain we can work really hard at something over a long period of time and we can get it done but at the end of it we don't feel gratified we don't get that burst of dopamine that non adhders get we know we should be proud of ourselves we know we should feel good but the chemistry in our brain just isn't lining up with that over time this can really wear us down and like I'm getting a little emotional talking about it because it sucks to work so hard at something and then not even feel like it was worth it at the end even though everyone says they're so proud of you and you objectively know you did something cool but you just kind of feel meh and eventually when this happens enough you start to feel like what's the point in doing anything the best way to combat this is with continuous rewards instead of just one big reward at the end every time you make just a little bit of progress toward your goal I want you to freaking celebrate and by the way celebrating yourself and celebrating your effort doesn't have to look like spending money if money is tight and you're like well I can't celebrate myself yes you can this can be as simple as wrapping yourself in hug and swaying back and forth and just telling yourself I am doing so good I'm so proud this can help release some oxytocin which isn't dopamine but still is a feel good hormone and can really help us keep going so those are my nine ADHD productivity hacks and if you want to learn more or if you want to interact with a community of people who are also trying to be more productive and work with their brain and not against it I really hope you will go to the description and check out the get [ __ ] done program it is the only program that I'm aware of that incorporates both emotional skills and practical skills alongside a community in order to help people People Like Us get more done oh and if you're seeing this before March 18th we're starting a live round which means I am teaching all of the lessons live in addition to weekly group coaching with me so you get 2 hours of time with me every single week for 17 weeks but if it's after March 18th please don't stress you can still join the program is still incredible and I can't wait to see you there that's all for me today I will see you all next time