I started writing this post two weeks ago, two weeks after I began self-isolating. It was a bad time for my brain because while I knew that I wouldn’t like working from home, I thought I had developed a strong enough set of strategies and techniques for dealing with my ADHD to see me through. It turns out that was an arrogant and wrong assumption.

Instead, I had a week of anxiety attacks and brain fog and I had to really scramble to feel healthy and functional again. Happily, I can say that my week 4 has been better, so I’m in a better place to share some ideas and resources. 

Is it helpful to have a little refresher about ADHD before we go further?

Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder is a neurological disorder that affects the Executive Function, or the ability to plan, focus, and execute tasks. While commonly associated with children, it is estimated to occur in 2.5% of the adult population. You can find out more here.

I’ve noticed something in the intervening two weeks since starting this post; I think the pandemic is making everyone a little ADHD. Every day I hear people talking about difficulty focussing, feeling like their brains are full of static, anxiety about not being productive enough, or time seeming to be weirdly distorted. Now I am not in the habit of casually using mental health terms, but as we all find ourselves in the soupy mix of anxiety and change and stress, everyone’s focus and executive functioning is likely to be a little affected.

The good news is that for those of you who don’t normally experience these kinds of issues, you’ll find your balance again before too long. And for those of us who do contend with this in normal life, we need to remember that we have the skills and tools that will pull us through little by little. This is what I’ve found helpful:

1. Remember: We are Not Working From Home

What we’re doing at the moment looks a lot like working from home, but what we are actually doing is just staying in our homes under government guidance because of a global pandemic. That’s not quite the same thing. Few of us were able to plan our work to optimise this time; many of our jobs have aspects that can’t easily be done remotely. All of us are dealing with large and small moments of grief, disappointment, and worry in our personal and work lives. What we are doing right now is working as best we can despite everything else, and it’s helpful to keep that in mind.  

2. Rebuild a Minimal Workday Routine

One of the most important strategies for coping with ADHD is building up daily routines. I have a very elaborate suite of tasks that I do on normal work days to help my brain transition from ‘home’ to ‘work’. Once I get to my desk, I check these things off in my very-essential bullet journal, and then I dive into whatever the day holds in store for me.

At first I tried to just import those routines into my new home-work setting, but that really quickly became overwhelming. Instead, I reduced the routine to just the essential things I need to do for my health and wellbeing and made everything else flexible or optional. My current approach is to know what to keep rigid (medication and supplements, bedtime, not drinking on weekdays), know what I need to be flexible about (exercise, meditation) and what needs to temporarily vanish from my life (a few personal projects – see point 7). Start small, and add slowly.

3. Review Your Strategies and Try out some New Ones

There are endless lists of strategies and techniques to help people with ADHD get through life, and I love learning about all of them. But day-to-day, I only use a few including my bullet journal, a pomodoro timer app, and timeblocking.  I’ve needed all of those over the last few weeks, but I’ve also been using some that I don’t rely on routinely including:

• Fidget toys (or knitting) for long video conferences. Out of shot of the camera!
• Flexible mini meditation breaks in the day instead of a long session in the morning
• Changing location to refocus my mind and tackle a new task

If it’s maybe been a while since you explored tips and techniques, have another look and see if there’s a new one that might help you now (some great ideas here).

4. Set deadlines, create accountability, make rigid boundaries

A lot of my work doesn’t have a fixed deadline, especially now; they’re tasks and projects that I should just be getting on with. As anyone who has ever attended a productivity training session knows, important-but-not-urgent is the hardest kind of work for most people to tackle, and it’s even harder for people with ADHD. If this is tricky for you, find ways of creating deadlines. Tell your line manager or other colleagues when you’ll have a draft for them to look at. Find an accountability buddy in your team and report in to them.

And as much as you are able to, create a rigid separation between your work and non-work time. In my case, this means being really clear with my partner that he can’t ask me casual questions when I’m working; that distraction could potentially really derail me (I could not relate more to this scene below, as much as it pains me to admit).

It means explaining to my team when I’m around for chats and when I’m concentrating on work and might have my email closed. It means being clear about my working hours and not feeling like I have to be on-call all the time just because I’m home.

I struggle with this normally, too, so a few months ago I began an end-of-the-day routine to help me accept what I’d been able to do and transition my brain back to home mode. I’ve started a simplified version of that up again this week, and it’s been helpful. My list currently includes:

• Writing one last email
• Noting down two things that went well, or even just ok
• Updating my weekly list of things that my team have accomplished. This is more important than ever in this weird time.

