Access to Work Guide: ADHD-friendly!

Access to Work (A2W) is a Government scheme that can help pay for things for you to stay in work if you have a disability. This could include things like a job coach, standing desk, reminder software… basically anything that can help you do your job like your colleagues are able to. I was SO shocked to find out this existed, after struggling for so long - which is why I talk about it a lot in the ‘Finances’ & ‘Jobs’ chapters of ADHD: an A to Z.

A2W isn’t perfect - mainly because the application process is so bureaucratic that it is incredibly difficult to figure out how to do properly, there can be delays and mistakes can be made (which I explain how to rectify below). It doesn’t actually help you GET a job - not so much access ‘to’ work as access to ‘stay in’ work. So that’s not great if you’re out of work (and ADHD isn’t usually associated with job stability), but it’s better than nothing. And really, really important to know about!

It should be clarified that this is not official or legal advice and no responsibility is taken for following it - but I hope it’s helpful as a rough guide based off my own experiences! It’s also obviously catered towards my experiences of ADHD, but worth mentioning that this could show up in so many different ways, depending on the person, as the case for all health conditions.

Why apply?

A2W can help pay for things based on your needs . This may include things that your employer doesn’t offer as part of ‘reasonable adjustments’ for your condition (like flexible working hours or locations). Examples relevant to people with ADHD might include:

• special equipment (for ADHD-ers this could include a headset, noise cancelling headphones, a standing desk, wall planners, time timers, desk planners, a note taking table, a weighted lap pad, fidget toys, watches with reminders, whiteboards, printers, and laminators!)

• special software (for ADHD-ers this could include a personal assistant, Dragon dictation software, audible.com, Alexa / Google home, password software such as ‘Dashlane’, Trello / Asana (for task management), or meditation apps such as Calm).

• support worker services such as an assistant or job coach to help you in your workplace (I HIGHLY recommend the ADHD Advocate and membership to ADHD Unlocked - where you can get peer support).

Who can apply?

People aged 16+, who live in England, Wales or Scotland, who:

• have a paid job, including work experience & internships.

• are self employed, if they achieve the ‘Lower Earnings Limit’ per year, currently £6,136 - or if not, have a business plan with a 3 year financial forecast. The Princes Trust & HMRC can help with this.

• have a disability or a health condition (physical or mental) which makes it hard for them to do parts of their job, or get to and from work.

How do you apply?

You can apply by phone, or online here, which includes questions on:

Your conditions or disabilities: e.g. ADHD (it’s probably advisable to have a medical diagnosis or doctor’s support in whatever you say here, rather than being self-diagnosed).

Whether you have problems travelling to work: if you do, you’ll be asked to consider other options. A2W won’t necessarily pay for a limo if you struggle with catching the bus, but they might make an assessment of how bad your problems are and whether they or your employer could help in any way, such as by working from home or helping with other transport options.

Whether your condition makes it harder for you to do your job, and if so, how. Any current coping strategies, and whether you know what you need to get help with this.

It’s good to put as much information as you can down, as if you have a ‘good level of knowledge about what support you need’, then your application can be ‘fast tracked’ (point 183) and dealt with faster. 

Some examples of how ADHD could make it harder for a person to do their job include:

• Becoming overwhelmed with stress and burning out, experiencing panic attacks & exhaustion.

• Having trouble doing small administrative tasks, that then take up your whole day & result in a lot of stress.

• Difficulty in relationships with colleagues, due to emotional dysregulation, having strong reactions and experiencing sensory overwhelm.

• Making impulsive decisions that you wouldn’t have made if you’d thought them out a bit more, which might have long term consequences!

• Becoming distracted by noises, sounds, thoughts.. anything at all! Office environments aren’t always great for ADHD.

• Difficulty meeting deadlines, organising work, being able to follow processes…

• Having poor attention to detail.

Current coping strategies might include things like working from home or flexible working hours, and ways that you could get more help with it include those listed above.

Details about your job, including how long you’ve been there & their contact details 
If you’ve not told your employer that you have a health condition that impairs your ability to do your job, it might feel difficult in considering how to tell them, but they will usually need to know if you’re applying for A2W. They should not treat you negatively for this - which is something I talk about in a lot more detail in ‘J is for Jobs’ of my book, ‘ADHD: an A to Z’.

What happens next: the assessment

An A2W adviser will look at your application, including whether you have had any previous assessments, which could help speed things up. If the caseworker is unsure about or can’t agree with you on the appropriate level of support (121) they can refer you for an independent assessment, which they should give you a call to discuss beforehand.

