Thursday Thoughts from an ADHDer - Issue #2

Welcome to Issue #2! 🧡

I’m Luce, a newly diagnosed combined ADHDer from the UK. The aim of this newsletter is to share with you my journey as I try medication and other techniques to get a better handle on my chaotic brain. Plus things I have found interesting that week or caught my attention!

So it has been 7 days now since I began taking Concerta XL 36mg. Tomorrow my dose is upped to 72mg so see how that feels.

Honestly, so far I haven’t noticed a difference. I am not suddenly super focused. I still struggle to not zone out when spoken to sometimes or in meetings. I still think about too many things and jump between tasks.

I have watched videos online where people mention noticeable differences and list all the things they have been able to achieve that day from doing laundry to admin and beyond.

So sometimes I wonder if my expectations are too high and maybe I just don’t know what ‘normal’ or ‘neurotypical’ is supposed to feel like.

On the bright side though, I also don’t have any side effects so that’s something!

Let’s see what updates I can bring in Issue #3!

This week we have a song that isn’t new to my life, I have listened to it many times over the years but always helps get me ‘hyped’. I often listen to this kind of music on the way to the gym or if I am up early to travel (remember those days?)

In March 2020, when the lockdowns first started here in the UK, I discovered Youtuber Ali Abdaal (of last week’s Issue fame) and a video he did using a system called Notion.

I love Notion a lot and try and use it where possible. However, I often don’t quite find a system that works for me. But this week, I watched a video from another great Productivity Content Creator, Thomas Frank. He talks you through creating a dashboard in Notion that brings together external links and other pages and databases from Notion into one helpful ‘landing’ page for your life.

I already have a dashboard to manage my personal life which includes chores list, side projects, books and a resonance calendar, but I used this video from Thomas to create one for work.

As I touched on last week, I am currently reading a different book to the one I featured. At the moment I am reading Atomic Habits by James Clear.

This is another ‘systems’ book that looks at ways to be more productive. I am only a few chapters in but I am enjoying it so far.

It discusses being systems driven rather than goals driven as often if the system is there, the goals will naturally occur.

Of course as the name suggests, the main purpose of the book is help the reader develop new habits and break old ones to help you achieve more and become the person you want to be.

In an early chapter it talks about ‘marginal gains’ and the British Track Cycling team. I had heard this term before about the team as they managed to smash world records and win countless medals after being mediocre for so long. This was all down to ‘atomic habits’ or ‘marginal gains’, with lots of little changes more effective than one large change.

Lots to read and implement yet but so far I am enjoying it and finding it interesting!

As I mentioned last week in the Video of the Week section, the plan is to try different productivity techniques and see how I find it.

At the moment, I am still using Pomodoro. The idea of Pomodoro is to do a set amount of time of focused work, then a short break. You repeat this 4 times and then take a longer break. It is probably one of the most well known focus techniques.

For me, the default value of 25 minutes work is too long. I tend to aim for about 10 minutes. Sometimes I find I am actually able to get into the zone so I keep working after the time is up. This kind of defeats the purpose but to be honest, I just use these techniques as a way to kick start my brain.

Its very hit and miss if I will remember to set a timer though, let alone if it will actually work, so the jury is still out!!

Its been a busy week this week and a few things have happened that I am proud of. But I want to mention something that I did with someone else, for someone else. Nothing better than being proud of your friends too!

If you know me or my online life, you will know I am good friends with Salma Alam-Naylor aka WhiteP4nth3r (said like the animal).

Now WhiteP4nth3r has been wonderful for the tech community. She is an ally, role model and inspiration as well as being an excellent speaker, blogger, content creator and Twitch Partner.

Another good friend of mine, ToeFrog, reached out recently as he had an idea of gathering together stories from members of the community to share with WhiteP4nth3r for her birthday, and wanted my help. Her birthday happened to fall between last newsletter and this one.

So after spending a few weeks requesting stories from members of the community in secret, ToeFrog and I decided we would create a website from the results and share them on the last Twitch stream before her birthday.

This left us with about 2 days to actually make a website. We are both not really web developers so I’m quite proud of the result which you can see here.