User blog comment:Selena ariel/Wiki Pages for Adapting HabitRPG for ADHD?/@comment-25647103-20150122235031

Love it! I've been using HabitRPG for, I don't know, a couple months? (Time, the passage of it, it is a thing.) My enthusiasm was starting to flag, so I want to try getting more involved in the community to get motivated again. Which could maybe be a tip, if it works.

So I would like to help with the page!

I've been working on habitualizing a morning routine and an evening routine. The idea is to do the same things in the same order, so that I don't have to decide those things every day, which is a major source of brain-churn and forgetfulness. Having a routine also allows me to pre-set supports and incentives for the routine, like the headphone-earmuffs that hang by the door for my walk around the block.

The walk is the centerpiece of both the morning and evening routines, which is very important because I have a foot-powered brain. So my first ADHD tip is to build physical activities into your Dailies so as to summon your full powers.

The biggest ADD-related annoyance I've had is that I'll do the evening routine but then forget to check it off (I guess because it's so good at getting me ready to unplug for the night!). Breaking a streak when I didn't really break a streak is a real bummer and demotivating. I also have to remember that cron comes into this, and if cron is set to midnight that's when I have to be done by, but actually I don't remember this and that's disappointing too. The obvious solution is to check off the routine before I do it instead of after, but that doesn't give me the same psychological reward. So I guess I'm still stuck on this.

Also... what was the other thing? Oh yes. Predictably, I found I would get distracted and sucked into something in the middle of my routine. So I've now set myself a challenge to do each routine in under an hour, which is how long it takes at a slow-but-focused pace, or alternatively allows for a distraction followed by an invigorating mad dash. It also makes me watch the clock, which is just helpful in general.