The ADHD Productivity Manual

When you specialize in ADHD, you spend a lot of time talking about how clients can get more done. Over twenty-five years of full-time practice, I’ve done more than 40,000 client hours. That teaches you a lot about how people with ADHD get stuck—and how to help them do more. And to suffer less in the process. The ADHD Productivity Manual is everything I’ve learned along the way.

Paperback and audiobook will be available May 9.

“I’m a season ticket holder for all things produced by Ari Tuckman. His masterful new book, The ADHD Productivity Manual, is his best work yet. In an ADHD-friendly manner, Dr. Tuckman has crystallized what you need to know and more importantly do and how to do it in this incomparable guide for living well with ADHD. This book will undoubtedly improve lives, including yours!”

– J. Russell Ramsay, Ph.D., ABPP, psychologist and author of The Adult ADHD Toolkit, Rethinking Adult ADHD, and The Adult ADHD & Anxiety Workbook

“Ari Tuckman has done it again. The ADHD Productivity Manual is practical, empowering, and refreshingly honest. He gives ADHD adults exactly what we need: zero BS strategies and deep respect. The reflection questions at the end of each chapter invite real transformation. This book will help you be more productive — but more importantly, it’ll help you live a good life.”

– Kristen Carder, Certified Coach, Host of the I Have ADHD Podcast, Founder of FOCUSED ADHD Coaching

“This is the closest thing I’ve seen to a comprehensive owner’s manual for your ADHD brain. And like a good owner’s manual, it’s compact, to-the-point, and full of actionable ‘troubleshooting’ prompts/solutions. Use it as a step-by-step guide, or as an a la carte menu depending on your particular challenge du jour. Either way, one of the best minds in the ADHD solutions arena has provided perhaps the ultimate roadmap to more traction and less frustration in your ADHD life.”

– Alan P. Brown, ADHD Coach and Creator of ADD Crusher™

“Ari Tuckman has done it again! With his trademark humor and compassionate candor, Ari walks us through our ADHD struggles with wisdom and grace, uplifting us with this inspiring, powerful, and practical guide to our own success.”

– Nachi Felt, PhD, Adjunct Professor of Psychology and Education, Co-Director of the Cognition and Neuroscience Lab at Teachers College, Columbia University

“Ari Tuckman PsyD gets it. In The ADHD Productivity Manual, he delivers the perfect mix of validation, insight, and practical tools for people with ADHD who want to get things done—and feel good about themselves in the process. Dr. Tuckman’s humor, honesty, and deep clinical experience shine through in every chapter. This isn’t just a book about productivity—it’s a guide to building a better life with ADHD, one doable step at a time.”

– Stephanie Moulton Sarkis, PhD, author and psychotherapist www.stephaniesarkis.com

“The search is over for a hands-on, practical, compassionate guide on increasing productivity for individuals (like myself) living with ADHD. Many workbooks out there talk the talk but Dr. Ari Tuckman actually delivers, to an audience he has advocated for and treated for over 25 years! He takes the common obstacles and overwhelming challenges those with ADHD know all too well and makes it less scary and, dare I say it, even fun to tackle. He possesses a wealth of information and more importantly translates that knowledge into strategies that someone with ADHD would realistically use. The tone of the book, like Dr. Tuckman, is educative, validating and encouraging—with a sense of humor sprinkled throughout the pages.”

– Roberto Olivardia, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist, Lecturer in the Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School. Parent of two college students with ADHD.

“In his terrific new book, The ADHD Productivity Manual, Dr. Ari Tuckman offers a smart, practical guide to living a better life with ADHD. It feels like having a conversation with a kind and knowledgeable therapist ally who really wants to guide you in showing up, improving your performance and noticing your successes along the way. I really love this book and I will definitely recommend it to my clients, friends and community!”

– Sharon Saline, PhD, Author of What Your ADHD Child Wishes You Knew: Working Together to Empower Kids for Success in School and Life and The ADHD Solution Card Deck

“With practical compassionate advice, Dr. Tuckman shares deep insight into why people with ADHD struggle with productivity and how to move forward. He offers a vital and easy to follow guide for anyone looking to get ahead of their ADHD and more easily keep up with the demands of everyday life.”

– Mark Bertin, MD, Author of Mindful Parenting for ADHD and Mindfulness and Self Compassion for Teen ADHD

Overview Table of Contents Read a Chapter

Overview

When you specialize in ADHD, you spend a lot of time talking about how clients can get more done. Over twenty-five years of full-time practice, I’ve done more than 40,000 client hours. That teaches you a lot about how people with ADHD get stuck—and how to help them do more. And to suffer less in the process. The ADHD Productivity Manual is everything I’ve learned along the way.

