Create a deadline
People with ADHD can sometimes get caught up in analyzing. So, coming to a concrete decision can be challenging. Giving yourself a deadline to decide on something can help you avoid procrastination.
Pause and Reflect. After you gather a lot of information to make a decision, pull back to assess what you have. People with ADHD are often more captivated by gathering information than by deciding. You might already have enough information to decide, but unless you pause, you won't know.
Set a Decision Deadline
Post your deadline on your calendar. Having a date to decide can help you prioritize by adding focus and motivation to a decision that has no time frame. People with ADHD love visual reminders.
Are you stuck in ADHD paralysis?
We get stuck in ADHD paralysis. “There’s just too much information, and I can’t seem to decide in time” is a common refrain heard from many of us with attention deficit who grapple with ADHD paralysis.
Throw in problems enlisting our executive functions and a desire to get things over with, and we make a lot of decisions we wish we could take back.
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Ask For Help
It’s OK to ask for help.
Asking someone you trust to help you sort your ideas and get their feedback can ease the decision making process.
You can even delegate some decisions to someone you trust.
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Create A Deadline
People with ADHD can sometimes get caught up in analyzing.
So, coming to a concrete decision can be challenging.
Giving yourself a deadline to decide on something can help you avoid procrastination.
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Define The Problem
The first step is to define the problem.
What challenges are you facing.
What outcome do you need.
Defining the problem first will allow your thoughts to have a guide and a filter, helping you to focus on the challenge at hand.
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Find A Quiet Space
People with ADHD can experience hypersensitivityto their environment. Visual clutter, noise, and busy environments can be distractions when you’re trying to make a decision.
Finding a quiet room or space to think can help you focus.
You can learn more here about tips on how to focus with ADHD.
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How do you deal with ADHD?
Noise, visual clutter, and too much hustle-bustle overload an ADHD brain, making it hard to make a decision.
Find a quiet room or nook to think.
Post your deadline on your calendar.
Having a date to decide can help you prioritize by adding focus and motivation to a decision that has no time frame.
People with ADHD love visual reminders.
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How do you make a good decision?
It’s important to be able to make decisions, but it’s equally important not to make ones that will take us off course.
Identify the problem.
List the solutions and options.
Discuss the approaches with others.
Rank the options in order of your preferences.
List the pros and cons of the top two or three.
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Limit Your Choices
Having too many choices can be overwhelming.
To simplify your decision making, consider narrowing down your options.
For example, if you’re trying to decide where to go on vacation, you can narrow your choices by affordability.
Then you can further narrow those choices by location climate.
From those options, you can choose based on how easy it is .
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Make A List
Another way to organize your thoughts is to make a list.
You can make a list of the pros and cons of each choice available.
If you’re overwhelmed with the number of tasks you need to do, you can also list them.
For example, you can group tasks by how much time it’d take to complete them.
This can help you decide which task to work on first based on.
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Write Down Your Thoughts
One way to improve your working memoryis to write down all the details and facts you need to decide.
Writing your thoughts down eliminates the need to remember things.
Seeing the facts in writing helps organize your thoughts and makes the process easier.