Hacking Your ADHD
218 episodes - English - Latest episode: 7 days ago - ★★★★★ - 539 ratingsADHD can be a struggle, but it doesn't always have to be. Every Monday, join William Curb, as he explores ways that you can work with your ADHD brain to do more of the things you want to do. If you have ADHD or someone in your life does and you want to get organized, get focused and get motivated then this podcast is for you. Part of the ADHD reWired Podcast Network.
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Episodes
Among Us
January 11, 2021 10:00 - 17 minutes - 11.9 MBLast year there was a surge in the popularity of the game Among Us - 1000's of people jumped on to be funny little scientists running around there spaceship running various little tasks... all while trying to find out who among them didn't belong - the one who was trying to sabotage the mission. The one who was an imposter. I definitely played my fair share of the game, but always felt like I didn't get to play as the imposter nearly as much as I wanted to... yet in real life, far too often...
On The Razors Edge
January 04, 2021 10:00 - 17 minutes - 12 MBOccam's Razor is a philosophical rule (and that's rule in a very soft sense) that we can use to help us with problem solving. In philosophy a razor is a tool used to eliminate (or shave off) options that might lead us astray. Occam's Razor is one of the most popular examples and has made it's way into popular culture from the movie Contact to Sherlock Holmes to The Big Bang Theory. I imagine that a lot of you have heard of the famous razor before, which states that: plurality should not be...
Lagging Indicators
December 28, 2020 10:00 - 13 minutes - 9.09 MBI'm going to be diving into some more aspects of planning in the coming months - I know, shouldn't I have done this before the end of the year? Well I'm going to us my being completely unprepared for the end of the year to illustrate a great point - it's never too late to start working on planning. One of the most important aspects of planning is knowing where you've been and this typically comes from some kind of review process. The reason for the review is so that we can plan an accurate ...
Top 5 ADHD Tips
December 21, 2020 10:00 - 12 minutes - 8.9 MBHey there team, we're nearly at the end of 2020 and I thought I'd deliver a bit of a shorter episode this week focusing on some of the strategies that I find are the most important for managing my ADHD. This is definitely not a definitive list and as for the order of things... well I moved things around a number of times trying to decide what the best order would be and honestly I'm not sure there really is an order or truly a most important thing. When we're trying to manage our ADHD an imp...
Sequencing
December 14, 2020 10:00 - 17 minutes - 11.9 MBSequencing is all about the order in which we do things. Sometimes it seems like it doesn’t matter what comes first, but also try putting your pants on after you put on your shoes. Sequencing is something I’ve come to realize is a big deal with ADHD. The order in which we do things has a big impact on our overall productivity, but more than that, some of our other issues with ADHD make the sequence in which we do things much more important. Today we're going to be exploring how the order w...
Even More Automations
December 07, 2020 10:00 - 16 minutes - 11.4 MBPart of the reason that automations is such a ripe topic is that it can help in almost all areas of our life - this week we're going to focus more on the work side of things, because when it comes to our jobs there are a ton of things that usually can be automated fairly easily, because we all have those little tasks that we have to do all the time that aren't that hard but do require us to shift our attention to them for just a little bit. And that's what I think is the best benefit of set...
More Automations to Make Your Life Easier
November 30, 2020 07:00 - 20 minutes - 14.1 MBIn this week's episode we're going to focus on the money side of things and go into how we can use automation for our shopping and then also how we can use automations with our finances. And as a reminder, automations are things that we can set up in our life that are just going to happen regardless of what else we do. So think clicking a button and having a form filled out or even more basically think about something like your dishwasher, you put the dishes in, click a button and then all ...
Automating Your ADHD Life
November 23, 2020 10:00 - 19 minutes - 13.1 MBOne of the paradoxes of ADHD is how much work we can get done when we're interested in something... but then how little we get done when something is boring. Unfortunately in life there are a lot of things that are going to bore us. And this becomes especially true with those boring tasks we have to do over and over again. So this is where automation comes in - automation is simply something that accomplishes tasks for us without our intervention. Whether we know it or not, all of us alread...
