How to ADHD: An Insider's Guide to Working with Your Brain (Not Against It)

Jessica McCabe

Jan 2024 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Jessica McCabe

About this audiobook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this honest, friendly, and shame-free guide, the creator of the award-winning YouTube channel How to ADHD shares the hard-won insights and practical strategies that have helped her survive, even thrive, in a world not built for her brain.

“The world of ADHD has been waiting for this book with bated breath for many years. If there’s a fairy godmother of our lot, it’s Jessica McCabe.”—Edward Hallowell, MD, coauthor of Driven to Distraction and ADHD 2.0

Forget “try harder.” When your brain works differently, you need to try different.
 
Diagnosed with ADHD at age twelve, Jessica struggled with a brain that she didn’t understand. She lost things constantly, couldn’t finish projects, and felt like she was putting more effort in than everyone around her while falling further and further behind. At thirty-two years old—broke, divorced, and living with her mom—Jessica decided to look more deeply into her ADHD challenges. She reached out to experts, devoured articles, and shared her discoveries on YouTube.
 
In How to ADHD, Jessica reveals the tools that have changed her life while offering an unflinching look at the realities of living with ADHD. The key to navigating a world not built for the neurodivergent brain, she discovered, isn’t to fix or fight against its natural tendencies but to understand and work with them. She explains how ADHD affects everyday life, covering executive function impairments, rejection sensitivity, difficulties with attention regulation, and more. You’ll also find ADHD-specific strategies for adapting your environment, routines, and systems, including:
 
• Boost the signal and decrease the noise. Facilitate focus by putting your goals where you can see them and fighting distractions with distractions.
• Have less stuff to manage. Learn why you have trouble planning and prioritizing, and why doing more starts with doing less.
• Build your “time wisdom.” Work backward when you plan, and track how long it actually takes you to do something.
• Learn about your emotions. Understand how naming your emotions and letting yourself experience them can make them easier to regulate.
 
With quotes from Jessica’s online community, chapter summaries, and reading shortcuts designed for the neurodivergent reader, How to ADHD will help you recognize your strengths and challenges, tackle “bad brain days,” and be kinder to yourself in the process.

Ratings and reviews

This book is entertaining, educational, and easy to read/listen to. Jessica McCabe beautifully lays out the chapters, including her own and others' anecdotes about the struggles of ADHD, making the book SUPER relatable. Jessica covers all the major areas that ADHD affect the brain and our behavior. She goes through executive functions, talks about relationships, and is inspirational in teaching us how to work WITH our ADHD brain and not make things harder. She includes strategies, tools, and choices, lending to the ADHD brain. I'd recommend this book to anyone who has ADHD and/or has a loved one who has ADHD.

I am currently going through a divorce mainly because of resentment from my partner towards me for dealing with me not dealing with my adhd since I was in middle school. This book has helped me and realize I am not alone in my condition ending up hurting my relationship when not dealt with. I am doing that now. But I have also decided going forward anyone I am going to get serious with at a bare minimum will listen to how to heart if not the whole book so they have an understanding of what people with adhd actually deal with and know what to expect at times.

I've lived with my ADHD since I was in elementary school. I'm a middle aged adult now and yep still not any easier. I'll also admit I'm not finished with it at the time of writing this (yep, it's cuz ADHD) but, here's the 3 core discoveries I've gotten in just a few chapters and the emotional (mostly good) ride it's inspired: 1. 95% of my Life's hardships have been, at least in part, rooted in my ADHD (A deeply frustratingly, and profound, "Oh, so I can do something about it!") 2. wait you're telling me I've actually been doing a Roughly C+ job dealing with this?! ON MY OWN?!! (makes me wanna angerly swear loudly and celebrate at the same time) 3. Finally SOMEONE HAS SOLID ADVICE THAT CAN HELP! (a resounding laugh of relief!) I'm truly thankful to the author for writing this book and have no doubts I'll be re-read it over and over (not just because ADHD, it's just a great read too)