This is something that I’m really concerned about because I’ve had symptoms of attention deficit disorder (ADD) since being a kid and yet I had no idea and wasn’t diagnosed until I was in my early twenties.

The DSM-IV is the diagnostic manual psychologists and psychiatrists use to diagnose Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) / Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) problems in kids and adults.

There hasn’t been a revision to this manual since two-years before I graduated with my master’s in psychology in 1996. Supposedly there is a revision due in 2011 which will probably change some of the criteria used in diagnosing ADHD and ADD.

What will change?

Here is more detailed information about DSM-V may change the ADHD ADD diagnosis, forever altering who gets the diagnosis and covered by healthcare for it.

Best of Life!

Vern

If you suspect your child (or yourself) has ADD, check here >

I was going phrase the title, “Best ADD – ADHD Treatment? Meditation or Medication? ” but I decided, no – meditation IS the ultimate treatment for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. There’s no question in my mind about it.

Why am I sure meditation is the best cure for ADHD?

As I mentioned in my previous post about ADHD – Self Adult Attention Deficit Disorder Diagnosis I have had ADHD – ADD since I was a young child, but only knew it in about 1995 during grad school classes in which we tested each other for various, mostly behavioral disorders.

I had no idea that meditation could be any form of  ADD ADHD treatment and offer any relief from my renegade attention and concentration habits.  I didn’t start meditating for that reason at all. I just thought meditation might be a nice way to relax from the stress of college, working full-time and volunteering as a big brother for 15+ hours per week. I ran and biked, and those helped – but I thought meditation would relax my mind even more.

I couldn’t have been more right.

The type of meditation I did was loosely based on Vipassana, or what Theravada Buddhists call “anapanasati”. Basically I sat down, closed my eyes and watched the breath go in and out. Really that’s basically it. There’s more to it of course, but essentially when you distill it down you could say just that, and have a pretty good synopsis of the whole idea of meditation. Sit and watch the breath at a very small point of concentration where it enters and exits the nostrils.

As one does that – the mind gradually slows down. Over time – days, weeks, months of a regular meditation practice the mind slows down and thoughts come less frequently while meditating. Eventually at some point, they stop. They stopped for me for the first time just a couple months into my practice. The concentration I was able to attain lasted minutes at a time – then tens of minutes… then over an hour.

After the thoughts stop… there is a peace of mind that is impossible to explain. There are many profound experiences that happen as the mind is in this state and it’s quite a journey to say the least. It’s amazing and I’ve tried to capture it in words and videos at some of my websites – but of course the words can never explain an entire body-mind experience.

Anyway, as the months went by I noticed something that was amazing to me. I was having spontaneous periods of concentration on what I was doing.

This was a novel experience for me – living with profound ADHD all my life had robbed me of any spontaneity in my concentration ability. If I wasn’t really trying hard I couldn’t concentrate more than a few seconds on any one topic. It’s a weird way to go through life – but I thought it was normal. Until I started having these amazing states of concentration just happen on their own! I wondered – is this what the rest of the world experiences all the time?

Amazing revelation… meditation has a marked effect on ADD ADHD.

I first started meditating about 1998. Since then I’ve had amazing levels of concentration that have enabled me to write a 130,000 word fiction novel, a 100,000+ word biography, numerous ebooks and create over 100 websites. I consider myself cured of ADHD – ADD but there are still times when it is a challenge to complete some tasks because all the sensory input around me is driving me nutty. In cases like that – if I choose to – I can meditate for a minute or 5 or 10 and resolve all the problems quickly. Sometimes I just like to experience the ADHD for a while because it’s what I thought was normal for 30 years of my life…

Here are some reasons why I believe meditation is the best ADD ADHD treatment:

1. It costs nothing.

2. Residual benefits. You’ll gain relaxation… peace of mind… cure or seriously curb your ADD ADHD in non-meditating, waking states .

3. Meditation is a great way to relax and create a buffer between the you that’s stressed out from work and your family who just wants to experience the stress-free you. Meditation is a great habit to get into purely for this reason alone.

