While I was unable to attend the comedy show with Canadian stars Rick Green and Patrick McKenna on Saturday night, I was truly excited to see what a central a role it played in the promotion of the conference.  And while ADHD is unquestionably a very serious mental health issue — with profound implications for public health — it can also be very, very funny.   Putting first-rate Canadian comedians (both of whom have ADHD themselves) in such a prominent place at the conference was a great reminder of how much better it feels to have ADHD when we can laugh at it.

Highlights of the conference that I was able to take in included:

• Two powerful lectures by American psychiatry professor Dr. Russell Barkley.  The first, which began with an overview of the neurophysiology of ADHD, explored the central role that poor Executive Function plays in creating the symptoms of Adult ADHD.  The second was an overview of the latest research on the major life activities that are impaired by having ADHD.  Barkley argues that ADHD needs to be acknowledged as a major public health issue, with substantial implications for the economy and society.
• An inspiring presentation by Olympic rower and 2-time medalist Jake Wetzel.  Wetzel talked movingly about the frustrations of having ADHD as a teenager, and the importance of making the best of your strengths, minimizing your weaknesses, and following your passions.
• Steve Ilott’s workshop on “Decluttering Your Mind and Space,” which included many valuable, ADHD-friendly tips on getting clutter under control - and keeping it that way.

I’ll be blogging more on the conference soon.

Twitter seems to have reached a tipping point.

As a coach who specializes in working with adults with ADHD, I am very conflicted about Twitter. Leaving aside the question of whether it’s the Social Network That Will Change Everything or merely a passing fad, there’s still a lot to think about. Overall, I think that Twitter has so much to recommend it that having ADHD is no reason to avoid it. I do have several concerns specific to ADHDers on Twitter, though, and I think it’s especially important to be aware of the very real challenges that Twitter presents to those who are easily distracted by technology.

I’ve only been actively using Twitter for a couple of months.  Based on that limited experience, here’s my assessment of the strengths and limitations of Twitter for ADHDers as I currently see them

Strengths

• The 140-character limit of Twitter’s “tweets” forces you to be succinct. Though it can take time to compose a tweet, it’s a relatively brief burst of focus. For ADHDers who struggle to express long and complex ideas, Twitter offers an alternative.  The limit also creates an  engaging verbal puzzle - express exactly the thought that you wish to within the 140-character limit.
• Twitter is a great way to network with others in the ADHD world - coaches, clinicians and regular people living with it;  The ADHD community is widely represented on Twitter. It’s also easy to find people who share other interests with you, and to build an ongoing conversation with them.
• The prevailing tone of Twitter is intuitive, light, fun, and spontaneous - most tweeters don’t seem to take themselves too seriously.  Sounds a lot like many people with ADHD.
• For news and information lovers, Twitter is a great way to get quick hits of input.  Every major news source is now on Twitter. Be aware of the risk of staying up all night following links.  It’s worse than Wikipedia that way.
• The bantering nature of Twitter can be a welcome distraction from quotidian and banale work - as long as you keep your Twitter sessions fairly short.
• Twitter seems far less of a timewaster than Facebook, which is capable of sucking up hours of time. This may sound like damning with faint praise, but in my experience it’s true.
• Finally, Twitter offers an opportunity to blurt out things that seem useless in every possible way to anybody but yourself.  This is something many, many people with ADHD are good at.

Limitations

• If you have even the slightest tendency to get hooked on screen time - web surfing, Facebook, instant messaging, and TV - it is crucial that you approach Twitter with your eyes wide open to the risk of addiction.   Many people with ADHD are drawn to the small screen like moths to a candle - Ned Hallowell calls this “screensucking,” and it’s a very real problem.   And because Twitter is chock full of so many interesting tidbits of information, there may be a tendency for some to fear missing “something important”.  Get over it.
• There’s no doubt in my mind that Twitter enables procrastination,  -  It can suck you down one rabbit hole after another if you follow all those tempting links.
• There’s a lot of nonsense on Twitter, and you can waste a lot of precious time  sifting through it.  Only follow people who are of genuine interest to you.

