537- Small Wins Add Up: How to Build New Habits in 2025

Summary

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ADHD Experts Podcast – Episode 537

Small Wins Add Up: How to Build New Habits in 2025
Host: Annie Rogers (ADDitude)
Guest: Linda Roggli, Professional Certified Coach & ADHD Expert
Date: January 14, 2025

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Overview

This episode, featuring ADHD coach and author Linda Roggli, focuses on practical, ADHD-friendly strategies for building sustainable habits in 2025. Rather than setting overwhelming New Year’s resolutions, Roggli emphasizes the power of “tiny habits” and the importance of celebrating incremental progress. Drawing on her personal experiences and key behavioral research, she shares actionable methods for ADD adults and parents raising children with ADHD, answering listener questions and offering real-life examples for habit-building at home and work.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Why Building Habits is Challenging with ADHD

• Roggli’s Personal Story: Grew up in a family where every meal ended with something sweet, leading to lifelong struggles with weight and dieting. She shares, “Every time I would lose weight... I would fall back, it was just really hard to start all over again.” (03:14)
• Learned Helplessness: Many with ADHD internalize the belief, “I can't do it, so therefore I probably am never going to be able to do it.” (05:35)
• ADHD-Specific Challenges:
  • Weak working memory ("our working memory boomerang... doesn’t always return." - 06:10)
  • Low consistency and tendency to take on too much at once.
  • Non-specific or impatient goals (“we want it done by noon tomorrow… I just want to be there. Does anyone have a magic wand today?” - 09:10)
  • Overwhelm from trying to attack all life changes at once (“We want to declutter the entire attic, lose 100 pounds, and exercise 150 minutes a week.” - 07:45)

Rethinking Resolutions: From ‘Shoulds’ to Intentions

• Intentions Instead of Resolutions: Resolutions often feed shame and disappointment; intentions are gentler and more ADHD-compatible.
• Start Small, Start Specific: Instead of ambitious vision boards or giant routines, focus on one small, manageable corner of a goal.

The Tiny Habits Method

• Source Inspiration: Roggli credits BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits framework (“Chunking down isn’t enough—we need to pulverize it!” - 25:30)
• The Tiny Habits Formula:
  1. Choose a Teeny-Tiny Behavior.
  2. Anchor It to an Existing Habit (Prompt): e.g., attach medication to brushing your teeth.
  3. Celebrate Immediately: “Ta da! Even the smallest wins.” (11:55)
• Example: “After I brush my teeth, I’m going to floss one tooth. Then I’m going to celebrate by saying ‘Yes!’ and giving myself a high five.” (12:40)
• Celebration is Key: Builds positive emotion, counteracts years of negative feedback for ADHD brains (“We are in encouragement deficit.” - 19:41)
• Notable Quote: “I change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad.” - BJ Fogg, as shared by Roggli (22:58)

Real-Life Application: Linda’s Water Habit

• Goal: Lose 20 pounds—not because of “shoulds,” but to feel better and wear a swimsuit again. (14:07)
• Brainstorm & Funnel: List all possible strategies → eliminate unrealistic options → choose ONE actionable, high-impact step.
• Chosen Tiny Habit: “Every time I open the refrigerator, I drink two swallows of water.” (18:27)
• Implementation Tweaks:
  • Visibility: Eye-level glass with sticky note “Drink Me.”
  • Adjust glass placement when it became “invisible.”
  • Use colored glasses and sticky notes to maintain novelty.
• Celebrate Every Time: “Yes, good job, Linda!”; “Celebrating for us is not optional.” (20:23)

Why Immediate, Small Celebrations Matter

• Builds positive brain pathways (“Change happens best with emotion.” - 21:54)
• Counters automatic negative self-talk embedded from childhood.
• Notable moment: Live exercise—listeners join in a “Woohoo!” session (21:24)

Habit Stacking & Building Complexity

• Once a Tiny Habit is Reliable, Add Another: e.g., after the water habit, Linda anchored eating at the table as a new habit (35:18)
• Habit Stacking: “After I feed the dogs, I set out bowls on the kitchen table as a reminder to eat there instead of in front of the TV.” (37:45)
• Fine-Tune & Adapt: Notice what’s not working (“I stopped celebrating”) and make adjustments.

Handling ADHD Traps: Overwhelm, Boredom, Indecision, Frustration

• Avoid Overwhelm: “Pulverize” routines into their smallest units; focus on what drives YOU the craziest, not what should be done. (27:31)
• Novelty: Switch up cues (color, glass shape) to keep habits interesting.
• Frustration with Slow Progress: Re-visit your true “why,” and remember: “There’s no magic number of days for a habit to ‘stick’—reliability matters most.” (55:39)
• Motivation: “You’re already doing a lot right. Celebrate that!” (57:25)

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Listener Q&A and Solutions to Common Challenges

1. Getting Up On Time

Tips & Suggestions:

• Pair rising with something enjoyable (e.g., cappuccino)
• Try sunrise/simulator alarm clocks, or quirky alarm gadgets (Clocky, Alarmy) (45:50)
• Attach habit to existing routine: “After I put my feet on the floor, I say, ‘It’s going to be a great day.’” (35:50)
• Address sleep routines the prior night (“Getting up early relates to going to bed early.” - 48:15)
• Celebrate any step, even if it’s just being in bed with your phone off

2. Kitchen Decluttering

Mini-habits:

• Retrieve and pile similar items (all papers together, mittens together)
• “After I walk into the kitchen, put five things away.”
• Five/fifteen-minute daily clean-ups—with music to make it fun (53:41)
• Enlist help or assign baskets for other family members’ stuff
• Always celebrate completion, no matter how small

3. Managing Frustration, Overwhelm & Motivation Lapses

• Instant Celebration: Record and replay personal cheers; ask a loved one to reinforce your wins (56:02)
• Roggli’s Reframe: “It’s not about what you haven’t done, but recognizing what you are already doing right.” (57:25)
• Remind Yourself: “We’re optimists—wanting the best for ourselves is half the battle!” (59:16)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ADHD Optimism:
  “Face it, we really are optimists and we believe that we can. It’s just that we can’t do all of it at once.” (08:20)
• On Starting Small:
  “Chunking it down is not enough. We’re going to pulverize it — make it so tiny anyone can do it.” (25:30)
• Group Exercise:
  “Try it right now. 1, 2, 3 — Woohoo! Did you feel silly? I don’t care. Do it again!” (21:24)
• On the Importance of Celebration:
  “Celebration for us is not optional.” (20:23)
• On Experimenting and Self-Compassion:
  “This life is a test. It is only a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received further instructions.” (38:44) – Jack Kornfield quote