4. Medication involves putting something into your body that gives side effects. Meditation involves slowing the mind down to a very slow, or stopped state… which relaxes you and eases stress.

5. Meditation is available anytime. You don’t have to wait for medication to kick in – you just sit and do it. Focusing on the breath a few times to calm yourself and slow thoughts down a bit works very well once you’ve meditated a few months.

6. You can’t overdose on meditation.

7. Eventually – after months or years you reach a state where you no longer need to meditate and your base-level concentration is much higher than it was. You can keep meditating and keep affecting it, basically operating as a normal human being after some time. Medication doesn’t change you long-term, only short-term.

I hope you look into using meditation as an ADD ADHD treatment that can profoundly change the rest of your life. If you want some help on how to get started I’ve created a free meditation ebook for download here.

If you want to learn more information about ADHD – Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder < go here.

Best of Life!

Vern

There are a number of tests for Adult Attention Deficit Disorder diagnosis that purport to give you a true diagnosis online after filling out a 25 question (or less) survey. I saw one instrument that had just 6 questions.

I have ADD, and have had it since I was a child. It was a real relief to learn that I had a situation going on in my head and that this is not how everyone’s brain functions. I think most of us with ADD – ADHD are shocked to learn that we have something that deserves a diagnosis.

To me it was my natural state of mind. It was stressing me out all during grade school, high school, college and grad school. It wasn’t until grad school in psychology that I knew what was going on. We gave each other tests for different maladies and I was diagnosed with profound ADD – ADHD. My attention span had always been just seconds long. Before 1997 I’d not experienced a whole 5 minutes of concentration on any one subject. The cure for me? Meditation. I’ll talk about that more in another post.

There are a whole lot of people out there – and some of you reading this too – that have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder and it would be a relief to have it diagnosed today so you can help yourself.

Recently I’ve had a couple people writing me email about how they find out if they have ADD – ADHD. I referred them to some tests I found online that appear to be valid… are they valid instruments though? I don’t recall the names of the ADD tests we used in grad school and I’ve been firmly entrenched in IT for the last 14 years.

I’m not sure if any online assessments of ADD are valid. I know they can’t be used as a diagnosis. I’d not use online tests to diagnose Attention Deficit Disorder, but they’re very helpful as a pre-diagnosis. A step to take if you’re concerned you might have it – so you can seek a real diagnosis from a qualified mental health professional.

If you’re interested in what the American Psychological Association criteria are for diagnosis of adult ADD – ADHD, click here – taken from the DSM-IV Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 4th edition.

Though some say living with ADHD – ADD is all negative, that’s not been my experience. Maybe that’s because I just didn’t know any better for the first 30 years of my life and thought I was experiencing life the same way everyone else was. I’ve enjoyed a life with a lot of change as a result of living with child and adult attention deficit disorder.

Would my life have been the same had my parents diagnosed it when I was 8 years old? The bulk of study on ADD diagnosis and ADHD was in the 1990′s, so it’s not likely anyone knew about ADD in 1974.

My life on ADD medication would have definitely been different. It’s a choice you have to make for yourself – live with it, or medicate.

Or, you can go the route I discovered just by chance… meditation. I’ll write something about how meditation has helped me cope with ADD in the next few days. Self attention deficit diagnosis over the internet is not something I’d recommend. If you look at the criteria for assessing ADD link I gave above there are tightly defined criteria for diagnosing adult attention deficit disorder and answering some questions and applying their scoring rules are not enough.

Getting 28 points when 25 is supposedly indicative of having the disorder doesn’t mean much of anything in itself. If you do score high on the online tests book an appointment with a mental health counselor and get a genuine test and full ADD – ADHD behavioral assessment. You owe it to yourself to find out because ADD disorder is highly treatable.

You’ve probably heard of the 80:20 rule by now. My take on it as it relates to my ADD – ADHD is…

20% of all you’re doing to make your business work, or meet your goals is the most important to focus on.

