The Steps to Prevent and Recover From ADHD Mistakes
Episode Summary
ADHD adults make mistakes. More than their neurotypical peers. But not all mistakes are created equal.
In this episode, I’ll also introduce you to Eduardo Briceño’s framework for understanding four distinct types of mistakes and how you can mitigate the occurrence of each type.
I’ll also cover practical techniques for recovering from the inevitable slip-ups without spiraling into shame.
What You’ll Learn About ADHD and Making Mistakes
- The four types of mistakes and why ADHD brains are prone to each one
- Prevention strategies tailored to each mistake type that work with your ADHD brain
- How to tell when something isn’t actually a mistake, just an unwanted reaction
- The STOP method for regulating your nervous system when mistakes trigger panic
- Self-compassion techniques that prevent shame spirals and help you learn faster
Transcript:
(00:01):
Everyone makes mistakes, and adults with ADHD may indeed make more mistakes because of ADHD symptoms. So there are two questions. One, how can you minimize them? And two, just as important, what is the most helpful way to respond to them when they do inevitably happen? You’ve tuned into Reimagining Productivity with ADHD, a podcast for ADHD adults like you who want to learn how to adopt the best strategies, tools, and skills to be able to get your essential work done in a way that works with the way your brain is wired.
I’m Marla Cummins, and I’m glad you decided to join me today on this journey to reimagining productivity with ADHD so you can do what is important to you without trying to do it like everyone else. I’ve made my share of mistakes, no doubt, including some pretty significant ones that took a long time to process and move through fully.
(00:59):
So I’ve learned a thing or two about how to move through mistakes, and I know it isn’t always easy. A mistake, as I’m defining it, isn’t about getting a reaction you don’t like or intend. It’s doing something that goes against your values and goals. I know you may be listening to this podcast because you want to make fewer mistakes. Before exploring how to do that and how to move through them with more equanimity, let’s look at the four different types of mistakes using Eduardo Briceño’s framework.
First, let’s start with a stretch mistake. A stretch mistake is one that you could not have foreseen the consequences because you were reaching beyond your current capabilities. That is, you’re in the learning zone. It’s outside of your current area of mastery, and that’s what makes it a stretch mistake. In the case of stretch mistakes, if there’s anything risky about it, you’ll likely only find out in hindsight. Let’s say you decide to renovate your kitchen backsplash yourself.
(02:06):
You watch YouTube tutorials, buy the materials, and feel pretty confident about the process. But once you start removing the old tile, you discover water damage behind the wall that requires electrical work and drywall repair. You never anticipated it. Or you delegate a task to a team member to free up your time, but you underestimate how much guidance or follow-up they’ll need, and it doesn’t go as well as you would have liked because you didn’t do enough on your end.
Presumably, the only way to avoid these types of mistakes is to play it safe, not do anything beyond where you already have mastery. But I think for most ADHD adults who appreciate a challenge now and then, this just isn’t the way they want to do things. If you’re learning and growing, you need to reach beyond your current capabilities, right? Stretch mistakes are only problematic if you continue to repeat the same mistake.
(03:08): You can course correct. You can learn from the mistakes you made and put guardrails in place to prevent those exact mistakes from happening again. For adults with ADHD, while stretch mistakes are inevitable, there may be instances where you have sometimes acted too fast without enough planning and thinking about future consequences, so you just don’t see the gaps until you hit them.
If you are prone to this, one workaround is to build systems or checkpoints where you can do more of what I like to call upfront thinking, perhaps by processing with others so they can help you identify these potential gaps. It’s not that you were careless.
It’s just that the executive function work of forecasting and planning didn’t fully happen before acting, which is a pretty classic ADHD stretch mistake scenario. Then there are the aha moment mistakes. These mistakes happen when you do achieve the outcome you thought you wanted, only to realize afterward that it really wasn’t the right move.
How You Can Think Ahead to Prevent ADHD Mistakes
(04:22):
Unlike a stretch mistake, it’s not about lacking skill or reaching beyond your current capabilities. It’s about saying or doing something in the moment that seems like the right thing to do, but then only afterwards realizing that the consequences just don’t align with your goals or perhaps even your values.
Let’s say you commit to doing a new project because it seems interesting and you want to be a team player, only to realize later that you just don’t have the bandwidth to put in the time and effort to bring the project to the finish line successfully. Or you send that email, yes, that email. You’re clear and make the point you want to make.
Then, later find out that you didn’t have all the information you needed, and you would not have sent it if you had. For ADHD adults, sometimes it’s about not weighing out all the options, jumping in too soon.
(05:25):
Yes, impulsivity. Sometimes it’s working memory challenges, zeroing in on one piece of information and not being able to hold multiple pieces of information in mind in order to weigh out your options. And then, of course, other times it may be frustration or emotional reactivity and just wanting to act quickly.
