LATE BLOOMERS - ADHD HACKS: Strategies that work with your brain, not against it

Episode Date: July 23, 2025

20% OFF LOOP EARPLUGS HERE: https://www.loopearplugs.com/pages/lp-adhdlove We’ve tried every productivity system out there — and most of them made us feel worse. So in this episode of LATE BLOOMERS, Rich and Rox share the ADHD hacks that actually helped. No shame, no pressure — just real strategies that work with your brain, not against it. From “the 300 second rule” to “lesser-of-two-evils,” these are the weird little tricks that finally made a difference in our day-to-day lives. I f you’ve ever felt like a broken human in a productivity-obsessed world, this one’s for you. Expect honesty, laughter, and 8 practical tools to try today.

ADHD hacks that actually work. We are sharing them all with you today and you are not going to hear any, why don't you just set three alarms or why don't you just leave earlier here. This has been hard earned over five years of trial and testing. We are pulling it from the depths of our relationship almost breakdowns to figure out for you how to get your ADHDer moving and working. This is the Late Bloomers podcast where we are getting our lives together eventually. It's the ADHD hacks episode. All of these hacks have been learned by you having to figure out how to hack me to actually move. What's the best about it is they're all weird, aren't they? They're all like just strange.

You would never read this in a book. No, you wouldn't. Little weird, strange things that forever, for whatever reason, work for our little weird, strange brains. I've got eight hacks and I think we're just going to share them with our good listeners, give an example of how it's worked for me and hopefully it's going to work for you guys at home. They'll definitely be a few that works for anyone with ADHD, if not all of them.

I do agree. First up, it's not five minutes, it's 300 seconds. Yeah, this one's crazy. Like this one, this one just, we were having a conversation and and we were just talking about five minutes and I was and I said something like five minutes is five minutes, you know, so that's 300 seconds and you were like, what? And it just feels different internally to you, doesn't it? Five minutes feels like, oh, I can do my makeup, have a quick shower, have a quick bit of a scroll, the 300 seconds, it's like you get a visual of a countdown. That's it. I can't imagine five minutes. Five minutes is this nondescript amount of time that's a fairly decent chunk,

need to leave soon, but I can fit a few things in. 300 seconds, the countdown is on, 299, 298. I need to be up, I need to be moving, I'm panicking. It has changed the way that we leave the house. And it's changed the way that I use five minutes. So it's like a bit of a cliche, but ADHD is like, I'll be ready in five minutes. I'll be there in five minutes. I've stopped saying that because I now understand that is 300 seconds. That is not a lot of time. The reason why ADHD is struggling with five minutes is time blindness, right? So time blindness is not really knowing.

It's the concept of time, isn't it? It's not having any real concept of what you can or can't do in that amount of time because it works the other way. If you've got two minutes to get to the train platform that's 20 seconds away, you'll be like, oh my god, panicking, I'm going to miss my train. Yeah. So it's either overestimating or underestimating how much time something's going to take. And if it's something that we don't enjoy, like cleaning, we always overestimate how long it will take. It will take two hours to clean that room. You could do it in 15 minutes. Well, we sorted out a lot of the junk room in about 20 minutes

and you were convinced it was going to take all day. I thought it was going to take hours and hours. And then if we love something, we go the other way. And it'll be like, oh, it'd take me half an hour to finish this song. Eight hours later. So we're all wonky with time. We don't know what five minutes means. But if you say to your ADHD, we are leaving in 300 seconds, you might just see them.

They visualise a clock, a countdown, a stopwatch in their mind and they're in a race against it. It does work. It blows my mind that. So that's number one, the 300 second rule. Use it, enjoy it. Number two, the lesser of two evils hack. Oh, this is cool. So like, don't you like explaining it? So if there's lots to do around the house, if I simply say, oh babe, would you mind unloading the dishwasher? It'd be like, oh, can I do it later? I'm not really that feeling it. Can I do it in five minutes? Which of course means never. Or if I go, babe, there's two things that feeling it. Can I do it in five minutes? Which of course means never.

Or if I go, babe, there's two things that need to do. I need to do this. The big pile of laundry that needs doing is probably two or three loads there. And the dishwasher needs emptying. Which one do you want to do? You'll be like dishwasher. And that'll feel like a win for you, right? And that is the key part. Now, I don't know what is mentally wrong with me, it's quite a few things at this point, but the fact that I need to feel like I've won the negotiation somehow. Will you even do it in tasks? Let's say we're both doing, let's say that we're both say, oh, should we do the kitchen? Yeah.

