There’s finally an ADHD support group in the province of Newfoundland. I have a list of list of Canadian ADHD support groups by province for several years, but haven’t ever had a listing for Newfoundland. Here’s the details.

ADD/ADHD Family Member Support Group
Location:Paradise Community Centre
Paradise, NFLD
Contact:Bernie Gauthier, Child/Youth Care Worker at 747-2523

So if you know of anyone in Newfoundland with ADHD, you might want to let them know about it.

If you know of any other Canadian ADHD support groups, please let me know. Here’s my US ADHD support groups meta list, and my list of International ADHD support groups if you’re outside Canada and looking for one near you.

For those of you who travel to a lot of conferences, or have trouble getting ready for or get stressed about going to a conference, Chris Brogan has a good post called 27 Things To Do Before a Conference

You don’t need to do all 27:) He just has it as a useful categorized checklist of possibilities that you can pick and chose from, divided under 3 categories. Research, content preparation, promotion and other prep. Here’s a few and there are more in his comments section:

Backup your laptop before you travel. You might not think about it, but there are many chances to destroy your data once you’re on the road. Make sure that’s not going to happen.

Check out the exhibitors and sponsors for the event. Click through the site links and visit their web pages. What do you know about them? Are they a prospective vendor for you? A client? Do you see some business value in meeting any of them?

Visit Flickr and look for recent pictures of attendees or other people you hope to meet at the event. I keep a little document of all the faces I might want to meet, sometimes with a few facts about the person, in a document. (I don’t do this for every event, but when I do, it helps).

You might even have different checklists for different types of events, and put them in different places including taped to the inside of your suitcase.

Also remember to schedule a reminder to start packing at least 2 days before the event to reduce the all too typical ADHD last packing panic.

I was quoted today on CNN’s website on an interesting article called “Listening to music at work — dos and don’ts”by Anthony Balderrama

Listening to music at work can be more than just fun for some people. According to Peter Quily, adult Attention Deficit Disorder coach, music can have a physiological effect on his patients who suffer from adult ADD. According to Quily, listening to music boosts the levels of neurotransmitter dopamine, a brain chemical that can help people focus.

Some of Quily’s clients listen to music when they can’t focus or when they’re performing a task they find boring. People who have ADHD often have dopamine levels that are low or quickly used up, and the music is a welcome help.

For some of his clients, music is just another distraction that they don’t need. And while many workers can’t imagine a day without music, plenty of people, such as Jay Levitt, prefer to leave the tunes outside of work hours.”

Check out the full article.

Just a clarification, I don’t have patients, but I do have Adult ADHD coaching clients

Music can also help Adults with ADHD (and non ADDers too) get motivated and focused to do things around the house that they may find boring like housework, cleaning, doing the dishes etc. Pick the music you like, crank it up or put on the headphones and go at it. I know some people that just use white noise to do it.

Some students with ADHD use music to help them focus or just to tune out the other noise around them so they can concentrate better.

I even have a play list on itunes called a wake up list that contains music that I find energizing and stimulating that I use from time to time. You might want consider creating one or more playlists on itunes or your ipod / mp3 player for the same purpose.

But it’s also important to notice what types of tasks you have to do at work, school or home when music won’t be useful and is an actual distraction.

How do you use music at work/school/home to help you focus? What kind works for you?

Here are the links to websites and blogs relating to Time Management for Adults and Children with ADHD for my CHADD Vancouver ADHD Time Management presentation tonight.

Time Management websites Articles, Books and Websites

ADHD Treatment – Technology
Online, computer based and external clocks timers and reminders

Internet Addiction Wake Up Devices

21 blog posts on Time Management

Top Ten Most Annoying Alarm Clocks. ADD Strategic Management?

20 Ways to Say No for the overburdened people pleasers

Time Management for Anarchists: The Movie
You don’t need to be an anarchist to find it useful and funny.

