<em>Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard</em> by Chip and Dan Heath It's a very helpful book. This is what I personally got from it:

1. Direct the rider. This is your rational and conscious brain. Identify what's working or has worked before. Schedule and plan your most important tasks. Keep your eye on how good graduation day will feel.

2. Motivate the elephant. This is your emotional self and subconscious desires. Use any energy or good moods to meet your goal. Break goals down into smaller tasks. Find like-minded people that encourage you.

3. Shape the path. Set up your environment for success (I study at campus all day instead of going home between classes). Build good habits (one at a time). Depend on others when necessary (I sometimes slack on my chores).

The book doesn't mentioning limiting screen time. In today's culture, it's really hard not to assume that electronics are related to a motivational issue. Check out how they cause emotional disregulation through changes in dopamine use.

It helps to talk 'manager' langugage - perhaps read Switch or a similar business change focused work to help get into the mindset. The 'do it well in one spot and expand on that' method is basically the 'bright spots' concept in that book.

I don't have the original source, but this book quotes a study that shows people are less likely to stick to a diet that they start on Monday. Likely because you are emotionally motivated to start on another day of the week. Like exactly what you re talking about - you feel disgusting and lethargic and are emotionally committed to losing the weight. Rather than trying to rationalize yourself into losing weight, which always loses out to those emotion-driven cravings.

You're absolutely right, Thursday is a great day to take control of your diet!

The longer you handle / read a product the more likely it is to go home with you

source: Heath, “Switch”

https://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When-Hard/dp/0385528752

Two things

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Your brain has a reward and motivation circuit implicated in ADHD. Now this reward and motivation circuit is controlled by multiple neurotransmitters the biggest two are dopamine and serotonin but there are more neurotransmitters implicated than just those two. Dozen more but the big two are Dopamine and Serotonin.

I will not bore you with the neuroanatomy but the motivation circuit consists of both the thinking and evaluating parts of your brain in the frontal lobe but also the emotional brain areas in the amygdala. The amygdala is your brains gateway to the past, it is the brain area that uses the past to evaluate the present and near future. If you are stressed or in a hostile environment your motivation will always be poor for this brain area will scream Caution and Conserve Energy, and get ready to be on red alert with fear and panic. In other words the eye before the storm.

Watch this video by Dr. Thomas Brown of Yale about ADHD. Call this video 1

He is one of the leading experts of ADHD. I want you to skip to minute 41 where you see the lighter blue slides and he talks about motivation. After that I want you not to start the video from the beginning but to watch this video if you find him interesting video 2 the first video is a little more advanced but it has a good section at about 41 with motivation. The second link is more for beginners with ADHD knowledge like recently diagnosed people. If you want to watch the entire of video 1 go ahead but do so after video 2. Video 2 is not necessary to watch but I feel it can help you and be life changing if you can internalize the content.

In other words you may need a second med to help the other end of the seesaw. It may be a serotonin med like an ssri but understand there are other serotonin meds that modulate serotonin in very different ways than ssris. Or it may be another med with other neurotransmitters. For example norepinephrine helps focus but too much norepinephrine at a certain moment combined with the amygdala processing environmental cues causes the brain to see the situation as higher than normal in fear. Now serotonin also modulates this whether you are anxious with medium fear or extreme fear. Intuniv is an ADHD med that modulates norepinephrine, it increases norepinephrine in the thinking part of the brain, but if you have too much norepinephrine in other places it actually lowers the norepinephrine in other places preventing you from doing the levels too high, aka balancing the system. Intuniv is a nonstimulant that is designed to work with stimulants such as your adderall, they work differently and they compliment the other and augment the pros and counters some of adderall's side effects.

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2)

Even if your neurotransmitters are just fine you may need help from an outside force.

• A) First I can tell you right now that your tactics to try to motivate yourself are doing everything wrong. Those tactics may work in the short term to fight through the fear but they only work a couple of times. Those tactics will not motivate you. This book will help you understand why those tactics will not work, and how to build good habits to help you motivate yourself.

  • Switch how to change when change is hard aka how to motivate yourself when life is difficult, unpredictible, and scary.

• B) Second it sounds like you need an ADHD coach for you are 2/3rds of the way there but are stumbling on the details for you do not know which details you need to know before to act and which you can do on the fly.

