Information Overload in 1755

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

Information overload is not a new thing. Here’s a piece from Stowe Boyd’s thought provoking /message blog

Denis Diderot, “Encyclopédie” (1755)
As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.

Some of us ADHD Adults (like myself) self medicate with information. I love learning about new things and ideas. Quite stimulating and a great way to boost dopamine, the neurotranmitter that does many things but helps us focus & is the reward chemical among other things. ADDers have lower levels of dopamine so we do positive and negative things to help increase it.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’re probably at greater risk for information overload. There’s so much more information available now in more easily accessible formats, and much of it free, we’re wired to look for possibilities and opportunities, we’re more likely to have many areas of responsibility, and learning is a competitive edge.

It is very easy for some of us to binge on new information and we need to realize & recognize when this is happening and find different strategies to deal with it. One aspect of this is to use reminders to help us get out of that state of hyperfocus on information. I did a post on Internet addiction wakeup devices with a few examples. It’s also useful to find ways to develop greater bodily awareness because for many of us it’s so easy to live in our heads all day and be semi asleep below the neck. Awareness is the first step in dealing with information overload but not the only one.

What methods do you find work for you to help cope with information overload?

Vision Vancouver vs The NPA Civic Election Social Media and SEO Scorecard

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

Photo Credits: dogsbody and Brent Granby

Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson’s campaign understood the internet, social media, and web culture much better than the NPA’s Peter Ladner’s did and that’s one of the many reasons he won the 2008 Vancouver civic election.

In this comprehensive post I compare and contrast the two Vancouver Mayoral candidates in the 2008 Vancouver civic election. Gregor Robertson of Vision Vancouver and Peter Ladner of the NPA in 25 different areas involving social media websites, (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Friend Feed), various search engine results & web presence. Data was collected election day, Nov 15, 2008. I did a similar post comparing Barack Obama & John McCain in social media & SEO. I’m an adult ADHD coach and a former political science student and long time political junkie who’s been online since before the world wide web started.

Here’s what I’ll be showing you.

9 overview slides of the data

Comparison chart of the data

Analysis and opinion

Links to Vision Vancouver’s and the NPA’s campaign’s social media profile pages

Overall conclusions

Social media lessons and resources

Links to Vancouver area blogs that cover politics

My 9 slides have an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license, so feel free to use them or remix them, just give me credit and a link.

Intro

This blog is usually about the strengths and challenges of adult ADHD, and trying to raise awareness of Adult ADHD in Canada, where we’re a decade behind the Americans, and Vancouver is way behind Ontario, sigh… and the world from the perspective of an Adult ADHD Coach who has Attention Surplus Condition more commonly called ADHD.

BUT I’m also a political science major and a politics junkie. So occasionally I’ll do posts on politics, humour, and other things that interest me. Disclosure, I’ve talked to both candidates briefly during the beginning of the 2008 Vancouver civic election.

Since the 2008 Vancouver civic election was so close the US Presidential election where I recently did a post called Barack Obama Vs. John McCain Social Media and Search Engine Scorecard, I decided to a similar post for the 2008 Vancouver civic election in my hometown. Congratulations to our new Mayor Gregor Robertson.

Social Media Websites

Facebook

Gregor Robertson has 3 Facebook pages
1. His personal one.
2. His politician one, his word.
3. His Gregor Robertson and the Vision Team One. This is the one I’m measuring in the chart.

Peter Ladner seems to only have two,
1. His personal one
2. His Vancouver NPA one. This is the one I’m measuring in the chart because that’s the main one they seem to be using for the campaign. That being said, Peter has more friends on his personal Facebook page, 617, than he does fans on the Vancouver Non Partisan Association’s Facebook page, 488.

So I just compared the two official campaign pages. Peter Ladner has 8 videos in a YouTube box while Gregor only list 3 videos, less prominently on the lower right hand side. But he has 15 videos on YouTube. Why didn’t the Ladner campaign post the other 7 on their Facebook page?

Both Peter and Gregor allowed wall posts on their respective individual pages. Vision Vancouver’s online campaign team decided to allow wall posts on their Facebook page, unfortunately the Non Partisan Association did not. Being open and engaging in the community was probably part of the reason why Gregor Robertson had twice as many Facebook Friends as Peter Ladner. Too bad Peter Ladner wasn’t as interactive on his NPA page as his personal page. That was a lost opportunity to engage the Facebook community. Seemed here like an open source style campaign vs. the old fashioned tradition command and control one. Command and control doesn’t work so well online, look at what happened to John McCain.

YouTube

Peter Ladner cranked out much more content on YouTube than Gregor Robertson did, more than 4 times the number of videos. Surprisingly, both candidates had very few subscribers on YouTube. Peter had 7, but for some reason refused to show any, Gregor had 4 and did list them. Both were smart enough to repurpose their videos by embedding them in their Facebook pages.

