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I always had a mortal enemy when it came to my focus; and it was me.
After years of struggling to get things done and build the life I wanted, I was
finally able to dial-in a set of strategies to effectively combat my ADD, and
take control over my time.
Just like me - you have a superpower; you just don’t know how to use it
(yet).
If you have ADD (or ADHD, as it’s come to officially be known) then you
face the same difficulties as myself and millions of others.
These characteristics can often include losing track of time, motivation and
the things you need to get done to create the life you love.
Worse still, ADHD is more common than doctors may have previously
believed, according to statistics from the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC). A recent report shows that up to 11 percent of children
aged 4-17 have been diagnosed with ADHD1 at some point in their lives.
Males are almost three times more likely2 to be diagnosed with ADHD than
females.
1
https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/features/key-findings-adhd72013.html
2
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/adhd/data.html
During their lifetimes, 12.9 percent of men3 will be diagnosed with the
attention disorder. Just 4.9 percent of women will be diagnosed.
- You forget what you were doing (or were supposed to be doing)
- Your speech pace gets fumbled, because the words in your head
move faster than the words coming out of our mouth
- Substance Abuse
- Chronic disorganization
- Relationship Problems
- Moodiness, and
- Depression
However, as with almost all things in life - characteristics and traits that
make certain components very difficult (if not near impossible at times) also
can be incredible beneficial in other areas.
3
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/statistics/1ADHD_CHILD.shtml
ADD can give you a huge edge if you accept that it requires specific
strategies to overcome the potential downsides and put them to use as
strengths.
You can actually get more done in less time than people who don’t have a
hyperactive brain.
For those of us with ADD, our core strengths tend to come out in the form
of:
- Creativity: We are incredibly creative not just with audio, visual, and
words but in how we see and hence approach solving problems
For example:
These are just a few of the superpowers our ADD/ADHD brain provides us.
It’s different for each of us, but all of us with hyperactive brains process
loads of information exponentially faster than most people.
For me this tends to be most obvious with math and information retrieval.
What that means is that I’m able to look at (or scan) large amounts of data
and very quickly identify patterns - this in and of itself has proven
fantastically useful for me first in Finance and now in actively investing /
building businesses.
In this guide, I’m going to share with you 5 tools you can put to use today to
turn your tendency to be distracted into 10x productivity.
*If you want to skip right to the ADD Productivity Hacks click here, or feel
free to just scroll past the story - you won’t hurt my feelings.
My ADD Story
My story starts in 1st grade at Saint Catherine of Siena Catholic school in
Mount Penn, PA.
I was raised Catholic (though I’m not anymore, but that’s a story for another
day), but my parents chose to send me to St. Catherines not because they
themselves were devout Catholics - but because Exeter School District, the
public school in our town, was awful at the time.
They believed I would get a better education at the local private school, boy
were they wrong.
My days would start with putting on my uniform; dark blue slacks, a light
blue button down shirt, a black clip-on tie, and black dress shoes - and my
mom driving me just a few miles from our home to school.
My 1st grade teacher was named Ms. Schertz, and 6 year-old me hated
her.
Most days would entail being given a cardboard notecard with 6 horizontal
rows and a bucket of cardboard letters and numbers that you could stick in
the rows to spell words, and solve simple math problems.
Ms. Schertz would write the sentences and math problems on the board
and then go sit at her desk and read Satan’s handbook.
I would finish the exercise and then be forced to sit there, for hours… bored
to death.
Or I could crawl under my desk, out the open classroom door, and go hit
the water fountain. Which I did with ever increasing frequency, until Ms.
Schertz had it brought to her attention from one of the other teachers that
saw me roaming the halls.
had eaten roadkill. Plus I had the added joy of her not suffering from one of
those dry mouth disorders so I ended up with a nice facial shower in
addition to the bath I had received from my mom the night before.
I was sent to the Principal’s office, parents were called. I was not having a
good day.
Most days were spent learning cursive and in my off time I would flirt with
my classroom crush, a girl with shoulder length brown hair named Aileen.
All was going well until I started finishing my cursive lessons in our
workbook too fast, and again being left to my own devices to sit in class
and wait for the other students to finish - after exhausting my trips to the
water fountain.
At this point the school leadership was convinced I was mentally unstable
and may need to seek the attention of a specialist school for students with
learning disabilities.
It was recommended I see a Psychiatrist and get put on this new children’s
miracle drug, Ritalin.
My parents refused to resort to drugs as they didn’t want their now 7 year
old child to form a lifelong chemical dependency (thank you Mom and
Dad!).
Instead they started looking for a school that had programs for “gifted”
students. Turns out my ADHD was directly correlated to having a high IQ.
It has been found that often times, those of us with ADD/ADHD in turn have
increased mental capacity4 (higher IQ’s) - which makes sense since we
need more use of our brain to be able to store all this extra information we
take in.
The fact of the matter is, I was in a downward spiral until it was realized
that I needed to approach managing my tasks and attitude completely
differently - because those of us with ADD/ADHD are DIFFERENT.
4
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mysteries-add/201108/the-mysteries-add-and-high-iq
What if you could actually work less (more specifically; spend less TIME
working) and get more done?
First you need to be aware of the triggers that are magnifying your ADD.
