In the beginning of 2024, I have been diagnosed with ADHD. Since then, I started treatment with medicine and therapy. I also wrote a 4-week update about my treatment.
Over time, I developed a few strategies to cope with ADHD.
Since I work with technology, I have also acquired several products and services that help me cope. They are listed below.
Microsoft To-Do
I use Microsoft To-Do to keep track of tasks. I like it because it’s very simple, it’s multiplatform, so I can see and check tasks from my phone, my computer and my watch. Since it integrates well with Siri, I can add tasks simply by saying ‘Hey Siri, remind me to X’, which helps me keep track of things. I specifically add tasks to my to-do list as I’m starting them, because that will help me remember to finish if I get distracted.
Wallet with Key Ring
I bought a wallet with an attached keyring that allows me to carry my badge, car and house keys, wallet, and an AirTag all together, making it hard for me to lose things.
S-biner carabiners
I have a lot of S-biner carabiners. I use them to attach things to my backpack and to each other, so I have only one bundle of items to keep track of.
Ray-Ban Meta Sunglasses
The Ray-Ban Meta works as sunglasses, a headset and as reading glasses. It also has a camera, which I use quite a lot, and an AI that I don’t use as much yet.
Kindle Scribe
I always carry a Kindle Scribe. I had (and lost) many notebooks and loose sheets of paper. The Kindle Scribe is an e-ink notebook that feels like a real notebook, but has a lot of capacity. I can also carry academic papers on it. I used to have a reMarkable 2 but I changed to the Kindle Scribe because it solves a few more of my use cases.
Pillbox
I use a pillbox to organize my vitamins and medications. I usually forget whether I took the medication or not a few hours after the time I was supposed to take it, so I use the pillbox to keep track of whether I took it or not.
Coping Strategies
I also have a few coping strategies that I use to manage my symptoms. I will list them below:
Multiple open projects
As counterintuitive as it may seem, I usually have multiple projects going on at the same time. The way this works is that when I’m working on a project and get distracted, the distraction usually comes from another project (like an email or a meeting), so I switch to that project. This way, I’m still being productive.
Log activities as I start them
I got the habit (or routine) of logging most activities as I start executing them. This helps me when I eventually get distracted, because I can go back to the log and see what I was doing before I got distracted. I use Siri and Microsoft To-Do to log activities, as described in the Coping Technologies section.
Plan activities I don’t want to start
I learned this technique recently. When I realize that I haven’t been productive and my day is a “bad day”, instead of trying to concentrate and do more, I go into planning mode. I essentially give up trying to do things, I start just planning and preparing things. If I’m trying to download 100 images and keep getting distracted, I would instead just list the websites that I want to download the images from, create the the Azure storage to receive it, etc. I may call this productive avoidance.