Tips, Tricks, and Systems for ADHD That Actually Stick

Tipping points: the moments that made ADHD less frustrating

Danielle: Good morning, everyone. Look who I have with me today. She’s going to start doing some more lives, and hopefully after the summit she’ll start doing a couple of days a week so that I don’t have to do them every single day, which is awesome. I love having somebody who can help with all of these things. So today is tipping points and stories, because it is possible to thrive with ADHD. You can upgrade your ADHD, which is obviously what we’re all about here. Last week I shared some of my tipping points and the things that helped me start finding success and less frustration with my own chaos. So, what was your tipping point to being less frustrated with yourself all the time?

V: I think maybe just the diagnosis. And you don’t have to be officially diagnosed, it could be self-diagnosed. Just the fact that I’m not just incompetent or forgetful or lazy or whatever. I do have something going on in my brain. And I actually was more successful than my neurotypical counterparts at my job, specifically because I was trying not to drown in my ADHD symptoms.

Danielle: Same. I was always high achieving. At 25 I had two college degrees, had been working full time in the corporate world since I was 16, and started my own business at 25, because I was determined that I was not going to live the life my mother lived. So of course I did all of the things. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t live in chaos and didn’t struggle all the time. I shared my tipping point last week, and you can find the video on that. What’s one of your favorite client transformation stories, of a client getting it and feeling so much less frustrated with themselves?

Client stories: outsourcing one thing and the dimmer switch routine

V: I have this really sweet older woman who is a client, and every week when we sit down and talk, the tips and tricks I’m giving her are just so simple. But she has been on her own with this, feeling so much shame, her whole life. For instance, she was stressing so much about meal prep and getting groceries in, and it was in her budget to do a meal service. So we outsourced that. And just that one small thing was a total game changer for her. Now every time we meet, I get a dopamine rush too, every time I help her.

Right now we’re working on nighttime routines and morning routines. At night, it’s like we have a dimmer switch, and we need to slowly turn your dimmer switch down, less and less energy, so that it soothes you to sleep. And in the morning, if you’re slow to wake up, we gradually turn your dimmer switch up. She said, “I just never would have thought of it that way. This is life changing.” It is really helping her, and it’s also so validating as a coach. These are things I found through trial and error and use for myself and my kids, but when I give them to clients and it hits them with relief, those are my favorites.

The clear-bins fridge tip that solved a real ADHD tax

Danielle: I think one of my favorite stories: I have an ADHD coach who is my client, and she’s actually a massive ADHD influencer. She was really struggling with throwing out food in her fridge. Friday her, who did the grocery shopping, was a very different her than Wednesday her, because Wednesday her did not have the energy, or didn’t remember that she’d bought the groceries. I said, oh, this is a really easy tip. Put all of your meals in clear bins. When you grocery shop, bring everything home and organize it into meals in clear bins, put all your produce in the door where you can see it, and put your condiments in the drawers.

She was so excited a month later, because she had used all of the groceries she’d bought for an entire month, that she made a video about it and tagged me. She said, “Why didn’t I know this? I’m an ADHD coach. Why wasn’t this something that occurred to me?” And I’m like, yeah, it was a two-second tip. The funny thing is, she tags me in the video, my husband is sitting next to me watching it, and he goes, “Why don’t we do that?” Shut up.

V: But that highlights it: we can solve other people’s problems. Sometimes we just can’t solve our own.

Danielle: Yeah. So now we do that in our fridge, and things aren’t getting thrown out anymore. Because even though I could give that tip to somebody else, I forget it for myself.

Every autistic person has one severely ADHD friend (a theory)

V: It’s hard, because we need other people to keep us accountable. And I have this theory, just a theory. Like you, I’m AuDHD. I feel like autistic people collect other neurodivergent people, and so do ADHDers. We recognize each other. I guarantee you that every autistic person has one severely ADHD friend, and mine is my husband. He is my severely ADHD person. So at our house, I am the ringleader. If I can’t make the system work, nobody else in this house is going to say, “Hey Mom, I thought we were doing this,” or “Hey babe, I thought we were doing this.” No. It is on me. And I think for a lot of women, that is another level of stress on top of already trying to manage work life and parenting life. How did I end up the business manager for our family? I wish I could outsource that. I need an assistant. But like I said, these systems you and I have developed, we developed them to survive, and they’re very easy fixes.

