37: Technology Aids for ADHD with Kat Hunt

Technology can be challenging for those with ADHD, and I’ll admit that I’ve struggled at times in this area. If you are someone who responds better to tactile and visual learning, you can probably relate. There are many tools and hacks available to help with executive functioning issues, and I’m excited to learn more in today’s show. I’m joined by technology expert Kat Hunt, who is raising a neurodivergent daughter. Let’s learn more about technological aids that can be helpful for ADHD. Join us!

Show Highlights:

  • Three specific areas in which neurodivergent struggle and technologies that can help:

  • Why mobile access to these tools is preferable over a physical tool, especially for those who travel or move from home to office frequently

  • How Kat uses Alexa technology to her advantage in time management with her family and at her office

  • How the Due app forces you to pay attention to notifications for events and tasks

  • How parents can use Alexa features with neurodivergent kids to increase independence and self-efficacy while still having parental structure in place

Resources and Links:

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  • KC Davis 0:05

    Hello, you sentient balls of stardust. I am KC Davis. Welcome to Struggle Care. We're going to talk today with cat hunt about technological, not, I guess, AI solutions, but technology aids when it comes to having ADHD, when I'm particularly interested in this subject, because I feel like I've tried out a few. And I have a difficult time with technology anyways, because I always feel like everything needs to be like tactile and visual around me. So I'm interested to hear a little bit more about what could be useful to the ADHD person when it comes to technology. Yeah,

    Kat Hunt 0:43

    So I am a little bit opposite, I work in a tech industry. So it's been kind of in my wheelhouse for a long time. But a lot of the solutions that I've been discovering recently, are very user friendly. And I kind of honed in on three particular kind of symptoms that people with ADHD or other executive functioning disorders or challenges, kind of grapple with. And I've identified what these technologies do that helps those three specific areas in my life that I think for other people as well, it could be a solution.

    KC Davis 1:19

    That's wonderful. Okay, hit me with the first one. So

    Kat Hunt 1:23

    one of the first big ones is time blindness, where you either underestimate how much time you need for something, or you exert a disproportionate amount of time to something that you're hyper fixating on. So for example, one solution that I use Calendly, I can actually build in buffers, for my appointments and things. So I don't have to worry about going over into another appointment or other obligation. And it also gives me a little bit of breathing room because it sometimes can be hard to pivot from one activity to the other. So having like 30 minutes or 45 minutes, to decompress after an appointment and start into the next activity can be very helpful. And with a software solution like that, I don't have to think about it, it is built into my schedule automatically, without me having to spend a lot of cognitive energy trying to calculate that with every individual appointment, it just happens automatically. So this

    KC Davis 2:26

    is something I totally think that I should do. Because I use acuity which is like a similar one, where I block off times and do this at the other end, I actually saw at one point where it asked me like how much time to put in between appointments. And I just didn't click anything because at the time, I was like, oh, pack it in, right. But here's the thing, you're so right, not only on the back end, but like the amount of times where I've gotten sidetracked and started something late. So it pushes it beyond. And I take ADHD meds in the morning. And so when I get several hours of this, like really intense motivation. And I find that during that time, I'm less likely to be tuned in to what my body needs. So whether it's going to the bathroom, getting a drink of water, eating something. And I have definitely found that like times when I have like back to back to back to back meetings or appointments, I'm not leaving myself any time in between. To do that, well, then we say that there is enough time to do something in between, there's not enough time for my brain to decompress from that meeting, to the point where it can start to actually hear the messages my body is sending.

    Kat Hunt 3:43

    Exactly, definitely some other kinds of solutions to that as well. I know I'm not sure if other people do well, I'm sure some people do. But I will have lots of tasks on my to do list. And I never have enough time to necessarily get to all of them. So some software solutions, I particularly use something called artful agenda. There's probably others that do this, I think task li does this too. It will migrate tasks that are undone. At the end of the day, to the next day. Again, it's automatic, I don't have to exert cognitive energy to think about it. It's just Oh, she did not finish that she didn't check it off. Let's move it to the next day. Sometimes I might reschedule it for a day later in the future. But I don't often identify that the day of it's the next day that I look at the tasks again and say oh, I need to push this out a little bit further. So that keeping track of that data, which was kind of my next problem, data loss and data overwhelm, kind of keeps all of that together without me having to exert extra mental energy for it.