You'll choose the things that in your mind give you a moral victory because it's the easiest task to do. Not moral victory. This ain't about lazy victory. I want the easiest possible part of that job and that for me feels like a victory. It's like this inherent allergy to something that's difficult. So I choose something easier and by winning and getting the easier thing, it gives me a dopamine boost so I can do it. Whereas if I'd only been presented with the easy thing, that would feel like the difficult thing. It really does show. Mind games.

It's a mind game that you play with yourself. I sometimes wonder, and I know this does come under more of the autistic spectrum, but we do see a lot of ADHDers talking about it, about PDA and like, what is it? Persistent drive for autonomy. I wonder if that comes into it. So like, I need to feel like I've made the choice, I've won. I think it's like pathological demand avoidance as well. I see a lot of- They call it both. Yeah. I see a lot of this in the ADHD world as well.

And a bit more be joking like, wait until you, if you tell an ADHDer what to do or how to do it, that they'll do everything, everything in their bones not to. It's interesting, isn't it? Like if I'm about to hoover and you're like, oh babe, can you do the hoovering today? I'm like, no, not now. But I love the lesser of two evils. It's so interesting how it works. No idea really, but it does work. So if you need your ADHDer to No idea really, but it does work. So if you need your ADHD to tidy their bedroom, offer that someone needs to do the junk room and someone needs to do a quick tidy the bedroom. I don't mind which one you do. Boom. It obviously works with ADHD, but you say you don't know. I'm pretty sure when I was

18 or 19, there was sales training for this event. So it's obviously a psychological thing. So if you want someone to buy something, don't just offer them the thing, give them a choice and they'll take the better option. Wow. So it's actually a psychology hack. I love it. I also think don't use it all the time. You need to like mix the hacks in because if you're always using the lesser of two evils hack, they're going to figure you out. So you need to keep them on their toes. Hack number three is a classic. It is body doubling.

Ah, the phenomenon. I cannot tell you how much body doubling changed my life. To know what it was, to know that it helped me and to know I could ask for it. For anyone that doesn't know, body doubling is having somebody with you when you complete a difficult task. Or anything. A task that you find difficult or anything. So it might be cleaning the room, folding laundry, doing admin. Now this could be a friend or partner that sits next to you. They

don't even need to do the thing, by the way, they just need to be with you. Or it could be online, it could be virtual. We have an entire app. This is how much I am obsessed with body doubling. I've dedicated my life to it and built an entire app based on body doubling. Just for anyone that doesn't know, we have an app. It's called Dubby. And we offer six live body doubling sessions a day with professional body doubling hosts. But if you don't want to do it digitally, it just works in real life. If you've got someone that can just sit with you. Phone a friend on FaceTime or have your partner come and sit with you. or have your partner come and sit with you. I wish I understood the science. I don't,

but it just works time and time and time again. If you are struggling to write that email, to fold those socks, just say to someone, would you mind body doubling me, sitting with me whilst I do it. They can be getting on with their own thing. That presence, that grounding, that quiet accountability, it just helps. I don't know where it comes from either, but I do know that it's really real. We were on someone else's podcast, Ben Branson, his name is, isn't it? He loved Ben. And he's so boss, isn't he? He founded Seedlip, sold it for whatever. I don't know. He's a rich, successful guy. And he was like, I've owned these companies, but I cannot do my emails

unless my assistant is sitting in the room with me. I just can't do it. And he needs to come to accept it. So it's not nothing to be shameful of. The very best. The best people in the world, if they're neurodivergent, will also be using body doubling. Definitely, yeah. Why not use it? I find it beautiful whenever I log on. I use a lot of our WLive sessions just to do normal things. And I find it so amazing. There's also like a shame reduction. If you're in a Zoom call with a hundred people and you know they all struggle and we're all there supporting each other, I don't know, it just

produces shame. And it's built, specifically, Dubby, it's built about the things that everyone has to do all the time. So like whether it's self-care, tidying in the living room, the kitchen, the washing, these are like never-ending things. It's for the never-ending basic tasks that aren't so basic. So big win for body doubling. Number four, we're going to gamify. We are going to make a competition. Yeah. I mean, look, the easiest way, if there's loads of clothes all over the floor that need to be put in the dirty washing basket. You would be all over it.

If I'm like, should we play a game, stand the other side of the room and throw items into it and let's see who wins. Throw items. I want to go and do that now. That's how exciting can I throw the socks in and get it every time. That sounds amazing to me. And it's again, it's like so silly, but like making it fun, making it novel, bringing some competition.

