My Coping Mechanisms

Recently I’ve become a big fan of the YouTube channel No Boilerplate run by Tris Oaten. This is likely because we have similar flavors of Spicy Brain (neurodivergence) and thus process information similarly. His video Hack Your Brain With Elaborate Coping Mechanisms has been a great help to me, and helped me understand why some of my existing coping mechanisms work as well as they do. This post will be a review of what tools I use for each of his suggested methods, as well as my own hard-learned lessons about how far I can trust my brain.

My Implementation of Tris’s Methods

I don’t have commentary on every one of the sections in the video, so some have been omitted or merged with other sections.

The recommended experience for this post is watching the video first, then reading the post as you go through the video again.

Declare bankruptcy on your memory / Use a note taking system

Your brain is for having ideas, not storing ideas.

I have ADHD. ADHD is one of many varieties of neurodivergence that makes your memory unreliable. There is no amount of trying harder that will make your memory reliable.¹ Instead, employ paper or digital methods that you like to remember things for you. It’s critical that they be methods that you like, otherwise you won’t actually use them. Put them in places that are convenient to access whenever you need them. Never avoid writing something down for fear of it being unorganized. You can organize later, write it down before you forget it.

Two popular note taking programs are Obsidian and Logseq. They share most of their core features.

• Ability to link between pages of notes (the most useful feature!)
• Configurable themes using CSS
• Notes written and stored in plain text using Markdown markup language
• Supports user-made plugins

There are a few places where they diverge. Logseq supports org mode, a less popular markup language, while Obsidian doesn’t. Obsidian is older and more mature, with well-developed community plugins. Logseq hasn’t been around as long, so it’s a little rough around the edges with some of the smaller features and plugins. Obsidian is closed source, while Logseq is open source.

Some of the most popular Obsidian plugins have been integrated into Logseq’s core toolset. This can be either a benefit or a detriment, depending on how complicated you want your workflow to be. Logseq tends to be more complicated and a little more free-form, while Obsidian focuses on having a cleanly implemented set of core features, and leaves the rest to community plugins. Logseq is my preferred app, but I’d say it’s a stylistic difference from Obsidian rather than a competitor.

Carry a notebook

For paper notebooks, dot grid notebooks are fantastic. They provide the ruled function of lined notebooks, while being more visually flexible for playing around with page arrangement. If you use pencils, ballpoint pens, or rollerball pens, any paper should be fine. I use a fountain pen for the interesting inks, so Rhodia is my paper brand of choice. Their paper is reasonably priced and doesn’t bleed or feather noticeably, and that’s all I need.

Cortex makes a nice notebook that costs too much. Their style of drawing itemized lists, where the bullet point is a large circle with a slash through it, is extremely helpful for visualizing task completion. Its key innovation is the ability to shade half the circle to mark partial completion. Typical checkbox lists have no way of representing partial completion, so a list where every task is half done is visually indistinguishable from a list where no tasks have been started. The ability to visualize partial progress is extremely important for maintaining morale, so I draw it into my own notebooks by hand.

Calendars are great

If it can be done before the due date, it’s a task.

For me, use of a calendar is the #1 corollary to “declare bankruptcy on your memory.” I struggle enough with remembering that events exist, even when I’m looking forward to them. Trying to remember whether I have an event on given day? Forget it. Anything I need to remember at a specific time goes on my calendar.

If you work the kind of job where people need to meet with you all the time, there are calendar apps that let you create a booking link. This is a page where people can schedule meetings with you, and the calendar will only let them schedule times you’re available. When people schedule the meeting, it will be automatically put on your calendar. While I currently have no need for this, though I use a calendar app called Motion that provides it.

Motion has some really cool features, such as automatically scheduling tasks into your available time between events. However, I hesitate to recommend it for a few reasons:

1. It costs too much. It’s $30 per month. If you prepay for a year, you can cut it down to $19 per month. If you call and ask, there’s a secret student discount that cuts the price in half, bringing it to a more reasonable $9.50/mo if you pay by the year.
2. Customer support is garbage. The “dedicated support” they advertise is an AI chatbot. The chatbot is useless and only regurgitates help pages. Dealing with that piece of junk is mandatory (albeit brief) if you want to message a real person. They also don’t have a help phone number, and will not give you one.
3. The desktop and mobile apps are Electron apps. For those who aren’t programmers, Electron.JS is a framework for creating “web apps” that basically package your website into an application format. An Electron app runs the website as an instance of chrome inside the app, which is much more resource intensive than programming a regular app. Developers choose it because it’s faster to cram their website into an app than it is to program a lightweight app.

It helps to know whether you prefer paper or digital calendars. Each has their benefits, use the one you like most.

Carry Earplugs

Like Tris, I experience sensory overload, and thus carry earplugs on my keychain. If you have over-ear headphones, or earbuds with sufficient passive or active noise cancelling, those work too. Some think it’s disrespectful to carry on a conversation while wearing earbuds or over-ear headphones. Additionally, I don’t like the feeling of active noise cancelling. To solve these problems, I have a pair of discreet dedicated earplugs.

The ones I have are “high fidelity” earplugs for musicians. They’re designed to evenly reduce volume across the entire range of audible frequencies. (Uneven reduction is what makes things sound muddy when you use typical foam earplugs.) A pair of these costs about $14-20, comes with a case you can put on your keychain. They last a long time. I’ve had the same pair for 3 years and had no issues. These Etymotic Research earplugs cost $14, and are the same as the $18 Vic Firth percussion earplugs I own but without the brand tax.

