In an effort to contribute to the growing corpus of #ActuallyUsefulADHDTips, I want to share one of the concepts that has been most helpful for me in collaborating with my brain: strategic externalization of agency, or what I'm calling SEA. (THREAD)
SKIM LEGEND:
1-13
Background
14-24
"Object permanence",
Social interventions,
Pomodoros,
Ritual
25-36
Cognitive load audits
37-45
Case study,
Cohabitation
46-49
Summary
1-13
Background
14-24
"Object permanence",
Social interventions,
Pomodoros,
Ritual
25-36
Cognitive load audits
37-45
Case study,
Cohabitation
46-49
Summary
1/ I think SEA's a useful concept for a few reasons:
1. It's the invisible root of a lot of ADHD advice.
2. Implementing it effectively requires a pragmatic acceptance of your unique brain, which is a thing most of us are working on.
3. Neurotypical folks can benefit from it too!
1. It's the invisible root of a lot of ADHD advice.
2. Implementing it effectively requires a pragmatic acceptance of your unique brain, which is a thing most of us are working on.
3. Neurotypical folks can benefit from it too!
2/ In the simplest terms, I'd describe SEA as: making a smaller or easier decision which nearly inevitably leads to a larger or more difficult decision being made for you, and doing so in a way that places the result of that harder decision under your control.
3/ Every time you set a phone reminder, you're externalizing your agency. A cognitive scientist might instead say you're "offloading to your metacortex": weaving a cognitive ecology out of tools and your environment to augment your brain's capabilities.
4/ (If you swing this way, you can also think of it as a form of magic: a way of creating a change in the world—which can include your inner self—whose sum of impact exceeds its cost of effort.)
5/ Okay, sure: "making a list to help you remember things" doesn't seem quite like a revolutionary lifehack. But, guess what: it DOES make you a cyborg, from a cognitive and philosophical perspective. And learning to become better cyborgs (or wizards) is why we're here.
6/ It also requires being willing to get into that headspace. If you're on the fence about whether you have ADHD, or are still figuring out how to really, truly accept your brain for what it is, take a tick to read this first.
7/ Just a bit more background, and then we'll get into more concrete tips. (When I can, I prefer to thoroughly communicate a model I'm using to generate insights, rather than just the insights I may have gotten from the model.)
8/ So. Humans are weird, as you probably know. I like to think of us as "self-modifying recipes": we can't help but be the sum total of our ingredients, but we CAN change our recipes so different ingredients go into us. Consider: the stereotypical solo backpacking adventure.
9/ When someone goes off to "find themselves", it's often a purposeful trip with a sense, even vague, of what they're hoping to gain—and often do. Yet the trip itself is a completely unknown variable that can go against all expectations (and often does).
How can both be true?
How can both be true?
10/ Through the SEA lens, the decision to go backpacking is a single act of agency which knowingly kicks off a chain reaction outside your control. Which, of course, is the real goal: to experience new things, and learn about yourself by observing your responses to hardship.
11/ ALL of this is to make the point that while we cannot simply "think real hard" and become different people, we DO have the power to make decisions that shape us into those people, or otherwise bring about their imagined impact such that the distinction is irrelevant.
12/ This is why, in that Other ADHD Thread, I harp a lot on the importance of accepting your brain for what it is, and what it isn't. In the physical world, understanding the shape of something is key to manipulating it—and it's no different here.
13/ If you had a magic (cursed) hammer that always hammered two inches to the left of where you actually hit something, that's only really a problem if you're solely focused on why the nail isn't doing anything when you hit it head-on.
14/ Okay, with all this in mind, we can start to explore what this looks like when applied to ADHD. I'll start with one a lot of us do: putting shit in awkward and conspicuous places as a memory trigger.
15/ Through the SEA lens, this is a beautiful externalization that doesn't require any technology at all. An easy act (car keys in fridge) uses knowledge about your brain (out of sight, out of mind) to mimic a more difficult act (remember leftovers).
16/ Why keys?
- You physically cannot drive away without them.
- It's a silly thing to do, so easier to remember you did it.
- They're more important than a lot of things, and thus have more potential to stay top-of-mind.
- You physically cannot drive away without them.
- It's a silly thing to do, so easier to remember you did it.
- They're more important than a lot of things, and thus have more potential to stay top-of-mind.
17/ (This doesn't apply to, say, assuming that because you consider your girlfriend's leftovers more important than yours, and both are in the fridge, both will be remembered. Trust me.)
18/ This thread explains the "out of sight" part further. This is where more knowledge about your brain = more empowerment.
(Note: object permanence is a very specific thing and not the right term here, but we don't have a better ADHD-specific one yet.)
(Note: object permanence is a very specific thing and not the right term here, but we don't have a better ADHD-specific one yet.)
19/ Some folks use things like yoga classes as a form of SEA. It's easier for some to drive to a place where someone tells you what to do than to muster up the executive function to do it all yourself. (For others, this also explains college.)
20/ Bringing in the social aspect opens up whole avenues of SEA. I'm actually writing this thread during @cassiemc and I's weekly Zoom writing coworking session. I administer pomodoros and we keep our heads down. She's working, so it's easier for me to work, and vice-versa.
@cassiemc 21/ (In case you haven't heard of pomodoros, they're the crown jewel of my executive function toolkit, and also an example of SEA. 25 minutes of timed work, followed by a break. *I* don't have to decide when to focus; a robot is telling me.)
pomofocus.io
pomofocus.io
@cassiemc 22/ Do you toil in isolation just because you think that's what great artists do? Quit it. Do friends help? Bring your friends. Make accountability buddies, or ask a friend to be your "work dom". Hell, ask your ACTUAL domme to help make scenes out of it.
@cassiemc 23/ The social aspect also touches on the @lichtenbergian concept of ritualization as a means of prompting "work-mind". The SEA model would view it as using humankind's oldest meaning-making apparatus to create an "easy→hard" catalyst out of whole cloth.
lichtenbergianism.com/ritual
lichtenbergianism.com/ritual
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 24/ Ritual can help both as an executive function aid (prompting internal state-changes triggered by meaning-imbued time, space, and/or behavior cues), and as a memory aid (I ALWAYS put my wallet RIGHT HERE as SOON as I get home.)
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 25/ The UX designer in me wants to point out that this has huge "design your life" implications. Do you have a One Place for things? It could be a special spot for everything you need regularly, or it could just be a big box you know to always look in first.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 27/ (Yes, I am a walking stereotype, thank you for noticing.) Okay, so this is less an alternative to SEA (she says, having committed to the topic of the thread) and more something that can help you figure out when and how to implement it.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 28/ The concept of cognitive load is fairly intuitive, I think: some things take more brain energy than others! Makes sense. But we're probably not used to actively assessing how much cognitive load our actions and environments ask from us.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 29/ The concept of cognitive load also factors HEAVILY into radical ADHD acceptance. We're so, so ready to criticize ourselves for struggling to lift the weights of life, without asking if some weigh more for us than they do for others. (They probably do.)
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 30/ This is why "just break your task down into smaller tasks!" is my personally most-reviled ADHD "advice" ever. It's specifically! what my brain! is terrible at!!
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 31/ I used to swap physical spoons for executive function with a former partner of mine who's disabled. I'd clean her house, and she'd build me algorithms to reduce my cognitive load.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 32/ For the longest time, I had one on my whiteboard for cleaning my room:
1. Remove trash
2. Remove items that don't belong
3. Make piles of like items
4. Put piles in places
5. Make places for leftover piles
1. Remove trash
2. Remove items that don't belong
3. Make piles of like items
4. Put piles in places
5. Make places for leftover piles
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 33/ Am I 10? Fuck no. But generating that kind of list internally, every time I wanted to clean my room, is exactly the kind of thing my brain struggles with. Simply referring to it, then following it, is SEA in action.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 34/ Are YOU cleaning your room or putting away laundry without having a One Place for everything you touch? Congrats! You've turned every single easy step in your workflow into 5 difficult ones.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 35/ Consider the cognitive load of:
Touch item → Move to location
vs.
Touch item → Figure out where item goes → Make a place if it doesn't exist → Figure out where place should be → Put it there.
And you wonder why you're so tired after doing laundry.
Touch item → Move to location
vs.
Touch item → Figure out where item goes → Make a place if it doesn't exist → Figure out where place should be → Put it there.
And you wonder why you're so tired after doing laundry.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 36/ With both the SEA and cognitive load lenses, making sure you have a sock drawer is a way of collapsing a high-load process into a low-load process that accomplishes the same goal (socks get put away).
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 37/ Here's a case study. Like many houses, my household is overall Not Great at putting away dishes. On top of that, of the 4 of us, 3 have severe ADHD.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 38/ Now, we have a dishwasher, so we're all still alive. But hand-washed dishes between cycles tend to pile up, and stay there for ages.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 39/ We could all spiral down the pit of Terrible Housemate Guilt, or we could assume that we're not broken, the system is. (Another gift from UX, as well as social justice.)
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 40/ What I noticed:
- Every time I wanted to dry a dish, I needed to find a clean dishrag.
- If I couldn't, I put it in our countertop dry rack.
- Dishes stacked upwards, wetting previously dry dishes and hiding them from sight.
- Putting away dishes then became a Proper Chore.
- Every time I wanted to dry a dish, I needed to find a clean dishrag.
- If I couldn't, I put it in our countertop dry rack.
- Dishes stacked upwards, wetting previously dry dishes and hiding them from sight.
- Putting away dishes then became a Proper Chore.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 41/ What we did:
- Bought a plastic bag dispenser, mounted it under the sink, and filled it with clean dishrags.
- Put a bucket under the sink for dirty dishrags.
- Switched our countertop dry rack to an over-the-sink model that keeps dishes in a single layer AND at eye-level.
- Bought a plastic bag dispenser, mounted it under the sink, and filled it with clean dishrags.
- Put a bucket under the sink for dirty dishrags.
- Switched our countertop dry rack to an over-the-sink model that keeps dishes in a single layer AND at eye-level.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 42/ Suddenly, we all became better—not perfect, but better—at putting away dishes. Did our shitty, shitty brains magically change overnight? No! But each step in the Dishes Workflow was swapped out for one requiring less executive function, and thus went from high-load to medium.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 43/ This exercise would NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE TO CONCEIVE OF without the tacit acceptance that *we are not broken* serving as the BEDROCK FOUNDATION of the entire premise.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 44/ I'll make a separate thread on this at some point, but SEA can help with lots of other housemate stuff. Are you starting to slip into "passive aggressive post-it" land? That's a sign that for whatever reason, communication is becoming high-load.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 45/ Setting a weekly/biweekly house meeting is externalization of agency both emotionally ("I'm not saying We Have To Talk, the calendar is") and ritually ("this is the time and energetic container for honesty and collaboration"). Try it.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 46/ It's about time to wrap up. Here's a summary:
- Find ways to make easy decisions that beget harder ones. Be creative.
- Audit your life for areas of high cognitive load, and transform them.
- Use meaning and repetition to create rituals that promote desired contexts.
- Find ways to make easy decisions that beget harder ones. Be creative.
- Audit your life for areas of high cognitive load, and transform them.
- Use meaning and repetition to create rituals that promote desired contexts.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 47/ And finally:
Seeing, accepting, loving, and LEARNING your brain for what it is is so much more than a tool for forgiveness: it's a platform for empowerment.
Seeing, accepting, loving, and LEARNING your brain for what it is is so much more than a tool for forgiveness: it's a platform for empowerment.
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 48/
If this helped you or someone you care about, and you can spare it, anything is appreciated.
ko-fi.com/adapowers
If this helped you or someone you care about, and you can spare it, anything is appreciated.
ko-fi.com/adapowers
@cassiemc @lichtenbergian 49/ Oh, and: I recognize there's nothing new under the sun. If I reinvented the wheel with SEA, please let me know about similar concepts!
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