The assessment might take place in person, at your workplace, or virtually - mine was a phone call (given the pandemic)! The assessor will most likely ask you about the questions that you have already answered, possibly helping to identify any other ways that you could be helped to stay in work. It can feel a bit embarrassing to ask for help, but it’s really important that you are as honest as possible. 

The assessor will then report back to A2W with their recommendations, usually 3 different options based on cost. A2W will notify you by email about the decision, and post you a copy of your report and a confirmation letter.

You have to sign and return the declaration letter to ATW, which will then allow them to issue a claims pack to your employer. There are lots of different situations describing who pays for ATW - and they might ask your employer to contribute. For support workers, 100% is paid by ATW, regardless of how big your organisation is.

Important to know:

• It might take a few weeks or months for A2W to get in touch. The communication can be also be less than ideal - I was told the wrong date for my assessment call and some of my emails bounced. DO NOT GIVE UP! Let them know if no one turns up to the assessment, call, email - do whatever you need to do!

• You have to return the signed declaration letter within 4 weeks of the date of the letter which can be difficult if you, like me, receive the letter almost 3 weeks after it was sent due to postal delays!

• So make sure that when you get an email or call to let you know a decision has been made, you keep an eye out for the letter and stay in touch with A2W. I’d also get proof of postage when returning it and confirm this by email, so you can show you’ve done it and don’t need to apply all over again!

What do I do if I don’t agree with the decision?

You can request that A2W reconsider their decision, contacting them within 4 weeks of the date on the letter! So this is really important to know: if you’re not happy, contact them immediately. This can be by post, or the email address provided in the letter, asking for the Access to Work Reconsideration Team.

I don’t know if everyone will have the same experience I did, but my decision was overturned. I advise that you read the Access to Work Guidance to check if all the processes were followed correctly.

I’d advise emailing to explain why you think there has been a mistake made as soon as possible. For example, the decision may not be tailored to your individual needs, as required by the guidance. The ‘justification’ for your decision will be able to demonstrate this - and of course, this will be affected by how specific, reasonable and accurate you were in your application. You could also raise any mistakes made during the process, such as evidence not being accounted for properly.

I really recommend taking every opportunity you have to make your case as much as strongly as possible. It can be a bit of a confusing and complicated process, but you have nothing to lose by asking for the help you think you need.

If you have had poor customer service or you think your A2W claim has not been handled correctly, you can also complain using their complaints procedure.

Phew! Then what?

A2W may contact your employer to tell them that they should purchase the support (or part of it, depending on what is agreed), and then send them the claim form and proof of purchase to be repaid. This will obviously be you if you’re self-employed!

It was quite a long, difficult process, but it was so incredibly worth it. It’s really important to know that the Government offer this scheme, and great that they do, because people with disabilities need to be better supported at work.

ADHD Coaching - A Testimonial

Many people come to ADHD coaching looking for help with the basics, such as cleaning, cooking, and exercise. It can be an incredibly vulnerable thing to reach out for help with the things society tells us ‘should’ be easy, but this beautiful client testimonial shows how life-changing it can be.

I imagine most people with ADHD finally seek a coach when things finally become unmanageable and you are at a low ebb. That's where I was anyway when I decided to embark on a coaching journey with Leanne.

I have lots of letters after my name. Three university qualifications in English Literature, all from well respected universities; all completed in sporadic, terrifying, almost heart stopping last minute 6 week blocks of 24/7 hyper-focus, caffeine, pot noodles, and a laundry littered floor. I subsequently taught for many years in a high achieving, high pressure grammar school; where my pupils achieved the entrance grades they needed for very prestigious universities. However, my career amounts to a miserable blur of last minute lesson preparations and too many unmarked home works. Each year, I would end up arranging annual guilt driven fabulous Easter holiday revision classes, where I repaid the debt I knew I owed my students at the price of my own health.

Looking back at university and my career, somehow I got letters after my name which earned me a decent living, and so do many of those I taught. When I gave up teaching, I gave a speech, got a present, a bouquet of flowers and a smiling relaxed photograph on the school website, which was definitely a keeper. I left with immense relief for what I was certain would be a lovely life of calm and order that would finally enable me to do the things I could never do all my adult life because nothing else was ever done.

