Hey there friends, and welcome to 🚀 The Station newsletter’s latest dispatch. Today, we’ll be reviewing three common myths about ADHD and the truth behind them. ADHD (or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) has been misunderstood and misdiagnosed for a long time, especially in women. Now, many folks are getting there diagnoses for the first time, and large groups are popping up online surrounding being diagnosed later in life. For those of us with ADHD (or suspected of having it), we can understand that ADHD can be an obstacle to everyday life. So, in an effort to help minimize this obstacle, let’s learn about three popular misconceptions surrounding ADHD.

💫 Homeworld

Myth #1: “We’re all a bit ADHD!”

Obviously there are symptoms of ADHD that can be experienced by anyone, regardless of diagnosis. Someone who is exhausted will often have difficulty focusing on a single task or struggle with their working memory, but this isn’t being/having ADHD.

Truth: For someone to have ADHD, they will experience and exhibit symptoms of ADHD that impair aspects of their lives and are a persistent issue lasting at least six months (Source: DSM-V).

Myth #2: ADHD is over-diagnosed nowadays.

While the rates of diagnosis have gone up in recent years, researchers have taken a look at this phenomena and debunked this statement.

Truth: There are a lot of reasons for the increased rates of ADHD diagnoses, including but not limited to increased awareness, improved detection / assessment tools, and increased recognition of women having ADHD (Source: UC Davis Health).

Myth #3: If you have another diagnosis, you can’t ALSO be ADHD.

People with ADHD often experience what are called “comorbidities”, which refers to the presence of multiple disorders/diagnoses. These can happen due to a number of genetic, environmental, behavioral, and social factors, but ultimately it is important to recognize that comorbidities are more common than not in people with ADHD.

Truth: People with ADHD will often experience comorbid disorders either simultaneously or as a result of living with ADHD. As an example, someone who consistently struggles to act due to executive dysfunction caused by their ADHD may develop higher levels of anxiety or depression. (Source: University of Nottingham).

In conclusion, understanding ADHD is not just about debunking myths, but about recognizing the complex nature of this brain-based disorder. I hope that by busting these myths, I’ve helped shed some light on what ADHD really is - and isn't. So, until next time, keep learning, stay curious, and remember, everyone's journey with ADHD is different and that's okay.

🛰️ In Orbit

Some of you may have seen my recent Threads post about turning a draft of the (former) newsletter topic of digital mindfulness and turning it into an article on my website - you can check it out here:

The Art of Digital Mindfulness: Finding Balance in the Digital Age

Also, the last Book Notes article on my website was on Austin Kleon’s “Steal Like An Artist” - highly recommend checking out my notes and the book for some great reading:

Book Notes: Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

And finally, my most recent YouTube video is live and here to help you optimize your time with 10 quick tips:

🪐 Expansion of the Universe

In an effort to continue spreading the love, here are a few creators I’ve been enjoying recently & a good book I picked up!

📖 Book Recommendation: This Is How Your Marriage Ends by Matthew Fray

🚀 Launch Bay

That's all for today’s download - If you found this newsletter helpful, please consider sharing it with others who might benefit from it. Remember, knowledge is most useful when it's shared! As I sign off, remember to keep reaching for the stars and tune in next time for another stellar dispatch from 🚀 The Station!

Share The Station by Krys Kestrel

See past updates from 🚀 The Station here.

Hello there fellow travelers, it’s time for another update from The Station! Thanks for your patience as we took a hiatus from content production for a bit. As far as introductory messages go, I’d like to keep it short and get straight into the content. I look forward to continuing to develop these updates as we get started with today’s dispatch on ways to recharge your brain. In this newsletter, I’ll review some helpful ways to give your brain the rest it needs.

💫 Homeworld

So, there are a lot of different ways that one might recharge - but where do we even start? Let’s take a look at what the science says. First, it is important to understand the different kinds of rest. According to Psychology Today, there are seven primary categories in which we need rest: physical, mental, sensory, emotional, social, creative, and spiritual rest. 

Physical Rest

The first category of rest is one most of us are familiar with - physical rest. This can include sleeping, taking a bubble bath, using relaxation exercises, and other light activities like yoga or getting a massage. Increased physical activity, illness, and/or stress can all cause you to require more physical rest than normal. During this time, your body can recover, your adrenaline and cortisol levels will lower, and your body will have a more effective immune response (Source: Mental Health Foundation). Physical rest helps to relieve and recharge your body and is vital to setting yourself up for success in other areas of life.

Mental Rest

The next category is mental rest, which is essential to combating mental fog and fatigue. Allowing time for adequate mental rest can help to improve memory, self-awareness, and creative vision (Source: Mental Health Foundation). Some suggestions for activities on your mental rest menu could be: working on a hobby, practicing mindfulness, spending time outside, and avoiding the news or social media. Additionally, if you are finding that the mental fatigue is settling in despite getting rest, consider talking to a medical professional to talk about possible physical or mental health symptoms.

Sensory Rest

Next up is sensory rest - essentially, the world can be incredibly overwhelming sometimes as our brains take in the wealth of information around us. Taking time to intentionally deprive yourself of high levels of stimuli can be incredibly beneficial to recharge and allow the mind to relax. Some examples of ways you can get sensory rest based on each of the 5 senses:

Touch -> Have a reset, like in the form of a shower. Prepare a comfortable, clean, and trusted outfit to get into afterward.

Sight -> Try meditating with your eyes closed for 5-10 minutes.

Smell -> Use smelling salts (or a similar product) to remind the senses of more comfortable and pleasant smells.

Sound -> Wear earplugs to reduce ambient noise levels, especially in crowded events and locations like concerts or amusement parks.

Taste -> Have a plain comfort meal, like chicken noodle soup and bread.

Sensory rest can be incredibly valuable in the evenings during wind-down time, such as reducing screen time for some rest (+ mental rest) in this category.

Emotional Rest

The next category is emotional rest, which gives us the time and space to express our emotions truthfully or seek out “others who help provide emotional peace” (Source: Psychology Today). Some days, this may be calling a friend or loved one to vent about our emotions and seek advice. Other days, this may look like you seeking out a person who you can just hang out with in a low-pressure environment after having a long week. The key to emotional rest is taking two minutes to just check in with yourself, and do so often - this is something you can do while walking/driving to and from work or school when you brush your teeth, or when you have a few free moments. Reflecting on how you are feeling and what emotional rest needs to look like for you is vital to a complete picture of rest.

Social Rest

Our fifth category is social rest, which is typically tied to one major question: are you an extrovert or an introvert? If you’re not sure which of these you are, you can try taking a quick online quiz like this one from Psychology Today; alternatively, you can narrow it down with the quick litmus test - do you gain or lose energy by socializing? Once you know the answer to this question, your options for social rest start with the same basic ethos. For introverts, social rest will often center around solitary activities (like reading, going on a walk while listening to a playlist, or playing a single-player video game). For extroverts, social rest could look like any number of low-intensity group activities, like coffee shop study dates, scheduling a virtual hangout session, or a book club.

Creative Rest

The penultimate category is creative rest, which is aimed at recharging your creative battery. Creative rest is essential to the creative process, providing both time to reflect on ideas and seek out inspiration. While this can mean a lot of things, some ideas to try out for engaging in creative rest are:

• Sit down and listen to an album from start to finish.

• Visit a museum or art show.

• Spend time in nature.

• Allow yourself to work on a piece for fun regardless of quality.

• Go see a movie or theater performance.

The goal here is to rejuvenate your creativity, spark some joy in your life, and work on new ideas and creative problem-solving skills (Source: Calm).

Spiritual Rest

The final category of rest that we’ll be discussing today is spiritual rest. In general, spiritual rest can be defined as “the ability to connect beyond the physical and mental and feel a deep sense of belonging, love, acceptance and purpose” (Source: Dr. Dalton-Smith via TEDx). This focuses on not necessarily a religious association, but instead the deep sense of fulfillment that is often associated with these more ‘spiritual’ feelings. To get spiritual rest, here are a few suggested activities:

• Volunteer with a local organization or charity.

• Read spiritual or personal growth-related books.

• Practice mindful meditation.

• Practice affirmations to reinforce the feeling of acceptance and purpose.

Alright - those are the seven different kinds of rest and a few different ways to help recharge your brain using each of these areas. Spend time reflecting, and if you need a little extra boost, try reflecting on each of these areas and giving yourself a score 1-10 on how rested you feel in each area. Choose the area with the lowest number to tackle first, and focus on getting from a 1 to a 2, or a 4 to a 5. Minor, consistent improvements will help to produce great results.

🛰️ In Orbit

Before you go, here are a couple recent articles from my website where you can read more for free.

Book Notes: Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

In this book notes article on my website, I discuss my key takeaways from Austin Kleon’s Steal Like An Artist. A short and engaging read - click the link to read more!

