Random urge to share some hacks that I’ve come up with that have worked for me and might be helpful to others, and encourage hearing some more!
The most generic ones: Reduce decision making, focus on “if this then that” systems, and provide clear visual indicators.
Tl;Dr:
- Flip pill bottle upside down when taking meds to remember you took them.
- Smoothies are a super easy food that can be really nutritious and might bypass stim meds appetite loss.
- Scales for cooking means only needing one tool for measurements and not needing to clean lots of spoons; use non-American recipes or write down conversions once the first time you make something.
- Before bed if you’re racing thoughts, write things down in a notebook and put it somewhere you have to pick it up (e.g., on coffee maker).
- Take notes using a non-linear tool like Obsidian canvas to better represent your non-linear train of thought.
- Freeze all of your food and prep more than you need when chopping to freeze it.
- Learn to cook meats from frozen, e.g., in the instant pot, to avoid thawing or meat going bad.
- Keep colourful stickers or sticky notes around so you can place them on things to remind you to look at it and deal with it later when you have time and energy instead of forgetting it when you look away.
Can’t remember if you’ve taken your meds? Visual indicator systems to the rescue! I flip my pill bottle upside down once I’ve taken it, and keep it visible near my bed or by my coffee table/desk. If it’s past 3pm, if I see it, I flip it right side up every time so that I don’t leave it upside down overnight and get confused in the morning.
Not eating breakfast? Smoothies. Keeping the Sims metres full is important. I always run into decision fatigue in the morning/afternoon and by then I’m too faded to decide to eat, or Vyvanse has me too not hungry to consume food, or I’ll spend forever making food to ignore my work. Bonus: Get a scale for cooking so you dont need to find and clean dozens of spoons and convert your recipes to masses (North Americans).
So smoothies. I ignore work for a day to do a wild research binge, figure out the nutritional value of some different smoothie mixes, experiment, and now I’ve got a go-to breakfast every morning that doesn’t hit my nausea and gets me nutrients. You can also measure out 3-4 at a time and freeze them in small containers, excluding wet ingredients.
BTW my go-to right now is appx. 150g milk, 50-70g sugar free yogurt, 60g frozen blueberries, 70g banana, 25g rolled oats, 25-50g spinach, 7g chia seeds, maybe 30g strawberry if I’m feeling it, maybe a dash of cinnamon if I want. Seems decent in terms of nutrients, and all stuff I’ve got frozen or on hand anyways.
Bonus: A microwaved sweet potato is better than it deserves to be for 5 minutes of microwaving and pretty nutritious and sating.
Planning tomorrow at bed time? Before bed, I’ve got tons of thoughts about what I need to do the next day. I write them in my notebook, then put my notebook on my coffee maker (a Clever brewer for easy cleanup, decaf beans) so that I have to pick up the notebook anyways. Not every day, but if anything pressing comes up.
Note taking is tough linearly? My thoughts aren’t linear, neither are my notes. Ever since I started using Obsidian for note taking, I find myself using the Canvas option which basically makes your notes into a graph/flowchart. Then I can colour code, link notes to other notes, turn each bubble into an entire page of notes, tag the notes. It even has an option to show you a random note on startup which can be helpful if you take notes and never read them.
Food going bad? Prepping is too much transition to cook? Freeze everything. Prep more than you need. If I’m already cutting half an onion for a meal, cutting a full onion isn’t hard - in fact stopping halfway might be harder. Cut one or two, toss it into a sheet, stick it in the freezer, and now you’re saved chopping for a bit. Bananas on their way out? Cut them into pieces and freeze them, frozen bananas are a freaking snack. Cutting bell peppers? Freeze that shit. Fresh spinach? I skipped the parboil and just froze it in a freezer bag and it worked great for smoothies and adding into curries. Freeze it all.
