Crafting Your ADHD Survival Kit with Maddy De Gabriele (Rebroadcast)

Summary

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Podcast Summary:

Hacking Your ADHD
Episode: Crafting Your ADHD Survival Kit with Maddy De Gabriele (Rebroadcast)
Date: June 22, 2026
Host: William Curb
Guest: Maddy De Gabriele

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into the concept of an “ADHD Survival Kit”—both the mindset and the physical tools that help adults with ADHD navigate life more effectively. William and Australian science communicator Maddy De Gabriele explore the everyday supports—from sleep headphones to time-tracking devices, from pill organizers to shared household language—that can make ADHD management less about struggle and more about smart, personalized problem-solving.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The ADHD Toolkit: Why and What Is It?

• Personal Journeys Driving Need
  Both host and guest were diagnosed as adults and experienced the frustration of discovering tools through years of trial and error.

  “I found myself really wishing I didn’t have to find this out through trial and error... That didn’t exist at the time, which was the inspiration for me behind starting my company Cognation.” (Maddy, 04:13)

• What Counts as a Tool?
  Tools can be physical (clocks, lists, whiteboards) or mental (habitual language, self-talk). The point is flexibility and support—these are not extra chores but lifelines.

  “They might seem trivial, but my life would fall apart without them.” (Maddy, 07:17)

• Adult Challenges Unique from Childhood ADHD
  Resources often focus on children, leaving adults to “parent themselves”—a major theme in both speakers’ journeys.

2. Physical Tools in the ADHD Survival Kit

A. Sleep Headphones

Maddy’s #1 Lifechanger

• Described as a “game changer” for managing ADHD-related sleep challenges by making bedtime more engaging, not less.

  “Lying quietly in the dark with my eyes closed is too boring and my brain becomes more and more awake.” (Maddy, 10:00)

• Challenges neurotypical sleep advice—sometimes, more stimulation and structure are the answer for ADHDers.

  “All the traditional advice around getting sleep...doesn’t work for me. Just fundamentally doesn’t work for me. I need to almost flip it on its head.” (Maddy, 12:16)

B. Weighted (or Heavy) Blankets

• Both speakers found comfort and better sleep quality—key for daily function and productivity.
• “If I don’t have good sleep, everything else in the day is going to be... a tragedy for my productivity.” (William, 11:15)

C. Pill Dispensers and Medication Management

• Visual, tactile reminders such as a days-of-the-week pillbox conquer ADHD-related short-term memory issues.

  “I always struggle to remember if I’ve taken them or not... It’s one of the only things that’s helped me actually remember to take medication every single day.” (Maddy, 16:03)

• Maddy notes that cheap, “uncute” pillboxes work and are widely available, but medical professionals rarely recommend them to ADHD patients due to persistent stigmas.
• Highlight: Additional reminders (app timers, visual checks) are often necessary, and any added “steps” (like diaries) can make following through even harder.

D. Fun/Novelty Tools: Grabber Bar

• William uses a “grabber stick” to pick up toys, reducing the brain’s resistance to boring tasks.

  “It solves an executive function hurdle for... picking up my kids’ toys.” (William, 21:16)

• Value: Sometimes making tasks more novel or fun is the missing “aid.”

E. Clocks and Timers

• Maddy places a waterproof clock outside her shower to counteract time blindness—otherwise she’d lose track in routines.

  “This is my shower clock… It helps me keep track of how long I’m in the shower because I forget almost every time… That for me is something that... really bad executive dysfunction affects.” (Maddy, 22:58)

F. Bluetooth Trackers/AirTags/Tiles

• Critical for items that can’t be “stored” in memory: keys, wallets, headphones.
• Short term memory for locations is unreliable—especially for ADHDers, and tech closes that gap.

  “If you have ADHD do not try to store the location of important items in your short term memory, because you can’t…” (Maddy, 30:05)

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3. Embracing the ADHD Toolkit Mindset

Adaptation Over Guilt

• A recurring theme: Stop beating yourself up—choose strategies appropriate for your brain, not shame-driven “shoulds.”

  “Going the easier route is never lazy. I believe that really, really passionately—literally never lazy.” (Maddy, 28:42)

• The myth of laziness is debunked: it’s often the result of overwhelming executive function challenges, not character flaws.

  "You're just currently meeting yourself where you’re at." (William, 28:46)

Sharing Low-Friction Solutions

• ADHDers are “all, a lot of us, reinventing the wheel in isolation. If we could pool that knowledge and share a bit more, it would have saved me a lot of time.” (Maddy, 07:03)

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4. The Non-Physical Tools: Shared Vocabulary

Language for Interpersonal Support

• Maddy and her partner developed a shared shorthand to make invisible obstacles visible and actionable:
  • “I’m stuck”: Means immediate, simple support needed (sometimes just holding a hand to stand up).
  • Climbing the wall vs. staring at the wall: Borrowed from How to ADHD and Brendan Mahan, helps distinguish between moments of mental problem-solving (leave me alone) and executive paralysis (please help).