I went to a debate at the Greek Church on Arbutus and saw a videographer at the back filming it, later found out it was for the Ladner team. I assumed it was for ads or to improve their candidates speaking performance. I tried to ask a question about why everyone in the campaign was talking about the well known problems of addiction and mental health in Vancouver but no candidates or media outlets were talking about the links between undiagnosed and untreated ADHD and addictions. These links are well known among those knowledgeable about ADHD but less so in the general public. Unfortunately they didn’t ask that one.

The SMALLEST numbers I’ve seen on ADHD and addiction are 20-25% in peer reviewed clinical journals in Pub Med and I’ve seen much higher. For example see this as well as this, and this.

Kind of frustrating especially when the BC Liberal government and Children’s hospital closed down the only provincial Adult ADHD clinic in the province (where it’s very difficult to find someone that knows enough about ADHD to diagnose it) at BC Childrens hospital because it had a 1 year wait list, which was politically embarrassing. Kill the wait list; avoid bad media coverage about long wait lists. I contacted various people in the BC NDP’s offices and got promises of action from several NDP staffers, who subsequently did absolutely nothing. It’s easy to forget one big reason we have so many homeless people in Vancouver is the NDP emptied out large mental institutions because they were so “terrible” and decided to “house them in the community” then promptly abandoned them to the predators of the streets.

We got coverage of the adult ADHD clinics shutting their doors on BCTV, but no other media outlet covered it, and the only public BC adult ADHD clinic is still dead and the patients are still abandoned.

Twitter

Gregor has nearly 5 times as many twitter followers than Peter, but Peter has 3 times as many Twitter update posts or tweets.

Gregor’s tweets (posts on twitter) were nearly all one way promotional broadcasts. He (or the person(s) that posted as him) only responded to other Twitterers 3 times and 2 of them were to his online campaign manager, @koriB. Sounded to me like Kori was talking to himself but I can’t be sure. UPDATE: Kori just mentioned in the comments it was Gregor doing the tweeting not him. But Gregor did technically follow 159 people. Whether he or his campaign staff actually read any of their tweets, responded to his followers or other’s Tweets or cared about interacting with those people, I couldn’t tell.

Most of the NPA’s tweets seemed to be mainly from/about NPA council candidate Sean Bickerton

The NPA’s tweets were 100% self promotional, not a single response to anyone else on twitter. They didn’t believe in the mantra of social media consultants and connected web strategists, “listen to the conversation”.
That is, they weren’t interested in following anyone else on Twitter, they didn’t even fake it, they had 0 followers. Obviously clueless about Twitter.

Vision Vancouver Twitter jacked Peter Ladner’s name on Twitter. That is, Peter and his campaign didn’t bother to register his name on twitter, (an internet rookie movie) so someone from the vision Vancouver camp registered his name and created a Peter Ladner account on Twitter, started putting out Tweets that insulted/made fun of Peter Ladner. This is why politicians and other visible people, businesses and other organizations should start learning more about social media, just as a defensive move if nothing else.

Frankly it was a clueless move. It’s one thing for a third party to do something like that like the brilliant Fake Steve Jobs did.

But for someone from the opposing campaign to do so and not create something like fakepeterladnder instead of using his real name is just not kosher, someone who did that in the US would probably get fired for it. Plus it irritated members of the local twitterati and others on twitter, especially Vision Vancouver’s seemingly unwillingness to apologize about it. It’s still up there, and was really counterproductive. Hopefully our new mayor understands the lessons of what happens to arrogant politicians in BC, they get defeated. Miss 604 reports that #civicvote2008 is now the second most talked about topic on Twitter today.

It also got mainstream media coverage since Vancouver Sun Journalist and blogger Gillian Shaw is unlike most Vancouver journalists and has a blog and a twitter account, and unlike other Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province journalists, she actually is clued into the blogosphere enough to have a blogroll with other non company blogs listed. Was also picked up by several blogs here are a few stories on it.

Most of the searches on Twitter for Peter Ladner seem to be related to Vision Vancouver’s campaign’s Twitterjacking of his name. Gregor (or his campaign) was smart enough to create an individual account on Twitter with his real name, which has no content but links to the Gregor08 Twitter page. Unlike John McCain, both candidates were smart enough to send out get out the vote tweets on November 15th, election day.

Flickr

There was more than 3 times the number of search results for Gregor Robertson as there were for Peter Ladner on Flickr, and 256% more photos on Vision’s Vancouver Flickr profile page than the Vancouver NPA’s. Vision Vancouver’s group pool on Flickr had 9 members and 400 items; the NPA had no group pool.

Vision started using Flickr on Nov 16, 2007, the NPA first started using Flickr on Jul 6, 2007, so the NPA started 4 months earlier, plus the NPA has been a political party since 1937 (so you might assume they’d have more photos to upload). Vision just started up 3 years ago and the mayor was from the NPA, and they had more elected members than Vision, but still had fewer photos.

Probably those restless cultural creatives and young folk creating all that content. Also Vision’s online team seemed far more web 2.0 savvy then the NPA’s. Plus I think Vision’s policies appealed more to that crowd.

