Episode Transcript
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(00:29):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with.
I'm Renee Allen, the host of this podcast.
If you're new to the podcast, it's just me.
Something I wanted to do for a while, and I'm doing it over a
hundred episodes into my podcast now.
And it's fun. The more I do it, the more I
enjoy it. So I am going to talk to
(00:50):
you today about something that you probably already do.
But the more we talk about things, the more we have ideas and
how to make it work in our lives to help out even better.
One of the struggles for women with adhd, and maybe
for anybody with adhd, is executive dysfunction.
(01:11):
And that can show up with working memory issues, which
means what somebody else. Okay, we don't
need to compare. But ideally, some information comes
in. The working memory does its work.
It knows where to store that little note.
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Put it somewhere so that we actually do something with it.
And if the memory, Working memory isn't working properly, then
we forget things very, very easily. They come into
our heads and they're gone. They come into our heads and they're
gone. And you think about,
like, if you have to repeat a number or something, just
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even taking a credit card number and putting it into a
computer or saying it out loud for a customer service rep or
something like that. When you see that number, you have to
either process it from your brain, what you
see to your fingers or to your mouth, and it goes.
It actually works. It actually causes an action, a result
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because of what you saw. But if you look at that number,
if you don't take care of it really quickly, you might not remember
the number. You might have to look at it again.
But you have caused your brain to work and process
what you saw and make use of it. If that's
not working out. And you can think of other times of the day,
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like thinking, I'm going to do this right now.
And then you start to walk toward that place that
you're going to do it, and you completely forget about it.
Or you have something in your hand, you put it down, you're not
really processing where you put it. You might even tell
yourself, I'm going to remember where I put this, because I
know when I look for it, I don't want to not be able to find
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it. And then later you say, okay, now, where did I
put that? Because you didn't really store that information.
You thought about it, you tried to help yourself.
You were even aware, which isn't always the case.
A lot, A lot of times we lose things because we're not aware
of where we put them, but
life, okay? So that. That gets in the way of life, for sure.
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And there's different ways to help with that.
Oh, my goodness. I'm sitting in a way that's not so comfortable.
So let me try. I'm trying to sit so that I don't.
Don't bump my microphones. And chances are my foot's gonna fall
asleep or something. I'm just gonna have to come off of this.
Pardon me for half a second. Okay, so I
want you to think about advertising and why advertising works.
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If you're watching a commercial or if you look in
a magazine and you see an advertisement, what does it do?
You see an ad. Do we really ever say advertisement?
If you see an advertisement. If you see an ad, how does it
work? Well, you look at the picture and you
think, oh, that looks yummy. I want to go there
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and eat. I want to get some of that.
I want to buy that next time I go to the grocery store or, that's
a cute outfit. I want to buy that. And there are other ways
of advertising. Just seeing something on social media, not
for my generation, but TikTok is making millions and millions
of dollars, probably more than that, for different companies,
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because they found that if people see it on TikTok and
someone talks about it, that idea gets in their mind and
they do something with it. So a visual helps because it
helps you think of doing it and it helps you remind you to
do it. And so whatever visuals we create in our lives, it'll
have the same effect. But it's not to make us go buy a bunch
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of things or make us think we need more.
It's to help us remember what we want to do or what we
want to remember. It doesn't always turn into an action like,
I need to get all this stuff done, although it might.
Or I need to be here. It might be you are going
to drive somewhere, and on the way home, you need to stop
by the pharmacy and pick up your prescription.
Will you remember what will help you remember?
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Do you set an alarm for a few minutes after
you have to leave the last place you're going to be, and that
helps you remember, okay, that alarm's telling me.
And you actually write on the alarm on your phone, pick up, you
know, or go to the pharmacy or whatever it is, and then you
do it. Sometimes I actually take the bag from the
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pharmacy and put it in my car so that I remember, you
know, like, if I have one from the time before or something.
Or the old prescription and put it in the car.
But you know what? The car is not really the best place for storage
like that. It's not like they have a little shelf to help you
see that. I mean, I guess they have the dashboard, but that's
not really what that's for. We don't want it sliding around.
So I have made post it notes, post it notes.
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And I know people just call them sticky notes, but I called a
post it note. I use the brand name, but this one's probably not
even the brand name because it's not very sticky.
But usually you can find that little spot
where it shows what song's playing or the radio or something
like that. A sticky note will fit there if you need
that there as your visual to pick something up.
