Have you ever found yourself sitting in your car in the parking lot before actually going into the grocery store? You’re not even doing anything — you’re just sitting there, seemingly trying to get the energy to go inside. Eventually you go in, and when you emerge, it’s the same pattern in reverse.
Welcome to Transition Time, the black hole for people with ADHD.
Several studies have found that, compared to neurotypical people, people with ADHD are slower to complete a series of tasks when they involve switching from one type of activity to another.
When you reach the end of your day and wonder where your time went, it’s a good bet that your “lost” time was lost in transitions.
I’ve noticed the same pattern occurs in CrossFit metcon (metabolic conditioning) workouts, which often involve several different movements performed for time.
Navigating transitions effectively — whether in a workout, in your day, or in life, is a crucial skills.
Here are 3 strategies I’ve learned from analyzing workouts that you can also apply to your day to reclaim some of the time lost to transitions.
3 Strategies For More Effective Task Switching
(1) An effective set-up.
In a workout, having an effective set-up is crucial. In the CrossFit Open, the global competition where all CrossFitters do the same workout, the workouts have a standard that prescribes the minimum distance between different pieces of equipment. If you watch the elite athletes who have the best times, you’ll see that their equipment meets that standard, but no more.
Setting up your equipment as close together as possible — within the standards — will minimize the time you spend walking from a rowing machine to a barbell or from a barbell to a wall or pull-up bar.
Apply this to your day:
In your day, think about an effective set-up both in terms of your physical space and your tasks.
Choose the right space for the tasks, and organize your physical space to be conducive to the tasks you’re going to do.
Consider how you can batch together similar tasks to minimize transitions. For example, set a dedicated time to check email and social media instead of doing it in between other tasks or when you get bored.
(2) Don’t push to failure.
Sometimes the volume of a movement in a workout is simply too high to do it unbroken, in which case you need to break it up. It wouldn’t be smart to attempt to do 25 heavy deadlifts without breaking it up in to smaller sets.
That said, each time you put the barbell down or come off a pull-up bar to take a break is a transition. The key to fast transitions in a workout is to stay well under your failure and fatigue threshold. If you push a set to failure, you need a longer time to recover, increasing the transition time.
The goal is to drop the bar, take a quick breath, and pick it up again right away. Don’t walk away from the bar.
Apply this to your day:
The same applies to your day. One challenge for people with ADHD is hyperfocus mode: when our focus gets locked in and we forget about everything else. Hyperfocus mode can feel productive because we get a lot done. But when we come out of it, it takes longer to recover because we’ve gone past our point of exhaustion.
Set a timer to remind yourself to take short breaks at least every 45 minutes. They key to staying on track during these breaks is to treat them like you’d handle the barbell in a workout: take a quick stretch, a few breaths, and get right back into it. You’re not switching tasks; you’re just recharging energy.
(3) Establish a Rhythm
In a workout, it helps to give yourself a rhythm, such as a breath count that you’ll follow between rep and sets. For example, I’ve done workouts with a high volume of pull-ups, which I did one at a time. I’d do 5 quick singles with a breath between each one, then a longer break after 5, where I took a 5 breaths.
Without a rhythm, I’d end up wasting time between each rep. Maintaining this rhythm helped me stay on track.
Apply this to your day:
As you look at your agenda for the day, think about the rhythm that will help you maintain your energy and focus.
For example, perhaps your morning deep work time of 2 hours is split into 4 30-minute chunks to work on the same project, with a quick stretch break between each 30-minute block. At the end of those 4 blocks, you take a longer walk around the block and eat a snack before moving onto the next block.
Grouping like tasks together can also help you establish a rhythm.
Want to develop more effective strategies for navigating ADHD?
If you feel like you’re losing time to the black holes of transitions, try these strategies and see how they work for you. And if you are feeling stuck and want to develop more strategies, reach out.
I have over 2 decades of experience helping people create strategies to reclaim their time.
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...