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Practical Tiny Habit Ideas from the Episode

• After I walk into my office... “...I will put away 10 sheets of paper, then celebrate.” (40:19)
• After I flush the toilet... “...I’ll do two pushups, then celebrate.” (40:40)
• After I plug in my phone... “...I’ll turn off notifications, then celebrate.” (41:00)
• After I turn on the coffeemaker... “...I’ll do three squats, then celebrate.” (41:10)

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Resources & Further Reading

• Books Mentioned:
  • Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg (TEDx Talk, tinyhabits.com)
  • Atomic Habits by James Clear (listener submission) (40:49)
• Other Tools: AI brainstorming prompts; sunrise alarm clocks; accountability via coaches (adhdcoaches.org)
• Supplemental Reading: Linda’s article “Uncomplicate Your Life in Six Steps” in the spring issue of ADDitude Magazine

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Takeaway Messages

• Start Tiny: Pulverize your goals into their tiniest pieces and celebrate every success—even if it feels silly.
• Build on Prompts: Anchor new behaviors to established routines.
• Personalize & Adapt: Fine-tune as you go; refresh prompts when they get stale.
• Celebrate Relentlessly: Immediate, positive self-celebration is crucial for ADHD brains.
• Do What Matters to YOU: Pursue habits that are meaningful and personally motivating—not “shoulds.”
• Give Yourself Grace: Habits are just experiments—if one doesn’t work, tweak and try again.

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“I change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad.”
— BJ Fogg (quoted by Linda Roggli, 22:58)

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For slides, resources, and full recordings:
Visit attitudemag.com, search for podcast 537

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Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Attention Deficit Disorder Expert Podcast series by Attitude Magazine. Hello, my name is Annie Rogers and on behalf of the Attitude Team, I am pleased to welcome you to today's ADHD Experts presentation titled Small Wins Add up how to Build new habits in 2025. Leading today's presentation is Linda Rogley. Linda is a professional certified coach, award winning author and founder of the Add Diva Network for ADHD women 40 and better. She also founded the annual ADHD Women's Palooza and the ADHD Couples Palooza. Linda has contributed chapters to several ADHD books and she chairs the webinar committee for the Attention Deficit Disorder association. You can visit add diva.net to learn more about Linda and her work. So we know that about 30% of Americans report making at least one New Year's resolution of according to Pew Research center survey. As for the other 70%, well, many of you are probably here today. Resolutions are tricky and often counterproductive for ADHD brains. The last thing that we need is another reason to feel shame or guilt or disappointment. But that doesn't mean that we can't build healthy habits and achieve our goals. So in today's webinar, Linda Rodley will walk us through some practical ADHD friendly changes we can make to improve our lives one small win at a time. So quickly. Before we get started, I must mention that the spring issue of Attitude Magazine is a fantastic supplemental resource for today's webinar, thanks to a wonderful feature article written by Linda Rogley titled Uncomplicate youe Life in Six Steps. You do not want to miss it. To make sure that you don't, please visit attitudemag.com subscribe and sign up for Attitude Magazine today. You can also click the magazine tab on your screen to learn more. So with that, I am so pleased to welcome you. Linda. Thank you so much for joining us today and for leading this very timely discussion.

[B]

