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How do I know my meds are working?

Mar 20, 2014

People often ask me how I know my medication is working and how I know I will need it forever. They are especially interested because I haven't taken a medication "holiday" since the summer after my sophomore year in high school. The answer is simple. Every once in a while, a pill gets stuck in the pill container or I get distracted and don't take a dose when I mean to. The latter happened today.

I will post again shortly on how I manage my meds on a daily basis, but for the purpose of this post all you need to know is that my alarm went off at 11am today. I was upstairs putting something away and when I came down to take my pills, I must have gotten distracted. 1:42 minutes later, I was

Generally lethargic, bored, and tired.
I was totally unmotivated to work out (even though it was on my calendar.)
I had also struggled to stay focused during a consultation at 11:30 and to use my working memory to schedule a session for next month.
Today was the day that I planned to file my "To File" stack. I got through my personal stack with great difficulty and quit before I got to the work stack. And, I avoided making any new folders that needed to be made because It seemed like "a lot of effort."
I ate lunch 3 times, because my brain was seeking stimulation in the form of salty yummy cheesy goodness.
I ultimately settled on watching The Following on the DVR, but even that wasn't stimulating enough so I was playing Angry Birds Star Wars II while watching.

At 12:42 I realized I wasn't medicated and took my pills. 38 minutes later, I mysteriously got off the couch and came in here to bang out the blog post I promised myself I was going to write today. Coincidence? I think not!

Off to work out!

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Barely saving my sanity...

Mar 17, 2014

With a baby due in a matter of weeks and a very very busy couple of weeks for my business. There are a few things that are helping me keep myself together.

Exercise. I've actually been pushing myself harder and going longer. It has helped me center myself and let go of stress and anger.
Communication. Game-planning with my wife and sharing responsibilities has been key.
Making time for social interaction has helped me 'reset' myself and not spiral down.
Really relying on my list of things to do. I added a third list for baby-related stuff. I check them regularly and have managed to be productive through the stress instead of succumbing to it.

Not tooting my horn, just hope to share some wisdom. Hope it is helpful

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I was just thinking...

Mar 13, 2014

This will be the shortest post ever. I have been super busy with new clients, excellent speaking engagements, and getting ready for our second child's arrival. As a matter of momentum I feel it is important to continue to post something regularly. So,here it is...

Since we know that exercise produces dopamine and we need dopamine to concentrate, I wonder if our (sometimes) hyperactivity is an evolutionary response to our ADHD.

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Executive Functioning Masterpice

Feb 25, 2014

Last week was my off week from coaching, usually a week to dig in at the computer and do some of the running my business stuff I need to do. This month, however, I took the week off from "work" to get the house squared away for our second child, who is due in early April. I was building a nursery, reorganizing our oldest's play area, moving rooms around, buying stuff at Ikea, putting that Ikea stuff together, getting some local kids to move furniture for (with) me, coordinating my mom to come in and paint, etc. etc. etc... All while not killing anyone, or throwing any power tools out the window.

I didn't think much of this process in terms of my ADHD until I was discussing it with one of my clients yesterday. Turns out it was an executive function masterpiece! I point this out not to "pump my own tires" but to illustrate that it is possible for any of us with ADHD to learn the EF skills to make a huge project like this manageable. It was not easy or fun, but more or less went according to plan.

I guess the key point here is that THERE WAS A PLAN for it to go according to. Any minute I spent planning, either by myself or with my wife was saved three fold in the doing of all this. Here are a few highlights that can be good templates for all of us. In no particular order...

I know that transitioning my attention to write stuff down when I'm doing really intensive planning is hard for me. So, during the planning process I walked around the rooms in our house with a tape measure and my wife had a pen and paper. Also, at Ikea, I did the same thing. She wrote down the bin no.'s and such.
I had a detailed plan before we went to Ikea. Detailed in the sense that we had objectives like under-bed storage for my son's room, something to contain his art supplies etc. This allowed us to know exactly what we were looking for... without exactly knowing what we were looking for, if you understand what I mean. I did have some ideas of specific pieces that I was looking for, but if I had waited until I had an exact list, we never would have gone.
By having a list and specific objectives it also keeps us from buying things that we don't want an don't need. Believe it or not, we aren't going to have to return anything!
I had no idea how long it was going to take me to do all the stuff that I needed to do this past week to get ready for the baby. So, I didn't do it during my last off week before the due date. That would have been cutting it close and would have resulted in a much higher stress level over the next month. Basically, I have another half day's worth of work to do, which can easily be taken care of over the next month. Me + planning well ahead = Me + much more relaxed!

