Just Do It
Ari Tuckman, Ph.D., MBA

Woody Allen once said that 90% of success in life is just showing up. This is especially true when it comes to all the mundane tasks of life: paying bills, organizing, filing, cleaning, etc. These are the sorts of tasks that we just need to do on a regular basis, before moving on to more interesting things. None of these tasks are especially hard, in and of themselves, but can cause big problems if they aren't done.

Unfortunately, people with ADHD tend to have great difficulty with consistently completing these sorts of activities. They may do them sometimes, but not often enough; or they do them, but too late. After a lifetime of these struggles, many of these ADHD adults add a layer of dread and avoidance to these tasks, so they are even less likely to do them. As a result, I often work with clients to make these tasks into less of a big deal-just show up and do them. No, they will never be any more enjoyable, but they still need to be done. And with a bit of momentum behind them, perhaps the ADHD adult will feel less dread about continuing doing the tasks. Here are some pointers to help you get going:

• Commit to do at least ten minutes of the activity-maybe you will keep going once you're rolling.
• Build in rewards for completing the boring tasks by allowing yourself to do something more enjoyable (guilt free).
• Designate at least one time per week where you tackle some of these mundane tasks-and put up a sign to remind yourself.
• Rotate between a few different boring activities, so the variety provides some stimulation.

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Reprinted with permission of Journal of Attention Disorders, this column contains abstracts of recent research studies provided by Sam Goldstein, Ph.D., University of Utah Medical School and editor of the Journal of Attention Disorders.

Bazar, K.A., Yun, A.J., Lee, B.Y., Daniel, S.M., & Doux, J.D. (2006). Obesity and ADHD may present different manifestations of a common environmental over-sampling syndrome: A model for revealing mechanistic overlap among cognitive metabolic and inflammatory disorders. Medical Hypotheses, 66, 263-269.

These authors suggest that increases in ADHD and obesity may share a common linkage, suggesting that these two conditions represent different manifestations of the same underlying dysfunction, a phenomena they refer to as environmental over-sampling syndrome. Over-supply of information in the form of nutritional content and sensory content may independently pre-dispose to both obesity and ADHD. The authors suggest that the pathogenic mechanisms of these conditions may overlap, such that nutritional excess contributes to ADHD and cognitive hyper-stimulation contributes to obesity. The overlapping effects of medications provides further evidence towards the existence of shared etiologic pathways. Metabolism and cognition may represent parallel systems of intelligence and over-sampling of content may constitute the source of parallel dysfunctions. The authors suggest that the emerging association between psychiatric and metabolic disorders suggest a fundamental biologic link between these two systems. Dysbaric conditions such as insulin resistence, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, ADHD, depression, psychosis, sleep apnea, inflammation, autism and schizophrenia may operate through common pathways and treatments used exclusively for one of these conditions may prove beneficial for the others.

MyADHD.com and Addvisor.com offer a free ADHD related teleconference on the second Wednesday of each month.

We are taking the summer off so our next teleconference will be scheduled in September 2007. Stay tuned for details.