  • Remember I talked about the amygdala in section 1. Your brain uses your past and your habits and your past outcomes to guess the future. Thus until you start creating good experiences vs a lifetime of 20+ years of ADHD your brain is going to imagine the worse case scenario. Think of the coach as a person helping you to ride the bike for the first time, you have a parent or big brother/sister first be with you with training wheels, then they let you do it by yourself with training wheels, then they remove the training wheels but help guide you being there to catch you from falling, and then you do it by yourself. Psychiatry is not just medicine but also non medicine techniques to provide multimodal treatment. I want you to think holistically not as taking more vitamins and supplements but to realize you need multiple positive inputs and that medicine is only 1 aspect of helping yourself.
  • But also remember that video from Dr. Brown about the amygdala. Your motivation is context specific. Having an ADHD coach may be necessary at first to get you on the right track, but even after you got most of it down it may be a good idea to have one and do short but quick meetings via e-mail, phone, etc. The coach is like that little person on your shoulder who lets you think of the things you would not normally think of, in other words feel the future. He also works like a man on ancient wooden navy ship in the crows nest with a telescope. His job is to look ahead and help you see what is coming and relay the most important things to the captain at the wheel. He is not steering the ship you are, but he helps you simplify the chaos and be aware of what you need to hear.
  • An ADHD coach also motivates you by talking in language that motivates you with sensory detail. He talks about the feelings of the why and not the logical thinking of the why. His job is not to be the nag saying you need to do this, but to remind you why you are doing this. You are doing something hard to get money, well money does not motivate your brain, sensory things that money buys motivates you, such as thinking of a day at a spa, or a good meal, or a fun trip, or whatever you need sensory imaging wise to help you buck up and know you can make it. He helps you sensory wise tone down the fear but also focus on the reward. When he does this he is actually changing your brain. Your brain has neurotransmitters in storage but it does not know which neurotransmitters to release at this very moment, it can be door 1 or door 2. An ADHD coach helps you feel what you need to feel by focusing on sensory information that causes your brain to release the right neurotransmitters from the right door to motivate yourself. To help you be the best person you can be.

This video is for you - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKSsDUWfW2Y

Also, this book is for you too - https://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When-Hard/dp/0385528752/

It seems small, but the effort of getting out of bed can be enough to affect a habit like looking at your phone. (There's actually a great book about this! Check out this summary if you're interested.) But yeah, an alarm clock would be better.

I'm reading a book called Switch, it talks about making sure to appeal to both logical and emotional reasoning.

Not sure but maybe Dan Heath &amp; Chip Heath - Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard

It's not my idea.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385528752

Some great practical stuff to look into is "Teach like a Champion" by Doug Lemov. It's a bit controversial, and some stuff I don't love a ton, but there's some really effective tools in there for your practice especially in terms of classroom management.

Another book I loved that I read right before I started teaching was "Switch" https://www.amazon.com/Switch-Change-Things-When-Hard/dp/0385528752 It might be useful for your leadership idea. It's not solely about education, but it has some great ideas about motivating and leading people.

Another book that influenced me a lot was "Making Learning Whole" by David Perkins https://www.amazon.com/Making-Learning-Whole-Principles-Transform/dp/0470633719/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1515192288&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=making+learning+whole

Another one that's not specific to education but is great for leadership is "Extreme Ownership" by Jocko Willink https://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy-SEALs/dp/1250183863/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1515192320&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=extreme+ownership He also has an awesome podcast about leadership and self-discipline.

Lastly, I've also recently started a podcast that might help. I've had a student teacher this year and it inspired me to record the things I am teaching him. Feel free to check it out if you think it will be useful. The first episode is on classroom management, which I firmly believe is the first place to start on development and supporting your practice.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-not-suck-at-teaching/id1329567251?mt=2

If you don't use itunes:

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/how-to-not-suck-at-teaching?refid=stpr http://howtonotsuckatteaching.libsyn.com/

Good luck, and feel free to reach out for any other advice!

EDIT to MODS: I read the self-promotion on the sidebar, but I was unsure if it counts in comments like this. If so, I will definitely remove that portion of this reply. I was just not sure, and I apologize ahead of time if I violated that rule.

Watch the Dr. Barkley Video I gave. If you have not also watch the 30 Essential Ideas for parents of ADHD kids which applies to you as well even if you are not a kid. Link one of the videos we have in the FAQ is pretty much a shorter video of the one I gave you which deals with motivation and emotion and how we come to doing actual action and executive function. A video to help understand ADHD you can watch the short video first or the long video, the short video is to introduce ADHD to undiagnosed people or ADHD skeptics. The longer videos are better at explaining why you have these problems and you need to know why, to know how to fix the why.

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There are also a lot of good books on this type of stuff from self help authors and such. I love reading but can't stand these books not because they are bad, but because they are too wordy and flowery for me. They are fine if I listen to them.

That said I highly respect these two authors, and this book was a big bestseller in the last 5 years.

>Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard Hardcover Amazon

>Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives?

>The primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.

Now these people for the Switch book I just recommended are not going specifically in ADHD for all people have these problems it is just worse with ADHD. One brother is a psychologist who teaches business / psychology stuff on how humans organize companies and communities, the other is a MBA who was one of a founders of a college textbook / college interactive instructional video company.

Infographic version of the book big metaphor

If you want to sign up for a 30day free trial of audible (amazon's audio books) right now you can pick 2 books such as that book Switch and then something on ADHD such as

Smart By Stuck: Emotions in Teens and Adults with ADHD done by Yale Professor and ADHD Expert Dr. Thomas E Brown

or

Delivered From Distraction: Get the Most Out of Life with Attention Deficit Disorder which is the best selling ADHD help book of all time, and is written by two ADHD Experts Dr. Edward M. Hallowell and Dr. John J. Ratey.

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This is the way to immediately cancel your membership after you sign up so you do not get a re-occuring bill where you get 2 more books per month but you pay money

They are completely fine with you canceling immediately after downloading and you still get to keep the books, the whole idea is to get you hooked.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard