I Accidentally Learned to Leverage ADHD by Keeping a Grimoire
Tap here to jump down to the TL;DR
Okay, yes, I play Dungeons and Dragons and I'm in my thirties.
Now that that's out of the way, in early 2024 I was working on creating a new character for an upcoming game. The previous campaign had been set in space, with the vibe falling somewhere between cyberpunk and steampunk, and— while it was objectively really cool to play a hot space elf who could transform into a body of stars— I was honestly looking forward to diving back into a more typical fantasy-based setting in the next one.
Strangely, the inspiration for this character came from my favorite focus tool, Stimagz, small stick-shaped magnets used to create soothing repetitive patterns. My favorites at the time were a set that glowed in the dark, but under normal light were a slightly translucent white, somewhat reminiscent of bone. Macabre, I know, but hear me out: I was going to be using them during the game anyway, and I thought it might be fun to make up a simple fortune-telling bone-casting mechanic for a witch character.
I'm sure you'll be just as shocked as I was to learn that there isn't a built-in character template for creating a witch in D&D, so I started researching how other players had "home-brewed" their own.
I usually love the research and creative process phase of putting a character together, and this was no exception. I found myself watching YouTube videos on "witch-builds" and reading seemingly-ancient articles on charm-casting (bone-casting's less-serious cousin uses any collection of tiny objects, not just bones), and somewhere along the way I stumbled across the greatest concept I'd seen in a long time: the grimoire.
In the broadest sense, a grimoire is a comprehensive and often historical book of magic. An instructive collection of spells, rituals, techniques, and practices curated and passed down from one practitioner or coven to the next.
This concept clicked into my life like a puzzle piece, filling a gap I hadn't seen, but felt.
You see, I had received a positive diagnosis for ADHD between Thanksgiving and Christmas the previous year (which itself had been an unspeakably validating puzzle piece) and, in the early stages of treatment, I was already recognizing a constellation of patterns that had played out over my entire life.
Diagnosis gave me the language I needed to educate myself about the way my brain worked. So, armed with the correct terminology, I soon learned that— while certainly unique— I was not alone. I found belonging in the ADHD community with surprising immediacy, where no one made me feel eccentric for having several apps for everything , including to keep from getting so focused on a task that I'd forget to eat (or pee) until I was in dire straights. In fact, I was met with open arms and a cheery refrain of "one of us, one of us..."
Something I've heard frequently since, and do believe strongly, is "If you know one person with ADHD, you know one person with ADHD", we're as different from one another as we are from the Normies. That said, we're often trying to solve similar struggles, even though effective solutions usually look different from person to person.
Treatment, education, and reflection have helped me zoom out far enough to gain the perspective necessary to observe that this leads to a community of people who are individually searching for a single Capital-S Solution. A one-size-fits-all fixer of a to-do list or strategy or app or book or philosophy or mindset or habit tracker or journal or AI-powered-auto-tagging-VR-thought-sorting-second-brain that costs an arm and a leg if you want it to sync between your phone and computer but it's worth it because, after a lifetime of being both too much and not enough, it's finally The Solution™. The One Thing™ that will finally Fix You™.
At the same time I realized there is no one right way. Even non-ADHD folks struggle to stick with a once-and-for-all strategy. But the breakthrough for me was in realizing that's okay. It allowed me to see through the illusion of failure and give myself permission to use what works.
A history of designing processes and routines, nerding-out about organization, and creating systems had taught me to save any resources that might be useful. So, all along I had been instinctively compiling a simple list of Things That Worked and Things to Try, with quick descriptions of what-for and why. My original intention for this list had been to find the pattern that would show me why they had stopped working, but I noticed something else instead: Whenever a breakdown, bottleneck, or Big Change™ appeared, I would swap in new (or old) components until something fit again.
All along I had been building my Grimoire.
If you're late-diagnosed like me, you likely have plenty of systems of your own. Systems are how we made it so far before we realized most people don't have to work that hard at "normal" things, and I mean this in both the personal and societal sense— with bonus points for societal if you're female-shaped (But that's a tangent for another day). Always putting your PKW (phone, keys, wallet) in designated areas is a system, writing things down is a system, setting multiple reminders is a system, having a hamper with multiple compartments for your laundry so you can sort clothes as they come off of your body is a system, having socks that are all identical so you don't have to pair them is a system (can you tell I really hate laundry?), the list is endless.
The Grimoire gave me a framework for the cyclical nature of my systems. I set out to build it with intention, and that's when I realized how much advertising and marketing in the productivity industry was targeted toward the neurodivergent community —peddling the myth of The Solution™.
This realization led me to formalize my process and share my list, and I'm really glad I did. The feedback I received in the very niche community where it originated inspired me to keep going, and ultimately empowered me to be writing this article.
I have spent my life wishing I knew how to use my creative voice to help others, and it took the synthesis of two seemingly unrelated things I never could have imagined putting together to show me how that might be possible. How I could use so many of the things that make me who I am to show members of my community how they might leverage their own unique qualities to thrive right where they are.
Let me encourage you to keep going with the knowledge that you are never alone, keep returning to what works with openness and intention, and keep experimenting with mindfulness as you build your own grimoire.
I'll be here to help you every step of the way.
✂️ TL;DR
Author with late-diagnosed ADHD realized their various "systems" for managing life are like a personal grimoire (the magical version of a playbook). They critique the productivity industry's focus on singular, usually costly, solutions for neurodivergent individuals and advocate for embracing a flexible, self-curated collection of strategies that work for you.