However, after everything else, I just couldn't manage to pull off what seemed to be the basics. ADHD are my real letters and for all the superpowers they may possess - they also make life so very difficult. By the time I met Leanne my entire domestic existence had descended in disorganised chaos, which was having an increasingly unfair impact on my family. I didn't do enough for my family and did nothing meaningful for me, because nothing else was ever done. But through a journey of support sessions with Leanne, text messages, emails, worksheets, reminders, prodding, before and after photographs, trips to charity shops and a few good laughs, I made it. Room by room, I finally achieved what actually turned out to be hardest, most ADHD tortuously boring, but ultimately most significant achievement of my life. I had a tidy, organised house. I had a home.

Will it stay that way? Well, lets be realistic - I have ADHD. But through Leanne, I am no longer paralysed by the time that vanished and left behind endless mounting undone chores. She helped to get me the entrance grades I needed to set me on my way back to what should have been essence of those university degrees and of my career. There is enough done now for me to finally be able to return to the too many unread letters that are stored behind the letters after my name. I'll read books, I might even write a story.

This is what ADHD Coaching with the ADHD Advocate did for me personally - it helped me to write my own story as ‘ADHD: an A to Z’. It’s incredibly rewarding to now be doing the same for other people with the same organisation!

ADHD Coaching is empowering someone to learn how to survive, not doing it for them. It’s designed to break through the barriers that are keeping you stuck, to live your life how you want to be living it, working with your brain rather than against it.

Click here to have a zero-obligation, free chat with me about coaching.

ADHD Coaching FAQs

1. What is ADHD coaching?

It’s a forward-focused, structured process, involving a collaborative partnership which empowers people with ADHD to transform their lives with unconditional acceptance, in gaining an awareness of their unique strengths, and overcoming challenges.   

We have conversations that empower you to figure out what you want, what’s stopping you from achieving that, and how to break it down into actions to implement it. The real work is done by you in implementing the actions between sessions, which can become experiments: learning what works and what doesn’t in a judgement free zone.

It’s like building a house, where coaching is the scaffolding to support you in getting the frameworks in place. Once the strategies that work for you have clicked, you don’t need me anymore - the responsibility lies with you. My job is to work myself out of a job.

2. Is it the same as therapy?

No. Whereas therapy is about answering the ‘why’ questions (e.g why did X happen?), coaching is about the ‘who’, ‘what’, and ‘how’ questions. Therapy is important for processing emotions and feelings, whereas coaching is more forward focused – it’s focused on outcomes, and tangible change.

Therapy is also thought of as a more ongoing, potentially lifelong process, whereas coaching usually tends to be for a time-limited period, such as a few weeks or months.

3. How is ADHD coaching different from normal coaching?

ADHD coaching offers expertise knowledge of this unique neurodevelopmental condition and how this applies to a coaching context. A few examples include:

• ‘Pills don’t give skills’: coaching can help with implementing strategies of how to use the potential benefits gained from medication, diagnosis or ADHD-awareness. For example, if you’re suddenly able to focus with medication, this helps you choose what to focus on.

• ‘Doing what you know’: a coach with ADHD expertise understands how to activate an ADHD brain to its full potential – for example, extra preparation with accountability, implementing actions, and overall engagement.

• ‘Maybe it’s not my fault’: we can offer understanding, education and compassion. It’s very empowering for a person with ADHD to understand their unique neurodiversity, and to replace shame with self-compassion and responsibility. Knowing that certain experiences are a ‘normal’ part of ADHD helps a lot with understanding them and being able to identify ways of asking for help, such as reasonable adjustments.

• ‘Name it to tame it’: ADHD can often show up in different ways which may not be apparent to neurotypical coaches, such as with Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. We can offer specific strategies and exercises to address the underlying causes of challenges and help people learn about themselves.  

• Reaching your limitless potential: ADHD coaching can be useful for everyone to understand how it works and how to get the best out of people who have it. This could also include people who don’t have ADHD themselves, such as a manager of an employee with ADHD.

4.   What can ADHD coaching help with?

Everything! Some examples of things I’ve coached people on include:

·       Organisation / executive functioning: establishing daily routines & healthy habits, time management, getting ‘boring’ chores done, prioritizing, dealing with distractions / procrastination, and deep cleaning the house (which was said to be harder than getting a Master’s degree!).  

·       Work (employees, self-employed & unemployed people): in general, how to work int he most effective & happy way. This has included: improving relationships with colleagues, talking about ADHD at work / identifying & asking for reasonable adjustments, overcoming specific challenges such as bullying, meeting deadlines, project management, dealing with demanding workloads, considering career options, identifying strengths, skills & talents, interview practice, delegation, and coping with stress. Access to Work can fund 100% of ADHD coaching for employees.

