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.
These tips draw from real experiences from 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 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. It’s as easy as browsing your local dollar store today to find clear containers and mesh bags to give this hack a try.
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 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.
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 leave 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 Go-To 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 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 small bite sandwiches and desserts), hockey night finger foods.
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 not internalizing how long it takes to do or go from one thing to the next.
Keep Shelf Stable Foods of Different Portions (Frozen, Canned, Snacks, Dried)
Image description: A collection of frozen foods on display in a freezer in. 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 different 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 to remember to eat, and if the only options for eating require lengthy prep, that can further exacerbate the issue.
Some examples include:
Frozen veggie 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.
Start a Basket System in the Home
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 in the entryway and put on a thicker 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, the go-to landing zone for specific things like car keys. Others are meant to catch your clutter, so that when you have the time and energy to do it, 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!
These hacks aren't one-size-fits-all, but experimenting with a couple today can spark real relief and confidence in managing ADHD quirks. Pick one that resonates and tweak it to your style—small steps lead to big shifts in how you navigate your day.
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