Reminder Tools: Beeping watches etc from ADD Consults

Sharper Image “Now You Can Find It!” Electronic Locator ie keys etc

For Children Specifically

How routines help children with ADHD achieve structure and happiness

Tips for getting ADHD Kids up and out the door

Helping Your ADHD Adolescent Get Homework Done

Tools and techniques to help ADHD students use classroom time more efficiently

Organization and Time Management Strategies for kids

Organization Tips for Your ADHD Student

And since it’s back to school here’s

Teaching Students with ADD, Links to 34 Articles & Ebooks

Impulsive, easily distractible, stimulus seeking, time blind, forgetful, procrastinating ADDers often have problems with their personal finances regardless of level of income. Common problems I hear from some of my Adult ADHD coaching clients are, late payments for bills they have money for, being years behind on filing taxes when the government owes them money, family arguments over money etc.

More than most people we ADD adults need to keep better track of how we’re spending our money. Here’s one possible solution.

Wesabe is an online program that helps you track your spending, and give you a better idea where your money is going and give you contextual tips about how to spend more wisely and track your financial goals. It’s a social web 2.0 app similar to 43 Folders for personal finances.

Privacy and security is built in and having privacy advocate Cory Doctrow on their advisory board was a brilliant move to allay privacy fears. Here’s their Data Bill of Rights, something that more net companies should emulate.

It aggregates spending data for users without personal identifying info so you can see who in your area is buying product or service x and if they’re happy with it or not (Fan, user or captive) and the average cost. You tag your spending items and you can see how much you spend on each category, i.e. groceries, beer by week or month. The tagging function allows you to get tips specific to the item you’re buying to spend smarter.

You get a tag cloud of your purchases i.e. items you buy once a month or more or big ticket items. Here’s a three-minute overview video showing a member using Wesabe.

There’s a detailed review with screen shots at get rich slowly via Money SmartLife

Wesabe’s tagging system is a key to its power. Every transaction, every tip, and every goal can be tagged. If you’ve ever used Flickr or del.icio.us, tags will be instantly familiar. They’re one-word descriptors used to categorize your transactions (and tips and goals). For example, if you take your friend Sue out for dinner at a nice restaurant, you might use three tags for the transaction: “food restaurant friends”. The ever-present list of tags can be used to check your spending. If I click on the “food” tag, for example, I get a list of all my recent food transactions, as well as graphs representing my food spending over time. I can also access tips tagged “food” from other Wesabeans.

Voice Candy is a voice recorder that you can use as an alarm with your Mac computer. You have different effects, a snooze button, and it wakes your Mac up from sleep. You can email the recording as an mp3, and also put it on an itunes playlist and carry it around on your ipod.

Since we ADDers are more here and now oriented than future oriented, we’re often more fun to be around, but we’re also more likely to forget things like appointments or phone calls. You can use it to remind you of tasks or even to take regular breaks, something that ADDers often forget to do.

Taking regular breaks (even 5 minute ones) is probably one of the most important habits to have if you want to be productive at work. It’s important for everyone, but crucial for adults with Attention Deficit Disorder, since if we don’t, we can easily get lost in distractions for extended periods of time.

Senatorsmith blogs about what his experiences with ADHD are like. A really good post on what’s it like to have ADHD
He blogs about some of the negatives

in other ways 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. – Unequivocally me… ever had a discussion with me where I ramble onto multiple tangents

and also mentions our well known sense of time blindness.

What is it like to have ADD? Buzzing. – totally! Being here and there and everywhere. Someone once said, “Time is the thing that keeps everything from happening all at once.” Time parcels moments out into separate bits so that we can do one thing at a time. In ADD, this does not happen. In ADD, time collapses. Time becomes a black hole. To the person with ADD it feels as if everything is happening all at once. – Thankfully this doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does…This creates a sense of inner turmoil or even panic. The individual loses perspective and the ability to prioritize. He or she is always on the go, trying to keep the world from caving in on top.

He also talks about some of the positives characteristic of adults with attention deficit disorder.

