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ADHDtime on-Air with Ari Tuckman · ADHDtime On Air

• Daniella Karidi, PhD: Hi everyone. Sometimes we feel that productivity, a ⁓ failure. And I feel that a lot of productivity books out there are not written for the ADHD brain. But this one that we're going to talk about today is not only written with the ADHD perspective in mind, it was also included questions that helped you work towards the steps in the book, which I personally found very useful. So today. We get to speak with the author of this amazing book. The book that we're talking about is the ADHD productivity manual that I could find today, which I was very proud of. our guest is Dr. Ari Tachman, and he's going to introduce the book and maybe share a bit what brought you to read, write this book and a little bit about yourself. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Sure. Well, it is great to be here. We've known each other, think, for, it's been a while. It's been a while. So yeah, I'm very happy to talk about this. think productivity, I think just getting things done ⁓ you know, why does it work and why does it not work, I think is a really interesting topic because there's so much that goes into it, right? It's not just, there's no like, Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yeah. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: five hacks or whatever that are going to revolutionize or transform your life. Like that's just marketing nonsense. Like people are complicated and life is messy and things don't always work out. ⁓ it can feel like a real mystery sometimes, especially when you have ADHD that it's like sometimes things come together and it works. And other times ⁓ the same circumstances seems that way doesn't work. ⁓ you know, it's really sort of like depressing and disempowering then, right? You know you need to do it and yet you can't get it going. So book then was, I maybe say every single thing, but it's a lot of things that I've learned over 25 years ⁓ of private practice, meeting with clients all day, you know, helping run the big ADHD conference and all the other stuff I do. Just kind of like, pouring all of that into 36 chapters on what might be getting in your way and more important, what do you do to get over that hump and get a few things done. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yeah, love that reason for writing the book. This is not your first book. You have read, wrote, I've read wrote a few books ⁓ and ⁓ they're all about your experience in the ADHD world. And I skipped some of the intro and I'll go back to it now by saying that you worked with thousands and thousands of ADHD clients as a therapist ⁓ and you very active in the ADHD world. What Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Daniella Karidi, PhD: is the biggest insight you wish people will take from this book. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: I biggest thing is that I think it's sort of like I said, right? That there's a lot of reasons. There's a lot of things that go in. And on the one hand, that can feel sort of overwhelming. But I think ⁓ the way to look at it is there are a lot of places where I can sort of smooth the friction a little bit, right? Make things a little slicker in the right way. Add a bit of friction in the ⁓ things ⁓ Instagram and whatever. But, you know, like just there's a lot of places to sort of put a thumb on the scale to put a little bit of a push to make things go a little bit better. Like this is really about kind of hope more than anything. And I think I would also kind of add on top of that, and I think this is maybe where some of those other productivity books sort of miss an important point is it's not really about getting more things done. This is really a book about living a better life. Right? Like that's really actually what we're talking about. Like living a better life, getting done the things that matter to you, the things that are important, not getting done some other things. Cause still somehow a day only has 24 hours. Right? So it's like making good choices, feeling good about what you do and how you do it. I even got a bunch of stuff about negotiating with other people. Cause you know, like other people have some thoughts and opinions about what you're doing as well. you know, so again, it's about living a good life. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Hmm. Yeah. So, ⁓ we, I read this book with part of my ADHD focus book club, which is a book club that I created for accountability. I would buy all these ADHD books at the international conference and then they would sit next to my bed. And at some point that pie almost fell on me and I was like, okay, this can't, this is not going to work. So I chart started this accountability group. read an ADHD related kind of, ⁓ sometimes far away, sometimes closer. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Awesome. Mm-hmm. Right. Daniella Karidi, PhD: to the world of ADHD once a month. And sometimes I'm the only one that read the book and other people come to talk with me and other times it's a room full of people that read the book. And we read your book and I collected some questions from people as we were reading the book and some insights. So I'm gonna start with an insight because I think it will maybe lead to some conversation that I would love to hear your opinion on. So one of my readers pointed out that there is... Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Mm-hmm. Daniella Karidi, PhD: very short chapters that they loved, but they were very packed with a lot of information and they had questions at the end. And their main question that came from the questions was, how did you get to that point where you decided what are going to be those kind of leading questions? Like, how did you narrow that down? Cause you held yourself to a tight three questions after. And he was like, how did you do that? Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I know. Daniella Karidi, PhD: How did you not ask all the million questions that can come up from each of these chapters? Ari Tuckman, PsyD: So yeah, I really like that idea of having the questions at the end, right? Because I mean, I say, like, you know, the book might be interesting, but interesting doesn't change your life. And ⁓ want your life to be better, right? We all want our life to be better. Like, that's really why we buy books like this. So I was sort of thinking about, how do I take the sort of lessons off of the page and help people apply them into their real life? Daniella Karidi, PhD: Hmm. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: I mean, again, like I'm a psychologist, I spend most of my day with clients, talking to clients, so like this is what I'm doing all day anyway. But I thought that this idea of putting these questions at the end of what people can do was really kind of going to be a helpful way for them to apply it. And I think I just, I don't know, like I took my sort of therapist brain, right, my psychologist brain, and I was just like, here are the questions. I will admit, as much as there are technically three questions, I do sort of... sometimes cram like three, four, five, like related questions into one question. So I'm cheating the system a little bit, but like technically your honor, there's only three bullet points there. So, you know, defense rests. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yeah. of the things that one of my readers really enjoyed was the fact that they didn't have to write in the book that you had the PDF with the questions. And I don't know if a lot of people know that, so I'm going to share that. And that was just an insight. And I ⁓ know that she, by coincidence, has two comorbidities, ADHD and OCD. So for her, taking out the book and making it dirty or writing inside was very hard. The idea that she could print out and write on the pages and keep the book pristine was really important. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Yeah. Yeah. Sure. Daniella Karidi, PhD: For me, as an impulsive person, I wrote in the book. couldn't... So this is another extra copy I bought so it will look nice because I needed that. ⁓ do like that you can do it in different ways. ⁓ But ⁓ of the comments that ⁓ I had was that some people, when they thought about productivity, they're like, ⁓ I think about the typical use an alarm, don't use the account, like whatever. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Ha Right. Mm-hmm. Daniella Karidi, PhD: And they were actually surprised about the social aspects and the disclosure conversation and the conversations that are not directly productivity, but are very much productivity. When you read the book, you're like, ⁓ of course that's part of productivity. So what led you to include those? Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Sure. Yeah. because I think it all fits, right? And I'm glad that we're talking about this because think that this is where some of these sort of the more simple advice falls flat, right? Because it's just ⁓ tight on this topic of productivity. So it's ⁓ how to do a to-do list or how to color code your schedule. ⁓ sure, that is something, right? I'm not gonna say it's nothing, but. It's not the whole story. I think, you know, again, because of all these conversations I have with clients all day, right? Like all these other topics come up and I often use this as kind of the example here, but it's like, if you got four hours of sleep last night, like that, I don't care what else you're doing. It's going to be a bad day, right? So. So there are all these other things. It's, you know, things like managing distractions and temptations so you don't impulsively jump off onto something else. you know, getting enough sleep. It's having good systems like schedule, to-do lists, alarms. ⁓ also kind of like the mental mindset side. Are you being kind of anxiously perfectionistic? Are you, I don't know, unsure of what exactly do we need to do here? I know my boss told me something, but I don't really remember. I don't want to ask her because then I'm going to prove to her I don't remember. Right. But I don't want to bring it up. like, or being ambivalent, like I feel like I should do this, but I kind of don't really want to. I don't know if I want to do it. Right. So there's the mental side. There's the social side of, know, do you tell people you have ADHD? If so, how? Other people are gonna have expectations, sometimes fairly, sometimes maybe less so. How do you deal with that? And ⁓ can you say no? ⁓ you have the social capital to say, hey, I you want me to do this thing. Unfortunately, I just can't do it. Or even, here's a big one. I choose not to do it. I would rather not do this thing you are asking of me only because I don't want to do it. and I'm allowed to not want to, right? Is that a thing in your life? like it does all these areas, they do sort of come together when we talk about productivity. Daniella Karidi, PhD: And I like to add another one to my clients. Can I do it differently? So I like to add the, like, I have to brush my teeth, but no one says I can't play crazy music while I'm doing it. I, yeah, that's so can I do it different? Giving yourself permission to also put a third option. There's a yes, there's a no, and can I do it differently? And I love using that as a mindset strategy. And when we're talking about... Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Mm, yes. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Daniella Karidi, PhD: what I like to do, you know, I'm a memory researcher and I love memory. That's my like cup of tea. ⁓ and I really appreciated your insight about time. it made me think a lot about, the different perspective of memory versus time. And there's a lot of productivity. That's the challenge of how to remember to do things versus the challenge of being motivated to do something. And you talk about that a lot during the book, like, how can we change our motivation? What's going to make us do this? Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Yep. Love that. ⁓ huh. Daniella Karidi, PhD: But I really wanted to think about those separations and how you see those, the difference between remembering to do it motivating to do it. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Right. Yeah. I think that, so this is often a place where things break down. And I, you know, sort of the scenario is this, Hey, you should set an alarm. Yeah. You know, I've tried alarms. don't really work because the alarm goes off and I don't really do it. Right. And I have to admit that kind of stumped me for a while. And then I thought about it I was like, you know, wait a second. The alarm worked perfectly. If the alarm went off and you heard it. It did the thing it's supposed to do because when an alarm is supposed to do is make you aware. it's three o'clock at three. I was supposed, I'm supposed to go and do this other thing, but it doesn't pull out a gun and it doesn't give you a cookie, right? It doesn't motivate you to do the thing. It just makes you aware ⁓ the thing. And know, so like being aware is indeed helpful, but there is still that whole second part of motivating yourself to do it. in the face of other things that are probably more enjoyable to do. So with ADHD, there is that kind of cognitive part of like, whoops, lost track of time, forgot I was supposed to do it. But there is also that emotional kind of motivational part of even if I know, ⁓ I make myself do it? What's gonna get me moving on this? ⁓ Daniella Karidi, PhD: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And we emphasize in the memory world, there's a difference between recalling and executing. So I think that that is really interesting that that motivation part comes to the executing. You could recall the task. I remember that I needed to eat my apple that I brought from work to work, but then executing the pick, opening the bag, eating the apple is where the motivation comes into account. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Mm, yes. Yeah. Yeah. I think that, you know, so this is where I think there's a lot of potential nuance that matters, right? So in other words, if the problem is about motivation, setting more alarms doesn't fix it because that ain't the problem, right? It's not the solution if that's not the problem. So now if you turn the alarm off and then you're like, oh, I'll eat it in a minute and then you get caught up and then you forget, then that would be the solution. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Hmm. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: ⁓ I think I need a second alarm at three or five because the one at three disappears too quick. Or I need to snooze it and not turn it off completely or whatever. but if the alarms are fine, ⁓ it's more about motivation, right? How do I motivate myself to do this? How do I make myself, you know, stop what I'm doing and actually eat the apple? Do I actually like apples or do I just feel like I should, or that's the only thing I could grab quickly or it really getting nitty gritty, an entire apple is too messy, but if I cut it up, I can take it in bites. Maybe that's a thing that makes a difference. Or all these other kind of nuances, why am I even bothering with this whole apple thing anyway? Maybe that's kind of the thing. So I think there's a lot of different kind of nuances on this that do make a difference. like, again, these are all kind of ways in, these are all places to do something to make it a little bit more likely that it's gonna work out the way that you want it to. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Uh-huh. One of my book club readers asked a question about reading the whole book. Their first comment was, ⁓ I two chapters, I gave up, I came back for another chapter. And ⁓ I on your behalf that, hey, ⁓ A, bought the book, they're in the right direction, but reading a chapter or two is starting. And if they're doing the work on those two chapters, it doesn't matter. What really matters is doing the work. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Mm-hmm. Daniella Karidi, PhD: They really wanted to stay motivated on completing the book. So they told me to ask you how to stay motivated on completing the book. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Yeah. So I think the first thing I would say is don't feel like you got to start on chapter one. I think I would say that maybe for any book, maybe not a novel, although frankly even that if you want to jump ahead maybe. But jump to the chapters that feel most relevant or most interesting to your life right now. I think the other thing I would say, ⁓ there's the obvious advice of like, well, set a time. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: that you, a regular time that you read it or every Monday night, you're going to read a chapter or something. But I think on the motivation side, what I would recommend is like, are you reading it? How did, how is your life better? What are you hoping to get from it? and to really kind of like feel that don't just sort of think it in an abstract way of like, ⁓ this might be nice, but really like feel it. So for example, I don't know if we, you know, like I have a chapter on overwhelm. So if that's kind of a thing for you, or that's often the case to think about, like, if I learn a couple things from that chapter that helped me feel less overwhelmed, if I feel more on top of stuff, if I feel a bit more grounded, if I feel a bit more confident about whatever the thing I got to deal with, like how good does that feel? Like, how is my life better? Why does this mean something to me? Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm-hmm. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: why should I invest the time and the effort and frankly, the hope that I could actually get something from this, right? Like that, like really feel that in your gut, right? That's gonna be the thing that's gonna make the difference. Daniella Karidi, PhD: I that. I put on books post-its many times about the why. For me, it's like when it's due for the book club or when I'm going to be interviewing the author or things like that. ⁓ make it front and center. So there's like the motivation will stay on top. Like, so I won't forget why ⁓ I'm even interested in the book. And then I have to not lose the book, which is another challenge because I take the books with me everywhere. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Mm-hmm. All right. It is. Daniella Karidi, PhD: but this is where your audio book was very useful. my question was, how was it, like, how was create, did you record the audio book yourself and how was that? Ari Tuckman, PsyD: I did, I did. So first of all, all the webinars I've done where I'm sitting in my office talking to myself, you know, and hoping there's still people listening, is really good practice for sitting in a studio and ⁓ a book out for, I don't know what it was, 10 hours or 12 hours or something. So, so yeah, I did, you know, I did the audio book. It's also available on ebook. This is another reason actually. why, so the idea of having the PDF with all the questions that people could fill out, there was somebody else's idea for the audio book. And then I was like, this really applies to the ebook too. And you know what? Some people don't want to write in the book in case someone else finds it or whatever. So yeah, so getting good ideas from other people and running with it. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Perfect. So when was reading ⁓ the one of the things that came to mind to me is that even though the chapters are very short and they have a lot of information, but I have a feeling there's stuff you didn't put. You had to like stop yourself. So can you us what you didn't include maybe or maybe what's the next one? Ari Tuckman, PsyD: There's always more ideas, know, ⁓ especially on a big topic like this, there's always some other nuance, there's always some other little spin. And, you one of the things is, ⁓ since wrote it, and then I've been presenting on it, you know, obviously, as you prepare a presentation, other ideas come. But I've really been, I've been a lot about kind of two related ideas. And one of them is the idea of you manage your ADHD better in order to live a good life, right? To add more positives. And I did put this in the book, but I really sort of added it to pretty much any presentation on ADHD I do. Because if you're not managing your ADHD well, too much of your energy gets put into avoiding negatives. They're mad at me. I'm late. I didn't do this. obviously, yes, less negatives. That's good. But the problem is less negatives just gets you to zero. It doesn't make your life good. It just makes it like not bad. Yeah. And not negative is terrible. You know, like that's not a motivational speech. You know. So like what really makes your life good? What makes it really interesting? What is important to you? What do you want to? Daniella Karidi, PhD: Hmm, not negative, right. Goal. Mm. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: pursue what do you want more of, right? Like I think that I'm really, really sort of like pushing that idea a lot and to feel like you deserve it and that you can get it, you know? So I think that that's one big thing that I'm just really kind of running with. I think another idea, and I did sort of, this was also in the book, but I'm really sort of pushing it more is, that this whole thing of like, ⁓ need to make myself do this, should I do this, should I do that? my big thing is it's really kind of about regret in the sense ⁓ it's not for me to tell you what to do. It's for me to figure out what I'm gonna do, but it's really about how will you yourself feel about this afterwards? And if you're gonna regret it, as in like, ⁓ I spent too long screwing around on... something and I didn't get this other thing done. Like if you are going to regret it, then I would hope that we can find a better way to address this. On the other hand, if you feel okay about it, it's fine by me, right? And this could be little things like I don't make my bed and I don't care. Zero regrets, not a problem, no sweat, know? So like that's fine. But if there's other stuff where there is regret, Daniella Karidi, PhD: Same here. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Like, just, I don't know, life is too much regret. I'd like people to have less of it. Daniella Karidi, PhD: and I love that. Have less regret. That's amazing goal. And I do like those two topics very much. I ⁓ like ask people if you had like one or sentences to close the conversation, ⁓ what would you want to share with the audience? Ari Tuckman, PsyD: I think it would be, I think it's just always keep learning. There's so many good ideas out there and there's so many smart people doing really cool stuff in this ADHD world of ours. And I mean how life keeps moving anyway, even if you're not, life keeps moving. So we're always kind of learning, we're always adapting and just kind of keep getting up. you know, brush yourself off, get up. Like, what can I do to make this a good day? And, you know, some lessons get learned the hard way, but if you've already paid the price, you might as well get the benefit, you know. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Mm-hmm. Yep. Definitely love that. If you already paid the ADHD tax, at least enjoy it. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for this time and the conversation. really enjoyed the book and I really appreciate you taking the time to be on ADHD Time On Air. Ari Tuckman, PsyD: Yeah, yeah. Well, it is my pleasure. I love the fact that you do a book club, a book discussion group. I think that is a really good idea, I think for all involved. So that's great. Glad to do it, glad to be here. And I don't know, looking forward to seeing you at the next big ADHD conference. Daniella Karidi, PhD: Thank you. I will be there.