Simple ADHD Hacks Anyone Can Try Today
Image description: A living room in a home with white walls, white carpet and a set of striped couches. There are blankets on a couch, and various puzzles and games scattered across the floor.
Living with ADHD can feel like juggling a dozen ideas at once, but the good news is there are practical hacks that anyone can start using right away to make daily life smoother and less overwhelming.
What is ADHD? For those who don’t know, ADHD is Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects how the brain develops and functions, leading to challenges with attention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity that begin in childhood and often persist into adulthood. There are additional types of ADHD based on the presentation of symptoms, but that is the general broad term for ADHD.
These tips draw from real experiences shared by our Qi Blog readers and advice from our Qi Coaching team, focusing on quick wins that reduce mental load without needing fancy tools or big changes.
Let's dive into some friendly, actionable strategies to help organize your brain and boost your motivation!
See-Through Bags and Clear Containers for Easy Access
Image description: 2 mesh bags sit on a table, one is white and clear with an orange zipper top, and the other is made of black mesh. The white bag has nothing inside, and the other bag contains cosmetics, lip balm, and dental floss.
Clear containers and mesh bags are a game-changer for tackling object permanence issues, where everyday items seem to vanish into thin air.
Are you someone who has 7 bottles of the same sauce in your pantry because you forgot you bought it the last time you were cooking up a stir fry? Do you find yourself having to check every single pocket of your purse or backpack because you forgot which pocket held your keys? Then this hack could be for you!
By using see-through storage, you can spot what's inside at a glance, skipping the frustration and extra mental load of rummaging through opaque containers and helping your brain find what it needs sooner.
This simple switch works for everything from desk supplies to snacks, helping maintain order in a low-effort way. If visual clutter still bothers you, you can keep these clear containers stowed behind cupboard and closet doors, with nice labels to continue to support that mental bridging when it’s time to look for what you need.
It’s as easy as browsing your local dollar store today to find clear containers and mesh bags to give this hack a try!
Define and Create Your “Drop Spots”
Image description: A blue tote bag hangs on a metal rack of hooks.
Drop spots (or drop zones) aren’t just for remembering where certain things go, but help to accommodate rituals, routines and other behaviours around your home.
A bowl to catch car keys, ID cards and other small important valuables is a common drop spot, but here are some other examples:
A specific shelf or coat hook to set aside the next day’s outfit, so you’re not scrambling through your closet to put something together the next morning
A box or basket in the living room where remote controls, phone chargers always live
A hook near the back door where pet leashes and harnesses hang, for easy pick up and go for walks
A box or basket where kids can drop their backpacks and lunch boxes after school
You can start with a cardboard box or old tupperware to experiment with a drop spot, and upgrade to a nicer bowl, basket or hook if it works for you!
Body Doubling for Motivation Boosts
Image description: Two sets of hands are pressing cookie cutters into a sheet of dough on a metal pan.
Do you ever feel like you’re more productive at the library: a quiet place surrounded by total strangers also focused on their own books? Then you may have been enjoying the benefits of body doubling!
If starting tasks like cleaning feels impossible, try body doubling by inviting a friend or family member to hang out in the same space.
They don't need to help directly: just their presence can spark accountability and focus, turning solo struggles into a shared vibe that keeps you moving. This technique leverages social energy and rewards feelings of companionship to override procrastination, making tedious chores more bearable from the get-go.
On YouTube, some students are emulating the classroom body doubling experience by playing group study videos: like this classroom in China or this fictional Animal Crossing classroom, to bring on those vibes.
A common way to body double shared by our readers is to meet up virtually (Google Meet, Zoom, Discord), and continue to focus on your tasks while still connected. For some, this digital hangout zone is more than enough to get those motivation gears going.
One of our readers struggled with meal preparation and meal planning, so she teamed up with another parent to body double together: Once every couple weeks, they go shopping together for all their groceries, then cook and prep them together in the same kitchen while their kids hang out and play! Kids spend the weekend socialized, and both parents go home with days to weeks worth of food they can throw in the oven right away, or keep in the freezer for later. Many hands sure make for light work!
Have a Set List of Meals
Image description: 3 bowls are decoratively plated with various foods: battered and fried tofu, sliced steak, and sliced beef topped with chopped peanuts. Various chiles, parsley, and cashews are also decorated throughout the table.
Meal planning and meal execution is a common struggle for our adult ADHD readers, especially ADHD parents juggling dozens of other concerns, worries and responsibilities on top of bringing food to the table night after night. Not knowing, or forgetting the plan for dinner was a common trigger for emotional dysregulation in many households we’ve worked with.
Streamline meal planning by sticking to up to 20 reliable recipes that you commit to memory, like spaghetti with meatballs, grilled cheese with tomato soup, roast chicken with a side salad, ramen bowls, and also remembering your family’s favourite fast food orders for those nights when no one has the energy to cook.
Write this list of menu items down and memorialize it as a laminated sheet or poster, or print it out and store in a binder! 20 is not a hard number, but one we figured allowed for a decent variety.