80% of what you’re doing is not directly affecting anything. It’s equivalent to throwing wet toilet tissue up on the wall – and eventually enough sticks that you can call it “art”. You won’t make any money with it though. It’s not great art.

Focusing 80% of your time and energy on the 20% of tasks that directly affect your income now is the best strategy… using 20% of your time to throw wet wads of tissue up on the wall.

I’ve mentioned 100 times that I have Attention Deficit Disorder & Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADD / ADHD) to a high degree.

When I’m working on things my mind is going everywhichway. I might be writing this post and I can hear the chickens outside which changes my attention to them. Then I hear a motorbike fly by – and my mind goes with it. Then I can hear some crackling of paper or plastic bag that the wind from the fan is hitting and it’s driving me insane and I have to get up and stop it. As I get up I realize I didn’t shower yet. I go shower. I come back to the computer, but before I do I think about what time I need to go exercise and if it looks like rain or not. I go outside and check for rain. I realize – it’s cold. I shut off the fan. I come back to the computer – reading everything I wrote before because I’ve forgotten it. While doing that I hear the dogs barking… and so on.

Do you or your child have ADHD/ADD?

ADD – ADHD is a horrible thing – in my case it’s like an ultra-awareness of every single part of sensory experience. It’s only overwhelming if you’re trying to do something else – which I usually am – I’m trying to focus on one thing. It is rather impossible to fight so I roll with it. Sometimes there are good days and sometimes not so good.

To have ADHD is a mind wrecker and the sooner you attack it and start setting yourself up with hacks to fix it, the better. Have you seen the ADHD Kid site that has many facts about it? It’s a site I’ve been working on to try to help people get straight facts and helpful lifehacks for dealing with the disorder.

I wanted to put some effort into this 80:20 rule for the next couple days, weeks… or maybe just today and see what happens. I’ll write down my daily goals with an emphasis on the 80:20 and see if I can make myself stick to them.

Things like email, Twitter, Google Reader and other things that I call essentials, really aren’t. They are distractions and part of the 80% that’s aren’t benefiting me directly. I’ll slow those up and put them in the 20% pool of time.

Actually, I’ll try to stay offline most of the day writing because that doesn’t require me to be online. I use this great program in my FireFox browser called, “ScribeFire” that allows me to compose blog posts quickly and with a little extra formatting that I can’t get in my WordPress text editor. I need not be online because it’s all saved to my computer’s hard disk.

I’ll write up a schedule for today…

7-8: look at email, stats, reader, twitter and respond to essentials
8-9: write blog post for aimforawesome.com. Check that blog post that was set to drip, dripped
9-10: add content to 30 day e-learning project
10:30: take friend to work
11:00: pick up some lunch on the way home so I don’t need to go out again for it
11:30: record some screencapture video and voice overlay for e-learning project
14:00: take a shower and go get some exercise if it’s too hot, otherwise stay and do more screencapt’s
15:00: FTP into new client’s account and download all files – have a brief look at code to see what I’m dealing with
16:00: Write content for big client and finish up one site today
18:00: Dinner
19:00: Create YouTube video of snake and joysthaifood.com video of dinner last night. Write more content for new site
22:00: Sleep or watch DVD

Keep in mind that the 80:20 rule is for everything I’m doing for my business goals… it has nothing to do with dropping my friend off at work or eating meals or showering. Those are subtracted out of the equation.

So – looking at hours above, I’m focused on things that will directly affect my income for 9.5 hours and throwing paper wads for 2 hours. That’s roughly 80:20 and if I accomplish this – I’ll be quite happy. I’ll also be doing things that are not work-related for 3 hours.

Usually what I do is leave internet on all day and respond throughout the day to email, blog posts, and tweets at Twitter. I think a huge portion of my day is spent doing this because I’m just not focused enough.

Usually when I write up a “to do” list I jot down main tasks to accomplish without any time frame. I never use hours. What happens then is that I spend all the time between the main tasks looking at email, Google Reader, using Twitter, chat and everything else that isn’t doing anything for my bottom line.

