How I Manage My ADHD Without Medication

hi I'm Dan Martell technology entrepreneur investor and creator of SAS Academy in this video I'm gonna go totally off script and talk about how I manage my ADHD without medication and be sure to stay at the end where I'm going to share with you guys a list of resources that I use to kind of enhance the strategies are going to be talking about in this video so if you deal with ADHD or have somebody in your life that struggles with it you probably feel frustrated that every day is a crapshoot you don't know if you're gonna be productive you don't know if you can get any level of focus every time you start to read you know 30 seconds later you're off to some other thing you're probably already clicked off this video or thinking about what you're gonna have for lunch or maybe you're feeling tired you don't have the energy or it's just something feels off and when you take your medication maybe and look I'm not a doctor I'm not gonna tell you what - I'm just gonna tell you what I've done but my essentially my experience has been that if you do things right you can get super clear you can summon a super focused state at will you can ensure that every day is your best day and you could really manage the way you show up with your unique ability in your zone of genius and just who you are which i think is absolutely the superpower I've got a video I'll link up below it's one of my most popular videos why I'm doing this one on why I think ADHD is my superpower but without sharing with you the strategies that I've learned over the years implemented into my life in my day then it's hard for people to understand how that could look so I'm just gonna walk you through what a day in my life looks like if you feel inspired to adopt any of those things feel free to do that but this is really just my take I don't play a doctor on the Internet be sure to consult with your physician figure out what's appropriate for you and just test things I think that was the biggest thing that I've learned over the years is just trying tweaking etc now what happened was is at eight years old I got diagnosed with ADHD and for many years I felt broken it actually sent me into kind of a spiral of depression and you know making some really bad decisions in my life and you know there's a whole story on kind of how that impacted me and where I ended up at really rock bottom and how I've turned my life around since then to now where I've you know I've started five companies I've hired over 500 people in my career I became millionaire when I was 27 and investor in 30 other companies and look I don't I'm not sharing that stuff to to brag I'm just sharing it because I want to give you context for what's possible when you own who you are and you figure out is there a better way to tweak things to essentially turn it around as a power instead of a deficit one is nutrition what you put in your mouth definitely affects your brain your mind your focus and the first thing is sugar I think that is probably the worst thing that we as a society have introduced into our lives most of you don't even realize how much sugar grams of sugar you're consuming on a daily basis and all I ask is that you look on the back of the packages and most of you are probably consuming your sugar through liquids through the beverages that you drink on a daily basis so taking those things out going back to water first thing I do when I wake up every morning is half a liter to a liter of water first thing my feet hit the ground I grab my water ball it's ready to go I drink it that just hydrates my body as soon as you wake up you're dehydrated hydrate your body have that bottle next to you drink throughout the day just water and that'll help quench that thirst for any kind of high sugar supplements now the other thing is is I'm a big fan of low carb high healthy fats so for the most part my breakfast that's probably if you want to dial in anything dial in your breakfast I go avocado egg whites maybe one egg lots of vegetables and it's really simple and clean it takes me like seven minutes to cook up and that just sets the whole day from there it's always just proteins and salads and again I'm not saying I'm not judging what you eat I'm just saying if you want to see if you could help you know counteract some of the downsides of your ADHD just try tweaking your nutrition is probably the biggest area if you drink coffee with lots of sugar and cream start trying to drink it black I mean it'll it'll change every thing I mean just on an energy level is gonna change anything so so nutrition is the first place number two is sweat everyday I know for a fact that if I don't work out I don't have the same impact in my work my creativity is not there my ability to focus my ability to communicate is is is depleted and so my rule is just sweat everyday when you wake up get a workout in do something it can be as simple as doing 30 push-ups you know I have a workout when I travel and I'm in a hotel room it's essentially four rounds of 20 reps each of jumping jacks air squats push-ups and sit-ups it takes about you know depending how fasten moving but 10 to 12 minutes and that's all you need to actually get a good workout in every day in the same spot you're standing you don't need any equipment no nothing and it's gonna get your sweat on and that just sets it for me my mind like I love to run I love to do CrossFit but I don't do those things for my body per se I do them for my mind and I'm telling you if you're not working out if you're not moving your body then a hundred percent it's gonna affect your ability to focus so that's that's a big area number three is sleep so many entrepreneurs so many individuals like yourself that have ADHD have a really hard time going to bed having a deep sleep and the reason why is your mind is racing so you know at the end of the day there's a few things I do one I sleep with a sleep mask to make sure that the room is a hundred percent dark I use an app on my phone for white noise so I don't get interrupted throughout the night you can use an app like sleep stream which is incredible again I'm gonna link those up below and or any app that really creates a white noise there's a bunch of free ones out there and just make sure that you turn off all electronics before you go to bed I'm a big fan of reading and this is the