How ADHD Brains Work and How to Work with Them

When you understand how ADHD brains work and how to work with them, you can embrace your ADHD traits instead of working against them.

Organizational advice for people with ADHD tends to focus on helping us do things in more neurotypical ways. For example…

If you want to be more organized, create a routine. If you want to keep track of appointments, use a calendar app. If you want to get things accomplished, focus on one task at a time. 

The thing is, those are the exact things ADHDers struggle with. 

Routine? Boresville. There are no dopamine hits to be had by rotely following routines. 

One task at a time? That requires sustaining attention for longer than it takes to get from one room to another.

Use a calendar app? Picking up a phone opens the door to an avalanche of distraction. 

A Dis-ordered Mind?

As an acronym, ADHD trips off the tongue and, on its own, has no meaning. But the words behind the letters sound pretty devastating: Deficit? Disorder?

That ADHD is considered a disorder is perhaps the reason advice is so often meant to make us function as if we don’t have it. The disordered person needs to become more ordered. 

How ADHD Brains Work

Let’s consider a different approach. Instead of trying to adopt the ways of non-ADHDers, what if we work with our ADHD rather than against it. What if we clean in ADHD friendly ways? For example, you don’t have to finish vacuuming the whole floor before mopping, doing the laundry, scrubbing the toilet, or polishing mirrors. 

To feed the need for novelty, bounce around. Do bits of one task, then parts of others. Who cares?! No one is watching you with a checklist of logical, sequential cleaning methods.

Mop to music. Do dishes while singing into the scrub brush. Polish mirrors with a podcast. Give yourself a chocolate covered almond for every step you vacuum on the way up the stairs. Lean into your ADHD; don’t argue with it. 

Swimming Up a Tree

Trying to force ADHD brains to use the same strategies as people who are inherently good at organizing, cleaning, and being on time is like trying to force a fish up a tree. The fish just ends up feeling bad about not being good at tree climbing. 

Embrace your brain, and do things your way. Like the fish, you’ll thrive in your own comfort zone.