The way to lessen the occurrence of these is to pause, reflect, check in with others, and again, like with stretch mistakes, build small decision checkpoints. You can reduce repeat occurrences while still honoring your drive to move things forward.
The learning in aha moment mistakes comes from noticing how impulsivity, working memory limits, or emotional reactions influence your decision. The third type of mistake is a sloppy mistake. A sloppy mistake, as you might imagine, is when you’re doing something you already know how to do, but you make the mistake, maybe because you lose concentration or act too quickly.
(06:43):
This isn’t about lacking knowledge or skill. Maybe you’ve done this task successfully many times. It’s about your attention being pulled elsewhere in the moment when you need to focus. So, for example, you might send an email with the wrong attachment because you were thinking about three other things while hitting send, or you put the wrong time in your calendar for a meeting because you were distracted when they announced it, even though you know perfectly well how to write down meeting times.
The frustrating thing about sloppy mistakes is that you absolutely can do the task correctly. It’s not a knowledge gap or a skill issue. It’s a focus and attention issue, which makes it particularly maddening for ADHD adults for whom this is a struggle. For adults with ADHD, sloppy mistakes often happen because you’re rushing or trying to multitask, or when your attention again is being pulled in multiple directions.
How To Reduce Everyday ADHD Mistakes Caused by Distraction
(07:44):
You can literally feel it in your body when you’re going too fast. That sense of urgency makes you want to just get something done rather than do it carefully. Of course, the way to reduce sloppy mistakes is to resist the urge to go fast and really slow down. Not easy. This means assuming you won’t remember something and putting it directly into your task list or calendar.
It means double and triple-checking your work. It means having checklists either for implementation or for review after you’ve completed something to make sure you did it correctly. I use checklists all the time. Usually, in my haste, I don’t use them while I’m doing my work, like crafting a podcast or a blog post, which I probably should. But I know I can’t rely on my memory, so I use the checklist after I think I’m done and catch any of the mistakes I might have made along the way.
(08:44):
I’ll check the calendar sometimes three or four times before sending out an email to make sure I got the date right. I know it sounds excessive, but it works. The learning from sloppy mistakes comes from recognizing your patterns. When do you tend to lose focus? What environmental factors contribute to rushing? And what systems can you put in place to catch these errors?
The fourth kind of mistake is what Briceño calls a high-stakes mistake. This is one where the results can potentially be catastrophic, either because there’s an element of real physical danger or because the consequences can be life-changing in ways that are difficult to reverse.
These are the mistakes we want to, of course, avoid at all costs, though preventing them often requires significant executive function capacity. So, for example, you might speed on an icy road because you’re running late to an important job interview, risking an accident.
(09:50):
That, of course, could cause serious harm. Or you might make a major financial decision impulsively during a period of emotional distress without fully considering the long-term consequences or seeking input from others. The challenging thing about high-stakes mistakes is that they often happen at our most vulnerable moments when we’re stressed, overwhelmed, grieving, or otherwise not operating from our best decision-making capacity.
Our executive functions that are already compromised because of our ADHD symptoms are even more challenging to access when we need them the most. The way to minimize high-stakes mistakes is to put systems in place during calm periods that can protect you during vulnerable ones.
This might mean having trusted people you commit to consulting before major decisions, or creating waiting periods for yourself before acting on important choices. Sometimes it means recognizing your emotional state and explicitly choosing not to make major decisions.
How Do You Prevent ADHD Mistakes With Serious Consequences?
(11:01):
When you’re in crisis mode, even if external pressures suggest you should act quickly, the learning from high-stakes mistakes, when they do happen, often isn’t about the specific decision itself, but about the conditions that led to making such an important choice from a compromised state.
So what systems could you put in place to protect your future self? How can you recognize when you’re in a vulnerable decision-making space? Now that you understand the four types of mistakes, let’s talk about how to respond when you think you’ve made a mistake.
Regardless of the type of mistake, there is one method I think is helpful in any situation after making what you think is a mistake—and I say that intentionally, you’ll find out in a minute. That is a method you’ve probably heard of already called STOP. Here’s why this matters. When you make a mistake, your heart starts pounding.
(12:06):
Your stomach feels like it just dropped three floors. Cortisol is flooding your system like someone opened the floodgates. Your amygdala hijacks your brain, and your prefrontal cortex, your rational brain, is gone. You start spiraling, and this is not the time to act.
You need to get your thinking brain, your prefrontal cortex, back online so you can make an informed decision about what to do next and avoid further compounding the mistake you already made. With the STOP method, you first stop for as much time as needed, and then take a breath.
This is meant to help you regulate because in those instances, your prefrontal cortex, as I said, has gone offline, and your amygdala, again, sometimes called the reptilian or lizard brain, has taken over, making it hard for you to make decisions about what to do next. So after you do that, the next thing is to observe what’s going on in your body.
