Creating Your ADHD-Friendly Focus Ritual

One of the most frustrating parts of ADHD is the lack of focus. Or rather, the lack of ability to control the focus, or at least steer the focus. The ADHD brain runs on dopamine, so it needs to keep things interesting. Thus, when something is not interesting, we lose interest. (Duh). For people without ADHD, it's easy to keep doing the "boring" thing like cleaning the bathroom or focusing on a work project that isn't exciting but just needs to be done. 

Alas.

It's so disheartening as a child, teen, and young adult to be expected to control our focus like our neurotypical peers... especially when we don't get a diagnosis until our thirties. (Just me?) 

The more I unmask and (re)discover the parts of my brain's wiring that are neurodivergent, the more I can creatively approach things that used to feel like insurmountable obstacles. 

enter: the focus ritual.

ADHD: Prone to Distractions

Distractions aren't necessarily bad or negative... they're just distracting. It's normal to be distracted by productive or positive things. You can be sitting there trying to work on a project and the interruption of literally any thought will derail you. 

Example: You want to practice a new painting technique. You refill your water bottle, get your painting supplies, sit down at your desk, and load up a YouTube tutorial to watch. Suddenly you can't stop thinking about the dishes in your kitchen. Surely you can tidy those up and then come back to the tutorial, right? So you go load the dishwasher to check it off your mental to-do list. 

You know yourself. Are you going back to your paints, or have you found four other new tasks to do? Are you even still in the kitchen, or are you putting together Ikea furniture that's been flat-packed in the garage for four months, because now seems like the perfect time? 

Identify Your Key Distractions

What distractions tend to bother you in a day? Try keeping track of them for a day and start to group them into, for lack of a better term, distraction themes: outside noises, interruptions, phone notifications, to-do list thoughts... 

Once you know the biggest distractions that you're up against, you can make a specific plan to defend yourself against them. 

Noise and Interruptions

Noise and interruptions are easier for some to address than others. My dog is never going to not bark in response to the dogs next door coming outside and singing the songs of their people. But I do know that I maintain focus better when I listen to upbeat instrumental music. Other ways to reduce noise distractions and interruptions include:

• Noise reduction or canceling headphones

• A note/light/doorknob hanger that indicates you are busy and need to avoid being interrupted (only works if other people participate, but worth a try)

• White noise or other ambient noise (I like Jason Lewis's Isochronic mixes or video game music)

• Put your phone on airplane mode or in another room so you don't get interrupted by the notifications

To-Do List Thoughts

Lingering mental reminders of tasks you need to handle are extremely distracting, and they also tend to come with a side of shame or guilt for not having all your chores done. That hustle is self-inflicted! You're allowed to do a fun thing first before you do a household task. I promise. 

Tips to reduce the pressure of to-do list thoughts include:

• Gamify your to-do list. Put a mix of fun and creative things, household chores, and self-care tasks onto a list totaling 20. Then roll a twenty-sided die (if you don't have one, use an app or random number generator from 1-20). Roll, do the thing, repeat. This approach circumvents the demand avoidant part of many autistic and auDHD neurotypes by making it random, rather than a direct "demand" on yourself to perform a task. Try it out with my D20 Play List!

• Delegate. Seriously. Why are those chores JUST FOR YOU? If they are reasonably yours alone, fine, but if they are household tasks then you can and should delegate them throughout the household as much as possible, with accommodations. 

• Hire help. If you are economically able to afford it, hire a household helper! This could be a personal assistant to run errands, a housekeeper to maintain cleaning chores, or paying your kid extra allowance to do the dishes every night. However it works out!

Starting Small

Julia Cameron recommends a once a week Artist Date with your inner artist. Could you start by creating a one hour zone of focus for yourself and a creative passion per week? This is such a teeny tiny ask in the context of the other 167 hours that you're allowed to get distracted. By starting so small, whether it's an hour a week or even ten minutes, you'll start to recontextualize the story that you "can't focus." 

Because we CAN focus. We just don't always have CONTROL of the focus. 

Nervous System Regulation

There's a reason we get distracted by noises, interruptions, and worries of things left undone. It's because our brains operate on patterns for our survival, and the fastest, most survival-oriented response to  interruption or sudden change is to assume we are  in danger. Thus, Instagram notifications feel like life or death scenarios, despite how logically we understand that they are not. 

For the most part, we're used to settling down after the brief excitement of a phone ping, but what if it's a bigger, more sudden noise or distraction? 

When my dog Gwen barks at the top of her lungs to tell me the next-door-dogs are outside again, she is LOUD. She does not care that we KNOW THOSE DOGS. She has animal instincts, and MY animal instincts want to run out of the cave with my spear, loaded for bear. Not helpful when I'm trying to write a blog post. Not helpful when we're watching our cozy YouTube painting tutorial. 

Same deal when my partner pokes his head into my office to say hello during the day. If I'm not hyperfocused, this is sweet and lovely. If I'm in the middle of something, I immediately think "THERE IS AN EMERGENCY!" before my brain has a chance to catch up and realize it's just him saying hello. 

So fun.

Practicing nervous system regulation techniques in advance means you have a toolkit of techniques that help you calm down and reorient yourself. Have you tried any of these? 

Downregulating Breath

Breathe in, then exhale twice as long. This is a breathing technique that helps regulate and soothe an activated nervous system.

Finger Breathing

Another breathing exercise! This time, hold up one hand in front of you and trace the outline of each finger. As you move up the pinky, breathe in. Move down the other side of the pinky, toward the ring finger, and breathe out. Up the ring finger, inhale. Down the ring finger, exhale. Repeat until you've breathed up and down all five fingers, then optionally do the same in reverse. 

