Yes! This routine I can do!

[Lovinit]

Hi, here is a routine I found I like so far

[Freedom-in-ADHD]

Greetings friend,

Glade to hear you found a routine you like. Reading this though made me realize just how great it is to have the simplist life posible. For example, your routine may be veary basic and comfortable, yet to a guy who has lived for the past 8 years in the wilderness in tents, off gride oneroom block houses, and a converted military trailer - that list stressed me out tottaly just reading it.

I have done all wash with dishes and clothes by hand in fresh water streams or in a traditional scrubbing board container at base camps in dry fields. And i am loving the simplisity of the task. Yet i know its not practicle for It when burrdened with many peoples usery unless its a fultime job. So my friend, i say yes, as long as you "keep loving it" you can keep your routine.

The bigest key i have found for consistancy when life throughs us unexpected stress issues or our ADHD impulsivity highjack our momentary realistic reason - is, always default to lessening the amount of work in a task rather than skipping it for the day. Because we all know what a skip means - out of doing It now means doing more of it later and since that is not so nice - it means doing a little later, which continues the cycle that is an evel cousin to "out of sight, out if mind".

Then when we remmber we have to face getting done for reall, we also remember all the other things that can now be done in that same time. Because, we now know our routine can have "routine" variations that eventually lead us back to the horrible fight to regain order into our lives.

I remmber how great it was leaveing America many, many years ago with just a backpack on with everything i needed, and all my gathered gear and possesions filling drawers and closest could not end up in heaps all over my rooms untill i freak out and declare merciless war to the situation. yet, the backpack needs order and the nature of our gathering mentalities needs constant encouradgement for minimalization.

Best to you and keeploving your routine without routine variations.

And may we all be free in ADHD

[cjnolet]

That daily routine reminds me of a routine spelled out in Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. That's really neat and I think it leads to structure, which our brains need.

It's funny. In the first session I had with my ADHD coach a few months ago (he's also ADHD), he asked me "So did your parents give you structure when you were growing up?"

That question had me mulling over my past and the meaning of structure for an entire week after that session. During the session the following week, I realized that no, my family had actually not given me much structure. In fact, I think the only one who made an attempt at giving me ANY structure was my father but I think the attempt was made too late in my life (my teens) and, as both my parents worked, I don't think it was consistent enough to be effective.

While my wife was pregnant with our first child, I needed to get a good job and was just getting to my first year at UMBC (as a junior) to finish up my 4-year transfer degree in computer science. I was working in "survival" mode at the time because I knew I had to get a degree and a good job quickly so that my wife and I could move out of our in-law's house and establish our own life. Otherwise, my child would end up being raised by his grandparents and my wife & I would not be able to have any control.

Needless to say, I think it's the structure that college life offered me that has really had me so focused and directed in my endeavors. When I graduated with my master's degree, I couldn't stop, because the school had been giving me a structure- assignments that had to be done on a strict schedule. There's no way I could have succeeded in school without having a consistent schedule, knowing my priorities for family and other things.

See, because I'm ADHD and I often have trouble focusing, it often takes me 5-10x longer to complete simple assignments than it does other students. I learned this in community college because other students could sit and do a homework in an hour that would take me 10 hours total to do. If it weren't for structure, I'd have never been able to turn in an assignment. But now I plan accordingly, similar to how the ritual you've posted works. If I know I have an assignment due each week, I knock it out in short increments to give my brain and body enough breaks. I'll spend 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there, and within a few days, I'll be done.

As an aside- I enrolled in the program @ my campus last semester to get extra time on tests because of my ADHD but after going through the process to enroll, I refused to use it!

I've come this far with my brain just the way it is. As nervous as I get on tests and as much anxiety as I get while preparing for them, I am going to achieve this PhD on my own accord and not because I got help. I've come this far without help- I think that's proof that no matter what "blockers" we have covering our paths, there's always a beauty in finding our own unique solutions to it. If human's weren't naturall good at problem solving, I don't think we'd have survived as a species this long. Case in point- our ADHD genes came from somewhere and were not lost by evolutionary processes. What does this mean?

[cjnolet in reply to cjnolet]

Here's Benjamin Franklin's routine from his auto-biography [1]. He's believed by many to also have had ADHD.

[1] curiosity.com/topics/benjam...