Develop a Twitter strategy

Time management experts often recommend checking email two or three times per day, at set times.  I think  a similar approach is valuable for Twitter.   Twitter is like a constant river of information and ideas - content yourself with dipping your toes no more than a few times a day.  Or reward yourself with a Twitter break after accomplishing a certain amount of work.  Don’t stay up all night on Twitter.

Please follow me on Twitter - but proceed with caution!

Some of the biggest and meanest raccoons in the world live in my garage. To be more accurate, they don’t actually live in the garage. They live in the walls of it. In a baffling fit of throwing good money after bad, the previous owners of my house decided to cover the wooden walls of the detached garage with vinyl siding. The raccoons, not to be put off by the depressing gray shade of the siding, found that they could burrow between the siding and the wooden walls, creating a nice, cozy abode for themselves. So far as I can tell, they only emerge from their comfortable subsidized housing to prowl the neighbourhood for tasty food waste.

Since Toronto has a municipal food waste collection program, almost every house in my neighbourhood has a green bin somewhere outside the house, expressly designed for food and organic waste –which includes diapers, by the way, in my house and many of those around me. And the raccoons love nothing better than to make sport of trying to pry them open. The latches on the green bins were not in any way designed to defeat raccoons, and those who fail to attach an aftermarket strap or lock run the risk of seeing a week’s worth of rotten veggies and meat scraps on the driveway in the morning. Like most people, I learned this the hard way.

So you’ll appreciate that I am no fan of raccoons. But the biggest raccoon of all lives right in my house, and he is me.

“Raccoon moms,” or in my case, “raccoon dads,” are an increasingly pervasive creature across North America these days, a hybrid of stay-at-home parent and home-based business person. We’ve become raccoons because long after full days of changing diapers, flipping grilled cheese sandwiches and shuttling kids here and there, we’re huddled by lamplight on our blogs, newsletters, emailing and invoicing. As our spouses get a good night’s sleep, we become increasingly nocturnal, and our eyes darken and hollow in their sockets, like our namesakes. We eat junk food.

My ADHD coaching practice is relatively new, and I’m eager to grow it. But I have to balance it with 2-3 days a week of stay-at-home parenting with my toddler daughter and her two older brothers. Needless to say, my days are pretty full, and at night, finally, my house is quiet enough for my addled ADHD brain to think in. I spent many years at university burning the midnight oil. Joining the ranks of the raccoons is tempting.

But I strive to practise what I coach my ADHD clients around - lots of rest, not too much “screen time,” especially late in the evening, not burning the candle at both ends. And I’m at my best when I can harness what Ned Hallowell calls my “morning brightness,” with coffee, the paper, and a run or bike ride before I sit down to work. Working late — really late — makes these things much harder to do.

So I’ve set some firm raccooning guidelines for myself, recognizing that they may impose real limits on my work:

• Spending “adult time” in the evening with my wife is critical. I love her, I cherish my marriage, and nothing is more important to me than her and my kids. She often goes to bed early, but if she doesn’t, I’m not working into the night.
• I don’t work past 11:00 p.m., no matter what. The alarm goes off at 5:45.
• I accept that I do not post on this blog as often as I would like. That’s OK — I don’t have a cigar-chomping editor breathing down my neck.
• I look very hard for other opportunities to get my work done — moments in the day to write up an invoice, send a couple of emails. This is challenging for my ADHD mind - I find it tough to compartmentalize tasks and transition in and out of them.

As long as the turmoil in the economy continues, I think we can expect to see more raccoons. Having jumped or been pushed from the conventional workforce, they will look to at-home businesses as a means of maintaining a sense of professional fulfillment and income. What they haven’t considered is the toll it will take on their lives.

Mies wasn’t even thinking of ADHD. In addition to the basic requirements, he didn’t consider the people who want — or need — to combine their sitting with bouncing, spinning, wiggling, or leaning back and forward.

If you, like me, are an ADHDer who has to spend a lot of time at a desk, sitting at a standard-issue office chair can be torture. You may have been the kid in class who endlessly twisted and turned on your chair in math class. Or you may have driven your parents crazy at the dinner table because no matter how much they pleaded with you, you just could not sit still. And now you have a job that requires you to sit at a desk, looking at a screen, for the better part of eight hours a day.

Maybe you need something different to sit on.

