Workplace Strategies to Enhance & Sustain Your Daily Functioning

It's not always about working harder, but smarter. Below is a list of discreet and practical strategies you can easily adopt into your workplace to help you better manage sensory overload, stress and improve your focus. This list of strategies won't disrupt your boss, co-workers or disclose your neurodivergence.

At a glance

1. Reduce sensory triggers

2. Simplify and streamline

3. Optimize your focus

4. Get tasks out of your head

5. Techniques to self-regulate when you need to

6. The daily basics you cannot skip

1. Reduce sensory triggers

Harsh lighting, background noise, uncomfortable temperatures and screen glare drain you all day without ever feeling like "work is hard." You just end the day empty and cannot say why. These are the quiet leaks, and they cost the same battery you need to focus.

What to do: Handle the sensory triggers that are draining you proactively, to stop this from constantly affecting you in the background. There are ways to discreetly approach this in the workplace.

Tools that help: 

• Fluorescent Lighting: Anti-Glare Sensory Glasses for screens and office lighting. You can get Anti-Glare, Carmel Tinted Glasses that also have polarization and UV400 protection, for additional outdoor light reduction.

• Noise: Noise Cancelling Headphones with in-built noise cancelling, you don’t have to listen to music to reduce the background noises.

• Temperature: Thermometer Keychain so you can notice what temperatures make you uncomfortable aiding in physical awareness for those with alexithymia and thus to help to regulate more quickly.

• Wear Comfortable Clothing: Comfort over appearance, there are plenty of clothes that are professional and very comfortable. An oversized office shirt and stretchy slacks are comfortable and professional and feel free to wear small variations of the same outfit, if steve jobs can do it, so can you.

How to say it to your boss: 

"I would concentrate much better if I could have the option of having my desk further away from the main walkway”.

“Wearing noise cancelling headphones sometimes can help me tune out background noise, for focus, when I am working on more complicated tasks. Would that be okay?"

“Sometimes, I like to wear these glasses as they cut a lot of blue-light out from screens and white lights inside, would you mind if I wear them inside when I feel my eyes starting to strain?”

2. Simplify and streamline

Every extra decision, every extra app, every instruction thrown at you in passing is a small tax. Enough of them and you are running on empty before lunch, with nothing left for the actual work.

What to do: 

1. Cut the number of systems and choices. One list, not seven.

2. Create and reuse your own templates so recurring work does not need a fresh decision every time.

3. Slow the flow of information down: ask for it in writing so you can process it once and keep it, instead of catching it on the fly or ask whether the Microsoft Teams training session can be recorded. 

How to say it to your boss: 

"Having written information can be great to have to refer back to on a later date, additionally if someone is away we can provide those updates to them more easily. Would it be okay if I or someone else creates and distributes a written summary of this information?”

“Would you be able to send me instructions in writing, then i’ll go through your information step-by-step at my desk. If I have any issues, ill reach out, if that works for you?”

3. Optimise your focus

Your focus is not spread evenly across the day. Pick the hours where you are your sharpest and do your hardest tasks during that window. Mine is 10am to 2pm usually with a good coffee.

What to do: 

1. Find your high-focus window and guard it for the hard work.

2. Push admin and routine jobs into your low-energy stretches.

3. Do one thing at a time. Multitasking feels productive and quietly wrecks your accuracy.

How to say it to your boss: 

If you are in senior management only:  "I focus best in the mornings, so I try to keep that block for deep work. Could we put most meetings after lunch where possible? I will get far more done for you that way." Otherwise, if you are not in senior management then you do not have control over when staff meetings occur for the whole cohort.

4. Get tasks out of your head

Holding the plan, the next step and the whole list in your memory is expensive and unreliable. That is executive function, and for a lot of us it runs differently. Do not fight it. Offload it.

What to do: 

1. Capture tasks somewhere you can see them, not in your head. Then Chunkify this list by clumping similar tasks together and then set a chunk of time to complete those tasks in different time chunks.

2. Break scary jobs down until the first step is easy: "write one ugly sentence. 

3. Use body doubling, working alongside another person in the room or on a call, to get started. Their presence is the help.

Tools that help:

• Use your Calendar or Undated Weekly Planner to Chunkify tasks

• A Mini To-Do Notebook small enough to carry into every meeting, so what your working memory drops still lands somewhere.

How to say it to your boss: 

"For meetings can we send tasks and deadlines in writing?”

5. Techniques to self-regulate when you need to

Some days the overwhelm builds anyway. Having a couple of go-to moves ready means you can settle yourself before it tips into a shutdown or a snap, instead of white-knuckling it.

What to do: 

1. A discreet fidget for restless hands lets you stim quietly and is far cheaper than suppressing it all day

2. A scent anchor to ground yourself

3. Slow breathing

4. A short walk, a few minutes away from the desk filling up your water bottle or going to the toilet.

Tools that help:

• A Fidget Ring or Stress Ball for quiet stimming that looks like nothing, and Aromatherapy Jewelry as a scent anchor you can wear.

• In the moment: When you feel the edge coming, step out for two minutes to the bathroom, fill up your water bottle or for a 15 minute walk on your break.

6. The daily basics you cannot skip

None of the above holds if the foundation is gone. When you are underslept, dehydrated, or running on caffeine and sugar alone, your capacity drops before the day even starts, and no clever technique buys it back.

What to do: Protect the basics like they are part of the job, because they are.

• Sleep: guard it. It is the single biggest lever on your next-day capacity.

• Food: eat regularly and eat food with nutrition, energy, protein, vitamin C, fibre and omega 3’s for your brain and to level your blood sugar

• Caffeine: Coffee has been known to be a non-medical resource to enhance focus for those with ADHD and with the right amount each day can be very affective in managing focus at work. It is important to not rush through having 3 shots of cafe coffee in the first 30 minutes, it is better to sip the one coffee throughout the day to prevent crashes. It is also important to drink at least a litre of water in the day if you are having caffeine, preferably 2 litres + a cup of water for each coffee shot.

• Sugar: ADHD symptoms do get worse when blood sugar is low, therefore, it is important to not eat a lot sugar at the start of the day to enhance your focus and energy throughout the day. That being said when you are low on energy and about to crash you can use little bits of sugar to get you to the end of the day, having some chocolate by the desk is perfect at 3pm just to give you enough energy to finish the day and not have to go home early sometimes 

• Hydration: easy to forget, and dehydration reads exactly like brain fog and fatigue. 2 liters a day of water is necessary to help manage the effects of sugar and caffeine

  
  

Tools that help:

• Water: A 2L Water Bottle with time markers so you fill up your water bottle only once a day and know how much water you need to drink by the end to hit your hydration target for healthy living.

• Sugar: Keeping some chocolate in your bag for energy crashes

• Sleep: Blackout curtains to remove all light from the room you are sleeping, White Noise Machine to block out outside noises and help insomnia

The real shift

You were never the problem to fix. The mismatch was.

Sustainable functioning is not trying harder. It is cutting the drains, using workplace appropriate supports, and protecting the basics, so the version of you that shows up at work lasts longer.

Wired Differently Australia creates resources and support for neurodivergent adults. This is general information, not clinical or legal advice.