How to Improve Focus and Get Stuff Done with an ADHD Brain

hi i'm dr sharon celine and welcome to our july facebook live um how to improve focus and get stuff done with an adhd brain if you can hear me please add your name and where you're from so i can welcome you officially to our facebook live it's great to be here i know it's a hot day for some of us here in the united states um and you know we've been uh kind of out of practice and or out of connection for a while but i'm really psyched to be here and i'm psyched to see all of you and so please say

hello hello mel joe um hello maggie from malta excellent melita hello tootsie hello i'm in welcome i'm so happy that you're all here and we're going to be talking today about such an important topic which is focus and that's something that so many people with adhd or who are neurodiverse struggle with hi susan nice to see you let's see hi hi diane from the uk hi mary from seattle hi linda from delaware uh vicki from south africa welcome um juliana from san marcos texas debbie from huntsville al

abama oh tootsie you're from the bahamas how lovely tina from iowa rk nice to see you hi robin from bremerton and monique from don't didn't say hi uh tonya from west virginia hi emily from sweden awesome hi melanie uh hi christy from south mississippi daniel from london joanne from worcester hey neighbor i'm in northampton uh welcome landa from denver carolyn from new zealand mo from manchester elaine from england uh michael from las vegas christina from wisconsin dodie from scotland laura from

pennsylvania bill bob from philly that is my hometown born at um born in philly uh hi cat from canada hi april from ish from ithaca hello amanda from her hertfordshire uh in the uk hello helen from henrico ilona hi nice to see you um gregory from pittsburgh lisa from california wendy from new jersey my estate where i grew up i'm new jersey girl just like you gemma from sheffield deborah from dallas tiffany from knoxville sam from australia fabiola hi from texas jessica carla from minnesota there

are so many of you this is fantastic i didn't know who would show up today it's wonderful emma um and oslin from the uk and lila and jessica and maggie from arkansas and jennifer from ottawa and amanda we focus on everything um monique texas hani from denmark angela from south carolina durham north carolina and philly hey lou you got it all covered stephen from glasgow becky from the from devon josie from colorado michael um from odin mary from saudi saudia lou gent from just hi lu justin durha

m haha maltak from claire nada from egypt good morning ronnelle from australia kari from south dakota heidi and vijay from new york city dot from illinois alathia how are you doing from uh alabama nicole australia haley from kent natasha from south wales oh my goodness there are so many of you i can't keep up with all of them and i don't i want to just say welcome everyone um yes you're kind of watching romper room as i greet everyone so i'm going to stop greeting everybody but i just want to sa

y thank you and bob it's your birthday today by celebrating this webinar and striving for happy for a better life so i'm going to sing you a song makes me think of the good old days happy birthday to you well you sure go out of your baby ways happy birthday to you x number birthdays wish you many more health and wealth and friends by the score so let's cut the cake and eat some more happy birthday to you i hope you have a beautiful birthday bob okay let's get started so we're going to be talking

about focus today and i think that's such an important important issue not just for people who are have adhd or are diverse but for so many of us living in today's society because we have so many distractions and i think it's important that we really look at what is distracting us and what is getting in the way of our being able to focus as we as we would like to ideally so let's talk for a minute or two about what is focus so focus is a dynamic process of choosing what is critical to notice or

do or recall it's like a flashlight it's your spotlight of attention and just to continue with the romper room theme if you take if you can make a fist and put it on your forehead you can do this it's your spotlight of attention and i know that's really corny but sometimes if you think about wearing a headlamp and where you're looking and what you're doing your light could be all over the place we want to try to narrow it so that it's right it's on what you're doing and not on what you're not d

oing so uh focus is about how it's the spotlight of your attention but it's also about how you direct your attention um so stress worry sadness trauma all negatively affect the ability for you to concentrate and persist with activities focus is affected by many things including a loss of familiar routines where and when you do things and predictability how and why you do things so when there is some some activity that interferes with you you know a routine that you're used to doing maybe you're

traveling maybe someone in your family is ill things are disrupted that will affect your focus uh when there's a lack of predictability like you're used to doing things in a particular order and now that order is is is um is shifted you'll have you'll struggle with focus human brains especially those with adhd benefit from these habits of familiar routines and predictability now people with adhd often face challenges in several of these categories simultaneously you all can benefit from some typ

