What is Self Care...?

What is Self Care...? It is different things to different people. Self Care for those with ADD / ADHD would include things that may not be as important to those without those challenges.

Self Care for those with ADD / ADHD ought to include things to cover these categories:

Outside support and structure for managing:
Time
Information
Things/Stuff
Focus

It is often a good strategy to organize oneself and life in such a way that one can use outside things to track and handle time, information, things, and your focus; as much as possible. Using these strategies are not a sign of weakness rather they are a sign of working smart and strategically. Organizing one's life in this way allows one to focus more on what is most important and fun.

Time -- When it comes to managing time, there are some good places to start. One place is look for whatever routines one has in place and notice what is working for you and what is not working for you. Keep the ones that work, tweaking as needed, discard the others and replace them with new ones. For example, pick a sequence of tasks to do for getting ready for the day, pick an order for them, and stick with it. Do the same for getting ready for bed. If one's life and work allow, pick wake up times and bed times and stay with them. From there, build out to scheduling appointments, tasks and to do's. Depending on your life, habits and way of functioning, you may want to start out using a paper planner and plan out a day or week at a time. Select a time at the beginning of the day to review what is coming and some time at the end of the work day or evening to review the day you just had. I prefer to plan at least a day ahead at a minimum...even off days. I do best if ,at least, the day before I plan so when I wake the next day, a plan for work or fun is already in place. If I wake without a plan for a work day, I am typically disappointed at the end of the day in how I spent the day or in what I accomplished. If I awoke with a plan in place, I have a better chance of being more productive and feeling better about my day, at days end. Even if it is a play day, I often feel more satisfied at the end of the day, if it were a day that I had already planned at least the day before.
This month we will look at how to get started in the other categories of Self Care...Managing Stuff, Managing Information and Your Focus...