Editor’s Note: This week’s post was written by Award-winning Professional Organizer,
Judith Kolberg.

The first step to effective note taking is focused listening

Maybe it’s the school season, or that its “conference season”; whatever the reason, taking note and note taking is on the agenda. Note taking is no small task.

• It starts with taking note — listening intently to the talking-head and getting a grasp on what is said.
• Then it involves writing down both the most pertinent ideas and the relevant details and ignoring extraneous material.
• Finally, good note-taking results in actually using the notes in the appropriate context.

Inattention and distractibility make note taking hard for everyone

Even people without ADHD find it difficult to take note and note-take. Inattention, which makes the ADHD brain struggle to focus long and hard enough to get information into the brain in the first place, and distractibility, which moves attention away from the task at hand, conspire to make taking note really tough. And figuring out as you listen and write what is important and what is not is also challenging.

Note taking Tips for the ADHD Student

• Don’t look: Consider not looking at the speaker, but instead looking down at the paper or your laptop or whatever it is you are taking notes on. Sometimes knocking out some of the visual of looking at the speaker, can reduce distractions.
• Use the handouts! These days, most speakers and teachers give handouts with the central concepts already on them. Write on the handouts. Use highlighting. Add your own comments or thoughts. Since you did not create the handouts, you have to put your own imprint on them so they live and breathe and work for you.
• Share notes with a friend: Let someone else handle the details; go for the main concepts and ideas. You can often get the details from someone else’s notes, an audio recording, or a written transcript.
• Use shorthand: Develop a simple short hand but be certain you understand it! You might write the word “details” like this “dtails”. The letter “t” can stand in for “the”. A long phrase that is repeated, like “note-taking” can be written out once, and thereafter written as “n/t”.
• Try Mind Maps: Consider taking notes graphically by using mind maps. Click here for more information.
  Consider using note-taking software. Click here for more information.

Using Your Notes Effectively

Just a word about using your notes: separate your notes out by topic or subject and you’ll be able to utilize them better. Say you went to a conference on ADHD and took notes about medication and on memory and on ADHD humor. Separate them, make the topic prominent, and stick your notes where they will be used next. For instance, put the medication notes in a file to bring to your next doctor appointment to discuss with your doctor. In your calendar, on the date of the doctor appointment write “bring notes”. The notes on memory might just be for your own edification so call then “Don’t Forget” and file them under “ADHD”. Maybe you’ll want to use the ADHD humor notes in your next presentation. Stick the notes in with your presentation material. In other words, put notes where they are most likely next to be utilized.

Have you ever tried recording important lectures? Do you have your own shorthand? Have you ever asked someone to share notes with you? Let us know what note taking strategies have worked for you.

Over the past several months, we’ve been focusing on anxiety and ADHD.

In January we introduced the topic of ADHD and anxiety with a report of how common forms of anxiety are much more common in people who have ADHD than the general population.  We also gave you a list of physical and psychological symptoms associated with anxiety.    Last month, we outlined the 4 most common axiety disorders associated with ADHD.  Remember half (52%) of adults with ADHD will experience general anxiety disorder during their lifetimes.

This month we’ll teach you a few things you can do to control anxiety.  Of course we need to start by saying that if your anxiety feels overwhelming or gets worse over time, you should begin by seeking the help of a professional, who might possibly prescribe therapy and/or medication.  There are, however,  easy, everyday things you can do to help control anxiety without taking another pill – that you can start right now!

1. Exercise
2. Eat right
3. Get enough sleep
4. Practice relaxation

Exercise Exercise Exercise

If you’re a regular Edge Foundation subscriber, you’ll have seen our review of John Ratey’s book, Spark: the revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain.

In it Ratey explains that regular exercise alone can dramatically reduce symptoms of anxiety:

• Exercise releases neurochemicals that help you feel better (serotonin, the “feel good” neurochemical, and GABA, an important inhibitory neurochemical that basically gives the command to “stand down”. )
• Exercise helps relax your body, reducing the resting tension of your muscles and thus interrupting the anxiety feedback loop to your brain.
• Exercise teaches you that you have control over the symptoms of racing heart, sweating, and elevated breathing. That feeling this way physically is not the same thing as a panic attack.
• Exercise even helps you unlearn the habit of anxiety.

Diet

We are going to sound like your mother, but she was right.  Be sure to remember to eat regular meals.  You may be able to get by and skip a meal with a little help from caffeine or sugar, but did you know that both of these foods can mimic the sensation of an anxiety attack – and actually trigger one!

Sleep

Irregular sleep habits can actually increase your anxiety symptoms!  Stress and anxiety may cause the body to produce a “no sleep” signal in the brain that heightens arousal and makes sleep difficult. This alerting effect is a cause of more anxiety and may set in motion a cycle of sleeplessness and stress.