• Studying (school & university students): managing studies, setting routines, structuring essays, identifying how they learn best & potential reasonable adjustments tailored to them, and considering future career options. One teenager said it was much more useful than the careers service at school!

• Emotional regulation: improving self-esteem, self-confidence, body-image, overcoming Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria, emotional ‘flooding’ / mood swings, co-dependency, people pleasing, loneliness, and general engagement with people who do / do not have ADHD.

• Physical health: relaxation, sleep, overcoming addictions such as alcohol and smoking, observing the effects of medication, implementing healthy habits such as regular exercise and cooking meals.  

• Everything else! Being an ADHD coach is never boring, because everyone comes with such incredibly unique and amazing stories – every day is different!

5. Should I get a coach?

Coaching can be extremely helpful for anyone, but ultimately, it has to come from YOU. You only get out of it as much as you put in, which is why it’s really important to find a coach that you click with.

If you have something you want in your life – a goal, a change, a challenge you’re facing – then coaching can be incredible, regardless of whether or not you have ADHD. I’ve coached people who don’t have ADHD, and it works just the same.

Everyone can benefit from a moment to pause, step back and figure out what they really want out of their life. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t want to change and improve something – but often their habits are not matching their intentions. My job is to help them change that to fulfil their long-term goals and dreams.

Book a free introductory call with me here to learn more.

Read ADHD: an A - Z here

Invisible Disabilities At Work: Calling All Employers

Imagine you’ve been struggling at work ever since you can remember, wondering if your colleagues also feel like they have to put 150% in to just get their basic job done. To ask for help seems terrifying, like you’d be admitting that you can’t do your job.  

Now imagine you’re diagnosed with a mental health or neurodevelopmental condition – you have answers. It’s not your fault. You deserve to be supported at work to be able to do your job, just like your colleagues may have been able to over the years. What happens next?

Many people are faced with the challenge of figuring out who they should talk to in their organisation, and how they should do it. Your employer has a duty to make reasonable adjustments to support you at work as soon as they’re aware that you might have a disability. But then what? What happens if there’s no policy in place, or if there’s no one to talk to? How do you let them know you’ve been struggling for years, and ask for help when you’re not even sure what that might be?

In this case, it’s easy for everyone panic and nothing being put in place, resulting in an escalation of the situation. This week the Government was found to have breached its duty to make adjustments for a judge who has dyslexia and needed voice recognition software to do her job like her colleagues. Instead of making this very easy adjustment, they ended up in an employment tribunal 6 YEARS later.

Many employers simply do not know how to support employees with invisible disabilities in the workplace, especially for those who are a later stage in their career. A failure to make reasonable adjustments can be disability discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.

 Let’s look at the judgment:

1) ‘As a tribunal we have had the opportunity to stand back from the detail of this case and look at it holistically. Unfortunately, nobody within the respondent’s organisation was able to do the same. Put simply, the respondent organisation did not know how to handle the claimant’s situation properly.’

Asking for help at work can be very challenging for anybody, let alone a person who has been suffering in silence due to an invisible disability, maybe for a very long time. For example, many adults are diagnosed with ADHD after burning out at work. It can feel embarrassing and vulnerable to admit this is because of something outside of our control.

I coach many people who tell me they can’t disclose their ADHD at work because they will be laughed at, or face problems with getting a promotion. I didn’t even realise an invisible disability could be ADHD, before I literally WORKED in mental health and disability law - how would most people find out?!

Due to stigma, these conversations can often happen when problem have already arisen, such as an employee being given a performance review, which causes even more sensitivity and panic. Given the anxiety, pressure and high stakes involved, it might feel impossible to take yourself out of the detail and focus on the broader picture, without worrying about being judged or complained about.  

2) ‘There was no pre-existing policy to deal with a judicial office-holder facing the challenges that were faced by the claimant. We accept and appreciate that the individuals within HMCTS were doing their level best in the circumstances to provide the claimant with what she needed. But in the absence of an appropriate policy or procedure they came up against significant obstacles in doing this.’

No employer wants to be accused of discrimination, but they might also not know much about how to handle invisible disabilities, and how to give a person ‘reasonable’ adjustments without shipping them off to Occupational Health (who might give a vague response, not working in the job themselves).

They might be also worried about the reaction of other employees, and how to handle confidential situations - but all that is needed is a sensible conversation about what is actually needed, listening, understanding, co-operation and trust. As more and more people feel empowered to ask for support in the workplace because of disadvantages they face in comparison to their colleagues, employers should have a reasonable adjustments policy in place.

Disability discrimination claims are the fastest-growing type in the employment tribunal, and there is the potential to award unlimited damages - having policies in place is an obvious answer to avoiding liability and needless stress for everybody involved down the line.

3) ‘The absence of an overall policy meant that nobody took ownership of the problem. It also meant that lines of accountability were unclear. Who had responsibility for taking the various steps required? If those steps were no taken (or not taken timeously) who should the claimant approach to have this rectified? Indeed, who should her leadership judges have been able to approach to rectify the problem?

Less than 1% of eligible people use the Government’s Access to Work fund which can pay for adjustments, including ADHD coaching. However, an employer might be worried about their own obligations in the meantime, given that the waiting period for applications is currently months-long - despite the average adjustment costing just £75 per person. Many do not involve any cost at all to an employer.

In professions or situations where there is no clear Human Resources team to go to, things become very complicated - just look at No.10 and their Christmas parties during lockdown. Who was there for any of the 100 employees to complain to? If a manager doesn’t understand their obligations to an employee asking for help, who are they supposed to turn to? In prestigious and ‘traditional’ industries like law, where 3% of lawyers have disclosed a disability compared to 24% of the working population, how is anybody supposed to trust that they will actually be given help, if this just ‘hasn’t been done’ before?

4) ‘It is this overall lack of coordination and pre-planning which has led to such a lengthy and problematic chronology of events in the claimant’s case.’

The answer is clear: make a reasonable adjustments policy. Have an external person you can reach out to if you like (hello!) who can mediate the conversation in a sensible and pragmatic way. Make it known across your organisation that employees who disclose a disability will be supported. Approach these conversations in a human way - not a legal way.

Once you’ve taken the ‘minimum’ step of possibly referring someone to Occupational Health - KEEP THE CONVERSATION OPEN. Even if one adjustment is put into place, an employee needs to know that they can talk to you about this on an ongoing basis, because it might not necessarily work. Often we don’t know what we need until we’re actually in a situation.

Why do this?

Reasonable adjustments simply support a person to do their job - they’re not ‘special’ or ‘favourable’ treatment - just the changes they deserve to be put on a level playing field with their colleagues. It doesn’t matter if they’re a new recruit or a CEO - they deserve to have the same support, understanding, and compassion.

Obviously, it’s ideal for an employer to follow the law, and to avoid stressful, expensive and drawn-out arguments over discrimination, especially when the majority of these situations can easily be resolved with a simple conversation. However, making adjustments for people to do their jobs properly will also boost overall productivity, employee morale, loyalty, and trust.

Embracing people being their authentic and whole selves at work can never end badly: it helps to have a more truly diverse, representative, and inclusive organisation.

How I can help

Having trained law firms like Lewis Silkin on invisible disabilities, published ‘ADHD: an A to Z’, and worked as a mental health & disability legal policy adviser, I am more than happy to support you with:

• raising awareness about invisible disabilities at work

• making a reasonable adjustments policy for your workplace

• supporting employees who disclose a disability & facilitating conversations to be pragmatic and co-operative.

Drop me a message to discuss this further - leannemaskell@hotmail.com.

Microsoft x ADHD: an A - Z

Microsoft recently invited me to speak to them about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, as I published ADHD: an A to Z earlier this year.

I was pretty excited to present their own research back to them, having recently come across a study from Microsoft Canada in 2015 which found that the average human attention span was shorter than that of a goldfish. It had decreased by a quarter in 13 years.

There’s a distinct lack of research on attention span since then, but Google recommends that websites should load within 1-2 seconds. When we talk about ‘attention’, it’s difficult to know what we mean - doing one task? Listening to someone when they’re speaking? Watching a tv show without looking at another screen?

How I see it, is how long we can choose to pay attention to something, to the exclusion of other thoughts. I recently tried to count to 10 and couldn’t do it without thinking of something else. I asked the audience at the presentation to do the same, who all had the same experiences. I would guess that the average attention span as of 2021 is probably 1-2 seconds (there’s been a distinct lack of research since 2015)!

So, if we all have an attention deficit, how do we classify someone as having ADHD?

As diagnosis rates of have skyrocketed over recent years, the conversation has become more confusing. Researchers have come up with a name for ADHD symptoms induced by technology - ‘Variable Attention Stimulus Trait’. When I was writing ADHD: an A to Z, I kept becoming distracted by whether I should open it up to everyone, second guessing whether ADHD was ‘real’, as the people around me constantly demonstrated signs - forever losing their keys or glasses, an inability to have a conversation without checking their phones, and double or triple-booking their free time with plans.

This continued until I read the NICE guidelines for professionals diagnosing ADHD which required the person to have '2 or more symptoms of hyperactivity/impulsivity and/or inattention which cause at least moderate psychological, social and/or educational or occupational impairment, and are pervasive, occurring in 2 or more important settings.’

In other words, to be medically diagnosed with ADHD, your life has to be pretty much falling apart in at least 2 or more areas. Given that the waiting times for assessment are up to 7 years in the UK on the NHS, and private options can cost well into the thousands, people who think they meet this criteria need some sort of support in the meantime. So the book stayed as it is, focused on ADHD rather than ‘attention’ more generally - though it could very easily be applied to many people who wouldn’t meet the diagnosis criteria.

Being diagnosed with ADHD won’t necessarily change much - learning about it will. My life became far worse for the first 6 months before I took control of my own treatment and insisted on being transferred to the NHS, but it’s a complex rollercoaster to be strapped into, especially when you throw in the opinions of others. Yes, everyone is on the attention deficit spectrum, but this doesn’t invalidate those who are diagnosed with the condition, just as much as it doesn’t invalidate those who aren’t. Ultimately, it’s just a label.

It overwhelms me to think about neurodiversity and the fact that we all have different brains in one way or another. The sheer amount of information on the internet means that it’s incredibly easy to self-diagnose and work yourself up into a place of believing you ‘have’ some kind of ‘condition’, ‘disorder’ or ‘illness’.

Typically, there’s no brain scans involved in diagnosing ADHD, as there would be if you had a tumour, for example. It is quite simply just one person’s opinion. Yes, they might be medically qualified and/or you may be paying them a lot of money. But at the end of the day, you are the person who knows you best. Having a 1-2 second attention span is probably pretty normal as of 2021, and it doesn’t mean you need to be diagnosed with ADHD.

If you find yourself unable to pay attention, start with the root of the problem. Remove the distractions (i.e technology). Sit. Breathe. Practice counting to 10. Repeat.

If you feel like you need help, get that help - and get off Google.

How to become less addicted to your phone

The average person is thought to spend approximately 4 hours on their phone per day, as of 2021. I wouldn’t be surprised if the real number is closer to 8 or 9 hours per day. Our phones give us the perfect respite from boredom, feelings or reality. It’s the numbing vortex available 24/7, from when you wake up in the middle of the night unable to sleep, to popping to the bathroom in the middle of the day. We take breaks from the big screens by going on the little ones, which are almost constantly tethered to our bodies like a 5th limb.

Depending on your situation, you might want to approach this by the below standards / screen-time:

• Level 1: spending slightly too much time on your phone. (0-4 hrs per day)

• Level 2: moderately addicted to your phone. (4-8 hours per day)

• Level 3: addicted to your phone. (8 hours+ per day)

A good test also is deciding not to use your phone for the day, and seeing how long you can go.

Hack your own attention with a plan

This means looking at how you use your phone and implementing a blockage plan, essentially your ‘weak spots’. Do you use your phone most when you’re in bed at night? Trying to find a song to play for the shower? Distracting yourself from work? Whatever it is, identify it and make an active plan to impose a barrier, for example, by not allowing yourself to take your phone into the bathroom. Humans are pretty simple, and if something is harder to do than easier (e.g having to walk upstairs to check social media), we will be less likely to do it out of boredom.

This might be easier to do if you track your screen-time and usage for a few days. It’s also important to have a plan in place for a replacement activity, such as fidget toys, writing in a diary, having wireless speakers or alarm clocks in place, and so on.

Sleep

Ideally, you want to have your phone out of the room you sleep in. Here’s a list of the potential solutions:

• Use your phone as your alarm? Buy an alarm clock like this.

• Use your phone before you go to sleep? Set a rule not to bring it into your bedroom at all - even a reminder notice on your door if necessary. You can set up podcasts / meditations etc. to play on a wireless speaker inside your room.

• Use your phone when you wake up at night? Don’t. It is creating a habit in your brain that you will use your phone if you can’t sleep: instead, try to think of an animal for each letter of the alphabet. If you still can’t sleep, write.

• Need to check your phone first thing in the morning? Make a conscious decision to do one other thing first. Even if it’s just drinking a glass of water. Then check it in a different room.

  Distractibility

• Have a phone-box: as in, a physical box that you can put your phone in, preferably as far away as possible from where you are sitting when you want to concentrate. Ideally, you’d put the phone in there for the majority of the day, but this is especially useful when you want to concentrate for a specific period. If you find that you keep going to get it, try a lockable version.

• Set office hours for your phone: for example, using your phone from 9am-5pm each day. Put your phone in the phone-box at all other times, setting yourself a reminder to turn it off at these times. Ideally, you want to have the first and last hour of your day free of your phone.

• Stop interruptions: Turn off the majority of your notifications (Settings - Notifications - switch off app by app). You may want to leave on specific ones to allow calls or messages from specific people to come through. Alternatively, you can keep your phone in ‘do not disturb’ mode for the majority of the time you use it.

• Tidy up your homepage: put all of your apps into a little folder. Within this folder, make 3 more: ‘tools’, ‘social’ and ‘utilities’. When you want to use them, scroll to the left and type in the name of the app you want.

• Give yourself conscious freedom: an app called ‘Freedom’ can block access to specific apps and websites across your phone and laptop, for specific times. It’s so good it was banned from the app store until a legal challenge saw it reinstated.

• Use a watch: or other single-use tool depending on your needs, such as a calculator.

Screen-time

• Set your background as a black image: basically, as boring or to the point as possible. You can also use the image above if you like (remember the days of buying phone wallpapers?!)

• Track your screen-time alongside other people: an app called ‘Moment’ tracks which apps are using most of your time, how long you’re spending on your phone, and lets you set up groups with other people you know as a very effective measure of accountability. You can also set up a screen time ‘widget’ to stay on your homepage and let you know how much time you’ve spent on it so far that day.

• Delete ‘junk food apps’: the ones that use most of your time. By using your internet browser on your laptop, this means that you’re much more conscious about how you’re spending your time on these apps and can’t be lured in by mobile-only features such as notifications.

• Block websites on your phone: yes, you can also use the in-built screen-time, but if you’re anything like me, you’ll just pop in the lock-code and continue using your app. By blocking websites under the ‘content & privacy restrictions - web content - limit adult websites’ settings on safari, you can actively stop yourself from automatically going onto the ones that provide effective distractions or ‘guilty pleasures’.

• Make your phone black and white: this can be found under (settings - general - accessibility - display accommodations - colour filter). It’s quite amazing to see the differences in the digital textures of buttons when they’re in this mode!

You can also read ADHD: an A to Z (yes, even if you don’t have ADHD), which is an explanation of how to control your attention in all areas of your life to live how YOU want to live.

why I wrote a book about ADHD

Last month, I published a book about Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. I wrote about 95% of it in about 3 weeks last year, after finally changing my GP surgery (a mere 6 months after moving house). My new doctor told me that if I wanted to change my medication dosage, then I’d need to go on the NHS waiting list to go to the ‘ADHD Centre’ again.

I felt the nervous pit of anxiety in my stomach as I tried to mentally predict what would happen if/when I became used to my current level of medication and needed to move up to the highest dose, and what would happen after then.. but pulled myself back into the present to ask how long that would be.

‘7 years’.

I laughed almost as much as when a psychiatrist first told me that the ‘quirks’ of my personality that had developed over the years since I had graduated from university were actually ADHD, not any of the other medical conditions that I had begrudgingly self-diagnosed myself with. I didn’t think ADHD was ‘real’, and definitely not serious.

spolier alert: ADHD is a real, very serious, neurodevelopmental condition

After confirming that the doctor had said, yes, there were medical waiting lists for people to see doctors that were up to SEVEN YEARS LONG, I asked how people survive in the meantime. She didn’t have an answer. I thought of the particularly bad year I had experienced until I finally admitted there was some sort of problem I didn’t have control over happening inside of me. I would wake up every day devastated to still be alive and to have to spend another day being me - feeling like my brain was permanently on fire became an odd sort of (very depressing) normality.

That went away when I was diagnosed, though the diagnosis process itself was some sort of real-life horror-movie specifically curated for the ADHD mind. Navigating your way through the shame of admitting you have a problem and then trying to extract information about what this process is ‘supposed’ to be like on the internet is hell. I was too afraid to ask any doctor for help for years, because I was convinced that the natural next step would be being sectioned in a mental health hospital.

