Hello friends,

I love taking the time to look back at my favorite things of the previous year. Too often I forget about great experiences over time, so “forcing” myself to look back and pick some of my favorites is a way to bring those memories back to the forefront, and get to share those experiences with others!

Some of these are ADHD-related, but a lot of them are just random movies, podcasts, books, etc that I’ve found to be interesting or excellent in 2022.

I’m always looking for new favorite things! Take the time to reflect on your past year and share some of your own favorites of 2022 in the comments. 😁

Substack launch

I’ll have the complete list of my favorites at the end of this email, but first I just wanted to talk about how great the Substack launch went!

Thanks so much to everyone who signed up to be a paid supporter!! 💙

I love seeing all the comments and interaction we had on the topic ADHD and sleep. Definitely worth checking out for some great strategies (and some commiserating as well).

Everything felt much more like a community and I’m excited for that to continue—community is so important for people with ADHD. For so long, many of us just felt isolated and alone (and weird), so it’s always great to find out that there are more of us that understand the unique struggles of ADHD, when many of those around us might not.

If you missed it last week, make sure to go back and check out the comments section:

Extra Focus • Finding Focus with ADHD

ADHD and (a lack of) Sleep

You may have noticed this newsletter looks a bit different. Skip down to the Moving to Substack section for more information on this…

a month ago · 42 likes · 33 comments · Jesse J. Anderson

To keep that going, I’d love to hear what some of your favorites of 2022 were! Hop in to the comments and share some of your own list, especially any hidden gems you think others might’ve missed.

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Stay focused,
Jesse J. Anderson

P.S. Paid supporters get access to the full newsletter archive, so if you’re a paid supporter you can also check out last year’s Favorites of 2021 issue:

Extra Focus • Finding Focus with ADHD

Favorites of 2021

Hello friends, I hope you were able to find some time to enjoy yourself this holiday season, perhaps diving into a fun new hobby. I've been mentally preparing for a retreat to plan my next year. Lots of big plans to come, and especially excited to start hitting some of my early benchmarks for my…

a year ago · Jesse J. Anderson

Favorites of 2022

📲 Apps

Arc Browser - The Arc Browser is a new web browser that does things a bit differently. This is the first browser that’s helped me get my browser tab problem under control. It’s currently invite-only, so make sure you get on the waitlist.
Raycast - I’ve been using some version of a quick-launch tool on Mac for close to 20 years. I started with Quicksilver, then moved to Alfred where I stayed for a very long time. I was happy with Alfred, but Raycast showed up and just made everything easier to do. If you’re a Mac power-user, I highly recommend checking it out. Plus it’s free!

📚 Books

Didn’t read too much this year, hoping to get back into in more in 2023, but here’s one gem that stood out.

Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg - Not as popular as Atomic Habits, but a lot of the habit research cited in that book was based on work by BJ Fogg. I really enjoyed his own book’s approach which leaned into the principle that feeling successful is “the single most important skill in behavior change” and building habit strategies around that. This lines up a lot with the guilt-free approach to habit tracking we’ve been taking with Polar Habits.

🎬 Movies

Yay, movies are back again! In 2022, I was able to see several of these in theaters which was fun. Last year I didn’t even list my top movies, because I hardly saw any. This year I had to narrow it down to my absolute favorites.

Everything Everywhere All At Once - This movie was magic. It was also extremely strange and over-the-top and even had some of the best action sequences of the year. The extremely strange nature of it shouldn’t be a shock, since it was created and directed by DANIELS (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), who previously created another of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen, Swiss Army Man.

Everything Everywhere All At Once really speaks to the core of the ADHD experience—I laughed out loud when one character said, “sorry, my wife confuses her hobbies for businesses” because… SAME. One of the directors, Kwan, actually discovered that he had ADHD during the creation of this movie. So much of this movie dives into the intricacies and experience of feeling misunderstood and not knowing why.

For a deeper dive into this movie’s connection with ADHD, I highly recommend this article by Ariel Fisher: Everything Everywhere All At Once Or: How I Stopped Fighting And Learned To Love My Brain
Avatar: The Way of Water - James Cameron does it again. I mean, of course he did—the man is the king of good sequels (see Aliens and Terminator 2: Judgement Day). The final climax of the movie is some of the best action you’ll ever see, with a wonderful conclusion to this second entry in the franchise. Can’t wait for more. I just wished he’d changed the logo.
Glass Onion - Speaking of good sequels, Rian Johnson follows up the stellar Knives Out with another modern whodunit in Glass Onion. Johnson is clearly having fun here—and bringing us along for the ride. I still want to see Rian’s once proposed Star Wars trilogy, but I wouldn’t be sad to see even more adventures of Benoit Blanc.
Prey - The Predator sequel I never knew I always wanted. Directed by one of my favorite directors, Dan Trachtenberg (10 Cloverfield Lane).

