Taking Charge of Adult ADHD, Second Edition

Use small-muscle exercises while engaged in boring classes or studying. Repeatedly squeeze a tennis or stress ball, tap your feet while studying, chew on some gum or even a rubber toy of some kind, or pace while you read. Any movement seems to be helpful to adults with ADHD when they need to concentrate on some task.

Once you have all the data pertinent to your problem in pieces—on paper, using objects, or graphically represented in some other way—you can move all that physically represented stuff around with your hands, your eyes, your ears, even your whole body to see if a solution reveals itself. If it’s a verbal problem, use paper, 3˝ × 5˝ file cards, or ev

ADHD can make the future seem hopelessly distant. A goal that requires a significant investment of time, incorporates waiting periods, or has to be done in a sequence of steps can prove so elusive that you feel overwhelmed. When that happens, many adults with ADHD yield to the temptation to find an escape route.

The problems that ADHD creates are not so much with knowledge, or the back part of our brain, but with performance, or the front part of our brain. That is where we use that knowledge in daily life for greater effectiveness. Thus, the problems for you have more to do with not using what you know at critical points of performance in your life than w