e of daily routines because these structures help you prepare for and adapt to what's coming and this is also an oxymoron this is often an oxymoron excuse me for people with adhd because many people with adhd are like oh i hate structure i don't like structure i can't create structure but i actually do better when i have some and this is true for me too you know i i like to have a certain routine like i see my clients on a certain day and then i have you know um other days that i hope to set asi

de for writing but then something happens and then i fill them up and then i don't get to do my writing and so i'm not following a routine and i feel just uncomfortable and then there are times where i don't have any routine at all you know in the past three weeks i've been um taking some time and space to re rejuvenate and refuel and some of that has been hiking and for me that's the task of the day i get up i make some lunch i go to the trail and i hike um and then i come back and i put my fee

t in the freezing cold river and uh get some dinner and just chill out um so this you know that was a very simplified routine but it was a routine that felt very nourishing to me so i'm curious when you think about what kinds of routines work for you what do you come up with and can you put that into the um into the chat what routines do you have in your life that nourish you okay that feel like you're getting done what you need to get you you're not just getting done something but you also feel

like it kind of keeps you on track you know i i have a quote in my book from a boy who said you know i do things in a certain order i brush my teeth i put my do-rag on and then i check my and i plug my phone in and if i do it in a different order it kind of messes up my night so i'm curious for you what routines serve you and how do they serve you laura says getting into nature every single day um i love that anybody else have a routine um paula paulina you don't have one so we'll work on that

today um denise work out first thing in the morning oh i'm with you on that um i like to work out first thing in the morning too preferably outside amanda connection with people uh melanie i need lu i need and love structure i get so overwhelmed so i don't do anything list and habitica help me you know habitika is is actually a really great app if you're not familiar with it so thank you for for listening that i appreciate that um uh let's see um sleep hygiene that's a really important routine f

abiola daily meditation followed by yoga and then elliptical in the morning prepped me up great for the day oh fabiola i want to come live with you because that sounds great uh denise i'm drowning all the time i work around others priorities so let me make a note about that about how to say your own priorities um so we can come back to that um because drowning all the time it sounds really terrible and so um frustrating so night time to do for the next day great that can help organize for some p

eople particularly those of us who run a little with anxiety i'd like i encourage you to do a little brain dump before you go to bed of the things you want to remember for the next day so you're not thinking about them and not going to sleep it's like okay i have my list i know where it is i've emptied my brain and now i can you know transition into um sleep and hopefully some you know inspiring dreams cat for me it's as simple as making that first coffee and making it hot fantastic onisa coffee

at 8 pm with my husband starts the end of the day great part-time working as a cashier fantastic lindsay when i wake up i take my medication while managing my breakfast if i forget or get in a hurry it messes up my schedule and i often forget my meds until late in the day i just want you know um facebook is doing that thing where it takes away people's comments so if i don't respond please send again exercise says jess then shower that sounds great uh bob almost none since i lost my job i need

to develop son some will bob this is your birthday and so we're going to help you develop some uh routines well i'm going to put that on my list to do two help bob develop routines so we'll be talking about that listing the task of the day and gym in the morning don't take methylphenidate okay that works for you richard adeline i'm searching for my ideal routine i have established some morning get up brush teeth take meds free cats then my days go wild so you need a little more structure than th

at um this is being recorded and you can get it on the replay eileen i have no routine at the moment and i'm suffering for suffering for it's trying struggling to start one okay so this is a theme that's coming up people are really struggling to create routines ironically the people who most benefit from the routine and structure of the military are not qualified per their rules that is interesting johnny you know i do have some you know some people who um have adhd and served in the military an

d it was very helpful for them in actually or training them to set up those routines lisa apparently i had routines i didn't realize before the pandemic when working from home more than i didn't follow the routines and i've been struggling to figure out my new normal everybody i think is doing that i think it's there's a way in which now that we have the ability because more things are online that we can work at home it does it does kind of mess with the structure that we had developed and proba

bly come to love and depend on danielle i don't have any conscious planned ones i think it's when i reach out to text a family member now once my day gets up and running i'm awful at staying on top of hydration and i notice a difference in my mood yes hydration is very important drinking water melanie i'm a teacher so summertime is hard for me yes i would imagine it is because you're so structured and then boom you have nothing so we're going to talk about that when need structure in the morning

to get organized my wake up routine is so so something since childhood i always prepared a pile of everything i need for the next day no matter how late i go to sleep i set alarms for meds and starting work i work from home that's helpful calling my parents as soon as i get to work before i go and before i go to sleep otherwise i become anxious all right lou it can be difficult to extract your trauma experience from your adhd emotional reactivity so for those who feel like they are drowning loo

