Tag Archive for: decision-making

ADHD Tool Tip: Reduce Decision Making Part 2, Meals

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I’m beginning by reiterating that this series of blog posts in which I’m sharing my recommendations for ADHD tools is my answer to the many requests I get from coaching clients who want me to tell them what to use to solve a particular problem. I am generally reluctant to make recommendations as no one product or tool or strategy works for every person. Nonetheless, I understand the desire to have choices narrowed down and to know what someone else found useful.

This post addresses reducing decision-making in the moment to improve time management and productivity and to reduce analysis paralysis. Part 1 discussed managing the decision of what to wear. Part 2 in this post focuses on the decision of what to eat (sort of).

How often do you skip breakfast because it’s just too hard to prepare or takes too much time in the morning and you just don’t know what to make? How many times have you lamented that you should save money by taking your lunch but the task of making a lunch each morning feels like too much? How much food have you thrown away because you went to the grocery store with good intentions of eating breakfast or taking your lunch to work or preparing dinner but forgot what you bought when it came down to deciding what to make each day?

This is common among my clients with ADHD. And it’s frustrating for them. They have discovered that the key to success is, again, to reduce the number of food decisions they are required to make in the moment when they’re trying to get out the door in the morning or rushing to get a meal on the table in the evening.

How to do this? Answer: Food planning and food prepping.

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Planning meals ahead of time of course reduces decision-making in the moment and ensures you will eat healthy and eat what you buy. I like this meal planning pad because it has a magnetic back so you can keep it visible on the fridge. On the left side of the page, write in meals for each day of teh week. On the right side of the page, list your grocery items. There’s even space for writing notes at the bottom of the page.

Though you can tear off and dispose if the pages at the end of each week, I think it’s a better idea to keep the pages of menus that really worked for you, your family, and your budget. Eventually, you’ll have weekly rotations of meal plans and grocery lists that are go-tos for you.

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As for prepping meals, my ADHD clients take the worry out of mornings by preparing breakfast and/or lunch for each morning of the week and store it in their fridge in grab-and-go containers. These glass food storage containers are microwavable and have locking lids (so no spills).

 

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Some clients even label a container for each day of the week, further simplifying things and eliminating even the decision of which container to pull out of the refrigerator. The name labels pictured here are waterproof and come with a permanent marker.

If you want to experiment with any of the products I’ve listed in this post, you can click on the highlighted text or the picture to buy it from Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I encourage you to only use ADHD tool recommendations that feel right for you and how you operate.

 

ADHD Tool Tip: Reduce Decision-Making Part 1, Clothing

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This post is a continuation of my series of recommended ADHD tools. I typically avoid making recommendations to my coaching clients, because one particular solution isn’t the key for everyone. Each person experiences the challenges of ADHD in his or her own unique way. That acknowledged, I understand that knowing what has worked for others can reduce the overwhelm of finding something that will work for you.

An aspect of daily life many of my clients find overwhelming is choosing what to wear each day. It can be the source of a great deal of stress. They describe themselves standing in their closet door staring at their clothes, or, even more commonly, standing in the laundry room over a basket of unfolded laundry, and losing so much time in the morning trying to pick out something to wear. They become paralyzed by the pressure to make a decision. Ugh.

We can really help our brains function better and improve our time management if we reduce decision-making pressure in the moment. In other words, mornings will be easier and we’ll move a little faster if we’ve made the “what to wear” decision in advance, in a period when time pressure was not an issue. What’s also helpful is setting ourselves up to not have to repeat the advance decision-making over and over again.

Two ways my clients have solved this:

  1. Creating a “uniform” for work.
  2. Creating standard “outfits” for each day.

A work “uniform” combines basic pieces and colors worn together each day of the week. Accessories can be added to spice up the uniform if/when it becomes boring.

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An example of a work uniform is paring black pants with a white blouse. My favorite go-tos are Lysse pants, like the black ponte pants pictured here (wearing Lysse pants is like secretly wearing comfy yoga pants), and a top that resists wrinkles, like this Grace Karin blouse. If you want a uniform that looks slightly different each day, get multiple blouses in the same color but different style or visa versa.