Fighting Resistance (Rebroadcast)
November 16, 2020 07:00 - 17 minutes - 12 MB"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What's keeping us from sitting down is resistance." This is how Steven Pressfield introduces the idea of resistance in his book the War of Art, and to me, resistance is the root of the "I don't wanna's." While I don't agree with many of the things in Pressfield's book (I mean, he states that ADHD was made up by pharmaceu...
Cleaning House (Rebroadcast)
November 09, 2020 07:00 - 20 minutes - 14.1 MBI'd say I have a love-hate relationship with cleaning, but that implies that there is a part of me that loves cleaning. There isn't. I like having cleaned and having a clean home, but I seldom enjoy the actual cleaning part. ADHD tends to not make cleaning any easier. Time blindness makes me think most of the cleaning tasks I need to do are going to take forever. I have a natural propensity for clutter, and that clutter often fades into the background of what I notice - so I just stop seein...
One Year of Podcasting: Interview with Kari Gormley
November 02, 2020 10:00 - 21 minutes - 15 MBThis week's a little bit different - today you're going to be hearing an interview I had with my friend Kari Gormley - now I say interview with a bit of hesitation because our conversation absolutely did not start out that way. Kari is a Certified Applied Positive Psychology Practitioner, Coach, and Trainer as well as a fellow podcaster - her show is The Flourishing Experiment. but so, I was having a zoom call with Kari and we were just chatting to catch up on a few things and I had mentio...
Give Yourself Some Slack: Self-Compassion (Part 2)
October 26, 2020 09:00 - 18 minutes - 12.5 MBLast week we started our journey of self-compassion. Self-compassion is key part of cutting ourselves some slack - it's the combination of empathy and action. We're doing the things that'll let us put ourselves at the front of the line when it comes to self-care. But self-compassion isn't easy. When we're being self-compassionate we're trying to relate to ourselves in a way that's forgiving, accepting and loving - many of us have grown up with the view that the only way for us to push our...
Give Yourself Some Slack: Self-Compassion (Part 1)
October 19, 2020 09:00 - 19 minutes - 13.1 MBIn this episode we're going to focus on the difficulties of self-compassion and then talk a little about mindfulness - next week we'll be going into the ideas of self-kindness, common humanity, and some other ideas I've been playing with. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/selfcompassion This Episode's Top Tips Self-compassion can help with ADHD because it can help us rea...
Q&A: Writing Past the Hard Parts
October 12, 2020 09:00 - 18 minutes - 13 MBIn today's episode, we have a listener question about writing and how to get back into it after quitting at the hard parts. Support me on Patreon Connect with me on: Facebook Twitter Instagram or ask me a question on my Contact Page Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/writingpast This Episode's Top Tips Use prewriting to focus your thoughts and to help build your momentum into writing so that you aren't relying so much on inspiration to keep working on your project. Create notes ...
Give Yourself Some Slack: Perfectly Imperfect
October 05, 2020 09:00 - 19 minutes - 13.4 MBOne of the reasons that many of us have trouble giving ourselves slack is because of our internalized perfectionism - it's something that controls our workflow and prevents us from ever taking a break because in our head we know we could be doing more. Even during the writing of this episode I had to fight off some of this internal perfectionism - this episode wasn't supposed to be entirely about perfectionism, but it was going to take a lot more than just one section to really tackle the to...
How To Give Yourself Some Slack
September 28, 2020 09:00 - 18 minutes - 12.5 MBOften when I think about productivity I envision something like a well-oiled machine - everything fits together, everything has it's placed and when it is running smoothly it produces amazing results. But the part that my imagination doesn't usually pick up are a few important words - well-oiled machine... what does it mean to be well oiled - well, for one thing, it means that there is someone maintaining the system. It means, that left to its own devices that the machine would breakdown - a...
