In a culture that relentlessly pushes us to optimize our time, the time spent decompressing and processing between activities can feel like a “waste” of time — something worthy of sacrifice at the altar of “getting things done.”
To the contrary, however, this transition time is crucial for the brain to switch gears as we move from one task to another. For people with ADHD, transition time is also a vital strategy for maintaining self-regulation, avoiding burnout, and lowering emotional reactivity.
That time spent in your car before you go into the grocery store or head back into your house isn’t just idle time. In that time, you’re “clearing the cache” of your brain and priming it for the next activity.
Read: 3 Strategies for Incorporating Transition Time Into Your Day
When applied well, transition time prevents overload on the system.
That said, there’s a point at which we can fall into the trap of “transition time,” fooling ourselves into thinking we’re clearing the cache when in reality we are draining executive function even more.
3 Things to Avoid During Transition Time
Here are 3 things to avoid doing during transition time.
(1) Scrolling Your Feeds
Scrolling your news and social media feeds has become the common default way we engage in transition time.
It makes sense why we do this: social media feeds set up conditions for the the ultimate dopamine hit. You don’t know what you’ll find, and when you hit on something good, you get a rush that keeps you coming back for more.
And that dopamine hit can give us energy.
But that rush is exactly the problem with using your transition time to scroll. The dopamine hit rewards the current behavior. It’s like gambling: if you hit on something good, you’ll feed the urge to continue scrolling. If you don’t, you’ll feed the urge to continue until you do find something good.
Meanwhile, instead of clearing your cache, you’re filling your brain with more information that it needs to process. It’s the opposite of decompression and processing that you need.
If you want to clear your mind, checking email, social media, or news is the last thing that you should be doing.
(2) Excessive Journaling
It can be helpful to write up notes after meetings or other activities. I regularly journal notes after my workouts, meetings, significant conversations, writing sessions, and other working sessions. These notes can be helpful to evaluate process, see patterns, and clear any residue from the task.
That said, this practice can go south when your previous task was challenging or frustrating.
Although journaling can be helpful for processing our thoughts and emotions, writing about difficult situations or emotions in the moment can actually be counterproductive. It promotes rumination, which keeps us stuck in the negative spiral.
In addition, the perspective of time can help us more accurately reflect on what occurred.
To avoid getting stuck in the emotional vortex drain, save the emotional processing for a later time, and keep your post-event journaling to facts, ideas, and objective observations.
(3) Decisions, Planning, and Logistics
Without a plan for what you are going to do, when you’re going to do it, and where you’re going to do it, your transition time can easily get eaten up by decisions, planning, and logistics.
Even the most basic decisions, like whether you’re hungry and what to eat, can take their toll.
Decisions drain executive function bandwidth, which is exactly what you’re trying to replenish.
Even if you know what you need to do, without a plan for where you’ll do it, you risk getting stuck in transition purgatory. Before you know it, you’ve been sitting in your car for an hour trying to figure out where to go. By the time you decide, you have no energy left for the task.
So, how can you use your transition time more effectively? Stay tuned for the next part in the series.
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