Last week I turned off the internet for a day and realized it was my most productive day of the week. The internet aggravates my ADD – ADHD, but, since that’s the path I chose for my life’s work – it’s a necessary evil.

Did you ever try shutting the computer off for a whole day?

Best of life!

Vern
Living in Hawaii in such a low-stress environment takes away a lot of the ADHD/ADD craziness I experience elsewhere.

I’m really of the anti-supplement mindset. I’ve used them in the past especially when doing triathlons and bicycle racing but for the last 8 years I’ve stayed away from any kind of supplements. I guess I think I’m always eating enough variety and it’d be a waste of time to take more of what I already have plenty of. I lucked into a good health stream here in Thailand and I’ve not been sick at all in more than two years.

Most supplements are unnecessary. That’s my thinking anyway (Vern-logic).

During graduate school in 1995 I was having trouble holding it together to study. I’ve mentioned that I have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), and especially during grad school when I had classes, practicum, big brother volunteering, work, exercise and a girlfriend I had a heck of a time studying when I needed to. My mind was going every which way. I’ve never taken Ritalin or anything to treat ADD, though at times in the past I’ve considered it. My brother has taken it and said his creativity just dies when he’s on it – so that was the deciding factor for me. Better to live with monkey-mind than lose my creativity.

I’d read about Ginkgo biloba in a couple of magazines I subscribed to. These appeared to be minimally biased articles (nothing is unbiased!) about the benefits of it. In addition to helping Alzheimer’s patients with memory deficits other benefits were mentioned like concentration increasing in intensity and duration. I found more articles by researching health journals in the university library and it seemed like pretty safe, natural stuff with side effects including: possible increased risk of bleeding, gastrointestinal discomfort, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, headaches, dizziness, heart palpitations, and restlessness.  I noticed death was absent as a side-effect and the rest I could live with once. I decided to try it on a trial basis and see if it helped me concentrate while studying.

I started taking the minimal recommended dosage (60mg) 150 minutes before I was to study. That was when it was at it’s peak in the blood stream. While I didn’t have any side effects at all I didn’t notice any real improved concentration effects at first either. Over one week I ramped up to the maximum suggested dosage of 200mg. At this dosage I noticed a difference immediately.

I was studying – reading through a book and highlighting important bits when I realized – I’ve paid absolute attention to what I was doing for the past 90 minutes! I was in the flow – while studying! That had never happened to me before in my life. I wasn’t even necessarily very interested in the material, I think it was something about biochemical aspects of disability – and yet I was sitting there in complete attention to the process of studying. That was an amazing moment in my life.

I was floored. I attributed it to the Ginkgo as that was the only thing I’d changed recently. Over the next few weeks it got even better. If I wanted to do study or think about something – I was able to with little problem. My mind wasn’t jumping around to analyze extraneous sounds, sites or thoughts. I was able to focus on just what I wanted to focus on. I remember thinking what a powerful feeling it was. I remember asking myself over and over – is this what normal people feel their entire lives? No wonder people can pull it together and write a book or graduate top of their class at Yale. If you can concentrate you can do anything requiring extended bouts of sustained, focused thought.

I continued to use Ginkgo on and off during graduate school usually at the end of a term when I really needed the level of focused mind it seemed to give me. I was wary about using it all the time because I’m concerned about taking any kind of supplements over the long-term. I did use it often though.

I noticed no change in level of creativity while taking Ginkgo and I haven’t heard about others experiencing such side effects.

After grad school I stopped taking it. The level of stress in my life decreased substantially and it was right about this time that I found meditation. Meditation has since taken the place of Ginkgo. It gives me a peace of mind, a balance and equanimity that is available anytime without supplements.

Recently I’ve been in book writing mode and I asked my family to find some Ginkgo and send it here to Thailand to see if it helps me focus on writing for extended periods of time about one subject. Blog posts are easy enough – since they’re only a couple thousand words max. Books are another animal and I’m thinking I need to call in the “Big G”.

The price for good Ginkgo here in Thailand is around $100 USD for a two month supply. Twelve years ago in the USA it was around $30. I hope the price hasn’t risen over the years. Isn’t it supposed to decrease? That’s my private logic anyway.