    “It talks about task initiation and organization for ADHD as being like a wall... Sometimes it looks like you’re doing nothing, but actually you’re mentally climbing the wall...” (Maddy, 38:43)

• These expressions reduce frustration, shame, and miscommunication in ADHD partnerships.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On ADHD as a chronic health condition:
  “My doctor didn’t say, hey, you might find this useful if you’re struggling to take your medication... People with ADHD are not the only people who struggle with memory... But because many don’t really think of ADHD as a medical problem, [they] have not been directed towards these existing medical tools.” (Maddy, 19:03)
• On feeling 'lazy':
  “I thought of myself as lazy for decades... but that was because I had the most unkind possible interpretation of myself.” (Maddy, 29:10)
• On embracing support aids:
  “My life got so much better when I stopped trying to improve my memory and instead treated myself like someone who had a memory problem.” (Maddy, 35:39)
• On ADHD life advice:
  “Let’s find the things that work. Let’s have a place that you record the things that you do find that work... in a year I might be like, I used to have this good routine. What was I doing?” (William, 14:38)

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• ADHD Toolkit Introduction, origins – 03:06
• Is the toolkit physical or mental? – 07:04
• Sleep tools & flipping neurotypical advice – 09:32 to 13:49
• The value of weighted blankets – 11:46
• Medication dispensers & memory challenges – 16:03 to 19:03
• Novelty/fun: Grabber bars for chores – 21:16 to 22:25
• Time blindness tools: clocks & timers – 22:58
• Waste/guilt and meeting yourself where you’re at – 27:34 to 29:22
• Bluetooth trackers for lost items – 30:03 to 35:35
• Shared language & vocabulary as an ADHD tool – 36:20 to 39:58
• Summing up toolkit takeaways – 41:06

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Takeaways & Final Tips

• Think broadly about your ADHD toolkit: Both physical objects and mental strategies count.
• Prioritize what works for you; ignore shame-driven “advice.”
• Leverage technology and novelty to save executive resources.
• Share practical language and pool knowledge with your community.
• Remember: “Laziness” is a label for unmet support needs, not a moral failing.

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Connect with Maddy De Gabriele

• Online workshops: cognation.com.au
• Social: Cognation.au on all platforms
• Newsletter, group problem-solving, and more starter kit ideas available on her site.

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By openly sharing their favorite supports and reframing self-judgment, William and Maddy underscore how an ADHD toolkit is less about products—and more about understanding, adaptation, and connection.

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[End of Summary]

Transcript

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[William Curb]

price Void in Florida welcome to Hacking your adhd. I'm your host William Curb and I have adhd. On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Hey team. This week we're chatting with Maddie DiCabrielli, an Australian science communicator who's turned her personal journey with ADHD into a mission to help others. Through her adult ADHD starter kit and corporate workshops, Maddie breaks down ADHD management into bite sized, easily digestible pieces. In this episode, we dive into the specific tools that can become part of your everyday toolkit for managing your adhd. We discuss timers, headphones, pillboxes, blankets and more. In this episode. If you've been wanting an episode that goes into the actual tools that I and many others use in their day to day ADHD life, then this is the episode Maddie brings the goods. If you'd like to follow along on the Show Notes page, you can find [e-mail] 181. I also wanted to let you know about the hacking your ADHD newsletter, Eddie, and all distractions. And that's what this newsletter is all about. The things that have caught my interest over the past week that I think also might be interesting to you. In it, I bring you the top things of the week that have caught my attention from the world of ADHD and beyond. If that sounds like something you'd like in your inbox, just head over to hackingyouradhd.com newsletter and sign up all the time. All right, Keep on listening to find out what goes into an ADHD toolkit. You emailed me originally to talk about this ADHD toolkit idea to help people get into managing their adhd. So can you tell me a little bit more about that idea? Because I think that's something that people like. I want to start managing my adhd, but I don't know where to start.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Absolutely. I was really excited and interested to hear you talk talk about the idea of a toolkit to manage your adhd, because that's an idea that I really landed on myself over the last few years. Like quite a few of your listeners, I imagine. I was diagnosed as an adult, so I was 29 when I was diagnosed and I was diagnosed with ADHD because I was having problems with my adhd. Almost by definition, you only get diagnosed with ADHD if you are struggling with symptoms of adhd.

[William Curb]

Yeah.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

And for me, obviously getting proper medical care, medication for me personally has been a real game changer. And there's a whole range of medical therapies that I've worked with with professionals that have been really life changing. But I found that I still had all these really practical logistical, organizational challenges in my life that didn't need medical solutions or didn't necessarily have medical solutions. But I still needed support and help. And once I knew I had adhd, I found I could actually start identifying gradually and through quite a lot of trial and error tools that were ADHD appropriate. That helped me with all these different areas of my life. And at the time I found myself really wishing that I didn't have to find this out through trial and error. I was hoping that everything that was ADHD appropriate came with a label that said ADHD appropriate. I could just run through those things and try them all out and see what worked for me that didn't exist at the time, which was the inspiration for me behind starting my company cognation and starting running workshops about, you know, understanding adhd. Almost an intro, a starter kit, like you said, a starter kit for adult adhd. Like, here's just some basics. The practical basics.