What Should You Do Right After Making an ADHD Mistake?
(13:10):
Observe your thoughts and your feelings. Take as much time as you need. It could be minutes, hours, days, or weeks. And only then proceed with whatever decision you make. Once you feel more regulated, and as you’re thinking about how to proceed, this is also the time to decide whether you indeed did make a mistake.
For example, when you say or do something that perhaps other people don’t like, you may decide it was a mistake. This is further compounded by the reality that adults with ADHD can tend to have rejection sensitivity. But of course, it’s possible that what you said or did wasn’t a mistake, but rather because everyone has an opinion, they might just not have liked what you said or did.
It might be that what you said or did was exactly what you wanted in alignment with your values and goals, and you just didn’t get a positive response.
(14:16):
That doesn’t mean it was a mistake because, well, everyone has opinions. For example, you shared an idea in a meeting with your colleagues that didn’t really land, so there was no real discussion about it. That doesn’t mean it was a mistake.
That just means that the people in that room on that day may not have been interested in your idea. Maybe it was a great idea, and they just didn’t realize it. Or you sent a thoughtful email, and you got a negative response, so perhaps the person didn’t like what you had to say.
That doesn’t mean it was a mistake. Or maybe you expressed how you were feeling to a family member or friend, and they got angry. Just because they responded in anger doesn’t mean, again, that you necessarily said anything wrong. You get it. You’ll have to decide in each context whether it was a mistake or not.
(15:16):
Remember, at least the way I’m defining it, a mistake isn’t necessarily about getting a reaction you don’t like or intend. It’s doing something that goes against your values and goals. So what if you indeed did make a mistake? That is, you decide it really was a mistake.
The first step is to lean into self-compassion rather than problem-solving initially. The reason for this is that by giving yourself self-compassion, you can be steadier in deciding how to respond to the mistake. According to Kristin Neff, a leading expert on self-compassion, when you give yourself self-compassion, you can identify and be with your negative emotions, but you don’t try to avoid or run away from them.
You also recognize that you’re not alone in making mistakes. It’s part of being human. And third, you’re kind to yourself even when you feel you fall short of your own or others’ expectations because of your mistakes. Once you’ve given yourself the time and space you need to both regulate and provide yourself with self-compassion,
How Can You Learn From ADHD Mistakes?
(16:33):
The next step, if you have an opportunity to address or perhaps fix the situation, is the cleanup. The first step to do this is to identify which type of mistake you made. Was this a stretch mistake where you were reaching beyond your capabilities? Or was it an aha moment where you got an outcome you didn’t actually want?
Or maybe it was a sloppy mistake from lost concentration? Then again, was it a high-stakes mistake with serious consequences? Understanding the type that you made will help you know how to respond and perhaps minimize the chances of it happening again. Did you misspeak? Can you go back to the person or people and explain what you intended to say? Maybe you need to apologize.
Remember, you are doing this so you can be in alignment with what’s important to you, your values and goals, not because you’re necessarily going to be able to fix it, because you just don’t know how the other person or people will respond. You can only do the best you can. Maybe you need to offer some monetary restitution. You can do that.
The key is to do what you think is the most important thing based on the mistake that you made, even though you have no idea how your apology or restitution will land. And one of the reasons to do this is so that you can move forward after you’ve learned what you need to from the mistake and made any amends that you could.
(18:14):
And of course, sometimes we know the way forward isn’t about fixing the original situation, the original mistake. Maybe you can’t. But about learning from it and carving out a different path. Even mistakes with significant consequences with long-lasting impacts.
It might take months or years, but those months and years are going to go past. Whether you move beyond the mistake or not, what would you rather do? That’s it for now. I’m really glad you joined me. I hope what you take away from today’s podcast is that, one, mistakes are inevitable because, well, we’re all human, and that ADHD can, yes, definitely exacerbate the potential for mistakes.
But there are also ways to mitigate these in some circumstances. And when mistakes do inevitably happen, I hope that you’ll give yourself some grace and self-compassion. Then, if you can, move forward in whatever way feels best.
(19:20):
If you want to continue to learn about how to work with your ADHD, please do sign up for my biweekly newsletter. You’ll get time-tested ADHD-friendly strategies and resources from me straight to your inbox. You’ll also receive a complimentary guide I created titled “Six Common Planning Mistakes Adults with ADHD Make and How to Avoid Them.”
You can find the link in the podcast description, or you can go to marlacummins.com/planning to sign up and get the guide. This has been Reimagining Productivity with ADHD. I’m Marla Cummins. Thanks for listening, and until next time, take care.
ADHD Related Links & Resources
- Learn how to plan better with my Free Guide: 6 Common Planning Mistakes Adults with ADHD Make.
- Check out Kristin Neff’s website to learn more about self-compassion and explore her books, Self-Compassion and Fierce Self-Compassion.
