How to trick your ADHD brain into focusing on the big tasks

I know it sounds counterproductive, but in those dire ‘impossible to get started’ moments, my go-to tactic is to put on a podcast. I’ll press play on the episode then move the phone just out of reach so I can’t subconsciously grab it and start scrolling. Then I start work while still trying to listen to the podcast – which might not be that conducive to clear thinking, but that’s kind of the point. It means that for those first crucial minutes, I’ll still have the ‘fun’ kind of stimulation that my brain needs to stop desperately begging me to find some other source of stimulation.

But now that I’ve eased myself into actually getting started, I slowly begin focusing more and more on the work and not the words I’m listening to. Eventually, the podcast will become sort of an annoyance, and I’ll naturally want to turn it off. And like magic I will have managed to switch my brain into focus mode without even realising, and the podcast can go off.

I’ll let you in on a little secret. If you pantomime as a productive person and commit hard enough to the bit, you just might end up being one. This isn’t always easy, but if, for example, I’m working from home, I try to wear work clothes, shoes and all. If I need to get things done in the morning, I sit at my desk rather than on the couch (although I don’t stay like this all day).

If you’re going to be out and about, packing your lunch in the morning, grabbing a coffee from a specific shop before you clock on or wearing jeans rather than tracksuit pants to your university lectures can be part of your ‘work mode’ ritual.

Another popular tactic I’ve seen online is not taking off your shoes when you get home from work and keeping them on until you’ve washed your food containers, packed your lunch for the next day, done a chore or two, cooked dinner, picked out tomorrow’s outfit and put your dirty clothes in the wash. Basically, you can’t put your feet up on the couch while you have shoes on, so you don’t risk simply collapsing.

I need to make it clear, however, that these ways of tricking yourself into productivity are a tool to be used when truly needed; they shouldn’t be the crutch that you lean on every day. You aren’t obliged to always be “your most productive, organised self”, in fact, that’s just a recipe for burnout.  Putting your energy into being healthy and happy and naturally better equipped to get things done is a much more sustainable source of productivity. But if you really do need to push through and get that to-do list done, there are always shoes.

Getting started is one thing, but maintaining that intense level of focus is a whole other beast. Part of eliminating your distractions and detours is understanding what causes them in the first place. A lot of the time I’m getting diverted from the work at hand because I think of something I have to do, I simply can’t trust myself to remember it later. In a very real way, it’s now or never. Sometimes this impulse to just ‘get it done’ is a good one for people with ADHD, but it’s not always that helpful when you’re mega-tasking.

I’ve managed to handle this by using my ‘brain dump’ space – a Word document I keep open at all times where I write down every important thought or task that pops into my head. This way I only have to divert my attention for a couple of seconds rather than minutes or hours, and I don’t have to feel anxious about my thoughts floating away into the ADHD-ether.

Another popular way of sustaining concentration is to break up your mental marathon into lots of little sprints and rests, using something called the Pomodoro method. This is a productivity technique created by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s, where you structure your work into medium-length bursts with short breaks in between. Broadly, it involves the following steps:

• Decide what you’re going to do.
• Set a timer for 25 minutes and do nothing except your chosen task until the alarm goes off.
• Set your timer for five or ten minutes and take a short break, where you can check your phone or make a cup of tea.
• Repeat this pattern two more times.
• Take a longer break, usually 20–30 minutes.
• Start again.

This system is extremely popular in the ADHD community and it works wonderfully for a lot of people. However, I’m not one of them. As I said, for me, getting started is the hardest bit, so stopping every twenty-five minutes just means I never really get into the flow of things. Instead, my brain tends to work in extended bursts of several hours, with significant breaks between.

But if it works for you, then use it!