Tips Archives - Remarkable Difference ADHD Coaching

Trees Can Help You Focus

Trees can help you focus.

What? You may ask? How does this work?

Will I need to sit under a tree in order to focus or concentrate? Or hug one?

Do I need to walk amongst them? Or, is it enough to see them from a distance?

Consider this: there is now a significant amount of research to support the idea that spending time among trees can help us focus better, reduce stress, and buffer against depression. When we spend so much of our time working in front of a computer screen these days, how can the ability to focus be improved by something as simple as this? I have spoken to many coaching clients over the years who describe sitting in front of the computer, trying to concentrate, and many minutes or even hours passing with nothing to show for it. It may seem counterintuitive, yet there are many excellent reasons for stepping away from the task at hand to find the company of trees.

The many benefits of trees

To start with, trees can benefit you by reducing mental fatigue and resetting your attention.
Getting outside for time in nature can provide you with a new perspective. A change of environment offers new things to look at, which stimulates your brain in ways which don’t happen when you are sitting still looking at a screen.
Trees create a calming atmosphere, reducing stress hormones like cortisol. Less stress means fewer distractions and better focus.
Trees absorb pollutants and increase oxygen levels, which raises air quality and enhances brain function and concentration.
Giving the brain a break from screens and artificial light, while surrounded by trees and exposed to natural light, can help refocus when returning to work.
Additionally, natural sounds experienced while spending time amongst trees, such as wind sighing through the branches, birdsong, and the sounds of other wildlife, provide a soothing background in contrast to the potential distractions of a noisy office.
The movement involved in walking in wooded areas or engaging in outdoor activities stimulates the production of dopamine. This vital neurotransmitter plays a crucial role in maintaining focus and motivation.

Movement has various benefits for focus.

Using the large muscles in the legs is grounding and calming, compared to sitting still. The body and brain become better oxygenated, and other chemicals are produced, for instance, nitric oxide, which helps cognitive functions such as learning and memory.

If you want to train your ability to pay attention, then practising mindfulness near trees—observing their textures, sounds, and smells— trains the brain to stay present, reducing rumination and intrusive thoughts that disrupt attention. Training attention in this way can be invaluable for many with ADHD brain types.

Trees can help soothe and regulate a jangly nervous system.

Trees reduce overstimulation and feelings of stress, and thereby promote activation of the parasympathetic nervous system (also known as rest and digest mode). Therefore, the ADHD nervous system in particular gets a welcome break from being frequently in a state of sympathetic nervous system activation arousal (also known as fight, flight, or freeze mode).

Hugging trees can be particularly beneficial.

Tree hugging stimulates the production of oxytocin, the “trust” hormone. “Studies show that people who regularly hug trees report feeling happier, calmer, and less stressed,” quoted from https://silvotherapy.co.uk/articles/benefits-of-hugging-trees.

Whether through visual exposure, movement, or mindful engagement, trees help regulate attention and sustain concentration.

Here are a few simple and practical ways to increase your focus with trees:

Take a mini tree break.

Simply observing a tree in detail, such as its bark texture, leaf movement, and sounds, will engage your senses and help refocus attention.

When could you fit in 5-10 minutes to give yourself this kind of mental reset?

Watch trees out of a window.

Improve your concentration and cognitive performance by looking at trees through a window if you’re feeling particularly short of time.

How will you recognise when it’s time to top up your focus levels?

Boost Dopamine with Tree-Based Movement.

Walking, hiking, or even stretching near trees encourages the release of dopamine, which is crucial for motivation and sustained attention.

How could you incorporate a “focus prowl” in a tree-lined area before or between work sessions to reset and refocus?

Reduce Sensory Distractions with Natural Sounds.

Nature sounds (rustling leaves, birds) provide soft fascination, a type of background stimulation that can create a calmer environment for deep work.

Have you tried playing nature soundscape tapes to help you focus yet?

Use tree-based sensory cues indoors.

Even when the cold or wet weather makes it challenging to experience the advantages of trees outdoors, you can gain their benefits by using sensory-tailored cues indoors.

Here is a selection of tree-based sensory cues you could try:

Olfactory cues (smell): Essential oils of pine, fir, and eucalyptus can promote calm alertness. You can use diffusers or simply add a few drops to a tissue, which works just as well.

Visual cues: Houseplants or a bonsai tree can reduce stress and restore focus. You could also try paintings of landscapes on a wall or images of forests or greenery as a screensaver for a calming effect.

Tactile cues (touch): Tree bark, driftwood, a pine cone, and wooden beads all have different textures to explore, handle and provide a grounding break.