Using the web tools alone is not enough if your policies and past actions don’t resonate with those people creating and consuming content on those social media sites. Just as John McCain had George Bush as an anchor on his campaign, Ladner had his own anchor, Sam Sullivan, i.e., Sam’s Strike. But to be fair to Sam, he was a small anchor compared to George Bush.
Flickr was created in Vancouver and it’s a very popular photo sharing site, that many local blogger use to spice up their blog posts. I’ve posted creative commons licensed slides for this post on my Flickr set here.

Friend Feed

10 of the links to “Peter Ladner” was done by one user that had them removed, but still showed up in the Friend Feed search, so the actual number was smaller. Even still, more results for Peter Ladner. I didn’t check every single link on both, but in this case the last ones looked pretty similar by the same user. They probably just had trouble uploading the video file on blip TV.

MySpace

I didn’t list MySpace activity on the chart, since neither candidate has any profiles on the site unlike Barack Obama and John McCain did on my previous post. There were only 6 search results for Peter Ladner, 4 for Gregor Robertson. When I searched for Peter Ladner on MySpace, there was an ad for Peter Ladner and the NPA. Interestingly, when I searched for Gregor Robertson, I found the same ad for Peter Ladner and the NPA. Maybe Gregor’s team was doing the same thing, I’m not sure.

Didn’t list WordPress.com results either, since there was such little activity there. There were 10 search results for Gregor Robertson on WordPress.com, 9 results for Peter Ladner.

Search Engine Results For “Gregor Robertson” and “Peter Ladner”

Gregor Robertson was elected as an NDP MLA in 2005. Peter Ladner was elected to Vancouver city council in 3 years earlier in 2002 and yet Gregor Robertson beat Peter Ladner in every search engine. His margin was biggest in google’s index, 48%, but not by that much in the other ones, around the 10% range. Keep in mind that more search engine results or user generated social media does not always mean that the results are positive towards the candidate, many are negative of both. The political blogosphere can be a tough place. One other thing to keep in mind is that bloggers are often content creators on other social media websites as well.

Quick Short Diversion to BC Provincial Politics

Gordon Campbell’s BC Liberal party is smart enough to realize this. The BC Liberals are encouraging their supporters to target bloggers on their website, and get involved in social media. I noticed that they’ve removed some BC bloggers from the list. I believe that bloggers and social media content creators will be even more important in coming civic and provincial elections, political campaigns will ignore them at their peril. The BC Liberal Party has got a very well designed and modern website, more similar to Vision’s than the NPA’s.

Carole James’s BC NDP’s website is quite antiquated in comparison, and is too clueless to even mention anything about blogs or social media on their get involved section. Look at the wording of their main URL, http://home.bcndp.ca, home? Did someone create this website a decade ago and forget about it? It get’s worse. Look at the order of the URL’s on their top navigation bar, they’re all subdomains! I.e., http://newsroom.bcndp.ca/ instead of http://bcndp.ca/newsroom. If you don’t know why this seems nuts, ask someone who knows SEO to explain. This web 2.0 cluelessness will hurt the BC NDP in the upcoming election.. I guess the old fashioned left can be command and control too. Maybe they should hire Gregor’s online team quickly, the election’s in May 2009, not too far away. Also hire an SEO, same title tag for every page on the site? Which after permalinks is THE most important on page SEO thing you can do. Just like John McCain’s and Peter Ladner’s website. Perhaps being so unaware of the internet that your campaign has the same title tag on every page of your site is a predictor of electoral defeat:)

Compare the design and functionality of the BC Liberal Party’s get involved section to the NDP’s version. Which one would you be more likely to click through? Hire a usability expert too. The BC NDP’s website looks like a decade old. Looks like the BC NDP will be roadkill on the information superhighway in the upcoming election. Maybe the BC NDP needs to lose and election too in order to find a new leader the gets the internet and social media.

Responding to Bloggers

I can only give my personal example, not sure if/how the campaigns responded to other bloggers. If you blogged about the civic election and got a response from either campaign, let me know in the comments.

I recently did a post calling for the civic election candidates and the media to start talking about the connection between ADHD and drug addiction and crime and the lack of services for adults with ADHD in Vancouver, and calling for a mental health advocate. One member of Vision mentioned in a comment on my post that vision supported a mental health advocate while the NPA opposed it but ignored the main question of my post and never bothered answering my follow up question. At least they responded, the Ladner campaign never bothered to.

Internet Presence for Gregor Robertson and Peter Ladner

From just the 2 domains visionvancouver.ca vs peterladner.ca, Vision clearly wins in every category. But Vision only has one website. If you look at the Vancouver NPA site, they beat Vision’s in pages in google’s index 283 pages to 219, the NPA has less Yahoo Links-Pages 201 vs 481, but more Yahoo Links-Inlinks, 1281 vs 219. So if you combine both Peter Ladner’s site with the NPA’s one, they have a greater online presence then Vision Vancouver in 2 out the 3 metrics.