king for how looking into how rejection sensitivity might be affecting you could be a supportive it has really helped me thank you lou for sharing that i agree there are a lot of similarities between the trauma response and adhd but there are differences maybe we'll do a facebook live on that um in the fall nicole get up early before everyone else and have some alone time jessica i try my hardest to use these tools however i feel as if my anxiety eats away at my positive approach the app it was

habitica i'll put it in the comments and while i'm adding something to the comments i want to share with you a downloadable that you can get on my website it's free and it's about um kind of motivating yourself how to harness your grit and get stuff done so that's there for you as well um every morning i take your adderall that helps you why what that's a vacation maybe some private tutors [Music] my life is a real struggle right now it's hard to build a routine and have it work and easy to mess

it up right now illness has thrown me off oh i'm so sorry to hear that kristen no routine at home and easily distracted at work i struggle with the weekend no routine and just end up wasting time um uh you use your done app to keep track of healthy habits that's great i have very little routine and barely any direction or motivation i never know where to begin my day other than with a cup of coffee all right so i'm getting a sense of where people are um and um virginia says uh i participate in

a virtual boot camp early in the morning three times a week and getting it done first thing helps my days and the online community is supportive so that's an interesting idea you know like how can you create um you know a routine buddy or other people who you meet with at the same time three times a week so that you are exercising or you're walking together even if you're and you're just having a three-way conversation or you're meeting at the gym or something that helps you get up and out um we

ndy i'm struggling too hugs um okay um i have no consistency um stay-at-home mom lost structure purpose once my kids went off for college i hear that um i have an article maybe um melanie you could add this it's um it's uh on my website i think it's but it's also uh through the psychotherapy network or on you know um relearning parenting about how the parent once your kids leave the nest it's hard because if you're like if your sort of whole routine was around your kids and even if it wasn't the

ir absence is a significant loss which will disrupt your routine uh okay keeping a diary and noting appointments on the wall calendar and keeping my son with his adhd on to his routine also helps i'm not sure if it's psychosomatic but starting the day with my vitamins which includes fish oil which i heard is good for adhd it is um it can be helps me starting with day productively i have it stacked on top of that with water intake brushing teeth and lila says i care for others too much and it cre

ates anxiety i don't know how to put myself first um okay i hear what you're saying nicole about a trauma adhd webinar you got it i will put that up there i'll talk to the powers that be um let's see um okay so i want to talk a little bit about how to create a routine and what gets in the way of it so you know we're talking about focus i mean it seems like there's a lot of interest in routines but i want to say a few things about focus and then get to you know what people have brought up which i

s um how do i create a routine for myself and i work from based on other people's priorities or priorities and i can't figure out what my own are so um one of the things that's helpful about routines is that routines fill in the gaps where your working memory might may lapse and the many disruptions of the pandemic have you know pretty much upended whatever practices previously could have assisted you to get through each day and manage situations with a sense of confidence or competence also any

disruptions in your life kids going to college perhaps a family member is ill or has died or you've had this change in your your relationship status any of these things uh will shift your routines and you'll start to feel unsettled and unbalanced and a little bit lost now one of the things that we can do to improve focus is by noticing where it is most people notice when they have drip when they're returning from the drift so you've drifted off and then you come back and you're like oh wow you

know what i wasn't really completely focused here i went to the bahamas um and so what we want to do is to learn how to create a plan for catching up when you have drifted off like instead of judging yourself or putting yourself down or saying something negative to yourself be matter of fact like what am i going to do in this situation when i drift off i'm in a meeting i know sometimes i drift off to do i have a buddy who um i can sit next to who is um who is taking um some notes about that than

k you so much melanie for putting that up do i have a buddy who's taking some notes so i can look over or you know do someone who i could elbow and they would write me a quick word or two about where we are i think it's important that we lean into the people who understand us and are willing to help us okay um okay um so we want to be in as intentional about what we're not going to focus on as what we are going to do which means that we have to understand what it is that distracts us okay um oka

y danielle thank you for telling me that that's a little weird um let me try this again uh [Music] that should not be the case um here i'll just send a different one which is how to get a motivation tip let's see if this works better tell me if you this one works and i'll check on the problem with the other one okay all right so um what we were what was talking about was that um when um when we are intentional about what we're not going to focus on then that helps us with the focus on the things