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Because we don't always remember. If you get distracted
in your head from minute to minute when you're driving, that
can happen really easily because you get on autopilot and just
think, I'm on my way home now. And you think about going home.
I've had times that I've forgotten so many
things and I've had to set up systems.
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And sometimes it's a visual tip, like a cue, a clue.
And sometimes it's just doing something visually to help
you remember. So let me give you an example.
So I went to Target once and told a friend that I
picked something up for her. So I remembered to do that.
I wrote myself a note. So that was a win if we're talking
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about success with the visual cues. And I wrote down
what she wanted, and I picked it up and I bought it
and I put it in a different bag. I was trying to be organized
about it so it would be easier to know how much money she'd venmo
me. And so I picked up her bag of things, I
bought her bag of things. I bought my bag of things, maybe a
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couple bags or something,
and then went out to the car and told myself, you need
to drive to her house on the way home to drop it off.
There's two ways to get home. There's the freeway way and the
little bit longer way. But it's more peaceful.
So I thought, okay, make sure you get on the freeway to go
to her house. It was in my mind not long enough,
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though. I didn't have some kind of reminder.
I need a reminder. Oh, my goodness. So I get closer
to the freeway and I thought, do you really want to go on the
freeway? And I thought, no, it's nicer to go, you know, the More
country way. So I went straight and I get home and walk
in the door and I thought you did not even remember all the
way home. It was probably a 20 minute drive.
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You didn't even remember that you were planning to take this
to her. So I carry in the bags and not only
did I forget to go to her house because I thought I can get in
the car and just drive to her house.
Now it would be an extra 15 minutes each way.
It would be out of my way. But I thought she won't even know
the difference. But I forgot her bag of
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things at the store. I grabbed most everything, but not
everything. And I bagged it myself and left.
You know how there's the bags on the little metal things if you,
if you ever do the self checkout. And I left her bag there.
So yeah, I paid for it, but I left
her bag there. So I called Target back and
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said, I think I left a bag there. Well, I knew I left a bag there.
I left a bag there.
Can you see if it's there? Has it been turned in?
It was at customer service. So it took me a long time.
It took a long time out of my day to do it.
I never told her that I left it there.
I just said I forgot to bring it by on the way home.
There was more to that story. I drove back, picked it up,
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then drove to her house, then drove home.
And so as I look back at things and you
may have done this in your life too, where you look and see,
where are the holes, where is this working, where is it not?
And the where it's not working is pretty obvious.
It stands out. That's where the mishaps are.
That's where you're apologizing to people or just frustrated
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with yourself. And in those moments you need to
think of a new solution, a new method.
What can that method be? It's not like I'm going to
be bringing post it notes to the store that says remember
every single bag. But I thought about what I used to
do when my kids were younger and when we would
stay in a hotel or even stay with relatives, go to grandma's
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house or whatever and visit. We had six kids.
Not always, but you know, sometimes we had four or five.
You know, all those years of having little kids and all
the things that you bring into the house or to the hotel to stay
somewhere, especially at a house because you're staying in multiple
rooms, you might even have a porta crib, you might have all these
things. And when we would Pack up. We
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would pack up. And then I would always do what I call a
visual sweep. I would walk around and look everywhere that
we'd been for a sock, a phone
charger or whatever. Back then we probably didn't even have cell
phones, but now we do. And I still use this
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method that even after I packed up, even though my
suitcase is by the door at the hotel, I still walk around
and the hotels make it a little nicer.
You don't have to look under the beds.
Relatives. I would actually look under the beds because things
slide under there and I look in the tables.
You know, did I leave a charging thing there?
I left brand new Apple charging cord on a
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trip once at a hotel and that was lame.
That was lame because I was staying in two hotels that trip
and so I didn't have one at the second hotel.
And thankfully with Amazon you can do an overnight delivery.
So I had one the next morning. I had to borrow one from a friend
that night because she used it. But I used a
little bit too. But I thought you should have done
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the visual sweep. You should have walked around.
You know, my husband would even say, are you going to go in and
walk one more time? Yeah, I'm going to go walk around.
And I always did it with kids. I always did it after
we got the kids in the car because I could do it without distraction.
I didn't know I had ADHD then, but I knew I needed
to do it without distraction where I could look thoroughly.
