Living with the quirks and challenges of ADHD can be quite frustrating. One particularly annoying phenomenon we encounter is something known as “Waiting Mode.”
The situation might look a bit like this. You’ve got an event coming up in the afternoon, but instead of spending your morning an other worth while tasks, you find yourself stuck in a bizarre state of motivation paralysis.
I think of waiting mode as a fear of ADHD itself. More specifically it’s an anxiety around time blindness and distractibility. I believe waiting mode happens to those of us who have a high level of awareness these traits but not enough scaffolding in our lives to manage them.
Distractibility
With ADHD you often find yourself in the middle of a task you never intended to start. You set out to do one thing then end up doing something else. Maybe multiple other things highjack your attention and you lose track of your original plan.
When you enter “waiting mode”, you’re likely to be aware that this can happen and so you stay vigilant, you stand guard, you watch the clock, and you don’t dare start a task for fear of losing track of time. You simply wait in frustration and obsess about the upcoming event.
Time Warping and the Time Perception
In the ADHD universe, time can warp and stretch. What feels like a mere few minutes can turn into hours of procrastination. This creates anxiety when you have to be somewhere as you know as well as anyone else that you’re likely to be late or forget about it all together.
Turn off “Waiting Mode”
To turn off “Waiting Mode,” We need to feel safe to “forget” about the event knowing we will be reminded with plenty of time to prepare and leave for the event. It’s like closing a tab on your browser, you might be afraid to close something important and give it your attention later because you’ll forget about it, then end up with far too many tabs open and tasks that receive divided attention.
So turn waiting mode by doing the following;
1. Brain Dump
Get a pad or your bullet journal and go nuts. Write down everything you need to do before the event ( shower, gather notes etc ) and figure out how long it will take you to get to your destination if applicable.
2. Set Reminder
Set a reminder, alarm or whatever for the time you worked out in the previous step ( maybe set it 10 minuets earlier than that to give your self a margin or error. )
3. Prep
Get the prep done and free up your mental RAM referring to the brain dump.
4. Relax
Now just get on with whatever you want until the reminder or alarm goes off. The prep is done and you don’t have to clock watch as you know you’ll be reminded. You’re time from now until the alarm goes off is yours.