Anyone else using Ginkgo and want to relate your experience? Please leave a comment!

Best of Life!

Vern
ADHDKid! – If you think your child has symptoms, check here.
Notes:

I encourage you to read more about Ginkgo Biloba before trying it for yourself. The effects that are claimed by companies manufacturing Ginkgo biloba are not wholly supported by research. The success I seem to have had could be the result of the ‘placebo effect’. There are many articles cited in the Wikipedia entry to help you understand more about Ginkgo. Here are three below that apply to improving concentration in healthy persons:

Elsabagh S, Hartley DE, Ali O, Williamson EM, File Se (2005 May). “Differential cognitive effects of Ginkgo biloba after acute and chronic treatment in healthy young volunteers”.
Psychopharmacology (Berl) 179 (2): 437–446. PMID 15739076.

BBC News: Herbal remedies “boost brain power”.

Dose-dependent cognitive effects of acute administration of Ginkgo biloba to healthy young volunteers.

None of what I’ve written should be taken as medical advice or persuasion. I am simply relating a first-person account of my experience with Gingko Biloba. Your experience may differ. Please research fully before embarking on your own experiment!  If you haven’t yet, please read this disclaimer.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia. Image links to original.

During my psychology grad program back in 1995 I was stumbling around the internet and I found a web site that had some psychological tests that one could use to test one’s self and see if any dysfunction was found. I thought, what the heck… I tried a short personality type test and found that it agreed with my previous results administered by a counselor in my program a year before. I was found to be “INTJ” personality type according to this scale which was a short version of the Myers-Briggs instrument for personality type.

Then I saw the “ADD” test for Attention Deficit Disorder. Hmm, I thought… my brother has ADD and to a severe degree. I never thought that I should get tested for it – but, let me take a look and see what kind of questions they ask.

As I sat there and looked at the questions, answering them in my head at first and then later, writing down every answer… I was mesmerized. These questions were describing a pattern of behavior that was E-X-A-C-T-L-Y me. I found it fascinating. I eagerly read each question and responded as truthfully as possible. I had no idea that ADD was this. Hmm…

When the test was finished and I totaled up my score I found that I had scored something like 77 points. Hmmm… Not bad, a “C” level I guess. I think nothing to worry about. Then I saw the “key” at the bottom of the screen. It said if you score 25 points or higher you may have ADD and you should be tested by a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist… or some other mental health specialist.

Huh? 25? Wow, I tripled that. I sat there for a minute and re-tallied my score and re-read everything on the page about the test. Apparently I had taken it exactly the way it was intended to be taken. It took a few more minutes for reality to sink in to the squishy grey bulbous mass. I realized that having ADD probably for years and years, maybe over my whole lifetime explained a lot.

I went to a friend I know that was a mental health counselor. I asked her to give me the official test, whatever that was, for ADD as I wanted to make sure this was all true. She did, and the instrument showed I had a profound level of ADD or ADHD more specifically, that was affecting nearly everything I did!

Wow. I knew that I wasn’t really like other people because I noticed that so many times I don’t seem to fit in with the program. I get incredibly bored with common things quickly. I always seem to have a variety of things I’m thinking about at any one time. If you picture your mind as a dry-erase board where thoughts arise and go away… mine is full of every color of dry-erase marker. The white is nearly hidden because there is so much going on there, and more thoughts need to get there…so, the mind starts to drag fingers across what was already written so it can write more with the finger bringing back the white of the board. Yes, it’s that bad sometimes.

As I focused on something, some topic that I had to think about, for work or for school I noticed that my attention span was in seconds. I was never able to concentrate much longer than 10 seconds at a time on anything. To say this was debilitating is an understatement. Any paper I was taking notes on during class is filled with drawings, diagrams, jokes, ideas, and even pages for books I’ve yet to complete – none of it related to my lessons.

