Attention Deficit Disorder Strategies: My Blog About Adult ADD

I decided to answer that question in the only appropriate twenty-first century way: through social media. I decided to start a blog.

Buy at AllPosters.com

A lot of people hang onto things they don't need anymore, but for adults with ADHD, ditching their trash can be even harder. If we don't throw anything away, that lost item has to be around here somewhere, right?

Buy at AllPosters.com

Buy at AllPosters.com

It would be nice if coping with ADD were simply a matter of remembering to take meds. But as the saying goes, pills don't give you skills. Skills, such as organization, time management, and self-care, are all things you need to learn. You're not born knowing how to do these things, and while your medication will help you focus on these tasks, you will still need to learn how to do them.

Organizing might seem like a boring topic to some, but it's made such a huge difference in my life that I wanted to document it. I want to reflect upon and celebrate my own success. Most of all, I want to make it public, in the hope that other people will be able to spend less time flailing around than I did.

Shopping for clothes is one of my least favorite things to do. I hate it. Nothing seems to fit, I usually hate the colors, and everything is ridiculously expensive. It's only gotten worse since somebody decided that "80's underage crack whore" was going to be A Look. I literally break out in a cold sweat when trying on clothes -- it's just that stressful.

In the following posts, I write about some of my strategies for reducing my shopping overwhelm.

Buy at AllPosters.com

Since I use the phrase "chaos demon" pretty often, I feel I should explain it.

You see, several years ago my partner Stuart and I were watching the inimitable Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was the episode in Season 3 where Spike (a vampire) has returned from Brazil in despair, his girlfriend Drusilla having left him. The scene went something like this:

Spike (on TV): Dru said I'd gone soft. Wasn't demon enough for the likes of her... I caught her on a park bench making out with a Chaos Demon. Have you ever seen a Chaos Demon? ...

Stuart: (just looks at me, you know, in THAT tone of voice)

Me: Hey! Shut up!

Stuart (innocently): I didn't say anything!

Stuart didn't have to say anything; he was thinking loud enough for me to hear him. In those days, he did a lot of extra work reminding me to do important things, keeping me on task when cleaning or cooking, and helping me deal with the consequences of my ADD. He teased me about having my very own entropy generation field. From that day forward, I thought of myself as a "chaos demon" (fortunately without the antlers and the slime).

Buy at AllPosters.com

To someone with ADHD, time management is every bit as challenging as organizing. In this regard, my gmail account has been a godsend.

It's free, which is always nice. It has unlimited storage, so I don't have to delete anything, and it's highly searchable, so I can always find what I'm looking for. Basically, that makes my email, for all intents and purposes, completely self-organizing.

Better yet, gmail comes with a calendar feature that has allowed me to come to grips with organizing my time. I can block out appointments and chores, and the best thing is that I can set e-mail, pop-up, and SMS reminders. In these post, I talk about how I use my gmail calendar to cope with my adult ADD.

Believe me, I know. I'd read dozens of articles and books, bought scores of nifty containers, and made countless promises to myself that I was going to change my ways. I put so much time and money into solutions that didn't work, I'd all but given up on myself.

As hard as it is to believe, there is a method that will work for you. It's a question of designing your own system, based on your own needs, your own strengths, and your own habits.

Buy at AllPosters.com

Buy at AllPosters.com

In this series, I talk about a trip I took to France -- and how I coped when it was suddenly moved forward by one week.

Buy at AllPosters.com

I've always felt that there is something lacking in a lot of the ADD literature. There are plenty of books out there about the wonders of medication, sure. They have all these fantastic anecdotes (remember, kids, in the plural form that's "data"!) about how Jane was diagnosed with ADD, started Ritalin, and her life got Much, Much Better. Then we meet Jim, who received an ADHD diagnosis, started Ritalin, and his life got Much, Much Better. Then we meet Joan, who was diagnosed shortly after her son Johnny was, and they both started Ritalin, and the whole family's life got Much Much Better!

It's all very inspiring.

As for books about getting organized, well, some of them have some great ideas. Others have advice that I consider to be truly terrible. It can be very difficult, as an ADD adult, to figure out which strategies are going to work for your specific brain and your individual life.

What seemed to be missing was a resource by and for adults with attention deficit disorder, talking about the real life successes and failures of getting organized. What works and what doesn't. What were the setbacks and what were the breakthroughs. What was absolutely necessary for success, and what could be allowed to slide. Where -- and this is a big one -- the experts might be all wrong.

I was recently invited to write a guest post for Clutter Control Freak blog. Since my most recent project was the creation of a filing system after years of putting it off, I decided to write about how to use humor to tackle the filing. Enjoy!