[William Curb]

Yeah. Cause that's basically like, I had, like, a lot of the same thoughts when I was starting this podcast is like, okay, where do I need help with adhd and where do I get started with it? Because there's. It's hard.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

It's really hard. And it's not clear. There aren't a lot of resources, and there especially aren't a lot of resources designed for adults. I mean, resources that do exist for kids, for ADHD are so important, and they're so incredible that they exist, but they're mostly designed for, like, kid problems like homework or they're mostly designed for the parents of kids with ADHD to help them. And it's like, I'm my own parent. I'm 32. I have a mortgage. I don't have someone running my life for me. I'm running my life.

[William Curb]

Yeah. I mean, and I think that is, like, the biggest thing is because a lot of the strategies to help with ADHD do require this executive function to get started with them. And, I mean, I think that's why I always recommend medication with people, because I'm like. That makes doing the strategies to get your ADHD under control so much easier, because the medication on itself won't get you where you want to be, usually because you have a lot of bad strategies you're using. But to fix your strategies, you need a kickstart.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

The point about lifting yourself up by your bootstraps is that it's literally impossible to do. You need extra support into the system to change anything. You cannot actually pick yourself up by the bootstraps.

[William Curb]

Yeah. It's funny how that phrase got changed to what people imagine it now. Yeah.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Yeah. It's interesting. Once that's why I reached out to you to say that. I just really resonated with that message. I really appreciated hearing that idea from someone else because I chimed with it so well. And then I also was just excited to talk about some of the things in my toolbox because I love talking about it and I love hearing from other people what works for them. Because I feel like we're all a lot of ADHD people. We're really smart, we're really great creative problem solvers, but we're all working in isolation. We're all sitting by ourselves, reinventing the wheel over and over and over and over again. And if we could just pull that knowledge and share a bit more, it would have saved me a lot of time, personally. So I've got to believe that it's going to be helpful for other people out there as well.

[Jake Grez]

Yeah.

[William Curb]

Now, before we get into the specific tools here, I do want to also, like, slow down, be like, can you tell me, when you envision an ADHD toolbox, is there a physical thing or is it just like a kind of mental checkbox? What are we envisioning here?

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Well, it's a mix of things. Quite a lot of them are physical items. I in my head refer to them as these are my medical support devices or my health support devices, which just helps me remember that they are important. It's like a kind of pretentious name to give, like physical things like clocks and lists and whiteboards and whatever. But it helps me remember that I need to take them seriously because they might seem trivial, but my life will fall apart without them. And then it helps me also explain to other people why they're significant so that, you know, I'm saying I need a clock on the wall and someone doesn't want to hang a clock there for some reason. Whatever that would be, I can bring to that discussion. This is how important it is for me because I have time blindness. This is a support device, me. Is there any way that we can make this work or something like this work? Because this is what I need. So a range of physical things, mental things. One of the items in my toolbox I've brought along is actually some vocabulary that I use with my partner in my household that has been really, really helpful for both of us. So it's. It's not one kind of thing, but it's just a range of really flexible tools that are designed to be flexible, designed to be adaptable, and to support me where I'm at. So they're not a list of chores I have to do or tasks I have to manage. It's whatever is happening for me that day. I've got extra help and extra support, the really important things.

[William Curb]

All right. And so it is not going to also just be like a toolbox that we carry around with us either. It's, you know, the things that are just in our life that help us.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

The things in our life that help us. That said, I love diy, I love carpentry, I love crafty ness, and I have an actual tool belt that is just so good that sometimes after I'm finished working in the garage, I'll just keep wearing it around for a while because I have eight pockets basically strapped around my waist. And I feel like most people would appreciate something like that. Because it's great I can bring all my things with me.

[William Curb]

Who doesn't want more pockets?

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Yeah, I mean, I also still lose things, but whatever. At least I'm not going to juggle 15 things every time I go from room to room.

[William Curb]

Exactly. All right, well, how can we jump into some of the items that you use in your toolbox to help manage your adhd?

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Absolutely. All right, so my first one is my favorite thing. This is sleep headphones. So obviously this is a podcast, it's not a visual medium, but I am still holding it up on the zoom camera so that you can see that. I'm sorry for all your listeners. Maybe I could supply a photo to go in the episode notes. This is just a soft, stretchy gray headband that has a little Bluetooth controller in the front and it has two flat little splits speakers sewn into the headband itself that go over each of your ears. And these are headphones that are really comfy to wear while you sleep. And I wear these while I fall asleep, I want to say every night. And these have been a game changer for me because like the vast majority of people with adhd, I struggle with sleep. And for a lot of people that might be like delayed phase sleep disorders. It might be whatever it is, I really struggle to lie down and go to sleep because nine times out of 10, lying quietly in the dark with my eyes closed is too boring and my brain becomes more and more and more awake. And so I'll start to, you know, think of things and daydream and like plan my day or ruminate on something and I will become more and more focused on that and my whole body just becomes more and more awake. And then it's two in the morning and I'm just going throw to sleep, going to sleep. And that's really unhelpful loop for me to get stuck in. So I use sleep headphones. I fall asleep listening to podcasts, audio books, anything at all like that that's just interesting enough for me to drift off to it. And it's really changed my life. And that I think was really significant me just because sleep is so important and it was something I struggled with so much.

