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Hi, welcome to ADHD Friendly. I'm Patti. I'm an ADHD and executive function coach and the creator of the ADHD Friendly membership. I invite you to check it out. You can find more information@adhdfriendly.com to see if it would support you to struggle less and thrive more. That's what I'm here for. That's what everything I do is designed to focus on. So this is episode 240, and in this one, I'm going to kick off a celebration of my first strawberry of summer. So I've got a gardening challenge, but a gardening win that I'm going to highlight. And then I have a tip about how to protect your brain, calling it part Du, part two, because I shared this before, but this is a slightly different slant. And then I have a product of the week about how to minimize the frizz if your hair is prone to frizzing in the warmer, more humid times of year. I have a product that I've been trying out and was waiting to see how I liked it before I talked about it. So today's the day. And then our main topic for today. And I'm going to say this wrong many times, but it's the zigonaric effect. So bad at unusual words and names and how what it looks like with adhd, how we can kind of use what researchers have shown about how it works with our brain and how to make that work for us when we have the ADHD brain wiring that can make it even more challenging. All right, so let's kick it off as we do with my celebration for this week, and that is that I have picked my first strawberry of summer and it was a beauty. So if you're listening to this, check out my YouTube channel, ADHD Friendly. It was a beautiful, plump, bright red strawberry. Just lovely. And it's my one win because the rest of the plants that I purchased and planted for my garden have died because we had several days of below freezing weather that when I planted them, it wasn't forecasted, but the weather changed. I covered them, I did what I could, but they did not make it. So I had to start over from scratch. But the strawberries, they did make it. So I'm going to celebrate that win and just regroup on the rest. It is a learning process and, and I definitely learned from my ADHD impulsivity to get things planted earlier, thinking I'd have more time for them to grow and produce more. And instead it was too cold. They didn't live. So it's A lesson it's something to learn from, not to beat ourselves up about. That's why I'm celebrating the strawberry. All right. I did not purchase anything this week, but I do have something I purchased a couple of weeks ago that I've been trying out and it is my product of the week. So I read about this in, I believe it was Real simple magazine. I honestly can't remember right now, but it was in their, their best products of the year list. And it's a product called Matrix. This orange bottle, it came in a three pack. So it came in a shampoo, exact size conditioner and a little top coat anti frizz serum. And so it's Matrix M A T R I X the three pack. So again it comes with this is the shampoo an exact replica, but conditioner and the serum for $23. I got the kit because it was an investment. I mean $23 for these tiny, like the early, what I would call, you know, travel size. This is 1.7 ounce of shampoo, exact size of conditioner and a 1 fluid ounce of the top coat anti Frizz Serum for $23. But here's the thing. I was thinking about just getting the, the serum and not worrying about the shampoo or the conditioner. But this little guy in this exact size sold solo was 29, but I'm sorry, was $19 by itself. So for four extra dollars I could sample the shampoo and the conditioner. So that's what I decided to do. I got mine from Ulta. I think it was $22 on at Ulta. It's $23 on Amazon. The shampoo and conditioner, if you buy them individually are $22 each on either platform. And it's an. For me, that's, that's a pretty high priced hair product. I get really protective of my hair products when they cost that much. So I'm, I'm really mindful because for me that's a lot of money to spend on shampoo and conditioner. But I decided to give it a go. And so the first time I used was the last time we recorded a podcast episode and I was talking to Becca before we recorded and telling her that, you know, I don't know, I really don't notice a difference. And she said keep using it, that over time it will continue to work even more. And I am now four washes in and I wash my hair every other day and it is definitely less frizzy and smoother. Like even when I wash it, I can Feel the smoothness. Even with the shampoo, I can feel the smoothness in the shower. So I'm definitely noticing less frizz now. It's not the peak of heat here yet and definitely not a peak of humidity. But my hair was still already frizzing, which is why I was seeking out an alternative to just dealing with it and pulling it up all the time. So again, it's Matrix. Mega Sleek is the line of Matrix. They have a couple of different lines. So this is the Mega Sleek. And I'm not sure if I'm going to keep buying the shampoo and conditioner. That's a. We'll see. I still have enough left for probably two more washes. I have been washing my hair with something with my regular shampoo first and doing a second wash with this because it takes a lot to lather. I have really thick hair to lather my hair. And I felt like it wasn't going to get the five estimated washes that they say you can get from this little sample guy. So that's my little hack that I've been doing to get a little bit more out of it. And this guy, it's made of glass, this one. These are made of plastic. And it's. It's really, I think, gonna last a bit of time. So I'm very excited about having these as we go into the summer months and for me, humidity and frizz months. So that's my product of the week. Oh, and I have a little picture of what the kit looks like on Amazon. So it comes in a little box. It's a three pack I didn't get from Amazon because when I looked at the reviews, even though it has pretty good reviews, the negative reviews were about them coming, leaking, or opened. And I just didn't want to risk that since for me, it was a pretty expensive sample. So I went to Ulta and bought it where I didn't have to worry about whether or not it was leaking or not, you know, the package was damaged or anything. So it's 23 on Amazon or you can go to Ulta and. All right, so now for my tip for this week. So it is about protecting your brain. And I'm calling this one part two. I've done protect your brain before, but this is specifically related to visual images. And this came from the book that I highlighted last week as my book of the week, where it was the Calamity Club and where the character Meg was talking about a picture and that she saw Meg was, you know, 11 year old girl. And she was talking about a picture that she saw once of a dead man. And this is her quote. She said they propped him up next to the front door and gave him a plate of food to snack on and stuck a cigarette in his mouth. After a while, I wished I had not looked at that photograph so long. Once you see one like that, it will be hard to unsee it when it's time to go to sleep. I highlighted that when I read it. I literally have said these things almost verbatim. Not the description of the dead man. But I've always told my kids it was one of my main jobs was to protect their brain from not seeing things that they couldn't unsee that would. My kids were prone to nightmares and being fearful of things. So it just didn't make sense to expose them to things that were avoidable. And so for me, that was things like certain book covers or movie previews. Like we'd go to see a PG movie and they would have a pretty intense preview on it. I used to have them cover the price because I didn't want them to see something that was probably beyond what they could visually handle at that age. News was never on when the kids were young. I didn't want them seeing news images. And as they got older, it was social media. And now, mind you, these can be images that maybe it's somebody else projecting a really clean house or really perfect skin or really whatever it is that we can get in our heads and really get kind of in that. That saboteur, a little gremlin in our brain beating us up. Not helpful. So protecting your brain from images, whether they are pleasant, quote, unquote, you know, supposed to be something pleasant to look at. If they get you into judgment and you don't have a way out of that, something maybe to work on with your therapist, you know, like literally, like get some support. But don't expect yourself to just be able to shut it off if you don't have the skills yet to do so. Whether they're violent, gory, graphic or beautiful and lead to judgment, notice what are the images that you would protect your brain from so that they're not sticking in there, draining your energy, creating a difficult pathway forward for you, because they don't work for you for whatever reason. So that is my tip for today. Simple, actionable, protect your brain from unsettling images. Again, whether they're positive or negative, just notice they don't serve you. All right, now my main topic, and again, I'm going to Butcher it again. But the zeigonoric effect and ADHD is about how to use open loops to get things done. So what is an open loop? Tell me if this sounds familiar to you. You read a text or an email and. And before you reply to it, you go on to something else, but you can't stop thinking about, oh, I need to go back and reply to them. I need to get back to them. This term, the Zignorc effect, is about those open loops. So it's from a Russian psychologist named Zeganaric who found that people tend to remember unfinished or interrupted tasks better than completed ones. His research concluded that our brains like closure. No big surprise. It's satisfying to check something off our list. He said that unfinished tasks create these open loops that are not closed, and they create that tension where we want it closed. This is important to understand with our brain wiring because we already have an overloaded brain, right? We have working memory that's taxed. Taxed. We have difficulty shifting our focus from one thing to the next. We have a lot of emotional weight tied to our unfinished tasks. And then we also have a lot of mental clutter. A lot of things we're trying to filter through in order to move forward on what we're trying to do. So what does this look like in real life? With adhd, you might sit down and try to relax, but you have a hard time because your brain keeps thinking about all those things you didn't finish. Okay. And in my mind, if you put it on your list and you didn't get to it, that can be like an open loop. So it's how to acknowledge, okay, I am moving these intentionally to tonight, tomorrow, next week, whatever, so that you are closing a loop with the finishing of a plan instead of it completely in limbo. It might feel stuck mentally because you have too many open loops. So you can't think about something else that somebody's trying to tell you or ask you because you're literally holding on to the open things because you're afraid you're going to forget something. So it might be okay. Okay, Okay. I can't think about that right now. I'm trying to remember. I need to reply to that email. I need to call the pharmacy back because they left a message and I still need to order the dog food that has been on my list. So you've got these things already. You can't take anything else in. And it can really. It can really create this. I. I'm very short with people when this happens because I don't have the mental bandwidth to take anything else in. And it's not personal. It's not personal. It's not that I'm irritated with them, it's that I'm agitated. Because if you keep talking, my brain might lose something I'm trying to hold on to. So there's open loops really do carry a weight. And then it also could look like being distracted, thinking about those unfinished tasks while trying to focus on one of them. So you're trying to write the email, but at the same time you're thinking about how, okay, as soon as you finish this, don't forget you need to do this and this to finish them up. So what can we do when this is our reality? So if these things sound familiar to you, there are strategies that help us to close those loops to support our brain. So the first and the most. The one I most recommend when I'm working with my clients is to externalize it. Get it out of your head. If you're in your head trying to hold onto those things like I talked about for me, I get irritable and I kind of snap, get a little snippy. When people ask me something when I've already got everything I can handle in my brain, I know that's a cue for me. I've got to get it down. So I'll say, okay, one second, let me just write down these things before I forget, and then I can pay attention to what you're asking me. So externalize it. Getting out of your head. Do a brain dump. Whether it's in a physical list, on a note, in a checklist, online, in an app, whiteboard, whatever it is, get it out of your head where you can see it. You could do a voice note if that works for you. I have people that do that, so I'm not going to omit that. For me, it needs to be external and visual. But if voice notes work for you, just putting that in here in case. Again, we all have different things that work for us, so I don't want to omit that. The next strategy is to start what I call stupid small. And this is inspired by the Mini Habits book by Stephen Guys. And remember, starting for us is often the hardest thing to do. I always think of that. Elton Johnson. Sorry seems to be the hardest word. And I think starting seems to be the hardest thing. The hardest word. But remember, starting creates momentum. So make it so stupid small that you don't have the resistance to starting. Because once we start, we can typically keep going. So the hack is to find the smallest actionable step you can take instead of trying to force yourself to do something that you have resistance for. So it might be just open a reply email, just open a document, write one sentence. If you're struggling with a mound of laundry, just fold three towels. I love towels because they're bulky and they make a huge dent in the laundry when I've got towels in there. Or maybe if you've got a sink full of dishes, wash one pot. Just give yourself permission to start instead of expecting yourself to do the whole thing. The whole thing is that perfectionism and it's the evidence of progress. We want to find a way to start so we can progress. All right, next tip is to create re entry plans. I am a huge fan of reentry plans. I have a really hard time coming back to things once I've stepped away. It's why I resist stopping once I start. But I've learned over the years I have to find ways to take a break because I won't literally get up to go to the bathroom or to get a drink of water and I'll get a headache because I'm hungry. But I don't want to stop because I have such a hard time coming back and starting again. The starting is so hard. So creating a re entry plan is a game changer. It's also a way to support your future self. So when you come back you have this like, oh, that's right. Oh, that's so good. I forgot I did this so now I can go ahead and start. So restarting for some of us can be harder than starting. Which is another reason why we will really resist stopping once we've started. So build in an easy re entry prompt, a restart prompt. So it might be adding a calendar reminder when you have time to come back to it with a note in the reminder what the next step is. It might be like, hey, next step, do this. You know, the next thing you need to do is is print this out and look for mistakes or edits or whatever. Put the exact next step in the reminder. The next step might be to use a body double. So, okay, I'm going to come back to this this afternoon, but I'm going to do it during a body double time. I have schedule so that you have a plan to support support you without you just needing to depend on your own willpower and motivation to get you started. The next tip is to leave the materials out invisible. I use this a lot with my students where they have a great plan for starting their homework after an activity or after their classes when they get home or back to their dorm room. But we have to plan for your future. Motivation, energy, interest. To be in a different place. You come back, you may not really want to do the thing. So it's what can you do to come back and set yourself up to re enter academic or project work when you may not feel like it? So it might be just, excuse me, like leaving the materials out. So if you have to read something, maybe leaving the textbook out with a flag for where to start or a flag for where you're going to give yourself permission to stop. Leaving your computer screen open to quizlet where you're creating a bunch of quiz, you know, a bunch of flashcards and maybe you just title it. So you've done one little thing to get you started and now you can come back to it because you've left everything out and you remember, oh, that's right, I already started the quizlet. Let me just go ahead and add some terms. Or it could be adding a post it note on top of what you're doing, your planner, you know, the project you're working on, the kitchen counter, whatever, letting you know where you stopped so you remember, okay, you had just done this. Like, I'll do that when I'm unpacking groceries and I'll leave myself a note. Remember to write down the meals you're planning and stick it on the fridge. If I don't have time to do it, I really try hard to do that in the moment because that's harder for me to come back to. But if I can't, it's writing myself a note to remind my future self of that next step that I still haven't done. Because if too much time goes by, I will not come back to it. So the goal in using the zigonaric effect is to work with your ADHD brain wiring, not against it. That's key. So if there's an unfinished task that's taking up space in your brain, what's the next step for you when you think about what's in unfinished, what would you do with that right now? Like, think of the one thing and then what's one tiny step you could take to create momentum? Whether it's identifying the next step, writing it on a post it, leaving it out to visually prompt you, support yourself to finish the loop in ways that help you to come back and tap back into it, or to be able to. Like I shared at the beginning, sometimes the way I temporarily close The Loop is planning to do it at another time and writing a note about, okay, when you come back to this. And I do this a lot. If I have to like move something to next week, I'm like, okay, this keeps getting pushed. Why am I not doing it? And I'm like, because it's, it's too big, it's too much. Let me write down a very simple thing that I can actually cross off when I'm going to come back to it. So I'm going to be okay. Instead of just like work on planner, which I'm making a. An ADHD friendly planner. It's okay. You are starting the priority prioritization section. Just write a summary for the tools in this section or just start the first sentence of the summary, outline it right. So making it small enough that I can do it and reminding myself of what I decided to support my future self to do it. All right now for my book of the week. And okay, this is a little outside of the books I typically recommend, but I discovered this recently and it's. It's a series of three books by an author I read probably about 10 years ago and loved this series so much. It's a young adult series of books by Neil Schusterman called Scythe or Scythe. I always say it wrong. This is book one of three in the arc of the Scythe series and it has 4.6 out of 5 stars with over 21,000 reviews. And the sequel has even more and even higher reviews. So it was in 2021 rated time best young adult book of all time. It is dystopian, futuristic, little sci fi ish. But I read the Unwind series that Neil wrote and absolutely loved it and got so many kids interested in reading a series through this book. It was like this series, Harry Potter and the Percy Jackson series that were just really, really popular. But this was really popular with the high school students. So here's a brief summary. In a world where no hunger, no disease, no war, no misery exists, humanity has conquered them all, even death. Now Scythes are the only ones who can end a life. And they are commanded to do so in order to keep the size of the population under control. So they're literally job in life is to kill people. Citra and Rowan are chosen to apprentice to a sky to a scythe. A role that neither one of them wants. These teens must master the art, quote unquote, of taking life, knowing that failure could mean losing their own. And the more they train, the more Citra and Rowan learn That a perfect world comes with a heavy price. I gave this four out of five stars. I am currently reading the second of the third books and really, really finding it interesting and thought provoking. So if this sounds interesting to you, I do highly recommend it. And now finally, a quote of the week again from last week's book, the Calamity Club. This is again from Meg, who I quoted before about protecting your brain. And she was so bored in this part of the book where she was sitting in a room with nothing to do with day after day in an orphanage where she wasn't allowed to interact with other kids. It was really, really cruel. And I do believe Meg had a lot of ADHD traits that made me really empathize with her. And so this is what she said. She said, Finally, I review my list of things to do. Find a mean name that rhymes with Darrella. She has this little girl that torments her name, Dirella. And so she literally has on her list of things to do. And these are. This is like her emergency list of things to do when she's really, really bored. So her. Her item is find a name, a mean name that rhymes with Dirella. And she says, I cannot come up with one. I am tempted to check it off my list just for the thrill of it. I just want you to sit with that for a second because when I read this, I laughed out loud. I literally. I read this on my. I got an advanced copy, so it was an ebook. And I did a screenshot of the page I was reading and I printed it out because it so spoke to our brain wiring where we just want to be able to cross something off. We just want to be able to get a little dopamine hit from finishing something. And I just so was connected to her line of thinking when she said that because I could feel the boredom. And I just laughed when she said that because it's so matched up with what I imagined she must have been experiencing in that extreme level of boredom. So that's my book from last week. If you didn't catch my review, I gave that one a five out of five, which is a rare thing for me. Highly recommend checking that one out. All right, that's it for this week. Until next time. Tally ho.