Sleep is such a big issue for many people with ADHD that we are planning a future post on the topic.  In the meantime, there is a lot of information on the web about sleep, sleep problems, and how to develop better sleep patterns. Here are a few places to start.

• http://www.sleepfoundation.org
• http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/brain_basics/understanding_sleep.htm
• http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih3/sleep/guide/info-sleep.htm

Relax Your Mind

Take a time out and pause to let your mind and body relax. When you are stressing, do something distracting and fun. Take a deep breath.  Or fill your mind with a challenging task like a Sudoku or crossword puzzle and you won’t have room to think about your anxiety

Relax Your Body

Relax your body and your mind will follow – we call this the relaxation response.   Relax your body and your

• heart rate decreases
• breathing becomes slower and deeper
• blood pressure drops or stabilizes
• muscles relax
• and your anxiety level decreases

Did we mention exercise?

Exercise can be a great way to release tension in your body.  There are non-strenuous ways to invite your body to relax as well.

• yoga
• medication
• relaxation excecises
• biofeedback
• and don’t forget to breathe.

Anxiety is a real and serious problem, but you don’t have to let it put you on the sidelines or eat you up inside.  It just takes self-awareness that your anxiety is getting the best of you and self-discipline to take steps every day to keep your anxiety at bay.  An ADHD coach can help you figure out which techniques are best for you and put a plan in place to help you stay on top of your anxiety.

Have you found any of these everyday habits have helped your anxiety levels?  Please share your experience in the comments.  We’d love to hear from you.

A follow-up to a Washington Post article.

The transition from high school to college is a big step for everyone.  When you have ADHD, however, going to college can feel like stepping off a cliff without a safety net.  A recent Washington Post articleby Susan Kunzle (10/25/08) chronicled one family’s journey to assuring that their son, who has ADHD, will continue building a successful life after leaving the support of home.

The family in the article was thinking ahead — their son hadn’t left for college yet — but they were anticipating some of the challenges he’d face.  College is a big step towards adulthood.  This new independence, combined with the academic demands of college life, is tough for most students.  But for students with ADHD, these challenges can feel overwhelming.

For the first time, students are completely responsible for how they use their time.  They are expected to attend classes and study each day without a teacher or parent to help them stay on track.  They organize their own schedules, choose friends and social activities, and figure out when, how much, and even how to study.

Many parents fear that without being able to keep a close eye on their student, they won’t know when a problem has arisen until after he or she has started failing classes.  At that point it can be difficult to turn things around.

Here at the Edge Foundation, we applaud families who proactively support their children to ensure their success.  We are often asked to recommend ADHD-friendly colleges.  What we can tell you is that any school can be ADHD friendly when a student has the support of a coach.

Sign up here to learn more about finding a coach for your child.

A coach provides steady guidance during a time when a young person’s job is to break away from their parents’ support and forge out on their own.  The same young adult that won’t listen to their parents’ advice, may be able to hear what they need to do from an ADHD coach. And an ADHD coach can provide feedback and support to build effective skills in the following areas:

• scheduling
• goal setting
• confidence building
• organizing
• focusing
• prioritizing
• persisting at tasks

Coaching strategies tailored to individual needs make the most of a student’s strengths.  A coach is not a doctor or teacher but rather an advocate who works with you to help you manage life to the fullest.

• Students and their coaches talk regularly and check in about academic and personal pursuits.
• Coaches can help identify strategies to stay organized, utilize your time well, and stay on track in your classes.
• A coach can help remind you to make good choices and take care of yourself emotionally and physically.
• A coach also can help you improve the relationships in your life with friends, peers, professors, and family members.
• Your coach is there to talk to, strategize with, and advocate for you as long as you need.

Are you ready to find out more about how an Edge Coach can help you be your best?  Click here for more information.

If you search the web, you’ll find several schoold out there have designed their programs around serving children with ADHD.  There are also colleges and universities that have incorporate academic coaching into their program.  Duke University, Landmark College, and the University of North Carolina, for example, offer on-campus coaching to students.

In the end, we believe that children with ADHD can be successful at any school and do any profession that they are inspired to pursue.  An ADHD coach can make the journey a lot easier.

To find out more about ADHD coaching please complete our information request form and one of our staff will contact you with the answers to your questions.

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Do you have piles of paper everywhere?  Do you trouble finding the right piece of paper when you need it?  Don’t worry, you aren’t alone.

Getting your paperwork organized can be an overwhelming task if you’ve procrastinated too long.  The key is getting caught up, then having a system in place so you don’t fall behind again.  Here’s one way that can help you get through the piles quickly – in just three days.

Start by setting aside three days to focus on your paperwork.  Friday, Saturday and Sunday are great times for getting organized.