    KC Davis 4:50

    And is it putting it on your calendar or is it putting it on just like another day's to do list?

    Kat Hunt 4:56

    So this particular software solution is interesting. I I put in my Google calendar, which my Google calendar if you saw, it would be absolutely insane, because there's my calendar. But there's also calendars that I have to have an awareness of, and not necessarily directly related to me. But if I'm a manager, I'm in a kind of a managerial role. So like I'm having to coordinate, well, I migrate my personal things into this other software. So that pops up on a monthly, weekly and daily spread, I don't have to copy it, it does it again automatically. And then it has in that software task areas, it kind of looks like a paper planner, this particular solution, but it's not. So rather than trying to write things from one page to the next to migrate it, it just automatically does it.

    KC Davis 5:49

    That's great. Okay, hit me with the next one.

    Kat Hunt 5:52

    So the third problem is the problem of dopamine. So ADHD, individuals in particular, but a lot of different people who have other neuro divergence have dopamine seeking behavior, or dopamine resistant behavior, in my case is dopamine seeking. And if things are under stimulating to me, I won't keep up with them. And it's not only that, I won't keep up with them. In some cases, it can be actually painful to engage in something that is not stimulating. So the act of going to a calendar and writing down your agenda in a planner, for example, this is a very tedious kind of task. So by eliminating that, and automating it, it gets done in an efficient way, that's not painful to me, or doesn't get shoved under the rug. Other solutions, kind of with time management, there's one program I use called forests, where it will actually grow a tree for every 25 minutes, you're working on something, it's a virtual tree, you can create a little forest.

    KC Davis 7:06

    So I'm not kidding when I say that, like of everything you've said, that one has blown my mind the most. Because, you know, I found myself playing. So I play love and pies, which is a mobile game that I'm kind of obsessed with. But I play it all the time. And one of the things that I find myself thinking about, like, as I'm playing it, because it's one of those games where you know, you have like a certain amount of energy. And as the energy goes down, then you gotta like, wait a few minutes and get more energy. But one of the things that I find myself thinking is like this, you know, I'm like merging strawberries to make a pie. And it's like, this pie doesn't exist. I don't know why my brain feels so satisfied by this completion. I remember thinking, like, I wish there was like a game, where in order to get more energy, I had to go to like, do some sort of care task, like and then it could magically know that I went and like, did my dishes. And I'd come back to all of this energy tokens, and I could keep going. Because you're right, there is something really satisfying about just that, like it's moving towards something, it's doing something it's not, I'm not just like doing things in the abyss. And I can 100% see myself, like working extra on something because I'm like, Well, I'm seven minutes away from the next tree, or whatever it is.

    Kat Hunt 8:26

    Yeah, actually, you know, if I don't do it as regularly yet to create, like a whole forest, but I have had days where I have some super tedious work, where I'll have multiple trees, and it's really quite satisfying to look at a whole forest of what you've done. So you could apply that to any number of things. But it also keeps things again, kind of talking about trying to manage your energy levels, you don't often recognize when you're approaching the end of your energy level, by breaking it into 25 minute increments. If it's something I'm really engaged in, it has the opposite effect, oh, I've worked on this one thing for, you know, an hour and a half, maybe I should step back from it and take a break or switch to something else.

    KC Davis 9:12

    It's great, because like the passage of time related, that timeline is like it really is difficult. And whenever I talk about solutions with like timers and things, I find that there's always two kinds of people that are really drawn to that. And the first are people that they don't want to start. But if they can visually see like, oh, it's only going to be this amount of time. It's like okay, I can keep going there's only a little bit left. But then the other people are people who are like once I start I just forget the world and all of a sudden hours later I'm still doing this and I've missed all these things. And so that visual passage of time is really important. But I found that like so my go to is always the like the visual timer right where you turn the dial and it colors the time in like a color so like red, blue, purple, but that's what really only helpful for me when I need to visualize how much time has passed coming to a specific stop point. So I only want to do 15 minutes. But like you're saying, if the issue is the opposite, where it's like, I can work on this as long as I want to it's open ended. But I do need to be aware how much time I'm spending on it, I need to see the passage of time to be better tuned in to how much time you know, I'm taking away from what other things I might need to do that day.

    Kat Hunt 10:32

    Absolutely. It For Me, I've seen those physical timers, I think those are really neat. One of the big things about all of the solutions I use is its mobile access. And that's something that I very rarely forget a planner, I always forget it at the house, I forget at the office, it's never where I need it to be. tools that are physical like that will get left in a bag. And when I switch bags, it's not with me anymore. For my particular profession, I travel a lot, I'm on the go a lot. So having everything in a handheld device is really helpful for me too, because I can use it anywhere. So that

    KC Davis 11:08

    I totally get that because my number one like and I guess you could call it technology. Okay, so we're talking about the passage of time, right? Okay, so this is a timer cube. And it's basically like this little cube, it's like the size of my palm. And you can get them with different increments of time, right. So mine is the one that has five minutes, 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes, just around the site. So when I put the time that I want facing up, it starts a timer for that amount of time. So cool. So this is really helpful, very satisfied.

    Yeah, sorry, just scratch my chair. It's really helpful when I'm at home, because I was like setting a timer on my phone. But then I'm picking up my phone and I'm getting distracted by the things on my phone. This is really helpful. And the way that I finally like cracked the code of the best way for me to use it is like, let's say that I have a meeting and 30 minutes. So what I used to do was say, okay, great, put the 30 minutes up. But then it would go off. And I'd be like, oh gosh, oh gosh, I might be right in the middle of something. And I'd be like, well, let me just wrap this one thing up. And then it'd be 10 minutes later, and I'd be late to the meeting. So what I found was, the best way to actually do it is if I have 30 minutes until I have to be at a meeting, I do the 20 minutes instead. So that when it goes off it orient me to the time, and I go, okay, so I need to spend about five more minutes wrapping this up. So then I'll click the five minute one over, and then I'll focus on wrapping something up so that when that timer goes off, I'm done. And I still have five minutes to like prepare or pull up the screen or get on the phone or whatever for the next thing. And when I finally figured out that that's what I needed, like I needed the to not just be told when to stop, right? Like we don't just need a timer. We truly need tools that orient us to the passage of time as we are doing something, which is what I love about like the forest one, what's it called, again,

    Kat Hunt 13:13

    it's called forest. And I think it's actually a lot of these are free or very cheap. I think forest is free for most functions. And you'll like this as well. I don't take advantage of this because I can't be disconnected completely in most cases. But it will actually block out all of your apps and notifications if you ask it to. Oh, so the phone becoming its own distraction can sometimes be mediated that way. For some folks, again, I can only do that to a certain degree,

    KC Davis 13:50

    people who work I do. Okay, I'm gonna check out the forest app. Let's pause for just a second to hear a word from our sponsor. And when we come back, I want to ask you about Alexa, because I heard your Alexa going off and I have some questions. Okay. Okay, I want to talk about Alexa because I have one and I don't know like how much you use your Alexa but I feel like I'm not using it to its potential. Because other ADHD people talk about these, like really creative things they're doing with their Alexa and I don't do anything with mine except like the timer when I'm cooking.

    Kat Hunt 14:21

    So I actually discovered Alexa first for my daughter years ago and she actually is on the autism spectrum. So shifting tasks for her is very challenging for different reasons and in different ways. So for us we started using it was just kind of a speaker to play music. You know, we got on some freebie or bonus or something. I would tell Alexa to give my daughter cues that in 30 minutes she was going to have to start shifting gears into something else or in 10 minutes and sometimes depending on how how difficult it was for her for certain tasks, we might do a couple of those, you know, 30 minutes, 10 minutes, five minutes. So it really started as a tool for her. I don't use it in the house very much personally. But what I use it for is the office more. So in a lot of what you were just saying about how you'll use your cube to give you some buffer to orient your time. Alexa does that for me in my office, when I'm here, she'll I call her Ziggy, because I'm a big David Bowie fan. And that's one of the options but I've got my calendar plugged into her. And she will say in 30 minutes, you have an interview with Casey Davis.