The last reason I carry earplugs is for hearing protection. This is something the layperson doesn’t receive enough education about. As a percussionist, I wasn’t told to wear hearing protection until I had been playing for 6 years. Now, I have mild hearing damage and tinnitus. If you’re a percussionist, go to loud concerts, or routinely go anywhere loud enough that you must shout to be heard, you need hearing protection. If these conditions are occurring at your workplace, your employer should be providing hearing protection.

In the face of ambiguity, refuse the temptation to guess

Bridging the gap between neurodivergent and neurotypical communication styles is difficult. Typically the neurodivergent individual has done more introspection about the matter than their counterpart, so the job falls to them. It’s not fun, and it’s not fair, but bridging that gap is sometimes necessary. Here, I’ve lifted two strategies from Chris Voss’s Never Split The Difference² that you can use to guide your counterpart into explaining things in a way that makes sense to you.

Mirroring is when you repeat the last few words of someone’s statement back to them, with upward inflection like a question. It’s great for when someone is explaining something in way that doesn’t quite make sense, and you want to coax them into elaborating. After you use a mirror, give it some space and allow the other person to say something before you continue speaking.

Voss uses the following example from his own negotiation with a bank robber:

“The other vehicle’s not out there because you guys chased my driver away…” he blurted.

“We chased your driver away?” I mirrored.

This exchange signals to the other person that you’re listening, and almost without fail, it gets people to elaborate on their previous statement.

Labeling is a technique used to demonstrate empathy and convince your counterpart to listen. When negotiating, many people are incapable of even processing what you’re saying until they feel their viewpoint is understood. Anecdotally, this occurs more often with neurotypical individuals.

A label usually starts with something like

• It seems like…
• It sounds like…
• It looks like…

Avoid using the word “I”, as it signals that you’re more interested in yourself than them. As Voss says, keeping “I” out of this makes it a “neutral satement of understanding.”

One of the most useful things you can do with a label is use it to air out negative emotions. Using labels, you can prompt your counterpart to discuss hidden concerns that may be blocking the way.

F O C U S

There’s too much information for any one person to consume, even on a single topic. Thus, for intentional learning and self-improvement, it’s important to judiciously select what information you want to consume, and more importantly, what not to consume. Don’t just read the headline of an article and take it at face value. Either read it fully, or don’t read it at all. Plan a time and place where you’ll take your time absorbing that information. If you can make that time and place a daily or weekly commitment, even better. At minimum, it helps to maintain a list of the things you want to read, so that you can sit down and read them deeply when you have the time.

Going to greater lengths, you can use software to help you manage your reading list. If there are specific sites you like, you can subscribe to their RSS feed. An RSS feed will inform you of each new item published to the site. Some sites even let you subscribe to the RSS feed for a specific topic to further curate your reading. You can use an RSS reader (such as the one built into Mozilla Thunderbird) to manage your RSS feeds. They let you tag and sort articles for easier retrieval later. I like to record key information in Logseq and tag it there.

Lessons Learned

“Should” is fake, do what you can.

If you are disabled, that means you can’t do something the statistically average human can do. Sometimes you can do it, but maybe not as often, or it costs you more. Don’t pretend your differences don’t exist. You are worthy of respect as a human regardless of them. More importantly, the sooner you stop trying to be “normal”, the sooner you can figure out what works best for you. Give yourself some grace, and plan for what you can do, not what you “should” do.

• If you can’t remember to do something later, set a reminder.
• If something takes you more time or effort, plan for the time you need, not the shorter duration you hope it’ll take.

For years, I thought the Pomodoro method didn’t work for me. Everyone said to do work periods of 20, 25, or 30 minutes. My ADHD is pretty bad. I can’t concentrate that long, so realistically I have to do 15 minutes. With that change, the pomodoro method works for me, and I used it to help me write this post.

Most importantly, figure out what someone means when they say one “should” do a thing. Sometimes, “should” means it will turn out better, but is not necessary. Ideally, every home cook would use fresh garlic for better flavor, instead of garlic paste or pre-minced garlic. If the amount of time needed to mince fresh garlic would have you leave it out instead, use the garlic paste. “Not as good” is better than none. Sometimes, one says “should” to mean “this will prevent an accident from becoming a much larger problem.” This is when it’s worth paying more attention to the cost-benefit analysis. For example, everyone “should” wear a seatbelt when in a car. The cost is a mild annoyance, but the benefit is a much greater chance of surviving a car crash. While you can operate on the assumption that it doesn’t matter because you’ll never get in a car crash, this relies on factors outside your control, so it’s advisable to wear a seatbelt.

Understand why things work or don’t work

Figuring out whether a single method works for you is putting a single brick in the house of coping mechanisms. If you pay attention to why things do or don’t work, you can rule out or further investigate entire categories, and build that house one wall at a time instead.

Thanks for reading, and I hope this helps you in your future endeavors.

Footnotes

1. In general, memory is not a voluntary process. This is why you should never tell someone “if you cared/tried harder, you would remember.” ↩

2. Never Split The Difference is an excellent book primarily focused on negotiation. A large part of negotiation is facilitating the exchange of information so that both parties are aware of the other’s capabilities and needs, a widely applicable skill. I’m summarizing an already incredibly concise book, so my coverage doesn’t do it justice. I highly recommend reading (and rereading) the book. ↩