Tag: executive function

backuppixiedust:

sometimesyouhavetobebrave:

mememic-bry:

mememic-bry:

mememic-bry:

executive dysfunction is telling yourself for two and a half hours that you need to shower bc you smell like your workplace and you absolutely Cannot do Anything Else until you shower, doing Any Other Thing before showering is illegal!!! but you still haven’t for some reason??? you’ve just been sitting on your bed in a towel scrolling tumblr for 2+ hours thinking “I need to shower right now immediately” and growing increasingly frustrated that you are still not clean and you haven’t eaten or done your laundry either

ok actually no I’m reblogging this because a) I am clean now (and I smell amazing, thank you), and b) I had a heckin Realize and I wanted to share it with y’all in the hopes it’ll help someone else with a brain like mine.

I figured something out about myself a long time ago– it’s only just now occurred to me that I was in fact solving a problem caused by executive dysfunction, and I haven’t been implementing this solution lately because my brain went “that’s a relatively new term to me and therefore a Different problem that requires a Different solution”. thanks a lot, brain.

anyway, long long ago, before I knew these fancy schmancy Official words, the problem, as I phrased it to myself, was such: 

sometimes I get Stuck. I was doing something, or on my way to doing something, and then… I just. got stuck.

“Stuck” looks like refreshing my feed or dashboard repeatedly. or it looks like staring at a spot on the wall. or chewing my fingernails. or picking at a stubborn sticker. all the while, my brain drifts through various unrelated topics I wouldn’t be able to recall if asked. sometimes I can get Stuck for hours before realizing I am Stuck. sometimes I get so Stuck that I go to bed that way (feeling especially bad for being unproductive) and I have to just reset everything by sleeping.

one day I asked myself, “why is this happening? why am I stuck, right now, at this moment in time?” the answer, as it turns out, was pretty simple: I was trying to make a decision, and I got distracted. I haven’t moved forward because I haven’t answered that one question or made up my mind.

let me rephrase this in terms of executive dysfunction: many people have expressed that it feels like knowing you need to do a thing but not feeling “ready” to do it. many with ADHD may also be familiar with the feeling of needing things to be “just so” before you embark on a task- you need your setup to look a certain way, or you need to set a timer, or have the right music playing, etc.

when I get Stuck it’s often because I got lost somewhere in that setting-up process, and my brain took the opportunity to nyoom off into Distraction Town.

getting myself Unstuck is solved, 95% of the time, by tracing my steps back to the original decision I was trying to make- often something small and inane- and then troubleshooting from there. (out loud! verbal processing is totally punk.) 

  • “what was I trying to do?” 
  • “was I trying to decide between two things?” 
  • (the answer’s usually yes.) 
  • “what were they?” 
  • “okay, let’s decide. 
  • “okay, that’s settled. let’s move on.”
  • and then I am free as a bird to nyoom in the direction of The Thing I Wanted To Do All Along, in the amazingly disorganized, scattered, yet rapid-fire way that I do many things.

so!!! in the case of my first post, where I hadn’t showered for 2 hours? turns out I had been trying to decide what music to listen to in the shower. (another hack: my chances of getting Stuck while showering decrease by 75% if I have music playing to help me keep track of time.) I couldn’t immediately make up my mind, got lost in thought, got distracted, and drifted. once I stopped and asked- “why am I stuck?”-  then I remembered- “oh yeah! I wanted to listen to music”-  and then decided- “I want to listen to Daft Punk’s Discovery album”- I was finally heckin able to shower. and also eat, and also throw my clothes in the dryer.

and may I add I only zoned out once, during the slow part of “One More Time.” 😛

I’m not saying this is a foolproof method. sometimes I don’t have a reason for being stuck, and that’s okay! I’m also not saying this is how every adhd brain works. it’s just how my brain works, and I’m sure there’s at least a few who can relate. for those few, I hope this helps!!

a lot of people are reblogging the original post without the update and leaving frustrated comments and that makes me sad! if I can find ways to hack my brain than so can you! executive dysfunction is a real and frustrating challenge, but don’t buy the lie that there’s no way to work with it or around it!!!

!!!!

This sounds really useful and for some reason, I’m also really happy to find out that I’m not the only person who uses music to keep track of time

ruffboijuliaburnsides:

theotherguysride:

taraljc:

robowolves:

biohazerd:

My biggest pet peeve is being talked to AS SOON as i wake up.
I hate that shit.
Stop tryin to communicate with me.
Stop askin me questions.
Im tryna understand the universe all over again dont talk to me yet ur gonna confuse me and piss me off.

⚠️ MORNING PEOPLE DO NOT INTERACT! ⚠️

I tell people that I am not a morning person and what they hear is ‘I purposely chose to stay up til the wee hours and then it’s my own fault for not getting enough sleep when I am awakened at a normal time when normal people should be up, and I just need to correct this failing to live a happier life’.

What I am ACTUALLY telling them is ‘I have delayed sleep phase disorder, where in my circadian rhythm is different from theirs and my brain does not produce melatonin the way theirs does. When I am forced to get up before I have had a full 9 hours sleep–especially if I am awakened during sleep cycle–I am working at an extremely reduced ability level and will be unable to work at my peak efficiency and effectiveness until the afternoon.

‘As a result, I may rely on caffeine and other stimulants for the first 5 hours of the day, which also contributes to insomnia, and burnout in the late afternoon means I may snack on carbs for the energy boost. It is the equivalent of having permanent jet lag such as when you are 5 hours off from everyone around you.

‘It is not something that can be cured, only a condition to manage, and requires the people around me to make reasonable accommodations such as not trying to force me to interact with them and be decisional when I first wake up.

‘I also have ADHD, which means I have difficulty working when there is noise and chatter preventing me from being able to concentrate. I need calm quiet to be able to do my best work, and the only time I actually have calm quiet is when the rest of the world is asleep.

‘During the day, I artificially create this quiet during the day, using noise-cancelling headphones when I am forced to work in a noisy environment, or by working alone in a quiet space. And when you deny me that quiet, I expend a tremendous amount of energy just trying to focus. And I am much more likely to miss steps, or make errors, affecting the quality of my work as well as how long it takes me to complete.’

And what people hear is ‘I am lazy and unwilling to change,’ when in reality THEY are the ones unwilling to change because it is inconvenient, or requires them to be considerate of others.

So, yeah. I am not a morning person.

Hey op

*are you me?*

This. ThisthisthisThisTHISTHISTHIS.

all of thiiiiiis.

Hi hi it’s me that description is me. I say as I desperately try to wind down for sleep.

apricot-studies:

dedalvs:

incidentalcomics:

How to Finish

I drew this poster for Jon Acuff and his FINISH book tour. Big thanks to Jon for this collaboration, his book has some great ideas about how to complete creative and life goals.

Love this, but reblogging it specifically for “Get rid of secret rules.” That’s one of the most amazing illustrations—and points—I’ve ever seen.

so important especially for perfectionists who procrastinate and never finish, or even start because they set such high standards for themselves.

storyinmypocket:

asexualconnor:

adhd-deluxe:

As a person with ADHD I can’t understand how people are able to listen to an audio book while doing something else simultaneously. When I listen to an audio book I need to be in a dark room with no other living creature nearby to distract me, and even then do I find it difficult to listen to an audio book.

As a person with ADHD I can’t understand how people are able to not listen to audio books/podcasts/TV/music while doing something else simultaneously.

Provided, of course, the other thing I’m doing does not require a lot of word/number processing.  Often when I do nothing at the same time as I’m listening, I’ll zone out and think about other things instead, because my mind isn’t being effectively engaged. 

Having interesting audio while drawing, gif-making, cleaning, walking, showering, playing certain video games etc is how I consume most of my media. It will also keep me from being distracted by outside noises, assuming these noises aren’t loud enough to mess with my auditory processing.

It COULD be however that you simply are not an auditory learner, or that you have particularly bad auditory processing. 

I listen to podcasts and music and things when I’m either riding the bus or doing tasks that don’t require my brain to make words: knitting, washing dishes, upgrading my computer, that kind of thing. It keeps my hands busy enough so I can focus on the words I’m hearing.

This doesn’t work when I’m trying to write (even with music – if it has words, I’m not going to be able to focus, and if it doesn’t, I’ll still get lost in the melody from time to time) or otherwise do something that requires the verbal part of my brain to do its thing. Everything turns into noise.

I have to be doing multiple things at once. If there’s a tv on, I’m knitting, cruising Tumblr, or reading, sometimes all at once. If I’m trying to really focus on the tv, I still have to be knitting or I chew my nails to the quick. If I’m walking for exercise, I have to be listening to music or a podcast.

I didn’t really identify the ‘cannot stand boredom because it’s painful’ or the ‘can’t ever be doing nothing’ symptoms of ADHD with myself until I realised that that doesn’t automatically equal frenetic physical activity. It also equals ‘I have seventy tabs open because I want to watch/read ALL of these things, but don’t have the focus now and have to keep scrolling through my dash’. It equals ‘I love this show with every fibre of my being, but I’ll go nuts if my hands aren’t active’. It equals ‘I’m working out and on a beautiful bushwalking track, but if I don’t have a soundtrack I can’t enjoy it’.

ruffboijuliaburnsides:

maltedmilkchocolate:

Time blindness is the weirdest aspect of executive dysfunction and so weird as an experience to live with.

It’s like you see the clock, the clock says 3pm, you look at the clock again and it’s 3:02, then 3:05, and then you look again and it’s 8pm and WHAT THE FUCK.

You don’t even need hyperfocus. But hyperfocus is like the Warp Speed:tm: version cause when that hits, it’s 3pm and then it’s the next day and why is the sun rising and when did i last eat and oh god i need to use the bathroom. And oh, also, you’re EXHAUSTED. The act of your brain tunnel visioning on something drains you (but that’s another topic).

Time blindness is…. having the general knowledge that today is Wednesday, and you need to do something on Thursday. Thursday is logically tomorrow, but the mysterious void of time is like ‘that’s like next week or something.’ 

It’s knowing you have to do something in three weeks on the 21st. And as the days creep closer, the 21st is stuck in a constant state of still being 3 weeks away, despite the fact it’s now tomorrow.

It’s wild. ADHD is literally living in a constant state of “There is Now. And there is Later.” and there’s no in between; no dates, no times; no hours, weeks, or months. It’s just Now and Later, and oh god why is is X o’clock already!?

Holy shit someone actually described my relationship with time wtf.

This was something I thought everyone experienced in my prediagnosis state, until I wrote about it in a short story and a teacher told me it was bad writing because ‘time doesn’t do that’.

yourunderwaterskies:

One of the biggest ADHD moods is wanting to watch things, but no. You gotta check this, you gotta go get a drink, do some backflips, notice the floor tiles, get a snack. Get a drink. Get another drink. Get some exercises in.

The one episode is paused halfway and now you gotta go to bed. It’s one of 50 tabs of half-finished fics, articles and youtube vids you wanna watch. But the ADHD is demanding cartwheels and the checkening of social media.

You’re behind on all your shows or other media because 5 minutes in and your brain suddenly shifts and you GOTTA DO STUFF. 

Replace cartwheels with pacing and yeah, it me.