[William Curb]

We could do an entire episode just on the sleep toolbox. Because there are so many things that I know I personally need to get to sleep. It is something that is important to be like, yeah, these are tools that help me. And I know if I don't have good sleep, everything else in the day is going to be a for lack of A better word, tragedy for my productivity. I will just sit there and stare off and I will find any way to not do what I want. It's probably the number one thing for managing my adhd. It's getting good sleep. And so, yeah, there's going to be a lot of tools that I need to help. Like, personally, I use like, a weighted blanket.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Love a weighted blanket.

[William Curb]

Took me years to find the one I like, which is like a. This, like, really like, chunky knit blanket. So it doesn't have any actual weight in it, it just has.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Oh, just a heavy blanket.

[William Curb]

Yeah.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Oh, my gosh. That's so cozy.

[William Curb]

Yeah, because it's like this big, like, weave of things. It's got all these, like, air holes in it, so it's not hot either.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

That sounds perfect. It sounds like you're describing one of Chris Evans. Gorgeous sweaters in, knives out.

[William Curb]

Yeah, something like that. It's just this big, chunky cable knit.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Yeah, love that. Music Cozy is the brand of sleep headphone that I use. I'm not affiliated with them in any way. It's one of the 5 million brands selling these on Amazon. I think it cost me 30 Australian dollars. That music code, the headphones, they were so important for me because that also helped me realize that why I needed adhd, appropriate sleep help and advice. Because I found that pretty much all the traditional received advice around getting sleep and there's a lot out there, a lot of people, about sleep hygiene. It's so important and foundational for all of us. A lot of the neurotypical advice or how to have good sleep hygiene doesn't work for me. Just fundamentally doesn't work for me. I need to almost flip it on its head. I don't need gradually winding down before bed, not eating anything before bed, gradually turn off all lights and stimulations and slowly relax into sleep does not work for me. Last night I wanted to make sure I got to sleep reasonably early. So about 15 minutes before I was in bed, I was on my treadmill, walking at a really brisk pace, listening to a podcast and playing a game on my phone. I was doing the exact opposite of what you would do for someone neurotypical. Wanted to go to sleep really soon and I was using my body. I was moving around, I was engaging myself. I was making sure that I wasn't going to be feeling restless in bed or bored. I was making sure I was going to feel like a choreography. I was going to keep listening to the same podcast as I went to bed. You know, it just completely different. From a normal sleep routine, but it really worked for me.

[William Curb]

Yeah, I think that's also a great point too, is that, yeah, there are going to be a lot of things about neurotypical sleep that don't work for us. There are certain things like, yes, you're still going to want to have a very dark room. You're still going to want to have things that are.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

You needed to be cool and comfortable.

[William Curb]

Yeah. But then, like, the amount going to bed's boring.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

It's so boring. I'm having a different chemical reaction to boredom than other people. Was really important to me because people talk about like, discipline and management. And I spent so long failing at received wisdom and common sense advice or it felt like I was failing because none of it worked for me. And then I felt like, well, maybe I'm just bad at going to sleep. Bad at going to sleep. Maybe I'm just badly disciplined or something. But it just wasn't working for me. It doesn't work for my brain. These are the things that work for my brain.

[William Curb]

And I think that's the key with this toolbox idea too, is that we go, okay, let's find the things that work. Let's have a place that you record the things that you do. You do find that work. So that, you know, like, in a year I might be like, man, I used to have this good routine. What was I doing? And I can like, oh, yeah, I was using these headphones and they really worked. I should try that again.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Oh, my gosh. For later when we talk about, I guess, vocabulary, I will grab a little flowchart that I actually made and printed out and stuck next to my bed. And it's for when I'm having like a really bad morning. And it's just a flowchart of steps of like, are you stuck? Do I need to be anywhere? Yes or no? And then it was like, if yes, then it's like, okay, am I running late? You need to do this and then text someone and then so on and so forth. And it's just a little visual reminder of a bunch of those tools I have for when I'm in like a real paralysis analysis paralysis or executive dysfunction moment.

[William Curb]

Yeah. And I think that's such a good point too, is that we do forget those things when we're not feeling well.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Yeah. If you have adhd, you have short term memory problems. By definition, that's something that you have. You're going to struggle with recall and struggle to remember things that, you know,

[William Curb]

I've been like, morning Man, I am having such a hard time waking up. Like usually it's just like I'm having my coffee and I'm like, I didn't make coffee this morning. Oh my God, how did I forget that?

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

I know these habits, they don't stick. Actually that is a really nice sense to me. Onto my next.

[William Curb]

Yeah, let's see.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Because it's morning for me. As your listeners can hear, I'm Australian, so this interview is happening at 9am on a Wednesday morning for me, which means I've just done most of my morning routine. So it's really top of mind. And the second thing in my ADHD toolkit is a days of the week medication dispenser which again I'm holding up even though your listeners cannot see. And I will supply a photo if you like. But it's just a clear plastic pill dispenser with little things that pop up and each one of them has a letter on it for the day of the week. So SMT Sunday through Saturday. And what that does for me is I have it on my bedside table. I take a variety of different pills every morning and I always struggle to remember if I've taken them or not. So I can just look over and if the day that it is so Wednesday has pills in it and I'm like, oh, I haven't taken them and then I take them and then that's my reminder for the day. That's my week by week reminder. And it's one of the only things that's helped me actually remember to take medication every single day.

