The Science of Fidgets

Hacking Your ADHD

William Curb

Mental Health, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 702 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2020

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

My desk usually has a least a few fidget toys on top of it. I say usually only because my children sneak into my office and steal them. But the rest of the time I have a couple infinity cubes, a tangle and a piece of sea glass I use as a worry stone. I love having them to play with as I think through sentences while I'm writing and also as something to keep my hands busy while I'm reading.

Today we're going to talk about the rise of fidgets in over the last few years and then dive into how they are supposed to work. We'll also be discussing what makes a good fidget.

Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/fidgetscience

Today's Top Tips

There are a lot of sketchy claims about fidget toys. Be wary of marketing claims, but don't throw the baby out with the bathwater - figure out which fidgets work best for you.
Fidgets work by helping us manage our attention and focus. It can be hard for us to direct our attention when we're either over or under-stimulated.
The best fidgets are things that we can do with our hands without looking at them - we don't want to be drawing too much of our attention to use them, just enough to help drown out the other outside stimuli around us.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Hacking Your ADHD, part of the ADHD Rewired Podcast Network.
0:08.0	I'm your host, William Kerb, and I have ADHD.
0:11.5	On this podcast, I dig into the tools, tactics, and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain.
0:18.5	My desk usually has at least a few fidget toys on top of it. I say usually only because
0:23.3	my children frequently sneak into my office to seal them. But the rest of the time I have a couple
0:27.5	infinity cubes, a tangle, and a piece of sea glass I use as a worry stone. I love having them
0:32.4	around to play with as I think through sentences while I'm writing, and also sometimes to keep my
0:36.5	hands busy while I'm reading. Today we're going to be talking about the rise of fidgets over the last few years,
0:42.2	and then dive into how they're supposed to work. We'll also be discussing what makes a good fidget,
0:46.7	and of course, if you want to find links to everything that I'm talking about, please go check out
0:51.4	the show notes page at hacking your ADHD.com slash fidget science.
0:57.4	All right, keep on listening to find out why we just can't stop fidgeting.
1:07.5	Fidget spinners entered the popular vernacular in 2017 when they boomed in popularity.
1:12.7	And when I say boomed, they really boomed. In May of 2017, the sales of fidget spinners peaked,
1:19.3	making up 17% of all online toy sales. Let me say that again. 17% of all online toy sales. That's an astronomical amount of market share. But of course,
1:31.5	that's also because it wasn't just one company making fidget spinners. Everyone was making
1:36.2	fidget spinners. The origins of fidget spinners aren't the clearest. Many news outlets have credited
1:41.5	Catherine Heddinger with patenting the original fidget spinner back in 1993.
1:46.3	A patent she let lapse in 2005 because she couldn't pay the fees.
1:50.1	But a Bloomberg piece that looked at the spinning toy that she developed concluded it wouldn't hold up as a patent for the fidget spinner.
1:56.7	It is only similar in that it spins.
1:59.0	It looks more like a small frisbee than a fidget spinner.
	...

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