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How “The Window” Helps Me Manage My ADHD Symptoms
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but small, incremental efforts help lessen the mental load
When I was running cross country in college, a nutritionist gave a presentation on “the recovery window.” The concept was that after a run, you have a 30-minute window to optimize your recovery. In those 30 minutes, if you did not have a meal and eat, you would be compromising your post-run recovery.
This window was obviously a problem if we drove 30 minutes to an hour to run somewhere and could not feasibly get a meal in during that time period. This would lead to an all-or-nothing mindset, at times, where people felt forced to eat something within that period of time, so some people prepared by bringing protein bars or the like, while others felt compelled to stop and get food somewhere on the way back.
This “recovery window” has proven to be a lot more complicated on factors like whether the person has been fasting and what state of training the person is in. This window can last up to five or six hours, according to dietitian graduate student Sarah Katz.
Nutrition aside, the concept of this “window,” when applied to other areas of my life, has been critical, recently, in managing my ADHD. This summer, I have been doing an internship as a law student at the courthouse. I have done work for my internship while taking classes at night. As a special education teacher, there are times I also go into the school building to get filing or paperwork done. In the months of late August to mid-June, when school is in session for my students, this daily routine accelerates into being busy from 7 a.m. to 9:30 p.m.
For me, it is not only about being busy or occupied. It is about being efficient given that there is only so much time and a lot to do. It is knowing there is only a small window to commit to a certain task before I have to move on to some other pressing task. As someone who leads the special education program at my school, I can commit to a certain piece of paperwork and then have to drop everything when a student has a question or when a parent wants a conference over their student’s progress.