funny part maybe you can't read because you get distracted really quick well what happens with me is I've taught myself that if I start to read in bed I go to sleep so it's funny now that when I'm reading a book I literally will fall asleep just because that's what's been programmed in my mind so be sure to get yourself a little reading light and a book and every night fall asleep with the book on your chest and it's a great way to go to bed your mind will go to sleep where the sleep mask white music on or white noise on and you will sleep so ideally at least seven hours I try to aim for 8:00 for morning routines I'm a big fan of tools to really just take all the best practices that I learned have it stack them into my day so I don't have to think about it so I have a morning ritual if you don't have one I highly recommend the book miracle morning by Hal Elrod and it will walk you through his framework called savers mine is a variation of that I've been doing mine for before his book was written but it's an incredible book and it'll just walk you through it but the big thing for me especially with ADHD is meditation your mind is so powerful and if you're not meditating for at least five minutes just eat in your life well I can't meditate every time I sit down I my mind races yes I agree but if you can learn to take control of that if you can just sit there in silence and just be in awe of how your mind kind of goes all over the place and just bring it back a great app like headspace to just help you understand how meditation works whatever it is for you if you're not meditating and you and you want to get off medication and self-medicate your ADHD a little bit I just don't know how you're gonna do it because it's just part of exercising the muscle which is your mind and ability to focus and just and and just be aware of what's going on and really just the I'm just in awe of how our minds work and how we can have kind of two different views of what's going on in reality so morning rituals to me it's it's everything from what I eat my exercise my gratitude journaling meditation the movement part that's just locked in but that if I don't start off my day with that then my whole day is just woo up for a roll the dice and we'll see what happens five thirty minute Pomodoro work blocks so my mind works best when I know exactly what I'm working on and I focus it in on a 30-minute window essentially I do twenty five minutes of work five minutes of rest and that rest is usually breathing techniques stretching standing up moving around whatever it is but for twenty five minutes I have a timer set I know exactly what I'm working on and I go deep and and there's just something about the gamification of having that twenty five minute timer and I'll link up a tool I use below called be focus but it just allows me to just not easily get distracted and go get browser blindness where I jump on Facebook or you I mean for many of us it is it is second nature I'm a hockey guy all of a sudden my fingers without even thinking about it open up the browser and start typing Facebook and I'm like what the am I doing here so if you're having those issues consider setting a timer Pomodoro is an incredible technique super simple to allow you to focus on your work six energy management I truly believe that like there is a circadian rhythm to life and to seasons etc our day follows a certain energy pattern in flow and for me what I've learned it could be different for you some people they swap it for night versus morning in the morning is when I do my best work output meaning any creative work anything I want to I want to create or things that I know I'm gonna have a hard time doing like reviewing financial statements or whatever it is in the business reviewing contracts I need to do that first thing in the morning when my mind is most aligned with what I need it to do and then what I do is I then load my whole afternoons talking to people from an energy point of view so I just think that if you don't know what your energy flow is for the day really consider studying it understanding how you feel and mapping to that so that you can put the right types of tasks and work in those windows like I don't do meetings before lunch the reason why it's because I don't want to use that time that I know I can be focused and create something when I can just push my meetings to the afternoon now maybe you're not in a position to be able to do that but there's probably other elements from an energy flow in your day that you can restructure and what I called a party you can change the time of day that you focus on those tasks and those those pieces so that you can get the most out of your focus 7 music now if you made it this far you probably don't have ADHD I'm kidding it just needs the content on point but for real I used to play background music while I worked I do my best work in coffee shops and busy airports I use VEVO on my Apple TV so that I can play that in the background just like a music video it's like the modern-day MTV but now what I do is I actually have an app called focus at will and you know there's science behind it but it's different channels you essentially complete a questionnaire and it'll tell you what kind of new based on who you are again it could be hocus-pocus all I know is those toons I use the up-tempo channel on focus that will for me just totally gets me in the zone so if I map that with my 30-minute Pomodoro's and I have my music play in the background I can be anywhere at any time and just boom crank out some work so if you don't incorporate some level of auditory distortion in your workday videos you just don't want to have stuff that you're watching and definitely don't put on you know don't go binge watch house of cards on Netflix put stuff that you don't have to listen to but it's there and it's kind of a beat and a rhythm and it'll help you I know it helps me really stay focused when I'm to get something done immediately and I can't waste any time getting into that zone eight block time one of the most important habits that I have is that I know exactly what I'm doing on a 15 minute interval throughout my whole day some of you might think that's crazy over scheduled and structured that's cool you can think that I could show you my results they speak for themselves the reason why I'm able to put out so much content