that matter um so there are um there are ways that we can what we can do is to identify possible obstacles and distractions things that set you off from you what you're what you're focused on and then make it hard to come back so we want to identify possible obstacles and distractions what types of things distract you then we want to reduce various notifications so turn off your phone turn off the banners on your computer and then um use different browsers for fun and work because if you're try

ing to use the same browser for work but you have a tab open of you know shopping at your favorite online store uh you're going to etsy or something like that then you're not going to be able to focus so put etsy on a completely different browser like safari which will make it harder to get to so um let's uh go back with let's go back with a new question thank you for all the comments about bullet journaling um it's a lifetime of buying expensive planners and all sorts of things to stop me messi

ng up it really did help me thank you for sharing that shirley i appreciate that thank you wendy um that's uh it could be overwhelming yes i can see that uh cassandra welcome hi i cannot recover well if my routine is disrupted my grandma died last august and a year later i'm still struggling to get back into a consistent routine i'm doing the best i can but it's frustrating that my brain is struggling to do anything consistently i've relied on body doubles more this year than ever and finally re

ady to humble myself and accept the help my friends have been offering to help me take care of the clutter that's built up over the last year good for you cassandra for asking for help and um and then receiving it and i agree 100 amanda um that when you create a routine for kids with adhd you need to include them you know to not just respect their autonomy but to invite their collaboration okay so um i um i want to continue saying a little bit more about um focus and then we're going to go into

routines so um kristen says as silly as it sounds nothing sounds silly to me by the way when trying to focus some sometimes i get confused on where or how to start there are so many angles and so many things grabbing my attention that doesn't sound silly at all routines and triggers for when to start instead of 1 pm my trigger for loading the dishwasher is after lunch okay so you end up going in circles kristin that's great all right so i mean that's helpful um so let's talk about the different

types of focus and um and how we can improve our focus amy does this add something that's really important which is routines and focus have become increasingly difficult since menopause this is very this is true for a number of reasons because estrogen and progesterone modulate a couple of neurotransmitters in the brain they work with them one is ach that has to do with memory one is dopamine that has to do with um pleasure and satisfaction and motivation and the other is a serotonin which has t

o do with mood and so what we're finding is that a lot of women who may have not necessarily shown the signs of adhd before menopause or had mild signs and somehow managed it with their intelligence or their competence um once they went or started the menopausal process um the difficulty of organizing and some of the the symptoms the latent symptoms of adhd reared their head and have complicated life significantly um okay so i want to say a few things about the different types of focus so there

are four types of focus the first one is selecting choosing what to focus on and i i saw that a couple people wrote that it's hard to know where to get started so let's talk about that how do you choose what to get started on and this has to do with the ability to plan and prioritize which is really something that many people with adhd and neurodiversity struggle with um so what happens is that for many people um the everything seems the same level of high importance it's hard to differentiate b

etween one thing and another so ideally you know what we'd want to do is to use the urgent and important matrix to be able to see what is the what things are urgent those are time related issues versus what's important which is a value related issue so in order to enhance prioritization part of what helps is to be able to zoom out to see the big picture one of the things that happens for many people with adhd is you get stuck in the forest or in the weeds and you can't zoom out to see the big pi

cture and when you add anxiety or depression into that mix it's even harder to see you know okay what is the big picture what are those mountain peaks that are coming through the clouds that's the thing that's the important issue it's the biggest and it's and it's it's it's calling for me so one of the things that we want to do is to is to be able to look at our at what are what we're facing and see what the priorities are so we want to identify things in terms of urgency what is the mo what's w

hat what's the time deadline that i'm facing and importance okay so what is what's something that you know that that matters to me that's a value that i have when i do it i'm in the flow i'm in the second quadrant um so most of us spend a lot of time in quadrant one which is the quadrant of crises things are urgent and important and we always feel like we're dealing with emergencies and we can't ever get to the place of quadrant two where things are not urgent but they're important um and that's

when we feel like we're in the flow like we're getting stuff done we remember to get a haircut we remember to get to set up a dentist appointment we turn our report in for work on time okay so um so when you're struggling with with with what what what to prioritize one of the things that helps is really to do a brain dump of some of the things that you're facing and then to take that list and then to make a second list that's smaller of the things that have a time pressure just those and let's

do those that's the those are the tasks of the day and if that's still more than three or or even i would say three three or four items then your list is too big and you have to make another list so i would start with time because the time pressure the time element is what get what is so hard for many of us with adhd because we're not always so great at managing time so we want to set up these lists so that we can learn to prioritize and and differentiate between what's urgent and what's importa

