How do you live a busy life with ADHD?

You're into an extremely rigorous degree taking a full course load, working, and planning a wedding?

I don't even have ADHD. I can push myself and focus all day, I can memorise without struggling much - at uni, I could draw you any given amino acid from memory, and that was for an elective. And I'm telling you, what you're describing sounds like too much for me.

You should absolutely positively not work and be doing anything time-intensive on the side while you are studying. Unless you want to burn out and fail, of course.

Read here you little smart fucker. And read well. I've been in those exact shoes as you not too long ago. The only difference was i did chemical engineering. It sucked ass.

1st most important thing is reduce your course load. Yeah it sucks that you are going to have to delay your graduation by about a year. But I can almost guarantee that you are going to fail classes and have to pay for them again and delay your graduation regardless. Cut one class minimum, 2 if you want to actually kill it in grades and compression of the material beyond what the classes offer. I learned this because well I did it by failing and being forced to reduce the corse load.

2nd don't take the classes in the given order from the school. For example. When I was doing Chem the school I went to set it as semester 1, math, applied Chem, instrumental analysis, organic Chem, lab tech, elective. Semester 2, would be math 2, applied Chem 2, physics, biology, organic Chem 2. Elective.

In semester 2, I would just dump biology,physics, and pick up instrumental analysis 2 , lab tec 2. This way my head isn't running back a related, unrelated subject when I'm trying to focus on something else.

3. You have a choice. You can do subpar for everything and see how that goes or suck at something, but be great at others. And it's not just school subjects. You can stretch yourself between school, wedding, work, and friends. But that's just gonna be subpar all along the board. Cut the social life, if your friends are any fucking good they will understand. Delay the wedding. Do you love your spouse? Do they love you? Good enough you don't need to prove it to anyone by having a wedding. If that's not an option. Well then delay it because right now school is the most important and you would probably want to actually be able to invest your self fully into the wedding.

This too shall pass and before you know it you will be back into the swing of things with friends and family.

Work what kind of work is it? Before I comment on that.

Also can you ride your bike to school. I found that to be incredibly helpful for some reason.

Oh, and don't worry about being slow. I was slow as hell, I was always the last to finish my labs, did all my tests with acomidations. Handed in all my work late or 2 minutes before dead line.... that might be a lie I think all my work was late. By like a week or a month sometimes. But if you talk to your professors you would be amazed what kind of leniency they can give you. Hell I don't think I ever even submitted a single Wilye? Wyly? How ever the fuck those con artists are called assigment. It was worth like 10% of my grade. But at the end of the term I could spend hours doing some bullshit online quiz or keep writing my lab report, or reading for my next morning labs.

If a dumb fuck like me can pull it off you can too.

This is a period of time in your life where you just don't have any more time to pour into hobbies and community etc. That is okay. You are only human. I just had two years where I was stressed out of my fucking mind and couldn't do anything when I got home everyday. I didn't have energy for hobbies, interests, friendships, nothing. It's slowly come back to me this year, especially over the summer and I'm gradually filling up my life with past time activities now.

You are not weird or wrong or less than for not having the energy to be active all the time. School is intense. It just is. When you're also working and planning a wedding on top of that, no shit you're exhausted, my friend. I do hope you allow yourself to have moments in the evening where you're just relaxing and doing nothing. That stuff kinda helped me when I was stressed. It was frustrating when you're someone who wants to do things all the time, but for me it was necessary to avoid imploding. I think it would be good for you too to allow your head a break when you're done with the day and not harass yourself with all the things you could be doing but aren't. You're allowed to do nothing after a long day where you have given it your all.

Remember that all of this is temporary. The wedding will pass, you'll graduate eventually as well and maybe then you will slowly experience that you have a bit more energy for all the fun things in life.

Hugs! I wish you all the best! 🤗

I hate being too busy so I force time to plug into a charger aka literally do nothing ALL day and I dont even feel shame. A nonsense boring lazy day is just as productive to my mental health as a productive day. The end. Idc about social norms. If I am on a charge day I ain't doin shit.

I don't. It's a mess my brother.

