118: What to Do When Your ADHD Brain Glitches and Acts Like a Neurotypical Brain

What to Do When Your ADHD Brain Suddenly Acts Consistent

Have you ever noticed that despite struggling to be consistent or systematic in 99% of how you function, there’s this one weird exception where you’re suddenly analytical, organized, and reliable? What is that about, and can we actually learn something from it to use elsewhere in our lives?

My own glitch: Christmas cards

I’ve sent Christmas cards and letters consistently for over 20 years, since 1996. I have an address book I’ve used for decades, with a little grid at the back tracking, year by year, whether I sent a card and whether I got one back, information I’ve even used to eventually decide to stop sending to people who never reciprocate. I keep a binder with every Christmas letter we’ve ever sent, organized chronologically in clear sleeves. Meanwhile, I have never once sent a birthday card, anniversary card, Mother’s Day card, or Father’s Day card on time. If I ever have, it was a complete fluke. It’s embarrassing, and it can make people feel like you don’t care, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

Why one system works and the other doesn’t

Christmas cards get done because they’re a single, contained marathon, one sitting, or a couple of evenings, and it’s over. Every card shares the exact same deadline. Birthdays, by contrast, are scattered across the entire year, unpredictable, easy to lose track of until you’re already late or distracted by something else entirely.

A listener’s brilliant fix

A listener reached out after being inspired by a pending list approach and asked herself how to turn her multi-step birthday card failure into something closer to a single-step process. Her solution: a birthday card organizer book, the kind with a pocket for each month and space to write down everyone’s birthday that falls in it. She tackled the entire year at once, buying and organizing cards for every month in one sitting, essentially turning birthdays into the same kind of single marathon event that makes Christmas cards work for me.

Taking it even further

You could address, stamp, and even write brief notes ahead of time using forever stamps so postage rates never become an issue, leaving only a quick seal-and-send action required each month. If you also give gifts to certain people, buy a batch of gift cards in bulk ahead of time and have them ready to drop in alongside the card. The only remaining hazard is remembering to check the book each month, which a simple phone notification easily solves.

The real lesson

The task that already works for you naturally, whatever it is, holds real clues about what actually suits your brain: a single concentrated setup effort followed by simple repeatable actions, rather than a recurring multi-step process scattered unpredictably throughout the year. Look at whatever you already do consistently without a fight, and ask what about its structure makes that possible, then see where else that same structure could be applied.

Your practical, actionable step

Identify one recurring task you consistently fail at because it’s scattered unpredictably throughout the year, birthday cards, thank-you notes, whatever it may be, and consider whether it could be restructured into one single batch-setup project up front, followed by simple monthly actions instead of a multi-step scramble each time.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.