[William Curb]

Yeah, I know. In our pre interview we discussed that the pill cap timers aren't available in Australia, which is what I use. Cause I have like multiple reminders on my phone. It's like, take it. And then like 1/2 an hour later like asking, hey, did you do this? And then I can just like look at the bottle and see if I took it. Because that is one of the scary things too when you're like, I don't know if I took my medication today.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Yes, absolutely. And I think this is what people really struggle to understand about adhd. Whether you have ADHD or not, very confusing. But it affects your short term memory. And that apart from being, you know, things that you're just talking about, things going on in your date is literally the last 10 minutes of what you have seen and heard is your short term memory. And if you have adhd, your short term memory, statistically speaking, is likely cut in half. You are not recording in your Memory, it is going in and going right back out again. Of have you taken your hand from the pillbox to your mouth or did something happen to interrupt that? You're just not retaining any of that information. So I don't know unless it's right there. I don't. I need a visual reminder and I need to not have to do anything to record that information. I started by trying to keep a diary or a little notebook next to my bed where I would mark whether or not I would take my ADHD medication. But then I couldn't remember if I taken my medication and forgotten to make a mark about it or just forgotten to take my medication and not made a mark about it. The making a record was an extra task. Yeah, just adding a task to the task that I was already struggling to do.

[William Curb]

I know exactly what you mean there. Where it's just like, yeah, that's another thing that I can forget if I did because I've definitely, like taken my medication then come back and been like, oh, I need to do that. And I walk over and I'm like, see that? The thing is like, reset. I'm like, oh, I have no memory of having done this. How can I have zero memory of this?

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

That's the thing. I think a lot of really well intentioned advice around for people for ADHD or that people with ADHD will often heard. I think the advice doesn't quite understand what the weakness is or the challenge is happening cognitively. So they give you advice that requires more executive function. I think that's also true of a lot of advice for parents of kids with ADHD and why it doesn't translate very well. You're assuming that the parent has more executive function and that's often true. But you can't then just transpose it to an individual as an adult trying to look after themselves. One of the things about this medication days of the week that I really like or that I think is kind of significant is that this cost me about $8 at my local chemist. And it's not cute. There are a lot of really cute, like pillboxes out there days of the week. They're metal or enameled. This is just kind of clear plastic. It's slightly ugly. It's got really big bright green tabs on it for opening each day of the week. Because it's designed primarily for older people who may be in care, who may also be struggling with their memory for a variety of reasons. Because people with ADHD are not the only people who struggle with memory in A variety of ways. But because many people don't really think of ADHD as a medical problem, often I have not been directed towards these existing medical tools that would be really helpful for me or are really helpful for me. So this is something that this pill holder is cheap, easily available, simple, works really, really well, has no battery, requires no input from me to make it work. Except for putting my pills in once a week. But my doctor didn't say, hey, you might find this useful if you're struggling to take your medication. Because I think people often put people with ADHD in a separate mental category to for example, disability or chronic health conditions. Especially if you're someone with ADHD and you happen to be young or generally able bodied or not necessarily present with many kind of physical manifestations, people really struggle to remember that ADHD is a chronic health condition.

[William Curb]

Yeah, one of the weird tools that I've picked up recently is just a grabber bar, you know, where you can squeeze the trigger and it like closes and it like using that for cleaning stuff up off the floor makes it so much easier to do it that I actually clean stuff up off the floor. Like it solves an executive function hurdle for like picking up my kids toys.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Oh my gosh, that's such a good idea.

[William Curb]

Like for one, it makes it a little bit more fun. But it's the like, oh, I don't have to lean over and do this. I can just grab things, go around and even my kids enjoy doing it more. Like, oh, you want can use this while cleaning your room. They're like, yeah, it does not work every time.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Such a good example.

[William Curb]

Yeah, it is not a typical tool that would be assigned for adhd, but it is a great tool to have.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

That is such a good example. And like you said, what you said just then was it doesn't work every time, but you probably don't need it every time as well. But sometimes it's helpful. That's why it's a toolkit. It's not like a prescription. It's like you have to do this every day. It's sometimes this is going to be useful for you, sometimes it's not going to be necessary or it's not going to do the trick. It's fine. It's part of a range of things you have kind of already stocked around your home or organized around your life.

[William Curb]

Yeah, and I mean it is specifically helpful for my household because I have children and picking up toys is they're always going to be on the floor. I'm cleaning up A counter. Not as useful, but still.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

That's a good point. I just had a mental image of myself trying to use it to clear off my forest of empty coffee mugs of like the side of my bedside table. And that going really poorly.

[William Curb]

Yeah, I've definitely like, I'll just grab this. I'm like that. That wasn't even that hard. Why did I do that?

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

You know, we love brand new things. One day it is going to work for something and you're going to have invented a million dollar industry.