Ok, as someone who did well in engineering school, I cannot imagine juggling all of that. I didn’t get diagnosed until 30 so I was unmedicated in college, but I lived at home and quit my pizza job when classes became more demanding. It was still a shitload of coursework and I spent most of my time at school, including all day on the weekends.

How I managed it back then was that I would do all my homework at school with my classmates, so basically body doubling. Otherwise I’d get home and screw off.

Even without ADHD, your current lifestyle would be a tough row to hoe. You are living on hard mode.

Working full time, trying to run a household solo, and have hobbies is a mess even though I’ve been out of school for almost 10 years. Most meds have caused issues for me, but I’m back on the merry-go-round to find the right combo because I am very much not managing my life, lol.

So I guess my advice is the following: be gentle with yourself, try to work in groups when possible, and perhaps consider switching meds if you feel it’s a limiting factor. The last one could be dicey though since instability could make things harder for you.

One last point: the students who are failing and struggling aren’t exactly going to announce it. Don’t sell yourself short and assume everyone is doing better than you!

Yeah, you’re kind of running things on a high difficulty setting. And it’s worth noting that comparing yourself to others is a waste of energy - they’re unlikely to be learning at twice the rate you are.

This is kind of where you stack rank priorities and if you can’t eliminate any - you accept they won’t get a large percentage of your attention - or you try to hyper focus on it to burn it down and get it completed and off the list. Hopefully things like wedding planning are one of those things that will drop off the list eventually.

I tend to break up my day into different phases.

8-12 - fresh: critical thinking and learning new things with minimal distractions.

12-4 - dull: maintenances tasks, reoccurring meetings, things I can juggle and multitask with.

4-10 - molasses: brain dead tasks like working out, meal prep and hobbies like gaming or preparing for the next day.

Adhd meds have withdrawal effects, which you are probably experiencing at the end of the day. Try talking to your provider about it and see if there is something they suggest like extended release forms, smaller doses spread through the day, or different medications altogether. That said, engineering school is just incredibly stressful, i hope you do well.

I'm 36 and doing the same thing as you right now, fulltime job and full time school for mechanical engineering. Its tough but I just try to keep grinding. I don't look too far into the future otherwise it starts to feel overwhelming, I try to plan for getting through the next week before worrying about the next. I also take frequent breaks when studying, if I start to feel molasses brained ( I feel like mine starts overheating like an old car lkl) I find a stopping point and do something mindless for a little bit before diving back in. I did switch to ER adderal and found that helped me have a longer runtime between breaks. Keep at it though, you can do it and when you do, it will be all the sweeter.

You're doing about three times of what I am capable of. You're not feeling overwhelmed, you are overwhelmed.

For every few days I manage to do all the things there's a day I have to take off work and cry in bed all day.

It isn't reasonable for society to expect people to work fulltime jobs and have any energy left to do anything.

This IS the normal way to feel.

How do you not just curl into a ball and closing up into yourself

Bold assumption.

How do people do it? Simple, they don't. It's only because of your ADHD that you're staying afloat as much as you are. You are literally trying to accomplish the same amount as 3 people, so ya, you are going to learn slower.
Of course, none of that helps you right this moment... I would start by confessing to the people around you including your fiance that you have fucked up and are in the process of finding out. Give them a date this semester ends and beg them to help where they can until then.
Someone else mentioned study groups, I have found that actively studying with others and discussing what you're working on is a massive boon. Are any of your classes online or do you have a way to communicate with your fellow students? Post on there that you have ADHD and are looking for study buddies. I 100%guarantee that there are other people who have ADHD or are struggling.
Do you commute or have other times where you have forced "down time"? I find that chagpt's phone app with the voice chat feature is amazing for helping me learn new stuff. As I am driving, I can ask it to explain stuff and if I don't quite get it. I can ask it to explain it again in simpler terms. I can focus in on things that I am interested in or don't understand. Then once I have a better grasp on the little pieces I'm not embarrassed to ask it to explain it all again. I can also get it to review course information with me. You can ask it to let you tell it what you know and have it correct things you are getting wrong.

To know you can get medication for that