Faster Than Normal: Turbocharge Your Focus, Productivity, and Success with the Secrets of the ADHD Brain

by Peter Shankman

Figuring out what they all have in common, and fixing that commonality, allows you to shut off the flow of water before it drips down the sink and ruins your kitchen tiles.

SQUIRREL!: Learn to do an “intake evaluation” on yourself to find out and defuse the trigger ASAP.

See, when you’re ADHD, you want to “fix” things, because you want them to be perfect. We’re usually terrible at explaining things to people, but we’re great at pushing them out of the way and doing it for them ourselves. (Come on, how many times has someone asked you to teach them how to do something on their phone, but instead of teaching them, you just take their phone and do it for them?

But I’d rather prevent a trigger from happening than have to apologize because I was rude, or wrong, or whatever. I should have focused on how I could have reacted to her before it turned into a major incident.

SQUIRREL!: When you’re ADHD, one of the most beneficial things you can do for yourself, as well as for others, is to live your life “one minute in the future.” This means you’re constantly on the lookout for the effect that things you’re doing right now will have one minute, five minutes, an hour, a day into the future. (People in AA meetings sometimes refer to this as “playing the tape forward,” which is a wonderful tool for those with ADHD as well.)

Personal triggers can be dangerous for many reasons, the least of which is that we often don’t realize we’re being triggered until it’s too late, and we’re already in the throes of it. I’ve found that one of the best ways to prevent triggers is to avoid being placed in situations that stress you out.

Know Your Triggers (and Avoid Them) Stress in our personal lives usually occurs because we’re in situations that let our ADHD take root and flourish. I encourage you to figure out what in your life does that. What situations in your life cause your ADHD to bloom? Is it a messy room? Is it dishes left in the sink?

The same thing is true with deadlines, whether work or personal. If they’re hanging over your head, they’re all you’re going to focus on, at the expense of everything (and everyone) else in your life. And the worst part? You might not even realize you’re focusing on whatever’s hanging over your head. You might truly try to be present. But you won’t be, and the person (or persons) you’re with will notice, possibly before you do.

Just because you’re not thinking about that thing that’s bothering you doesn’t mean it’s not manifesting itself in your brain as something else. You could be focusing on the thing bothering you, or it could just be something shiny—maybe looking up how many times the F-word appeared in the movie Pulp Fiction (265, by the way). Doesn’t matter. Having something hanging over our heads prevents us from being present. So focus on getting what’s in your head out of your head, by getting it done.

SQUIRREL!: “Soon” isn’t an actual due date. If you’re ADHD, always, always, always request a deadline. Deadlines are actualities, and actualities allow people with ADHD to plan their hyperfocus accordingly and get their work done on time, every time. This goes for your personal life as well as your professional life.

See, ADHD people simply love to be able to start a project, get it done, and file it away. “I have to do this thing, I’ll do this thing, this thing is done, I don’t have to think about this thing anymore.” It’s the same reason we need to feel heard in an argument: if we don’t feel like you heard us, we can’t file what we just said and move on to the next point, so we’ll raise our voices and keep talking. It’s a self-defeating process, because the more we feel like we’re not being heard, the more we’ll raise our voices, and the more you won’t want to interact with us—which of course will cause us to raise our voices more. It’s also why, counterintuitively, we can actually do relatively well on a test as long as we know what’s going to be on it. We can study it, learn it, spit it out, and forget it. We like to finish things NOW.

SQUIRREL!: If you have the choice between finishing something now or leaving it for later, always finish it now. Finishing things now will allow you to “cross it off” in your mind and move on.

It took me awhile to make the connection—ADHD, impulsiveness, all those things that benefit me in the real world can be sent entirely to the negative when I drink.

The only questionable thing I ever did when I was drunk was to buy many domain names. (As of today, I have close to four hundred or so domain names that seemed like such a good idea at the time.) So while I “didn’t have a problem with alcohol,” I clearly did, and just didn’t see it, because I wasn’t like those “people who have problems with alcohol” that you hear about. Like anyone who’s ADHD, we’re freaking AMAZING at convincing anyone in the world of almost anything. Unfortunately, we’re also really good at convincing ourselves of almost anything. So the next day, when I’d wake up tired, cranky, dehydrated, or all three, I’d convince myself that the best way to stop feeling like that was to order three grilled cheese, tomato, and bacon sandwiches, and because I was my own boss, work from home that day. Obviously, this wasn’t the right answer; the right answer was not to drink so much. And I’d tell myself that, too. Over and over. So the next time I went out, I’d make sure to have only one drink.

What are your nonhuman triggers? What substances, beverages, or even foods can lead you astray? And what’s the best way to eliminate them?

SQUIRREL!: Everyone has different triggers that result in either firing up their ADHD or causing them to do things that are self-destructive in some way. Focusing on what those are and learning strategies to avoid them can be a game changer, as it was for me, Adam, and many, many other people.

Anti-Trigger Strategy: Write down how you feel when you’ve given in to a trigger.

Understanding why you make bad decisions, and how it feels when you do, is a great step in changing your habits to avoid them in the future.

Anti-Trigger Strategy: Find other ways to continue the high.

Amazing how it always comes back to dopamine, huh? In the genetic lottery of life, we’ve won big-time, as long as we learn how to master our gifts. ADHD means we need more dopamine than a normal person. We can get that through negative means, or we can find positive ways to do it. Your goal is to set up your personal and professional life in such a way that you can avoid the negative things that can trip those triggers, while focusing on the positive ways of getting the chemicals our brains so sorely crave.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what you do. It doesn’t matter how you’re perceived as “different,” or what people think of how you make your life work for you. What matters is how you handle yourself, how you’re feeling, and how you’re able to focus on changing yourself for the better, not other people. Always remember that.

