To ask how to stop procrastinating!

[Sadit]

I seem to spend my time doing this.
There is washing to be put out, housework and ironing to do, kids to entertain and all I do is sit on mumsnet!
I can never be focused and get on with my jobs so my work is done. I have tried limiting my internet time but that doesn't work! I have no will power. HELP ME!

Bertie, how did you go about getting assessed for ADHD? Everything I've read about it rings scarily true for me, but I'm not sure if there's anything that would help after a diagnosis.

I'm in Germany so it's different than the UK. I went to my doctor and asked her and she referred me to a neurological centre. Nothing is happening much at the moment as I'm in a waiting list but they wanted me to try sticking to a timetable first to see if it helped.

There are things that can help after diagnosis, some you can access without diagnosis too - I really like a book called So You're Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy, and it's worth watching some talks by a guy called Russell Barkley, and ADDitude magazine's website is brilliant too. I don't know whether Occupational Therapy or Educational Psychology (or similar) is available for adults on the NHS because it varies depending on different countries' acceptance of adult ADHD as a real thing. There is a possibility (but I don't know again how available it is in reality) of accessing counselling or other MH types of therapy with a therapist or counsellor who understands ADHD, just to avoid the situation where they are giving you advice about something which you then find impossible to follow up on, for example.

The biggest thing that you're blocked from accessing without diagnosis is medication, which I think is worth trying just to see what the effect is basically. And then there is the other issue which is that if you are undiagnosed you can try all these things and they might help or they might not, but if you're thinking you have ADHD and you actually have Dyspraxia, or something, for example, then it might be unhelpful or demoralising. And there's always a sort of doubt in your mind, for example I don't feel as though I can enter support groups without a diagnosis because I feel like a fraud. So it would be nice to be told one way or the other, either you have it or you don't and then you can sort of move forwards from that if that makes sense.

Thanks, bertie. Is there specific medication that helps adults with this? The kinds of self-help strategies above I can do independently, I guess (I have tried most of them, without much success!)

Get off Mumsnet?

Try to change your mindset...

Rather than constantly feeling guilty about the things you "should" be doing, switch your thinking to 'I "would like" to get such and such done.

I am an expert procrastinator. My most recent way of tricking myself is trying to think about who I would like to be. Do I want to be the person who gets the task done so that they can enjoy the rest of their day or do I want to be the person who fritters away a day procrastinating on Mumsnet etc. rather than doing a couple of relatively painless tasks.

On that note, I'm off to do the washing up...

There is this: www.additudemag.com/adhd/article/718.html

But then this is the UK situation: www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder/Pages/Treatment.aspx

There is info in Crazy/Stupid/Lazy about different medications and how and why they work which is easier to understand and less jargonny. Your library might have a copy or it's not that expensive second hand on amazon.

Normal self help methods don't work with ADHD. You have to understand the limitations of it to be able to adapt methods. So reading can help a lot, IME, Russell Barkley's talks have been the single most helpful thing for me so far, but it's probably better to be able to work with actual professionals about it, if that makes sense.

I'm terrible at concentrating on stuff I'm not interested in. Definitely 'zone out', there's always that moment when someone asks what you think about something and you do that sort of "huh?!" as you return to Planet Earth!

I also used to love reading, up until I got a computer. Could easily get through 2 or 3 books in a weekend, not any more. I took 5 books out of the library back in May and was determined to get through them. Ended up renewing them several times and took them back last Friday with only 1 chapter completed Was feeling a bit guilty that I'd had them so long.

focus on one task at a time, start small, just get started and other things will follow.

put your shoes on, it really puts you in work / get on with it mode.

get a timer and do 10 - 15 minute bursts then give yourself a little break, then do another timed 15 minutes.