This is a podcast I recorded with another Open University associate lecturer, discussing our experiences of being neurodivergent tutors at the OU. We share how strategies designed to support neurodivergent students often benefit all learners, and why empathy, compassion and flexibility matter so much to our work.
Tag: ADHD
Melanie’s Massive Compendium of Productivity Hacks
I’ll update this list as more things occur to me. Feel free to add your own productivity life hacks in the comments.
Headphones on, open these three tabs on your browser in order
- YouTube video of 24 Hour Crackling Fireplace
- rainymood.com – rain and thunder sounds
- Endless looping YouTube video of a smooth jazz track
H/T to Reddit user Tadallagash and their viral Reddit post Time to get classy
Alternatively, choose your own soundtrack that makes your brain focus, and use it EXCLUSIVELY for when you’re being productive. You can train your brain to associate these sounds with focusing on work.
Book recommendations
The Anti-Planner: How to Get Sh*t Done When You Don’t Feel Like It by Dani Donovan
$48 plus shipping
Yes I know it’s expensive for a planner (it’s not a planner, though), but there are 2 reasons it’s worth it. First, it has many features that make the book more effective as an interactive workbook that also make it more expensive to manufacture, such as being comb-bound to lie flat in use, thick pages so your sharpies won’t bleed through, tabs to organise the info, etc. Second, it works. It has saved my hide so many times because I was stuck, frozen, bogged down, unable to do what I needed to do, and this book got me going again. It is packed with hundreds of tips, strategies, and lifehacks for every situation. I highly recommend this book.
£7.99 for the ebook. Weirdly, also available as an audio CD for £38.87
Full of excellent and encouraging advice for ALL students, especially (but not only) neurodivergent students. This is the book I wish I had had when I was an undergraduate. However, it is long and in-depth. If you struggle to take in information from walls of text you will need some strategies for approaching this book
£10, also available as audiobook
Clear combines his personal and professional experience advising people about building habits that serve them, with cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience. The result is an evidence-based system for reflecting on your life; the habits you have, the habits you want, and the effect your habits have on you. He sets out step-by-step processes (I love a step-by-step process!) for changing your habits. It’s oversimplified in some ways. For example, it neglects the effects of trauma and other psychological problems that might impede the step-by-step process from unfolding as he sets it out. But there’s a lot of applicable wisdom here for most people.
App Recommendations
Currently £3.99 one-off purchase. No in-app purchases.
A productivity app for iOS and Android, as well as add-ons for Chrome and Firefox. Fundamentally it’s a timer (I usually set it for 25 minutes). A little tree will grow as long as you don’t interact with your phone while the timer runs down. Over time you can grow a little forest, representing how much time you have spent focusing. It doesn’t lock your phone – you can still use it, but the tree will die. Works well with the Pomodoro technique.
Free
Turn your to-do list into a fantasy roleplaying game. Gather experience points, gain levels, and boost your stats by completing user-defined quests (such as doing your laundry or booking a dentist appointment)
Free for individual users
Web-based kanban-style organiser. Or you can make a physical kanban board (see below).
Other Life Hacks
Free
Get stuff done by focusing for 25 minutes at a time. You don’t have to buy anything or download anything. The website explains how to do it.
Free (you just need any pen and any notebook)
Ignore what you see on Pinterest and Instagram. It’s not an art project. You don’t need a new fancy notebook, new fancy pen, stencils, stickers, or any art supplies. It’s a simple system for organising your time and your tasks. Use a pen and notebook you already have – you could use one of those notebooks you wrote in the first 4 pages of and then abandoned. Tear out the old pages, or just start on the next empty page. The website explains how to do it.
Free (you may wish to buy a whiteboard, or you can make do with things you already have)
A system for tracking your tasks that need doing, are in progress, waiting for something (eg an email reply) or done. There are numerous apps that do this electronically eg trello.com, or todoist.com. Or you can go old school with a whiteboard and post-it notes. Or you can use the back of a door or a big piece of paper. The system is what matters, not the tools.
Free, although paid options are available
A category of strategies in which the presence of another person helps you stay on task. Here are some variations.
- Arrange informally with a friend to join a video call whilst you both focus on your own tasks.
- Arrange informally with someone at your home or workplace to keep you on task. This is not a full-time commitment for them, it’s very low-level. For example, when my daughter sees me scrolling on my phone during work hours, she asks “What are you doing” in a neutral, non-judgemental tone. This may help me realise I’m doom-scrolling, and snap me out of the spell. Or I may explain that I’m researching apps for a blog article I’m writing.
- Arrange informally to get together with someone in person. For example, you may arrange to go to a friend’s house because she really wants to declutter the kitchen cupboards but never gets round to it, and you really want to work on your assignment but keep getting distracted. On Thursday at 2pm you go to sit at her kitchen table with your laptop whilst she organises her cupboards. You’re both more likely to get your tasks done under this arrangement.
- Simply going to a public space like a cafe or library may help you stay focused. I’d feel pretty odd sitting in a cafe playing The Sims or scrolling Facebook on a laptop, so I tend to remain focused on work.
- Pay to join a video call with one or several other people. Sometimes I attend online or in-person Study Hubs. Being connected online with other people helps me focus better than I can when I am working alone. There’s a (US-centric) list of body-doubling apps here, but I haven’t tried them.
Frame it as a favour for someone else
I’ve got no link for this one. Some years ago I saw a thread on Reddit or Twitter or somewhere, in which a user asked people what tasks they were procrastinating right now. Then he reframed each one as asking the person to do that task as a favour for him. E.g., if one user said they were procrastinating posting a cheque to pay a bill, the original user would say “Hey, could you just do me a favour and post that cheque to the electricity company. I’ve been meaning to do it but I keep forgetting, and I’m worried they’re going to cut me off. You may have to buy a stamp first. Is that OK”? The users reported that this had enabled them to do tasks they had been unable to complete for themselves, by instead imagining they were doing a favour for someone who was depending on them. What was especially lovely was that the thread quickly became huge, with vast numbers of people sharing tasks they were stuck on. The original user couldn’t possibly reply to them all. So users began responding to each other with the same reframing. It was beautiful and powerful to see. But now I can’t find it again.
A variation of this is to do tasks as a favour for yourself in the future. If I wash the bedding now, future Melanie will have clean bedding tonight. I seem to more easily motivate myself to perform acts of service for others than to do tasks for myself. By thinking of future-Melanie as a different person, I can strip the bed and wash the bedding as a favour for her. I also remember to feel gratitude to past-Melanie when I get into the fresh-smelling bed at night.
Studying When You Think Differently
I was a guest on a 90-minute StudentHub Live broadcast on 21st March 2024, about Studying When You Think Differently. I was there as both an associate lecturer supporting neurodiverse students, and also as a neurodivergent person myself who is currently a PhD student and has been an undergrad student. This is the recording of the event.
Procrastination Isn’t Rest
I’m a lifelong procrastinator. It’s part of my ADHD. I can spend all day achieving nothing, shaming myself the whole time. Procrastination is horrible. It’s not work because you don’t get anything done, but it’s not rest either. In fact it’s very draining. And it’s definitely no fun. I don’t allow myself to anything that’s actually fun when I’m procrastinating, because I’m supposed to be working. But I’m not doing any work either. It’s just awful.
I’ve found a very weird way of breaking the cycle – take a break. It was hard at first. I told myself “I’m not entitled to take a break. I haven’t actually done anything”. But rest isn’t a reward for working. Rest is an essential necessity for human function. So is fun. If you’ve ever told yourself “I’m not entitled to eat food/drink water/sleep because I haven’t done any work today” then that’s VERY WEIRD AND WRONG. You don’t need to earn rest and fun, food, drink, or sleep. You just need to have them, regularly.
I make myself take a break by telling myself “You’ve spent all day saying you ought to start work, so here’s one last chance – make yourself start work now or else admit that berating yourself isn’t working and take a break instead”. Sometimes I find that ten minutes later I’ve got started and I’m getting on with work. But more often I find that I’ve just completed another level of Candy Crush. So I take a break.
Here’s the difference between procrastination and a break: when you’re on a break, you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing. You don’t have to feel guilty about having a cup of tea and watching TV when you’re on a break. You’re supposed to be having a break, and that’s what you’re doing. You can even do something actually fun (in fact that’s a great idea if you can).
Another difference is that a break has an end point. When I take a break I decide how long the break is going to be. Maybe I just need 10 minutes. Maybe I need an hour. Maybe I need a week. I decide how long the break is going to be, and when it ends. Procrastination has no end point.
I tend to procratinate in the place I’m supposed to be working. Not always – sometimes I procrastinate getting out of bed or leaving the house. But most often I’ll sit at my desk and procrastinate. When I take a break I like to get up and go somewhere else. Walk around the block. Go to a nearby cafe. Walk to the kitchen to make a drink. Change the scene and also move my arms and legs, get the blood flowing and the heart pumping. Reset.
When the break is over (I usually set a timer on my phone or something – time-blindness is another part of ADHD) I go back to my desk and I get to work. Usually I start by making a plan – I identify what I’m supposed to be doing and what are the next small tiny minuscule steps I need to take. If there’s an obstacle stopping me I identify it and decide what to do about it. Having conscious deliberate thoughts about the task, maybe even writing them down, helps get me moving. If I can get moving eventually the work has a momentum of its own. At least until the next time procrastination strikes.
And it will strike again. But now I have a strategy for it, so I just repeat the steps. Maybe I need another break. Maybe I need a longer break. Maybe I need to ask someone for help. What I definitely don’t need to do is to keep staring at my computer and mentally shaming myself. I don’t need to try harder. It doesn’t work. I need to try something else.
Steps for breaking the procrastination cycle:
- Notice you’re procrastinating
- Give yourself an ultimatum – either get to work or take a break
- Decide how long the break is going to be. Set a timer
- Move. Go somewhere else. Do something else. If possible, do something actually fun
- Enjoy your break, free of shame or guilt. You are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing
- After your break return to work
- Write down the task you are supposed to be working on
- Write down the next tiny little action you need to do (e.g. not “answer the scary email” but just “open the email program”)
- If you are stuck on an obstacle, write down what it is. Then write down how to resolve it
- Keep going one tiny little action at a time until you have momentum. You’ll know you have momentum when it is easier to keep on working than it is to stop.
- If (when) you notice you are procrastinating again, go back to step 1. But also think “do I just need to do the same steps again or do I need to do something different this time?”
- “Something different” might include taking a longer break, switching to a different task, asking for help, etc.
Melanie Rimmer 