Building Gratitude
September 21, 2020 09:00 - 19 minutes - 13.7 MBOne of the hottest trends to come out of the self-help world over the last few years is gratitude. And it's no surprise, gratitude has been found to be one of the greatest indicators of overall well being. I'm usually pretty skeptical about things that get hyped quite as much as gratitude has been - I mean when you see the list of things that a gratitude practice can help with it's pretty easy to roll your eyes. I mean can gratitude really do all those things that people say it can? Today w...
When To Quit
September 14, 2020 09:00 - 18 minutes - 12.6 MBThe first thing we've got to understand is that when we ask, when should I quit? We're also asking, when should I persevere? And they often serve as the same answer - I should quit when it doesn't make sense to keep going. I keep going when it doesn't make sense to quit. Unfortunately is really easy to get those messages mixed up and with ADHD we've all got a trail of unfinished projects and ideas that are weighing us down every time we need to make this decision again. Support me on Patreo...
Rationalization and the Stories We Tell Ourselves
September 07, 2020 09:00 - 15 minutes - 10.7 MBResistance is the embodiment of the I don't wanna's - the part of us that keeps us from doing our work - or anything for that matter. And a big part of resistance comes from our ability to rationalize what we're doing - I'll jump into one task and find myself doing something else and then my brain will come up with a reason why I needed to be watching youtube instead of working on this week's episode. In today's episode we're going to be exploring what rationalization is, some of the ways t...
How to Find a Therapist
August 31, 2020 09:00 - 15 minutes - 11 MBOne of the hardest aspects for me with ADHD is that I can quickly become overwhelmed when I can't find a clear path forward - I know I could do the research, but setting aside the time feels like it's going to be too much and so I just procrastinate forever on starting. For me finding a therapist was one of those things that seemed too murky to get started on. There were just so many things to consider and so many things that I don't know. Not only did I not know where to start, but I also d...
Energy Management: Spiritual Energy
August 24, 2020 09:00 - 15 minutes - 11 MBI know the term spiritual energy is going to throw a lot of people - so let's start off by getting clear on what I mean here. When I'm talking about spiritual energy I'm not talking about anything religious here, I'm simply referring to the idea that you have an energy reserve that you can tap into when you're doing something that matters. And specifically, something that matters to you - this doesn't have to be some higher calling type of idea. One thing that really illustrates the idea of...
Energy Management: Emotional Energy
August 17, 2020 09:00 - 13 minutes - 9.39 MBEmotional Energy isn't as cut and dry as physical energy - there are no emotional calories that we can track and measure. And while there is no scientific delineation of how to measure emotional energy it’s still something that we can all feel - we're not robots. We know that when we're feeling those positive emotions that sometimes we can barely contain the energy we're feeling - when we're seething with rage it can feel like we're going to burst. When we're sad it can feel like we want to ...
The Wall of Awful with Brendan Mahan
August 10, 2020 14:00 - 19 minutes - 13.4 MBWe've all got things that we think we should be able to just do - for example, I've had on my to-do list for weeks to make a phone call to the bank - it won't even take that long, but I keep putting it off. I keep finding reasons not to do it - what I've done is I've created a wall of awful around making this phone call (really most phone calls) and the more I put it off the more it builds it up. Today we've got Brendan Mahan from ADHD Essentials to explain what the Wall of Awful is and some...
Energy Management: Mental Energy
August 03, 2020 09:00 - 13 minutes - 9.34 MBToday we're going to be looking at ways that we can work on cutting down distractions and staying focused. We'll also be looking at ways that we can better schedule our time to focus on when our brain is going to be working best and we'll also be looking at better ways to end our workday. Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/mentalenergy This Episode's Top Tips Mental energy is about our ability to focus and keep our focus. To effectively do this we need to stop trying to multitask a...
Energy Management: Physical Energy
July 27, 2020 09:00 - 17 minutes - 12.2 MBBefore we get going here, I just want to make sure you know that I'm not a doctor, and while this episode is a lot about your health, it is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice. Just because I say something on this show doesn't necessarily mean it will be the best advice for you - be smart and be safe. And when in doubt always consult your doctor before changing your diet or exercise routine. Today's episode is a follow up to last week's on Energy Management, but this ...