📅 “The Ideal Week” Planning Method

The previous article is a companion article to my YouTube video (which you can find here) about utilizing the Ideal Week method for planning your weeks and tackling your to-do lists. This has still been my absolute favorite way of planning as I transition out of my job, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon!

🪐 Expansion of the Universe

While I love sharing what content I have to offer, here are a few interesting articles from around the web that you may want to check out:

What is Maladaptive Perfectionism? (Psychology Today)

5 ways to foster inclusive communication in the workplace (Atlassian)

Productivity Plummets On Mondays: How To Be Your Best All Week Long (Forbes)

🚀 Launch Bay

Thank you so much for reading this dispatch of 🚀 The Station - if you value the content I’m producing and want to show your support, please consider sharing this newsletter on social media or with friends who might enjoy content like this and who want to take the next step in upgrading (and recharging) their mind! I’ll see you all next time with another download!

Share The Station by Krys Kestrel

See past updates from The Station here.

Welcome back to another dispatch from 🚀 The Station! I hope you're as excited as we are to dive into this mini-guide to prioritizing your tasks. It's always a pleasure to have you onboard as we explore new ways to optimize our productivity and find balance in our day-to-day lives. Let's get started!

💫 Homeworld

Task lists can get overwhelming at times - it can feel as though there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them. Something that can help this feeling is leveling up your task prioritization skills, so you can take care of what matters most now and reduce your overwhelm. Here are a few different methods of prioritizing your tasks:

🐸 Method 1: Eat the Frog

This method, which is great for those with a small number of important, yet undesirable tasks, challenges you to do the hardest thing on your to-do list first in your day.

To put it simply, eating the frog is the process of identifying your most difficult task of the day and completing it before you do any other work. If you have to eat two frogs, eat the bigger one first. Identify which task is more challenging, and do that first thing.

• Sarah Laoyan, “Why you should eat the frog first”

While this may cause some to cringe at the thought of doing the hardest part of the day first, this method encourages you to think of it this way - at least you don’t have to dread eating the frog for the entire day. By eating the frog early, you give yourself some momentum in completing your tasks (starting with the most important one) - ensuring that you tackle your day with the mindset that you’ve already done the hardest thing you’ll have to do today.

➕Method 2: Eisenhower Matrix

This method is inspired by a Dwight D. Eisenhower speech in which he said:

“I have two kinds of problems: the urgent, and the unimportant. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
(Source: Columbia University)

While the second part of this may not necessarily be the reality, this quote led to Stephen Covey developing the Eisenhower Decision Matrix where tasks are categorized into one of four categories along an x- and y-axis:

Once you’ve decided whether each task is: 1) urgent, and 2) important; you can then take action and decide what to do now (urgent + important), schedule for later (not urgent + important), delegate (urgent + not important), or eliminate (not urgent + not important). Using this method, you focus on what to act on in the near term and use your task list to guide your future efforts more efficiently.

🔠 Method 3: ABCDE Method

This last method is simple but impactful. Using this method, list out all of your tasks and assign them a letter grade:

A: Top Priority

B: High Priority

C: Medium Priority

D: Low Priority

E: No Priority

Schedule your A&B tasks for the short-term, your C&D tasks farther out, and review your E tasks - are these tasks you want/need to put energy towards right now? Does this task or project still align with your goals? Eliminate tasks where possible. This allows you to understand where all your current tasks and goals rack & stack in your life and properly allocate time according to those goals and priorities.

🛰️ In Orbit

In case you missed it, my latest YouTube video & accompanying article are live now. Click the links below to learn about the Ideal Week Planning Method and how I use it to make sense of my life.

🗓️ “The Ideal Week” Planning Method

How I Plan Using Ali Abdaal’s Ideal Week Method

🪐 Expansion of the Universe

Here are some resources & articles that can help you take control of your task list and focus on what matters.

A4 Task Prioritization Template - Digital Download - 3 Colorways - Goodnotes & Notability Compatible

How to prioritize tasks when everything's important

15 of the Best Time Management and Productivity Books of All Time

🚀 Launch Bay

As we wrap up this dispatch from The Station, I encourage you to check out the resources linked here to further your journey in task prioritization. Remember, the universe of productivity is vast and unending, but with the right tools and methods, you can navigate it with grace and efficiency. Until our next download, keep learning & keep growing. Safe travels!

Subscribe now

See past updates from The Station here.