nt okay so let me see um some of these comments here um i'm gonna try to zoom up so i can see that okay um let's see a couple people about um everything being the same level priority cat i set out to prioritize the bigger and more urgent tasks but as the week has gone i focus on things that are valuable to me um example client based work versus my own driven products i wind up anxiously trying to finish what i should have prioritized and it's very rough so that's a really good point cat and i th

ink what you're what you're talking about is that you know we end up prioritizing things maybe that matter to other people but may not be something that actually is our heart's desire and in those cases what we want to do is make a chunk of time you know you could even say like heart's desire or my priority someone said um that they're you know i'm always i'm always drowning i'm always dealing with someone else's priorities well that's because there's no time for your own priorities and one of t

he things that happens is there's a sense of pressure like i need to get all this done now right this is and this has to again do with that time management urgency factor so if you can lay out your priorities in terms of time that will help the second thing that we want to do is we want to pick one challenge of our for our focus like what is our main focus challenge and work on that and create an ideal response for that so could you put in the comments section what is your main challenge like yo

ur one main challenge with focus and let's brainstorm a little bit about how we could respond to that in an alternative way um a million interests i want to do equally right and so when that happens we have these millions of interests that we want to do equally our brains get overwhelmed you can't even see the forest you're like you're in it and there's trees everywhere and you don't know how to get out and you just want to probably sit down and cry that's what i would do like i'm lost i don't k

now where i am so um what we want to think about is how can we get out of i can get out of the forest and and take and get a bigger picture so the thing is what we want to be able to do is to look at the force and say okay what things have time deadlines what are those time deadlines and then starting from what's nearest do to what's further out you create your priority list eileen says i try to get organized with a list then mark everything as an a i finally pick up thank you um facebook for ge

tting rid of that i finally pick up the a's and i don't know what can you please repost we have to remember that it's not about keeping up with neuron normative but accept our own exactly you're not trying to compare yourself with neuro normative people you're trying to just do your what works for your brain and be part of a community of people like this who similarly struggle i just want to say that facebook is deleting people so i can't respond i'm sorry please repost i struggle with having th

e mental capacity to even use these tools right so one of the things that happens is that um you know you're so overwhelmed that even using something that i'm suggesting like what is one thing what is one challenge for your focus feels like too much so i um i think that um what what's important is to break things down into smaller pieces so you know if you have trouble focusing and you notice there's something that distracts you right put that on your phone into a voice memo right away i notice

what's distracting me is this or i notice what's distracting me is that so that you can start to have a record of what it is without trying to hold it in your brain which which taxes your working memory and then you feel bad about yourself too um so uh one of the things amy you said you struggle with is staying on one task with being distracted by another denise many competing priorities yes um getting your son to college self-care main challenge is definitely the motivation to actually focus i

just have none lately so if you're lacking motivation to focus on anything what's getting in the way of that motivation tell me i'd like to know because um when we're when we're not able to motivate it's usually because there's a part of ourselves that is you know holding us down that is telling us something negative that is is is trying to protect us from something that it's worried about or it's afraid of or so what what do you what's going on do you think that is holding you back from motivat

ion sorry overwhelmed now um getting done when i'm supposed to i have a very hard time very consuming day job and business i run on the side so focusing both has been a challenge yeah so this would be hard for anybody tonya so um you know again in situations like this you really have to like block your time and stick with your time blocks and that can be challenging virginia having never received any professional development or mentoring when it comes to project management i'm realizing that my

time blindness is huge i think that attitude has a lot of interesting stuff on time blindness um that's also something that we can put down as a good a good topic for a webinar in the future um nadine my one main challenge of focus is relationships and how not to get emotionally attached to everything a person says or does if something goes wrong i want to be able to focus on work or school without stopping right so that has to do with you know some you know um reaction rejection sensitivity and

and actually being able to set boundaries for yourself around being and saying something yourself like i do not need to take this personally this is not about me any interaction with someone is fifty percent them and fifty percent me diane says i'm feeling like i'm failing at everything even when i'm doing good that sounds really hard diane and i'm sorry to hear that because um you know the fact is if you are doing well there's a there's a voice in your head that is not letting you notice what'

s going well and to counteract that voice what i really suggest is at the end of each day before you go to sleep in a journal write down three things that went well that day and they can be small like they could be um i made a good cup of coffee they could be huge my boss loved my work today and gave me a positive review they could be medium i cooked a good dinner so whatever it is maybe some days there's five maybe some days there's just three but really to come up with three because we want to

nurture that positive outlook instead of seeing what's always wrong um cassandra i've worked cassandra went away a lack of clarity depression okay so what's getting in the way of motivation i'm not sure i'm treating anxiety but i think i have unchecked depression so just so you know untreated anxiety or severe anxiety can lead to depression that's what the research shows the main challenge is that i resist discipline i can't stand regulating myself for a long time extremely stressful so uh yass

er i think if you resist discipline or you can't stand regulating yourself for a long time do it for shorter amounts of time how long can you stand it if you can you know work in a 15-minute block use the um the pomodoro method the tomato timer and just set yourself up for 15-minute blocks with a short break and another 15. work with what makes sense to you where you succeed rather than paying attention to what you don't do i hope the video is not glitching lila i'm always overthinking what a sp

ecific person in my life is going to do or worrying of some arguments going to happen but it doesn't happen i overthink and it's affecting my sleep i have insomnia insomnia and i go to sleep every night at 3am that sounds really stressful um and here's the thing you can't control what other people do or say all you can manage is your response to it and so if you're worrying about what other people are doing that is toxic worry it's it's it's not productive because you cannot do anything about it

what would be productive is to say okay you know i'm worried that i won't know what the right thing to say is when people do that i need some pocket phrases let me let me such as i need some time to think about that let me get back to you or um i didn't like the way you you said that could you repeat it please lack of motivation and executive functioning listening and reading are big challenges thank you for posting that melanie being addicted to high dopamine activities like watching and re-wa

tching tv shows games on my phone right so that's definitely going to get in the way of motivation um that you know when you're when you're feeling kind of uh like you need a retreat or you're tired or you just need your brain off that's fine but you have to you have to put some boundaries around that otherwise that's your whole day and then you're going to feel bad about yourself so i think setting alarms having uh having a buddy call you if you have a partner asking them for assistance um i ha

ve a problem with time blindness and object permanence wow this really struggle with what i think about thank you i worry that i'll never get better and ever reach my long-term goals okay lorenzo i hear that i have bursts of ambition but mostly distracted and dispersed i get depressed because i often feel out of control meeting my goals so when i read this lorenzo what i want to say to you is are your goals too big you know i know that i have very high expectations for myself and those high expe

ctations are part of the problem because nobody could meet those okay so when we have goals that we're not meeting we might need to size down the goal for a while so that we can meet it put it in our book and our our journal at night hey i did this thing that i said i was gonna do so that you can start to feel a sense of progress rather than a sense of oh i never get anything done i um you know whatever you tell yourself i'm a loser um or or you know i'm not smart or um i'm not i'm not worth any

thing thank you lila for saying that uh diane diane says i rewatch tv shows all the time i have to say that sometimes i will rewatch an episode or two particularly if i'm feeling like stressed out um i make a list and it feels good to let something to get something completed on the list absolutely mickey denise i have 80d and my son who's entering his freshman year in college i make lists and that helps me manage my load but my son does not he seemed to have found a tool that works for him he do

es not want to take meds would love a webinar on helping a college kid with raging add succeed well i did two webinars on this actually and you can find them on my website um you can also find things on attitude but there's definitely a webinar that you can purchase on my website exactly on this topic um reading uninteresting text during my studies is hell i drift off texts that interest me i can spend hours without losing focus so generally i think it's important when you're studying not to loo

k at your phone not to read your texts but to have a break time you know again you're going to work for a period of time for as long as you can concentrate take a small break work for a second period of time and then take a larger break where you look at your tasks unless you are you know the president of the united states who is managing multiple issues or the you know some government official who needs to read their texts every hour probably you can take uh you know work for 50 60 minutes and

then come back johnny i work in a role that takes me inside and outside constantly it's extremely hard for me to change tasks which is required of me one might be digital but then i might be needed somewhere else there are tasks like emails i need to respond to or send and i purchased a surface go3 tablet to do stuff on the go and it was great initially but i find that being in my bag makes it hard to have that spark sorry um yeah you can be distracted by having that thing so it could be helpful

to have it but then you can sort of find that you're drifting off to it um it's it's you know when you have a a job where you change environments where you change tasks you know that's hard for a lot of people particularly those who are neurodiverse because there's that shift and that flexibility and it takes some people longer to have a warm up in fact i one thing i was going to share today was about multitasking because multitasking actually interferes with focus quite a bit multitasking does

