Can Staying Busy Help Your ADHD?

If you have attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), you know it’s more than just being forgetful or getting distracted by a rogue neighborhood squirrel. ADHD can be a serious impairment and affect your quality of life, with symptoms that can increase impulsiveness and make it hard to finish tasks and follow directions. That’s not great when you have work deadlines or a dentist appointment you can’t miss … again. There must be a solution, right?

What life with ADHD is like

If you have ADHD and have heard someone say something like, “Just get up and do it,” or “Calm down,” you get how frustrating and misunderstood the condition can be. ADHD isn’t a choice; it’s a developmental disorder with symptoms that start in childhood.  

It’s possible you might fall into a pattern of inattention (difficulty staying organized or keeping on task), hyperactivity (extreme restlessness, fidgeting or talking a lot) and/or impulsivity (acting without thinking and difficulty with self-control).  

Some people with ADHD deal mainly with symptoms of inattention; while others might experience hyperactivity and impulsivity; and many people experience a combination of all three.  

Different types of therapies and medication treatments exist for ADHD, but it’s a lifespan disorder that you have to learn how to manage. New research, however, has provided some intriguing news about ADHD symptoms.  

An interesting finding about ADHD symptoms  

A 2022 study showed that while there may not be a cure for ADHD, symptoms can fluctuate over the course of your life, and most people even experience periods of remission from their symptoms. And a recent follow-up to the study found something intriguing that correlated with the periods of remission for some of the 483 study participants.  

What was it? Having more responsibilities.  

It sounds backward, but it’s true. The study found that ADHD is associated with environmental factors, such as your school or work schedule and obligations you have to other people.

“We found that, in the years that people were doing better, they seemed to actually be living much more demanding lives,” says Dr. Margaret Sibley, the study’s lead author, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral Sciences at UW School of Medicine and a clinical psychologist at Seattle Children’s.  

One explanation for this finding is that people with ADHD manage their symptoms better when they keep busy and have lots of responsibilities. But the association also might go in the other direction.  

“Another way to interpret it, though, is that only during periods of life when symptoms have gotten under control are people able to then step up to the demands in their lives,” says Sibley.

In other words, you can think about it as a U-shaped curve: There could be a sweet spot in how much people with ADHD can take on. Too few life demands can lead to idleness, which can be self-sabotaging, and too many can lead to feeling overwhelmed. Sibley’s research shows that, when finding this sweet spot, symptoms of about 10% of study participants remained consistent for signs of ADHD, about 15% of participants entered partial remission, and about 9% of participants experienced full remission of their ADHD with almost no symptoms or impairments for at least two consecutive reassessments and until the study’s endpoint.

Keeping track of your ADHD

Sibley says most people with ADHD will have good years and not-so-good years, and that things can go well for you if you have the right factors in place. It’s important to work with your doctor to see what combination of tools and treatment options are best for you.

There is one thing you can start doing today: Keep track (to the best of your ability) of personal factors that correlate to the periods when your symptoms decrease. Knowing your habits, environmental influences and other external pressures can be key to managing your ADHD.

“A person with ADHD needs to learn what factors they need to put in place in their life in order to be their best,” Sibley says. “Although the science is still unraveling which factors help people, it’s easy for a patient to work with a therapist or just to consider their own lives to understand: ‘When I’ve had those periods of remission, when I’ve been doing really well, what was it that made me do well? Can I replicate that in my life?’”

The TL;DR? Be observant. Take note of your environment, track your moods and behaviors and start to notice your patterns. It can help you learn to manage your ADHD symptoms. 

A version of this story originally appeared on the UW Medicine Newsroom.