Eat Your Dessert First
ADHD Education
How do you structure your day? Do you start every morning off by doing the things you have to do but don’t necessarily enjoy and put off the more enjoyable parts of your day until later?
Most of us spend very little time doing the things that we do best. Since we tend to enjoy the things we do best, but we still spend most of our time doing things that we don’t really enjoy.
Instead, we spend the majority of our days struggling to do things that we don’t like to do. Then we wonder why we don’t want to get out of bed in the morning to go to work. Working this way drains your energy and decreases your ability to succeed at what you are trying to accomplish.
If you have ADHD, the things you do best need to be the things you do first. Of course those things you choose to do, at work or in school, need to have a positive intention of moving you forward and not wasting your time.
Our brains are stimulated and focus better when we are asked to take action in areas of interest. The greater the interest the greater the attention we use and the greater our intention of directing our energy towards manifesting it. The ADHD brain engine is even more ignited and gets revved up when we focus on tasks projects or goals that are of high interest and generally but not always lead us to our concealed strengths.
Once you discover your naturally reoccurring patterns of success and integrate them, with specific areas of interest, amazing things begin to happen right before your very eyes.
Unfortunately, the reverse is also true.
The ADHD brain does not gain momentum by focusing on challenging, intellectual tasks that inhibit our ability to process information or prevent us from taking action. The more challenging and un-stimulating the task the more difficult it will be to get our brains activated so that we will take the necessary action to complete important assignments.
This has been consistently proven in PET brain scans conducted by Dr. Zametkin of the NIMH since the mid 1980’s. Using PET scans which measure brain metabolism, an indicator of brain function, he was able to show how two test groups of ADD and non ADD brain functioned in areas of interest and non-interest. The brain scans consistently illustrated that ADHD and non-ADHD brains performed well in areas of interest and strength.
However, when both of these groups were asked to focus on completing tasks of intellectual challenge that were mundane, the pre-frontal cortex, responsible for executive function, organizing, prioritizing, decision-making, etc. worked well for the non-ADDERs and consistently shut down for the individuals with ADHD. Even though the individuals with ADHD wanted to complete the task, it became increasingly difficult to concentrate and the harder they tried the more their brain would continue to shut down. It wasn’t that they did not want to do the task or were lazy.
In fact the opposite was true.
They really wanted to complete the task and understood the value of doing it. The harder they tried the more it immobilized their ability to focus and take action. Interest makes a huge difference in an ADDers ability to gain any kind of forward momentum with tasks, assignment and projects.
If you are an adult, entrepreneur, business executive or manager with ADHD, It is important to rearrange your schedule doing the things you enjoy the most – which are usually the things we do best.
My experience has consistently showed me that the first things you do to start your day can make or break your day.
Rather than feeling drained before 10:00 am, you’ll be more productive, have more energy and sustain your focus during the course of a challenging day. You will feel as though you have accomplished something early in your day and it will fuel positive emotions and energy that will sustain you for the rest of your day.
