Improving your self-awareness can have a huge impact on finding success in what you are doing. As a key executive function, self-awareness also known as metacognition, is something that people with ADHD tend to struggle with. In-fact, on average, it is only until the late 20s that people with ADHD begin to develop it in healthy amounts naturally.
Self-awareness is incredibly important for structure and routines because this executive function is essentially you becoming more aware of your thought processes, how you conduct yourself in certain situations, and how you work in general. The more self-aware you are the better you can navigate your day, self-evaluate, set realistic goals and see the bigger picture.
The more self-aware you are in your thinking the better you can be at self-regulation.
This has to do with how you choose to spend your time mentally and physically. Safe to say this is an important subject for some effort and attention if you want to make routines work and achieve specific goals.
Routines require that you notice as you are doing them, what works and what does not, so they can constantly be improved. If you are fully aware of a routine every day for an entire week, taking notes on timing, pacing, order and goals of that routine, how many improvements and adjustments do you think you would make? Our guess is the routine would look completely different and rightfully so, because now it is better suited to you and how you live life.
Routines that are created and consistently improved from self-aware thinking will be the most successful.
For instance, timing is a key parameter that you essentially guess at when you first input a task into your routine. As you begin to do the routine more and more you might notice the amount of time it takes you to do certain things, whether you are over or under and apply that to your routine for next time.
Building self-awareness is difficult so it will take time. The good news is, you seem to be well on the way, because it does take some amount of awareness to say "Hey, I could use some help with my routines!" and download an app to help you design and get them done.
Our newest feature in the Brili Achievements tab on the app helps you be more self aware. View your 'Routine History' and get insights on where you need to improve. Ask yourself a few questions:
Are there particular days when I usually get less done? Are there particular routines that I tend to start later than I have them scheduled?