Uni-tasking to control ADHD

In today’s world where we are victims of information overload on a daily basis (facebook, twitter, rss feeds, etc, etc) ADHD is something that many people suffer from almost daily. For some of us it is mild, for others it is quite severe. I was diagnosed with ADHD quite late in my life. Several months back my roommate commented that my morning routine, no matter what I was working on was a multi-tasking fire drill. Not surprisingly, this wasn’t exactly effective and it increased my overall level of anxiety. After school ended, the complete lack of structure in my life made it even more challenging to control my  ADHD. But, after starting my blog, I was forced to start coming up with a structure and I realized that uni-tasking was essential to controlling my ADHD.

3 Signs of information overload

More than 5 Tabs on a browser : If you are anything like me and read and comment on many blogs it’s not uncommon to have upwards of 7 tabs open in a web browser. Realistically we were never meant to take in this much information at once.  When you do this, you may increase the quantity of information taken in, but you decrease the quality of your retention. Somewhere I heard the analogy of sand in an hour glass and the notion of one grain of sand at a time to describe how we should retain information.

More than 5 applications running at the same time: Having multiple applications open is another sign that you are suffering from information overload. If you are at work and you have a browser, word, powerpoint, excel, some social media applications, and whatever else you can pile on, then it’s likely that information overload is decreasing your efficiency.  Although we’ve made massive advances in technology that allow multiple applications to run at the same, ironically this reduces our efficiency.

Switching multiple times in the course of an hour between tasks: I have to admit there are times when I’m notorious for doing this. I’ll switch between a word document, facebook, email, and anything else I have opened. That’s why running only one or two applications at a time is a good way to control information overload. Make note of how often you are switching between applications in the course of an hour. If you are switching between more than 5 applications and you’ve done it more than 5 times, it’s a good sign of information overload.

5 tips to help you uni-task and control ADHD

1. Setup a task list: This is kind of a no brainer, but a to do list is a pretty good way to keep you on track. Amazingly enough a paper and pen list was one of the most popular forms of to do lists according to Lifehacker readers. My personal preference is an application for the mac (ironically called Anxiety), which is a simple checklist. You can create a simple task list, and check of items when you are done. It even allows you to group your tasks if you want.

2. Go in order: If you stick to the order in your checklist then you’ll get things done much faster. I’ve noticed when I go out of order on my checklist I tend to let my mind wander over to the other items on the list.

3. Do one thing at a time: This is really the whole point of this post. I try to stick to working only in one application at a time. At the recommendation of Leo Babuta from Zen Habits I downloaded WriteRoom, which allows for distraction free writing. I try also to ignore any chat requests while I’m doing work in a particular application. When you start a task, decide that you will work on only that for some period of time.

4. Shut down email/Check Twice a Day: Depending on the nature of your work, you can probably get away with checking email twice a day. I receive about 40+ emails a day, some of which are notifications, some newsletters, and others responses to emails I’ve sent. If I keep my mail client open, every time I receive an email I get distracted and  check to see what I just received.

5. Enforce Time Limits: One of the most ironic things I learned in business school was that when people had too much time they always procrastinated. When they didn’t have enough their efficiency level went up tremendously. Give yourself a time limit for your tasks. I usually give myself one hour for writing blog posts, one hour for comments, and another hour for anything related to social networks.

By putting some controls on the information you take in, you can curb the symptoms of ADHD which are likely increasing with each generation thanks to all our technological/social media advances.

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