As the owner of an ADHD brain, one of the biggest challenges I face is balancing the need to build routines in order to be productive with the need for new and novel mental stimulation. You see, I know that I need to build routines. I also know that maintaining routines in the face of constant distraction is hard. And, to be honest, I find that conflict somewhat interesting.

How it All Began#

Back well before I realized that I may have ADHD and before I sought out validation of that suspicion I recognized that about once a year, usually around February, I would become highly dissatisfied with my work environment and end up changing jobs. I initially attributed this to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). SAD, of course, is the seasonal depression that supposedly comes from the lack of sunshine during the winter months. Given that during January and February of each year I usually went to work in the dark, worked inside a building with no natural light, and then drove home in the dark, that certainly seemed a reasonable conclusion. That conclusion was further supported when I took a job that had me driving around town all day, going in and out of buildings, to service computers. During that time I didn’t seem to be affected by the depression in the same way.

But that didn’t seem to completely explain some of my behaviors or my mental and emotional state. I always felt like I was in some level of upheaval. I was never ‘happy’. Some of my actions were rash and unpredictable. It also didn’t explain a lot of my childhood experiences of feeling out of the loop of what was going on the classroom or among my peers. I vividly recall spending two days testing with my principal. He determined that my behavior in the classroom – being disruptive, uncooperative at times, failing to do assigned work, etc – was the result of boredom. Apparently, he administered some kind of intelligence test and determined that I was, in fact, highly intelligent and, thus, “ahead” of the class. This, he believed resulted in me being bored in the classroom.

Looking back, I believe he drew the only conclusion available to him; ADHD hadn’t yet been recognized by the medical profession, that wouldn’t occur until the late 1960s or early 1970s. And it would be many years later before it came into common usage. An elementary school principal, even had he been trained and up-to-date in the field of child psychology, could not possibly have identified my behavior as ADHD, though in retrospect, it clearly was.

Returning to more recent, adult times (see how ADHD works?), when I finally began to suspect ADHD might be the culprit I sought out a diagnosis. Was I? Well, according to the psychologist I very likely did have ADHD though he believed I had developed adequate compensatory mechanism. Now, at the time I sought out this diagnosis ADHD in the adult was only becoming a recognized concern. Most professionals believed that children “grew out” of ADHD as the aged. Today we know that this isn’t true. And those compensatory mechanisms? Well, yes, there are some, but they’re not nearly as effective as I think he believed them to be. I did a very poor job of describing my experiences to him. When you only know one way of being, how do you describe the “abnormal” when that abnormal is what is normal to you?

So, given a diagnosis of sorts I set out to learn more. I am, to this day, still reading and learning about my brain and how it works and how to manage it effectively.

Moving on to that Conflict …#

A common recommendation for helping folks with ADHD brains wrangle their constantly rambling thoughts into some sort of reasonable order is to create routines. Build habits. Always losing your keys? Put them in the same place each time. Always forgetting things? Carry a notebook and write down everything you need to remember. (That works really well, except you always tend to forget where you put your notebook – or pen.) And there a host of other suggestions to help you manage your brain. And for some people these tricks apparently work.

For me, routines tend to have variable effects. In general, I tend to push back against routines because they are confining. They get in the way of the pursuit of new and novel experiences. Routines would prevent me from, for example, spending hours digging through websites to learn new things about some esoteric topic or testing a new piece of software. Routine would demand that I sideline those activities for later and focus on the work at hand. And my brain doesn’t like that.

And, where I do encounter routines, and become comfortable with them, I get bored and need new stimulation. That seemed to be the case with my nearly annual job hopping. Once I’d gotten the routines of one job down, I needed to move on in order to get that hit of dopamine that comes with new experiences and learning new things. (Learning, by the way, seems to be, at least for me, a positive side effect of ADHD, though achieving it is not without its own challenges.)

On the other hand, I sometimes welcome routine and struggle to depart from it. For example, when I first began to work from home I developed routines that drove my day. I knew what I was going to do and when I was going to do it. And, as a result, I was pretty effective at my job. I got stuff done, often with minimal distraction! That also allowed me to get the bulk of my “must do” work done early in the day. I dreaded and avoided anything that disrupted that routine. Now I’m not saying that I rigidly adhered to it. I would often stray in small ways, but generally I stuck pretty closely to that routine. When I didn’t, I would often forget things and leave things undone.

Looking back, I’ve begun to realize that I am most resistant to routine when it is forced upon me. School set my routines and I pushed back against that. I’ve had managers who tried to set my routines and I pushed back. When the organization or manager tried to change how I do things (maybe the procedure changed) I would push back at least until I understood the rationale and could see for myself the benefit of the change.

When I am able to set my routines based on what I perceive to be important, when I am able to set the priorities for my day or my life, I am able to create and adhere to those routines fairly easily. And I’ve noted that they tend to evolve on their own over time. For example, I am writing a blog post every day. No one has mandated that, I do it for myself. The choice to do it was mine. I don’t always do at the same time every day, though I try. But it gets done every day.

I suspect that I am not alone with this struggle. the ADHD brain is a curious thing that requires a lot of new stimuli to keep it engaged and, at the same time, it needs routine to help it be productive and to gain the most benefit from those new stimuli. It’s a tough balancing act and a constant struggle. At least in my experience, though, it is one that can be achieved, so long as the routines needed are generated from within and not externally imposed.