Yeah. Or a race we could do as well. I love a race. Yeah. I also think like a mission, sorry to bring it up again, but on our app, Dubby, we do all the live sessions. Yes. But we also have a load of videos of us, uh, instructional videos where we clean rooms in our house. And some of

this was called messy mode. And it was me cleaning like the messiest bedroom and kitchen you've ever seen. And it took me an hour and a half and I was being filmed. It's like, stop and have a meltdown. And I remember we formulated it as like, I'm on a mission. I'm like Apollo Kitchen coming to save the population so people could then come and move into the kitchen. I don't know why I'm such a child. It helped. It's like missionify things, make them a competition. I don't think that's a word. That's okay. We can make it a word. It is now. Again, it can't be every day the thing is a competition,

because then they'll get bored. So mix it up. Sprinkle in your hacks. But just have some fun. Number five. I've got it written down as treats and rewards. That's exactly what it is. Because that's what it is. Whether it's chocolate or whether it's an activity.

If I'm like, babe, before you get this done. Is it not a bribe? I am bribed by Cadbury's Cream Eggs to do all manner of like basic adult tasks. It works though. Let's re-relabel it to bribery then. Bribery. I'm going in with bribery. So basically bribe in your ADHDer. You know that they are desperately searching for dopamine and they can get it from chocolate, a water park, a trip to the cinema, a games afternoon, you painting resin with them, like loads of fun activities or chocolate treats and they will work for it like a little dog.

You do yeah? Like a little dog. It's like doggy training. Visualizing a rocket looking up if I do this, can I get a treat? Yeah, you can. That's me. Doggy training, ADHD doggy training. Um, what's your experience of bribery with me? Like how does it work and how do you use it? It always is usually actually more as if we've got like a day of filming because you enjoy filming, but if it's like a full day, we're filming five or six videos or whatever, like you, after about three, start to lose the will to live, don't you? You're like, you go, you have got no energy. Sometimes your brain confuses it with illness or whatever or tiredness. You're like, I'm done, I'm done, I'm done. And then it'll be like, well, should we go here afterwards?

We've got two more left, let's count down. And then we can go here. Cinema. Yeah, cinema. And then you perk up. So it's not tiredness, not real. Your brain is telling you that you're ill or you're tired or you're whatever, exhausted. You're not really. It's just that your brain is like, I can't do this anymore. That's dopamine though. So I get through the first few videos, I run out of dopamine. I'm using it non-scientific. I'm sorry, I'm probably getting it wrong, but I run out of all energy

and it's like a mini burnout. I have mini burnouts any day I try and do a lot of work or a lot of cleaning. Mini burnout. And then that would be the day over. But if you inject a reward into the mini burnout. Really important the timing though. You can't do it halfway through. Cause if you have your tree, no, you can, you can, you can dangle the carrot halfway through, you can make the bribe halfway through, but

you can't give the reward halfway through because you can't go from experiencing the dopamine to then have to do the work. You can't have a treat in the middle. That's why I don't have credit cards. You don't get to have the joy of overspending because the consequences are tough. And I'm an over-committer and an over-promiser. So I'll be like, let me have the cream egg now. I promise I will clean the kitchen. You won't. And yeah.

I really believe that I will, but it's like learning to work with our brains. You only get the bribe. That's why it's better to see it as a bribe because if it's a reward, oh go on, just have it sooner. I promise I'll finish it. It's all the same thing. A bribe is a bit more serious. You need to do the thing and then we'll do the exchange. I agree. So it is bribery. And some people might listen to that and think, I don't want to have to bribe my partner to just be a normal adult human, why is that on me? I mean, do you want it done or not?

Like, I suppose that's the, that how important to you is the thing. Cause a cream egg is a small sacrifice for a trip to the cinema. And most of the things you all enjoy yourself. Like I enjoy going to the cinema. I just of the things you'll enjoy yourself. Like I enjoy going to the cinema. I just don't need to go there to do the job that I'm supposed to be doing. So try and pick a bribe that you might enjoy too. I also love that, like, do you want it

done? We could sit here and argue all day about relationship dynamics and is it wrong? Is it right? Are you infantilising? What's wrong with me? Why can't you just do it? Read those comments on the internet all the time. Do you want it done? If so, buy my cream. If not, just carry on arguing. It's fine. You do you. And that's the thing. These hacks have come from you figuring out how to actually get me to do it. To do it. Rather than just layer on expectations of why can't you do it, you do it, it's not fair,

we need to split evenly, blah, blah, blah. We do need to split evenly. Let's be creative about how we get there. But I imagine your life is better since the hacks. Yeah, definitely. Because it's more fun to hack and see it work than constantly come up against just a laid down lumpness going, I'll do it later. I do still, you know, let's, I do still come across that sometimes, don't I? The laid down lump saying I'll do it later. Yeah. And you can't always bribe.

