AI tools for ADHD

AI and ADHD go hand in hand for me, as some of the best ways to stump executive dysfunction lie in tools people have created for exactly such a purpose. Here’s some of my favourite ways to trick my brain into working, all free of course, because ADHD medication is expensive.

Readvox is a chrome extension that puts executive dysfunction to bed for me. I often find myself reading chapter upon chapter all at once, a result of the executive dysfunction freeze response that my ADHD will present me with every evening after my medication has worn off. This is one of those “burn a little bit now or become charcoal later” kind of situations that are so common. A read aloud extension turns the boiling flames down to a simmer. Select any text on your screen, and press the play button, that’s how easy it is. I can stay in my ADHD paralysis, and still go on reading. Most textbooks, work documents, lengthy emails, and articles don’t come with an audiobook version. Now they do! Initially I was frustrated with the pacing of the voice, I think much faster than most screen readers can talk, but Readvox was a great choice for me, because it allowed me to slow down or speed up the speech as much as I wanted, and gave me a ton of voices to choose from which stops me from drowning them out as they get too familiar.

If listening isn’t your style, the classic Chat-GPT comes in handy as well. No - not to write your assignments and do your work for you, but to summarize all the big readings into smaller, easier to swallow points. I’ve got a textbook this semester that reads like someone was desperately trying to reach a word goal, without any mind to how it was actually going to be perceived. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still got all the useful information I need to support my learning, it’s just buried under mountains of paraphrasing, repetition, and several slightly varied examples. Chat-GPT has been my saving grace with this one. It managed to turn 3 chapters, (somehow 100 pages) into a simple 3 page document, while still including all the important information! I know, because I passed my exam with flying colours. You’ll have to give it the right prompts though, simply asking it to summarize isn’t quite specific enough. Prompts such as “Could you summarize this chapter for me, make sure that I still get at least one example and full explanation of the subject, and include anything you think would be helpful to my understanding.” or even, “Could you rewrite this for me, and take out anything repetitive?” are great ways to get the AI to do exactly what you need it to do. The effort to type a few extra sentences is well worth the hours-long concept of filtering through wordy documents. 

Another very useful AI tool for me has been goblin.tools. Laying in bed and battling your executive dysfunction on your own is one thing, but goblin tools can help make your argument as to why doing your laundry will in fact, not kill you, much more convincing. This website will let you input a task on your to-do list, and then using the little magic wand, it will break down the task into steps for you, and estimate the time for each step, and the total task time. My ADHD has just told me that I can only do laundry on a Saturday, as it will definitely take a full 12 hours to do. I’m sure that’s wrong, but not exactly how wrong, and not exactly sure where to even start, considering the small piles across my house. Inputting the task into Goblin Tools, I was actually able to inform my executive dysfunction that laundry only takes two hours, less if I ignore the tedious (and surely fake) concept of sorting my colours. My ADHD conceded that 2 hours didn’t actually seem quite as hard, and I was permitted by my own brain to complete my laundry on a Tuesday thanks to the helpful AI tool. 

All said and done, these AI tools were built to help us out, and we deserve to be able to accommodate for our ADHD. Using these tools can be the difference between laying frozen in bed, and being able to get up and get stuff done.