My whole life has been a whirlwind of events and activity (book coming out soon). I’ve been on a rollercoaster of ADD for so long that I thought it was just normal. I thought it was just me. I thought that nobody could really concentrate for more than 10 seconds at a time on any one thing. I thought that everyone got bored in a few seconds with things.

Anyway, this post isn’t about describing ADD and how my life has been affected by it. Suffice it to say that my life has been a direct expression of the ADD!

I wanted to write this post for a couple reasons, one being to show some of the signs of ADD and ask readers to at least take an online test to see if it might be an unseen problem in their own lives… The second reason I’m writing this blog post about ADD is so I could share with you some of the things that helped me with ADD and that might be able to help you too if you are suffering from it.

What is adult ADD/ADHD (with Hyperactivity) like?

In the book Driven To Distraction, Edward M. Hallowell described an experience of the “hyperactive” aspect of the ADHD disorder from a patient’s perspective:

…It’s like being super-charged all the time. You get one idea and you have to act on it, and then, what do you know, but you’ve got another idea before you’ve finished up with the first one, and so you go for that one, but of course a third idea intercepts the second, and you just have to follow that one, and pretty soon people are calling you disorganized and impulsive and all sorts of impolite words that miss the point completely. Because you’re trying really hard. It’s just that you have all these invisible vectors pulling you this way and that, which makes it really hard to stay on task.

Symptoms of Adult ADHD:

The Hallowell Center identifies the following indicators to consider when ADHD is suspected and recommends that individuals with at least twelve of the following behaviours since childhood— undergo professional testing:

1. A sense of underachievement, of not meeting one’s goals (regardless of how much one has actually accomplished).
2. Difficulty getting organized.
3. Chronic procrastination or trouble getting started.
4. Many projects going simultaneously; trouble with follow through.
5. A tendency to say what comes to mind without necessarily considering the timing or appropriateness of the remark.
6. A frequent search for high stimulation.
7. An intolerance of boredom.
8. Easy distractability; trouble focusing attention, tendency to tune out or drift away in the middle of a page or conversation, often coupled with an inability to focus at times.
9. Trouble in going through established channels and following “proper” procedure.
10. Impatient; low tolerance of frustration.
11. Impulsive, either verbally or in action, as an impulsive spending of money.
12. Changing plans, enacting new schemes or career plans and the like; hot-tempered
13. Physical or cognitive restlessness.
14. A tendency toward addictive behaviour.
15. Chronic problems with self-esteem.
16. Inaccurate self-observation.
17. Family history of AD/HD or manic depressive illness or depression or substance abuse or other disorders of impulse control or mood.

6 Lifehacks for Managing ADD/ADHD:

1. Make lists and use post-its. There was a time after I found out I had ADD/ADHD that I was ‘list crazy’. Every morning I would wake up and write a list of what I needed to do for that day and what I wanted to do for that day, but that wasn’t essential. I followed that list everytime I got distracted with something that became important in my mind because when my mind becomes focused on something – it’s very hard to get away from that. Focus comes rarely, but if it’s there – I never remember what else I had going on and I can lose hours doing something (sports usually) that takes time away from my other activities that I needed to do.

<a href=”http://www.adhdkid.com”>ADHDKid! – If you think your child has symptoms, check here.</a>

A person with ADD/ADHD has thoughts all day that pop into the head that require action. Unfortunately, a lot of times the action needs to be taken at a time in the future, and can’t be completed immediately as the thought comes. In order to keep up with all the thoughts in my head I had post-it notes of 4 different colors so I could write up a quick note and stick it to the pile of other post it notes of the same color.

I separated the notes by color to correspond with areas of my life… for instance: If I had a thought that I needed to study for my biology exam on Thursday instead of Wednesday I’d put that on a blue post it. Blue was for school. If I had realized that I had better run 8 miles slow instead of 4 miles fast because I hadn’t done enough LSD training (Long Slow Distance) I would put that on a pink post-it because pink was for activity/exercise/fun. And so on. I had post-its all over my computer, my wallet, in my pockets in my backpack, all through my books…

But, it made a difference since my level of stress went down a couple of notches because now – those thoughts weren’t just lost, as they would have been without the post-its. I HAD the thought written down, it was just finding it. Finding it on paper was much easier than bringing the thought back into my mind when I needed it. MUCH easier. So, post-it notes or some other list system might work for you.

