JANUARY
By Tara Carman-French
Welcome to my year-long series of actionable articles. Each month, we will break down a component of ADHD or a learning disability and give you some actions to take to work with or work around the issue at hand.
I would love to hear how things worked or didn’t work for you. Drop us a comment on our social media or connect with us directly at [email protected].
Try This Month: Notice How Your Attention Really Works
Many of us grow up believing attention is something you either “have” or “don’t.” With ADHD and learning disabilities, attention is often misunderstood as broken or unreliable. In practice, it is highly variable—deep and focused in some moments, scattered or elusive in others.
This month, we’re not trying to fix attention. We’re just noticing it.
Pay attention to when focus shows up naturally. Is it during movement? Conversation? Creativity? Urgency? Interest? And when does it fade—long instructions, waiting, boring repetition, noisy environments?
When are you able to pay attention or work a problem for long periods of time, and when are you unable to focus for even a second?
No judgement here! We are just noticing how our attention works. This is the first step in deeply understanding how we work, and where we need to put in some work.
Try this month:
Take some time to simply observe. You might jot a few notes or just mentally track:
- When was focus easier?
- When was it harder?
- What was happening around you at the time?
Don’t strategize, just take note.
This kind of noticing matters because it replaces judgment with curiosity. Instead of asking, “Why can’t I focus like everyone else?” we start asking, “What does my brain respond to?”
That shift is powerful. It opens the door to self-understanding—rather than shame.
Next month, we’ll build on this awareness by adjusting the environment, not ourselves. For now, give yourself permission to notice without fixing. That is the meaningful step.