n't really exist in the brain it slows productivity it changes how we learn and think and it can increase superficiality in social relationships really what multitasking is doing is splitting our attention every time we switch from one thing to another we're changing our attention so we're not concentrating on either task and then you need a mental warm-up to resume the suspended task so efficiency goes down so if you have work where you are changing and shifting from thing to thing then you nee

d to give yourself a little time to make those transitions so your brain can catch up otherwise that creates that sense of overwhelm um okay more from the the comments there are so many comments exhaustion from parenting and high conflict custody i'm trying to maintain routine and boundaries when he's gone i struggle yes um one of the things that's really hard in divorce families is when the two parents don't get along and you can't have similar routines in in the houses not that they have to be

the same but that there are routines and they are similar it's important if you can if you are in a divorce situation if you can get someone to help you mediate some sort of routine or parenting support that can be really useful carolyn i block time but others schedule meetings anyway they get they get more and more behind which causes stress and it goes in a circle so here's the thing i want to say and this is really hard to do is sometimes saying no to something enables you to concentrate and

develop the thing that you're already working on so if you can't go to a meeting like you can't have somebody scheduling meetings for you back to back if you need time to transition and warm up and think about what you're doing and so that's a reasonable thing to say is like i can only attend two meetings a day or three meetings a day because i actually have work to do and i these meetings are getting in the way of me doing my work we have a problem how are we going to solve that um i've seen a

social media set of posts where someone asks a colleague to translate what she really wants to say to a business speak i have no idea what that means lorenzo i just feel emotionally overwhelmed and need a hug like 90 of the day i'm i'm sorry to hear this lorenzo i don't know if you're getting your therapeutic support or medical medication um or something um if you're exercising regularly any of those things might help with your emotional overwhelm kristen what can we do to make sure we follow o

ur timers or not forget them if we're doing something and can't break away that's a fantastic question kristen because it's so easy to set the timer and ignore it i have a timer that goes off at 9 45 every evening that tells me i need to go upstairs at 10 and then i have another timer that tells me to go upstairs at 10. and i ignore those i would say 85 percent of the time and then i go upstairs too late and so you know one of the things that i think we want to do is to make our timer annoying u

m and to have a conversation with ourselves and say you know what you keep ignoring the timer and then you go to bed too late and then you feel bad and blah blah blah so what's going to help you so in this case i asked my husband when it's 10 o'clock please encourage me to go upstairs and even if i'm a jerk ignore that because it's not about you just encourage me by saying it's 10 o'clock this is when you wanted me to tell you to go upstairs and then you're done your birthday so here you go fail

ure is all about your state of mind we are supposed to stumble as human beings that's our path that's how we learn that's what that's what fosters a growth mindset you stumble you pick yourself up you reorient you try again or maybe you try something different one of the things that i hear you saying is that you are expecting failure no matter what you do and that's something that's worth talking about with somebody like a coach or a counselor or a therapist because that expectation of failure i

s getting in your way of actually sharing your gifts with the world you know we all have moments of success and moments of less success you know we all think times when things are going swimmingly and times when you're like i'm just going to sit at the beach because this day is is kind of been really stinky um rather than condemn yourself for your failures how can you look at your failures quote unquote as as opportunities you know in chinese it's the same character crisis and opportunity so i'd

really like you to really think about when you're struggling what is a learning that you could take from it rather than you know berating yourself for how terrible you are that you've stumbled again yes thank you susan for sharing that ned just covered that as well on attitude amanda i think it's important to remember that if your child has adhd and they have other neuro differences yep extremely low dopamine from draining boring tasks makes it easier to just just be distracted it's hard to pay

attention even when i want to so one of the things that we want to do with an adhd brain is very low dopamine tasks with high dopamine tasks and you want to set up a work schedule where there's something that you love something you don't like so much something that you love a break etc so that you feel like you're able to um to balance that [Music] um uh hugs release so much stress i'm holding in my body yeah where can we watch the replay of this hi lori it'll be right here and there's also one

on my facebook page too um it has helped me forget the idea of perfect routines consistency i start habits all over the time all the time i start habits over all the time that's right so you're gonna start you're gonna quote fall off the wagon but you don't have to shame yourself you don't have to should yourself you don't have to blame yourself you can just be like okay i'm going to start again oh boy if you and i could put our heads together we'd be the ultimate productivity machine sounds go