However Vision Vancouver’s website is superior in to both Peter Ladner’s and the Vancouver NPA’s website in:

Design
Functionality
Usability
Interactivity
Encouraging Engagement
Social media features

I’ll do another post later comparing the two main websites.

List of Gregor Robertson and Peter Ladner’s Online Profiles on Social Media Websites

Gregor Robertson’s Websites

Vision Vancouver’s Website
Gregor’s personal Facebook page
Gregor’s politician Facebook page, his word
Gregor Robertson and the Vision Team Facebook page
Gregor Robertson YouTube
Gregor Robertson Twitter page
Gregor Robertson’s Fake Peter Ladner Twitter Page (Twitter jacked)
Vision Vancouver’s Flickr Photostream

Peter Ladner’s Websites

Peter Ladner.ca
NPA Vancouver website
NPA Vancouver Facebook page
Peter Ladner’s personal Facebook page
Peter Ladner YouTube
Peter Ladner Twitter
NPA Vancouver’s Flickr Photostream

Overall Conclusions

Of the 25 different metrics I used, Gregor won 17, Peter Ladner won 6, and they tied on two. Gregor Robertson was the clear winner. He won every single category in the search engines if you don’t add the 2nd NPA Vancouver website.

Gregor Robertson’s Online Campaigner was Kori Brus. who has a blog, and twitter account and is active online While the twitter jacking was a definite screw up, overall he performed far superior to his counterpart in Peter Ladner’s campaign, if in fact Peter did have a dedicated person for that. I couldn’t find out by googling it. Clearly not a good sign.

Both campaigns could have done better in engaging people on Youtube, Flickr and Twitter instead of just old fashioned push broadcasts. They both could have had created groups of individual on their website by demographics or areas like the Obama and McCain campaign did.

Social Media Lessons.

1. It’s important for a political organization, business, non profit that wants to get involved in social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr etc to understand how the tools work, simply from a defensive point of view, even if you don’t plan on participating in them. I.e., avoiding getting Twitterjacked like Peter Ladner.

2.Why were both candidates so anti social on social networking sites that were designed specifically to allow people to, you know.. socialize?

Robertson did well on Facebook.

But look how many YouTube subscribers they both had. Look at how many YouTube groups they were members of. Zero.

Look at the how many photos they both posted on Flickr. Then compare how many contacts they had on Flickr. Look at how many Flickr groups they joined, ZERO.

Now look at the number of contact and groups this sociable local blogger’s has on Flickr.

If you’re creating all that content, LEVERAGE IT. And do so by being engaging with the community in a non pushy way. Google open source politics to see the way of the future.

If you’re an individual business person you may or may not want to get that involved in social networks because to do them right can take time and resources, or it may not be the right fit for you, or your resources are devoted elesewhere. Frankly I can’t picture myself spending time on MySpace, but I know some people love it.

3. It’s even more important to understand the ecosystem in which the tools are used.

For example flashy blinking graphics with extreme contrast are fine on MySpace, but would not be fine on LinkedIn. If you don’t understand the culture of the site and the users and how they interact with each other, you could be seen as an unwelcome outsider or a spammer, and have some really counterproductive results.

Here are a few social media mistakes to avoid.

So if you decide to participate in a social media network, learn about the culture of the site and engage with the community. Barack Obama didn’t dominate John McCain in social media and on the internet simply because he understood the tools and McCain didn’t, he beat him because he understood the environments in which the tools were used, the users of those tools and used the tools to engage and organize people and to get them to engage and organize others.

If you don’t understand this, hire someone that does like a social media consultant.

Gregor beat Peter Ladner by a fairly wide margin for many reasons but in a close election a good website and blogging and social media strategy could make the difference between losing and winning. I’ve watched elections for 30 years some are really close. Smart politicians will get clued in or pay someone to help them get a clue, the dinosaurs that don’t will be adding another potentially dangerous vulnerability to their campaign.

Resources relating to why and how to get involved in Social Media

The emergence and rise of mass social media

Social Media – Visual and simple images explaining trends, concepts and technologies driving Social Media growth

How do I convince my boss of the ROI of new marketing? David Meerman Scott answers the question via video.

Is It Worth It? An ROI Calculator for Social Network Campaigns

Social media ROI resources and general social media stats

A graphical categorization list of social media tools

Social Media & NonProfits: Make it Easy for Your Fans to Help You by local blogger and social media consultant Monica Hamburg

Alltop – Top Social Media News

E-Metrics: Followers, Friends, and Fans - Expanding Your Online Community By Beth Kanter

Vancouver Blogs That Cover Politics

Here’s a list of some blogs that cover politics in Vancouver that you might want to check out. I didn’t list politicians that blogged, since most of them just start up before the election, go dead shortly after and often just use blogs mainly as a press release device. This is by no means an comprehensive list, and it’s just of list of some blogs that I sometimes read or have searched to see who blogs about Vancouver politics. In listing them, I’m not saying I agree with what every blog on the list has to say.