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And so I've started doing that at the grocery store because that
time that that happened at Target, it happened probably a few
weeks before that at the grocery store where I was having a Christmas
party at our house, it's my annual favorite things
party, and went to the store and got the last minute
things. Time was of the essence. When I got home, I was
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doing the last minute things to get ready.
Kind of the sweep of the house was not completely clean.
Well, a lot of things. But what's still visual visible is not
clean. And that matters to me. And, and I get
home and I was going to make something that needed
a lot of ingredients, like a seven layer Mexican dip with the,
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you know, the guacamole and all that stuff.
I get home and I don't have everything.
I go out in the car, I don't have anything.
I left one bag there. So at that point I just thought,
okay, you've done. This is a pattern.
I'd done it many years before, once, but it didn't
stick out to me. Because it just happened once.
It's like, how did I walk away? I thought, well, because in my
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brain I thought I was done. It was like, thanks, bye.
You know, grabbed the cart, went out and just didn't think
to get everything. So now when I'm done, I
look, I look at the counter at the grocery store.
I look in the cart even when I'm putting
things on the conveyor belt because I've gotten out to the
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car for was something at the bottom of the cart that I
forgot to get out and either do self checkout or real checkout
and you have to go back in the store and it didn't beep on
me when I left, but I just didn't see it, you know, so.
So I know that things can get missed.
And so now I do more of a look at the whole cart,
look at the whole counter or whatever before I leave the store
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and. And also look in the car before you bring stuff in.
Have you ever left things that maybe we're frozen overnight or
something? If it's wintertime, maybe it's not a big deal, but
yeah, you might have to do a scan. That's your visual.
You're not actually making a sign for yourself or writing
a note or putting a water bottle by the door
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or something so you don't forget it.
Although I have forgotten things that are low by the door.
I think I've mentioned that before. Sometimes they need to be
a pyre or the note has to be up that says, grab your water bottle.
All of those things. Don't think this is.
I shouldn't have to do this much. I feel like don't feel
bad about yourself for having to go extra steps.
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If that's what you need, do it. If that's what you need, do it.
Because your brain may be struggling with remembering.
And unless it's just like someone saying, hello, don't forget
this. And that's what all those things are.
Hello, don't forget this. And sometimes it's just your brain
getting into a habit of I might not be aware of everything
when I get up out of my seat on the airplane.
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Therefore, before I walk out, before I grab my overhead bag
or whatever, I'm going to look at the seat.
I left a pair of AirPods on the plane once.
Never doing that again. That was my lesson that taught me, look
at your seat, look at everything, look at the floor and
make sure something didn't fall out.
You're not forgetting. And there are times that I feel like,
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am I obsessive? Am I? You know, maybe.
Maybe the answer is yes, but I need to do that because things
will get left and we need to do what we can
to help our brains. So let me look at
this,
and here's the funny thing, here's the kind of.
The paradox is when you have adhd, there's a possibility
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that maybe you're a person that keeps adding more to your life.
Maybe more to do's, more things to do, more interests,
more things that you bring into your house, more things to take
care of, keep track of. And the more that you
do that, the more you add
hobbies, life experiences, appointments, things to do.
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Whatever it is, if you're not simplifying, you're actually going
the other direction. And that's possible because you may just
have ideas all the time and want to do different
things. And so when you do that, it's going to make it more complicated
for your brain because you can't possibly keep track of it all.
So you need to do what you can to help you.
It would be nice if our brains were a storage unit, but
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they're not always well, and it's not just that.
Once the information's stored in there, we don't remember.
Sometimes we don't remember. Like it could be the name of
an actress or a TV show or who knows what a song,
and you can't remember it because you're trying to remember
it, but you know it's in there. And when you're not trying to
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remember, when your brain is a little more relaxed, five minutes
later you go, yep, I knew it. It's in there.
So sometimes the things are in there and they just can't come
out. We just don't remember because we're thinking about other
things or we're maxed out or whatever.
We're just on autopilot, driving home.
But other times it's actually that the information never went
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that far. It never went into your brain, it never got
stored. And that's okay. It's not the
greatest thing, it's not the most fun thing, but it's a reality
and it's okay. It's just I have a different way that
I need to handle it then. I have a different way that I need
to work with it then. So let me see what else
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we can talk about here. And isn't that a nice
natural segue? I'm just looking at my notes.
Well, and that's the other thing is when you write notes, just
because you write the notes, do you see them all?