and deliver so much value to my coaching clients to be able to build businesses invest in other companies be value out of be present for my family take incredible amount of vacation every year is because it's all structured when I I don't need to know what I'm doing this afternoon I just know that it's packed because I review my day the night before and I read my week on Sundays so block time is the habit of actually scheduling going in your calendar dragging dropping and putting in the description of that calendar entry exactly what you're gonna do to move the needle forward so that way I don't sit there and I call it bleed time between different events or you know you have a meeting with somebody and they keep talking and you have nothing scheduled in your calendar so you keep talking all of a sudden a thirty minute meeting went to a sixty minute meeting all those things add up so I'm a big fan for focus point of view to really help me mitigate the ADHD is to block time with these specific tasks I want in the description and then use my Pomodoro timer to make sure that I execute in those thirty minute windows nine build a team a support network people around you now many of you guys are saying dan I do not have the financial means to do that and I can understand that but I will tell you this ever since I was in junior high school and there was class projects where there was you know activities or we were playing a sport or playing in the backyard with my friends building a tree house etc I got really good at growling and recruiting people to help support me in what I was creating okay and to me that's no different than your life there are certain things that you would love to do for eight hours a day that other people and you probably don't think this is true I guarantee it I know for a fact my bookkeeper sandy is amazing she loves to do bookkeeping and spreadsheets and numbers and if I took that away from her and I said hey you're gonna start to write blog posts she would freak out because she doesn't like to do that if I said hey we're gonna stick a camera in front of you and we're gonna record some videos she'd be like oh my god no way I quit so I know for a fact there are people in your life that would support you in a certain area you could swap out certain tasks you could ask for favors you can look for leverage you just need to have enough self-worth in the value bring the other people to be able to ask for it that's the biggest challenge I'm gonna get into that whole you know a bag of whatever but you need to bring people into your life to support you into things you struggle at because I know for a fact there are people out there that love to do that work the things you hate to do other people love to do and if you can bring that in and tweak your day and tweak your projects so that you can have that and it takes time years maybe but you build towards that one day you will wake up and realize that ADHD is a hundred percent your superpower it's the reason why you're so energetic and creative and you know able to produce outcomes that other people aren't an uninspired by instead of making it a crutch or a deficit or a weakness and that to me is my hope for especially for all the kids watching this if you're watching with your parents just know that again I felt broken at eight and there were people that showed up in my life and showed me that there was possibilities and they believed in me in a way that I didn't believe in myself at the time and through that journey of entrepreneurship is the awesome ultimate personal development program and for me programming became a new addiction where I could really get focused on kind of going deep on something that wasn't illegal or got me in trouble and since then I just decided I don't want to take medication to deal with my ADHD and that was a decision I made probably eight years ago and it was a transition and I added all the things I'm talking about in many other stuff I'm probably forgetting to just say no I'm gonna own this I'm gonna tweak it I'm gonna work my way through it and I can tell you it's been almost ten years since I made that decision is probably the best one I show up as me as Dan not as somebody else and it feels absolutely freakin amazing and I hope this for you so quick recap one is nutrition two is sweat everyday three isn't sure I get incredible sleep four is focus on my morning routine five is the Pomodoro Technique the 30-minute focus of work productivity six is energy management seven is music eight is block time and then finally nine is build a team of supporters if you've gone through the transition yourself or if you feel like you're going through it now and you need some support just leave a comment below there's incredible people are part of the community that can relate also be sure to check out the other video on ADHD is my superpower you will just say you know when you go watch it it's the hundred percent contrast okay that was Dan Martell three years ago and this is Dan today and maybe it was a little bit chubbier maybe I didn't understand how video worked and all this stuff I've done a video every week for the last three years so go check it out maybe it'll inspire you to start a new creative endeavor because it's been probably the biggest blessing in my life is having a community of folks like yourself watching these videos so that I can serve in a bigger way so hope this video finds you incredibly well if you liked it be sure to click the like button leave a comment below subscribe to my channel super appreciate you guys watching I'll see you in the next video I mean we're either when Dan asked me about the shirts I wear a lot of people ask me like we're gonna get your shirts your shirt games on point I'm like well I don't know

Channel: Dan Martell

Views: 391,465

Keywords: How I Manage My ADHD Without Medication, Can't Focus, Diagnosed With ADHD, Drink Water, Morning Routines, Pomodoro Technique, Energy Management, Build a Team, Productivity, Entrepreneurship, Dan Martell, adhd without medication, adhd help, how to deal with adhd, how to deal with adhd without meds, adhd treatment, adhd medication, adhd management, adhd treatment without drugs, dealing with adhd, adult adhd, living with adhd, adhd in adulthood, how to cope with adhd

Id: 4rEwOMf_khY

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 09 2018