“The world of ADHD has been waiting for this book with bated breath for many years. If there’s a fairy godmother of our lot, it’s Jessica McCabe.”—Edward Hallowell, MD, coauthor of Driven to Distraction and ADHD 2.0
Forget “try harder.” When your brain works differently, you need to try different.
Diagnosed with ADHD at age twelve, Jessica struggled with a brain that she didn’t understand. She lost things constantly, couldn’t finish projects, and felt like she was putting more effort in than everyone around her while falling further and further behind. At thirty-two years old—broke, divorced, and living with her mom—Jessica decided to look more deeply into her ADHD challenges. She reached out to experts, devoured articles, and shared her discoveries on YouTube.
In How to ADHD, Jessica reveals the tools that have changed her life while offering an unflinching look at the realities of living with ADHD. The key to navigating a world not built for the neurodivergent brain, she discovered, isn’t to fix or fight against its natural tendencies but to understand and work with them. She explains how ADHD affects everyday life, covering executive function impairments, rejection sensitivity, difficulties with attention regulation, and more. You’ll also find ADHD-specific strategies for adapting your environment, routines, and systems, including:
• Boost the signal and decrease the noise. Facilitate focus by putting your goals where you can see them and fighting distractions with distractions.
• Have less stuff to manage. Learn why you have trouble planning and prioritizing, and why doing more starts with doing less.
• Build your “time wisdom.” Work backward when you plan, and track how long it actually takes you to do something.
• Learn about your emotions. Understand how naming your emotions and letting yourself experience them can make them easier to regulate.
With quotes from Jessica’s online community, chapter summaries, and reading shortcuts designed for the neurodivergent reader, How to ADHD will help you recognize your strengths and challenges, tackle “bad brain days,” and be kinder to yourself in the process.
That said... This book is LONG and there is a LOT of information. Don't give up hope though - the information is broken down into bite-sized chunks and is totally consumable, even with ADHD brain!
So many people in my life have ADHD, and this book (and YouTube channel) help me understand their condition, challenges and most importantly their benefits! While reading this book, I realized how much of my childhood and adult life were improved by my friends with ADHD.
I cannot recommend this book enough. You know someone with ADHD, this will improve your life significantly.
What I found from reading the book is that this is an extremely readable/relatable book.
There were a lot of moments while reading this book where I realized that things that made me different are not rare. There are people that have the same "issues" and there is a reason why.
In my age group children were labeled "hyper" etc.. and parents told that you would grow out of it.
That has not proven true, but the passing of time has also brought more understanding and knowledge of ADHD.
The main message that runs throughout this book is that different is not "wrong". There are a lot of people that are neurodivergent and that can be a positive thing in more than one respect
Some of the information that impacted me in a most helpful way are:
+ An excellent definition of executive function and how development is delayed in people with ADHD.
+ Response inhibition. What it is.
+ Chapter 5 " How To Sleep. "
+ Chapter 8 " How To Remember Stuff. "
This book was edited well and could be beneficial for readers with ADHD, people that suspect that they live with it, and it makes the struggles easier to understand for people that don't have ADHD. It should be at the top of a short list for the subject of ADHD.
I've found her book to be an incredible manual to "how to ADHD". Jessica gives tools, shares her own experiences, background information on ADHD, and even includes peoples' own experiences with it. She write in a very clear way that is easy to read and understand; I found my mind didn't wander too much and when it did I could get right back into it. And I've found aspects of ADHD that I didn't think I was experiencing but was; like the emotional stuff. And so, I've also been able to learn even more and get to know my silly brain even better. My goal is to learn how to work with my ADHD, rather than against it. This book has been extremely helpful in that regard.
I really can't recommend it enough to both people with ADHD and for those who might know someone with it. Read it now. :)