Personal Energy Management
July 20, 2020 09:00 - 12 minutes - 8.92 MBIt's an hour after lunch and your staring at your computer monitor. There are words in front of you, but you've read the same sentence over and over again five times in a row. Your eyes are glazed and curling up under your desk for a quick nap like George Costanza is seemingly a better and better option by the minute. Except you have things to do - you have stuff on your schedule and taking a nap is just not an option. Enter Personal Energy Management - this is an idea of scheduling your w...
Taking Breaks
July 13, 2020 09:00 - 13 minutes - 9.36 MBWe all know that one of the biggest hurdles from ADHD is starting, but paradoxically one of our other hurdles is stopping. Sometimes it feels like we're better off if we just power through until we're done, but if we really want to get the most out of our workdays, we need to have some breaks. In today's episode, we're going to be looking at the benefits of taking breaks, some different ways that we can take breaks, and also exploring going beyond breaks and actually taking some time off. ...
A Nudge in the Right Direction
July 06, 2020 09:00 - 14 minutes - 9.81 MBMaking the right choices isn't always easy - we've got so many options of what we can do and when I'm tired I don't want to weigh all my options. It would be great if I could just get a gentle push in the right direction. Something that would make the choice I want to make easier to make. What I'm talking about here is a nudge and that's what we're going to be talking about today. We'll be learning about what a nudge is, why they work, and when they don't. We'll also be looking at some of t...
Fighting Resistance - Part 2
June 29, 2020 09:00 - 15 minutes - 10.5 MBLast week we started off our discussion of resistance - a term that I got from Steven Pressfield's book, the War of Art. While there are parts of the book that aren't that ADHD friendly, I do like this idea of resistance. And basically resistance is what is keeping us from doing our work. It's procrastination, rationalizations, comparison, perfectionism, and everything else that keeps us from working all rolled into one idea. It is the embodiment of the "I don't wanna's In part one I talke...
Fighting Resistance
June 22, 2020 09:00 - 16 minutes - 11.2 MB"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What's keeping us from sitting down is resistance." This is how Steven Pressfield introduces the idea of resistance in his book the War of Art, and to me, resistance is the root of the "I don't wanna's." While I don't agree with many of the things in Pressfield's book (I mean, he states that ADHD was made up by pharmaceu...
Moving From Defense to Offense
June 15, 2020 09:00 - 12 minutes - 8.71 MBYears ago now, before I started this podcast, I worked as a sports writer. It was fun work and I also found that a lot of the things I was writing about could be applied to real life. One of the areas that I really saw it was in the difference between teams playing offensively and defensively. No matter the game teams are going to be playing on both offense and defense, but what I often saw was that teams that had an offensive mindset often were able to take advantage and play better. What ...
Take a Picture, It'll Last Longer
June 08, 2020 09:00 - 16 minutes - 11.2 MBFollowing up last week's rebroadcast about creating better reminders I thought I'd add in some more ideas on how we can remember things. One of the tools that I most often use is the camera on my phone. I think the first time I tried to use a photograph to remember something was when I was a kid and saw a commercial on TV for a bow and arrow and shield set - it looked like the best toy, but the only way I could think of to record the phone number to call for it (yes this pre-internet) was t...
How to Create More Effective Reminders (Rebroadcast)
June 01, 2020 09:00 - 15 minutes - 10.7 MBWhen you've got ADHD making reminders is a given. There's just too much going on in any one given day for me to keep track of it all and without reminders I know I'm going to drop the ball somewhere. I've got reminders for big things like when I need to leave to pick up my kids from school and little things like having a cup of tea in the evening but not too close to bedtime. So when I get told I just need to create a reminder to remember something I just want to shout that I already am usi...
How To Make Time For The Important Stuff (Rebroadcast)
May 25, 2020 09:00 - 18 minutes - 12.9 MBOne of the things I want to look at while I'm taking my break is what my prioritizes are - it's easy to let yourself just get pulled along with the flow of things and often that means you aren't following your prioritizes. What you end up following is the path of least resistance and overtime you going to find that you just aren't able to make the time for the things that are important to you. So during this break I thought it would be a great time to revisit this episode on how to set you...
Burnout (Rebroadcast)
May 18, 2020 09:00 - 15 minutes - 10.9 MBThis week we were supposed to have a new episode going up but I'm really starting to feel it. I feel like I've been stuck for a while now and pressing on the gas is just spinning my wheels, so I've realized that I need to step back and take a break. And I thought what better way to start off that break than rebroadcasting my episode on burnout. I know I'm going to have to work on picking up a few lessons from this episode again so I though you might appreciate them too. Exhausted, empty, ov...
How to Think (Critically)
May 11, 2020 09:00 - 13 minutes - 9.53 MBThe ADHD brain has a strange relationship with thinking. One of my biggest gripes is that it often feels like I can't ever turn my brain off. No matter what I'm doing, I'm thinking about something. I could be washing dishes, but I'm thinking about what else I need to do before I go to bed. I could be walking to get the mail, and instead of wondering what's in the mailbox, I'm thinking about a conversation I had three years ago. Even when I'm trying to meditate, I'll often find myself thinkin...
Cleaning House
May 04, 2020 09:00 - 19 minutes - 13.4 MBI'd say I have a love-hate relationship with cleaning, but that implies that there is a part of me that loves cleaning. There isn't. I like having cleaned and having a clean home, but I seldom enjoy the actual cleaning part. ADHD tends to not make cleaning any easier. Time blindness makes me think most of the cleaning tasks I need to do are going to take forever. I have a natural propensity for clutter, and that clutter often fades into the background of what I notice - so I just stop seein...
The Science of Fidgets
April 20, 2020 09:00 - 13 minutes - 9.08 MBMy desk usually has a least a few fidget toys on top of it. I say usually only because my children sneak into my office and steal them. But the rest of the time I have a couple infinity cubes, a tangle and a piece of sea glass I use as a worry stone. I love having them to play with as I think through sentences while I'm writing and also as something to keep my hands busy while I'm reading. Today we're going to talk about the rise of fidgets in over the last few years and then dive into how ...
Best-Laid Plans and COVID-19
April 14, 2020 09:00 - 16 minutes - 11.1 MBTrying to plan in a pandemic has been... well really what's been a problem is all the plans that I made before the lockdown. Every week I look through my calendar and have canceled events and plans that just aren't going to happen. I mean this was the first Easter I didn't have to pretend to be sick during to avoid going over to the in-laws, but that's a pretty weak silver lining. We've got a lot going on so planning is more important than ever - I mean going to the grocery store takes a lo...
When Good Science Goes Bad
April 06, 2020 21:00 - 14 minutes - 9.85 MBGoing online has its perks - we've got a wealth of information at our fingertips - but with so much information it can be hard to find the truth. Often we can't find the signal for the noise because well, it is just really noisy. And by noisy, I mean there is a lot of bad information out there. In today's episode, we're going to be looking specifically at science journalism, but really most of what we're going to be talking about can be applied to everything that we read online. We want to ...
Controlling What You Can When Everything Feels Out of Control
March 31, 2020 00:00 - 11 minutes - 7.79 MBI hope everyone is staying home and staying safe. I know that everyone is going through a hard time right now and ADHD isn't making it any easier. So today we're going to be talking about what we can do to try and regain some of that control you may feel you have lost in your life. We'll be talking about staying in contact with friends, setting up routines and using accountability. We'll also be talking about ways to get in a little more self-care. For show notes go to HackingYourADHD.com/C...
Compassionate Ass-Kicking For The Win (Rebroadcast)
March 23, 2020 06:00 - 14 minutes - 10.1 MBWhen I'm working on this podcast sometimes I wish my boss would be a little harder on me because it can be easy for me to get behind - but my boss is kind of laid back and lets me get away with more than I should - and that's probably because my boss is me. When I can't count on myself to get the things I need to turn to others to help me out. A lot of us with ADHD can have trouble turning to others when we need help, but we don't have to do things alone. And one of the best ways others can ...
