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How To Power Through ADHD: Proven Strategies to Crush Tough Tasks
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How To Power Through ADHD: Proven Strategies to Crush Tough Tasks

Non-Medication Ways to Help Your ADHD

In this video, Dr. Tracey Marks discusses non-medication ways to help with ADHD, specifically focusing on procrastination and aversive tasks.

Aversive Tasks

  • With ADHD, aversive tasks seem too painful to start or complete.
  • Reasons for tasks being aversive include being too big, boring and routine, taking too long, or having too many steps.
  • Break up large tasks into smaller subtasks.
  • Pair the most resistant subtasks with a rewarding task from a list of activities that do not involve food.

Reward System

  • Create a list of rewarding activities that take a reasonable amount of time to complete.
  • Use regularly scheduled pleasant activities as motivators by scheduling unpleasant activities around natural breaks.
  • Pair pleasurable activity with unpleasant activity using your planner.

Soothing Environment

  • Create a soothing environment for unpleasant tasks if concentration or focus is required.
  • Comforting surroundings help offset the negative experience of completing the task.

Prioritizing Tasks

  • Prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance using Stephen Covey's approach: important and urgent, important but not urgent, not important but urgent, and not important and not urgent.
  • Urgent things tend to be prioritized over more important things simply because they were put off for later.

Time Management

  • Keep a time log of how long things take and schedule tasks in your planner.

Pairing Pleasant Activities with Unpleasant Ones

This section discusses how to follow through with tasks that you would ordinarily put off. The two tips for that are pairing pleasant activities with the unpleasant ones and prioritizing tasks in order of importance.

Pairing Pleasant Activities with Unpleasant Ones

  • Sometimes, we see unpleasant tasks as more important than they really are because they produce a good outcome.
  • Pair pleasant activities with the unpleasant ones either immediately afterwards, as a reward to look forward to, or do it simultaneously with the unpleasant activity.
  • Create a comforting environment in which to do the unpleasant activity to make it more tolerable.
  • Adjust the time that you do the hated stuff so that it's just before you do something that you like.

Prioritizing Tasks in Order of Importance

  • Prioritize tasks in order of importance to reduce wasting time on unimportant things so that every important thing doesn't become urgent.
  • Fire drills beget more fire drills. A constant state of urgency and catch-up makes you extremely inefficient and neglectful of things that are really important.

I hope this was helpful for you. More information on organization and planning is coming soon. Stay tuned.

Playlists: ADHD Success Strategies: Mastering Executive Function Skills
Video description

With ADHD, procrastination is huge. No one wants to do unpleasant things. But with ADHD, you can avoid doing things just because the scope of the task seems too great. It may have too many steps or you think it’s going to take too long. This video is talking about how to follow through with tasks that you would ordinarily put off. The two tips for that is pairing pleasant activities with the unpleasant ones. This means you have already generated the task list and identified which parts are unpleasant and how long it should take you. You saw how to that in the video that preceded this one. You use the pleasant activity either immediately afterward as reward to look forward to or you do it simultaneously with the unpleasant activity. You can also create a comforting environment in which to do the unpleasant activity to make it more tolerable. Like taking bad tasting medicine with something sweet. And you can adjust the time that you do the hated stuff so that it’s just before you do something you like. The second tip to being able to follow through with tasks is to prioritize them in order of importance. This helps reduce wasting time on unimportant things so that every important thing doesn’t become urgent. Firedrills beget more firedrills. And a constant state of urgency and catchup makes you extremely inefficient and neglectful of the things that are really important. ADHD VIDEO on EXECUTIVE FUNCTION https://youtu.be/GIOAwvmHYuY Want to know more about mental health and self-improvement? On this channel I discuss topics such as bipolar disorder, major depression, anxiety disorders, attention deficit disorder (ADHD), relationships and personal development/self-improvement. I upload weekly. If you don’t want to miss a video, click here to subscribe. https://goo.gl/DFfT33 Disclaimer: All of the information on this channel is for educational purposes and not intended to be specific/personal medical advice from me to you. Watching the videos or getting answers to comments/question, does not establish a doctor-patient relationship. If you have your own doctor, perhaps these videos can help prepare you for your discussion with your doctor.