Oh, thank you so much for allowing me to be here. And I am going to take you on a journey that is not easy even for me. So when Attitude magazine said we'd like you to do something about habits and keeping habits, I said, not me. Are you serious? We can't be. You have to be kidding because habits are tough for us. But I guarantee you that even though you're thinking about adding new habits and you the most often the most common thing I hear from my clients is I want to set up a morning routine. Well, a morning routine has a lot of different habits with it, so we're going to break those down A little bit. Excuse me. So why do we have a picture of a combine in a wheat field? Because I grew up on a farm and my father, when he was in the wheat field at harvest time, had to, he couldn't have time to go in and stop, get off the combine, go in, have dinner or lunch and come back out. Because we had to get that wheat out of the field, right? So my mom would always bring him food to the, to the field. She'd bring a big, big thing of iced tea, she'd bring him a sandwich or she'd bring him some food. But it always had something sweet at the end. Always. All of our meals had something that had to be sweet. So I grew up thinking that was the end of a meal. And what that caused was a problem with, duh, a little bit of a weight problem. I have to say it was partly genetic. My father's mom, my grandmother was, was not even 5ft tall and she probably, I don't even know what she weighed. But all I remember as a kid was she didn't have any lap to sit on because all of her tummies were covering up her thighs. So I have been fighting weight all my life. And that's what I wanna talk a little bit about today. Not just about weight, but about creating habits that help us with really difficult problems. And this one's gonna been a difficult issue for me my whole life. So when I would go on diets, cause they say never go on a diet, you should eat. Intuitively, I've done it every time I would lose weight and then I would fall back, it was just really hard to start all over again. So I was trying to get back on that lose weight course again. But every time I did, it felt like I had the big F word or the L word in my front of my face. Right? Loser. I just couldn't do it. It was just more and more and more difficult. So it's really familiar territory for us, right? We fall into that cycle of self blame and anxiety and depression and hopelessness and learned helplessness is part of what this is about. I won't go into detail about that, but that is, I can't do it. So therefore I probably am never going to be able to do it. We begin to believe our own story about that, which can really lead to despair. This poor dog has got that look that I probably had. No one else told me about it, but I probably had this hang dog look of oh my gosh, here we go again. So, so why is it so hard for us to make habits stick, not just losing weight or setting a morning routine or whatever it is that you're trying to do. Because we're not gonna do resolutions, we're gonna do intentions. Right. Intentions are a little less sticky. Why is it so hard? Well, let's face it, our working memories are a little bit deficient. If we throw our working memory boomerang out, it doesn't always return. It goes off in the distracted area. Right. So we don't always have our working memory to dep. We get busy with other stuff. I start to set up a new habit and suddenly other things get in the way. It's like, oh, well, I have to. Oh, I'll do that in a little minute. Yeah, of course I'm going to go back to that. Then I can go back to the slide before and say, there I go again kind of thing. Oftentimes we feel really so guilty about that. The other piece is that we're not particularly known for our consistency. This little up and down road here is kind of how we do things typically. So we need to accommodate that as we start creat new habits. We want to work with our adhd, not work against it. So there's some other things that possibly happen for us is that maybe we might take a little bit on too much. Right. I don't know how this guy's even pedaling this thing because he has a huge bicycle with tons of stuff on the back of it. And we want to clean everything at once. Clean the entire attic. We want to lose £50 or £100 and we want to exercise 150 minutes a week because isn't that what we're supposed to do? Face it, we really are optimists and we believe that we can. It's just that we can't do all of it at once. And that's what we believe that we can do. The other thing is that sometimes our goals or our intentions are a little bit wishy washy. We don't really kind of know how to make them very specific. Like we may say, well, I want to get more sleep. Well, there are a lot of pieces that go into getting more sleep, but we just have this. I'm going to get, you know, five and a half hours more sleep a night or whatever it is. Probably we're sleeping five and a half hours is more likely. But the point is it's not very specific. And the other piece is that, doggone it, we want it done by noon tomorrow. Come on, let's get this over With I don't have time to wait around. And we get really impatient because I don't know about you, but I can see me being a svelte, in shape person. But getting from here where I am to there, I don't want to do all that work in between. I just want to be there. Does anyone have a magic wand today? Attitude magazine might have those. I don't know. You might check out the spring edition. So the question is, how many of you create vision boards? You don't have to raise your hand or anything. This is not a poll. But just think about if you have tried to create a vision board. It's a really good idea. We get all the stuff out of our head that we want to happen. We want to visualize it. So then we have some kind of a visual reminder, which a lot of us are visual learners. So it's like our goals and our plans and our dreams. And sometimes they're huge and sometimes they're little tiny ones. But the problem is we put all that stuff on a vision board and we can get a little overwhelmed. We want to do all of them. Refer to trying to take on too much. But if you concentrate on just one corner of that vision board, then you can make it more ADHD friendly. So it's kind of like when I talk to my organizing clients about cleaning off their desk or whatever the tabletop or whatever it is. Often it's the dining room table. They go in and they're just like, oh, I don't even know where to start. So we just start in one tiny corner. It's the same thing about vision boards is that we need to start whether you have a created a vision board or whether it's just in your head. We want to start with one tiny piece. So remember, what we need to do is we need to create a habit plan that is friendly to our type of adhd. And I don't mean inattentive versus impulsive or hyperactive. I don't mean that. I mean each of us has a way that our ADHD manifests in the world. So we need to make it work for us. It's a very individual, personalized piece. We need to make it really quick. We need to make it easy to remember, and we celebrate. Ta da. Even the very smallest wins. And I think that's one of the pieces that's often missing for us. We go down the hill of I didn't do it. But we often don't say ta da. I did do it. So let's talk about this, I have to say that when Attitude magazine approached me about this, I thought the thing that really made a difference for me was a book that was written many years ago called Tiny Habits. And you know, there's so many books out there, you can figure out how to do this from a thousand different ways and a thousand different websites. However, Tiny Habits is the one that really resonated with me. And the book was written by a PhD professor of behavioral science at Ste. Stanford University out in California. And in 2007 he'd been studying and researching and studying and researching. Finally, he had this eureka moment in 2007 that tiny habits and tiny behaviors lead to new habits, right? Little tiny ones, little bite sized ones. And I know that you've heard about chunking it down. I'm going to talk about that in just a minute. But this book came out, I believe, in 2011. And then he's updated it. He has WebEx, excuse me, a TedX talk. Not a WebEx, a TedX talk. And you can find him on YouTube. He just seemed approachable and just kind of casual and realistic about the way he was approaching this. So his process was like this. Number one, you choose a teeny tiny little behavior and then you attach it to a habit that you're already doing. Like for instance, once upon a time when I first started learning about how to coach adhd, someone said, Nancy Brady, as a matter of fact, someone said, if you're trying to remember to take your ADHD medication, put a rubber band around it and attach it to your toothbrush. You know that you're going to. Most of us will brush our teeth. So it's attaching the medication taking to a habit that you already have. That's what it means. And that's called a prompt. Then the piece that I say is often missing is we celebrate when we do the new habit, the new, excuse me, the new behavior. So the behaviors build into habits. That's what happens here. So the truth is that a lot of times we think, oh well, I should reward myself or I should, you know, we can't take trips to Tahiti every time we do these teeny little things. That's why we're going to do some very tiny little things. So, whoops, we had this on here twice. So it goes like this. After I brush my teeth. Now this is not taking her medicine. I'm going to try and floss my teeth. So instead of trying to floss every single tooth, I'm going to floss one tooth. And this is what BJ Fogg says in his one of his TEDx talks. He says, after I brush my teeth, I'm going to floss one tooth and then I'm going to celebrate by saying yes and doing a high five for ourselves, right? Yahoo. We're not so good at celebrating. And anybody can floss one tooth, right? So the point is, is that he gives himself extra credit for flossing two teeth or three teeth or four teeth, and eventually we end up flossing more and more. Of course you know how to floss your teeth. So another piece of tiny habits is your ability to do this. Yes, you can floss your teeth, right? Starting really small can be the habit of doing it every time after you brush. As I mentioned, he says you get extra credit if you've lost more than one tooth, but you get to celebrate even just one. If you floss five or six teeth or if you floss all of your teeth one day, yay, we're celebrating. But the next day you only floss one. That's still a celebration because remember, what we're doing is building consistency. And eventually you're going to be able to floss your teeth. Even if you floss one tooth, even six months from now, you're still going to celebrate.

[C]

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[B]

