I am currently awaiting an ADHD diagnosis.
The way I understand it, ADHD is a neurological condition caused by a shortfall in certain chemicals (e.g. dopamine) in the brain that regulate behaviour and focus. Essentially, people with ADHD find it harder to stay focused on certain tasks because they don't get the same sense of reward and satisfaction from the task that NT people do. This is crucial for wellbeing and therefore ADHD sufferers are driven to seek out stimulus that does give them that reward, which comes in various forms (food, exercise, drugs, alcohol etc.). So there's no such thing as being "a bit ADHD" and ADHD is not caused by screens, though of course modern life can make symptoms worse.
I'm not going to go into how my life has been affected by what I now think is ADHD - my experiences mirror many on here - underachieving, exhaustion, anxiety, a complete breakdown and burnout when trying to combine a stressful job with parenting.
I'm hopeful that a diagnosis will lead to medication, but I realise it's not a magic bullet and hard to get hold of, but there's a few things I've been doing lately to make things easier for myself which really seem to be having an effect.
- Shopping daily and not meal planning at all. I have some basics in the house (milk, cereal, frozen veggies, pasta etc) but otherwise only shop for that day.
- Tidying the part of the house that I'm in. If I'm in the kitchen, I tidy the kitchen. I tidy the kids' rooms while putting them to bed. I do the bathroom while the kids are having their baths. Otherwise I ignore everything. I have a hoover upstairs and downstairs so I can grab it quickly to do wherever I am. I don't think "I need to hoover", I just hoover.
- Big box in the sitting-room under my chair of papers. I shred stuff while watching TV in the evening, a few docs here and there. I have so many piles of random papers in the house, but one by one they're been moved into the paper box for sorting and shredding.
- Healthy ready meals. I spend a lot on relatively healthy ready meals for when I don't want to cook for myself. Before that, I'd cook for the kids and end up eating junk myself.
- Planning "self-care" to get the "reward" hit I need, but trying to focus on positive things like music, a hot bath, a nice face-cream, a glass of chilled water or exercise.
I don't make lists of things to do anymore. I read somewhere that this can be a waste of mental energy if you have ADHD, although I know some people find it useful. I read on here "Either do something immediately or forget about it" and tbh that has been a very useful piece of advice for me - saves a lot of mental energy, I find. I just don't dwell on stuff unless I can deal with it immediately. So rather than make lists for packing, I just start packing. If I'm not going to deal with a messy drawer or area of the house, I just forget about it.
One thing I now do as soon as I get through the door from school with the kids is put everything we need for the next day next to the front door. So unpack school and nursery bags, get homework done, get reading done and re-pack bags (except packed lunch). Put uniform and clothes for the next day next to beds. And only then do we take a break. This has really helped.
Immediacy is really important, I find. I'm much better at focusing on those tasks which are immediately in front of me, so finding a way to make important tasks more immediate - having papers printed and on my desk, making sure my computer is logged in and the only screen up has what I need to do on it - is really important for me.