No. Like it can't be like, I'll bribe you to get up and clean your teeth. I'll bribe you to get up and do the morning coffee. No, no, no, no. Like I... That's why there's lots of different hacks though. That's it. That's why there's loads of...

Talking about loads of different hacks. Number six. Jumping into the fantasy. Oh, this is big for you. And this is, this one doesn't really make sense to me, but it, it like works. It really works. So you explain it. It really works. So I and lots of ADHDers will have loads of creative ideas. We know that ADHDers are very high on creativity and empathy. So we're talking about the creativity now, coming up with

wild and wacky ideas. Maybe it's things that you want to do in life, your life purpose. Maybe it's new hobbies. Maybe it's an activity that you want to do that day. And sometimes they might be good and other times they will be wild. They're always good, they're just sometimes not practical. Ah, they're sometimes not practical. Now, if I share a fantasy, so for example, if I wanted to turn Lily's room into a sort of theme park room and have her a slide coming out of her bed and like a popcorn machine all in the room. Yeah.

I take so much joy planning the fantasy. Yeah. How would we do it? Can I research? Is there someone that could make a slide out of bed? What will it look like? Can I get some initial sketches up? Can I start costing it up? There is so much joy in the fantasy. Now, if you were like, don't waste your time on that. We're never doing that. I would double down and probably try and force it through. You're going to have a worse life. Yeah. Well, and you'd, it'd be rejecting as well.

It'd be a bit sad for you. And it'd be sad if there's something I'm super excited about. So what you do, we just call it jumping in the fantasy. Anytime I have a wild, wacky idea and it might be changing Lily's room to a helter-skelter, or it might be starting a new business, you just jump in it with what would it be called? What would the logo be like? Oh really? When would you launch it? I get all the high from imagining this new venture. And that's enough. Once I've had that enjoyment of the creativity, it very often just goes away. So it's important for timing, right? So this is when they are in the fantasy. So when Rox is like, oh my God, I've had this idea. What about we turn

Lily's room into whatever, blah, blah, blah. At that point is like, what would it look like? I can now sit opposite you and being like, that's obviously never going to happen. And you can level-headedly be like, yeah, obviously, lol, there's never going to be a slide from the loft out into the garden swimming pool for her and stuff. Right. But you can rationally think about it now, but it's when you're in the moment of that idea where the dopamine's running high, that is when the fantasy company is needed.

You're body doubling a fantasy. And that makes it so much more enjoyable. The reason why the partner or the parent or the friend wins in that situation is once they've had the dopamine hit of imagining, the idea will then often quieten down. Sometimes it comes into fruition, like Late Bloomer's podcast, like W, like anything that we've done, like ADHD Love as a social media account, like sometimes you'll jump in the fantasy and you'll think, actually, this is a really good idea, let's do it. Yeah. So if it is an idea that might have legs creatively or what you're going to do today, you can actually do it. But I think it's a really good way. It's like a love language for an ADHD,

a jump in the fantasy with them, and they won't then feel rejected and they will also not do it out of spite. Yeah. Because some of that will never work. Well, just watch me. Yeah, big time. Right. I've got two more to get through. However, I do just want to take a really quick break to tell you about something incredibly exciting. We have got our first sponsor of this podcast and I am so excited to tell you it's Loop Earplugs. Actually something that Rich and I use on a really regular basis. All the time.

All the time. We have got our own website on Loop Earplugs that is going to give you 20% off our favourite products and they include the Quiet range, which is what we use for getting to sleep. The Engage range, which is when we go out for dinner and I want to hear him, but not everybody else. And the Experience range, when I'm dragging him out to festivals and gigs. You use them all the time, so do I. And now we've got 20% off for our listeners. All the time. I'm baffled how you remembered which loop does what. That was amazing.

Thanks so much. Check out the show notes for the link. Also use the link in bio on our social profiles to get there, get your 20% off and turn the world down. Right back into it for our last two ADHD hacks. They better be good. I think they are really good. Okay. Okay. So number seven is changing location. What do you mean? So I feel like every room has an amount of energy and focused time available in it. And when I'm in that room and I'm working, cleaning, writing the next book, whatever it is, I'm using up the energy resources of that room and I can start to feel tired and I can start to feel muggy and a bit unclear. I've lost that hyper focus. If I take my laptop or what I'm doing and go into a new room, I almost up the energy

