Making Life DOABLE with ADHD

0:00Oh, boy. Hello, Brains! Welcome to 2025! This, for me, is the year of making my life doable — for all versions of myself. Let me explain. [ Intro Music Plays ] If you have ADHD, you probably know the feeling of having a "bad brain day." Your meds aren't really working, you forgot to take them, you're out of them, you didn't sleep well last night, you are not hyperfocused on the thing you're supposed to be working on; in fact you might be hyperfocused on something else entirely or just feeling really distractable

0:29and it just feels like an uphill battle and like you're just not going to get a lot done that day right? But here's the kicker. Most of us when we set up our lives, when we set up our systems, we don't set them up for that version of ourselves: the one that's really really struggling. We set them up for the version of ourselves that we typically are, or that we maybe want to be, that we wish we were I am very not functional on days when I don't take my meds or haven't slept, and that's kind of been okay because then on the days when I am having a really good brain day I can kind of make up for that,

0:59I can work extra, I can work faster, better... but being a new mom, uh, that's not really the case anymore. I'm quickly realizing like, this version of myself that has not slept well and is distracted uh by a tiny adorable baby all of the time, like, this is the norm for me now. This is the version of myself that that I am most of the time now,

1:23and it's the version of myself that I need to be designing my life around. As I'm going through this process of starting to design my life around her, around this more impaired version of myself, I'm realizing pretty quickly why I should have been doing this all along. So there's this concept of "universal design," um, and I actually talk about it in my book.

1:42The design of a product service or environment to be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible without the need for adaptation or accommodations. I'm a huge fan of universal design of products and services and environments that are designed this way because they are not only accessible to people who have impairments,

2:00but they're also easier and more enjoyable to use for everyone. A classic example of universal design is curb cutouts. Curb cutouts make a sidewalk accessible to people in wheelchairs; it would be very hard to get up onto a curb on your own if you're in a wheelchair and there's not a curb cutout, right?

2:16But it also makes it easier for people who are just wheeling their luggage or riding those dope little electric scooters. I really love this concept because it's really just this win-win situation: design for the people who have the greatest need or who are the most impaired and it benefits everyone. But when you have ADHD, first of all, it's not a visible thing, but because people can't see it it's really easy to like convince yourself that you are less impaired than you actually are but the other really big thing with ADHD is that sometimes we did get sleep, sometimes we are on meds that are working for us,

2:48sometimes we are interested in what we're doing and we're able to function not even just like as well as somebody without ADHD but often better. If we're interested in something especially if there's any sort of like urgency, novelty, anything like that we can outperform our peers and so it's really easy for us to convince ourselves that that is the version of us that we need to be designing our lives for forgetting that this other version of ourselves also exists

3:14and also needs to use the same systems that we are creating for ourselves. I've really come up against this recently of I built this channel on sheer hyperfocus and novelty and passion, almost desperation of like, "I need to do something to like figure out how to function in this world because I am a mess" like this is not at all working. So there was this urgency, this need, and I was able to do incredible things that I'm very very proud of

3:40but now I'm doing all right like I have my toolbox the novelty isn't there I've learned all the things! ...Not all the things, but like, I've learned most of the things. I've written the book. I still love what I do but it's a lot harder for me to focus on it right now. It's also at home, it's also with friends.

3:54There's a lot that's hard for me about my life right now, I talk about that in this video and part of it is I've overbuilt my life. There's just too much on my plate, there's too many commitments. But with this concept of universal design, the idea behind it is that, if I design for the version of myself that is not very functional,

4:11then the version of me that is a badass will still benefit, and the version of myself that really struggles will be able to do my life. So... how do we do it? I think the first step is really taking a hard look at when you are at your worst. When you are at your most impaired, what does that look like. It's not something that I think we like to pay attention to because we do live in a pretty ableist society that judges our worth based on how much we can do and so facing down how impaired we can be some days and how hard it is for us to do even seemingly simple tasks that's tough. But I'm going to try and be a model for that right now;

4:52and this is going to be probably emotional, because I have all the same internalized ableism messages that you guys do. At my most impaired, I am forgetful. I not only forget the things that I need to do, but even if I remember to do them I don't remember how to do them. It doesn't even matter if it's something that I've done a million times before; I don't remember the steps involved.