Share The Station by Krys Kestrel

Hey there friends, it’s time for our first weekly dispatch from The Station! I want to take just a brief moment up front to thank you for checking out this newsletter - your support makes it all worth it. I hope to use this weekly e-mail newsletter as a way of sharing tips, tools, and resources surrounding balanced productivity and leading a happier life. Today’s edition is about the first concept I think of when brainstorming about productivity - time management. In this newsletter, I’ll review what research and experience has shown to be the best ways of improving your time management and productivity.

💫 Homeworld

When you start a newsletter about psychology and productivity, you might wonder where to start. For me, the most obvious place would be time management. There is tons of advice online about what the best time management methods are, but I can say that there are some basic concepts behind the idea of time management that are necessary to improve, regardless of whatever specific method you are using. Decades of psychological research has highlighted three main qualities that help a person effectively manage their time, and I’ve got a summary of it for you here:

#1: Increase your awareness of how you spend your time.

Paying attention to how you spend your time can help you improve your responsibility and refine your estimates of what you can accomplish. By being more aware of how your time is spent, you can identify patterns and make more intentional plans moving forward. You can accomplish this by using a time tracking app or recording your time tracking in an analog method like a bullet journal. Reviewing your time tracking and gaining this awareness to more effectively manage your time helps to support your well-being and your goal achievement over time. Also, just knowing what you can realistically accomplish within a period of time based on the real data from your life can dramatically improve your planning, which we’ll discuss more in #2.

#2: Set aside time to plan on a regular basis.

Planning can increase your perceived control over your time and has been linked to improved time management skills. By improving your planning skills and routines, you can make more attainable and actionable plans for yourself and set yourself up for higher rates of achievement. Planning can come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, but one method of planning I really love is the Ideal Week Method. I made an entire YouTube video about this method and why I love it that you can check out next time you sit down to plan your week:

Being a good planner and feeling comfortable planning your time are both essential parts of this quality; both of which are linked to improved time management and time control outcomes.

#3: Generate feedback and adjust planning accordingly.

Consistently checking in and reflecting on how your time is spent and how you aim to spend your time allows you to better refine your goals and planning by pointing you in the right direction. Try out different techniques in your planning if the Ideal Week Method isn’t for you - while there are quite a few out there, here are some popular methods you may want to try out:

• ⏰ Focus Sessions

• 🧱 Time Blocking

• ！Eisenhower Matrix

• 💡 Theme Days

• ⚡️ Planning by Energy Levels

Once you’ve spent some time implementing a strategy, decide on a set check-in time for yourself to reflect and reassess whether your current strategies and use of time in general are working towards the life you want. Remember that it is also okay to adjust goals if you just find that you can’t dedicate time towards something right now, you find you don’t enjoy or want the goal, or if it’s just not the right time to approach a goal. Reevaluating and recalibrating your path on a regular basis is a way to supercharge your time management skills.

Sources

Claessens, B. J. C., van Eerde, W., Rutte, C. G., & Roe, R. A. (2007). A review of the time management literature. Personnel Review, 36(2), 255–276. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480710726136

PEHLİVAN, A. (2013). The Effect of the Time Management Skills of Students Taking a Financial Accounting Course on their Course Grades and Grade Point Averages. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 4(5).

YEC. (2022, November 8). Council post: How to level up your time management skills in 2022. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2022/01/28/how-to-level-up-your-time-management-skills-in-2022/?sh=225ec9d6b4bd

🛰️ In Orbit

Alongside the monthly updates from me, here are a few interesting articles and resources that I thought you might want to check out:

Flexible and Automated Time Management

Why to-do lists kill your productivity, and what to do instead (Timeboxing)

This astronaut was rejected by NASA three times. Here are his secrets to perseverance 

🪐 Expansion of the Universe

Before you go, here are some links of content I’ve created that might be beneficial for upgrading your life:

A4 Task Prioritization Template - Digital Download - 3 Colorways - Goodnotes & Notability Compatible

A4 Landscape Daily Planner Template - Digital Download - 8 Colorways - Goodnotes & Notability Compatible

🚀 Launch Bay

Thank you for reading this dispatch of 🚀 The Station - if you value the content I’m producing and want to show your support, share this newsletter on social media or with friends who you think would like to take the next step in ⚡️ optimizing their life and 😊 increasing their happiness. I’ll see you all again next week for another download from The Station!

Share The Station by Krys Kestrel

See past updates from The Station here.

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