Image created by the author — his face in a closeup with mathematical formulas superimposed over the picture.

The Axioms of ADHD

The lessons learned in three years of studying my own ADHD.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an axiom is “a statement or proposition which is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true, and from which other statements can be derived.

For the last few months I’ve been writing down things that help me function with ADHD. These were short phrases, kind of like mantras: hurrying is kryptonite. Nothing is on the way to anything else. Choice is friction.

I started calling this my “Rules of ADHD”, and planned to write them up — but when I got to number sixteen, I realized that would make for a pretty complicated article. Also, who’s going to remember sixteen different rules, especially when there were likely to be more?

I’m lucky enough to be friends with Amber Beckett from The Hello Code and she suggested I look for over-arching themes, groupings that might simplify these rules into basic concepts from which the rules could be extrapolated to fit different ADHD experiences.

With a bit of searching, I discovered there’s a word for that: axiom. After the obligatory “If you don’t know, why don’t you axiom?” joke, the following six Axioms of ADHD emerged:

1. The Axiom of Stuff: Find out where things want to live, then help them return there.

That’s really all there is to keeping track of everything. Your items don’t get lost on purpose, nor does the universe try to hide them from you. They are trying to get back where they belong. A simple way to think of this is: when you are missing something, where do you usually find it? That’s probably close to where it should live — so make a home for it and make it welcome.

This first axiom is the simplest. If you can keep it top-of-mind, it makes all the others easier.

2. The Axiom of Transitions: Liminal spaces are dangerous.

This one started as “Hurrying is kryptonite.” For those who would like a more mathematical framework:

The speed at which you transition from one place to another is directly proportional to the likelihood that you will…