I hope this book is helping you realize that you’re not crazy, you’re not disabled. Quite the opposite. You’re awesome.

Having a faster than normal brain is responsible for a lot of my success, if not all of it. Thinking differently helps, as does realizing that what other people think of me doesn’t matter, as long as I’m happy with myself.

Like most people with ADHD, I’m never satisfied with achieving a goal. I constantly need to improve that goal.

SQUIRREL!: Using apps and other tools at your disposal isn’t “cheating,” and it’s not being “weak.” Quite the opposite—it’s recognizing that any edge you can give yourself to be more in control of your fast brain is a benefit.

A Clean and Simple Environment Is Mandatory

Keeping your home clean is also massively important. I’m beyond overwhelmed and depressed when my house is a mess. I simply can’t focus, and it causes a severe drop in my already low dopamine levels. Me with lower-than-normal dopamine levels = a completely unproductive me. A non-ADHD person may see a rug that needs vacuuming, dishes in the sink, or clothes that need to be washed as minor annoyances that can be dispensed with quickly. For me, and many others who are faster than normal, these same things can bring a potentially productive day to a screeching halt. Paralysis sets in—sometimes you can’t find the energy to clean the house, but you can’t seem to get anything done because your space is so messy. I know a lot of fellow ADHD people who feel the same way.

It’s so difficult to remove emotion from objects when they are your own. It’s because we get caught up in what we wanted to achieve with that item or what it was a symbol for.

Organization and cleanliness are crucial for the ADHD person to succeed. A neat environment, one in which you can locate things you need, helps you be more productive—whether that means focusing or letting your mind wander and create. For George, his strategy for being the best he can be involved spending an hour, with help from his wife (with a lot of help from his wife), tossing out every item in his bathroom he did not use.

Those who are faster than normal have a tendency to collect things, sometimes unconsciously.

Possessions can weigh us down physically and psychologically. Think of how easy it would be to keep your place neat and functional if you reduced its contents by half or even by a third. As an added bonus, the more you decide to reduce, the more you can give away!

SQUIRREL!: Outsource as much of your cleaning and decluttering as you can. You’ll find that there are tons of companies that will take your old stuff and digitize it into newer, much smaller stuff. Find out what you can digitize and no longer need to worry about. Digitize, donate, discard . . . freedom.

Organize Your Life Around Deadlines

Let’s face it, we’re never going to be done taking care of everything else in our lives, so “soon” is not a reality. “Soon” is BS. “Soon” simply does not exist in the ADHD-affected person’s mind. SQUIRREL!: I have a deadline for everything I do, every single thing I do. My friends, you should, too.

Once I have a deadline, I can work backward from the goal to create a plan of action to reach the deadline.

SQUIRREL!: The more you can eliminate the need to think first thing in the morning by doing things the night before, the easier it’ll be to start your day like a boss.

While the zigzags are great when you’re trying to be creative, when I just need to get something accomplished, I have strategies to avoid them.

I one-hundred-percent embrace the necessity of having assistants who are involved in every aspect of my life, as well as any technology that can help me manage that which I’m not good at managing otherwise. Google Calendar is my friend.

Once I tell Alexa to shut off her wake-up alarm and tell me the weather, I can ask her for my schedule, because I’ve synced her with Google Calendar. I do this before I go to bed, and as soon as I wake up.

ChrisDucker.com.

SQUIRREL!: In the end, zigzagging is great, and can push your creativity through the roof—as long as you have someone else who can walk your straight line when need be.

As much as possible, I try to keep my meetings no longer than twenty minutes. Sometimes that’s not doable, but most of the time it is. I tell the people with whom I’m meeting that we’ll have twenty minutes, and we’ll start on time. This helps keep my day flowing. The worst thing for me is getting behind schedule on meeting days. Since I have so many, one overrun can throw off my entire day.

SQUIRREL!: Stick to a routine as much as you can. It lets you focus more of your attention on the creative side of your day and think less about the routine itself.

Maximize Long-Burst and Short-Burst Downtimes

(For a great book on the beauty of plane flight and its amazing effect on the mind, check out Skyfaring, written by a pilot, Mark Vanhoenacker. He gives a very cool perspective about life on a plane.)

Figure out what reboots you and use your brief windows of downtime to do it.

If you’re the smartest person in the room, then my friend, your ass is in the wrong room. You need to have a trusted group of people with whom you can talk, take advice, and complain when the need arises. I don’t care how you find these people, but make sure that one or more of them are smarter than you, one or more are older, one or more are younger, and one or more are not as smart (so that you can give back).

ADHD people are always trying to cross the finish line. It’s what we do, it’s what productivity means to us. So with that knowledge, every time you face a new challenge, simply ask yourself this: What is the essential problem each obligation, task, job, challenge, or desire represents, and how can you solve it? Break it down into manageable pieces, employ the strategies you’ve learned that you know will help you do it, and get it done. Whatever it is that helps you get to the finish line, that’s what you need to do. Remember the great adage: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

SQUIRREL!: If you fall in love with a program that truly helps you with your life, try to find the money to upgrade to the paid version. Not only is it good karma to pay back the developers, but you’ll get the latest upgrades and usually be first in the queue if you need support.

Scrolling is not our friend. So let’s avoid that trigger by putting everything on one screen.