Maybe you prefer to plan and simplify what-to-wear using clothing you already have in your closet (or laundry basket). This means taking time to assess what you own to coordinate outfits that appeal to you and make you feel good when you’re wearing them. Then group them together in your closet for easy pull, dress, and go mornings.

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A few tools to put together planned outfits include space-saving hangers, hanger connector hooks, and tags. Use the

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hanger connector hooks to group items of clothing together, then use labeled tags on the clothes rod or the hanger groups to designate a day of the week, such as “Monday Week 1.” I like the tags shown here because I can write on them or use the tags included with them.

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If you’d like to try using products in this post, clicking on any of the highlighted words or the picture will take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate, I earn on qualifying purchases. The items in this post and the others in this series are shared as useful suggestions and meant to help generate ideas and/or provide a potential way to move forward. No one solution will work for every person. Experiment with what makes sense for you.

 

 

Emotions Are Not Data

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Emotions happen. We don’t control them. We experience them. Emotions provide us with information about our internal state and our interpretation of our external environment, but they are not data.

In certain circumstances, it makes sense to act in response to an emotion. For example, if you’re walking alone in a dark alley and you feel fear, trust it and choose to leave the dark alley in favor of walking on a populated, brightly lit street. 

It’s important to recognize, however, tha

t our brain can fool us. It can use negative emotionsto erroneously warn us thatwe are in danger of becoming prey or being ostracized, two things humans evolutionarily avoid. In its effort to protect us from death bypredators and from loss of a support system, the brain has developed a negativity bias. We are thus sensitive to and very aware of ournegative emotions and allow them to influence our decisions, our personal boundaries, and our relationships.

Karen, a recent client, came to coachingwanting to improve her work-life balance. One of the challenges she identified was her inability to set boundaries around her work day. When she transitioned from working in an office to remote work, this became especially difficult. Through our sessions together, she determined that she wanted to clearly define her work hours for herself and for her colleagues and upper management. As a result, she began declining meetings outside of her defined work hours.

In a follow-up session, I checked in with Karen on how holding this boundary around her work hours was impacting her goal of improved work-life balance. Her face dropped, and she lamented, “It isn’t working.”

I probed, “What part of the strategy isn’t working?”

She said, “It isn’t workingbecause I feel bad about declining meetings.” She wanted to drop the whole strategy and try to findsome other way to “feel like” she had work-life balance.

As we explored this deeper, she acknowledged that she in fact was enjoying more time with her family and keeping up better with household tasks as a result of setting boundaries around her work hours. She reported that tension between her and her husband over her work had also decreased. Furthermore, she could not name any concrete negative repercussions at work. Nonetheless, Karen was using her negative emotion as the sole criteria for judging the effectiveness of her strategy.

Do you recognize yourself in this account? Do you make critical life decisions based on emotional feedback? How can these negative emotions be processed in a meaningful way? What’s a better way to get at useful data points for determining whether what you’re doing is working?


 

First, take some steps to evaluate and manage the emotion itself:

  1. Pause –
    Pausing provides time for your emotional brain to cool down and your logical brain to heat up.
  2. Reflect – Create self-awareness by objectively considering how the emotion influences your physical state, your cognitive state, and your behavioral state. It may enhance your self-awareness to journal your observations.
  3. Name It – Naming an emotion can tame it. Naming it takes away its power over you.
  4. Respond – Choose your response with intention. You can choose to do something in response or to do nothing in response. Choosing is the action in both cases. 

Next, ask yourself two questions about your strategy to collect information beyond your emotion:

  1. Did I do the behavior I committedto?
  2. What observable outcomes did I get as a result?

Together, Karen and I employed these tools to take a 360-degree view of her strategy for improving her work-life balance. She ultimately chose to stick with her boundaries around work hours. She says that she sometimes still feels bad when declining a meeting outside of her work hours, but she uses her new tools to slow down, examine her emotion, and gather accurate data. 

How can you use these tools to achieve your goals?