Working With Your ADHD (Updated and Rebroadcast)
March 16, 2020 06:00 - 12 minutes - 8.29 MBThis week we're going to be hitting Working With Your ADHD. One of my biggest struggles with ADHD often comes from my belief that if I just tried harder I'd be able to overcome anything that my ADHD was throwing at me, but surprise surprise that just isn't the case. In today's episode, we're going to be looking at why we don't want to just keep trying to do the same things as neurotypicals, why we struggle so much with the idea of trying harder and also some of the strategies that are going ...
The Surprising Magic of Setting a Deadline
March 09, 2020 09:00 - 15 minutes - 10.6 MBWhen I was in school, I always wanted to be the kind of student who able to finish a project well before it needed to be turned in. I loved the idea that I could write a paper and still have a week left to polish it. Of course, I was never actually that student. For me to get started on a paper, I had to actually be able to feel that pressure from the deadline building up on me. That usually meant that I was mostly working on papers the night before - I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Since ...
The Surprising Magic of Setting a Deadline
March 09, 2020 09:00 - 15 minutes - 10.6 MBWhen I was in school, I always wanted to be the kind of student who able to finish a project well before it needed to be turned in. I loved the idea that I could write a paper and still have a week left to polish it. Of course, I was never actually that student. For me to get started on a paper, I had to actually be able to feel that pressure from the deadline building up on me. That usually meant that I was mostly working on papers the night before - I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Since ...
Getting off the Hamster Wheel (Before You Burnout)
March 02, 2020 10:00 - 15 minutes - 10.9 MBExhausted, empty, overloaded, unable to cope - these are some of the words I'll find myself using when I'm feeling burned out or on the path to burnout. We tend to find ourselves in burnout after prolonged periods of stress - it isn't something that sets in all at once. It isn't that we finally have a straw that breaks the camel's back, instead we just eventually find ourselves waking up one morning and realizing we just can't even. We find that we've lost our passion and drive for everythin...
How to Create More Effective Reminders
February 24, 2020 07:00 - 16 minutes - 11.2 MBWhen you've got ADHD making reminders is a given. There's just too much going on in any one given day for me to keep track of it all and without reminders I know I'm going to drop the ball somewhere. I've got reminders for big things like when I need to leave to pick up my kids from school and little things like having a cup of tea in the evening but not too close to bedtime. So when I get told I just need to create a reminder to remember something I just want to shout that I already am usi...
Life Lessons From Video Games
February 17, 2020 16:00 - 15 minutes - 10.8 MBTalking about video games so much last week got me thinking about games a lot and so I ended up getting a new game for myself called Stardew Valley. The game was originally released in 2016 but because it was so popular it has been released for a bunch of other systems - I got my copy on the Nintendo Switch. In Stardew Valley you escape the hustle and bustle of the city by moving to a farm you inherited from your grandfather. And then the gameplay is basically just running your farm. Clearin...
ADVGD: Attention Deficit Video Game Disorder
February 10, 2020 14:00 - 18 minutes - 12.8 MBI've played video games since before I was able to read - although that statement loses some of its weight once you find out that I didn't learn to read until I was in 4th grade - you know, dyslexia and all. Nonetheless, video games have been a part of my life for a long time. I mean, games are so ingrained in me that while I am writing this, I am listening to video game music - it's excellent for creating a relaxed focus. Video game music was specifically designed to help with attention - I...
ADHD in the Gym
February 03, 2020 11:00 - 17 minutes - 12.2 MBThis week we're going to be jumping - yeah, jumping because we're talking about exercise. I hope you're ready for some Jazzercise - but if that's not your groove I've got some other options for you as well. Somewhere in our heads, we all know that exercising more is something we "should" do, but it feels like the easiest thing in the world to put off. I mean just because when I look out my window and I can see it's raining doesn't mean I need to stay on my couch right now. In today's episo...