od ronnelle um or maybe you're not talking about junior talking to someone else say my house is a nightmare and i need to work on budgeting but i have a mentally taxing job and no spoons left to give to home personal tasks so i think in this kind of situation dana or for other people who have mentally taxing jobs and that kind of burns their brain out i think it's worth maybe you know really talking to a friend or colleague or somebody in human resources about how to make your work work life mor

e manageable you know you can't give everything at work and have nothing left for yourself because day after day then you're on a starvation diet and they are not going to be able to continue to succeed at work so we've got to come up with different ways of managing um i like to use multitasking to keep my brain from wandering when doing mundane tasks i like to listen to a podcast that's great when working on a routine you're welcome yasser thank you for putting up the eisenhower matrix i apprec

iate that melanie um do you do i rest after this yes i do i have a drink of water i might try to talk to melanie to sort of go over what's going on except i don't have her phone number um and um and i take my dog for a walk um often i need to be productive i'm doing two to three things simultaneously so when you're doing those two to three things simultaneously you're not really doing any of them particularly well and so i would really encourage you to be able to say to yourself okay i have thes

e three three things i need to do i'm gonna start with this one only and i'm to minimize those other things i'm going to put them in their own tab or open up a new browser and i'm going to minimize them so i'm only focused on the thing in front of me um okay uh writing three completed tasks working in 15-minute blocks writing more urgent and important lists so many things i know but i forgot because i'm overwhelmed okay i'm sorry that you're overwhelmed because i gave a lot of information today

but you're right writing three completed tasks that you feel good about working in 15-minute blocks or 20-minute blocks whatever makes sense to your brain and using urgent and important lists based on the eisenhower matrix that melanie posted above um the second one i posted didn't work either okay so i'm not sure what's going on with my downloadables why they're not working this is very frustrating to me i will copy this and put it in one more time here we go this is about motivation this shoul

d work i'm not sure why it's not working but i will certainly uh talk to my people to make sure um thank you very very much everybody we went over a little bit i'm gonna spend two more minutes answering questions uh sadly i can't trick myself like that because i always know mentally no i have wiggle room and so i let myself procrastinate it's similar but helps me to set multiple alarms to before travel time to trigger me right so um one of the things that helps me um with the alarm is knowing th

e uh sort of the is remembering the outcome when i don't do that or you know when i don't set the alarms to leave um for the airport enough time i know i'm going to be in a panic and that panic is not worth it to me anymore um dylan i binge to try and get my dopamine fixed it's a vicious cycle right so what you want to do dylan is actually alternate dope high and low dopamine activities because the binging isn't going to help you feel better um well trish i'm glad you made it and there's a recor

ding so you don't have to worry about it you're welcome bob we are thank you danielle we are not the sum of our failures we are the sum of all parts good bad past success future promise that's beautiful thank you danielle i appreciate your saying that okay um okay [Music] uh okay great awesome uh kevin my life too when my daughter leaves after being here for an extended period of time i struggle greatly yes it's you know it's hard when you have when you have contact with a child or a family memb

er and then they're gone or students or whatever and then you have this open expanse of time and they can feel overwhelming so i encourage you to think about you know what do i want to do on saturday or what do i want to do tomorrow now that my daughter's not here or my child's left for college you know what's one or two activities something that might be a have to and something that would bring me joy um and listening or watching something i knit um that's i think that's different than actually

um you know basically um watching something having you know go shopping on amazon and doing my emails like that that's a bit much um so okay um let's see uh thank you for posting the downloadable i hope it works um uh i see okay the downloadable worked thank you oh my god all right i'm going to look into this danielle i'm really sorry if you're interested in the downloadable about how to harness grit or motivation um send me an email uh info at doctorsharonceline.com and i'll send you the um th

e the downloadable i'm not sure why that happened so we we went a little bit over thank you so much for joining me and for everybody for sharing today i really appreciate it and um we will see you again in a month maybe it's three weeks we'll do one in august for sure and then we'll come back to our every other week in september so thank you for joining in all over the world i appreciate your honesty and your vulnerability and how you are um how you are supporting each other again um thank you f

or the feedback about my downloadables i don't know what's wrong but i will um i will fix that um and you can get the the replay here on attitude or on my website www.drsharonsaline.com so yeah you can check out hello at dr sharon celine or info at dr sharon celine thank you so much have a great weekend and um be kind to yourself bye