About some real life examples. I mentioned my struggle with trying to stay maintain a steady weight loss. So I want to lose 20 pounds this year. And this is a real goal for me. So it's not made up. It's like this is not an actor doing this. I want to get clear about what I really want, though. Do I want to lose weight just because I should lose weight, I should lose weight. There's those shoulds again. Or do I want to wear a swimsuit again? Yes, I do. I would like to wear a swimsuit again. Or do I want to feel better about my body? Yeah, both of those things are true for me. So it's not just the act of taking pounds off of my body. There's a deeper reason for all of this. So I need to find out what that is and get clear about that. So then I'm going to brainstorm how could I lose £20? And this is where your brain gets goes crazy. You can use like mind maps. You can make lists. You can just speak this into a, into one of your voice recorders just so you do a brain dump of every possible way that you could do this. So I just put a bunch of them on here. I can eat less. Well, that sounds logical. Duh. I can find a good diet. If it's just the right diet, I know it'll work, right. I've tried that. Been there, done that. I could take diet pills. Nope, I don't think I'm going to do that. I can drink more water. I can join a weight loss group. I can have my jaw wired shut. Probably not, but you know, it's a possibility. I could go to a cool sculpting place and pay money to have coolsculpting done, whatever that does. I could try intermittent fasting. I could eat at the table. I can eat more slowly. And no carbs, no sugar. All of those things might get me there. But I want to pick one of them. So I'm going to cull the list. So I know this looks like a lot of stuff on here, the things I've just mentioned, I've taken a lot of those off. I am not going to wire my jaw. I am not going to count calories. I am not going to go to a weight loss retreat. That's too expensive for me. So I'm culling the list, what's realistic? And then I cull it one more time. I get down to three things. One of them is I could drink more water. One of them is I could have smaller servings. And one of them is that I could always eat at the table because I have a tendency to eat not at the table I chose. I want to drink more water. If I drink eight glasses of water a day, that's going to keep me, number one, going to the bathroom a lot more. But it's also going to fill me up and make me. And it's also going to be good for my body, drinking more water. So this is just a visual of the funnel is what I'm talking about. So number one, what are all these dozens of ways that you can accomplish the outcome? And then which ones would have the highest impact? Which ones are really doable? Which ones are realistic for you? And they get smaller and smaller in the number and then which one do you want to do now? I said, I want to drink more water now. And what's the tiniest behavior that I can do for that. Don't forget that you don't have to go through that whole complicated funnel. You might know what that tiny habit is. And I really did know what my tiny habit was going to be about drinking more water. So I know that my prompt would be to open the refrigerator door. I tend to go to the refrigerator a lot because I'm looking for food, right? That's not what I really want to do. But every time I go to the refrigerator and I open the door, I'm going to drink two swallows, at least two swallows of cold water. That's my tiny habit. That's the teeny tiny thing I'm going to do. So what I did was I put a glass of water on the top shelf right at eye level with a sticky note reminder that said, drink me just like Alice in Wonderland. And every time I open the refrigerator, I'm taking a drink of water. I also set everything up so that I, so that I could make this work. So first of all, I had to have space on the top shelf to make sure that I had a place to put a glass of water. My refrigerator gets a little busy in there. And the water that I found after I did this a couple of days, I realized if I leave that water overnight, it gets a little smelly and I don't like the taste of it. So I realized I, I need to put fresh water in every single morning. Not a problem. The other thing that I noticed was, and I don't have it on this slide, but I have one of those refrigerators that has two doors on top and you open it up. Well, I usually open the left hand side and the water was sitting on the right hand side so I couldn't see it. So I had to move it over to the other side. So those little adjustments are things that make this really work for you. But here's the most important piece. Not only do I drink the water, even just two swallows, sometimes I drink half the glass. But. And I've been doing this for a couple of weeks now, just so you know, it's brand new. Not only when I drink the water, I also go, yes, good job, Linda. Or yeah, you did it again. Congratulations. Whatever it is in the moment. And celebrating for us is not optional. It may seem really silly, but as I mentioned, my organizing group, when people get the smallest thing done, we cheer, we applaud. They go, yay. Good job, good job, good job. And at first it feels kind of silly to do that, you know, to receive it. Number One but to do it. But what I hear is that people will say, I love it when you cheer for me. And other people will say I love it when you clap for me. So there is value in this because it's so important for ADHD folks, I want you to remember some of you may have heard this statistic and I'm not sure where it came from. Someone gathered this information, but by the time ADHD kiddos are 10 years old, they have heard 20,000 more negative messages out there in the world, from the world than kids without adhd. And that's you. That's you when you were a kid, however old you are right now. So what we are right now is in encouragement deficit. We need even more celebration than other people out there without an ADHD brain. You'll notice this sweet little girl spilled the milk and she's really feeling a little. Oh, here, I did it again. And then the other picture of her says yay, I'm better, I'm fabulous, I'm good now. Not that I think you should celebrate spilling the milk, unless that's your goal, which I doubt. However, you can celebrate in tiny, tiny ways that are instantaneous right now. So woohoo. With this in the air or. Yes, that's what I say when I. When my dogs do something right. Yes, good job. Or yay. And you can give yourself a little hug or thumbs up or a nod of the head if you're going to. If you have people around you and go, yeah, all right, that's a good job. You can do awesome. You can just bounce your head a little bit. That's fabulous. Good job. You can even spin around. You can dance. I don't care what it is, just as long as it's fast and it happens immediately after you do that tiny teeny little habit. So I want you to try it right now. I don't care where you are, you don't have if you're with a lot of other people. But I want you to try one of those things. Are you ready? 1, 2, 3. Woohoo. All right. Did you feel silly? I don't care. Do it again. Woohoo. We have got to have those kind of acknowledgments to ourselves. We don't need someone else doing it. We can give that to ourselves. So it's going to feel uncomfortable at first and we're a lot more accustomed to saying no, you screwed up. Those are the messages. That's the self talk we're used to. But we want to celebrate even if Self talk and self celebration is considered, oh, I don't know, that's just selfish. Or you're being a narcissist or you're being egotistical, but not in this context. And plus, it's really short. It's really, really, really short. Change happens best with emotion. And this kind of celebration elicits emotion, even if you don't believe it in the moment when you keep doing it. It's kind of like if you smile, you're acting as if. And eventually you feel like you're. It's real, you actually are happier. Okay, this is from BJ Fogg. And I love this quote. I change best by feeling good, not by feeling bad. What does that mean for us? It means instead of punishing ourselves for the things that we screwed up on, for the many times that I fell off of the wagon that I and I'm having to get back on the horse again. That was a mixed metaphor. Anyway, the point is that all those times that when we say, oh, I'm terrible, I didn't do it right. See, I'm hopeless. I ate the whatever. Not going to trigger anybody by saying whatever your favorite, you know, indulgence is. If you have issues with food, as I do, those things are not helping. And that's one reason. That's one of the things I think I was really attracted to the work about tiny habits was that he knows that most of us, ADHD or not, most of us really are trying to do something, but we are more likely to be negative about it than we are to be positive. That's why we have to artificially and eventually authentically celebrate these tiny wins. So what are some of the best practices for building all these new habits? Well, first of all, it's choosing a prompt. Remember, a prompt is something you're already doing. For me, the prompt was opening the refrigerator door. I am never going to go through a day that I don't open the refrigerator door. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's not a good thing. I don't know. But brushing your teeth, for instance, as I mentioned, with the flossing your tooth or taking your ADHD medication or showering, eating, sitting down to eat. Checking your email. When I check my email, I'm going to. After I check my email, I'm going to delete 15 junk emails or I'm going to unsubscribe for something. That's what I'm talking about here. If you want to get rid of email, these are different kinds of intentions. Charging your phone. Every time I put my phone on the charger, I'm going to whatever it is and then celebrate feeding the cat or walking the dog, even just getting out of bed. And one of the things that BJ Fogg recommends is that and continues to do is before he gets out of bed, when he puts his feet on the floor, he says it's going to be a great day. And he's been doing this for years and years. And when he has days that don't feel like that are going to be very great, he's decided to alter it just a little bit. And he says it's going to be a great day somehow. And I love that. So it's still the acknowledgement, it's still the, it's still the habit of saying it's going to be a great day and therefore making it one. But it's altered just a little bit. Taking your meds, for instance, taking your meds might be something you already do regularly. If you take your meds and then you add something onto it, that's another way to anchor, as they call it, a prompt from another habit. So let's make this really easy as well. That's one reason I talk about these tiny, teeny habits and why I think this is such a great idea. The easier the behavior is to do, the more likely it is to become a habit. So you notice that the picture that I have here is of a really intricate maze, right? There's one way in, one way out, but instead of trying to go through all those little intricate little corners that are in there, we're just going to slice right through it. ADHD folks want to complicate things. It makes it more interesting. But this time I invite you to let it be easy. Let it be easy for yourself. Something tiny that is not so difficult. We also are going to make it really quick, right. BJ Fogg suggests that whatever this new habit is needs to happen in 30 seconds. It's not. Or maybe it's. Maybe you could do 60 seconds. But if you can delete 15 emails in 30 seconds, then great. If it takes you 20 minutes to delete 15 emails, you've taken on too much, then you want to go back and just delete one email. Perhaps if we. If you were trying to get rid of email, and I don't know who doesn't want to do this, chunking it down is not enough. I told you we're going to try and make it, make it really tiny. You've heard about chunking it down. That's not enough. Here are these big boulders here that are still. They're chunked, but they're not very. They're not really small. Instead, we're going to pulverize it. We're going to make it so tiny that it's just anybody can do this. We can do it. That's the important part, that we can do this. So the question is, what do you want to change this year? What kind of habits do you want to put in this year? And believe me, if it's a morning routine, you need to start with pulverizing that morning routine into something that is so tiny that it's similar to getting up, putting your foot on the floor, feet on the floor and saying, it's going to be a great day or equivalent, right? Maybe you want to exercise some more or start exercising. Maybe you want to get some more sleep. Maybe you want to eat healthier. That's one of my goals. But I'm not adding that on yet. I'm right now drinking water. Maybe you want to declutter your space. That's always a biggie for ADHD folks, especially at the beginning of the year. It feels like new renewed confidence in that. Maybe you want to tone down your stress. Maybe you want every. When you get your anchor, it's like every time I sit down at my desk, I'm going to take three deep breaths kind of thing to make sure that you are less stressed than you were before you sat down. Maybe you want to stop running late. Maybe you want to stop smoking. Maybe you want to stop interrupting or overspending. All of those things are doable with this program. Can you do all of them? Well, you might want to do all of those things, but let's do one at a time and one piece of that, one at a time. However, the ADHD tendency is to not decide. But I want them all. I want to do all of them. When I work with my organizing clients, they're like, I don't know where to start. The entire house. So the entire apartment isn't meant. I don't know where to start. Indecision is always a challenge for us, but the question is, what drives you the craziest? Not what drives your friends crazy, not what drives your partner crazy, bless their hearts, or your co workers, but what drives you crazy. For me, it was, I'm tired of feeling bad about being this weight, right? I don't like this way I the way I look. I don't like the way I feel in this body. I don't like the way that my clothes fit and I do want to wear a swimsuit. So that's the one that I'm focusing on now. Adding one tiny habit at a time will take forever. But what happens with all of those post its over there? Would you not get lost in all those post its instant overwhelm, right? As you gain confidence and you actually begin to do the things that you say you're going to do, then other areas of your life begin to align with it too. It's kind of like once we get in motion, we stay in motion. I think that might be physics, if I'm not surprised. The deepest value of the tiny habit, if you will, is that they strengthen the belief in yourself. If we can believe that we can do it instead of I don't know, then we're probably much more likely to do it. So what about habit stacking? And you've probably heard that phrase before, tiny habits is really built on habit stack stacking. And we just talk about stacking on one thing and it's, you know, using one habit to anchor to another one or sister it to another one. They call it in construction. So you can add even more habits onto that. So that I may take another one of those three things that were my top choices. Like maybe I want to have smaller portions after I begin to really get this first one in place. That's when you feel like it's most reliable because it's not about, oh, it takes 21 days. No, it doesn't take. May take 25 days days for you, but who cares how long it takes when it's reliable. Every time I open that refrigerator and I see drink me and I have a drink, that's when it's reliable. Then I can add another habit onto that. And it doesn't necessarily have to be I drink two swallows and then go have smaller meals. It means I anchor it to something else. I have a different prompt. So here's a second piece to what I was talking about. I decided that the second part and you can actually have two of these or sometimes maximum of three. But I think for ADHD folks, we just need two. Another thing that I said was that I really want to eat at the table instead of tv. I eat in front of the TV far too often. We don't have kids at home anymore. We have three dogs. They don't sit at the table with us, that's for sure. Although they certainly hang around the table when we eat there. Netflix means that I am sit, I'm sitting too much and I'M eating mindlessly instead of paying attention to it, which is kind of in the periphery here. So my tiny habit solution is to eat at the breakfast table after it's all cleared from debris. Right. I had to get stuff off of the, off of the breakfast table, the kitchen table. So what I did was after I feed the dogs in the morning, I'm going to set out two bowls because I don't know about you, but I think a lot of ADHD folks like to eat out of bowls instead of plates because it doesn't slide off or something. I don't know. But I put two bowls out and they're like pasta bowls with flat where I put the spoon