[William Curb]

Exactly.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Next item in the toolkit is a little plot which is this is a great time for it because right in the middle of the interview, right about that time, I was just trying to remember how much time has passed because I'm really enjoying this chat, which means that for me no time has passed. I can keep chatting to you about this for six hours and it wouldn't really register until maybe I needed to go and get a drink or something. So this is a little clock that has been incredibly, incredibly helpful for me with my time blindness. And this is my shower clock. It does not hang in my shower, but it hangs just outside my shower where I can see it from anywhere in my bathroom. It is waterproof, steam proof, heat resistant. It's designed for all bathrooms. Just a little digital clock. And it helps me keep track of how long I'm in the shower for because I forget almost every time when I'm in the shower. I am not keeping track of the time mentally ever. And that's just something that creates a lot of stress when I'm getting ready in the morning. Many times in my life I've zoned out in the shower and then suddenly had to be running late in a panic. So it makes me kind of anxious. I also sometimes find showers really boring and kind of painful to start just because I'm just not in the right headspace and I'm just don't have a lot of executive function and really don't want to have to stop doing whatever it is I'm doing. So it's really helpful for me to say okay in a shower for 90 actual seconds. And that's fine, just commit to that, get in the shower, see how you feel. And then I can actually have a objective tracker for how long that is, which might sound really silly. And I think it's also something we don't talk about a lot. But that for me is something that adhd, like really bad executive dysfunction affects. And I think it happens for a lot of people and it's really easy to feel just a lot of shame or confusion or resentment for why a really simple, necessary daily part of life is tough. Getting that shower clock for me was something. It was really practical, so it helps a lot. But it was also a way to support myself without shaming myself, if that makes sense.

[William Curb]

Yeah. Personal hygiene is hard because it is again, boring, not fun.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Repetitive.

[William Curb]

Yeah. For some people, like having like a shower radio or having some like the little Bluetooth speakers that can play podcasts in the shower.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

I also have Bluetooth speakers that I wear with a shower cap. They are great. They're not one of my tools, but they absolutely could be. They've got little over ear hooks and I wear them under my shower cap and I just keep listening to my podcast or I listen to like pump up music.

[William Curb]

And it is funny with like showers. Yeah. Because like the worst part of the showers are getting in the shower followed by getting out of the shower.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Right. It's transitions. I hate them and I'm no good at them.

[William Curb]

And it's like both. It's like I'm going to be. I don't want to get wet and it's like, like now I don't want to go get dry and I don't

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

want to get cold. And so I like, I will turn on the shower and let it run for a few minutes, like 30 seconds while I get ready to get in, like you know, get undressed or whatever, which in Australia is a little bit verboten because we are a drought prone country. We have national education campaigns about not wasting water. And so that's something that by default I don't ever do. But I realize that for myself it just makes such a big difference whether to already be warm and there's steam in the air and it's not such a big temperature transition that I realized that for me personally this is a, again, this is a health support thing. This is something that significantly improves my quality of life, daily hygiene to be able to run the shower for 30 seconds extra. So I'm just going to get over that mental block and I'm going to make that choice.

[William Curb]

Yeah. And then you have the clock there to remind you not to take it too long. So it's fixing, you know.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Absolutely, absolutely.

[William Curb]

I think it's a fine solution and I think that's also a great mental thing to be like, hey, this is important for me like so that I can function as a person. Like a lot of times we like overlook a lot of these aids because we're like, well, that's, you know, maybe it's a little wasteful or it's a lot. I'll frequently have these like tomato soup sippers for lunch. And like, part of me is like, man, I should just make a really big pot of tomato soup. And then I could have that all week and I wouldn't have to be wasting it with this. I'm like, but I won't do that. I just won't eat lunch for that week. And it is more wasteful. But it does let me function as a person way better.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Something that was really helpful for me and transformative for me was realizing that really often when we have these general conversations about waste or needfulness, people without ADHD are often using very different mental standards. So for example, when they are saying something isn't needed, what they mean is, it's equally easy for me to make a big pot of tomato soup or buy them prepackaged. Those are pretty comparable level tasks for someone with executive dysfunction. Cooking and organizing and timing and remembering to put things away in the freezer before they go moldy and all the rest of it. That is excessively difficult. That is an outsized level of difficulty. And that's kind of not really what we're talking about in general conversations about is this necessary or is this useful or is it lazy to go for the easier route? It is so much more difficult for us to do this that going the easier route is never lazy. I believe that really, really passionately, literally never lazy. We always need to make things easier, simpler, less moving parts to treat our medical condition.

[William Curb]

Laziness isn't really a thing.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Laziness doesn't exist.

[William Curb]

You're just. When we're being lazy, we're just currently meeting ourselves where we're at.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Absolutely. I also think that's true for absolutely everybody. I think it's especially true for neurodivergence. I think you have to work really hard and take a very unkind interpretation of events to find a lazy, neurodivergent person. And I thought of myself as lazy for a decades. This really important. A big part of my self image of myself. But that was because I had the most unkind possible interpretation of myself. Because I was judging myself by all these other standards.

[William Curb]

Yeah. Standards that even neurotypical people probably weren't meeting.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Yeah, probably.

