My Sensory Survival Kit: 6 Things I Never Leave the House Without

I used to leave the house with my keys, my phone, and a vague hope that the world wouldn't be too loud today.

That strategy did not work.

Over the past couple of years I've assembled what I now call my sensory survival kit. Half of it lives in a crumpled pouch at the bottom of my bag and the other half lives in my jacket pockets (and the holes within). Every item earns its place because it's solved a specific, recurring problem that my ADHD brain throws at me in the wild.

My field-tested list. From someone who has walked into a supermarket, been hit by the fluorescent lighting and the beeping and someone's trolley wheel squeaking, and had to leave without buying anything. If you've been there, this is for you.

If you've ever noticed that sitting with your back to a room makes you calmer, or that you can concentrate in a window seat but not a middle seat, you already know the problem. Your ADHD attention system doesn't filter out movement the way a neurotypical brain does. Every person walking past, every flickering screen in your peripheral vision, is an interruption that your brain has to consciously suppress. That takes energy. A lot of it.

Focus Frames reduce peripheral visual input so your brain can stop spending resources on filtering and start spending them on the task in front of you. I wear them in cafés, on trains, in open-plan offices, and sometimes at home when the living room has too much going on.

They won't make you hyperfocus on command (nothing will), but they remove one of the biggest environmental drains on your attention, and that compounds over the course of a day. If you're losing focus before you even start working, the problem probably isn't motivation. Your brain is burning through its processing budget on things you're not even looking at.

If you experience sensory overload, earplugs are the difference between functioning and not.

I've tried every type going (foam, wax, flanged, ring-style, custom-moulded) and written a full ranking if you want the detailed breakdown. But for daily carry, silicon mouldable earplugs win every time. They sit over the ear canal rather than inside it, which means no pressure, no occlusion, and none of that horrible underwater feeling that makes your brain even more anxious than it already was.

The other reason they earn their place in the kit: they work under headphones. Every other earplug I've tried either sticks out too far or creates a seal that makes over-ear headphones painful within minutes. Silicon moulds flush to your ear. Headphones go straight on top. More on why that matters next.

I keep a pair in my jacket and a pair in my bag. If you're new to them, we've got a step-by-step guide because they work a bit differently from what you're probably used to.

Earbuds don't cut it. Not for sensory regulation. You need closed-back over-ear headphones that physically seal around your ear and create a barrier between you and the auditory chaos.

Mine are Audio-Technica ATH-M50x. Wired. No noise cancellation. I've had them since my music production degree and they're still the best headphones I've owned. Industry-standard studio monitors: flat frequency response, exceptional clarity, and circumaural cups that seal around your ears rather than sitting on them. That passive isolation matters more than active noise cancellation, especially with earplugs underneath.

The one upgrade I'd recommend: swap the stock ear pads for SOULWIT cooling gel replacements. They're deeper than the originals, which creates more space inside the cup. That extra room means silicon earplugs fit comfortably underneath without the headphones pressing them into your ears. The gel also stays cooler during long sessions, which matters when you're wearing them for three hours straight in a café. Earplugs plus the M50x with gel pads is what I call the “sensory airlock.” The earplugs take the edge off the ambient environment, the headphones add a physical seal on top, and then the music provides controlled auditory input your brain can predict. Predictable input is calming input.

Which brings me to: what to actually play through them.

I have three go-to playlists depending on what my brain needs. For deep work, it's Spotify's Peaceful Piano. No lyrics, no builds, no surprises. Just piano that's interesting enough to keep my auditory system occupied without pulling my attention away from the task. When I need something more structured, I go to Poppy Ackroyd or Ludovico Einaudi: contemporary classical that has enough movement to satisfy a brain that finds silence suspicious, but not so much that it becomes the main event.

And then there are the days when my brain needs energy, not calm. For those I have a techno playlist I've built from my own vinyl collection. Repetitive, driving, rhythmic. Techno works for ADHD focus for the same reason fidget tools work for ADHD hands: it gives a part of your brain something predictable to latch onto so the rest of it can get on with the job.

