Comment by cardanome
1 day ago
First of all if you have the money get an official diagnosis. While self diagnosis is often right, ADHD symptoms can have overlap with many other things so it is better to be sure.
Now want a quick fix? If you can, get medication. It doesn't work for all people with ADHD but for those that it does it will give you the most bang for the buck.
Now there is coping strategies. Therapists can help a lot. There is also people offering ADHD coaching. This is great because the coaches tend to have ADHD themselves and understand you. It helped me personally a lot but be warned that everyone can offer coaching so quality may wary.
Last part is lifestyle. Sport. It is not optional. Running is amazing and will help you a lot but if you are not fit enough yet, walk. Walk every day for at least 30min. You need to. Also personally for me reading a physical book for at least 30min a day makes a huge, huge difference. Diet is important but what works varies from ADHD person to person. For me cutting out processed sugar was a good step.
Also no caffeine. This may also vary but completely cutting it helped me personally a lot. Yes, it helps somewhat with executive function but only in the short term and does more harm than good in the long term. Generally any form form of self medication be it alcohol, weed and so on, cut it out. Again get proper medication if you can.
Honestly accepting that you have ADHD or well at least some form of neurodivergency is already the biggest step. It gets so much easier once you learn how to properly manage it.
https://borretti.me/article/notes-on-managing-adhd
Came across this a few months ago on HN here and there’s a fair bit of exposition on things you’ve mentioned. My personal takeaway from it was to try Todoist, which has been a complete game changer in my life. I’ve used other systems before but something about Todoist worked better for my brain (plus the mobile integration is awesome… my second best over the years was org-mode but the mobile story is way too clunky)
+1, Todoist has changed things for me drastically.
I was diagnosed with ADHD a year and a half ago in my ~mid 30s. The meds (Vyvanse) help somewhat, but the real key to improvement for me has been using Todoist.
IME the real trick is using it consistently, and for everything. My routines (e.g. morning routine: meds, eat, coffee, brush teeth, brush the dog's teeth, etc etc) are all in Todoist, not because I struggle to focus on getting that stuff done in the morning (well, sometimes, perhaps) but because starting the day with do-easy-thing, mark-it-done, repeat, sets up the rest of the day to be run by Todoist instead of the bit of my brain that goes "I know we should be getting ready to leave but WHAT IF YOU WROTE AN APP TO DO THIS COOL THING, JUST QUICKLY TRY THAT NOW, YOU CAN LEAVE AFTER".
I had a similar experience with org-mode too. It was great at work where I'm at my desk all day, and made a huge difference, but not having a good mobile experience makes it impractical for day-to-day home use.
That was 100% the key for me too: put absolutely everything into it that I can’t address immediately, both work and life.
I did use org-mode like that too (all of life into it, not just work) when I was working from home but both capture and viewing when away from the laptop just had too much friction.