🎶 Music

Didn’t really discover much new music this year. Any recommendations?

All The Truth That I Can Tell by Dashboard Confessional - I’m a sucker for a good emo album, and this one delivers. It goes back to its root a bit—raw and acoustic, feeling like the albums that got Dashboard started, The Swiss Army Romance and The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most.

🎙️ Podcasts

The Art of Product - the origin story of the founders behind two separate apps, Tuple and SavvyCal. I binged the entire show, which starts before either product is even an idea yet, eventually becoming very successful businesses.
DLC - my favorite video game podcast that I’ve been listening to for almost a decade. Hosts Jeff Cannata and Christian Spicer have a lot of fun and never get cynical—love their positive perspective on one of my favorite hobbies.
Refocused with Lindsay Guentzel - Lindsay has done a great job hosting with this ADHD podcast, including doing a marathon of episodes for every single day of ADHD Awareness month!

📺 TV

Severance (S1) - The final two episodes of Severance’s debut season were some of the most thrilling and tense television I’ve ever seen. The show moves slow, and then suddenly very fast in a way that delights my brain and tickles my curiosity. I was a huge fan of Lost (yes, even the final season), and this is the first show that successfully scratches that same itch. My highest recommendation—I can’t wait for season 2.
Andor (S1) - This is the kind of Star Wars show I’ve dreamed of. While I enjoyed The Mandalorian a lot, this takes it to a whole new level. It’s a top-tier war and espionage film that just happens to take place in the Star Wars universe. It’s helped to redeem the mess that was The Book of Boba Fett and (sorry, not sorry) The Rise of Skywalker.
The Rings of Power (S1) - While there were some clunky choices here and there, for the most part, this show is absolutely gorgeous and really captured a lot of the magic of the films. I could watch an entire show with just Elrond, Durin, and Disa. Can’t wait to see where they take it in season 2.
Stranger Things (S4) - What can I say, Stranger Things remains one of the best shows around, consistently hitting out of the park with each new season. Honestly, one of the few reasons I still have a Netflix subscription. Perhaps the only reason? Actually, maybe I should cancel my Netflix subscription until the final season comes out. 🤔
Only Murders in the Building (S1-S2) - I’ve been wanting to see this show for awhile, but we didn’t have Hulu. We finally signed up and binged both seasons, and it was just as delightful as expected. The banter between Steve Martin and Martin Short is a treat, and the whodunit mystery is fun as well. Season 2 ended with quite the cliffhanger, so season 3 should be fun!

🎮 Video Games

Tunic - By far my favorite video game experience of the year. It looks like a simple 3d platformer at first, but there’s so much more mystery and puzzles and secrets to uncover. One of the few games where I felt the need to use a notebook to assist with puzzle-solving, similar to one of my all-time-favorite games, Fez—this is a compliment! Highly recommend.
Dome Keeper - The game I keep returning to on my Steam Deck. It’s a deceptively simple game, but the combination of cave exploration, upgrades, and base defense is just so well mixed. Highly recommend for fans of casual indie games.
Dying Light 2 - It didn’t seem to get much buzz or praise but I love this franchise. It takes what was fun about the original parkour game, Mirror’s Edge, and mixes it with satisfying combat, RPG elements, and a dash of terror. I put about 60 hours into this one.
Elden Ring - The game that’s probably #1 on most people’s list. I found it extremely frustrating at times, but the world was just so full of wonder and discovery that I powered through the more difficult gameplay, to the tune of around 60 hours. I just wish the menus and systems weren’t so purposefully convoluted and difficult to understand—it didn’t jive well with my ADHD brain.

❓ Other

Annual International Conference on ADHD - Getting to hang out with a bunch of people that all have ADHD was an experience I’ll never forgot. I got to meet a bunch of fellow content creators, and we all had a blast just being ourselves and laughing at silly ADHD goofs rather than feeling bad about it. It was an amazing time.

That’s it for me—though I’m sure I forgot some amazing things I just happened to forget were my favorites of the year. But that’s what the comments are for!

What about you, what were your favorites of 2022? Let me know!

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ADHD Jesse @adhdjesse

ADHD is feeling like you’re always behind, afraid of being seen as lazy, and overworking to compensate until you burn out in a blaze of glory.

ADHD Jesse @adhdjesse

ADHD is selective hearing but you don’t get to do the selecting.

ADHD Jesse @adhdjesse

[desperately scrolling apps, tabs, and messages trying to pick up the trail of that thing I was super interested in just moments ago and want to get back to but somehow forgot what it was come on brain remember the thing what was the thing wait was it something about horses?]