About Toolbox Quizzes

Simply being aware of some aspects which drive and influence our daily lives is a powerful first step to turning inward with curiosity and care, and which may initiate further ideas/choices.

Quizzes can be conducted with or without a support person, and are useful for individuals to:

  • Build better awareness of how they see themselves.
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  • Support emotional wellbeing, creative expression, and personal growth.

And for professionals to:

  • Aid counsellors and psychologists to use these tools at their own discretion.
  • Coach and educate to foster metacognition and reflective learning.
  • Further narrative therapy, dialogical therapy, and cognitive-behavioural approaches.

Quizzes may additionally prove beneficial for user selected third parties (IE in a pre-employment assessment situation, sports coaching, or professional counselling environment).

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The choice to use any tool or topic quiz is made freely by the individual. Quizzes provided have been selected, reviewed and determined by qualified professionals appropriately fit-for-purpose and hail either from legitimate academic studies or research, or examples as currently used by health professionals. Permissions for reproduction and use has been gained by the content owners, where applicable. Supporting material is available in ‘Resources’. Our charter is not in the business of gathering email addresses for promotional campaigns or bombarding users with offers of any kind. The tools provided are FREE to use and designed for individuals in any stage of interest or curiosity. Basic advice relating to quiz results are provided automatically. Follow up on any matter herein is entirely in the hands of the induvial. No future automated correspondence with users is intended, or implied. Users can leave (or de-register, if activating that function) at any time.

Tips & Tricks

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  • Contextually, quiz results will likely vary when related to different life events.    
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All quizzes are academically and professionally verified. We endeavour to replicate quizzes, tools and material to the closest standard and process guidelines (if provided) or as directed by the study author/s. Quizzes use plain English, with as little subject jargon as possible. We recommend users are as honest as possible.

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Patience My Dear…

If your mind works fast, this article is probably for you. Especially if you are one of the millions out there who also find it difficult to slow down. One of the tricks for busy people here is to understand the rest of the world may just need time to catch up!

If your mind works fast, this article is probably for you. Especially if you are one of the millions out there who also find it difficult to slow down. One of the tricks for busy people here is to understand the rest of the world may just need time to catch up! Yet, one of the easiest ways to help the world do this, is also one of the hardest for busy people to execute. This solution is to simply take a breath or pause. Other than benefitting everyone else, this must actually slow you down – not simply swapping out to drive flat stick on a different racetrack. And when this happens, magical things may also start to happen. This is the power of patience or pausing. I totally believe this, and I will tell you why.

First though, how hard could it be to just slow down? Well, if you are (or were) anything like me, it’s almost firkin impossible! It’s estimated there are over 22 million people out there who suffer this condition of ‘trying to do things too quickly’. Technically, I am referring here to ADHD – and the big numbers here only relate to those medically diagnosed.

Professional treatment helped me successfully navigate major turns in my life – the guts of which doesn’t rest with the treatment itself (drugs per se). It was about opening gateways for me to see the world differently and then having me address my own issues through a bigger-picture lens. For me, the ADHD thing was to learn about myself from myself (and the other way round too, of course!) While you might be groaning at where we are going here, this is not another article on societies ‘plaguing ailments’ but one on the additional virtues offered when we slow down.

Sometimes it’s the simplest things which can have the most impact and this short story is not just about living with ADHD for over 50 years undiagnosed, but discovering a surprising solution, and relief. My whole life I think I knew I pinged fast, and too much. But yikes, when things became really obvious it scared me to think what life might be like to not be quick… perhaps haunted as a youngster from Jack Nicholson’s frontal lobotomy in ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ (if you haven’t seen it, go watch it!). My own diagnosis began inadvertently while finishing a GP visit. My doctor was casually listening to a few tales of my weekend escapades (game fishing, golf, managing and performing in a rock band, producing music videos, writing a book, moving house, buying Reformer Pilates studios) and as she looked more intently at me, she asked a few more questions. And then a few more, and a few more. As I answered, her eyebrows began to rise. I was already thinking about the traffic and the laundry on the line and mowing the lawns, when she suggested I might benefit from seeing a ‘friend’ of hers. By the look on her face, I could either agree to her suggestion or get a free ambulance ride wearing a straitjacket! I agreed with her.