What matters is having a default. No browsing, no choosing, no “what am I in the mood for” decision spiral. Pick your playlists, bookmark them, use the same ones every time. Your brain will start associating the sound with work, and the transition into focus gets faster.

Nobody puts eye drops in their aesthetic flat lay. But if you take ADHD medication, you probably already know where this is going.

Stimulants dry your eyes out. So does staring at screens for hours without blinking, which is what happens when you finally get into a flow state and your brain decides that blinking is an unnecessary interruption. By mid-afternoon your eyes feel gritty, your vision gets slightly blurry, and you start rubbing them, which makes everything worse. That low-level irritation sits in the background pulling at your attention like a browser tab you can't close.

I carry a small bottle of preservative-free drops for sensitive eyes. Nothing fancy, just basic hydrating ones from Boots. They're actually the first thing I use every morning, before coffee, before screens, before anything. Two drops per eye and it's like a cold splash of water for your vision. It clears the gritty overnight feeling instantly and means I'm not starting the day with my eyes already playing catch-up. Then throughout the day, two drops when things start feeling scratchy and the irritation disappears. Five seconds. One less source of sensory noise you probably didn't realise was there until it's gone.

If you wear glasses or Focus Frames all day, this goes double. Dry air, screen glare, and frames sitting close to your face all contribute. Keep a bottle in your bag. You'll use it more than you think.

Here's the ADHD equation: your headphones are wired (good), your playlists are on your phone (necessary), and your phone is at 11% by 2pm (inevitable).

A dead phone doesn't just mean no music. It means no maps, no timers, no way to look up the thing your brain just decided is urgently important, and a rising tide of low-grade anxiety about being unreachable. For a brain that already struggles with overwhelm, a dead battery turns a manageable day into a stressful one surprisingly fast.

I carry a small USB-C battery pack. Nothing huge, just enough for one full phone charge. It lives at the bottom of my bag and I forget it's there until I need it. The peace of mind alone is worth the weight. One less thing your brain has to monitor, which frees up a small but real amount of processing power for everything else.

Charge it overnight, throw it in your bag, forget about it. That's the whole system.

Not an app. Not your phone. A pen and a physical notebook.

The phone is the most overstimulating object you own. Every time you unlock it to “quickly jot something down,” you're exposing your attention system to notifications, unread messages, half-finished thoughts from four apps, and whatever your lock screen reminded you about. The quick note takes thirty seconds. The recovery from the ambush takes ten minutes.

A notebook has no notifications. It doesn't suggest you might also want to check your email. It accepts the thought, holds it, and shuts up. I use mine for the random ideas, tasks, and worries that pop into my head when I'm trying to focus on something else. Getting them out of my working memory and onto paper means my brain can let go of them, which frees up processing power for the thing I'm actually doing. It's an external RAM dump for a brain that keeps too many tabs open.

The pen matters more than you'd think. A good pen makes writing feel like a reward rather than a chore, which for a brain that runs on interest rather than importance is the difference between actually using the notebook and leaving it blank. I use a Lamy and have done for years. They're weighted properly, they write smoothly, and they're built to survive living in a pocket. The Safari is the one most people start with and it's genuinely hard to go back to a biro once you've used one.

The notebook itself doesn't matter as much. Small enough to fit in a pocket, cheap enough that you don't feel precious about it. I've lost about fifteen of them, which is honestly the most ADHD endorsement a product can get.

None of these items are revolutionary. Most cost less than a round of drinks. Together, they've changed how I move through the world.

Forget “managing symptoms” or “hacking your ADHD.” Your nervous system processes the environment differently. These are practical tools to work with that instead of against it.

Half of my list probably wouldn't work for you. Good. Sensory needs are personal. The principle is the same (reduce unpredictable input, support your weak points, bridge the gap between your brain and the environment) but the specific items should be yours, not mine.

Start with whatever problem hits you most often. For me it was visual overload. For you it might be noise, or the phone problem, or the dry eyes thing you never connected to your medication. Pick one, find a physical solution that works, and carry it with you until it becomes automatic.

Then add the next one.