The obvious goal of this book is to help you be more productive, but the real goal is to live a better life. Sure, I talk about how ADHD impacts your productivity in lots of different ways and then offer all sorts of strategies for all sorts of situations. Importantly, I also cover how to think about how productive you really want to be and how to negotiate this with the people in your life who may have a different opinion. So, part of that goal of living a better life is to have better relationships.

As always, this book is user-friendly, readable, and action-oriented. It has thirty-six brief chapters that delve into an area where ADHD (or just being human) can influence your productivity. Feel free to jump around. The chapters are broken into seven sections:

Why Does ADHD Make Productivity Harder? Knowledge is power, but so is acceptance.
Set a Better Foundation Life is hard enough, so make some things easier.
What Are You Working Towards? Hint: a meaningful life that you can feel good in.
Set Up a Good Work Environment So your brain doesn’t have to work as hard.
Sharpen Your Tools How to not hate schedules, to do lists, and reminders.
Productivity is a Mental Game Flex those motivation muscles even when you don’t want to.
The Social Side of Productivity Play well with others, but also know when it isn’t your problem to solve.

It’s loaded with strategies, but probably funnier and more entertaining than you would think. It even looks good, thanks to Marcy Caldwell’s fantastic line drawings. Yep, pretty pictures.

Put It to Work

In order to make it easier to apply these lessons to your life (you know, the thing you actually care about), every chapter ends with some questions to help you really think about how to use these strategies. It’s not quite a workbook, but it is a book that helps you do the work.

Table of Contents

Thirty-six short chapters that cover one area that affects your productivity. Start at the beginning or jump around—your choice.

Introduction: Seriously, Another ADHD Book?

Getting Started

Why Does ADHD Make Productivity Harder?
ADHD is All About Doing
ADHD Makes It Harder to See Time
ADHD Makes It Harder to Feel the Future
Co-Occurring Conditions Make Things Even Harder
Why Am I So Maddeningly Inconsistent?
What Exactly Is Getting in Your Way Here?
Set a Better Foundation
Make the Most of Your Brain: Sleep, Diet, and Exercise
Should You Take Medication?
Give Yourself Some Credit: Notice Your Successes
Surround Yourself with Good People

III. What Are You Working Towards?

What Are Your Goals? And Are They the Right Goals?
Too Many Ideas! How to Sort Through All Your Options
Do You Actually Have Time for That?
Set Up a Good Work Environment
Get the Distractions Before They Get You
Stay Away from Where You Get Stuck or Slide Away
Control the Screens Before They Control You
Do You Really Need to Keep That?
Create a Smooth Workflow
Sharpen Your Tools
Yes, You Need a Real Schedule
And Probably a To Do List, Too
Wait, What Was I Supposed to Be Doing Now?
You Get (Social) Points for Using Your Tools
Productivity is a Mental Game
The Lies We Tell Ourselves
Just Bite the Bullet on Things You Hate
Ambivalence: Pick a Side
No, That’s Fake Productivity
The Love and Hate of Deadlines
How Perfect Does That Need to Be?
Overwhelm: Break Down Big Tasks
Ambiguity: What Am I Supposed to Do Here?

VII. The Social Side of Productivity

Social Pressure, Faking It, and Falling Short
How Productive Do You Really Need to Be?
Should You Tell People You Have ADHD?
What About Disclosing at Work?
Disappoint and Disagree with Grace

VIII. Bring it Together

You Deserve a Better Life

Read a Chapter

After a lifetime of ADHD-based struggles, it’s easy to get tangled up in your head the next time a deadline hits. In Section VI. Productivity is a Mental Game, I cover eight topics related to how we can get in our own way so you can create a stronger mindset to better handle life’s inevitable challenges. There are a lot of things that you can’t control, but you may have more influence over what goes on between your ears than you may think. As a psychologist, this is kind of what I do all day. The goal of this section is to help you keep showing up and bringing your best to the next challenge.

This section has eight chapters:

The Lies We Tell Ourselves
Just Bite the Bullet on Things You Hate
Ambivalence: Pick a Side
No, That’s Fake Productivity
The Love and Hate of Deadlines
How Perfect Does That Need to Be?
Overwhelm: Break Down Big Tasks
Ambiguity: What Am I Supposed to Do Here?

Any of those look familiar? Grab the PDF here and flex those mental muscles. Because I like sharing my work, these chapters are different from the free sample offered by book sellers.