The variety of modern workplace chairs available today is fantastic. From the state-of-the-art Aeron chair to the more modest offerings of big-box office supply stores, there are plenty that rise, lower, roll, swivel, and tilt, all the while providing terrific lumbar support, ergonomic armrests, and a choice of colours. My wife has an Aeron in her office, and it’s magnificent. I’m saving up for one.

But for people whose ADHD runs toward physical hyperactivity, even the most forgiving chair can feel confining. And as I wrote in a recent post, being able to move back and forth on a chair can have a calming effect on people with ADHD that improves focus and effectiveness.

Another great modernist designer, Le Corbusier, called a chair “a machine for sitting on”.  This machine has a deceptively complex function — to support your weight while you sit, without breaking or falling over. And the number of types of “sitting machines” in the world reflects the vast number of different purposes they serve, from barbers’ chairs to race-car seats to beach loungers.  And if one of the functions of the chair is to facilitate focused, deliberate thought by allowing the dissipation of a small amount of kinetic energy, then the exercise ball is the perfect “ADHD office chair.”  Like “lefty” scissors for southpaws, it’s a simple machine well-designed for the specific needs of a less conventional user.

I don’t sit on my ball for everything. If I have to do an extended period of reading, I like to use my (tilting, reclining) chair. In meetings with clients, I often revert to a chair because they find my bouncing distracting — though I also have other clients who like to sit on another ball that I keep around for just such a purpose.

Seeing my “guest” ball rolling gently in the corner of my office last week, a new client asked if he could sit on it.  That afternoon, we had an exceptional coaching session.   As we talked, he bounced gently, rolling the ball steadily back and forth, up and down beneath his feet. Already a very vital and animated person, he was free of the constraints of a conventional chair. He was much more relaxed, focussed, and engaged than I’ve ever seen him.

I’ve been using a ball as a part-time office chair for eight years. Here are a few more things I’ve learned in that time:

• Your posture improves immediately - it’s  very difficult to slouch on a ball, though not impossible. For me the result has has been that I sit better everywhere - chairs, benches, even driving a car.
• You have a variety of positions available, depending on how flexible you are.  I occasionally kneel on the ball, and sometimes I sit on it cross-legged. Hold on to your desk!
• Your core muscles are strengthened - the act of remaining upright on the ball puts several muscle groups to work without overstraining them.
• It’s great for taking “active” breaks - while just sitting on the ball keeps the core engaged, you can also use it for impromptu exercise sessions. I do ab crunches and lift dumbbells I keep under my desk.

16. Do you like bicycles, even if you don’t ride them any more?

-from Edward Hallowell’s ADD Self-Assessment quiz, in Delivered From Distraction

I love bicycles. Ever since pretending to be Evel Knievel jumping Snake River Canyon, (riding a bike wholly unsuited for the job, with an ending that was, while less spectacular, just as final for the bike), I’ve had a passion for them. I’ve commuted all over Toronto by bicycle since I was a teenager, I’ve raced road and mountain bikes, I’ve done some bike camping. Weather permitting, I travel everywhere by bike, and now, I take my kids with me. In my garage, ten bicycles vie for maintenance and attention (4 are my wife’s - I married well - and two are my sons’, but still). That doesn’t include the well-used Burley trailer, the tandem Trail-A-Bike, two very small kids’ bikes, a couple of frames, and a unicycle I got for my 40th birthday. Lots of wheels and boxes of parts. Then there’s the tools. It’s all a bit much.

I realized that bikes and cycling were part of my ‘otherness’ when I first saw Breaking Away, the 1979 coming-of-age movie about a teenager who doesn’t fit into midwestern America. Dave longs to escape from the confines of his drab Indiana life. He wants to be an Italian bike racer. Breaking Away struck a chord with me not because it’s a great movie (it won an Oscar, and was nominated for several), but because I immediately understood the film’s use of the bike as a symbol of freedom, challenge, and escape. And though my life was hardly at all like that of the main character, I shared his experience of being unusual, not exactly a perfect fit with my surroundings. Like Dave, getting strong and fast on a bike was a way for me to embrace myself as a misfit (as far as North American sports of the 80s went). Cycling informed my identity. And on the road, with traffic to contend with and the world whizzing past my ears, my mind was calm and my thinking was clear. I remember the moment clearly: as I watched the scene where Dave drafts a truck at 50 m.p.h. to the strains of Mendolsohn’s ‘Italian’ symphony, a passion was born.