It happens to me, almost every podcast episode is, I have so
many notes, and I. I look at them, and sometimes I go
through them all, but sometimes I look and go, you just missed
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a whole section. My brain picks out some things
and not everything. And that might happen for you, too.
So anytime your brain isn't going to
remember, you need to have kind of like
an external hard drive. You have a way, like a
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personal assistant, a separate storage unit.
And it could be a notebook, it could be writing it in
your phone, it could be a Google Doc, it could be whatever.
Writing it down is important, even if you never need
to look at it again, but it's there if you do.
If you're not good at remembering people's names and you have
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a job or your life or you're dropping kids off
for at school, you're meeting new moms, and it's important to
you to remember people's names, then you need to do things
like write it down as soon as you get to the car, put it
in your phone. I used to write in my phone.
In fact, I still have phone numbers in my phone for some of
my friends as, like, Nathan's mom instead of
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her name. Because for a long time, once I hit my 40s,
I just wasn't remembering mom's names very much.
So I just write the kids, mom, and then you call them
up and, hey, my son wants to plan a play date
with your son. You don't have to know their name right away,
so that's one thing. But if you do know their name,
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write their name in your phone, put them as a contact, even without
the phone number. Just write a note about, met her at the
gym and she's really nice and she has dark hair, and it's
not like you're stalking her or anything.
You're just remembering because you might think, oh, I'll remember,
I'll remember. I do that a lot as a yoga teacher.
I think, oh, for sure I'll remember them.
There's only three of them. And then I get home,
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and maybe I don't remember any of the three, but if I
write it down or if I say it several times, or if I say
something to them like, oh, I'll remember this because.
And then I give an experience, you know, because as
someone with adhd, I do have that thing of loving to share, but
I give an experience. I give a connection, but it's also giving
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my brain a connection. One of the women that I think I will
never forget her name, and she hasn't been Back to class in
a while. But one night she told me her name,
and I don't hear very well. My right ear hardly works at
all for. For voices, for vocals. It hears some sounds, but
understanding words is not one of them.
So it messes up the in sound of words.
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And apparently the front. The front sound.
The first letter sound, too. Anyway, so the woman told me.
So it was the husband and wife. And she said her name was Ramey.
And I thought, that's so cool. And I said, ramey, that's so
great. I said, I have a friend who used to
say, if I ever have a girl, I'm going to name her Raymie.
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Her last name was Rohrbach. She said, it'll be Raymie Rohrbach.
And she just thought that was the cutest name.
When I met her, she had one little. One little boy, a
toddler boy. She had two more boys, so she never had a
girl. She never named her Raymie. But she said that
again with her next two boys. You know, if this is a girl
I'm going to name. So anyway, so I share that story with her.
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Like, I know somebody who wanted to name their daughter Raymie,
but she just never had a daughter. And so I thought, oh,
of course I'll remember your name. Well, another thing that I
do as a yoga teacher, and like I said, it's not like I'm stalking
or anything, but I'm trying to help myself remember people.
And so when I get home, I'll look them up on
social media. I'll think, oh, I wonder if I just put in
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the first person's name, even if I don't know their last name.
Maybe they're friends of somebody. Because a lot of times Facebook,
you know, will give you somebody. Local Instagram seems to give
you more famous people when you start typing in a name.
But they'll give you, like a friend of a friend or something.
So I find out her name is Amy. There was no
R. So I felt so stupid. But I'll never forget
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that because I have a news story, and when I do see her
again in class, I'm always going to know her name's Amy because
I messed it up. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So. Oh, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so let's
go back to the idea of visual sweeping.
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So another thing that can help you remember things is
making it a habit to do things in a certain order,
otherwise known as a routine or a method or habit stacking.
Last week, I talked somewhat about having daily routines, whether
it's the same Every day or just a morning routine, or this
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is my get ready for church routine, or this is my get ready
for the gym routine. You can have a routine.
This is my go to sleep routine. And if you
have a hard time remembering to take your asthma medicine, you
might need to take it twice a day. I'm not very creative with
coming up with ideas. So this is mine.
I have to take asthma medicine certain times.
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If you have a hard time making that visual, putting the medicine
by your toothbrush, if you're already brushing your teeth, if
you're having a hard time remembering to brush your teeth, put
your toothbrush by the sink so that you do it, you know, when
you wash your hands before you go to bed or something like that.