So is trying to navigate private psychiatrists, costing £400 per session, and asking people who have ‘known you throughout your life’ to answer questions about you. It’s an incredibly shame inducing experience to have to admit that you are incapable of living normally to the people around you, many of whom don’t want to admit that you have ever suffered, in case it reflects badly on themselves. It’s horrible trying to tell whether ADHD is ‘real’ or not, trying to understand whether it’s just being ‘distracted’ or whether you should indeed take the medication that is being prescribed to you by a medical professional, despite it costing so much money and the people around you telling you that it’s ‘speed’.

how my brain feels (really quite painful and difficult to pull apart)

This is all hard enough, but even more difficult when you’re just trying to wade through the shame of existing, feeling like everyday is turning up to an exam that you’ve studied really hard for, but the exam questions are all on a different topic - to then motivate yourself to get help. My brain feels like carrying around a school class of children, but the teacher’s left the room, and just trying to get them all to shut up for JUST ONE SECOND takes every ounce of willpower I have. So there isn’t a whole left over to navigate doctors and therapists, medication and illnesses. There’s just the Googling ‘AM I GOING CRAZY’ 20 times per day, and confirming to yourself that yes, you probably are. Then being distracted by something else.

So, having been able to get help and finally have the teacher come back into the room (where like magic, the children all fall into submission), I thought ‘someone should do something about that’. So I wrote a book. The words poured out of me, such as how to get diagnosed without waiting for 7 years / falling out with everybody you know / becoming convinced that maybe the psychiatrist is trying to financially exploit you, and then transfer over to the NHS so you don’t have to pay £300 A MONTH FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE TO BE ABLE TO EXIST LIKE A ‘NORMAL’ HUMAN BEING WHO DOES NOT HAVE 5 SIRENS BLARING IN THEIR MIND AT ANY ONE TIME.

In true ADHD style, I became ‘hyper-focused’. It was all I could pay attention to or talk about for a few weeks, finishing up to chapter W, then I went on holiday. I did not pick up the book again for 10 months, except to send it to people who messaged me about ADHD occasionally who all told me that I needed to publish it. This is what ADHD is. It’s not always a ‘deficit’ but more of an inability to control what your mind does: it’s the kids ruling the school, deciding what subjects they’re going to do that day. They might be brilliant at it, but then they’ll ditch it just before getting the certificate for another one, leaving a long list of unfinished projects and ashes of dented self-esteem in their midst.

Me on holiday, completely forgetting about the book I had spent the last 3 weeks of my life obsessing over to the exclusion of everything else for the foreseeable future.

It means that you can pay lots of attention to the things you’re interested in, but NONE AT ALL to the things that you’re not - even to the point of literally falling asleep when you’re checking out (I used to do this all the time in class). It sounds like common sense, but imagine if your brain just stopped playing ball when you tried to make it do the things you don’t ‘want’ to do. It feels like someone else has control of your decisions, which is pretty scary when you’re strapped in the chair and forced to watch, eyes sellotaped open.

Luckily, the spark came back when I started seeing an ADHD coach. Actually, when I found out that there is Government funding to help people with disabilities (including ADHD) get / stay in work, including job coaches. I literally couldn’t believe I had spent so many years obsessing over how to do this, and there had been support there all along: people needed to know about this.

That little spark of passion (and my brilliant coach) managed to help me get the manuscript over the finish line and into a real life book. That’s the amazing thing about ADHD - a little goes a long way, and we are REALLY QUITE ENTHUSIASTIC when we are inspired - we can get things done that would take other people years. Our ‘dysregulated’ emotions mean that we can quite easily forget about the life-destroying shame we’d been feeling just the night before, and pick ourselves up to try again. Persistence is the key to success, just like those who are actually ‘crazy’ enough to think and act differently without stopping to think about it. We’re a creative, compassionate and extremely courageous bunch, us ADHD-ers.

Refusing to accept ourselves, whether we have ADHD or not, means that we ultimately are procrastinating by beating ourselves up for being who we are. This mass wastage of energy could be diverted into yourself, if you started working with what you’ve been given, rather than against it.

If I had stopped trying to force myself to try and live a life that I ultimately didn’t want to live, then I would have been able to enjoy my early 20s, instead of wishing them away. I won’t ever get that time back, and we won’t ever get this moment back: do you want to spend it hating yourself, or enjoying the ride?

Please read it here.