Meats going bad? Instant Pot was a saviour. Cooking chicken and sausage from frozen in the instant pot works great for all kinds of things. Slap a premade curry paste onto a frozen chicken, throw in some frozen spinach and frozen peas, meal ready in about 30 minutes. I use naan for everything because it freezes and reheats well; mini-pizzas with frozen pepperoni that’s portioned out, naan as a sausage bun, garlic naan with pasta, whatever, it’s versatile and freezes well.
Can’t do this right now and then you forget? Having the short-term memory of a fly sucks. Have sticky notes or stickers around the house. Then when you notice you need to clean the toilet or refill something or whatever it is and you can’t do it right now, just stick something colorful on it so that you look at it at a better time. I don’t even bother writing things down on the note, it just needs to draw my attention at a time I can deal with it.
Just a few, might add more if some come to mind, but hoping to hear some other’s thoughts :)
“Sacred Rituals”. This is what I call things that have to be done exactly the same way every time or it screws everything else up. For example, as soon as I get up, the very first thing I do is take my meds. Nothing, and I mean nothing, happens before taking my meds. Gotta pee? Can’t. Gotta take my meds. House is on fire? That sucks. Gotta take my meds. If I don’t, I will definitely forget to take them and fuck up my entire day.
I have something similar. I practice doing certain routine micro-habits until they become ingrained in muscle memory and always do them.
For example, I still set my keys down without thinking most times they are in my hand, but thanks to spending several hours practicing the motion years ago, I now always unthinkingly set them where they belong: clipped to my beltloop and tucked into my pocket. Anytime I identify a need to add one of these to my life I spend an hour practicing experiencing the trigger and then doing the motion. To learn the keys-in-pocket habit, I held my keys, clipped and tucked. Pull them out, note the feel of them in my hand, and repeat, over and over. It feels silly to practice doing something so easy, but once it becomes muscle memory, it doesn’t rely on my faulty thinking memory. I’ll do several sessions of practice every few days until I can feel that it’s fully ‘set’ as an unthinking motion. They’re a pain to establish, but they are well worth it and have saved me a ton of grief over the years.
One of these automatic habits saved me this morning. I always pat my keys when closing a locking door behind me (even if it isn’t locked), and this morning I had missed swapping my keys to my new pair of pants. I would have been locked out of my house and late for work if patting my empty pockets hadn’t alerted me just before a pulled the locked door close behind me. I have some other ones that I haven’t mentioned, because I can’t think of what they are. I’d notice the problems they prevent coming back if I stopped doing them, so I can only assume they must still be working.
I keep the keys in the hand that closes the door they lock. No keys, no close.
As someone with ASD as well I’ve learned that if I take my meds and I still cant do what I need to do that day, its ok to just give up and try again the next day. Some days are genuinely futile
Yeah! Not beating yourself up over this is really important, same with not overthinking it. Some days are hard, some are less hard, some, I’ve heard, are easy.
Some days the best progress/discipline is noticing it’s a day where you need your own compassion to admit you need to let yourself off the hook for a bit.
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Never just wait in the kitchen. When something is boiling/cooking/idle use that time to clean.
I’m going to preface this one by saying I have a messy kitchen most of the time. We just take plates there and leave them on the counter. feeding ourselves is hard enough without having to cleanup right after. Then there is some cooking task that requires a but of idle time, I use that time to clean while I wait. This has two advantages: it makes waiting easier (before I did this I regularly undercooked food), and it makes me not leave the kitchen while the stove is on. That is a big no no for me.
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Modify instant meals
When feeding myself is hard, I like to modify instant/freezer meals. I always have shelf stable meals ready and a few plans to easily add to them. I find that most of them are a bit lacking in the protein department, so I have some easy ways to add some meat to them (canned sausages, tunna, cheese, peas).
