This Twitter thread kind of blew me away when I first saw it last September.

“What’s your ‘OMG I didn’t know that was ADHD!'”

I retweeted it commenting that I thought about 75% of the replies applied to me.

Some of those things are:

  • Leaving all the cupboard doors open. (also dresser drawers. doors, etc. And leaving lights on.)
  • Bumping into things. not realizing it. Having weird bruises and scratches that you have no idea how you got.
  • Falling down all the time. (This was actually one of the things that motivated me to get diagnosed. It’s no big deal to fall when you’re 25, but now? probably best avoided. And 20 years from now? A fall could kill me!)
  • Leaving a trail of crap everywhere.
  • Endless internal dialog (i thought this happened to everyone?)
  • Getting overwhelmed because my hair is in my face.
  • Going into panic/shutdown mode in loud environments or in large groups of people.
  • Thinking that you should be able to do better, and thinking you’re a human dumpster fire failure of a human being because you can’t.
  • Overactive bladder (wait, is this why when I’m hyperfocusing I can hold it for hours but when I’m bored or doing other things I have to pee, like, every hour???? YES).
  • The way coffee never makes me hyper – I can drink a cup of caffeinated coffee right before bed and then go straight to sleep.
  • Leaving half-full beverage cups everywhere.
  • Having great ideas for new projects, starting a few of them, finishing none.
  • Procrastinating.
  • Dreading phone calls.
  • I can make eye contact or I can hear what you’re saying. Choose one.
  • Reading a page of text so fast that you have to stop yourself to go back and read a section that you accidentally skimmed over.
  • Walking past something on the floor 100 times instead of just picking it up.
  • Feeling super sleepy even after a good night’s sleep, and not being able to get up in the morning.
  • Hating people who are making noise.
  • Being easily startled.
  • Not being able to stand talking over the TV or vacuum or any other noise. (I cannot STAND when the TV is on in one room and there’s music playing in another room and I can hear both. it makes me want to scream.)
  • Making lists, and making lists of lists, and sub-lists.
  • Thinking every car trip to every location takes 15 minutes.
  • Everyone is SO SLOW. (I notice this especially when walking… i walk fast, and slow walkers make me FURIOUS.)
  • Stacks of clutter.
  • Losing things all the time.
  • Not being able to hear people talk in a crowded room.
  • Binge eating. Seeking stimulation by always having something to eat or drink.
  • Having trouble distinguishing between right and left.
  • Terrible handwriting.
  • Trouble with depth perception.
  • Being able to act calmly in a crisis.
  • Spacing out while talking to people.

Things that people say they have, that I developed a system to keep from doing:

  • Not doing laundry until i don’t have anything to wear, and then forgetting about it until it gets mildewy. I manage this by having laundry day every Sunday, and no other day. It also helps that the washer plays a little tune when it is done.
  • Talking too loud, and blurting things out without thinking. I did this all the time when i was a kid but got in trouble for it enough that I manage to control it most of the time. But I still sometimes find myself talking too loud, and I blurt things out way more than I should.
  • Forgetting things. Forgetting that you forgot things. This is why I have notebooks full of lists, why i send emails to myself, and why I feel completely lost if I don’t have something to write with and some paper.
  • Forgetting to pay bills. I have signed up for auto-pays on everything I possibly can. The others I have put calendar reminders in my iCalendar. I’ve used a number of systems for keeping up with bills over the years.
  • Trying a new system of organization, having it work great for three weeks, and then forgetting about it. I have developed my own system through trial and error over the years. I still forget to look at my list sometimes. Also I sometimes leave it at work and so I forget what I need to do when I get home. I would like to switch to something computerized that I could access from any of my devices, but I also need the immediacy of being able to just grab a pencil and jot something down.

Streamlining and simplifying is the real key to managing ADHD. Make things as easy as possible to reduce friction. Seize the opportunity when you start to hyperfocus. Use psychological tricks to make things more fun. Coffee.

A little trick that has really helped me get and stay organized is the Marie Kondo method of folding and storing clothes. My drawers (and The Mighty Sam’s drawers) are so much more organized than they’ve ever been. You can fit a lot of stuff in a small space, and when you open your drawer you can SEE EVERYTHING.

I love the Kondo method in general, but the precept that you have to do everything in a short time is not feasible when you have ADHD, unless you happen to luck into a period of hyperfocus right when you get started. But Kondo-ing your whole everything is something that will take days at least, and, for me anyway, hyperfocus is something that lasts a few hours. I can’t hyperfocus over a period of days unless there’s an actual crisis looming – like moving to a new place with a hard deadline.

Also – and here’s another thing I didn’t realize was ADHD until I read it on Twitter – if you have ADHD, things like house cleaning and de-cluttering take WAY longer than they do for a neurotypical person. A chore that takes a neurotypical person 2 hours will take all day if you have ADHD. So if you’re going to Kondo your house you’re going to need to do it little by little.

Lots of people in that thread were all, “omg, I think I need to look into getting diagnosed.” I didn’t say that, but I thought it.