Getting through another Canadian COVID Summer

If you live with Tourette Syndrome, more than likely you are also experiencing symptoms of ADHD (or other comorbid conditions). The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic may be making your ADHD-like symptoms worse if your job requires you to work from home.

In 2020, the year the world experienced the beginning of a new reality after COVID-19 became a global pandemic, many businesses began transitioning to a work-from-home reality.

It's affected everyone in different ways, but if you have always had trouble adapting to change, then it can prove to be a massive toll on you.

It’s already May 2021, and as an adult living with Tourette Syndrome Plus (TS+), which includes ADHD, it's been tough - to say the least. There is still a lot of challenges in any kind of normal when you're living with ADHD as an adult but working from home presents many more. But here are some tips that have helped me cope.

1. Have a designated workstation – Working from a kitchen table or your bedroom?? The new realities brought on by the pandemic have forced most of us to work from home. But when you live with ADHD, that can be a tall order.

Your ideal workspace should be an enclosed space, with a desk, you might even have a window for sunlight. But the key thing here is it is not overly cluttered. If your workspace is too cluttered, you may be distracted by cleaning everything up.

2. Stick to a schedule - Don’t go past it. – It may be hard to call your job a typical 9-5 gig in this new reality. When you leave the “office” for the day, your reward is the 5-6 steps it takes to get to your living room or kitchen.

Since the start of the pandemic, the work-life balance lines have been blurring. Your daily commute used to serve as a transition from life to work. But COVID, at least for most of us, has rendered the daily commute obsolete. So, when does your workday start and end?

To this day, in summer of 2021, I still get up late for work and work later than expected of me. Back in 2020, when this all started, I would work in sweatpants also. But one thing I would never do, and today I thank myself for this, was work in my pyjamas all day long.

A couple of tips here:

1. Pretend to dress up for the workday as you normally would pre-COVID. – it reinforces the “I’m going to work” mentality.

2. Don’t work late – Stop at a designated time. Use reminders, timers, alarms, whatever works for you, to give yourself a mental reminder for the start and end of the day.

3. Take breaks but use them wisely. – When you get up in the middle of a task to get that mid-morning coffee, does your mind wander over to the laundry machine as well?? RESIST IT. The laundry can wait. Get your coffee, grab a snack, and go back to your duties.

This may be hard at first, but it takes mental discipline to develop this habit. As counterintuitive as it may seem, breaks can be a distraction if not used wisely. They’re important, yes. But they can get you out of the “work-mode” loop.

4. Try to avoid distractions as best you can. – This one goes back to my first point about a dedicated office space. If you’re working at the kitchen table, chances are you’re going to get distracted. You may get distracted by your partner cooking or getting the kids ready for school, or just from them doing everyday regular household duties. It may be best to set an alarm for when it’s time to go back to work, or if you can somehow predict said distractions, to set alarms around those times.

5. Self-care - Self-care is HUGE. COVID or no COVID, regular exercise, eating healthy etc. is all an important part of anyone’s workday. But self-care goes beyond the stereotypes you hear about in Facebook ads. Meditation is key, yes, but so is something as simple as taking a hot shower on a Wednesday night, or reading a book and having a tea. Adult colouring is my go-to now. Also, give yourself permission to relax, pick up a hobby such as gaming or picking up an instrument - Netflix, whatever that looks like.

These are four big areas I’ve learned where my ADHD is affected in the last year, and I hope these tips help. But there is already so much writing on this out there and other tips worth exploring from people much more qualified than me.