So, some weeks later I met with her friend (a professional psychiatrist) and we chatted. She asked me to describe a typical day at high school. I did. On finishing, I think her eyebrows were higher than my GP’s. In her words she suggested I try a ‘molecule’. Which I did and I am convinced it played a vital role in getting a much better measure on life. I celebrate the process now having orchestrated extraction from a hog-tied business arrangement, having created an environment enjoying the elevation of key passions into workable, community-based initiatives, and which include numerous and generous connections to writing my first non-fiction work – all the while boasting an online platform to stream associated mental health content free to rafts of people all over the world. Pretty amazing really. Massey High School to the world. To what do I hold as the most important factor in all this? Time. Time to pause. Taking time to reflect. I coin it dwell-time.

How does this work? Well, for all the pingers out there, this can be a bit rough at the start because we naturally think fast, we drift fast, we lose track of priorities, we catch up, we fix things fast, and then straightaway go adding more to an already overloaded applecart. Sometimes we need only see the crumbs of an idea, yet somehow an almost instantaneous subconscious vision manages to manifest from a billion linking synapses, and we find ourselves once again screwed! Patience or dwell-time is tricky to manage. One aspect with breathing space is when to pause, and when to move (or dash) forward. Everymove we make in getting something off our plates somehow ends up back on our plates – often cleverly disguised as another project!

But here are the key takeaways from slowing down: 1. The world does catch up. 2. Things don’t return to our plate as quickly. 3. Drum roll please… solutions and ideas seem to spring out of thin air while obstacles seem to disappear. Sounds great, thanks. Yep, I’ll have a number 3 every day of the week please!

It might sound fanciful, but this is precisely what happens, and it is also critical for modern society. Social engagement demands an ability to defer to truth, and which entails consideration and thought – or taking our time. We struggle to do this because our subconscious still thinks we live in caves, chased by sabre tooth tigers. And here’s the thing, surviving 50,000 years ago required instinct and immediacy to help ensure our physical safety, but we aren’t living in caves now, we live in a modern society. Slowing down is critical for a working-society, and while the deeper aspects of this aren’t covered here, suffice to say instinct (speed, haste, urgency) is a survival trait. Dwell-time (pausing and consideration) is a social trait.

The theories regarding how ‘miracles’ as such come out of thin air from dwell-time are open for debate, yet research is enthusiastically increasing in the area. In essence the ‘golden geese’ that emerge from such pausing efforts come from unconscious consideration – from our subconscious. Pace, consideration, and dwell-time offer opportunity to help reduce or avoid mistakes and forming opinions too quickly. Some describe social haste as knee-jerk reaction.

Care needs be taken though not to allow procrastination or deliberate laziness to masquerade as dwell-time. Deeper motivational or problem-solving issues could be at play if outcomes repeatedly show little or no advantage with a slowed or eased approach.  Conversely in our ADHD world if/when we force things along, results may end up less than desirable. Similar in many respects to cramming last minute for an exam which significantly reduces dwell-time opportunity – at a time less likely things will sink in anyway.

And it is becoming more formally and scientifically theorised as being a real thing. For example, the ‘Law of Reversed Effort’ basically says that a high level of urgency and effort is counterproductive. The English author and philosopher Aldous Huxley states, ‘the harder we try with our conscious will to do something, the less we shall succeed’.

All this of course can be disregarded if one finds themselves in that perfect mode of productivity; being on a roll. When caught in this tractor beam, let her suck you right in! (Incidentally, in one form or another, dwell-time has through history lead to the biggest Eureka! moments.)

Finally, I’m not sure wisdom comes purely from age as some young folks are amongst the wisest people I’ve met. Wisdom is born more from our learnings from taking time, thinking things through, and chewing on things for a bit. Dwell-time not only makes us look wiser, but we become wiser.

There are no golden rules.
Bottom line is, try it.
Deliberately and concisely.
And see what happens.

Odd perhaps that the best medicine could be just to sleep on it.