A Splintered Mind

I recently shared the following on Twitter: Here's how I'm helping my #ADHD brain ignore distractions today. #howto #vineportraits #favthings #trance vine.co/v/brFMLemlhPX —Douglas Cootey (@SplinteredMind) February 16, 2013 Drowning out distraction and noise can be difficult for the adult or child with ADHD. I find background noise becomes foreground noise, so I constantly struggle with aural distraction. In fact, my first article published in ADDitude magazine was about the importance of white noise in managing a productive work environment. I've continued to experiment with what is effective for me since then, and I thought I'd share what I do lately: First , I load up a long vocal trance music playlist into iTunes. I love dance music because it was my first white noise. It also pumps up my adrenaline and helps me work faster. I then drop iTunes audio levels to half way. I do this because I am going to layer the music with real white noise. ...

Pencil sketching on an iPad with Paper—a very impressive app. I can't tell if it was my neurological problems or if it was the app, but this seemed to take longer to render than with pencil on paper. However, I'm fairly pleased. I've finally found an iPad drawing app that feels close to the real thing. It also felt nice to start and finish something within the hour. Art projects of late have been formidable cliffs of doom that I avoid like Ebola.  

Monday - Entry 26: Day61 . This past weekend, after many days of feeling better, I dared to come out of my hermit’s shell. I let a brother take me to a movie on Saturday, I attended Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, met with my Bishop afterwards, and attended a birthday party. I am paying for my daring today. New chest cold. Headaches. Body aches. Nausea and fatigue. Feeling flush. Plus my cough has returned. I may have to hole up in my apartment until Spring warms these cold Utah skies. My immunity system—long embattled and weary from the fight—has softened its borders of defense like it’s running its own amnesty program for viruses. My meeting with an immunologist next week can’t come a week too soon. All of this has me rather discouraged. I do have bills to pay and clothes to buy for my girls. Worldly needs abound. Sixty one days of illness and little work means a very bare bank account with no reserves. I can’t even afford to get my haircut. So I’m justified to sink into despair a...

I wanted to point you in the direction of a new blog, The ADHD Academic Advocate , written by Nathan Stewart. It's not often that I see myself as an inspiration to others, but apparently my humble writings here touched Nathan over there. You can read about it in his own words . Nathan's approach to ADHD is different than most. Instead of giving you a list of ten ways to better organize your glove box, or as I often do here, recount humorous anecdotes to help ADHDers not feel bad about being themselves, he thoughtfully approaches ADHD from the needs of the advocate. You won't want to skim his articles. Set some time aside to ponder and chew. There's a lot of meat there to take in. Aside from being sincerely flattered that my writing can influence another writer, I wanted to make the point that we never know when what we send out into the world will affect someone. Adults with ADHD don't often think about what they say from moment to moment, never mind worry ...

I have blogged often about the ADHD adult's tendency to suffer from what I affectionately call Multi-Irons Syndrome . You know… When you are busy working on cleaning the garage, but you also remember you need to research plumping to fix the guest bathroom, and you wanted to sort all your digital photos by date and color, while also making time to fill out your taxes? That sort of thing. There isn't time in the day to get it all done. The thing with ADHD adults is that they don't seem to know that, so they get busy—and very stressed—trying to finish what they started. Meanwhile, they suddenly remember that the car needs to be vacuumed, and who can ignore that glovebox. While you're at it, right? There are three ways that I'm going to recommend for you to solve this problem. Don't care. I mean, have you seen what's available on Netflix lately? Wow, that House of Cards . I wish Kevin Spacey was my senator! But in all seriousness, there's only so m...

Monday - Entry 25 Sunday is a day of rest, so I did not use my 3do list except to get myself ready yesterday morning. The children arrived and I was quite busy helping them settle in. Interacting with them after two weeks apart was wonderful. I made dinner for the Brownie, Leprechaun & Elf—portabella mushroom pizza. We had a good time together. Oddly, I felt sicker on Day 54, but I still tried to enjoy their company to the best of my ability. It was Day 55—today—that I was most disappointed in. I was much sicker today. Even though I had slept for seven hours, I was neurologically off as well. There was even an underlying low note of depression. Gee, I wonder why. It's never a joy to tic uncontrollably, but I had big plans for myself & my 3do list today, so I found the setback very disappointing. All is not lost, however. Now I know my 3do list isn't a miracle cure for cancer, it can't establish world peace, and I can't rely on it to get rid of greasy sta...

Saturday - Entry 24: Come explore hyperfocus with me today. I have learned something that may benefit all of us. There is a mystical ADHD superpower called hyperfocus . As rare as unicorns, hyperfocus can flit in and out of our lives. Adults with ADHD are often accused of tuning out, but in reality we are usually hyper tuned in to something that excites & engages our minds. Sometimes hyperfocus is good because we accomplish so much while we are doing it. Hyperfocus gives us clarity and purpose, free from the tyranny of distraction as we bury ourselves into a project and actually complete it. Last Christmas Eve I had everything laid out for my girls. I was completely prepared for the morning. I suddenly realized I had time for that extra project. I could make those bookmarks for the girls. I began to get excited, even if it was in the early AM. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I grabbed my watercolor pencils, paper, and stencils, marked out my bookmark borders, stared ...

Anybody who knows me knows that I have a shrine dedicated to Dr. Edward Hallowell in my library. I have read and reread his books multiple times and loaded them up with so many commentary-filled color Post-It flags that my bookshelf sags from their rainbowy weight. So when I learned that Dr. Hallowell had apps available for the iPhone, I jumped at the chance to download them. They're also available for Android. The first one I'm going to share with you today is ADHD Quiz. ADHD Quiz is a self-assessment quiz, so if you were hoping to find out how many ADHD kids it takes to screw in a lightbulb, you'll be disappointed*. But if you were hoping to give yourself a once over to see if you have AD/HD, then you'll be pleased. First, you are greeted with a choice between a short quiz and a long quiz. Short Quiz is "adapted from the 18-question symptom checklist called the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale (ASRS v1.1)". Long Quiz's analysis is based on Dr. Hallowe...