[William Curb]

We just make this image in our head like, yeah, I'll just work all the time and breaks are for never.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Yeah, yeah, I will be always productive. I will have very weird thoughts about self discipline. And this will be a Protestant work ethic and it'll be fine. And capitalism isn't broken.

[William Curb]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

And then we may be drifting off topics, but I would also love to come and have that episode with you sometime.

[William Curb]

Oh yeah, the. The things I have written about capitalism in my own journals. All right, let's move on to our next tool though.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Absolutely. Airtags, air tags, tiles, Bluetooth trackers. I have them attached to my car keys, my house keys, my headphones. I have them attached or near virtually every significant thing in my life. Or I have another form of Bluetooth tracking. So for my phone, I use a phone case instead of a wallet and that's got my ID and my credit card and my public transport card in that wallet so that I can find my phone to find those things. And my gosh, transformative. If you have adhd, do not try to store the location of important items in your short term memory because you can't. You just can't. You have maybe three or four slots in your short term memory available for chunks of information and they are too busy remembering the time you have to leave the house and have you fed your kids, pets, self and one other piece of information. There will never be spare room to remember where you just put down your car keys. It will never be get it off your slate, stop trying to remember it. Attach a Bluetooth tracker to it. You can share them with the other people in your household so that they can also find the keys that you left in the cupboard or the fridge or wherever you left them. And then you're not having arguments about it. You could set up location tracking between your devices. So my phone buzzes me when I leave my keys behind somewhere that isn't my house.

[William Curb]

Oh, I like that.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

It's the best. I use iPhone things, but tiles are not Apple specific. Tiles work with Androids and iPhones so that you can, you know, share them between people with two different kinds of phones. What literally whatever Bluetooth trackers you can attach to things, get them set up and ask someone maybe for help to set them up. Because I struggle to set up like finicky settings and things like that. I'll get bored or distracted and stop halfway through. Ask someone to help you set it up. And it is a bit surveillance. State my privacy as much as I ask apps not track me and I, you know, use ad blockers and all the rest of it. I was like, it doesn't really serve my privacy to be locked out of my home for the third time this month.

[William Curb]

Yeah, I mean, I remember in first Year of college, I lost my keys to my room for three weeks and I just would happen to show up when people were coming into the room at the same time as them.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

That's a more reasonable solution for ADHD than either not losing the keys or organizing a replacement.

[William Curb]

Yeah, turned out they were in the bottom of my laundry basket and I just hadn't been doing my laundry.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

So that is classic. That is a classic. I don't have a solution for the laundry thing. I just have division of labor where my husband does basically 100% of the laundry in my home and I do 100% of the cooking. And that works really well for us.

[William Curb]

One question I have about the devices is do you have like a reminder to like change their batteries or replace them when they are going to be going out of service?

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

The airtags and the tiles that I use, they both have a little app you download on your phone and pair with and they both those apps give you notifications when you have to replace them. So it tells you when the battery is running low and then when you open the app and look at it, it'll give you a little battery metric. So there's like a lot of warning. And they don't use very like specialist batteries. I mean they use little round watch batteries that you can just get at the supermarket, about $10. So yeah, anything that requires like specialist or like specific upkeep or maintenance, I know that once that maintenance or repair or whatever replacement time rolls around, I'm not going to do it. So it has to be really easy to keep going otherwise it's not going to be a useful tool for me probably.

[William Curb]

Yeah, I can see that because I. Yeah, I know I had a long time ago I had a flat tile thing that I could put like just like attached to a book and then it eventually ran out of battery and I'm like, oh, get another one of those.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Never happens. Actually, I think with the tiles I may be making this up. I believe they may have a little special premium subscription thing you can do and they will just send you new ones or send you new batteries that could be handy.

[William Curb]

Yeah, because that was the one I had was like five years ago now.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

So again, I use Apple things. I find the airtags work really, really well and really intuitively. Those are the ones that can do all the kind of matchy parry with my phone. So if I'm out and about it knows that I've got my iPad and my earpods with me and will ping me if I leave them behind somewhere. And that has saved my butt a

[William Curb]

number of times I can imagine because I. The places that I have left my phone and been like to go back like an hour doing with my life.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Oh God. And it's just such a bad feeling. And the thing is, it doesn't make a difference where you leave them. It doesn't make a difference if I've put my phone down on top of my chest of drawers while I'm getting dressed in the morning or if I've left it on a train I took three hours ago. It doesn't matter because once it's out of sight, it is out of mind and it is out of my short term memory and I have no record of it. There is no difference in based on the ridiculousness or the unlikeliness or the novelty of that location. It's exactly the same mental thing is happening which is it's out of sight and it's out of mind. So stop beating yourself up for not being able to find your stuff in your own home. Hatch airtags to things that you like.

[William Curb]

And especially I like when I ring it and I'm like, oh, it was next to me.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Right next to you. Sitting on top of a pile of books. Yeah, I called my. I found. I used Find my, like the. Find my device to find my AirPods this morning and they were behind me. I just turned around like, there they are. My life got so much better when I stopped trying to improve my memory and it said treated myself like someone who had a memory problem.

[William Curb]

Yeah, because ADHD is a memory problem.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

So it's a memory problem and it's a movement problem. Almost everything I'm talking about is either things to help you remember or things to help you keep in motion or get in motion. It's my top advice to work by.