In addition to recipes, you can also remember specific theme nights your family loves: Breakfast for dinner, tea time (a meal of low-effort sandwiches and desserts), hockey night finger foods, or “put whatever you want on a bagel” nights.
Over time, knowing exact items, ingredients and steps reduces shopping guesswork and eliminates recipe-hunting stress, saving money, time, and precious cognitive energy. This reader-favorite hack turns cooking from a daily dilemma into a low-fuss routine (and we could all use less ‘fuss’ in our lives)!
Set Alarms as Gentle Reminders
Image description: A red petaled flower, cup of coffee, and a cell phone sit on a brown wooden desk.
Multiple alarms throughout your day can act as external cues for tasks big and small, countering time blindness without relying on willpower alone. Even tasks that are routine to you, like a weeknight Yoga class, can benefit from an alarm or other reminder!
Customize them with fun sounds or voice notes to make them less jarring, and layer a few leading up to deadlines for built-in nudges. This hack keeps momentum flowing and prevents small oversights from snowballing.
One of our ADHD readers, who also works from home, splurged on a gorgeous Seiko Melodies in Motion Clock. These beautiful clocks chime out a song once per hour, which helped our reader with time blindness by adding a gentle cue to their workday whenever an hour passed.
Time blindness, in ADHD, is the difficulty to perceive or sense how much time has passed, which can lead to missed or late deadlines, mealtimes taking longer to get to the table, or general tardiness due to a lack of internalizing how long it takes to do or go from one thing to the next.
Keep Shelf Stable Foods of Different Types
Image description: A collection of frozen foods on display in a freezer. There are fish fingers, okra, onion rings, potato egg rolls, and cooked shrimp.
As an additional accommodation to sticking to a variety of meals that you know, have a variety of foods in shelf-stable, long lasting versions to not only make it easier to initiate meal prep and cooking, but to have those smaller snacks to keep you fueled and satisfied.
Some people with ADHD find it difficult to get themselves to eat, or forget to eat until hit with pangs of discomfort, and if the only options for eating require lengthy prep, that can further exacerbate the issue to initiate the steps to prepare food for yourself or others.
Some examples include:
Frozen veggies in steamable/microwavable bags, to make it quick and easy to get vegetables warmed and ready to eat.
Canned beans, to easily crack open and enjoy beans on toast, to pour together into an easy chili, or to toss into other menu items for a healthy protein boost!
Frozen fruits, to make your own smoothies.
Canned soups, to eat on their own or add to a soup and sandwich night.
As a bonus to this hack: Pre-organizing canned food into bags (e.g., putting canned beans, tomatoes etc in a “chili” bag), so that it’s an even faster grab-and-go to take what you need and get started on a recipe.
Start a Basket System for Catching Clutter
Image description: A series of woven baskets are neatly slotted into a white shelf.
Day after day, every member of the family may find themselves accumulating clutter that needs a home:
Freshly washed grippy pilates socks for your weekly workouts, to be sorted into a gym bag but not the general sock drawer
Fancy jewelry from a date night, that needs to eventually make its way back into the jewelry box
Coupons from the mail, to be sorted and added to your wallet or car
A jacket that was too thin for the cold weather, so you left it strewn in the entryway while you put on a different jacket before leaving
Toys that made their way to the living room, that now need to make their way back to your child’s bedroom toybox
The potential solution for you? Baskets.
Baskets can act in different ways. Some baskets are permanent fixtures, like the “drop spot” as mentioned earlier for your car keys. Others are meant to catch your clutter, so that when you have the time and energy to do it at a later date, you can go about putting things away all in one go.
Stop looping the message of “should I put this away” in your head when faced with your clutter or facing things item by item, and embrace what works for you!
Have Duplicate Items in Multiple Rooms
Image description: A hand holds a pair of scissors. In the background, 3 more pairs of scissors are visible.
In one Qi Blog reader’s childhood, one recurring item lost over and over was a pair of scissors.
This pair of scissors did everything: cut construction paper for homework projects in a bedroom, cut clothing tags and coupons in the laundry room, cut down cardboard boxes in the garage, and so on.
Its ‘home’ was a kitchen drawer, but with each task and each person who wanted these scissors, the scissors would be a constant source of small arguments around the home, wondering where they moved to next, and who was the last person to have them.
If you notice you need something in a room where it doesn’t normally exist or have a home for, consider buying another copy of that item. That copy then always lives in that part of your house, rather than trying to keep track of one pair.
This doesn’t just apply to scissors, but could also include single items or systems:
Trash bins
Laundry hampers
Reusable water bottles
Throw blankets
Catch-all baskets
Phone chargers
Lotion and lip balms (especially in the winter)
Tissues and paper towels
Nail clippers
These hacks aren't one-size-fits-all, but try experimenting with a couple and holding out for a few days or weeks to see if they spark relief, easier routines, and confidence in managing ADHD challenges. You may notice by adopting some of these hacks, the benefits can be reaped not just by one person, but by the whole family!
Pick one or a few that resonate, and tweak it to your style and life routines. Small steps can lead to big shifts in how you navigate your day.