My wife, fortunately, understands my love of bikes, and even shares it a bit — most of the first two years we were dating were spent mountain-bike racing. And I’ve been able to spend a lot of personal and professional time around others who love bikes. Many of them share a quirky kind of differentness (if ‘differentness’ can be shared) that I really enjoy. I will talk bikes with just about anyone.

But when I read Question 16 of Ned Hallowell’s ADD-Self Assessment Quiz in Delivered From Distraction, I was moved to consider: what is it about bikes and ADHD? I invite your thoughts.

My kind of ADHD includes bicycles.

]]> http://www.rubiconcoaching.ca/wp/?feed=rss2&p=32 http://www.rubiconcoaching.ca/wp/?p=30 http://www.rubiconcoaching.ca/wp/?p=30#comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 23:08:01 +0000 Robert Gordon http://www.rubiconcoaching.ca/wp/?p=30 A study published in the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology March 10 found letting kids with ADHD move around may be helping them to focus on their work.

As it turns, in a group of boys aged 8-12 with ADHD, they were more successful on tasks requiring working memory when they were allowed to fidget, stand up, and be active in class. Even chewing gum (not a habit of which I am fond) can help to keep an ADHD mind stimulated.

Mark Rapport, of the University of Central Florida, says that kids “use movement to keep themselves alert. They have a hard time sitting still unless they’re in a highly stimulating environment where they don’t need to use much working memory.” When they get to do work that engages their interests and excites them, they can sit still and focus. When the task is more mundane, they use movement to get their minds engaged.

These results certainly made sense to me. I was always a pretty good student, but I can certainly confirm that throughout my academic and professional lives, my best and most creative ideas emerge when I am walking around. I’ve talked to many, many people with ADHD who have had similar experiences, or seen it in their kids — pencil twirlers, toe-tappers, chair bouncers.

As a new friend @goaskmom on Twitter said, “Thank God for the teachers who used to let my boys stand up and work.” She and her boys were very fortunate. Though there is lot greater understanding about making simple accommodations than in years past, the attitude that still prevails in most schools today is that kids should sit still, and be quiet.

As a former teacher (with ADHD), I know it can be distracting to have a lot of unnecessary movement in class when you’re trying to get things done. But if a child learns better when he’s moving, and the main objective of school is learning, the movement is anything but unnceccessary. When I let some of the more restless kids in my high school history classes move around more and adopt alternate seating arrangements, I generally found that the level of disruption in my classes went down. And in virtually every instance, the hyperactive kids’ classroom performance improved.

It’s always great to see science catch up with common sense. This study should be recommended reading for educators everywhere.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear him say anything like this. Though he’s in Grade 3, closing in on his ninth birthday in a few weeks, he seems more and more capable of the ennui of a junior high school kid these days. It seems like only a few weeks ago that he was a relentlessly cheerful and compliant little boy, but more and more he’s testing us, complaining more stridently about homework and chores, pushing the limits of acceptable family behaviour. Bedtime is one of his favourite areas of protest, and I was braced for a moderate amount of sulking, stomping, and grudging acceptance.

“I’m really glad to hear that,” I replied. “What made it such a good day?”

“Well, I got my green belt at karate today, and my school sweatshirt arrived, and it was Cub night and we’re working on our Kub Kars. And at recess my friends and I played some really fun games.”

“You’re right,” I agreed. “It really has been a pretty great day.”

What I enjoyed more than anything about what William said was how quickly and easily he was able to recall them, and to acknowledge that today really had been a bit above average. And while not all of the good things that happened were entirely of his doing, a couple of them sure were: the karate belt was the direct result of his steady practice, and recess turned out well when it was his turn to “lead” the games he played with his friends. He doesn’t always do it this well, but today, without prompting, my child recognized his own successes.

Most of us could certainly do a bit more of this. We live in a culture that is driven by fuelling unrealistic aspirations, for wealth, health, beauty, and a well-organized laundry room, and we’re constantly invited us to confess our failure to meet the standards of the day.