But the habit stacking is
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really helpful to not forget things, to get into a routine,
to develop the habit because your brain triggers you to do
it. You might not go into the bathroom thinking, I
gotta take my asthma medicine tonight.
But you go into the bathroom knowing you're gonna brush your
teeth. And when you do, you say, oh, yeah, and I'm gonna
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take my asthma medicine. Or maybe you take
medicine for your ADHD or some supplements, but some days you
forget to take it. Sometimes you remember.
So having a routine of when I wake up in the morning,
maybe having a water bottle already ready for you, it has ice
in it, it's insulated, it's going to be cool in the morning.
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And you wake up and you see that water ball and you take a
drink of water. Healthy thing to do.
And have a habit of having your supplement, your medicine
right next to it, setting it out the night before.
If you do that enough, even if that medicine's not right there,
when you see that water bottle, that habit is already.
It's that Pavlovian kind of thing. When I do this, then
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I do that. When I do this, when, when, then I do that.
I don't know if you have any experiences like that.
If you have.
I want to say, if you've done some stacking, I want to say, you
can't say, how do you stacked. I guess if you've put habits
together before, when you go to do something, you will
(24:27):
start to think of it like, I exercised in the morning to DVDs
and stuff for years, videos before DVDs.
And that was my habit. And I knew that I
would do things like the routine the night before, go
to bed on time, have my workout clothes ready already, choose
what my workout was. I did as much prep things as I could
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because it helped make sure it was really easy to do
in the morning. Had my water bottle ready.
But at some point, with one of my friends.
I don't know if you use Marco Polo, where you can video each
other. We started sharing our workout time and whether you kept
the camera on. Most of the time, we didn't keep the camera on
the whole time because you turn the music up and they can't really
hear you and that kind of thing. But.
(25:08):
But it would just be. I'd have my phone there.
I'd have it propped up. This is the workout I'm gonna do.
I've got all this. I'm excited. And I'd start out and, you
know, just knowing that she's there with me, kind of like we're
working out together. And then at some point, turn it off and
keep working up. And it got to be
that. When I got up in the morning and walked toward that
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room, I wanted to work out because I
had connected. When I went in there, I connected it.
This is the time that I get to spend with that friend.
This is the time I get to do this. I was no longer just
thinking it was me alone because I'd done it so often.
It gave me something to look forward to.
It was in my brain that those two things were connected.
So anything that you connect is going to be another cue
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for your brain. It might not. It might not
technically be a visual cue, but for me, when I've
done this kind of thing, it becomes visual.
It's like I can see in my head the experience.
If you've ever watched a certain TV show at a certain
time of the week or a certain time of the day.
I started watching Little House on the Prairie on a little
(26:15):
DVD player while I was doing dishes just to get myself
to watch it. I had the DVDs, and then I thought, well, now
I'm buying season two. Well, now I'm buying season three.
Because it was so effective. It got me in the kitchen
enjoying Washington the dishes when I needed to do it.
And there are times other people in my family were doing it.
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But it was the thing that kept me in there because it just took
away the dread factor. At some point, when I ran out of
DVDs, there were no more seasons. I would go
in the kitchen even other times of the day and just turn on the
sink water, and I could hear the Little House on the
Prairie theme music. I could see it, the scene in my
brain. It was so ingrained in there.
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It was all connected. So that became a pleasant thing.
It wasn't a cue, a visual cue that was helping
me remember to do dishes. It was helping me enjoy
doing the dishes. So you can use them for all kinds
of things. You can make it a lot more pleasant an
(27:21):
experience. But here are some examples.
Some of them you may do, you may not, or you may have
tried, but notes, whether it's a sticky note, whether
it's on the fridge, I do fridge notes sometimes because
I know that I will never go a day without walking
up to the fridge or by the door that I walk out of
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when I leave. Or on my laptop. Have you ever put
a note on top of your laptop? I have.
This is one of them black duct tape.
It's pretty sloppy, but yeah, that one.
And then honestly, I made this note, I put it on
my laptop. I think it fell off because like I said, I don't think
this is a real post it note. I think it's not really.
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It's an off brand or something. And when I finally slowed
down to get on Amazon, place an order, I didn't
know where the note was. And there were, I thought there were
three things on it and I thought of two of them and
I placed the order and I looked and looked for the note.
I couldn't find it. I'm looking right now.
There were just, there were just two.
There weren't three things. So I did all right.