[William Curb]

All right, well, let's get into this last tool, which I believe you said was vocabulary.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

This one is a bit more abstract, obviously, unlike those other tools, which are, you know, very concrete. But this is just a way of referring to a few kind of ways of talking about common issues or challenges, especially that I started using with my husband. And it just really, really helps us kind of communicate exactly what's going on. I think it is so, so valuable and useful to have these conversations with the people that you live with or the people that you know are close to you, just to help both of you really clearly communicate. Because from the outside, I mean, ADHD is invisible. You can't see what's going on necessarily inside someone's head. Also, when you have adhd, ADHD is also difficult to understand.

[William Curb]

Yeah.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

On the inside. So the specific examples that I have, I asked my partner and said, hey, what are the things that, you know, you found that you appreciate since. Since I was diagnosed a few years ago. And he said immediately, a few kind of key phrases. One of them was I'm stuck. So I think like a lot of your listeners probably I have problems with getting, like, physically stuck, like on the couch, in the bed, wherever I am. I just maybe there's too many things to do and I just don't know where to start. And I'm really overwhelmed or it's something that I don't really feel equipped to do, or I haven't eaten for eight hours because I've forgotten. So now I'm just really hungry and dizzy or I haven't drunk water. Whatever reason, I'm having a really hard time just standing up and getting started. So for me, just being able to say, hey, I'm stuck. And what that means is I don't necessarily need him to come over and solve my life or solve my day. Often I will say, hey, I'm stuck. Can you give me a hand? And what that means you'll literally come over and hold my hand and help me stand up from the couch. And that helps incredibly, the getting a hand. So that language around stuck is really, really helpful for the. I have an immediate. There's a road bump here that I just need help with really quickly, if you can. Another one is phrases around climbing the wall versus staring at the wall. And that's something I got straight from an excellent YouTuber called How to ADHD. I recommend her channel very much. It's got tons of practical videos.

[William Curb]

Yeah, that's the model from Brendan Mahan.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So Brendan Mahan and I saw it first through the how to adhd.

[William Curb]

Yeah, she has a great video on it.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Absolutely. It's cartoons. And I recommend watching with your family, your friends, anyone you to track on the bus. And it talks about task initiation and organization. For ADHD is often being like a wall where each individual step of it is a brick. And sometimes it looks like you're doing nothing, but actually you're mentally climbing the wall. You're mentally getting over every working out how you're going to solve a problem. Sometimes you're just sitting and staring at the wall. It's a really good way to quickly check in with my partner if he's seen me kind of just physically not start a task, be staring blankly at a Physical wall in my house for a while. Like standing in the middle of the kitchen, halfway through a step with half a cup of coffee in my hand, just vaguely staring into the middle distance. He can say, hey, are you climbing a wall or are you staring at a wall? And what that means is, are you thinking and should I leave you alone or are you a bit stuck and do you need a hand? Really, really useful, clear ways of communicating where we're at. That has just made our lives a lot easier, nicer. I mean, easier, less frustrating and more easy to be loving and supportive of each other. And we started to use that language back both ways because he doesn't have adhd. But people with ADHD can also, without adhd, can also get stuck. Can also have trouble getting things started or thinking through a problem.

[William Curb]

Yeah. I mean, I love that the wall of awful language is so great for just communicating everything and being like, hey, yeah, this is. Everyone's going to have issues with doing this and we all have similar ways of trying to climb it or stare at it or break through it or do any number of things.

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Always trying our best. Yeah.

[William Curb]

Is there anything you want to leave the audience before we sign off?

[Maddie DiCabrielli]

Absolutely. So if this episode was helpful for you or useful for you, you can come and find me online because I talk about this for a living. I run online workshops called the adult ADHD starter kit. You can find that at cognation.com au that's cognizant cog like C O D nationlikethecountry.com au because I am Australian and check out my newsletter, check out maybe a workshop. We run online workshops that just run through some of these ideas and some really practical tools and a space to do a bit of kind of collective problem solving. So come and check me out online at cognation. Com AU Cognation. AU on all the socials. But thank you so much, William, for having me on and having this conversation. It's really fantastic. I had so much fun.

[William Curb]

I had a great time. Thank you for coming on. Thanks again to Matti for coming on the show. If you want to see everything mentioned in this episode, be sure to go check out the show [e-mail] 181 but before you go, let's do a quick rundown of today's top tips. One, when we're looking at what goes into our toolkit, we need to be thinking of both the physical and mental items that can assist us throughout the day. Two, it's important to work on getting past the idea of what we should be able to do and look at the things that will actually help us do those things. 3. It's important to work on understanding and accepting ADHD as a chronic condition. We need to recognize ADHD impacts on our daily life and work on employing practical tools and strategies to help mitigate those challenges. That's it. Thanks for listening. I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. Feel free to connect with me [e-mail] content if you'd like links or to read this episode's transcript, you can go to the show notes [e-mail] 181 and now for your moment of Dan what's the difference between a hippo and a Zippo? Well, a hippo is pretty heavy and a Zippo is a little lighter. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates Price and coverage match limited by state law. Not available in all states.

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