Danielle: Absolutely. The funny thing is, when Kelly did that video and my husband said “why don’t we do that,” I said, we used to do that when our son was little. And he goes, “Oh yeah. Why don’t we do that anymore?” I said, I don’t know, you’re the adult here too. My husband is ASD, for those who don’t know, so there’s an ASD-er, an ADHD-er, and my son is ADHD. We had systems and things we did when he was younger, and we forgot them. But coaching reminds me of them. It’s so cool when something clicks for clients and they can feel less frustrated with themselves, less shame, less ADHD tax. Because food in the fridge is a major ADHD tax for a lot of ADHDers. Food, laundry, late bills, taxes.

The tax-season spiral, inherited

V: And we haven’t even touched on taxes. I know it’s early, but the tax deadline is only two months away, and I am hypervigilant about this, because my mom always misses it. My mom always misses the tax deadline and has to file an extension. So I’m paranoid about taxes. And I have a 1099 that should have been here last month and still isn’t here by the 15th of this month, so I’m going to just do it myself, because I’m sick of waiting for somebody else to do what their job was supposed to be. Taxes are one of those things I am so overly paranoid about that I usually get them done really fast, and the fact that it’s mid-February and I still haven’t done my taxes is causing me a ton of anxiety.

Danielle: I always try to get in early no matter what. I try to get everything turned in by the end of February so it’s in the tax guy’s hands, and then if he takes time, there’s still time.

V: Exactly. But this year, because I’m an entrepreneur, my taxes are a little different than when I worked a traditional job. And that’s another thing with my mom: her taxes were never just taking a W2 down to the tax prep guy. She and my dad have multiple businesses. So she had anxiety around it, she would procrastinate and not do it, and then she felt like she needed to go through and figure everything up herself, because they got more money back when she did.

The green, yellow, red system: label tasks by minutes, hours, or days

Danielle: So what was your tipping point tool, something that was just life changing for you? And everyone watching: I want to hear the tools and systems you’ve created for yourself in the comments, because every one of us has our own things we do. Start sharing tips and tricks with everyone, because maybe there’s something I need today.

V: My favorite, the thing I created for myself: when I was teaching, I got super hyperfocused on scheduling and time blocking, because if I did not schedule time for it, the task was in the ether. It was not going to happen if there was not time scheduled for it. People say, “Oh, that sounds weird,” and I’m like, roll with me here. Every morning I was making a to-do list anyway. I started labeling everything green, yellow, and red. Green tasks take minutes. Yellow tasks take hours. Red tasks take days. Red tasks are really projects, multi-level things, that’s why they take days, and we can break those up later. Instead of getting bogged down and procrastinating about the whole to-do list, I’d break it up by color, then schedule an hour on my calendar and just work on green tasks. How many green tasks can I knock out in an hour? And in an hour, I was done. I didn’t have to think about them anymore. Then I’d schedule an hour on my calendar for yellow tasks and do the same thing. I’m telling you, my to-do list would just vanish. If you do that consistently, daily or weekly, a lot of the things we put off can very easily be accomplished.

The other thing is, you have to put it on your calendar. Several months ago I needed to go get the tag for my car, and I kept saying, oh, I’ll do it between meetings. I wasn’t using my system, and it didn’t get done. So I said, okay, I am going to put time on my calendar. I scheduled an hour, because you have to go to the tag agency and who knows how long they take. I overscheduled the time, went, and took care of it in 15 minutes. And guess what? I had 45 minutes of free time on my calendar to use for whatever I wanted. But it did not get done until I put it on the calendar.

Paper planners, digital calendars, and processing time by hand

Danielle: For me, we use a project board for organizing team tasks here, and for my personal stuff, I hand things to my personal assistant. Then I use daily planning. You guys have seen my videos of me using my bullet journal or my regular planner, depending on what works for me that day, and I color code. I don’t use red, yellow, and green, because yuck. I use green, purple, and pink.

V: Okay, it needs to be more fun for you. But it’s still the same: you just need three colors.

Danielle: I prioritize things, and first I write down all my appointments so I can see them written out, because my digital calendar does not help me process time very well. I have to write down my time things, and those are color coded a certain way for each business. Then I add in my tasks, and I can get my tasks done every single day this way.

V: I use both. I use my digital calendar and I color code in there, but I also have to have a paper copy. A lot of people say, “Oh my gosh, that’s so much to keep up with,” and it is. You’ve got to do what works best for you. For me, because we live in this virtual world, I have to have the digital calendar for meeting links and reminders and all that. But the actual budgeting of the time is done on my paper calendar.

Danielle: Exactly. I can’t process time unless I handwrite it out. Okay, V and I both have to go, we both have coaching sessions. If you have any questions about any of this, drop them below, and you’re going to start seeing events drop into the group this afternoon, because getting everybody the speaking events is on my task list. Have an amazing day, everyone.