I know some of the bloggers on the list personally from meeting them at the excellent Vancouver Bloggers Meetup Group hosted by Raul, or other blogging/tech events around Vancouver of which there are many, Vancouver has a thriving tech/blogging/Web2.0 community Apologies in advance if I’ve missed your political related blog on this list, I’m sure I missed quite a few.

If you have an opinion on what you read on someone’s blog, agree, disagree (respectfully, not rudely), or have another related point to make, let the bloggers know in the comment section of the particular blog post. Bloggers love feedback. Including this one:)

Vancouver Political Bloggers or Occasional Political Bloggers

For Vancouver Sun civic politics reporter Frances Bula is in a class of her own. Read her first, and encourage her to fully join the blogosphere by adding a blogroll of local Vancouver bloggers:)

The others are in grouped in sections then alphabetically.

Vancouver Online Magazines

Georgia Straight Politics Blog
Only Magazine
The Tyee
The Vancouver Observer

Vancouver Group Blogs

Beyond Robson Especially Sean Orr
Vancouver Metblogs
Vancity Buzz

Vancouver Primarily Political Blogs
Bill Tieleman
Irwin Loy
Keeping it Real
Left Eye on Vancouver
Oldtown News
Pacific Current Vancouver Sun blog
Paying Attention
Pacific Gazette
Public Eye Online
The Official 2010 Olympics Newswire
The Vancouver Manifesto

Vancouver Blogs That Sometimes Discuss Vancouver Politics

Adult ADD Strengths
Buzz Networker
Chinese in Vancouver
Currents
Hummingbird 604
Loud Murmurs
Miss 604
Mori Therapy
Paul Hillsdon Yes he’s in Surrey but he does have some great material, and I hope he wins next time.
Rob Cottingham
Stephen Rees
Tris Hussey
The Ugly Chinese Canadian
The Vancouverite
Ursa Minor Bear 604
Van Rambling

ADDers Should Learn From the Presidential Online Websites and Blogs

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

“One person can make a difference and every person should try.”

US President John F. Kennedy

Online ADHD awareness and advocacy activities are easier and cheaper than offline ones, and are often more effective. Especially since most people with ADHD don’t have a lot of local services available for them because of a lack of awareness about ADHD and an unwillingness for most adults with ADHD and their families to demand change and services for people with ADHD in the offline world for a variety of reasons. Governments don’t give services out of the goodness of their hearts, people need to raise awareness of why those services like basic diagnosis and treatment of ADHD are important and demand services from the government and the health system.

Regardless of which party you support, I’d strongly suggest ADDers and their families start looking at the US Presidential candidates online websites, blogs and forums to see how they’ve been effective and organizing and connecting and motivating people, fundraising and spreading ideas so that we in the ADHD world can learn from some of tactics and strategies of what they’ve done well to help get the word out about our cause.

Even if you don’t like Barack Obama, his websites and blog have been really massively cutting edge in a number of ways and I think that there are many lessons to be learned from their many sites and many sub sites and individual state websites and blogs. I’m sure there are also some good ideas from John McCain’s sites too. Canada just had a federal election and frankly most of the major parties websites were massive disappointments in comparison.

Probably these sites may start shutting down a lot of their content shortly after November the 4th, so now is the time to check them out and document the good ideas you can find. To save a visual good example of an online site, take a screenshot. On a Macintosh you can take a picture of the screen by pressing the apple key plus the shift key plus the 3 key (or press and hold the 4th key to drag the picture to the area you want) to take a visual example of someone doing something useful online.

We may not be able to duplicate all of their online tactics and strategies, but even if we learn one or two, I think that can help us, whether those ideas are applied to the larger websites like ADDA,  CHADD, and the ADHD Coaches Organization or individual ADHD support group websites or personal websites or blogs that some of us ADDers have.

If you have ADHD and don’t have a website or blog of your own, and you want to make a difference for people with ADHD, or have some opinions and ideas you feel are worth expressing, or just want to counter the lies and myths out there about ADHD in adults and children, consider getting one. Ideally one with a domain name, but if not, get a free easy to use blog from sites like WordPress.com, where they take care of most of the technology for you. See this page for some features. 10 years ago you had to be a techie to have a website, today your non techie grandmother can easily create a website or a blog. Or get your teenager to set one up for you:)

There are still a lot of people out in the online world saying ADHD doesn’t exist and is not a real condition. I’ve even created a special page for those dinosaur people. But there needs to be more ADDers and their families with online presences, as well as ADD support groups with websites or blogs. The more ADDers and their families start getting online and showing the human side of ADHD, and start raising awareness and demanding services, the quicker the stigma of ADHD will be reduced and the quicker people with ADHD will get the resources that they deserve. Resources that people with other mental health condition have gotten because they demanded them.