and the fork in there and I put them on the kitchen table. Right. So that it reminds me all day long. Oh yeah, I'm going to fix food and we're going to eat at the table. I'm going to fix food and we're going to eat at the table. So it's like a big gigantic post it for me. But that's my second piece. That's my second tiny habit. And when I do that, what am I going to do? Yay, Linda. Good job. Good job. Woo hoo. Nice job. Woo. You did it. Oh, I love it. Congratulations. So what I found was that my habit, both of my habits needed a little bit of fine tuning. And when I found the glitch, like realizing that the water was not tasting very good after it sat there all night in the refrigerator all night. Then I realized I need to fill up the glass again. So I do that in the morning. And that's not hard for me to remember because I'm putting fresh water out for the dog. So that's not a problem. Here's what else I noticed. I noticed that the glass was beginning to be blind to me. It was disappearing, it was becoming invisible. So what I did was I'm now using different color glasses on alternate days. Like I have some glasses that are green and I have some that are blue and I have some that are purple and I even changed the color of the post it that said drink me. So ADHD folks may have to make this a little bit more interesting. If you find you're kind of slipping, then it's time to notice, oh, what's going on? How do I get back on track? The other thing that I noticed is that I stopped celebrating. Oh, there's the pits and there's the deep ditch that we can fall into. I just unlike, I'm drinking it. Yeah, I put it Back in. Oh, I was supposed to say wonderful, fabulous. Maybe I need to say, drink me celebrate on it so I can remind myself, because it's hard for me to remember that. Right. You may even need some outside accountability for this. And I'm not saying you have to have it. You know, you could get coaching help, or I'm not suggesting that your partner or a person who is judgmental say, oh, did you do that yet? That's not what we need here. I wouldn't mind somebody saying to me, did you celebrate? That would help me. Maybe, but you might. You might need somebody to help get started. But this is really your show. You're opening that door to a completely and wonderful new way of living for yourself. So the good news is that when you create these tiny habits and they actually become a habit, those behaviors become a habit. It actually clears space for that new habit to have an easier route through your brain. It's not like a rut in your brain, but it's kind of the same idea, is that when we use that part of our brain, that brain circuit gets stronger and stronger. So it's more likely to default to that instead of a different one. So I may default to, I'm going to have a drink or I'm going to eat at the table instead of, I'm going to go get in the pantry and have whatever. I'm going to eat something snacky that I didn't really need. I have to say that what's going to help me in the coming weeks is that I'm getting Invisalign, and you can only eat when you take the Invisalign out, and it has to be in 22 hours a day. That may help me out just by itself. So the brain circuits that we use most often are the easiest to access, and we want that to be true for us. So don't forget that we have a ripple effect here. Your tiny habits are really, really tiny in isolation. But when we accomplish something in a way that works for us, we're more inclined to believe that we can do other difficult tasks. And we do do other difficult tasks. So I just want to mention to you, another example is that one of the people that just came into my new organizing group is struggling to get things decluttered. And it's a very, very, very big deal because her husband said, if you don't do this, I'm leaving you. As a matter of fact, he's already making plans to leave. He doesn't believe that she can do it, and he doesn't believe if she does it that she'll be able to maintain it. So she is taking one tiny piece at a time and she's using some coaching to help her with that. But I'm just saying that some of these habits are not idle. They're not trivial. They are very, very serious and they have serious impacts on us and on the people around us. So give yourself some grace. Allow yourself to start again. Because that's what's really going on here in the new year, with new things that you want to do, whether it's setting up a morning routine or putting your feet down, saying it's a great day, or having a drink of water. Those things are really tiny, but part of a bigger picture that will really make a difference. And don't forget to celebrate. You need to celebrate. All of us need to celebrate. I just wrote down a few more tiny habit ideas for you. One of them is after I walk into my office, I will put away 10 sheets of paper from the piles and then celebrate. And this came directly from from an amazing ADHD therapist and professional and expert, Kathleen Nadeau. The reason I know about this is because she shared it at one of the ADHD conferences after she and a non ADHD friend, Judith Kohlberg, wrote a book called ADHD Friendly ways to organize your life and time or something like that. And all these papers from the book were all over her office and she decided that the only way she was going to get it fixed was to walk in the office and put away 10 pieces of paper on some of the piles and eventually the office was clear of those piles. Here's another one. After I flush the toilet, I will do two pushups and then celebrate. BJ Fogg did this. It's one of his examples. He said he was up to 58 push ups a day during this because sometimes he was doing extra credit. Or maybe he was just going to the bathroom a lot. Maybe because he was drinking water. I don't know. After I get out of bed, here's another one. I'll sit on my meditation pillow for 30 seconds. Doesn't mean you have to meditate, but at least you're in the right place. But then celebrate. After I plug my phone in to charge, I'm going to turn off notifications and then celebrate. Yay. I don't have it on. I'm not going to be bugged and not going to be distracted by it. Right after I open my email, I'll delete 20 junk mails and then celebrate. Woohoo. Yeah, I got it. I got it. Good job. After I turn on the coffee maker, I'll do three squats and then celebrate. Yes, I did it. Three squats. Yes, yes, yes. And again, you may decide to do four or five, but if you only do three, you still celebrate, no matter when. So I really invite all of you to thrive in 2005. You've got this. I'm telling you this. This kind of tidy, tidy, tiny habits habit really does work. And I can't. I can't emphasize enough about how I would really invite you to buy the audiobook or find a way to borrow the book from the library or go online and watch some of the YouTube videos with BJ Fogg and hear some of the success stories. I mean, there are remarkable success stories with people like us. ADHD brains don't always believe it can happen to us, but this is a magic wand. Yes, we have to employ the magic wand, but yes, we can do it. And I don't know why this came up for me, but while I was creating these slides, this quote came up for me and I just decided to put it in here. And even though it doesn't really have anything to do with tiny habits, it might. It's from Jack Kornfield and it says, this life is a test. It is only a test. If it had been an actual life, you would have received further instructions on where to go and what to do. Remember, this life is only a test. Your tiny habits experiment is just a test. So experiment to your heart's content, but don't forget to celebrate. Alrighty. So at the end of the slides, I do have some links to BJ Fog, Tedxtalk, the one that I watched, which was like 20 years ago, I swear to God. Was it 20? Yeah, it was 20 years ago. The website is tinyhabits.com and now I just was on that website this week. They now have songs on Spotify and Apple Music that are about doing trap, doing, learning how to do tiny habits. And I gotta tell you that a good friend of mine wrote some songs for children about adhd and they were wonderful for me too. So I suggest you check those out because the few that I listened to sounded like they would work for me too. And don't forget, if you. If you are interested in getting some help, you can from not a friend or please, not anyone judgmental, please, please, please. ADHD coaches you can [e-mail] all those folks in there are professionally trained and I think that's really important. Here. So anyway, I am ready to take questions. How about that? Let's celebrate.