Many of my clients have experienced this sense of failure a great deal. Having lived with ADHD all their lives, they’ve heard a lot about where they’ve fallen short of expectations. They’re messy. They’re aways late. They don’t focus at school. They make impulsive decisions. They’re disappointing. The accumulated weight of all the unmet expectations is so great that they often don’t know how to begin to describe their successes. Finding ways to mend this wounded sense of self-esteem is at the root of healing the damage of ADHD.

I often ask my clients to create what I call a success log. I used to use the term success diary, but I found that the notion of keeping a diary seemed to elevate the level of stress many of them felt about recording their successes. Maybe diaries seem too overwhelming an idea. So my clients can call it whatever they like, put it in any format they like, and use the medium of their choice, but they have to use it regularly — daily if possible. I urge them to document all their successes, even those where it might seem they “didn’t do anything to deserve it.” In fact, it’s often those successes that at first blush appear to have simply happened that turn ou to be of the greatest interest, bringing connections to light that they hadn’t considered before.

My success log is a simple point-form list that I make on each week of my Moleskine 18-month Weekly Notebook planner. I try to make entries every day, and I keep them short. The point here is to capture the information, not to analyse it.

Where do you record your successes?

Most people find this remarkably easy to do when evaluating others. But many of us struggle to look as hard for the positive in ourselves. People with ADHD often find it especially hard. They’ve rarely heard much supportive, constructive feedback, and many have experienced a lifetime of largely negative criticism. No matter how beautiful the ‘pictures’ of their lives are, the ugliness of the ‘frame’ distracts them, and they fail to appreciate it.

I recently had a chance to visit the Art Gallery of Ontario, recently reopened after a breathtaking renovation by renowned architect Frank O. Gehry. Maybe it’s not surprising that an art gallery should get me thinking about reframing; pictures and frames are their stock in trade, after all. But I found myself thinking about the gallery itself. During its planning and construction, the renovation was sharply criticized by many commentators as a lipstick job, limited and superficial rather than substantial. My experience was entirely the opposite: I found it spectacular. And while many of the collections in the gallery were the same as they had been before the renovation, the “frame” of the gallery made it possible to experience the artwork in entirely new ways. I was able to look with fresh eyes at paintings and sculptures that I had seen many times since my first childhood visits to the gallery. The change to the frame enabled me to enjoy powerful new perspectives.

My reframing at the art gallery happened completely by chance, and the extra enjoyment I got from the act of reframing was an unexpected bonus. Most of the time it needs to be a more deliberate act, initiated to put a negative circumstance (or at best, a neutral one) into a new light . While there are countless ways to initiate, or trigger, the reframing process, my aim is to find the simplest most reliable cue that I can. Since my style of learning and retention responds well to words, music and sound, I looked for a sonic cue that I could trigger when faced with the need and opportunity to reframe. For the moment, I’ve settled on the hook of a popular song from the ’80s: “Freeze Frame,” by the J. Geils Band. I replaced the opening words to the song - the same two words as the title - with the word “RE-FRAME!”, sang it to myself in the urgent, explosive way that the song begins… and it resonated perfectly for me. I’ve never really liked the song, or the band, but their valuable contribution to my arsenal of helpful self-talk has helped me to reframe their place in my memory.

I was furious with myself. The strain was almost certainly a result of pushing too hard on my bike on Wednesday. I haven’t been to yoga - great for my back - in months. I could see a really race result slipping away.

As is so often the case, it was my wife who triggered the reframing. “You’re doing this to have fun, right?”

Yes, I agreed. I’m almost 43 -I’m not trying out for the Olympic team.

“And you can always withdraw.”

True. And if it keeps hurting like this, I will. I have a whole season of bike riding to look forward to, and I don’t want to risk that.

It’s often difficult for people with ADHD to see the positive side of things. Our attention has so often been called to what’s wrong that we have a hard time acknowledging what’s right. Certainly that’s how this flare-up in my back made me feel.

Peter Jensen, a superb motivational coach who works with elite athletes, taught me about the concept or reframing. Reframing involves taking the “picture” of your life, and taking it out of an ugly (negative, pessimistic) frame, and replacing it with a beautiful (postitive, optimistic) frame. The “picture” does not change, but the context changes completely.

