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ADHD Tools – Part 3: Don’t Do It Alone

Tools and Tricks to Improve Your Executive Functioning
Part 3: Involving Others And Asking for Help

In my last two posts, I have written about practical tools that can improve your executive functioning (here are Part 1 and Part 2. In this third part, I want to emphasize one more strategy: involving other people for help.

This third strategy could also be seen as a part of the other two. Other people can be our external memories, as well as hold us accountable for our choices, make life less boring, and help us make better long-term decisions.

However, I figured the aspect of asking others for help deserved to be addressed on its own, if only because this point might be the hardest for many.

Why is asking for help particularly hard for people with ADHD?…

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Does Positive Thinking Help You Reach Your Goals?

Can positive thinking help you reach your goals? Picture from: https://pxhere.com/en/photo/539763 (Attribution not required)

Can “positive thinking” really help you change your life for the better and reach your goals? Many motivational speakers and writers seem to believe so, but empirical studies reveal a more complicated picture.

If you want to reach your goals, positive thinking seems to come with some pitfalls.

In particular, in her research spanning decades, Gabriele Oettingen and her colleagues have discovered a powerful link between positive thinking and poor performance [e.g., 1 – 5]. Oettingen’s book “Rethinking Positive Thinking: Inside the New Science of Motivation” [6], and her website detail many of these findings. For example, in one study [2] they asked college students who had a crush on someone to engage in future fantasies about them and a person of their romantic interest.

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How to Deal with Regret

Do you have deep regrets about some of your past decisions?

How to deal with regrets about your past decisionsA solid “No!” to this question should be much more concerning than a “Yes”.  Regrets make us human, as Daniel Pink argues in his new book The Power of Regret. What’s more, regrets can help us become better humans, if we learn something from them along the way.

Drawing from his own research as well as previous studies, Pink claims that people feel regret quite often. He identifies four core categories of regret:

1. Foundation regrets
“If only I’d done the work.”
These are regrets where we opt for short-term gains over long-term payoffs, like not studying hard enough in school or not saving enough money.

2. Boldness regrets
“If only I’d taken that risk.”
These are regrets of inaction,

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Two Book Recommendations for the Holidays

If you’re ready to cosy up by the fireplace with some good books, I have two suggestions. They are both classics in their fields, though of different times and genres. The first is a novel by one of the great German poets. The second is a concise introduction into the research on decision making.

1. Johann W. von Goethe. Elective Affinities, a novel published in 1809 .
(original: “Wahlverwandtschaften“; also translated under the title “Kindred by Choice“) .

The title refers to a chemical reorganization of substances, which Goethe uses as a metaphor for human relationships, and as a way to question our ability to choose our own actions and resist the forces of nature.
The novel begins at just at that point where many other stories end: with a happy,

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Which types of decisions do we regret most?

In this TED talk, Kathryn Schulz makes the rather unusual
claim that regret is not always a bad thing:

It is a worthwhile talk for many reasons. One thing I found
particularly remarkable was a study she cites, which showed
that the kinds of decisions people regret most are decisions
concerning their education and career. Next up are romance
and parenting as fields where people experience considerable
regrets.

Interestingly though, people seem to have hardly any regrets
about finances or health, which are by far the most
extensively researched decision domains.
I do hope that more decision scientists will in the future
venture out into those other (messier?) domains, like
relationships or careers, where people seem to have a lot
more difficulties with their decisions.

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Relationship decisions – deciding matters…

Here is a very interesting new take on an older debate: why is living together before marriage, particularly before engagement, associated with higher risks for divorce?
http://www.scienceofrelationships.com/home/2012/9/11/twos-company-but-is-it-necessarily-bad-company.html

It is an uncomfortable finding for us secular liberal folks…. accordingly, many explanations have been brought forth, such as that the two groups likely differed from the beginning (correlation is not causation, post-hoc is not propter hoc, etc.). This newer study though not only controls for many selection factors in a huge sample, but additionally uses a longitudinal subsample, which makes it harder to make those arguments.

Among other explanations that the article mentions, here is – of course! – my favorite: people who start living together before really committing to each other may “slide” into a marriage, rather than deciding consciously and fully before taking that step. Interestingly, people who get engaged before moving together show the same pattern as those who get married before moving together,

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