Do I Have ADHD?

When Your Child’s Evaluation Starts to Feel Familiar 

You take your child in for an ADHD evaluation.

The questions start.

Do they have trouble staying focused on tasks that don’t interest them?

Yes.

Do they get distracted easily?

Yes.

Do they procrastinate or have trouble getting started?

Yes.

Do they lose track of time? Forget things? Start one thing and somehow end up doing three other things?

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Except somewhere along the way, you realize you’re not only answering for your child.

You’re answering for yourself.

I’ve been hearing versions of this more and more lately. Parents take their child through an ADHD assessment or begin learning about executive function, and suddenly they start recognizing patterns in their own lives that they’ve never really thought about before.

And it raises an interesting question:

Is this ADHD? Is this executive function? Or is it just really hard to focus in the world we live in right now?

We’re All Trying to Focus in a World That Doesn’t Make It Easy

Think about how many things compete for your attention in a single hour.

An email comes in.

Your phone buzzes.

You remember something you need to order.

You open your phone to do that and see a text.

You respond to the text, notice another notification, check it quickly, and somehow end up watching a few Reels.

Then you look up and think, Wait. What was I doing?

And back to work you go.

Until the next notification.

We live in a world of YouTube Shorts, Reels, texts, Slack, email, news alerts, apps, watches buzzing on our wrists, and an expectation that we should be reachable and responsive almost all the time.

We’ve also gotten used to getting things immediately.

Want to know something? Ask ChatGPT or Google it.

Want to buy something? It can be at your house in a few hours.

Bored for 30 seconds? There are thousands of videos waiting for you.

Meanwhile, many of the things that matter most still require something very different from us: sustained attention, patience, planning, prioritization, and the ability to keep going even when the reward isn’t immediate.

Those are executive function skills.

So...Does Everyone Have ADHD Now?

No.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder with specific diagnostic criteria. Being distracted by your phone, procrastinating on a project, or occasionally losing track of time does not mean you have ADHD.

And executive function challenges aren’t exclusive to ADHD.

But learning about ADHD, whether through your child, your partner, a friend, or even your own curiosity, can give you language for things you’ve experienced for years.

Maybe you’ve always relied on a deadline to finally get moving.

Maybe you can focus intensely on something you’re interested in but struggle to stay engaged with something repetitive.

Maybe your calendar is organized, but your brain still feels like it has 37 tabs open.

Maybe you’re successful and accomplishing a lot, but it takes an enormous amount of energy to keep all the balls in the air.

Recognizing yourself in some of these experiences doesn’t answer the question of whether you have ADHD.

But it might raise another question that is worth exploring:

What would make it easier for me to manage my attention, time, priorities, and everything I’m trying to hold?

Maybe the Better Question Isn’t “Do I Have ADHD?”

If you’re wondering whether you have ADHD, that’s a conversation to have with an appropriately qualified healthcare professional.

But from a coaching perspective, I’m interested in a different question:

Where is the friction?

Where do things consistently feel harder than they need to?

Is it starting?

Prioritizing?

Estimating time?

Staying focused?

Switching between tasks?

Remembering everything you need to follow up on?

Creating routines that actually last?

Stopping yourself from saying yes to one more thing?

Because whether you have an ADHD diagnosis or not, those are things you can start paying attention to.

You Don’t Need Another Productivity Hack

When we notice that we’re struggling with focus or productivity, our instinct is often to find something that will fix it.

A new planner.

A new app.

Time blocking.

The perfect morning routine.

Turning off notifications.

And some of those things can absolutely help.

But a system only works if it works for you.

That’s where understanding your executive function and your strengths becomes important.

Maybe time blocking helps you focus. Maybe looking at a calendar packed with blocks makes you want to run in the other direction.

Maybe you need quiet to concentrate. Maybe you actually focus better when there’s some activity around you.

Maybe a detailed task list gives you clarity. Maybe seeing 28 items on a list immediately makes you feel overwhelmed and you need to see only the next three.

There isn’t one correct way to be productive.

The goal is to understand what helps your brain get from intention to action.

Pay Attention to the Patterns, Not Just the Problems

This is one of the things I work on with clients through executive function coaching.

We don’t just look at what isn’t working.

We look for patterns.

When can you focus?

What makes it easier to start?

When does a routine stick?

What kinds of deadlines help you and which ones create unnecessary stress?

What happens right before you get overwhelmed?

What are you naturally really good at?

What structures are already working that you may not even realize you’ve created?

That last part matters.

Because you aren’t starting from scratch.

You already have ways of operating that work for you. Understanding your strengths helps us identify more of them.

Then we can build routines and structures around those patterns instead of continually trying to force yourself into systems that don’t fit.

Our Attention Is Valuable

I don’t think the answer is that everyone needs to become perfectly focused, delete every app, put their phone in a drawer, and suddenly live a distraction-free life.

That’s probably not realistic.

But I do think it’s worth becoming more intentional about what gets our attention.

Because when everything can interrupt us, everything starts to feel important. And when everything feels important, it becomes much harder to decide what actually deserves our focus.

Maybe watching your child go through an ADHD evaluation makes you recognize some things about yourself.

Maybe it leads you to seek your own evaluation.

Maybe it doesn’t.

Either way, it can be an opportunity to better understand how you operate.

What helps you focus?

What makes you feel overwhelmed?

Where do you consistently get stuck?

What structure do you need?

What routines make things easier?

And what would change if you stopped trying to force yourself into systems that don’t work for you and started building ones that do?

You Don’t Have to Figure It Out on Your Own

This is exactly the kind of work I do with clients through executive function coaching.

We start by understanding you: your strengths, your executive function, what’s working, and where things are getting harder than they need to be.

Then we get practical.

We identify what you need, build routines and structure around it, test what works in your actual life, and adjust as we go. And when everything feels overwhelming and you don’t know where to start, sometimes we start right there. We sort through it, prioritize it, break it down, and get things moving.

You don’t need to have ADHD to benefit from executive function coaching. And if you do have ADHD, coaching can give you practical support for navigating the day-to-day executive function challenges that come with it.

The goal isn’t to become someone who never gets distracted or overwhelmed.

It’s to better understand how you operate and build a way of working that helps you focus, follow through, and spend more of your energy on the things that actually matter to you.

If any of this felt a little too familiar, learn more about Executive Function Coaching or reach out to start a conversation.