5:17I am terrified of missing something, and that anxiety shuts down my cognition even more and I can barely function. On my worst brain days, like, I am exhausted. Everything takes a ton of energy. It took me like the better part of today to sit down and do this because I kept researching and I kept brainstorming and I kept doing it. I procrastinate out of a sense of like, perfectionism; I have a hard time stopping or knowing when to stop;

5:42there's a lot of self-doubt, making decisions can be really tough, like, even seemingly simple decisions. Sometimes I can even go non-verbal. At my most impaired I have migraines, the aura thing, so I actually can't look at a screen and -- It's so hard you guys it's so hard to just say these things out loud because like, I expect a lot of myself and there's so much that I want to do

6:03and I want to be capable of doing but I have to admit that I have these impairments that I need to accommodate for. I want to be the best version of myself for my family, and for my community, for you guys, for my employees but the thing is, designing for and with these impairments in mind is going to be helpful in terms of me being able to do the things that I want to do

6:27because I'm going to be operating in a system that is accessible to me even when I'm at my lowest. And you can get into like the other members of your household too if you want but at the very least, how do we make sure that the products we use and the systems that we build for ourselves are accessible to that version of ourselves?

6:42Who is it that we're designing for? And then like, what do we do? How do we actually implement universal design principles? I looked it up there are seven principles to universal design, I will put a list here.

6:57So my challenge to myself, and I invite you to join me if you'd like for 2025 is just to make my life doable. I'm calling it the "universal design your life challenge." I'll give you a really simple example of something that I've already done. I am using a new camera system, and it's something that I'm borrowing from my partner, he's starting to make content as well and got a really cool camera system that is very complicated and instead of watching him show me how to use it

7:20and expecting myself to remember, or even taking notes, I just filmed it. I was like, I need to film this because I'm not going to remember, and even if I start to read through the steps I'm not going to remember where the button is that you told me to push or whatever, so like let me just film it.

7:33And it felt ridiculous. I know what an "on" button is, like, I don't actually need to record you pushing the on button. But you know what? When I was exhausted and didn't want to get started and feeling like procrastinating and just wanting to go home and not do this at all like, it helped so much to be able to pull up that video

7:49and just see exactly where the buttons were and be able to follow that tutorial. Setting up your systems in this way is going to feel ridiculous. Asking for the accommodations that nine times out of ten you're not going to need is going to feel ridiculous. It's not for that version of you. It's for the version of you that does need it.

8:06And you can't necessarily predict which version of you is going to show up that day. It's like an insurance policy; it creates this safety net. So I'm going to try this. I invite you to join me; I'll even give you like different levels of involvement. So like, one is go down a rabbit hole, right? Research all the things. Figure out all the universal design things

8:25and if you want to just super hyperfocus on this as a project, please, go for it. Let me know how it goes, I would love to hear that in the comments below. But like, way on the other side of it, just start to notice when you go to buy a product or set up a system, what version of you is that going to be doable for?

8:41Personally I think I'm going to apply one of the principles of universal design which is flexibility. On days when I feel like hyperfocusing on this project I will let myself hyperfocus on it; on other days I'm just going to try and notice, what am I committing myself to? All right, I'm going to stop there, let me know in the comments below how this landed with you.

8:56I'm really excited that you clicked on this video, I hope you share it. I hope that you engage in the comments because I think it's something that it would be really good for us to talk about and I'd like to revisit it moving forward if you guys are interested. Thank you to my Brain Advocates and all my Patreon brains for supporting the work that I do

9:10and honestly just allowing me the time to sit and think about stuff like this. I've never heard anybody else talk about this. If you guys have, if you have any like videos or articles or whatever that you found or just want to share your own thoughts on it I'd love to hear them. This concept of universal design, but instead of lots of different people you're designing for,

9:27you're just designing for the lots of different versions of yourself, and your range of capabilities. Like, subscribe, click all the things and I will see you next video! Bye brains! [ Outro Music Plays ]