Hi all,
I have fairly severe ADHD and I take Concerta (27+18mg) and Ritalin (20mg) daily. I have a bunch of tools I have found helpful for managing my life including the ADHD symptoms and thought I would share some here.
Telegram - I use Telegram as my phone brain, a place I put information so it is out of my brain. I put in meds (I copy and paste almost every time) and because I do it so regularly it is actually part of taking meds now. I therefore know when I took my meds last to within a couple of minutes and can use that to make sure I don't miss or double up. I also use scheduled messages up to months in advance for things like car registration, booking my psychiatrist appointment, or knowing when to take my cat to the vet.
Alarms - I use a few alarms which are countdowns from when I did something regular. For example, I take my Concerta in the morning, set a 6.5hour timer, then I am reminded to take my Ritalin. I do the same for pain meds or other meds as needed. This means I have a countdown in my tray the whole time which helps to keep it in mind.
Banking - I switched to a digital only bank and was able to finally automate almost all of my major transactions. My pay comes in, rent goes out, money gets sent to various other accounts like savers for specific goals or transactions accounts. By making my fuel always come from the same place every time and making sure my fuel budget always transfers through to there I never have to worry, I just know that I have fuel money there.
Physicality - I need to be physically active. I was working in IT for a decade and it was not so slowly killing me. I now earn basically the same driving a truck and lifting heavy things all day. I am less stressed and I have a clear career ahead of me as I upgrade my licences and competencies. I am happier with more physical activity but trying to fit it in on the weekend or evenings was just a losing proposition for me, I work now for money and health and it is way better.
Anyway, that's a few thoughts, I hope someone finds them useful.
If nothing else this is a different way of organising than what has been tried on most other systems. Will it work? Maybe, maybe not. What we do know is other methods have been tried and had outcomes that this team does not want to replicate, so trying a different method makes sense.
I am reminded of the difference between the spirit of the law and letter of the law systems. In letter of the law systems if something is not explicitly illegal it is permissible. It is the duty of the lawmakers to explicitly prohibit the behaviour by creating a prohibition and if they fail to do so correctly then the act is permitted. In spirit of the law systems things a little more interpreted rather than directly read, so if you have an act which fits very well the spirit of the law, being something the law was specifically intended to prohibit or limit, then the law will be interpreted as applying to that behaviour and that case will be used as an interpretation in future for other cases. This is actually what we use in most of the world and does make sense, even though it does mean that sometimes laws exist that are not enforced or some things that are not explicitly prohibited by law are prohibited by case law.
I think in the case of a system that has to change over time this will inevitably happen. Something new happens, people figure out what they will do about it today, then that becomes the rule going forward.