Got ADHD? Try one of my favorite tools.

My June Masterclass explored the science, psychology, social context, and embodied experience of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

As an adult with ADHD, I contend with the myriad difficulties and the superpowers of ADHD. I’ve tried countless interventions over the years, with varying degrees of effectiveness.

Today, I’d like to share with you one of the most potent and easy-to-implement tools I’ve tried to date. This mind-brain-body intervention has made a major difference in my writing and teaching life, and also in my sense of self-determination. But first, a little background.

What ADHD Is + How It Challenges Us

ADHD is a developmental disorder seen in both children and adults. It spans several domains of self-regulation, including:

• difficulties with inhibition, which encompass thoughts, emotions, and movements

• resulting cognitive, emotional, and physical impulsivity

• cognitive challenges manifest as difficulties in executive functioning

• emotional challenges manifest as difficulty with emotional regulation, e.g. the tendency to broadcast feelings and reactions readily (some may consider this a superpower!)

• in adults, hyperactivity is often internalized and looks more like busyness, intense restlessness, multi-tasking, and a difficulty not giving in to countless random impulses that pop into mind

• challenges with sustained attention and distraction control (secondary to inhibition issues)

Executive Functioning Issues in ADHD

Russell Barkley captures the felt experience of ADHD as the “failure of persistence” toward a goal. This, he points out, is a motor issue: Can you sustain a series of bodily actions required to see a goal to fruition? People with ADHD often have difficulty directing behavior forward in time, and also finding the motivation they need in the moment that allows them to do so.

This orientation to time is significant: Countless times, I’ve closed out a highly unproductive day and am brushing my teeth before bed, only to be overcome with insight about the day’s derailments and, frustratingly, a surge of motivation and connection to the heart of my work—all at 9:45 p.m., when I can’t make use of them. I often resolve to do better the next day, only to fall prey to the same pattern and end up feeling disembodied, and alienated from my work.

People with ADHD, says Barkley, don’t have trouble perceiving distractions; they have trouble not responding to them. He adds that distraction control is a motor (movement-related) issue. (Hence, the hyperactivity.)

There’s a hidden gem here: Difficulty with inhibition involves several aspects of our embodied superpowers, including interoception (the ability to receive and respond to signals that come from our bodies), proprioception (the awareness of where we are in space), and body agency, the sense that we can move or act in a way that matches our intentions.

The inhibition difficulty characteristic of ADHD relates most readily to body agency. In ADHD, there is a cognitive intention to not pick up my phone, not grab a book, not check email, and so on. But we don’t experience bodily self-determination, the ability to act in the way we intended to. (This sense of body agency and self-determination relates to issues of social justice and equity, too—which we explored in Masterclass but I’ll, um, inhibit talking about here, because brevity.)

Here's the thing: When we give in to a distraction, we switch tasks. We move from what we were engaged in before to what we’ve gotten distracted by.

For some people, distraction is only costly in the moment; they simply return to what they were doing previously. For people with ADHD, however, switching tasks is incredibly costly. It places a high demand on the already-depleted resource of working memory.

Working Memory in ADHD

Research has found that people with ADHD have deficits in working memory, which is the retention of a small amount of information in accessible form. Working memory facilitates planning, comprehension, reasoning, and problem-solving. (All things we need to follow through on.)

A deficit in working memory means that it’s hard to remember things: the name of someone you just met, the page of a book you read moments ago, the gist of a research article you just reviewed, the idea that occurred to you on the way to the kitchen.

In ADHD, switching tasks (from planning a Masterclass, say, to the book chapter you’re working on) strains an already-compromised working memory. For this reason, ADHD specialists recommend the liberal use of working memory primers such as sticky notes, charts, cues, reminders, timers (to keep time), a pen and paper, etc. to act as cues or as substitutes for working memory.

Here's the true cost in a working memory deficit.

Imagine a vertical string of hot chilis hung to dry. For the sake of understanding, imagine that the top chili is the most surface aspect of what you’re working on and the bottom, the one with the most depth.

Now imagine that each time you switch tasks, no matter how deep and engaged you were prior, you lose the thread of connection to what you were doing. Unlike people who can go right back down the string, you have to start again at the top, working your way down the string of chilis. This sense of displacement often adds to the wall of resistance you feel, requiring even more willpower (and inhibition) to scale it.

This doesn’t just impact the quality of the task you were working on; it impedes the depth of relationship with your ideas, the degree of immersion you had in the work, and even, your degree of embodiment. (After a tough day not long ago, I left a burner on for several hours, filling the house with gas.) At these times, I tend to override my body’s signals. I become more accident prone. My stomach often bothers me.)

This is for me one of the most heartbreaking aspects of dealing with ADHD.

Enhancing Working Memory in ADHD: What Experts Advise

Experts offer helpful “externals” to enhance working memory.  These include sticky notes, cues, charts, reminders, timers, pen and paper, and more, which develop a kind of “field” version of working memory that lives outside the brain. I also use the Notes and Voice Recorder apps on my phone, for when I’m on a walk or in the kitchen and inspiration strikes.

(Sometimes, I’m hit with a struck-by-lightning kind of idea that seems so huge and work-altering that I’m certain I’ll remember it… only to find myself unable to access it. When this happens, I have to return to the place where my body was when it struck, which has created some hilarious situations, like standing, fully clothed, in the shower. (Water not included.)

These tools, experts say, also make dopamine (our motivation system) external, and make problem-solving something we can build with our hands.

These ideas help, especially when we customize them to our quirks and needs. I have many multi-colored, irregularly shaped post-it sculptures that take me through a process and remain waiting patiently for my return. A colleague I know fashions origami mobiles, ideas encased within each small sculpture, that hang from their ceiling.

Yet in my opinion, working memory is not simply one of the brain’s executive functions. It happens in and through the body.

And this leads me to the embodied approach to working memory.

An Embodied Approach to Working Memory in ADHD

When you stop one task and move to another, you leave behind not just cognitive memory, but an embodied “signature” of the excitement, immersion, battle, or creative spark you felt in the task you were engaged in. (This is often one of the hardest things for me about writing this column; it requires me to leave the chili string of the book-in-progress behind.)

This signature is therefore biological and chemical.

You also leave the embodied memories that accompany the task: the attempts you’ve made to meet walls of resistance and the sensations that come from doing so (interoception and body agency). The position you’ve worked in, the orientation of your body in space, and the movements—stretches, inversions, connective tissue work—you’ve engaged in (proprioception). The small celebrations you engage in, and anything else happening in your body at the time. 

In ADHD, these sensory memories fade quickly. (Something similar happens in OCD, except the sensory memories don’t imprint in the first place, requiring someone to feel as though the task they keep repeating isn’t complete and needs to be redone.)

What I’ve found helpful here is this: At the end of a major stretch of work (often, before bed) I record the sensations of that day’s work: where I feel the resistance and how it manifests. The small victories I get up and dance out when I’ve scaled a wall of resistance. The sense of dopamine release from the work, which often leaves its somatic “mark” on the back of my neck where my vagus nerve plexus passes. The tiny stretch breaks I take. Where the feeling of deep engagement happens and how (and where) it registers. My battles with resistance and how and where they manifest in my body.

That way, after a distraction or necessary departure from the deep work, I’m not confined to a sensory-free “cue card.” I have a multisensory memory that helps me reweave my mind, brain, and body together. 

This, to me, makes The Return more enjoyable, like rediscovering buried treasure. And it supplies the missing link, the integrative approach to elf-determination.

What This Looks Like + How To Do It

In the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, the two child protagonists leave a trail of breadcrumbs through the forest to find their way home. (There’s a lot more happening there, but they slayed the evil witch, which I’ve decided to equate to the stealing of my attention.)

Borrowing the metaphor, each night I leave a trail of “sensory breadcrumbs” to find my way “home” to the depth (the lower chilis in the strand) of my work.

Each night, I record somatic markers: for the felt sense I had in the work, the feeling of resistances and the agency I felt in overcoming them, the places that contained the “dopamine” hits, and anything else I want to leave for “tomorrow’s me.” to find.

Although these are written, they are not cognitive in the least. They are tied through immediacy to the visceral experience in such a way that I can re-member them in my body the next day. Also, I always write these by hand so that they’re wired into my body memory more deeply.

To bring this to life for you, here are several editions of sensory breadcrumbs from the last ten days of work.

Sensory Breadcrumbs, 6-30-23: A sense of horizontal width, of taking up space, particularly in my chest. The back of my neck (vagus nerve area) vibrating. Bubbly champagne feeling around my ears, as though I’ve popped them in an airplane. Attuned to sound. A light sense of humming. Expansiveness. Joy.

Sensory Breadcrumbs, 7-2-23: Sense of peace. Buzzing around my ears. Cells feel nourished. A sense of depth and connection to Chapter 1 and its characters. Getting better at resisting impulses; each time, there’s a feeling of strength.

Sensory Breadcrumbs, 7-5-23: Proud of myself for making it through another brutal night of fireworks and staying focused today. Reluctance to stop working: a pull in my solar plexus, a wish to keep going. A second wind. A tiny shot of dopamine. Buzzing in my ears. Gratitude.

Sensory Breadcrumbs, 7-7-23: Longing. Wistfulness. A wish to keep going. Familiar sense of expansion and light, and buzzing around my ears. Smiling with my whole body. Several exciting instances of connecting to working memory more quickly. A sense of integration, of knowing how and where to start tomorrow.

Words can’t describe how helpful this has been to me. And in true ADHD fashion, I expected that after writing it down, I’d easily retrieve it the next morning without needing to do anything else. This was not the case.

I’ve now closed the circle: Each morning, I get out my notebook and check over my brief “Sensory Breadcrumbs” entry from the previous night. I’m often able to connect to a tiny residue of the attentional victories I had the day before and the way they felt in my body. Sometimes my note to myself chronicles a sensory defeat, a way that I yielded and how that felt in my body. One of last week’s notes mentioned “the feeling of expending too much time before starting my writing,” and a “collapse” in my chest. This was helpful; it reminded me to get right to the chili string without delay.

I confess that occasionally, around dinnertime, I get the sense that I’m close to a breakthrough in my work, and need to get one or two more chilis further down the string. I recognize this as a sign that if I avoid listening to podcasts or watching TV or anything else that involves someone else’s voice or ideas, I can get there. At first it was hard to do: It’s possible that I love podcasts more than anyone else in the Universe. But the more I follow the sign that I need more quiet time with a chili string, the easier and more rewarding it is to do.

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This tool may sound simple, or similar to the other working memory assists like post-it notes. Yet its simplicity masks its potency: It links working memory, bodily sensation, and the chemical charge that in ADHD often seem elusive even on their own.

The Sensory Breadcrumbs practice reconnects me to the embodied signature of yesterday’s work, to its trials, joys, and discoveries. But it doesn’t stop there. To my surprise and delight, it has spread its sensory signature into other areas of my life, expanding my sense of connection, movement (progress!), agency, and self-determination.

That’s it; try this ultimate working memory tool, and let me know how it goes.

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