Building My ADHD Toolbox: A Review of How to ADHD

Building My ADHD Toolbox: A Review of How to ADHD

By: Julia Daley

When my copy of Jessica McCabe’s How to ADHD: An Insider’s Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It) arrived, I was so excited. I sat at my desk, opened it up to the first page, and didn’t move from my seat until I’d finished reading the whole book. That’s the funny thing with hyperfocus: hours had passed me by without my noticing it at all. Honestly, I can’t really say that I read the book the first time I opened it, so much as I devoured it. It was as if, for the first time, there was something that could help fill the gnawing hunger inside of me that I’d never even realized I’d been enduring for so long. 

I’ve been a fan of McCabe’s YouTube Channel—How to ADHD for a while now, and her friendly, relatable voice translates clearly into text. Sometimes I felt I could hear her reading aloud in my head. The book is a compelling mixture of anecdote, science, and practical tips that is structured in an easy-to-digest way. I find myself regularly pulling it off my bookshelf to thumb through again and again and again, all so that I can continue building upon and refining my ADHD toolbox.

A photograph of an assortment of tools lined up against a dark background.

The ADHD toolbox

In each chapter of How to ADHD, after McCabe goes over a particular aspect of the ADHD experience (like hyperfocus, executive function, motivation, memory, etc.), there is always a section devoted to introducing tools that readers can try and add to their toolbox. Each chapter typically features a few different tools with different suggestions for how to implement them into your life.

As anyone who has put together a physical toolbox can tell you, you don’t want to just buy a bunch of fancy tools and throw them into the toolbox without first knowing: a) what works best for you and b) what you’ll actually want to use them for. McCabe advises readers to begin gradually ( pp. xii ~ xiii), with just a few tools, and to reflect on not only why you want to try using a particular ADHD tool, but also how long you plan to try it out for (with the understanding that it can take time to get used to an unfamiliar tool and apply it to your own life). With patience, though, the toolbox will slowly fill with tried-and-true strategies that can be used to better support the ADHD brain.

What’s in my toolbox?

So kind of you to ask! It’s still a work in progress, but my toolbox has come a long way from the maladaptive strategies I’d been haphazardly deploying prior to receiving my diagnosis. Here’s a few of my favorite tools, in no particular order, that I learned how to use from How to ADHD:

Planning out the steps

Before tackling a task, it helps me if I visualize in advance what each step will be (p. 60). Taking the time to plan out what I’ll do first, then second, then third, and so on is surprisingly helpful. For one, it breaks projects down into smaller, more manageable steps. Also, it helps me make sure I’m prepared and have everything on hand that I need to complete the project with as little friction as possible—there’s nothing worse than being interrupted part-way through with the horrifying realization that I’m missing some key component that I need. I’ve long since learned about myself that an interrupted project often becomes an unfinished project. However, if I know how I will get from A to B and the things I need to reach my goal, I’m much more likely to not only begin the task but also successfully finish it.

Compensating for my working memory

My working memory isn’t the biggest out there, and it gets overwhelmed easily. I’ve been learning to reduce my reliance on it and find ways to compensate for its weaknesses (pp. 203 ~ 205). One thing that helps is jotting down key points in a discussion, especially the things I need to do later, so that I can return to my notes to guide my work later. Such a simple thing to do, yet it’s hard to remember to take notes in the middle of things, so I’m developing my “jot this down” reflex and getting more consistent at it. On a similar note, I’ve been trying to make better checklists, ones that break down projects into their smaller steps so I can track my progress as I complete things. Of course, that does mean I need to remember to check things off my checklists as I finish them… which I don’t always do. Still, the more of a habit it becomes, the more reliable I become at using my checklists properly.

A photograph of a desert hare crouched behind a spiny bush.
A photograph by the author of an actual rabbit (desert hare) that she "chased" with her camera, from the Desert Botanical Gardens in Phoenix, Arizona.

Chasing rabbits

I like to think of my life story as a series of rabbit holes I’ve dove into, scattered about a field, with no particular rhyme or reason connecting them together. It takes a lot of self-discipline and mental effort to resist the temptation to chase after another rabbit that runs by me. However, hard experience has taught me that if I follow the rabbit to the bottom of its hole, I will have lost hours and hours and hours of time that could have been spent more productively. I expend significant mental effort on self-regulating to avoid exploring new rabbit holes, and that restraint takes its own mental toll on me. It turns out that chasing rabbits is what my brain does to relax, and sometimes I need to let it loose and run around as far and as deep as it wants (p. 69). Then, I feel more refreshed. I’ve been working on building time into my life and routines where I can just let my mind wander wherever it wants to go.

A photograph of a bee landing on a large, pink flower.
Another photo by the author, probably taken at the Herb Garden in Kobe, Japan.

Making honey

I really liked McCabe’s bumblebee analogy (p. 182). She writes that we should personify our brains as little bumblebees, busily buzzing around a garden. A more neurotypical brain might have an organized garden, with dedicated sections featuring different arrangements of flowers; my garden, on the other hand, is an eclectic jumble of all sorts of plants, some of which don’t really look like flowers at all. I carry the pollen (or skills) from those flowers with me, and, with them, I can make some delicious honey. Instead of cursing my brain for wandering around everywhere, I should instead appreciate that all these different things I’ve learned, hobbies I’ve enjoyed, and skills I’ve developed can complement each other in surprising ways. I have to remind myself that none of the flowers in my life were a waste of my time, and that the honey I make is unique to my life’s experiences.

Opening up

Slowly, ever so slowly, I’ve been opening up more about how my brain is different and the challenges that it brings to my life. It’s a hard thing to do, as on the one hand I don’t want anyone to treat me differently—especially as though I’m less competent, but on the other hand I do seek a bit of grace and understanding for when my brain just refuses to cooperate and do what I want it to do. I’ve had decades of experience of writing a self-narrative of being lazy and forgetful; I’ve only had three years to start untangling that mess and recognizing the intertwined autism and ADHD (or AuDHD) at the core of so much of my self-hatred. It doesn’t help that when I do share about my brain’s struggles, I’m often met with the reaction: “You don’t look like you have _____.” I guess that’s why it’s important to share my story (p. 387), to help people become more aware of what ADHD can look like across a wider range of people than it’s usually stereotyped to appear as.

A photo of a female mallard duck swimming amongst a splashing school of orange koi.
Another photo by the author of a duck frantically swimming amongst a school of hungry koi. Taken in front of the main temple at the Mt. Shosha temple complex in Himeji, Japan.

Just keep swimming

There’s an analogy that’s often used in the ADHD community, that we’re all kind of like ducks, looking like we’re calm and put-together on the surface, but underneath the water we’re actually paddling frantically, trying to keep up with everyone else. That’s basically my life. Fortunately, I’m no longer swimming around in the dark: with the tips and tricks from How to ADHD, I’ve been learning how to adapt my life to my brain. I’ve still got more tools to add to the toolbox, but in the meantime, I am getting better at learning how to swim with the brain that I have, so I don’t have to spend so much effort paddling to get to where I want to go.

Reference

  • McCabe, J. (2024). How to ADHD: An insider’s guide to working with your brain (not against it) (1st ed.). Rodale.

Julia Daley is a senior lecturer and Assessment Coordinator at Hiroshima Bunkyo University. She received her Masters in TESOL from Northern Arizona University, and she’s certified to teach Secondary English in Arizona. She’s mainly taught writing and EFL in high schools and universities in the USA and Japan. When out in nature, Julia’s brain has a knack for spotting the smallest of movements made by the littlest of creatures.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *