Focus Bear for iOS
The iOS app is still in beta (but it works pretty well). It's a two-step process to download the app:
1
First, download Apple Test Flight
and then come back here
to get the redeem code
2
Download and install
the Focus Bear App
The iOS app is still in beta (but it works pretty well). It's a two-step process to download the app:
First, download Apple Test Flight
and then come back here
to get the redeem code
Download and install
the Focus Bear App
Sweet! Now you can download Focus Bear with this link
I was recently diagnosed with ADHD and thought I’d share some tactics that work for me in managing my symptoms. I’ll start with a disclaimer: I have no medical qualifications and don’t claim that my approach is the right way to go for anyone else (or probably even myself — I’m still figuring things out). I am not taking medication and hope to avoid going down that path. My coping mechanisms are a bit unconventional but they mostly work for me and I’m reasonably high functioning (successful career, married, financially stable, fit and healthy etc.). It’s worth noting that I’ve also been diagnosed with ASD and that probably influences the approaches I’ve gravitated towards.
Let’s start by discussing the symptoms I experience:
Many of the problems I listed above cause me significant shame “Oh no I’ve done it again”, I think as I dive towards a blackened pot or realise I’ve forgotten to show up for a meeting. I’m doing much better at managing them though and hope that by writing down my (slightly whacky) solutions, I’ll think of further ways to optimise them and maybe give other people some ideas.
Left to my own devices, I tend to flit around to whatever feels interesting on the day. This is rarely what is most important. I do get things done but it normally involves greasing squeaky wheels rather than operating in the “important and not urgent” quadrant of the Eisenhower matrix. Quite often I can have a thought like “I wonder what’s happening in the Ukraine conflict” and go down a rabbit hole of checking news websites/Wikipedia articles about Russian tanks. Often in the evening, I get a burst of hyperfocus and get a huge amount of work done in a short amount of time but then struggle to unwind and sleep in the evening.
What works for me for dull tasks is:
To manage hyperfocus I find these tactics helpful:
This has been a perpetual problem for me for as long as I have managed my own schedule. When I was 13, I lived 5 minutes walk from my high school but was still late nearly every day. If I have to travel somewhere, I’ll often leave the preparation and packing phase until it’s too late and then miss my train or forget to bring something important and have to go home.
My tactics are:
When I was 19, someone bought me a pressure cooker so I could soften up chickpeas at warp speed. That turned out to be a bad idea. The seal started to malfunction at one point and even though I knew that I needed to keep an eye on it and turn the heat down when it reached the right pressure, I forgot on at least three occasions. The result was that I essentially let off a chickpea filled pipe bomb in the kitchen. The ceiling was spattered with legumey goodness and the sound almost set off the neighbour’s car alarm. Needless to say my parents weren’t impressed. I stopped using the pressure cooker which reduced the explosiveness of my cooking related disasters but I continued to regularly forget about frypans on high heat or let curries go so dry, only steel wool would salvage the pot. Once I was steaming some vegetables and forgot to put water in the bottom.
I performed no better in the biochemistry lab during my honours year. There was a simple procedure for growing up some e coli for an experiment: put various amounts of strange smelling powders into a flask, add water and leave it on a shaker for a certain amount of time. I got transfixed by reading a journal article and by the time I remembered to look at the shaker, it was too late. I’d killed the e coli — how do you even do that?
The common advice I had was to just set a timer. Problem was I’d forget to do that. In the end, I changed to a bioinformatics project and went from killing e coli to “killing it” with a solid thesis and mark to go with it. Turns out computers are much more forgiving than living organisms and much better suited to my brain.
While I was single, I was able to avoid burning pots by always cooking with a microwave. The great thing about microwaves is you have to set the timer to do anything. Why can’t stove tops work like that?
When I met my wife, I had to expand my repertoire. Things generally went ok when she’d cook with me but if I’d try to cook her something on my own, she’d end up with charcoal on her brocolli at least 20% of the time. After the final burning experience which almost led to marriage counselling, I decided to find an engineering solution. A Cuisinart benchtop steamer was the answer to my problems. Like the microwave, you have to set a timer and it turns itself off if it runs out of water. The other appliance that works well for me is a rice cooker. Turns out you can cook almost anything in a rice cooker and it detects if it’s low in liquid so there’s no risk of a hot, blackened mess for dinner.
One of my least favourite parts of working for a largeish company is being expected to attend bloated meetings with 5+ people (often 10+). Because so many people are there, the topics are mostly not relevant for me. I know I should be there to absorb context but I find people talk so slowly and go on so many tangents that it bores the hell out of me and I end up multitasking and then not really taking much in.
My tactics for these calls are:
I’d really like to get a treadmill desk. For times where I need to look at the screen or be ready to present my screen, I reckon being able to walk while listening would work well for me.
I have tended to say Yes to too many things. The overyessing often coincides with times that I am almost in a manic state and feel that I have limitless energy. To give you a picture: in 2020, I had two part time developer jobs, was handling several consulting clients, was building two startups and was doing a relatively intense carpentry course. Each of those activities seemed good in isolation but there was just too much.
Balancing all of them was tricky — I wasn’t excelling in any of those areas. I’ve read the book “Essentialism” and heard a lot of advice over the years about the necessity to choose “One Thing” but have never really been able to implement it. To a certain extent, my approach has worked for me. My side business, Smooth Messenger, did turn out to be successful. I hope that my new side business, Focus Bear, will also be successful. Nonetheless I need to be really mindful of my inclination towards shiny objects.
I don’t really have any good tactics for this besides one: throw money at the idea. I’ve recognised that I am an ideas guy and am not good at following through with implementation. However, if I have a team or even one other person working with me, it’s less of a problem. It’s easy for me to keep the momentum going if I have someone else doing more of the heavy lifting and I’m just providing vision/direction.
“Body doubling” is another tactic for this where I’d use a tool like Focus Mate to create microaccountability for a work session. However, that only works if I actually have the time to put into the project. If I legitimately don’t have enough time to do the project justice, I either need to delay the project or put money into it. If I’m not willing to spend money on it, that helps me make the decision to defer it.
I quite often get into hyperfocus while I’m on public transport. I’ll pull out my laptop/iPad/phone and get deep into some task (or just reading the news) and just before the train doors are about to close, I’ll realise that it’s my stop and I NEED TO GET OUT NOW. If I only have my phone with me, it’s not a problem but often I carry a bag (or multiple bags) with me. You can imagine the consequences. One day I left my laptop sitting on a train station bench (miraculously it was handed into the police station). Another time I lost my gym bag. Once I left a whole suitcase of carpentry tools on a bus. My wallet fell out of my bag once and I walked off the bus without it.
Most of the time I got my things back but it’s not a pleasant experience to realise that you’ve left a whole suitcase behind.
My tactics for dealing with this are:
This blog post was first published in Medium
