*Also see [[My Relationship with ADHD]]*
![](https://youtu.be/d8-_eDc6JJM)
A previous version thought the best way to be meant investing in "second brain" strategies. Meaning that if a computer can do something your brain struggles with, delegate it to the computer and make it your copilot.
I am the version of me that took that advice as far as I could and learned about "the tax" the hard way. However beneficial any one of these tools was, a little something would be lost because of these taxed benefits adding up. So I invite you to learn what I did the easy way.
The tools I was using, many of which I still use, were mostly apps: To do list, calendar, email, various apps with "AI" in their names promising to be more than just data storage, they would take on the intelligence for me too. I tried to use these tools to their full potential. I thought they would not only fill in for my ADHD, they would make me superhuman.
Others tried to warn me about my approach but as neurotypicals are apt to do, it was less scrupulous. It was "Don't use those things as crutches" or "Maybe just try to hone in on your listening skills." In fact it was absolutist and ableist because I was being told to "just do" what I was already trying my hardest to do while suffering the consequences alone knowing I had real limitations they did not have.
But there was another side of me that kept thinking of a podcast episode where an expert on ergonomics said of overuse of chairs and back support products: "When you support something, you weaken it." That got me thinking I might be paying a tax with everything I was doing.
Over time, it started becoming clear. My "second brain" became my phone, so my first brain became something constantly needing to be on the phone. I was confident that by delegating to a system, I could instead focus on the aspects of my work I didn't need the system for. What actually happened was I exhausted that focus on maintaining the system. I could never honestly point to a return on this investment despite putting in ever increasing time and energy which translated to stress and frustration.
Don't get me wrong. Tools have their place but out of these realizations, I learned to find my minimum, and try ruthlessly not to go beyond that. But this begs the question, how was this minimization even possible for me if these tools were meant to accommodate aspects of my cognition that needed it? If I remove or reduce them, don't I need to replace them with something else? The answer is yes, there was another tool. Here's how I found out what it was:
Imagine you were having a busy day going in and out of meetings, your to do list is overflowing and your mind is racing with new items to add to the list that you haven't gotten a chance to because you're too busy to even capture. You're also stressed out because any time you spend just looking at that list is time you're neglecting on your email or instant messages which you're also behind on.
**Then the police come and arrest you**. Never mind for what. They put you in a holding cell alone for 12 hours without your phone and not so much as a magazine to stimulate your attention. You have to just sit there with four blank walls around you. Ask yourself: What happens in those 12 hours?
> [!quote] My "second brain" became my phone, so my first brain became something constantly needing to be on the phone.
What will probably happen is your mind will be forced to move into a diffuse mode. You will begin thinking of random things. Memories from long ago, future things, imaginary scenarios that will never happen, in essence your mind will fill the need for stimulation with its own thought.
After some of that happens, the real magic begins: You will begin to think clearly. The to do list you programmed in your app because you would forget begins to magically reappear in your head. More than that, you'll start to see the world for its dynamics of nature and people such that the list will cease to serve as the right construct for how to go about your day. You will gain a kind of clarity that allows you to access a deep and rich understanding of what is truly important.
Calmness is like compounding interest. When you are calm others feel more comfortable around you. Then they too make you feel safe and your calmness is nourished. But even alone, your calmness lets you come out of the cell with linear thinking about what is right to do moment to moment. It gives you peace to accept what you can't change and patience for the things that will take time to do so.
So all of this is to build up to the key idea of this whole article:
# Idleness is my most important tool
Telling people with a hyperactivity disorder to sit still doesn't sound like useful advice. Yet it is hard for me to ignore how life-changing _being still_ has been for me personally. We are told to try meditation because it helps so much with ADHD but hardly anyone ever does it. I think of it more as the right message in an envelope without a legible address on it—it's undeliverable.
This is also a good point where I should remind readers all of this is my personal experience with my own brain. I understand this may not apply to everyone working to manage their own ADHD. That being said, if I were reading this a year ago, I would have immediately considered myself one such exception. Yet here I am surprising myself having found there was another way I could be as a human being. So I would encourage everyone to resist the urge to dismiss these ideas as personally inapplicable too quickly.
> [!quote] Calmness is like compounding interest. When you are calm others feel more comfortable around you. Then they too make you feel safe and your calmness is nourished.
"Sit still" isn't the advice here anyway. It's _learning to slow down_. Once you manage to do this well, stillness is an eventual outcome. Going between these states and having multiple decades of experience with my own ADHD has made it clear to me that most of what I experience as the symptoms of ADHD come from states of being constantly sped up.
When we are sped up, we are [[Being Present|time bound moment to moment]]. Each moment we are in is a threat to arriving at the next one...or being prepared for it, or wanting to just get out of the present one out of boredom. When our focus is constantly on the near future being more promising than the present, how can we expect ourselves to have a mind that will focus on what people are saying to us or remembering where our keys are?
Being still or just slowing down is essentially just embracing healthy leisure. When we think of leisure, it's easy to consider it as easy because it's inherently lazy. It's like a reward after an arduous workout, and in this manner of speaking, it should feel like that too but honestly, it's hard work to actually convince yourself to begin to do nothing, Let alone to stay there for some time. Idleness should also not be confused with starving yourself of enjoyment as if being idle means staring at the wall and forcing yourself to be bored in the name of discipline.
When we successfully let leisure happen, we start to discover this other kind of person we can be. In place of actively managing one task after another we get intimacy with the moment and other people.
![](https://youtu.be/hoVKOZAvUkE)
Increasingly, we live in a world where leisure is vilified. We value work and the constant state of productivity as signals that we are spending our time appropriately. Yet who on their death bed is reflecting positively on all the time they used up being at work? [Indeed the opposite is true](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3377309/).
If nothing else, take a leap of faith and see what happens. Passionately put things off and create lots of unplanned space for yourself. You may be surprised that your productivity paradoxically increases. Even if it doesn't, all of us should enjoy our time on Earth as much as possible anyway.