Day 1:  Paperwork central

• Pick a place that you will keep all of your paper work on. This is your “Paperwork Central.” It can be a section of your desk, an out of the way place on the floor, or the dining room table.
• Go around the house and round up all your papers and bring it to your Paperwork Central.
• Don’t forget your backpack, purse or front seat of the car.
• Get all your paper – newspapers, bills, junk mail, assignments, magazines, homework, notes, letters, everything. About the only paper you don’t want in this pile is your books.

This step should take you about 15-30 minutes.  When you are done, congratulate yourself, you are getting organized!  Does the pile look overwhelming?  Don’t worry, we’ll get through it quickly on Day 2.

Did you find anything important when rounding everything up?  Choose one thing, and do it now!

Day 2:  Quick Sort

1. Go through every piece of paper and sort it into one of these piles:
   a.  urgent
   b.  bills
   c.  to do
   d.  save (filing)
   e.  reading
   f.  recycle
2. Do not spend time reading or thinking about each piece. It’s easy to get distracted here by thinking about each thing. Don’t! Just keep thinking, “All I’m doing is sorting stuff into piles. I have time to take care of this later.”
3. Set a timer; see how fast you can do it. Your job is to stay focused on sorting and do this step quickly. This step is about getting organized, not doing any work.
4. Don’t get distracted by the urgent pile. Your job right now is getting things sorted.
5. Take the recycling out right now. Doesn’t it feel great to get rid of that huge pile!
6. Put your reading pile somewhere you’ll look at it… in the bathroom, on the coffee table, by your bed.

This step may have taken you as little as an hour, or much longer if you’ve really let things go.  (Hope not!)  Take a break if you are getting stressed.  It’s important that you feel like you control your piles – they aren’t controlling you.  So take a break when you need to and come back later to do more.

When you are done with your sort, pick one urgent matter that you uncovered when doing this step, and take care of it now. 

Day 3:  To Do List

• Go through your “to do” pile and make a list of what is in it. This is your To Do list. It’s easier to look at a list than having to shuffle through the pile every day.
• Prioritize your list and put the most important items at the top of your page, the less important ones go towards the bottom.
• Post your list on your fridge or somewhere else you’ll see it.
• Look it every morning and pick the things you want to get done that day.
• Having trouble getting started? Start with the easy stuff. Again, you are in charge of your list, it isn’t in charge of you!

This step should take no more than a half hour.  All you are doing is writing down your to do list.  When you are all done, pick at least one high priority or urgent item and take care of it.

Be sure to cross stuff off your list when you do them.  And reward yourself when you’ve accomplished 10 or 15 of your items.  You’ll never have a finished to do list.  So it’s important that you celebrate keeping on top of it.

Congratulations!  You’ve got your paperwork under control.  And along the way, you’ve started taking care of your “To Do’s.”  Now it’s time to keep it that way.

CREATING A SORTING SYSTEM THAT WORKS

Now that you are organized, stay that way.  Every time you bring paper into the house, whether it is mail, or school work, or something else, bring it to your Paperwork Central location and sort it right away. 

• Don’t drop it on the dining room table if your Paperwork Central is in your bedroom.
• Do open all envelopes – especially for your bills, and recycle what you don’t need to keep.
• Do add items to you “to do” list as necessary and look at it each day to stay on top of it.
• You don’t need to buy fancy organizers for Paperwork Central, but you can if you’d like. The key is staying on top of it as is comes in.

A QUICK WORD ON FILING:

Does anyone like filing?  NO!  The key for filing is only keeping things you really need.  Obviously financial stuff like tax records need to be filed.  And you’ll probably want to keep school work for the quarter.  But beyond that, try not to save very much stuff.  The less paper you save, the less filing you have.  Some people like to file things right away (like doing the dishes).  Other people like to let it pile up and do it all in a quick hour or so.  Figure out what works for you.  Just be sure to keep your long-tem files separate from your bills, urgent and “to do” piles!

Top Ideas for Staying Organized:

• Paperwork Central: set aside a place for all your paperwork
• Quick sort: sort things into piles as you get them
• To Do List: keep a to do list to make it easy to see what’s on your agenda
• Take care of the easy stuff first. You’ll feel less overwhelmed when you have less to do.
• Don’t get overwhelmed. With just a little work every day, you can stay in control.

What tricks do you use to keep on top of your paper piles?  If you’ve got a system that works, we’d love to hear from you.

Editor’s Note:Our last blog talked about how ADHD has impacted Jesse in school.This one explores how coaching has made a difference in his life.For more information about how an Edge ADHD Coach can help you visit Edge Foundation’s Coaching Page.]

Written by guest blogger: Shaina Humphries, University of Illinios

Aside from his medication and special accommodations, Jesse makes use of an academic “coach”. Coaches are commonly used in ADHD treatment, and are the main focus of Neil Peterson’s EDGE Foundation.