Here’s how I reframed my back flare-up:

1. I acknowledged that I race for fun, and that if I have to withdraw, I can.
2. I took the injury as an opportunity to visit my friend Ed Tonus at Active Healing Centre. He’s the best massage therapist I know. I hadn’t seen him for a while, and he did a fantastic job working out the worst of the discomfort.
3. I made a commitment to myself to devote more of my workout time to strengthening my core and improving my flexibility - both of which should reduce the chance of another injury.
4. I reminded myself that my family and I have made the race a chance to get out of town for a couple of days and enjoy a hotel pool, sauna, and hot tub. My kids are thrilled.

Reframing isn’t always easy. But when you can make it happen, it’s a powerful way to turn a difficult situation into an opportunity for growth and positive change. I’ll be blogging more on techniques for managing personal change soon.

I want to love Mondays. I mean it, I do. I want very, very much to be one of those people who launches forth into the week with a spring in his step and a well-flossed smile. The detritus and chaos of the weekend (in my family, that’s usually skis and boots in the winter, two days’ worth of cottage supplies in the summer, and always, always, the inexplicable mess in the breakfast room) will be squared away, and the house — and my wife and kids — will be ready and eager for a fresh start. When schoolyard conversations with other parents drift toward how hard Mondays are in their house, I find it all rather tiresome.

But secretly, I agree. Monday is hard, especially for families with school-aged kids. And when ADD is added to the mix, the risk of things going nuclear before the kids get to home room is substantial. I have ADD, and it’s possible that two of my three kids do, too. More than once in the final minutes before we all head out the door on Mondays, I’ve found myself barking like a drill sergeant to get jackets, boots, and backpacks in order before the long march to school. And by the time I wave (or if I’m lucky, am hugged) goodbye by my kids, my stomach is knotted with shame and regret. I’ve already had to tear the kids away from Harry Potter, Lego, and memories of the weekend. Why would I do anything that makes it even harder and more painful to begin the week?

As an ADD coach who works with adults and families to manage, among other things, the overwhelm of daily life, I feel like a bad parent when this happens, as well as a hypocrite. I’m neither of these things, of course — I’m a pretty good dad, I know it, and I’m not trying to buffalo my kids into grudging compliance. It just comes out that way sometimes. Overwhelmed by the task of juggling the needs of three kids under nine years old, I react by applying pressure. “Dad, the more you yell at us to go faster, the slower we get!” protests my eldest son. Never a truer word was said.

Einstein described insanity as dong the same thing over and over again and expecting the result to differ. In an effort to avoid being labeled insane (by even more people than already think I am), I’ve chosen to examine what I could do differently to get a different result. After looking for the root causes of these rough starts, I’ve created the 3 “L”s: a simple 3-step system that — here’s the critical part — I put into motion on Sunday night. If your family, like mine, gets caught behind the 8-ball on Monday mornings, try these steps:

1. Laundry: I’ve wasted many, many valuable minutes furiously struggling to help my kids find clean clothes for Monday morning. Do a couple of loads of essential laundry on Sunday night. Even if they’re still in the dryer while you shower and eat breakfast, everyone can head off with clean clothes. Even better, if your laundry is caught up, especially for younger kids, help them choose their clothes for Monday as they go to bed Sunday night. Do the same for yourself –especially if a shirt needs ironing or shoes need polishing.
2. Lunch: Is anyone staying at school for lunch? Do you take your lunch to work? Try preparing lunches as you clean up the kitchen after dinner the night before. Make sure lunch bags and Thermoses are ready to be loaded while you’re preparing breakfast.
3. Launch: one well-known ADD coach advises creating a “Launch Pad” by the front (or back) door of your home. The launch pad contains all the crucial items you need for the day. If the launch pad is properly “loaded,” you minimise the chance of needing to scramble through the house to locate crucial items at the last minute. Consider creating a launch pad checklist (astronauts swear by them!). Launch pad checklists can be as long as they need to be. Mine looks this

• wallet
• keys
• mobile phone
• lunch
• briefcase, gym bag, backpack — don’t forget key books, files, running shoes, etc.
• in winter: gloves, hat, scarf
• in summer: bike helmet, bike shoes, bike lock

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different variations on the “3L” approach. People (and families) with ADD often find planning ahead to be a challenge. But once it’s structured into their routines in a way that works for them, they can be extremely organized and effective.