bars again. Why? That's the strangest thing. I think it's important to know the difference between fact and reality versus somebody's reality. The brain is a powerful thing. If that works, then it works. Who am I to argue with it? I guess the reality would be novelty in new environment, maybe dopamine. You've got a drink on the way, you're sat somewhere new. There'd be a way to ADHD pseudo-scientific explain it, but I'm not going to. I'm just going to say every room has an energy source. We use it up to move location. That could also mean going to work in a cafe

at a friend's house, sitting in the garden, like mix up your working environment. Do you have to, like, I would imagine a risk for this one would be distraction. Like if you're in the middle of something, if you stop, move room, there's a window there that is you're at risk of being distracted by something and derail you or? I feel like if you're sort of in hyper-focus, but you're just losing the edge, you could

top up by moving rooms. Where's going to mess you up if you're like, oh, I'm going to find the best coffee shop with the quietest environment that's got lovely coffee, fast Wi-Fi. You're then on a research project. Traveling three hours to this coffee shop. Didn't you even see it once? I was away or whatever. And like you don't drive. You spent loads of money or it was an idea. Yeah. Going to a cat cafe or something. That was real, wasn't it? You never made it. We ended up going to the cinema because it wasn't open, but we did. We got a 50 minute taxi. So yeah, you've got to be careful with the location you change. You definitely do. So like maybe see it more like rooms.

Yeah, okay. And the vibe. But like if you're folding loads of laundry and like your back's aching and you just feel totally drained, walk into a new room, get it on the bed, absorb that new energy. Love it. Okay. Number eight, it's our final hack. It's the micro goal. Okay.

What is this like? Don't commit to tidy a whole room. Just maybe say, I'll do this surface, that sort of thing. A hundred percent. So it's basically lying to yourself. So you don't get overwhelmed. So it can be something as simple as let's say if we're cleaning our bedroom rather than saying, can we clean the whole bedroom now? You'll say, oh, could you just take those two mugs downstairs? Yeah.

Sure. That feels like one tiny step, it's a micro goal, it's achievable, I'll get the mugs, and then I'll be like, oh, might as well take that downstairs too. I think this is important though, like you say, it's lying to yourself. I'm not sure that it is, because when we were first together,

tidy in the bedroom meant something different to you than it meant for me. My tidying the bedroom would be like, make the bed, take the clothes off of the floor. Like it would actually take 10 minutes. You would be like, oh, the skirt and board needs this. Oh, the cabinet and the bath and the en suite needs doing so I'm going to rearrange all of that. So it actually would turn into a three hour thing because you can't, you don't know what tidying the whole bedroom means. So it's almost like redefining what it means as well. It stops you. It stops the ADHD brain going to all or nothing and gives you some parameters

to work on. And if it's just one tiny thing that you can do, example, if I'm massively overwhelmed by my email inbox and I'm thinking about starting a new email, which has happened 10 times and how I tend to deal with it. Could you just go on and delete today's junk or unsubscribe from today's junk? Sure. And sometimes you might just do that. But other times for me, I start, I don't feel as bad as what I thought. I've achieved something, so I feel quite good. I might then carry on and actually sort something out.

This is crazy, right? Because there must be some science behind this. It just made me think just then about when they say, like, if you want to go for a run, don't commit to going for a run because that's horrendous. Commit to putting your shoes on and getting out the door. It's so interesting. Loads of these hacks work for normal humans. Humans without ADHD, when it comes to maybe working out, eating really healthily, starting a business, we're just using that similar psychology for the basic tasks and the things that people without ADHD might not be struggling with.

Which is often taken away. You don't usually have access because they're all deemed to be like, we just should be able to do it, which is obviously not helpful. Yeah. Most people wouldn't need a hack to just clean their teeth or like make the bed. That is apparently on autopilot. Can't believe it. So yeah, that's it. What's your favourite hack out of those eight? What do you like use the most for me? Oh, I think the less for two evils probably is my favourite one. It's so good and it works every time. I've got to go with jumping into the fantasy. You've stopped me from starting loads of businesses and buying domain names and wasting money just from having that little half an hour chat with me.

And without saying, no, that's a terrible idea. And without her and my very sensitive feelings. So absolutely love it. We really hope that there's some hacks in here that have helped you. If you've got an ADHD hack that we haven't mentioned that works for you, please comment so we can all learn from your mastery. It's been a joy to have you here. This is the Late Bloomers podcast and we will see you. We're going to go and have lunch first. Someone's got to cook it. Someone's got to lay the table. What do you think? I know that you're hacking me, but my brain is immediately like, lay the table. What do you think? I know that I know that you're hacking me

But my brain is immediately like lay the table lay the table And I now can't wait to go and lay the table so I can avoid cooking See you next week