Peterson founded the EDGE Foundation, so he could help other kids suffering from ADHD, in the same way he was able to help his own two children, who have ADHD and Dyslexia.

“Medications do not work for everybody. They are not ‘the’ answer,” said Peterson. “Medications do not teach skills, but coaches do.”

Coaches like Jesse’s and those from Edge work by helping a person with ADHD to organize their life on their own, rather than telling them what to do. The coach meets with a student once or twice per week, and helps him or her with prioritizing, focusing, confidence, etc.

For example, Peterson’s daughter calls her coach for 30 minutes every Monday. She and her coach talk about how everything in her life is going.

“Then she’ll tell him she’s got a big paper due next week, and later she’ll tell him how her friends are coming to visit her that weekend,” Peterson said. “He’ll ask if that will affect her paper. Then she’ll say ‘I should probably write the first part of that paper this week before they visit.’”

What’s important about coaching, Peterson stresses, is that the person with ADHD is doing the thinking, coming to the conclusions on their own, and that’s how they learn the skills needed in life.

Treatment plans for ADHD that include medication, special accommodations and coaching, can be very beneficial to a student with ADHD, and can help the student function normally in and out of college.

Regardless, ADHD is a difficult disorder to deal with, especially in college, and certainly when a student with ADHD has not been diagnosed with the disorder. But, according to Jesse, with the right treatment, being a college student with ADHD is manageable.

“Since I was diagnosed, I’m always learning more ways to deal with it,” said Jesse “I have no doubt that I’ll graduate and have a “normal” job afterwards as an engineer.”

Read more testimonials on how Edge ADHD Coaching changes lives.

Recently I was waiting with three young boys for a table at a busy restaurant. The crowd had spilled outside during the long wait, and the boys inevitably got in trouble by throwing berries at the windows of the restaurant.  When confronted by their mother, they each had a different excuse for their behavior:  “I only did it once,”  “He made me,” and “I didn’t do it.”

It’s easy to come up with excuses for letting your impulses get in your way.  Everyone uses excuses to get out of a jam now and then.  But you can end up fooling yourself into believing your own story.  “I only did it once.” Doesn’t sound so bad does it?  But sometimes only one time is all it takes to make an irreparable mistake.  Consider drinking and driving.  You might get away with it once.  But on the other hand, you could end up killing someone.

 “He made me.”  It’s easy to fool ourselves into believing that someone else is responsible for our actions.  But, short of having someone holding a gun to your head, the only person who makes you do something is yourself.  Sure it might have been the first boy’s idea to throw the berries in the first place, but the second child threw that berry all by himself.  Does, “he made me,” stand up as a defense for shoplifting?

Which brings us to “I didn’t do it.”  Standing around and not acting when other people are doing the wrong thing, is doing the wrong thing.  Each of us has the responsibility to take a stand and say stop.  We call people heroes when they step in to help someone who is being victimized in a crime.  “I didn’t do it” stands hand-in-hand with “it’s not my fault.”  Taking personal responsibility is looking at ourselves honestly and owning our actions.  If you know that a crime is going to occur and you do nothing about it, you can be held accountable in a court of law.

Everyone makes mistakes.Sure it’s hard to stand up to an angry mother and say, “It was my idea,” or “I felt embarrassed to say ‘no’.”  It’s even harder to stand up to our friends and say, “I don’t want to do this; I’m outta here.”  Thankfully, most of life your mother won’t be there to make excuses to.  The only one you need to fess up to if yourself.  Some days with ADHD can feel like a series of impulsive disasters.  You don’t make them better by shoving mistakes under the carpet with lame excuses.  The key to successfully living with ADHD is facing your mistakes and working to avoid them in the future.

What kind of mistakes do you use white lies to cover up for?  Lateness?  Forgetting to pay a bill?  Missing appointments?  Getting homework in on time?  Most of the time the only person fooled by your excuses is yourself.  Consider your friend who is always late.  You know they just can’t get it together, regardless of their story.

If you’re in the habit of making excuses, it can be hard to change.  Be easy on yourself, and pick one thing to practice being honest about.  Next time you are late say, “I intended to be here on time, but I scheduled my appointments too close together.”  Or, “I cut it too close when I left home this morning and didn’t allow for traffic.”   When you start giving honest explanations for your behavior instead of excuses, you give yourself the information you need to avoid that problem in the future.  Who’s more likely to be on time?  The person who says, “I got stuck in traffic.”  Or the person who says, “I didn’t allow time for traffic.”

You don’t have to make excuses for ADHD.  You just need to be honest with yourself and work to keep on track.  When you make mistakes, fess up, forgive yourself and move on.  It’s what everyone else does, and you can too.