5. Take breaks throughout the day, at night, and on the weekend

There is anecdotal evidence that people are working more hours now than they were before. Our commutes are gone, but our guilt is high, we don’t feel as productive as normal. We probably aren’t! Try to be mindful of this and realistic about what you can do in a day and what’s really required of you.

I’ve found it helpful to take breaks away from screens now and then and to make sure that I have a lunch break that definitely doesn’t involve a laptop or my phone. Set a timer if you have time blindness, but give yourself a few minutes to disengage and relax.

Your situation may not allow you to fully unplug at night or at weekends, but if you can, you will genuinely feel better for it.

6. Remember that there were bad days in ‘normal’ time, too

Some workdays do not go to plan, but at the moment, it’s easy to blow a not-great-day out of proportion. When I feel like I’ve had a day where I haven’t been able to do much at all, I’m finding it helpful to remind myself that some of my days were like that before, too. There were days with too many meetings and neglected emails and side-tracked projects. Things slipped. We aren’t always our best. That’s not going to change just because we’re working from home.

7. This is not the right time for ADHDers to learn new skills

People are coming up with some really wonderful online learning tools and resources for adults and kids and wow, it would be a great time to learn a new language or really perfect your dance moves, but if you have ADHD stop even thinking about adding a new hobby or project to your list. Look around your house. Count the number of on-the-go projects you already have. I have about a dozen, one lurking in every corner of my house. I do not need to learn Korean right now, even if BTS are giving free lessons.

I’m not saying this to curb anyone’s ambitions or curiosity, but because there’s a dark side to wanting to dive into everything at the moment. If you don’t keep it up; you’ll feel like a failure. It’s so easy to get overwhelmed by all of the things that you could be doing, that you get paralysed. Absolve yourself of that pressure.

8. Treat your comorbidities

ADHD tends to come with other mental health conditions including ASD, anxiety, depression and OCD, and it might be important to treat those ones before your ADHD. In my experience, when I have an acute episode of anxiety or depression, it’s more serious than even my worst ADHD day. Take care of yourself as holistically as you can, whatever that means for you.

9. Find some purpose

As we’ve been told countless times over the last few weeks, we’re all already doing our part by just staying at home. If you are doing that, looking after your loved ones (in person or remotely), and working too, your life has purpose.

However, that may not feel like enough for you, and this need to do more is something that people with ADHD may experience more acutely than others. We like to be helpful, particularly in a crisis.

There are lots of ways to do that at the moment, and many of these tasks can be done around your existing work or life commitments and from home. I have a few things I’m doing during my no-screen-time lunch breaks. If you want to take on a more substantial volunteer role (i.e. with the NHS), talk to your line manager.

10. Recognise periods of transition and the discomfort of the unknown

Now and again, I have a flutter of panic at the idea of going back to ‘normal’ life. This contradicts all of my conscious thoughts, but I know that rather than being fearful of ‘real life’, this is a sign that I’m nervous about another transition. And that’s ok. It’s helpful to remember that we all feel uncomfortable about change. We’ll probably even miss a few of the nicer routines we’ve established during this time. There’s a helpful post about this on this very blog.

11. Continue to fight for treatment and accommodations

Getting treated for ADHD, like many mental health condition, is hard, and the local provision is patchy and confusing. People with ADHD are often bad at asking for help or advocating for themselves. We can feel like we’re bothering people with our own insignificant issues, and a global pandemic will exacerbate these feelings. 

Push through these doubts and ask for the help you need either from health care providers, or your line manager if you have disclosed to them. Review your accommodations and see if they need to be adjusted. Check out the support offered by CCCU. We all deserve to be healthy right now.

In addition to the links above, I’ve found the following podcasts particularly helpful:

Ten Percent Happier with Esther Perel; although this is about relationships, it has useful tips for setting kind boundaries with the other people who might be sharing your home.

Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast: This podcast has a very chirpy tone but persist. They’ve made a few really useful episodes recently

In writing this, I followed my own advice and asked for a deadline that I just about met. And in true rambling ADHD-style, I’ve written something three times longer than I should have. I still feel like this is too brief, and I would be happy to chat with anyone else who wants to talk about how their brains are coping with this situation.

Katie McGown, Arts and Culture Manager