Often these people are highly imaginative and intuitive. They have a “feel” for things, a way of seeing right into the heart of matters while others have to reason their way along methodically. This is the person who can’t explain how he thought of the solution, or where the idea for the story came from, or why suddenly he produced such a painting, or how he knew the short cut to the answer, but all he can say is he just knew it, he could feel it. This is the man or woman who makes million dollar deals in a catnap and pulls them off the next day. This is the child who, having been reprimanded for blurting something out, is then praised for having blurted out something brilliant. These are the people who learn and know and do and go by touch and feel. These people can feel a lot. In places where most of us are blind, they can, if not see the light, at least feel the light, and they can produce answers apparently out of the dark. It is important for others to be sensitive to this “sixth sense” many ADD people have, and to nurture it. If the environment insists on rational, linear thinking and “good” behavior from these people all the time, then they may never develop their intuitive style to the point where they can use it profitably. It can be exasperating to listen to people talk. – sorry folks, I know this describes me all too well Hurmph They can sound so vague or rambling. – totally me But if you take them seriously and grope along with them, often you will find they are on the brink of startling conclusions or surprising solutions.

More on his blog.

If you have ADHD, how would you describe it to someone who doesn’t have ADHD?

The very useful Make Use Of blog has a pretty extensive list of 38 different To Do List Services. They also have links to each service and briefly describe some of the additional features of each service

apart from ‘Create/Delete/Edit Lists and Tasks’

For those of you who haven’t checked out online to do list services, there’s a lot more features nowadays then there was a few years ago.

Here’s some of the features of the different services listed:

Create tasks by dialing provided number and leaving a message

Retrieve and add lists via SMS receive alerts via E-mail, SMS or instant messenger

RSS support

Auto tagging

Sharing and collaboration

Categorize lists, prioritize tasks

Browser addons(firerfox, IE) that let you add notes from any webpage

Schedule lists to autodelete. A handy feature for ADDers who add too many items to their to do lists.

I’ve reviewed a few of these before, i.e., Remember the Milk, Ta-Da List, Joe’s Goals

Sometimes, even if you’re really techie, a paper based solution may be the best fit for you, but it’s probably worth checking some of them out. For those interested in more info on this very common adult add problem, time management I have a list of some time management articles books and websites on my website, and you can also check out the time management category on this blog

This may be relevant to some of the bloggers at the Northern Voice Blog Conference in Vancouver this Friday and Saturday. Where there probably will be more adults with attention surplus condition than the average 5% in the population. See Top 10 Advantages of ADD in a High Tech Career.

Here’s an example of how a Web Designer, Douglas Bowman of Stopdesign, who’s

been organized most of my life

stays organized in the different areas of his web design business. He’s redesigned sites like Blogger, Wired News, and Adaptive Path.

In my mind, once I have familiarity with a place (apartment, office, hotel, etc.) everything I have with me usually has a logical place it belongs, and I’m pretty diligent about putting it there.

I think the key in the above sentence is a logical place, as in logical for YOU. Not necessarily logical for other people. That’s where many adults with Attention Deficit Disorder get tripped up, they’ve read/been told doing X is the “logical” or “right way” to do it, which is of course bullshit.

The right way to do it is the way that works for you. The person who wrote the book/article/ did the seminar/workshop found a way that worked for them and SOME of those methods MAY work for you but usually not without modification or customization.

That customization is what I do for a living, coaching adults with Attention Deficit Disorder and even if 2 ADDers have the same problem, the solution is usually different. Sometimes my ADHD coaching clients ask me what’s the best way to do X for someone with ADHD? The answer is there is no “one best way”.

What works for one ADD coaching client doesn’t necessarily work for the other one. Logically if you think about this, it’s obvious. We’re not all carbon copy clones of each other with the same genes, environment, beliefs and experience. But we don’t always do the obvious.

So often we get frustrated by trying a recommended solution from a book etc and find it doesn’t work for us and we blame ourselves. It may be the wrong solution for us, and even if it’s the right one, it usually won’t work unless we adapt it to our personality, attitudes, behaviour and preferred ways of doing things. Even then it may need some modification via trial and error, feedback and coaching.

Douglas makes some very good points in his post and there are also more good ones in the extensive comment section.

I repeat this system over and over again, to the point that I don’t even think about it anymore.

That’s a very important point that many of us miss. You can’t just set up a system once and expect to maintain itself automatically, you need to practice doing it again and again until it gets burned in deep into your neural network. Repetition precedes effortlessness.