“Solutions start
with Awareness”
The most common productivity killers that magnify ADD:
Distractions
A distraction happens every 8 minutes, or roughly 60x per day5. The most
common distractions take the form of unneeded information masked as
communication, such as:
- Emails
- Messages - The include texts, Facebook, GChat, Skype, and Slack
- Unscheduled Phone Calls
- Coworker’s conversations
5
http://interruptions.net/literature/CubeSmart-productivity-wp1.pdf
Procrastination
80% of people admit to procrastinating, 20% of those 80% are chronic
procrastinators6… and you might have guessed it, folks with ADD are
almost always in that 20%
Disorganization
This is harder to diagnose and nail down, but in reality - the ADD brain and
disorganization form a downward spiral similar to substance addiction.
Once people like you and me let pieces of our lives or work spaces become
disorganized it triggers a domino effect that kicks into procrastination and
more distractions.
6
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2010/04/procrastination.aspx
You need to beat your ADD/ADHD brain over the head with these
tasks to make what will otherwise become subconscious (and easily
forgotten or not considered) a tangible and active endeavor.
This means using sticky notes, or printing it out and sticking it on your
corkboard.
The way this takes shape for me is in 2 forms depending on the day
of the week. Some days I have a commute and some days I work
remote.
The format is very important, here is the format I use to ensure I’m
accurate in my to-do prioritization:
I must ______________
A high-priority task that will have an immediate impact
I should ____________
A task that will contribute to your long-term goals
I want ______________
For a while I would rewrite the list in priority order on a post it note
and stick it on my computer monitor - now I use a free browser
extension for my Google Chrome browser called Momentum
Dashboard.
2. Timed Sprints
The second tool that lets me plow through tasks at a superhuman
rate is planning and then running in sprints.
This is not a new concept, and I’ve actually even written on it before,
but just like the ADD To-Do List, there is a nuance that needs to be
adapted to make this work for folks with ADD/ADHD.
7
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique
It may be that I need more time to get moving and build momentum in
a task or it could simply be that the tasks I’m executing on take more
than 15 minutes to achieve.
The concept is simple, you need to tackle the big rocks first or you
will never get to the little rocks.
He demonstrates this using large and small rocks and a glass jar.
First, he puts all the little rocks in the jar and then tries to put in the
big rocks - but there’s not enough room, the little rocks have made an
inefficient use of the space.
He empties the jar, places the big rocks in first, and then uses the
small rocks to fill in the gaps.
8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmV0gXpXwDU
Another variation of a timed sprint that I use is called The 3+2 Rule9,
which focuses your production time each day on 3 big items and 2
small ones.
“Big” items are tasks that take 1-2 hours to complete and “small”
items are more like ~20 minutes.
Instead, if you run your days using the 3+2 rule you will actually:
- Prevent burn out since you still get variety throughout your day
in addition to the motivational benefit of a feeling of
accomplishment.
9
http://lifehacker.com/5853732/take-a-more-realistic-approach-to-your-to-do-list-with-the-3-%252B-2-rule
3. Chunk Distractions
Use timed sprints to schedule known distraction chunks.
A distraction chunk is time you block out of your calendar and actually
schedule to respond to all those communication mediums that
otherwise sink your productivity.
To do this you need to block out time for Emails, Calls, Messages
(Skype, Slack, Google Chat, Facebook, Snapchat, Etc).
To do this you need to commit to it. You need to close your email
tabs. Close your Slack tab. Set your phone to silent and turn it upside
down.
The only way you will see exponential production from your ADD is to
create a distraction free vacuum where you give yourself the chance
to be productive.
4. Concentrated Distractions
Yes you read that right, and I know it seems like an oxymoron.
Let me explain...
The key here is to use things that do not have the potential to run
away with your attention.
A stress ball gives you something that you can squeeze for a few
minutes while brainstorming or instead of taking a longer break during
production time - it works because it comes with a fixed expectation
of the outcome; you know exactly what you’re getting and after 2-3
minutes you’re good to resume production.
A cup of fresh juice, aside from the energizing benefits of having all
those active enzymes, works because it has a clear beginning and
end.
I’ve heard of people keeping brain teaser games at their desk to use
as concentrated distractions but the problem is - something like that
has a high likelihood of running away with our attention.
Instead I’ve found that music, more so than just sounds, helps to
stabilize my focus and get me into my flow state. The trick here is that
it can’t be music that I know.
I think the reason is, more than anything else, that I don’t have
established expectations for what is going to happen - and this
translates into pleasant surprises.
And for a lot of people that works - but if you’re like me, sometimes
you need someone to force you to focus - which means not giving
you an easy option to distract yourself.
If you can’t tell from the screenshot, what Focus does is it blocks you
from being able to access specific time-sucking websites for set
periods of time (that you select) from 15 minutes up to an hour.
There’s also an option to simply “focus” which stays on until you
disable it.
This is a fantastic tool for those of us who are our own worst enemy
when it comes to reigning in our distracted selves.
These range from anecdotal tips like “be realistic” to things like “forget
perfect,” “go on a scavenger hunt” or “do the fun stuff first.”
None of these are going to have a noticeable impact on your ability to crush
your daily tasks.
Many of them don’t even make sense for us... The idea of accepting shitty
work or pouring attention into designing your activities to be more “fun” vs.
simply being more efficient and getting them done is ridiculous.
Trust Me
The tips I’ve shared here work. I’ve been building (successful) businesses
for over 10 years and it’s been a slog dialing in how to maximize my daily
habits and output to capitalize on my ideas.
Nick is also well known in the digital marketing industry having created 2
popular products in use by thousands of marketing professionals around
the world. He has been featured in The New York Times, INC Magazine,
Entrepreneur, Huffington Post, Business.com, and many other publications.
For more information visit NickEubanks.com