(28:25):
No system is perfect, but it did the job.
But yeah, calendars, whiteboards. Whether you
need a whiteboard for your daily routine or a printout
of your daily routine or a big picture of what the week's
going to look like if you have a lot of people in your house,
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who's doing what. I did that more for when I was
going out of town. I did more traveling by myself as
my kids were older. And I would print out
a paper that would say each day that I was gone, who
needed to go where, who had what, you know, soccer practice or
(29:08):
a recital or who needed to be driven here or there.
You know, that was the big picture of the week.
But the, but the play by play too. I don't really do that
for my regular day, but I have bought some boards to
do that. I just haven't done it. I bought not the whiteboards,
but the chalkboards. Have you. It's the black
(29:29):
chalkboard and they could have a wooden frame or
a white frame and then they have the chalk markers and they're
so pretty. Like at restaurants and stuff at delis or
sandwich places where it has it written in different Colors and
I used for a while, but then my granddaughter, like, drawing
on it has become more of a place for her to draw.
(29:50):
So that, yeah, not every system lasts, but some of them
do. But just the visible things like laying out the
clothes. Have you ever laid out an outfit and go,
oh, yeah, I was going to do that. Like, otherwise you're going
to gone into autopilot and forgotten to.
That you're going somewhere that night or something.
But something by the door. It could be whatever it is,
(30:13):
a bag by the door to grab on your way out.
If you're afraid that you won't look and see it, write yourself
a note, look down, color coding things, if that
helps you. I don't know that it helps me.
I know that people do that. And I've done that in my little planner
app. Well, it kind of does it for me.
Like, if I write something for yoga, it'll do it in
(30:37):
purple or maybe I get to choose the colors, actually.
But it doesn't. I don't know. It doesn't help my brain do
anything, actually. I just think it looks pretty.
And then. Do you remember to charge your phone?
Do you have it in one spot? Do you have it multiple places?
Do you have one in the car? I have one in the
(30:59):
car. And I don't know that I need it, but it.
I don't know. Just seeing it helps me remember to do it.
And then also if you have boxes. So if you
have things in your refrigerator, if you forget that
you have food and then it goes bad, or you buy food
and you forget to eat it and it goes stale, have clear containers
(31:23):
in your pantry, make things visible in your fridge.
Things can get lost in a vegetable drawer.
It's kind of sad to think of how much money's been wasted on
vegetables I forgot that I bought. But if you can
make things as visible as possible or write a note on
the fridge that says these are meal ideas or food
(31:46):
ideas
because it may leave your brain as soon as you get out of
the grocery store. And
I think I've. I just, like always, I.
I look at these notes and I think. I think I've said it.
I think I've said it. And afterwards, I don't.
I don't know. How am I doing on time?
(32:07):
Pretty good. Pretty good. I.
I hope you've thought of something new that maybe you could
do. And also I hope you know that you
don't have to rely on your memory.
You shouldn't ever rely on your memory if you have adhd, because
(32:30):
it can lead to frustration. And you shouldn't feel bad
that you can't keep track of things and other people can.
It might be frustrating. That can be a.
I felt bad, but don't feel bad. Like, you should be able
to do it. Like, why can't I do this?
And get mad at yourself for not being able to do it.
You can get mad at the ADHD if you want, but don't get mad
at yourself because. Because your brain is doing the best
(32:54):
that it can and you're just doing what you can to
support it. You're outsourcing anything that you can
by
having. All I can think of is that external hard drive or
that Google Drive. You're taking stuff and whether it's physically
on the computer or not, you're putting it somewhere else because
(33:15):
your brain storage isn't. Isn't thorough.
And it's kind of funny because once you get dependent on computer
things like writing in a Google Doc and having that information
and being able to access it. I also go through
things, you know, when you edit things online or something, you
can do the undo button. And it's so nice because you make
(33:37):
a mistake and you do undo. And I've been finding myself this
past year that when I do something and it
makes a mess or I spill something or trip or,
you know, whatever mistake it is, I wish I could
hit the undo button. And it's not like it's a silly thing like,
(33:58):
oh, I wish I could hit the undo button.
Wouldn't that be great? It's more like, I think I can.
I think my response is we'll just click the little, like, turn
to arrow and go back and then you'll be fine.
And I think, no, life doesn't work that way.
Or you drop something and it breaks.