So, again, I don't point all of this out to pat myself on the back. Anyone who has know me for a while knows that all of this is made possible by the work I have done overcome my ADHD-related EF issues. I don't think I could have handled this the way I did, say 10 years ago. But by taking baby steps forward, organizing commercial kitchens, planning moves, starting my own business, etc., I've taught myself the skills. And, if I can do it, you can to!

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Food shopping, cooking, prep & my fridge!

Feb 14, 2014

So... I've noticed that many people with organizational issues (with or without ADHD) struggle with the daily or weekly grind of buying the right food, planning meals, and executing them. I have a bunch of strategies around this topic and though I'd share them with y'all. Many of them were born of my experience running professional kitchens, but are all super-helpful and super-relevant at home too.

Food Shopping:

The first point is that you need to have some sort of regularly scheduled time that you do the weekly shopping. It needs to be a time that everyone in the household knows about. (Read: deadline to get what you want!)
Keep a magnetized list on the fridge that is big enough to hold your whole weeks shopping list on one page.
Keep a pen (that writes on vertical surfaces) in top of the fridge or right next to the list.
Write things on the list when you realize you aren't going to have enough to get through the current week and the next week. (NOT WHEN THE BOX IS EMPTY!)
If you go to two different stores like we do, use two pages of the list.
Make the list in sections. For example, produce at the top, frozen food at the bottom.
Even try making it in the order of the isles if you know the store well. (This really helps with our not-so-great working memory. It's nice to go down the list in order.)
Have a powwow before the night before or morning of going to the store. Move round the kitchen or house in a a specific order looking for visual clues of things that might have been forgotten.
While making the list decide on lunches and dinners for the week, and buy the right food.
Don't go shopping when you are super-hungry.
Unless you have 3 teenage football players, avoid Costco, etc. No one needs that many artichokes—I promise you!
Try to only buy what you are going to eat in a week to 10 days. (I'll post a pic of my fridge on Friday morning, if I can figure out how. We go shopping Saturday morning.) This is more or less what your fridge should look like when you go shopping.
My picture brings up another great point. As you can see, something spilled in the fridge this week. By really cleaning out the food every week, it is super easy to clean up real quick, make sure the older stuff gets used first and nothing rots in the back corner.
Don't fall in to the "infinite possibilities" land of delusion. You don't need 4 different kinds of jelly to choose from every morning or 7 kinds of salad dressing. I think you can commit to one for at least a week, if not how long it takes you to use the jar/bottle. (This is the reason no one needs that many artichokes. You will get sick of artichokes before you get half way through the jar!)
Get used to not buying anything that isn't on the list. Unless it is the thing that you eat everyday for breakfast, you know you are out, and you just forgot to put it on the list, avoid temptation. If your'e not sure you have one at home, you probably do. If it isn't in your eating plan for the week, you don't need it.

Food shopping seems to have been a longer post than I had expected. More on cooking, meal planning, etc coming soon.

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Let your ADHD fly free... when it is appropriate!

Feb 14, 2014

I work very hard to keep the distraction monster at bay most of the time. But, once in a while I let him in to play. I have had a very very busy three weeks with my business. I have plenty of work to do today, but none is urgent, and I have no clients. So when I woke up I spent a few lazy minutes with my son before mom took him to school. Then I watched a few minutes of Sweden v. Switzerland. (Olympic hockey.) Then I chose not to shave and that time... and then some in the warm shower to think about how I should prepare for the zombie apocalypse. (I know. I watch and read too much SciFi.)

The point is that this morning was a rare low stress, low pressure, no deadline time. I managed to find a middle-ground between staying in my PJs and watching hockey all day and diving right in to the office, which would probably lead to me staring at the computer unproductively for quite a while or burning out and being done for the day at noon.

I guess, what I hope you take away from this is that there is voice in your head that will tell you to stay on the couch all day. There may also be a voice that says, "GO, GO, GO!" Seems pretty black and white, right? It doesn't have to be either extreme. If the real you is telling yourself that you need a little break, take it. Come back refreshed and ready to kick ass!

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