Madison County Health Alert: Psychiatrist Provides Tips to be More Productive. Doctor Explains | Sta

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In this column, Owen T. Muir, MD--a specialist in child and adult psychiatry--shares a strategy to help people with ADHD improve their productivity.

The Big Picture: Dr. Owen Muir, Child and Adult Psychiatry, "Here's a quick and easy approach to be more productive if you have ADHD by using the Cube Timer Hack!"

A Doctor's Expert Insights to Super-Charging Your ADHD in Madison County, Mississippi

For many people with ADHD, distraction and attention, can be a daily battle.

Take this article as an example, if you have ADHD--you're likely to start reading this article, and then suddenly, you're going to get distracted and wander off! Was that a new text message, breaking news, the cat needs water?

And then, it'll be something else, and… oh, where was I going?

This is the paradox. ADHD allows for remarkable feats of hyper-focus, but it also predisposes people living with the condition to be wildly inefficient and have frustrating experiences.

That is if they don’t take their ADHD into account.

Before we continue, You should know that ADHD makes it hard to plan things.

Optimizing Your ADHD Brain for the Tasks at Hand

The Timer Cube Hack

Above is a timer cube. It's the lowest tech timer of all time! It’s also less capable of distracting you.

The 3 steps to be more efficient with ADHD:

  • Set a timer for five minutes. And then, try to do something boring. See if you can get through it.
  • Set a timer for the next increment up, and try to do something boring. See if you can get through it.
  • Note the time: When you reach a point where you can no longer complete a task without becoming distracted, you will have a clear measure of your personal limit for staying focused. I call it the "quantitative measure of your own distractibility time limit."

    • Next, if you’re using a stimulant medication for treatment and management of your ADHD--it's time to take that stimulant medication and then repeat the steps above.

    Once you reach that moment where you no longer remain focused, you'll have a sense of how long you can reasonably focus on a boring task. You'll now know your own "distractibility time limit."

    Just like you can vary the stimulant medication in the above study on yourself, you can also vary the task.

    "I can read a boring book on economics for 10 minutes. On my medicine, I can do it for 20 minutes." There you go, you now have a way to measure.

    As a child and adult psychiatrist, I’ve often used this approach to titrate stimulants to different tasks that my patients may need to do.

    Yes, I will adjust the dosage and instructions as to when to take a medicine based on the task.

    And, I will use the above approach to also determine the dosage and timing of that dosage for that particular difficult task.

    This technique works particularly well for people who don't benefit from stimulant treatment most of the time, but do need stimulants on a task-by-task basis.

    Next, the Revolution in ADHD Management

    Stop trying to work longer.

    Once that timer goes off for the maximum amount of time you can focus on--stop doing whatever it was you are doing.

    Take a proper break. Preferably you want to wiggle, jump, or run about for 5-10 minutes. Get up, jump around, and do anything other than that thing you were focused on.

    Once done with your break, set your timer for the next break and now start working.

    Force yourself to take breaks.

    Take those breaks at empirically determined intervals, utilizing the approach above. And when your energy and attention start to fade... simply stop!

    Don’t do wildly ineffective work. Doing this can make you feel bad and it drains you. Most importantly, ineffective work is neither good nor productive.

    It feels like working hard, but it’s only unpleasant. Not effective.

    Having said that, my timer just beeped. I hope this brief "ADHD Super-Tip" was in a format short enough to be appealing to people with ADHD!

    Medical News Today: Key Takeaway for You in Madison County

    One of the research studies cited by Dr. Muir, shows that individuals with ADHD tend to make suboptimal decisions rather than being inherently risk-seeking. The findings suggest that interventions for ADHD should focus on improving decision-making quality rather than merely addressing risk-seeking behavior.

    What They're Saying: "Furthermore, our findings may shift the focus, in conceptualizing ADHD-related decision-making from a positive risk attitude toward a difficulty in EV maximization. For clinical practice, the finding that individuals with ADHD are not risk seeking as such is important. Treatment for individuals with ADHD should focus on improving the quality of their decision-making, as they tend to make suboptimal decisions more often. If the three mechanisms which we proposed above (executive functioning deficits, aberrant reinforcement sensitivity, and avoidance of mental effort) are found to explain decision-making deficits in ADHD, clinical practice should focus on these mechanisms." (Study Source)

    Health Standard Newswire: Navigating a world where focus fluctuates.

    Medical News and Statistics for Madison County, Mississippi

    The following health facts impact your physical health directly!

    Did you know there were 2423 deaths from different types of accidents in Mississippi in 2021?

    33.7% of you in Madison County are obese.

    13.6% of you in Madison County are binge drinkers.

    17.6% of you in Madison County have depression.

    All of these variables above play an important role in the outcomes of your overall health.

    Owen T. Muir, MD is an expert at The Health Standard and writes a daily healthcare newsletter.

    The Health Standard Newswire.

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