I did this post last year and given the time of season, I thought it’d be useful to repost it. My theme for this year will be sustainable growth. Sustainable being the challenging part for an ADDer. Enjoy.

How many of you actually carry out your New Year’s resolutions? Honestly. In full.

I’m no paragon of virtue here myself.

I believe that after too many failed attempts at New Year’s resolutions, most people start to attach strong unconscious negative feelings towards New Year’s resolutions, but continue to create a new one or a batch of them each year in part out of guilt, or perceived social pressure.

If you are one of the few that do carry out your New Year’s resolutions in full, good on ya, and keep doing what you’re doing. If you’re one of those that do not, you might consider my proposed alternative.

A New Year’s Theme.

I came up with this idea while coaching a client around what goals he wanted to accomplish in 2006.

I had an intuition that a theme for the year might be more useful for him than several specific goals and I asked him what he thought about having a specific theme for the year (based on his situation and desires) and he was quite responsive to that, adjusting the wording a bit. It worked well on another client and I decided to try it myself. My chosen New Year’s theme is deliberate creation, (as opposed to impulsive action).

A theme is much bigger than a specific goal i.e. lose weight, stop smoking. It can include many related goals under its umbrella. For example live healthier, become a kinder person, judge others less, market more effectively, live a more balanced life, develop a deeper spiritual practice, etc.

It allows you to look at the whole year from a specific perspective. When you decide what you’ll do for the week, you examine those decisions in part through the lens of your theme. What can you do this week that will bring your closer in line with your theme?

It’s not an absolute; I still will do impulsive things. However I will move toward more deliberate creation in my life. It’s an orientation, a holistic point of view, something that can encompass many areas of your life.

10 Tips on creating and implementing your New Year’s Theme

1. You cannot officially commit to the theme until after January 1st or it doesn’t count. This is a way of removing the guilt and built up negative emotional and psychological baggage of previously unfulfilled New Year’s resolutions, allowing you to make a decision from a clearer, more realistic position.

2. The theme should ideally consist of a single concept, or at most 2 related or complementary concepts. A single ADDer can come up with a bigger to do list than 4 other people combined. A smaller number = a greater clarity and focus. Also an increased chance of sustained action. Will your really remember 10 different themes in your 4th month of the year?

3. The fewer words the better. Two is ideal, and much easier to remember than 15, and easier to use as a mantra.

4. It is process oriented. You are moving towards something. You can set specific individual goals during the year under the overall framework of your theme, but you don’t attach a numeric target to your theme. This reduces your disappointment, and subsequent de-motivation if you don’t do well on your theme for a particular week. There’s always next week. However, this doesn’t mean you start slacking and take a month off.

5. It’s something big enough to really stir your soul. No small dreams here. Dream big. You need something big enough to motivate you into continual action. For most people, losing 10 pounds or cleaning out the garage doesn’t cut it.

6. Work on the wording until each word really resonates with you. You choose your theme; don’t let someone else tell you what it should be.

7. Regularly examine your life from the viewpoint of moving towards your yearly theme. You need to set related goals on a regular weekly and monthly basis that move you closer to your theme, and reward yourself when you reach those goals. I suggest scheduling in the reward first.

8. Don’t plan too far in advance. Be willing to readjust and realign your goals as life circumstances change. It’s a process, not a fixed in stone timeline you set once and slavishly follow.

9. Use your theme as a decision making tool. When making an important decision (when appropriate and related), add your New Year’s theme as one of the factors in making the decision. Does this decision move me closer to my yearly theme?

10. Use your ADD creativity in creating meaningful limited goals towards your theme. If you feel like it set a new goal every week or couple of weeks. Mix it up for increased dopamine stimulation. Be creative about chosing your goal and limit it to increase the odds of completion. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

If you have one, work with your ADD coach on developing your theme, and choosing and implementing your theme related goals as well as weekly regular strategic realignments.

I could write why most New Year’s resolutions fail but that’s another story. Ideally setting and regularly working towards personal meaningful goals year round is the best way to go. A yearly theme can turbo charge that process, it’s not for everyone, but it may be right for you.

If you decide to choose a theme for the New Year, let me know which one you choose by adding a comment below, it may inspire others.