In addition to teaching the MTEL to a graduate student from the North Shore today, I also worked with students from Ireland, Russia, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic on strengthening their writing skills and completing final papers. I feel very fortunate to spend time with such a geographically eclectic range of clients!

Everyone procrastinates, and creative people with ADHD have a particularly difficult time shifting from one task to the next. Getting started is often particularly daunting because once people with ADHD get immersed in a task, they may work on it for hours. So the mere thought of committing to sitting for hours to do something mundane and difficult or interesting but high stakes is enough to make a person want to fold laundry instead. That’s why I tell my students to consider the ten minute rule. It’s the same strategy my mother used with me, and it’s highly effective when you just can’t seem to get started. “Just spend ten minutes.” Inevitably, when you spend ten minutes on a task, you realize it is much easier than you thought. You may even get the task completed in one sitting. If you don’t have hours to spend, however, using a kitchen timer to track a beginning and an end to the time you’re investing is helpful.

And try using the ten minute rule in other areas of your life. It worked for Mom! If she’d want me to watch an old movie that I was sure would be boring, she’d say, “Just watch ten minutes.” Of course I would hem and haw, roll my eyes, and look at my watch for the first five minutes, but by the last five minutes (more often than not) I was transfixed. The same phenomenon can occur with schoolwork (I swear!), personal statements, or that report you don’t want to write.

Learning a new skill is humbling, even for an exceptional tutor. It’s important for educators to keep learning, so we can stay in touch with the ego swallowing feeling of being a beginner.