    KC Davis 15:42

    So that only you have her plugged into your calendar. Yeah, so

    Kat Hunt 15:46

    my virtual calendar feeds into her. And she will remind me in an increment that I set of appointments that are coming up,

    KC Davis 15:56

    that is helpful, because I get the push notifications on my phone. But I can't tell you the amount of times that like you're doing something and it comes down, you're like you like swipe it away, or you don't see it, I had no idea that you could actually connect so that the notifications are coming through Alexa,

    Kat Hunt 16:14

    exactly. You can do Apple calendar or Google Calendar, which Google calendar can feed into Apple calendar, which I have an Apple Watch. So I do that Google Calendar is where I have my foundation, because it goes everywhere on any device pretty much. And then it can feed digitally into a variety of different devices, depending on what I use them for another app that is good for that it's not on Alexa specifically, but do will harass you about reminders until you acknowledge them. That was actually on an ADH forum on Facebook. I can't remember which one but someone suggested it. And I tried it. So things that are really critical. I will do that. So I don't do the swipe up and forget that data loss that I mentioned earlier. That's a big one for me. So it'll remind me again, do due

    KC Davis 17:08

    Do you e Okay, so how does that work? So like let's say I need to feed my cats.

    Kat Hunt 17:12

    So I do have a couple of reoccurring ones. For my mids, I'll you know I take my meds a little bit later in the morning because I have to stay up later for work and family obligations. So I have a reminder on a cycle and it will harass me every five or 10 minutes until I acknowledge it. And even with non like repeating tasks. By just having awareness of it, I can say, Oh, I can't do that right now because of this important thing that got in the way. But let me reschedule it to a time I think I can. So it doesn't get lost, I'm not losing the data. It's bringing attention to it and I just reschedule it. Or I say okay, I need to go ahead and do it like it's harass me three times at this point, I need to I need to get that done. So that's very helpful, too. I wish I could connect Alexa and do but they haven't figured out that link yet.

    KC Davis 18:08

    So how is do different than Alexa just like setting a timer and alerting you to something

    Kat Hunt 18:14

    that harassing feature the inability to get rid of the notification without either rescheduling it or deleting it, it will just keep there's no easy way to snooze it, it will just keep going in increments that you set. So you could say, you know, remind me every five minutes, they have a new feature now to where it's urgent, where it won't even let you get rid of it at all. It's like this is really, really important. I haven't used that feature yet. Because I haven't had anything that's like that critical. But it just continues to remind you until you either reschedule it, or delete it or do it. Because it's the ideal thing. Do you

    KC Davis 18:51

    ever just delete it? And then forget to do the thing?

    Kat Hunt 18:54

    No, it's a process to delete it. So that's another thing about it is the way it's it's what we call a user interface. So that's what you're interacting with. Its user interface is set up that it's not easy to delete it you have to like really cognitively say I'm going to delete it because it's no longer relevant. You cannot so I'm busy.

    KC Davis 19:16

    It's interrupting. It's like no matter what it is sufficiently interrupting your train of thought and direction. So that like if you're going to take the time to delete it, you might as well just go do the thing. Yep, that's actually kind of smart. Because it is so easy to just say like Alexa turn off. Yeah, or to swipe away notification on your phone. And part of that is because you're thinking, Oh, I've just got five more minutes on this thing. And I'll do that and you're like you're like, you're just like batting it away with your hand and then I it doesn't take me very much time to forget something. Say that. It's interesting.

    Kat Hunt 19:51

    When you hit when you reschedule, you pick increments so I can say I want to be reminded again in three hours or I want to be reminded again in 10 minutes, so maybe you're Like knee deep and some thing that really can't end a kid's got a problem your bandage it up the knee, whatever it might be, you can just very quickly say, remind me in two hours or you know what have you. Okay, but you can't delete it as easily as you can reschedule.

    KC Davis 20:17

    So if you do want to just batted away quickly, you can only do that by rescheduling it. And the rescheduling is easy.

    Kat Hunt 20:24

    Yes, fairly easy, but it makes you think about it. So you're not Yeah, you know, losing it in the ether of your brain.

    KC Davis 20:30

    I will say the thing that I use Alexa for, besides just the timer stuff is the grocery list feature. Because the amount of times that I have gone grocery shopping and forgotten, like something major. And I always think like when I run out of something major, I always think like this is so major, there's no way I'll forget to get this when I go or when I order or when I whatever. But I found that like, I'm noticing that I need something in my kitchen, usually when I'm in the middle of doing something in my kitchen. And so putting the Alexa in my kitchen, so that as I'm literally like, you know, I'm stirring a pot, right and I use the last of the red wine vinegar, I can literally just be like Alexa, I have red wine vinegar to the right, and I don't have to even stop what I'm doing. Because what I found was I wasn't stopping what I was doing to go like right down the list. So the ability to have her do something for me while I'm doing something else. And then you have like your whole list there.