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Having a smartwatch with a voice assistant is a godsend
I bought a used galaxy watch 4 and I love it. I set timers and reminders on it all the time, the only time it’s not on my wrist is when it’s charging. I set timers for the oven, for the washing machine, and in general for something I need to get back to after some time. I set more descriptive reminders to a bunch of things. It finds my phone when I loose it, and it also helped me track my heart rate once I started medication
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A doctor just told me my adhd symptoms are real but its also probably trauma related and prescribed me blood pressure medication and antidepressants (even though i already take antidepressants and go to therapy for trauma)
this isnt a tip sorry I just feel hopeless lol
Steady on. You’re on a programme, and programmes can be assessed, reviewed and tuned until they work.
The hardest part is the time sink as you wait after each tuning to get a feel for the results. I know from other stuff it can seem_like_forever before the regular tunings see results, and every day up to that one is just a struggle around faith and hope.
That chore you always put off the entire day because it’s this daunting thing that just takes forever? It probably doesn’t. Next time you do it, see how long it really takes.
Look at the clock. Or use a stopwatch. Write down the time for everything you do regularly. Add it to your todo list entry if you use one. Once you know that the ordeal really only takes 15 minutes, it seems less daunting.
OK. I started the stopwatch, then put it off for 5 hours, and completed the task in 5 minutes. So it took me 5 hours and 5 minutes. I just don’t have time during the day for a 5+hr task.
Alarms or reminders for everything. Especially helpful for not getting stuck in ‘waiting’ mode. Afternoon appt? Set alarm 10mins before gotta leave so I can forget about and not hold it in my mind
I do this for the same reasons - and also, snooze emails until two weeks before an event, then a week before the event, then a few days before the day of the event in order to keep reminding myself it’s going to happen.
Chicken wings in an air fryer take about 20 minutes all up. If you cook them for two meals a day you can clean it every second day no worries, third if you have a bad day.
You don’t actually have to have complex meals with sides and so on. Beef mince fried as patties or a scramble on a low heat will give you a reasonable meal with a pan, implement, and bowl. Chicken thighs cook well with just a little fat in the pan and a high heat at the start dropping to a medium. Eggs covered with water in a pot, bring to boil, take off heat, wait 17 minutes, perfect hard boiled eggs every time.
Outsource and obscelete yourself. Do you have to do your taxes? Maybe someone else can do that and you can pay them and use the energy you saved to work more hours, ending up net positive. Obviously not always applicable, but my washer and dryer mean I don’t spend multiple hours a week hanging and forgetting and rewashing washing, I just wash and then into the heat pump dryer and it is done.
I put anything I need to take with me right in front of the door, so it’s impossible to miss on my way out.
If you live with someone else (who may need to open the door) put it (or a reminder) in (or on) your shoes.
On food, write the expiration date with a big magic marker as a reminder to use them.
Put the things you want to use first (food or otherwise) closest to the point of access so they get considered first. Don’t arrange things in a way that anything is obscured if possible.
Just have less of everything to avoid being overwhelmed with choices. Don’t have a well stocked pantry unless it is arranged in a way that encourages first in first out. Same with hobby supplies and clothes.
On food, write the expiration date with a big magic marker as a reminder to use them.
If it’s something from the freezer(and the expiry is now useless) write the date you thawed/ opened it.
I tried the smoothies route once, about 2 years ago. I bought a Ninja blender, so I could make a personal smoothie to-go and not have to clean up a separate blender every time I made it.
Turns out I suck at making smoothies. I thought it’d be simple. Just throw some frozen fruits in a blender, along with some ice and a liquid like milk or something to help it mix. But that was horribly bland. I tested a bunch of other recipes online that also mixed in kale, honey, flavored protein powders, and/or other ingredients and they also came out weird.
I eventually found one recipe I liked that a friend recommended. But by that point, I was kind of burnt out by the whole thing. I only found one good recipe overall, and hunting online to test more recipes was getting to be a chore. This was supposed to be quick and easy! And now it’s consuming too much of my time, just trying to figure it out.
So… my blender has been collecting dust in my kitchen for the past couple years now.