Life doesn't work that way. But we do have access to
(34:19):
computers for things that we. We can't, you know, that
we don't have to just rely on ourselves.
Life works a certain way, and the computers can help
us with some of it, but not all of it.
I guess what I'm trying to say.
Oh, my goodness. I think that's it. And I
(34:40):
still have time left before I have to leave.
I'm not going to be super rushed before my next class.
I realized if you're watching on YouTube, that my sweatshirt
matches the flower and the border on my frame
for the video. But it's September. If you're
listening later, it's not September, but another time of year.
(35:04):
But. But I'm kind of excited as well, it's a little.
It's still. It's still warm in Florida, but it's cool in the
morning. Just kind of exciting. Kind of exciting.
I guess the only other thing that I thought of, and I probably
didn't write a note for, is on top of,
(35:24):
it's possible that you're somebody who has a lot of ideas and
gets involved in a lot of things. So there's more to keep track
of and all of that. You also may
be sensitive to discomfort. It could be your clothing, it
could be your shoes. It could be, I need to have
sunglasses when I walk outside. I need.
(35:45):
There. You. You might be in. You might feel sometimes like
you have to bring a lot more things than other
people do when you go somewhere. And there's more for you to
keep track of. When you get out of your car,
you're heading back out to your car or something.
Maybe you're thinking, renee, this is just you and maybe some
other people, but not me. But that could be.
(36:09):
That could be. There are some sensitivities that come with adhd,
noticing
if you're too hot, you're too cold, your pants aren't comfortable
anymore, you need something cozy to wear.
You need this. It may be you don't like it when you get
cold, but you don't like it when you get hot.
And if you go in a store, you have to have a jacket,
(36:30):
the air conditioning, school. You have all these things that
other people just walk in the store and they just walk out, and
they're not like, oh, I'm squinting.
I gotta find my sunglasses before I walk out.
You know, they're not feeling that way, but you're fumbling.
And so if you have more things like that, you bring
band Aids with you in case you start to get a
blister. All those things that later you think, oh, no,
(36:53):
I forgot that. All of those things. It does add to your
load. It adds to your mental load of what you need to
bring places, how you need to pack your bag, whether it's
just a purse or a little belt bag or whatever.
All those things that you have to keep track of.
You might be a little more particular about it than somebody
else, and that's okay, too. But just know that you've
(37:17):
got a lot going on in your mind, and there's a reason why
you have to come up with these little methods to help yourself
so you can stay afloat. It's like a little lifeline.
It's helping you stay afloat as you go through your
day as simple as trying to remember to go to the
pharmacy, which actually this is my auditory reminder.
(37:39):
I do need to stop and pick up my ADHD medicine.
It's ready today. I'm trying to make it so
I don't get it a day after or two days after.
Keep forgetting because then there's that many more days that
there's lapsing and stuff. So
I made myself a mental note earlier to leave earlier before
(38:00):
my class so I could go to the pharmacy.
And if I leave in a few minutes, I'll have time to do that before
my next class. So thanks for helping me think about that.
I'm sure you're saying it's nothing.
I didn't do anything. But you did. Because you're out there.
I know you're listening and that keeps me coming here and help
me. So I honestly am going to type it right
now. I'm going to type myself. I'm going to actually send
(38:24):
myself an email. That's my other visual.
I know I've talked about it before, but I'm going to send myself
an email because otherwise it won't show up
before I leave. Pick up,
I'll say rx, I wrote tx da da da da
da. Okay, I just sent it to myself. And then
(38:45):
I don't know if you're like me. I don't like.
Like, if I looked at my email on my phone.
I don't like to have something that's not open and so I
open it to see, but then I have to open the envelope again so
it's there later if I need to be reminded of it later.
That's another visual reminder. If you haven't done that.
But I just sent myself an email because when I get off of here,
an alarm's not gonna help. I'm not gonna sit and do that while
(39:06):
I'm talking to you. Anyway, anyway, anyway, thank you so much.
I will be back and I'm so grateful for you for
being there. I will. I already said I'll
be back, but thank you so much for being here.
(39:30):
Short the silence of sound has yet been found
but not by me
(39:55):
Toast spread on some grape jelly I don't
need to pass But I'm a chef and a good
one My grandma can't hear me the
breakfast is done Getting col
(40:16):
so I run
open windows Broken shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(40:40):
Time for a
rewind I've run out of time to sing
melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
(41:05):
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.