[A]

Linda, thank you so much. I wanted to say first of all that it's always wonderful to have specific recommendations for, for books and other resources and sometimes some great, oftentimes great recommendations come from our listeners. So I wanted to pass on that. Atomic Habits by James Clear was also recommended by some listeners here today for those who are looking for some more resources.

[B]

And.

[A]

We have some suggestions as well about ways to use AI to help you brainstorm ideas for how to break down a goal into teeny tiny steps. That is also in our spring issue. But you can actually prompt AI with things like I want to wake up at 6am every day. What are some small ways that I can begin to work toward this goal? And it may give you some ideas that you haven't thought of. So I just wanted to throw that out there.

[B]

Thank you so much for those and thank anyone who sent those ideas in. And I'm very familiar with Atomic Habits. I just, this one works better for me. I have both of, I have all of that stuff and this one just seems tinier and easier for adhd. But if it works for you, Atomic Habits is perfect.

[A]

Right? Okay. And I welcome anyone who has found a book or an app or a website. Any resource that has helped you. Please tell us in the comments section and we will share all of these with everyone who's here in our follow up emails. Because you just never know what is going to click with you.

[B]

Wonderful.

[A]

Okay, so before we launch into the Q and A, I did want to circle back to the question that we asked at the outset here and that was when you have worked to establish a habit toward a goal that you know will help you and you've run into some problems with that, what have they been? So the number one answer was overwhelm that just felt it was too much, didn't know where to begin. Number two was boredom that the goal and the tasks involved, the habits involved lose their shine. Number three was frustration, especially when, you know, results are slow to come, which they often are, and then shame over small slip ups or past failures and finally bristling against kind of rules and structure. So I want to start right at the top with overwhelm and breaking down some tasks. And I wondered if we could kind of group solve a couple of comments from our listeners who had very specific big goals and ideas for maybe breaking them down. So one big goal which I think is probably common here, is getting up on time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Can we brainstorm Some ideas of small steps toward this goal.

[B]

Are you asking the audience? Are you asking me?

[A]

I will ask you, Linda, to kick it off because it'll be a little slow. Yes. Comments to come in there.

[B]

There are. Can we just cheat with AI? Can we just have AI getting up on time? First of all, I think that the best thing to do if you want to get up on time is to have a dog because that they will never. Or tat they will never let you sleep in. However, that's a. That's a completely different commitment, that's for sure. But getting up on time, I think is difficult, especially at least here in the United States when we are in winter time Z and it's dark, sometimes dark outside. And even if the sun wakes you up, blah, blah, blah, there are actually clocks that have a globe on top of them that gradually light up just like the sun's coming up, so that it gradually wakes you up so that you actually have. Have light in your room. I don't know about you, but I sleep with the curtains pulled and the shades down and everything so that I don't have any distractions so that I can sleep, for heaven's sake. The other thing is that, and I'm not promoting any particular medication, but there are medications for ADHD out there that you take at night and help you wake up in the morning. They kick in in the morning. So that's another possibility. And I know that there are a ton of different kinds of a alarm clocks and two alarms that you can put in your phone. One of them is a called. I think it's called Clocky, if I'm not mistaken. It has little wheels on it and you put it across the room and when it goes off, it jump. Jumps off of the cabinet or whatever it's on and it drives, it runs around the room and it doesn't shut off until you catch it. So you are out of bed. Another one that I know of is that there is a certain alarm that you have to actually, to turn it off, you have to solve a math problem. Now, it's not a big math problem, but it is a math problem. So you have to be awakened up to know what two plus two is kind of thing. And there's another one that will not shut up until you shake it. And you can't just go, okay, I'm done. You have to shake the heck out of it. So there are certain alarms that work as well. So I'd love to hear from the audience some other things that you can think of Because I don't have to worry about it. My dogs are on top of me in the morning saying, excuse me, but I need to go out.

[A]

Absolutely. Yes, we do have some good suggestions here. Someone did endorse and say that their sun clock has made a big difference for them. So to piggyback on that. And someone wrote in to say, my suggestion would be to connect getting up on time with something fun like, I will make myself a wonderful cappuccino.

[B]

Yeah, perfect.

[A]

I love that habit. Yeah. Or projecting into the future. How will I feel when I get up on time versus being late all day? Of course, that requires some clear thought before the coffee. But. And then, of course, it. A small. A small new habit might go to the night before and resolving to get into bed with your phone off by a certain time. And that's something that you can celebrate if you are in bed and your phone is not within reach. You can celebrate that even if you're not necessarily sleeping. So those were some ideas that came from the group. Others variations of alarms, iPhone alarms, the clocky alarm, lots of alarms. There's an app called Alarmy. So we will consolidate these into a list. But.

[B]

Well, I just want to mention. And I'm glad someone said something about turning off your phone, because getting up on time in the morning actually has direct relation to going to bed at night. Right. So when I have clients who want to get up earlier, we have to back up and look at what time are you going to bed and what's keeping you from going to bed? Because, remember, we have, you know, we have a difference in how our circadian awareness and clock works. So sometimes we end up going to bed later, and therefore we would like to sleep later. But we are getting up and we're operating a lot of times on sleep deficit, which then makes our ADHD symptoms even worse. So it may be not a morning information, maybe combination of morning changes, but also to look backwards at what's happening at night.

[A]

Right, right. Exactly. Okay, wonderful. So another big goal is decluttering. And you mentioned that great tip about putting away 10 pieces of paper every time you walk into your office. And we did a poll recently asking about the areas of the home that cause the most clutter. Stress and kitchens, I think, was number one. So I'm wondering if we can talk about some ways to. Yeah. A small habit you could form to get a hold on clutter in your kitchen and other, you know, communal spaces in your home.

[B]

Well, kitchen is a whole different thing than other communal spaces.

[A]

That's true. Okay, let's keep it to the kitchen.

[B]

Kitchen for now. As I said, it's kind of the thing that drives you the craziest. And one of the guys who was at the. Who was in one of the blitzes this week was working on his kitchen table, and when he showed us an image of it, it was piled with everything. But what goes in the kitchen, it was papers and it was mittens, and it was stuff that needed to go in another room and all that kind of stuff. So I think kitchen tables, also dining room tables, because all kinds of horizontal surfaces are danger zones for adhd, because it's just like dash and drop, right? Drop, drop, and D. It's like I said it backwards. So we jump in with, I'm just going to leave this here for a minute. And then we don't ever come back to it, even though we think we're going to come back to it. So it kind of comes down to the same kind of thing with Kathleen Nadeau, is that if we. I'm just going to use the kitchen table or the kitchen counter as an example. Those things. You. You. First of all, number one. Number one job is you get things off the floor. I talk to people about this a lot, is that I. I've broken my wrist and two ribs because I was tripping over clutter on my floor. So the first thing to do is to get it off of the floor. And even if you have to make more piles on something higher, at least get it off the floor so you can have safe passage back and forth to what you're doing. The second thing is to do what Kathleen did and start at the top, but also first make more piles. Sounds like a beautiful idea, right? Make more piles of things that go together. So if you have a lot of papers on the kitchen counter or the kitchen table, in some cases, because a lot of people use their kitchen table as their office, right? Just make piles of all those papers. You can sort them a little bit, but just make piles so that you have at least some space on that. On that table. And sometimes you may need to make some space for sorting things to begin with. So as in terms of. In terms of tiny habits is we can put all of those papers together. As I find a paper, I will put it on the pile of papers. The next step for that. That is a different. Different kind of habit. I'm going to go through these, and then we're going to get rid of the ones we don't need and all that kind of stuff. But a lot of clutter in kitchen. In kitchens is the reason it's so hard to keep clean is because we use it all the time. Right. Every single meal. Even if you don't cook three meals a day, you're eating there some, you know, at least once a day, maybe twice a day. And if you're working at home like I am, you're going in for snacks and that kind of stuff. So the first. The first step to clearing the kitchen is to do the stuff that's day to day stuff. Just get all the dishes that are piled in the sink. At least start with washing the dishes. That's at least a place to jump in. And then what happens is then we use those dishes. You understand why this is really difficult. So just acknowledging that this is difficult. And also remember, you get those dishes done. Even if you get some of the dishes done, don't forget to celebrate. Yes. I did it. I did it, I did it, I did it. And therefore, the other stuff that is everyday stuff, like if there's mail that's come into the room or whatever it is, just sort that stuff out and get it out of the way. That's the first piece of dealing with a decluttery kitchen. The other thing is if you have a family and some of that stuff that's in the kitchen belongs to other family members, create a little box or a basket and put all of their stuff in that basket and then give it to them when they come home or come into the room saying, hi, this is all yours. Would you please put this stuff away? And if you have little kids, you might have to help, but bigger kids might be able to do it themselves. Not necessarily willingly, but you can model. Yay, I did it. Congratulations. All right. I'm sure other people have great ideas, too.

[A]

Well, piggybacking on that, someone wrote in to say, like a five minute designated cleanup time for the kitchen where maybe you turn on a fun song and get the family. And they know it's like one song or maybe two.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's it. And you. If you do that every day, you know, you will be making progress. More importantly, you'll just be getting into the habit of having that time. But that, that seems to be the. That seems to be the pattern with the kitchen in particular, because just exactly of that problem that you raised that you're. You're using everything again. So it's hard.

[B]

Well, it's kind of disheartening. It's like, didn't I just wash this dish 20 minutes? You know, I Mean, it's kind of a pain in the neck. I will say that I have to give my husband props because. And he's not adhd, he's more ocd. But in the evening, he makes sure that the counters are clear. He does the hand dishes. We have a dishwasher, so most everything goes in there. But he does the hand washed dishes and he wipes the counters off. And he does that because he said, I know that you like to wake up with a clear kitchen, so you might enlist another member of your family to help you too.

[A]

Yes, yes. And someone wrote in, I find that putting a big 15 minute timer up and limiting it to just that amount of time. And she said, you can get, quote, so much stuff done in 15 minutes. Which is true.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[A]

So I want to get to another one of the big hurdles that people face and that is the frustration that with slow results, motivation. How can we work to maintain motivation when it can take, you know, by some estimates 66 days to form a new habit where it becomes automatic? Any insights?

[B]

Could be 67 days, could be 75 days. And again, as I said in the slides, there's no magic number for that. There's no magic number for habits to be, be to settle in. But if you are having a lot of frustration with slow progress, then I really invite you to back up a minute and make sure that you're actually working on the thing that you really, that's really important for you or not the thing that you think you should do. Like, that's number one. But as a part of that, though, the frustration can also come because we're unrealistic about how long this might take. And you're right, we get bored and we're really impatient. We want it done now. It's not like I want it done in 25 days or even 125 days. But that's where I think that having outside accountability can help. And also, I think that frustration also comes from when we forget to celebrate, we forget to give ourselves that reward. And sometimes, you know, some people have said, oh, you can give yourself a little, you know, a massage or something. Like, those are way too far away for me. You know, I need to have instant kind of, I need to have instant acknowledgement. And if you can't remember to acknowledge yourself, have somebody else in your household acknowledge you, or put it on a record, put it on a recording and just push the button and go, yay, Linda, you did it. You did it. Because I think that kind of, that helps eliminate Some of that. And I think that frustration goes right along with boredom and it all kind of is in that motivation circle. So we have to. I think that going back to the original why do I want this anyway? And remember that things build on each other. You already have habits in place. You already are doing. Let me just say this to everyone out there, you're doing a lot of things right already. Okay. You're doing a lot of things right. So I'm going to celebrate that now. Yay. You're doing a lot of things right. It's just these pieces that you want to change that are so get bigger and bigger and bigger. It's because human brains are designed to look for the negative, not the positive, because we're looking for that saber toothed tiger. But the frustration, I certainly understand it and I certainly feel it myself. Do we have. I haven't given very good answers to that question. So do we have better answers in the chat?

[A]

No, I think that was a great. That was a great answer. And I think the frustration element. Yes. People say they need the feedback. And even if it's a little bit of progress, that feedback. And I'm thinking to myself, surely we can figure out how to harness AI for this. I don't know. We'll let you know when we do. But to give you that little dopamine hit of an alert saying you deleted 10 emails. Congratulations, job well done.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

And you know someone, it bears repeating. Someone wrote in today to say that your exercise of cheering actually made them quite emotional because they realized that they've spent most of their lives not being cheered by others. And so it was. It was, yeah. Or themselves. Right. And so it was actually a powerful thing. So if you can allow yourself to lean into that silliness, might feel silly. You might actually find that it does help you in maintaining that motivation in a way you might not have expected.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

Well, I must say we are sadly out of time today. I wanted to wrap up by repeating a quote that you said at the very beginning, Linda, that I thought was so powerful and that is, is that we really are optimists and we want to do it all. So let's look at the bright side of all of this, is that we are optimists. We want the best for ourselves. That's why we're here today. And thank you so much for giving us the tools to take steps toward doing it all, but one step at a time.

[B]

Yeah, exactly. Some of them. Right. Some of the children. Yes.

[A]

And thank you to everyone who joined us today. You suggested some wonderful resources which we will collect and share with the group. And if you would like to access the slides and other event resources, know that you can visit attitudemag.com and search podcast 5:37 so the slides and recording will be available a few hours after our live webinar. And if you are listening in replay mode, you can just simply click on the event description. Our full library of webinars is available as a podcast. It is called the ADHD Experts Podcast and it's available on most streaming platforms. So we hope to see everyone again for another free Attitude webinar next week. Our topic is on Diffusing Defiance in Children with adhd. So to make sure you don't miss that or other research updates, articles, whatnot, you can sign up for our free webinar Free Newsletters excuse [e-mail] newsletters Linda, thank you again so much and we wish you all the best for the rest of 2025.

[B]

We hope to see you again soon.

[A]

For more Attitude Podcast and information on living well with attention deficit, visit attitudemag.com that's a D I T U D M A G dot com.

[C]

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