Good or bad you have ADHD habits. And, how organized you are is driven by your habits. Is you world calm or chaotic? Organized or cluttered? Look back at your ADHD habits. They matter.
Let me explain a bit more what I mean by ADHD habits. Make your bed every morning? That’s a habit. Don’t make your bed? That’s a habit, too.
In a nut shell, your life will be easier when you add awareness to your world and pay attention to your habits. Notice you habits. Do they support you or sabotage you? Make your life easier or more stressful.
How Awareness Supports Good ADHD Habits
Awareness is a key part of making ADHD easier to live with. It’s especially important to keep you from veering away from your habits.
It’s a frustrating thing about ADHD. Habits can vanish overnight. Even solid ones.
One day you’ve got a supportive habit, like planning your day, that you’ve been practicing for months. The next morning you seem to forget all about it. That’s why staying aware of what you’re doing and when matters.
Why do habits vanish if you have ADHD? I don’t know. Stay tuned and I’ll let you know as soon as I figure it out!
Why Our Sink was Full of Dirty Dishes
Recently, one of my supportive ADHD habits vanished. In a flash life got more cluttered and difficult. Fortunately I’m on constant alert for disorganization. That awareness helped me find my ADHD habit again.
If you’ve read my story about getting organized, you know how once upon a time I was very messy and disorganized. Some might even say I was an incredible slob. Not to the world, of course. I was what I call a hidden messie person. The outside world thought I was organized. Only those who lived with me knew the truth of my clutter.
Yet, even in my former disorganized days, I relied upon one supportive habit. I always did the dishes. The kitchen counters could be cluttered with papers and such. But, the dishes were washed and put away.
Where did this good organizing habit come from? From my parents. And, I thank them for it. Growing up, anyone who left as much as a dirty knife in the sink heard about it. For some reason, when I moved out on my own, this supportive habit stuck. I’ve since been a raving fan of no dishes in the sink.
Until recently, that is. Somehow, seemingly overnight, my strong dish washing habit vanished. I found myself soaking dishes all day because “I was too busy to wash dishes”. Leaving a sink full of dirty dishes to wash before starting dinner is NOT a supportive ADHD habit!
Breaking That Bad ADHD Habit
It wasn’t until I noticed this new bad ADHD habit and how it was snarling up my life that I could do something about it.
Yes, I have been busy. That’s true. Business is bustling. Private coaching clients, the ADHD Success Club, and everything between. It’s invigorating and fun. Yet, too busy to take a minute to rinse a dish? Really Dana?
It became too easy to convince myself I was too busy to wash dishes. I had to stack them in the sink and dash back to my home office.
Thankfully, my awareness finally kicked in. The messy kitchen drains my energy and erodes my self-esteem. Yikes! Leaving dirty dishes has become a new bad ADHD habit.
I’m ditching this bad habit of soaking the dishes. From this moment on I will wash the dishes after each meal.
How will I remember my new good habit? I find my Visualize Neat technique miraculous for building new ADHD organizing habits like this.
If you want to learn how you can Visualize Neat, that’s one of the useful tools organizing you’ll learn in my Organized for Life program.
Don’t lose your battle with disorganization. Good or bad, your ADHD habits matter. Pay attention. Support the life you want to have. Living with ADHD doesn’t have to be so hard!
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Thank you for a very good post. I found it quite useful and will check your site often. Regards Cherry K
Thank you, Cherry! That’s nice to know. Warmly, Dana