Everyone: Omg listen to this amazing podcast!!
Me, a person who can’t pay attention to anything that doesn’t have visuals for more than 3 minutes without being bored/distracted:
Hi! ADHD kid here. I know this feeling well! And because I’ve thought about it a LOT, I have some suggestions
In order not to get bored, I have to have four conditions met
- Visual engagement (interesting to look at)
- Audio engagement (interesting to listen to)
- Mental/critical engagement (interesting to think about)
- Tactile engagement (interesting to fidget with)
Sometimes a medium will fulfill all of them!
Video games are great because they’ve got their own visuals and music, they’ve got little tasks for me, and you operate them with the buttons or joysticks or keys or what have you. That’s all four boxes checked!
Some activities are NOT great. They miss boxes, or only partially fill my meter for engagement in some categories.
Sitting in a classroom at school requires me to sit still, and unless the teacher/professor has a good powerpoint there’s not much to look at. And maybe the lecture is review so it’s not even that mentally challenging. At least, not much that won’t distract me. But then you can add little tasks in to fill the gaps — if I doodle in class while I’m taking notes, I have something for my hands to do and something I like to look at! And it’ll fill up the rest of my interest in the “thought” category.
I almost never listen to podcasts without doing something else.
Podcasts for me are like lectures; they fill up my audio meter, and most of my interest meter. But I’m still lacking visuals and touch. Personally, I find that drawing can actually take away from a story unless I’m really just doodling little flowers or something. But here are some things that have worked for me!
- Gardening - digging, prepping soil, weeding, picking out the rocks from the dirt, pruning, watering - all the gardening tasks require a lot of visual and tactile engagement, and a relatively small amount of focused attention.
- Knitting, crocheting, embroidering - VERY tactile and visual activities, and unless you’re following a difficult or unfamiliar pattern you can just kinda do it. You maybe won’t make a tapestry, but a simple striped scarf or beanie hat will be alright for this.
- Coloring books! I have this book of mandalas to color in, which is great for doodling while listening to a story
- Video games! As long as they don’t have dialogue or things to read. I couldn’t play Bloodborne, or hit a story milestone in Skyrim, but like, the dungeon crawl part of Skyrim, or a game like Journey where there’s not much text, is great! I listened to the TTAZZ episodes while clearing Dwemer ruins
- Taking a walk, if you’re somewhere you’d feel safe walking with headphones. If you don’t feel super safe walking alone, maybe get a couple friends with a similar issue together and have the hiking/podcasting equivalent of a silent disco
And a final note of things to avoid
- Text or reading, as mentioned above - I can’t scroll Tumblr while podcasting because the language processin part of ya brain can either read or listen not both. Can’t read a book, nor write, cant hold a conversation without missing things
- Watching tv, or generally trying to take in another story. I can only focus on one story at a time
- Chores, homework, paperwork. For me, cleaning my room mostly means sorting through a lot of old papers and drawings, and it distracts me and often, again, involves reading. I’m better off listening to music while I do these things
Now go forth and listen to some podcasts!!
another thing you can do is lots of podcasts have transcripts that you can follow along with! i struggle with processing things auditorily too so not only does this check the visual box (looking at words) but it also checks the fidgety box if you scroll along with it and make the words bounce