2. Two words, Gingko Biloba. When I was studying for some of my graduate exams I used Gingko Biloba for a while and I experienced something I never had before… sustained concentration lasting for minutes… even up to an hour at a time. Not joking. This stuff is worked very well. I remember having to take it for a few days to build up a level in the system before it worked, but when I did so I found remarkable results. I couldn’t have been happier with the results. I’ve been away from the USA for a few years now, so I’m not sure what the health industry is saying about Gingko Biloba, but, if there are no real negative side effects I would strongly recommend someone with ADD/ADHD try this out as an alternative to Ritalin or other medications generally prescribed. Learn more about my Gingko Biloba experience here.

3. Take advantage of the time when you first wake up and you’re lying in bed awake, but relaxed. If you’re like me, even with ADD, this time when I first wake up in the morning is the time when my mind is nearly completely uncluttered with thoughts. I can think clearly for as long as I lay there, sometimes I do just that for an hour as it’s remarkable that the mind is in this quiet, anti-ADD state. I use this time to think about what best to focus on during the day and to resolve any problems that need looked at. I am amazed, and even to the point of being disturbed about the level of concentration that occurs during this time, it’s so unlike any state of the mind after I’m showered and running around during the day. Not sure it happens for everyone, but it’s worth a look.

4. Meditate! I meditated using a Vipassana type method where I just focused on the breath in and out and the feeling of it at the tip of my nostrils. After a while I found that the mind actually was able to stop during meditation. I had no movement at all. No thoughts existed. It was a cool state that I’m glad I found as it offered a lot of relief, whenever I sat I could either calm the mind or stop it. It’s a good feeling when feeling too frazzled or when the dry erase market board (mind) is overrun with 6 thought processes all trying to write on the board at the same time. The coolest tool I got from meditating is that anytime I choose I can stop what I’m doing and focus on a couple breaths – in, out, in out, in out, and the mind has calmed down remarkably from the state prior to watching the breath.

Grab my free Easy Meditation PDF file here >

5. Exercise. For me there are a couple kinds of exercise. There is competitive and there is solo. As I get older I prefer the solo type because I’m able to think a little bit as I do it. I especially find that LSD running or bicycling works well for thinking for extended periods of time. The faster I go, the less I am able to concentrate on anything except the movement – the exercise. This is also a good break for the brain and something that should be enjoyed when you can.

6. Try hard to catch yourself doing 8 things at once and eliminate 7 of them. Today as I write this I’m typing, listening to some Radiohead and other mixed music… I have drawing paper to my left that I pulled out because I thought I’m going to get this urge to draw something for a cartoon project I’m working on. I have the internet going in the background, though I’m not using it. I just made coffee and I’m sipping it occasionally. I’ve got all those things going on while I write, and since I’m used to this – I’m OK writing under these conditions. If I find that I’m NOT able to concentrate on writing, I’d eliminate the other things so I could better focus.

Persons with ADD/ADHD just naturally add things to their personal environment that causes new stimulation and pulls their attention away from what they really need to accomplish. If you can catch yourself doing this and eliminate all those extra sources of stimulation, you’ll be able to concentrate on what matters more easily.

I’ve never gone to a psychiatrist to seek medication for my ADD/ADHD. I am anti-medication, preferring to find lifehacks that work in it’s place. I fear relying on medication since I made it to age 29 without even knowing I had ADD/ADHD. I didn’t go insane during all those years, so as long as it doesn’t get worse – I think I can manage without medication.

OK! I hope these 6 lifehacks help some of you with ADD/ADHD!

Best of Life!

I’m so interested in ADHD/ADD that I created a site
<a href=”http://www.adhdkid.com”>ADHDKid!</a> where you can go to find more information about whether your child (or you) might have ADD/ADHD. Check it out!