Observation of Senses

This one's great for anxiety attacks and spiraling into the void. Start by identifying the things in your environment you can feel. For example, I can feel my feet on the floor and my butt in my chair, and the lumbar pillow lightly touching my back. My wrists are making contact with the desk and my keyboard keys feel smooth under my fingertips. 

Next, what are the things you can hear? I hear my keyboard clack-clacking away, my dog breathing steadily in her sleep, and the sound of French Toast the orange cat doing hallway parkour. 

I wasn't even stressed, and just writing down these observations is making me feel very relaxed. Next, what do you see? I like to go by color for this. Find red things, then blue, then green... cycle through a few colors. The process of experiencing the present moment helps as a grounding technique when you're mentally spiraling. 

Creating Your Focus Ritual

Since we're talking about activating your senses, it's time to bring the focus ritual into the spotlight. The concept of a focus ritual comes from my approach to anti-perfectionist writing, Novel Day. Each Wednesday, I work on my novel for a few hours in the morning. I used to go to a coffee shop, but... COVID. So I usually stay home and write in my office (where it's distracting to be in my house, sigh). However, I can recreate the environment of the coffee shop by playing café ambiance sounds on YouTube, lighting a coffee scented candle, making a homemade latte, etc. 

It doesn't have to be coffee shop specific. Just some kind of ritual aspect that brings one or more of your senses into play. Perhaps you light incense when you want to journal. As long as that incense is burning, it's journaling time. If you look up and the incense is gone, then you're done! 

Similar to the D20 list to gamify chores and tasks, creating a ritual for your senses around a goal, project, or task means taking the demanding pressure off and replacing it with a seemingly-arbitrary marker of time. 

The coolest part: It works. 

Scents for your Focus Ritual

Bringing in a scent is one of the most powerful ways to get your mind to stay on task. If I smell lemons I will clean anything. If I smell somebody else's shampoo, I want to shower and be clean too. So give yourself the gift of a trip down the candle aisle at Target and pick out a scent that means ART, or WRITING, or CLEANING, or whatever you want to focus on. 

Warning!

If you tend to walk away and leave candles lit, try a wax warmer, oil diffuser, or scented room spray instead (and double check that anything you use is safe for pets). 

Sounds for your Focus Ritual

Again, I can't recommend Jason Lewis enough. His Mind Amend channel on YouTube is full of different music mixes with names like "Upbeat Study Music," "Hyperfocus High Energy Trance Mix," "Focus Flow," and "ADHD Intense Relief." 

I've discovered two approaches for sound with the ADHD clients and friends in my life. Some people need stuff with no words, and some people need words  - but words they KNOW. I had a roommate who worked best with episodes of The Office running in the background, which would drive me up a wall. I'm a no words person, so I like video game music (Spyro the Dragon soundtracks especially, because they put me back into a hyperfocus kind of mood from childhood game marathons) or Mind Amend's isochronic tone mixes. You could also listen to white noise, nature sounds, or another neutral background noise. 

For this dual approach reason, my online community The Neurodivergent Creative Pod hosts co-working/body doubling calls regularly, some with chat and some quiet. Because some of us can't focus if other people are talking, and some of us can't focus UNLESS other people are talking. 

Sights for your Focus Ritual

What kind of lighting is best for you? Lots of autistics hate "the big light" and opt for lower light from lamps, but I actually like overhead lighting and stay focused better when I'm in a brightly lit room. What's key is to identify what works for you individually, and create your ritual around that. 

If you're distracted by to-do tasks, then working in a messy area might be too visually overwhelming for you. I tend to tidy my desk a bit when I'm on work calls where I'm listening rather than leading the call, because keeping myself just a little busy helps me pay attention. When I'm leading a call, though, I need to keep my desk clear so I don't get distracted. 

Big important reminder: Your brain is just wired differently. You aren’t messed up or wrong.

Other Applications for Focus Rituals

You can use this "ritual" approach to add a commute to your day if you work from home, to give yourself a clear transition from work mode to home or rest mode. 

Any habit that you want to build into your routine can be treated like a ritual. Adding a little bit of intention to something that's otherwise boring or mundane (thus un-interesting to your brain) can help make it more fun and engaging. 

Key Points, Quotable Sass, & All That Jazz

Time to bring the fireworks with some seriously sassy key points and memorable quotes from episode 87:

“Anything that makes you aware of the distraction will help you notice how many times a day you're actually getting distracted. And then you can potentially make a plan to reduce those distractions.”

“ADHD is disabling in our society because society is not set up for people with ADHD, right? Society is set up for people who can remember to do stuff.“

“You're definitely not going to improve your focus if you're treating yourself like shit all the time. You gotta be a little nicer to you. Be nice to my friend.”

“Even if I can only focus on it for five minutes at a time, I am taking that time and I'm going to love it. This is about finding enoughness in what you can achieve as opposed to convincing yourself that you aren't good enough because you can't focus for longer.”

Episode Mic Drop

The truth is, there is no shame in being unable to focus for long periods of time. What's important is you create a space for you to embrace your own unique circumstances and find ways to nurture your creativity - ones that make sense and work for you!

By focusing on the 'enoughness' of where you are at the moment and implementing your focus rituals, you allow yourself to reinvigorate your creative journey and overcome distractions when it matters most.

PS.

I just really really wanted to tell you that I thought I'd get four blogs done in an hour and this took me about two hours including Facebook and lunch breaks.

Are you a neurodivergent creative aching to dismantle societal myths and pave the way for more inclusive, flexible, and fulfilling experiences through artistic expression? 

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