    Kat Hunt 21:32

    Yep, absolutely. I do that with my my Apple watch, because I can feed it into the do app as well. I can set reminders or make lists. So Alexa and in and my Apple Watch kind of work. Similarly, one is just fixed in my office and one goes with me wherever I am.

    KC Davis 21:50

    Well, the thing that I also like about I don't know about the Apple Watch, but I had a smartwatch one time that I could make it the notifications just vibrate with no sound, which was really helpful in environments where there was other people around, or I didn't want to alert people to like what it was I was reminding myself, like you don't want to be take your medication right in the middle of a board meeting, right. But you still want to be alerted. And it's like, okay, I can do that. Like that a lot of there was something else I was gonna say. I think it was about the Alexa Oh, you were mentioning like giving your daughter like transition times and like layups to transitions. So I've started doing that with my kids too, mostly because I forget, I'll be like 10 more minutes a TV, and then I'll go do something and it'll be 45 minutes later. But you know what I found? And if you found the same thing, my kids respond much better to Alexa telling them that it's time to stop doing something than me.

    Kat Hunt 22:45

    I don't mind when you're better for everybody else's parents, but me.

    KC Davis 22:49

    It's almost like they see her as some objective robotic. Yeah, it just is time the house just went off right. Like as opposed to, Oh, mom just doesn't want us to watch more TV. So I just that's like an interesting observation I wanted to share with listeners because

    Kat Hunt 23:05

    I can't remember how young your kids are minors worry and five minds about the beat 13 and a few months. And one thing to think about as they get older, that's been good for her too is she started taking accountability for her own time buffers. So first, second, third grade, I would set the transition time, but now she sets her own. So she'll say, Alexa, remind me in 30 minutes that it's time to get ready for better or what have you. So she'll set her own buffers and and that's given her that skill that she'll take with her as she gets older. And it gives her some self efficacy with it too. So it's not Oh, you know, mom is imposing this thing on me it's me doing this to help myself feel better and do the things I need to do.

    KC Davis 23:55

    I have seen people utilize also like smart bulbs with their Alexa where you know, it'll, it'll change the color. Like if there was somebody that I was listening to where their kids get like 15 minutes to read before they go to bed. And instead of the parent having to go in and be like okay, lights off, they have a smart bulb, and after the 15 minutes, it turns purple to let them know they have a couple of minutes left. And then it turns off. And I mean obviously you can turn it back on but it's like it reminds them and I think that's so key for neurodivergent kids like teaching them how to use the technology that's going to be helpful to them. Because I've really I haven't done it yet but I really would love to even for my kids at their age like get some smart bulbs and put like one of the I have like an echo that someone gave me like the Alexa little dot, which is only like 50 bucks. I would love to set that up in their room to wake them up in the morning. Right where it was like telling them it's time to get up and it was like turning on the lights and maybe playing some music which is crazy that like even at the age of three and five, there's a way for me to start to give them some independence and some ownership. And I mean, I'm probably still gonna have to go up there and help them and things like that. I'm not like leaving them on their own. But I feel like there's so much potential in technology with our kids, to still give them the structure that they need, while allowing them like better teaching them to have some ownership over that, you know, their processes and taking care of themselves and creating their own structure.

    Kat Hunt 25:32

    Definitely. And for me, and my daughter, you know, being on the autism spectrum, she thrives on structure, and I am one of the most unstructured people in the universe. It's helped bridge a gap for us as a mother, daughter, dyad, where she's getting the structure, she needs a little bit more, but it's not either, it's not totally impossible, because a lot of things would be without these assistive technologies, I think for me, but it's also not abrasive to me. So it really creates a very harmonious kind of ecosystem. Not that things don't ever go wrong ever. We've been working on it for years, but you know, I definitely am things. There's little things like they're so simple, but they make a big difference.

    KC Davis 26:17

    That's awesome. Well, cat, thank you so much for coming on. And for sharing those solutions with us. I think that's gonna be really helpful to people. And I quite literally am going to go download the tree app right now.

    Kat Hunt 26:30

    I'll make a list of everything I kind of mentioned today to you so you can have it and share it and you know, all of these are just a hodgepodge of things I've tested so there's nothing they will put it in. Yeah, awesome. Thank you so much for having me today.

    KC Davis 26:45

    Absolutely. Thank you.


Christy Haussler