There are so many ways to bring the benefits of trees into your life, your home and your workplace when you need a boost in focus and concentration. I’d love to hear about any strategies you have for improving focus that involve trees or time in nature.

Please do get in touch with me to share your experiences or thoughts at adhdcoachanna@gmail.com.

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Challenges of ADHD: producing creative work consistently.

What can make it hard for creatives with ADHD to produce work consistently over time? And what can help? Part one of a two-part blog.

For me the definition of creating on a consistent basis means to create something regularly. Many of us in creative fields need to be able to produce work on a regular basis in order to keep income flowing in. There are projects to complete, work to hand on to others where work involves more than one person, due dates for submission, deliveries to consider, publishing deadlines to meet.

You could say that producing work consistently is going to involve several different stages

Having initial ideas
Preparation and planning
Getting started
Carrying out the work, and continuing to work on it over time making adjustments as needed.
Getting it finished and out of the door.

I hear a lot from people with ADHD who tell me they are able to do something quite well for a while, then it lapses for one reason or another. It can be days, weeks, or months before they realise they have stopped, and even longer before they find a way to return to it.

Could it be due to novelty wearing off?

Could it be that the buzz that comes from achieving something at first, is no longer providing the juice of motivation needed to continue, as soon as it begins to become routine?

Could it be to do with getting easily thrown off course by external events like interruptions or distractions?

Could it be because self-directed transitions are hard for those of us with ADHD, so returning to something again once you have stopped presents problems?

There are many possible answers to this conundrum, as everyone has their own particular “brand” of ADHD. Yes, we are all different.

Years ago I used to believe that I could only paint when I felt like it. Then, on occasions when I did feel like it, I would not be organised enough in my materials to make a start. By not organised enough I mean, for example, that my paper would be stored in one place, my paints and brushes in another, and I didn’t have a dedicated clear workspace to work in, etc. This caused me no end of frustration, as I often could not find what I was looking for, and on many occasions I spent so long looking with no success, that I finally gave up in disgust. Painting accomplished – nil.

I also think on reflection that I may have been slightly affected by inflexible thinking, as I would get hyper-focused on finding the exact brush or paper that I had thought of using, whereas, looking back now I wonder, why didn’t I just use my creativity to improvise and do something else?

Hyperfocus is an interesting one for ADHD creatives, as it can either take the form of “helpful hyperfocus” which enables us to be immensely productive, or “hindering hyperfocus”, as in the example above. Sometimes we can experience a combination of both! I’ll have more to say about hyperfocus and creativity in a future blog.

In the end, once I realised that ADHD was an issue for me, I found a great piece of advice by Dr. Ned Hallowell. His recommendation is to only get as organised as you need to, to achieve what you want, without taking organisation too far and getting embroiled in perfectionism. Doing this has certainly helped take my own productivity in painting to a whole new level.

For now, here are three tips you can try, if producing work consistently is eluding you.

TIP one: To help take that first step towards creating, have everything you need set up in advance for yourself and to hand, so that it becomes really easy to begin. Preparation is one key to avoiding frustration and inertia.

TIP two: If getting prepared seems like a bit of a chore, try separating it out into a standalone activity, and then take a break and go away. Making yourself a drink or going for a walk can provide enough of a break for it to seem like a completely separate activity. Then when you return to begin your creative project, voila! There is your workspace and everything you need to get started immediately. Getting going feels much smoother and more effortless.

TIP three: Beware of thoughts telling you it has to be done in a certain way. You’re a creative after all; some of the best inventions and creations in the world have come from happy accidents or from people making it up as they go along. Keep that inner flexibility and creative muscle well-exercised.

Another thing to understand is that if we wait until our brains and bodies are in the state we believe is ideal for creating before we begin, like I used to, then we risk either at worst not achieving anything at all, or at best only a fraction of what we could be capable of.

So instead of the “Do I feel inspired to create today?” criteria, we need some other way of getting ourselves to create regularly – which is what I understand by consistency. Someone once said that our lives are defined by the questions we ask ourselves.

What might we be capable of if we changed the question above to, “What do I feel inspired to create today?” Feel the difference in those two questions. The first asks for a simple yes or no answer, while the second question opens up a whole world of possibilities.

What kind of questions are you asking yourself when you set out to create something? The first kind, or the second? And which will you be using next time?

In part two of this blog we will be examining ways to get unstuck if your creative projects grind to a halt.

Anna Schlapp B.A., AACC, ACC, is a certified coach with the ADD Coach Academy and the International Coach Federation. Specialising in ADHD and Creativity, Anna helps talented people like you find ways of being more creatively productive and productively creative.

Get in touch to schedule your complimentary coaching session with Coach Anna.