Okay, so. What I ended up doing is setting a time every day when I would no longer be doing work. For me, it’s around 5pm which is about the time when my concerta starts to wane and things that aren’t interesting become more difficult. (1/n) https://twitter.com/tiikafiredancer/status/1283896583306858496

But that’s a broad limit. The other thing that I had to do was be gentle with myself: I had to accept that I wasn’t going to be able to do all the things within the time allocated and those things that couldn’t get done would have to be done the following day. (2/n)

That said, I would organize tasks in order of deadline and interest. Deadlines usually took precedence over interest, as they provided a natural external constraint and usually came with guidelines. Interesting things were lower, but got done quicker. (3/n)

It also helped that my projects (book, articles, etc) are interesting to me so focusing on them was much easier. (4/n)

I also broke things down into chunks. For example, when working on my last chapter on mono no aware and ethics, I would set the end of a section as a hard limit. Once I hit the end of the section, I would take a 30 min break and eat something or pet my cat (very important). (5/n)

The other thing I did was monitor how my focus worked. This requires a bit of introspection and self knowledge: I knew that when my focus wandered from a task, that task would not get done in the ways that I needed it to, so I would shift to the next task on the list. (6/n)

Again, this hasn’t been much of a problem since much of my work is interesting to me, but I strongly recommend listening to your bodymind with regards to the ways that you stop minding tasks. When this happens, it might be time to stop or take a break. (7/n)

But that relies on having a certain level of sensitivity to your self. I have the advantage of decades of martial arts practice which has cultivated that sensitivity into me. You might need to find a practice that engages in similar self-cultivation. (8/n)

In the absence of all that, you might want to find an accountability partner: a person who reminds you to take breaks and keeps you on track. Accountability partners are a massive asset, but if such a person is unavailable, reminders on your devices work pretty well. (9/n)

I have one that says “eat motherfucker,” which makes me chuckle but also gets me to go find food. (10/n)

Having said all of this, I want to be clear: all of the stuff we do to manage our ADHD is based in a situation where we’re not in a pandemic being mismanaged by a corrupt democracy hellbent on killing us. As a result, many of our strategies will fail. (11/n)

I point this out because stress and stressful situations exacerbate our ADHD to the point where it becomes impossible to focus on anything. And this is okay. It’s okay to be overwhelmed, to be unable to do anything “productive” for the day. (12/n)

And this is something that you need to remind yourself of. You haven’t failed if you’re too overwhelmed too get something done. You’re not lesser if you wake up and find yourself unable to do anything. And this is where you need to be gentle with yourself. (13/n)

Finally, the demands of productivity and progress are not built for us. And I think understanding this is the best advice I can give you: there’s nothing wrong with you if you simply can’t at some point, and there’s everything wrong with a society that demands that of you. (14/n)

That said, I hope this helps. If you have a specific question, please feel free to DM me: I’ve managed my ADHD through all kinds of shit and I recognize how the world literally isn’t built to enable our success. If you need help or just want to vent, my DMs are open (fin)