Here in Vancouver BC Canada, it’s very hard to find someone who knowns enough about adult ADHD to diagnose it. We had the only provincial BC Adult ADHD clinic at Children’s hospital get shut down because the one year wait list was politically embarrassing for the Gordon Campbell Liberal (neoconservative really) provincial government. The patients were abandoned and still are. We got coverage on one TV news show but nothing else. Maybe if there were more online ADHD websites and blogs in this province, together we might have been able to save that BC Adult ADHD clinic. Maybe if there were more ADHD websites and blogs in your province or state you could help ADDers get the resources that you’ve been complaining that you need. You can bitch to your spouse and do nothing, or take some action.

I’m trying to raise awareness of ADHD for our vancouver civic election, focusing on the well known links between ADHD and addiction, given Vancouver’s huge addiction and crime problems, hoping the local media and the blogosphere will start noticing. We’ll see how that turns out. There’s also a provincial election in BC soon, May 12, 2009.

Maybe people have seen 1 or 2 useful ideas on the main presidential candidates websites/blogs or on individual local candidate websites that they could share with others Adders. Or send me some examples of how a campaign organized people, promoted ideas, connected people or raised funds that could be applied to people with ADHD (not just why my candidate is better their opponent) and I’ll blog them so other ADDers can take those ideas and modify them to their needs and put them into practice.

25 Idea Capturing Tools

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

Most people have 2-3 times as many ideas than they can do in a day but adults with ADHD often have 5-10 times as many. What’s worse is that ADHD adults usually have problems with working memory, distraction, impulsivity and disorganization so it’s easier for us to have those ideas to slip away. If an ADDers writes their ideas down on random scraps of paper, they might as well toss em out the window. Better chance of finding them.

Glen at LifeDev has a good post on 25 tools to capture those fleeting ideas, divided into analog tools, web, mac, windows and phone based tools. I like the Recording MP3 watch, and have recently been using one of the small moleskin notebooks which I wish I got years ago.

Different tools work for different people and most need more than one tool.

One thing to keep in mind that capture is just the first stage and then the filtering/filing/prioritizing needs to take place. Just because you think it’s a “good/useful/interesting” idea doesn’t mean you have the time, money, energy and resources to do it, and you usually should be willing to decide what you’re going to say “no” to in order to say “yes” to the new idea, but that’s another post.

Ipod Touch The Personal ADD Assistant

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

One of the advantages of coaching adults with ADHD, is that you often have some pretty creative clients. One client had trouble organizing themselves while they were out of the house and generally preferred using the computer to help her manage time.

Being a Mac person (sold them for 7 years) and knowing that she didn’t want a cell phone (so no iphone) I suggested she consider getting an ipod touch because ease of use and intuitiveness were important considerations. Also I asked if she usually lost her ipod, because the ipod touch is amazing, but kind of expensive, and that wasn’t a problem for her. She got an ipod touch it worked great for her. Here’s her review of it from the usefulness for an ADD time management perspective.

I highly recommend the iPod Touch (or iphone) for someone with or without ADD, (but especially for someone with ADD)! It’s a large purchase, no doubt, and you’re going to need a computer to sync it with. I’m not a big fan of buying things new or supporting large corporations. BUT, money and politics aside, if you’re looking for something that can assist you, and you don’t have a habit of losing things like phones or agendas, I think it’s a terrific buy.

As someone with ADD, I have trouble with time management, remembering things when I’m on the go, sticking with routines, reading the paper, (too complicated!), etc. Now that I use the iPod Touch, all of this is so much easier!

iCal, which is a simple calendar software, comes with the iPod touch. I like things to be visual, so I like that it draws in blocks of time for each event I have scheduled. When I’m at home, I can schedule something in on my computer and then sink it with my iPod. When I’m out, I can schedule on my iPod, using the keypad, and then sink it with my computer when I get home. I set an alarm for each event, so my iPod beeps at me and I’m never late.

Another amazing thing about using the iPod Touch is that I can sink Free Podcasts onto it. I can hear a summary of the news, be guided through a 20 minute Yoga session and through my exercise workouts, listen to spiritual teachers…

The iPod Touch also has WiFi, so I can set it up to get my email anywhere there’s a wireless Internet signal. Personally, I much prefer this to having a phone, but that’s just me. This is especially helpful if you use I Want Sandy for reminders.

I can write notes to myself, so if I’m out and I suddenly remember something, I can write it down without having to fumble for a pen.

Address Book comes with it too, so I can sync my contacts with my computer. I don’t search for phone numbers anymore!

And, of course, it’s an MP3 player, so I bring it jogging with me. I’m a musician and I’m always transporting music. It’s so much more practical on something like this, than with a USB stick.

It has lots of other features, but the ones I mentioned are my favorites. There are also maps, a timer/stopwatch, web browsers, games, photos, stocks, videos, etc.

It’s my very own Personal ADD Assistant.

There’s no one magic time management solution for adults with ADHD, some prefer paper, some prefer electronic and it’s best to get something that works for your particular brain wiring.

If you use a portable electronic organizer to help you manage your time, which one do you use and how useful is it for you?

