Struggling To Stay Focused With ADHD
This post is worth focusing on
Hi ADHDers, how are we all doing? I can’t believe it’s almost Christmas!
Raise a hand if you struggle to focus.
🖐️ 🖐🏻🖐🏼🖐🏽🖐🏾🖐🏿🖐️
Congratulations! You have come to the right place. Today, we are diving into ADHD and focus, well, the lack thereof.
It really irks me when Non-ADHDers say things like: “Why don’t you just sit and focus on it for an hour and then it will get done?”
It’s almost as if we haven’t tried that, or we don’t have ADHD
Forgive me, that was a little snarky.
Let’s get into:
Why we struggle to focus with ADHD
How to stay focused with ADHD
Identifying and addressing the source of your inability to focus is what will enable you to eliminate what is standing between you and your focus.
This post is worth focusing on.
Shall we begin?
Why do we struggle to focus?
Why do we struggle to focus?
Look, there are many reasons, but I have narrowed it down to the big 3:
ADHD
Lack of interest, motivation, and desire
Health Conditions (e.g. Iron deficiency anaemia) or Mental Health
The Cambridge dictionary defines focus as:
“The main or central point of something, especially of attention or interest”
To state the obvious, people with ADHD have an ‘attention deficit’, meaning we have difficulty with regulating our attention. This can manifest as getting easily distracted, finding it difficult to sustain attention, and being impatient, etc.
Easily distracted
Let’s take getting easily distracted as an example. I split distractions into:
Internal distractions - Your thoughts, RSD/emotions, brain fog, daydreaming
External distractions - Noisy environment, clutter, people, life circumstances
➡️ You are sitting in an open-plan, noisy office, and you are trying to work on a project. All of your attention, thoughts, and emotions are on how annoyingly noisy the office is. This is what has captured your focus.
➡️ To shift your focus to the project, you need to eliminate the external distraction. This could be accomplished by booking a meeting room to work from or using noise-cancelling headphones to focus.
As simple as it seems, when you are struggling to focus, it can be hard to think through things clearly.
Lack of interest, motivation or desire
You know when you are super interested in something that gives you this childlike excitement, and you are hooked, internally fulfilled, and completely hyperfixated on it?
Sometimes, the issue isn’t a lack of focus, discipline or your ADHD brain. Some things just aren’t interesting.
A perfect example of this is reading a book. I used to think my attention span was too short to read fiction books nowadays. Until I recently read the book Yellowface. I was immediately hooked, and I finished reading the book in record time.
I realised my attention span wasn’t the issue; I just hadn’t found a book or a genre that was interesting enough to keep my attention.
“I remember when I used to buy ‘brain foods’ to help me stay focused, not knowing I had ADHD. Anyone else used to buy/do things to switch your brain on before you knew you had ADHD?” - Rach Idowu | @AdultingADHD
Other reasons why we might struggle to focus
In addition to ADHD, there are other factors, such as health conditions, that might be impacting your ability to focus.
Iron deficieny aneamia
Fatigue
Stress
Anxiety
PMS
I’m anaemic and I’m not the greatest at taking my iron supplements. This results in me feeling fatigued and low on energy. My ADHD medication is not as effective when I am low on iron.
How to stay focused when you have ADHD
For some people, staying focused can be as simple as flicking a light switch on and off.
As people with ADHD, we need to make several adjustments just to get started and maintain being in a focused state. This could be in the form of ADHD coping strategies, routines, and finding workarounds.
This newsletter was getting too long, so my next newsletter will be on ‘How to stay focused when you have ADHD’. I will include a list of ADHD Coping Strategies and workarounds you could use to help you stay focused.
That’s all from me!
Rach, with ADHD.
In my late 70's and finally figuring out that I'm an ADHD-er! (My 50-year old ADHD daughter said to me, "Mom...ya think...???" She's a cutie smarty pants who is in a very rigorous grad school program and on Vivance and said the difference in her ability to study is life-changing! We are both late to these realizations!) And it has bought me some peace and lessening of my self-judgement. Your Substack has helped! Grateful...!!!
I don't struggle b/c I only do things I am intrinsically motivated to do, and then I want to focus on them. The struggle comes from trying to do things you have no natural interest in, or from trying to make your focus act like a non-ADHD person. If I'm distracted, who cares? I follow the distraction until it's done and then go back to what I was doing. It's not a problem when you work with your nature rather than fight it.