Moosecamp Presentation Attention Surplus Condition (Aka ADHD) in High Tech

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

Update: Here’s the wiki page for the ADHD presentation on the Moosecamp Wiki

I’m doing a presentation at Moosecamp at the Northern Voice Blogging Conference in Vancouver today. Title is Attention Surplus Condition (Aka ADHD) in High Tech. Managing all that Extra Energy and Creativity. So if you or anyone you know or work with have the gift and the challenge of ADHD, and are at the blogging conference at UBC today, please show up with your questions. Thanks to noted Vancouver Fashion Photographer and digerati Kris Krug for the encouragement. Here’s the overview

There’s a lot of people in the digital world with the gifts and challenges of Attention Surplus Condition. It can be a competitive edge in many areas of the digital world with the benefits extra energy, creativity, rapid fire mind, mulitasking ability, hyperfocus and the ability to think 2 levels beyond the box. But if not managed properly it can cause a lot of problems in work and other areas of your life. We’ll talk about what it is and is not and how to manage it. You might want to look at Top 10 Advantages of ADD in a High Tech Career (especially the comments) and Top 10 Ways to Manage Adult ADHD. Questions encouraged.

Top 10 Ways to Manage Adult ADHD

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

There are many ways how to manage or deal with Adult Attention Surplus Condition, aka Adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Here are a few.

Top Ten Ways to Manage Adult ADHD

1. ADHD Coaching. More for adults than children. Pills can be useful but pills don’t teach skills, they’re not designed to. They can, however, put you in a better place to learn them through ADHD coaching or therapy.

Once you stop using ADHD meds, their effectiveness is gone. Learned skills from ADHD coaching last longer.

See the 26 benefits of adult ADHD coaching. Adult ADHD Coaching focuses on practical day to day ways to manage adult ADHD more effectively at work and at home. Generally speaking therapy is more focused on the past, and coaching is more focused on the present and the future. Adult ADHD Coaches work on helping you learn to more effectively manage the challenges of ADHD and identifying and developing the strengths of having ADHD. They work over the phone for 3-4 sessions per month. Most of us adult ADD coaches offer a free sample sessions of ADD coaching so you can try before you buy.

2. ADHD Medication. Not the tool of the devil, not the magic cure all. Just a useful tool that has been studied more than probably 98% of any medications that you’ve taken, and stimulants have been used for 70 years. Talk to people who’ve actually taken medications for ADHD and a doctor that’s experienced in dealing with adult with ADHD before you make up your mind. Here’s some articles on ADHD medications, lists of companies making ADD medications and detailed clinical pdf’s on ADHD meds and ways to deal with side effects (scroll down to chp 10). If you do try ADD meds, at least give them an honest try, it takes a while to find the right med(s) and the right dose. Keep in mind meds are a partial solution, even ADHD drug companies don’t say they’re a complete solution

3. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy by someone that knows about Adult ADD. The knowing ADD part is crucial whether its a therapist or coach. Just like coaching it’s also crucial to have a good fit with the therapist. Therapy is useful in uncovering, understanding & dealing with things from your past that aren’t resolved and interfere with your present functioning. Some people, especially men, view going to a therapist as a sign of weakness. I view it as a sign of strength and courage. That you have the guts to look inside yourself instead being too weak and afraid to do so. So if you need to go to one, go, don’t be a wuss.

4. ADHD Support Groups. There’s a lot of info on the net about Adult Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I have a 130+ page website on Adult ADHD and believe learning about Adult Attention Deficit Disorder is important, but it can be really useful to meet other ADDers in person. They’ll all “get” Attention Deficit Disorder, you don’t have to explain what it is to them, it’s helpful to meet others with the same problems & gifts, plus we’re not boring people:) I have a list of Canadian ADHD support groups by province and a list of US ADHD support groups and International ADHD support groups. If you’re in Vancouver come visit the group I lead, the Vancouver Adult ADD Support Group. If there’s no group in your area, create your own like I did, check out the section on how to start, run and promote a support group.

5. Adequate Diet. Keeping the race car brain running smoothly. Feeding your ADHD brain with a good diet, especially adequate dopamine building protein in the morning, and Essential Fatty Acids are important. Adders often forget meals and water. Starving your brain doesn’t make you smarter.

6. Exercise boosts the 3 main neurotransmitters associated with Adult ADHD. Dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine and the feel good beta-endorphins and relieves stress. Exercise is the number one non medical way to deal with ADHD, depression, anxiety and stress. Make sure you chose exercise that’s interesting to you vs. what you think you “should” do. Not everyone likes the gym.

7. Learning to Slow down and Stop. So you don’t crash. Take regular, short, non electronic breaks or your brain will slow down/shut down/or distract/procrastinate out, all very common problems with ADHD Adults. This is the #1 way to be more efficient at work. Especially when you’re “too busy” to take a break.

8. Meditation. Think deep mental refreshment. Why do those Buddhist monks always look so chilled out? Race car ADHD brains need pit stops and tune ups or they burn out. If you’re a beginner, start with active forms of meditation first, NOT passive ones (i.e., don’t start staring at the wall and thinking of nothing). Active forms of meditation involve your senses, i.e., body, breath, voice, ears, or fingers, so it’s easier for ADHD Adults to focus and avoid getting distracted and helps to calm the monkey mind. Check out UCLA’s research on mindfulness and ADHD

• So try out Yoga, Tai Chi, Qigong, breathing meditations, walking meditations, guided meditations on CD, mantras, chanting, using mala‘s / prayer beads, or Eckhart Tolle’s concept of being present, being in the now.

• Would you expect to go from not running to trying to run for 30 minutes the first time? Then don’t expect to meditate 15-20 minutes at the beginning. Try 2-3 minutes at first everyday and slowly work up.

9. Tutors or Educational Psychologists that know about ADHD. See this section on teaching students with ADHD, or this one.

10. Professional Business and Personal Help. Professional Organizers that know about ADHD, bookkeepers, virtual assistants, secretarial help, cleaning services etc. Smart, successful people delegate what they don’t like, or aren’t good at. Especially if you have your own business, hiring someone to do the paperwork should be the first thing you pay for, it can make the difference between success and constant struggle and frustration. In Canada try Professional Organizers of Canada, and in the US try Napo.

What are some ways you manage your ADHD?

Zenware For Better Focus

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

Less = More.

That’s the concept of Zenware the software category of reducing the increasing amount of clutter clogging our computer screens. Jeffrey MacIntyre had a good article in Slate magazine about it. Via Webworker Daily.

The philosophy behind zenware is to force the desktop back to its Platonic essence. There are several strategies for achieving this, but most rely on suppressing the visual elements you’re used to: windows, icons, and toolbars. The applications themselves eschew pull-down menus or hide off-screen while you work. Even if you consider yourself inured to their presence, the theory goes, you’ll benefit most from their absence.

ADDers are known to be easily distracted so I though some of you might be interested in this method of reducing the temptations to distract out on several programs while you’re working on one. Since many ADDers are known to be running several programs at once, let alone several browser windows in several browsers, sometimes you may want to take a break from all that multitasking with a bit of Zenware.

Webworker Daily gives a useful list of those Zenware apps. More are in the comment section

I like the Mac based Writeroom (Windows users can try Darkroom), it’s a word processor that blanks out the whole screen so you get no screen distraction at all.

Backdrop fills your screen with a blank screen so you can focus on one app or take screenshots Dropcloth for Windows users.

The zenware concept reminds me of the time I spent in some of the Zen rock gardens in Kyoto Japan. Very serene peaceful places. If you ever get a chance to Japan, I’d highly recommend checking them out if you enjoy increasing your peace of mind and presence. If you’re in Vancouver you can always go to the Nitobe Garden (Japanese) at UBC or the Sun Yat Sen Garden (Chinese) in Chinatown if you want to balance out the never ending ADD search for stimulation with some calm inducing activity.

Phone Tricks For Busy People

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

Lifehacker has a great post on Top Ten Telephone Tricks

I especially like #1 Trick automated phone bots into thinking your line’s dead. and #4. Skip the greeting and get right to the beep with one keypress. ADHD adults are known for many things but patience in the face of inefficient, irritating voicemail loops from hell isn’t one of them.

There’s a special place in hell waiting for the person(s) who invented voicemail menus that often leave you trapped in voicemail hell. One of the worst I remember was Hewlett Packard where you spent several minutes going from one voicemail option to another for what seemed to be like an eternity only to have them hang up on you at the end.

“We appreciate your call” translated into real language often means we have such contempt for our customers, and have such excessive greed that we can’t be bothered to hire live humans to talk to you.

Phone bots, spam bots, what’s the common denominator?

Barcamp Saskatoon Attention Surplus Condition in Technology Links

Post from: Adult ADD Strengths

Here’s some links to some of the content that will be mentioned in my discussion on Attention Surplus Condition in Technology at Barcamp Saskatoon Saturday September 29th.

Adult ADHD Screener Test

Top Ten Advantages of Having ADD in a High Tech Career

ADHD Treatment – Technology – Online, desktop and external clock and reminder for those of us whose internal clocks don’t work so well.

Succeeding with ADHD in the Workplace

Here’s a few other links relating to ADHD at work

ADD at work articles

ADDA’s ADHD at work section

ADHD on the Job

Possible places to call for ADHD Diagnosis in Saskatchewan. Or where to get suggestions on where to look.

Dr. Declan Quinn is a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist at the College of Medicine, University of Saskatchewan. He’s also on the advisory board for the centre for ADD Advocacy Canada

“He has an extensive clinical practice in ADHD seeing children, adolescents and adults. He also sees a wide range of other psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents.”

Learning Disabilities Association of Saskatchewan
609 25th Street East
Saskatoon, SK. S7K 0L7
Phone: 306 652-4114
Email: email hidden; JavaScript is required

The Canadian Mental Health Association (Saskatchewan Division)