What to Do When You Feel You Never Have Enough Time

Episode Summary – Too Much To Do And Not Enough Time

Why does it feel like you have too much to do and not enough time? For adults with ADHD, there always seems to be more to do, more to keep up with, and more they want to fit into their day. In this episode of Reimagining Productivity with ADHD, ADHD and Executive Function Coach Marla Cummins explores how you can take a more intentional approach to deciding how you spend your time.

You’ll learn how adopting an essentialist mindset, creating an execution plan, assessing your available time, recognizing your fear of missing out, and setting boundaries can help you focus on what matters most to you. While you may not have enough time to do everything you want, there are ways to make more intentional choices about where you direct your time and energy.

What You’ll Learn About ADHD & Time Management

• How essentialism can help you decide where to focus your time: Learn how to identify the areas of your life where you want to make your highest contribution and get specific about what that means.
• How to create an execution plan to follow through on priorities: Explore how planning your tasks, deadlines, time, and support can help you follow through and understand how much time your priorities require.
• How to assess how much time you have available before making commitments: Learn why it’s important to consider your existing responsibilities and commitments before taking on something new.
• How to recognize your fear of missing out (FOMO): Understand why you may feel compelled to pursue every interesting opportunity and why you’ll sometimes need to let things go.
• How to set boundaries around your time: Discover ways to say no while still leaving the door open to future opportunities or offering an alternative when you can’t do exactly what’s being asked of you.

Transcript: Managing Your Time & Tasks With ADHD

(00:00):
I bet there are times when you find yourself thinking, “I have too much to do and not enough time.” And maybe you’ve come to accept that as just the way things are. There’s always more to do, more to keep up with, more that you want to fit into your day.

But what if you have more control over this than you think? You’ve tuned into Reimagining Productivity with ADHD, a podcast for ADHD adults like you who want to learn the best strategies, tools, and skills to get your essential work done in a way that works with the way your brain is wired. I’m Marla Cummins, an ADHD and Executive Function Coach.

And I’m glad you decided to join me today on this journey toward finding what matters most to you without trying to do it like everyone else. As you might imagine, I work with people all the time on time management.

(00:55):
And so comments like this one that a client recently shared in a prep form with me are pretty routine. She wrote, “Time is an issue. I don’t have enough time for everything. I have a busy couple of weeks coming up, so trying to budget time, be aware of my time, and what needs to be done is so important right now.”

Let’s start to unpack this by first looking at the definition of time management, at least the definition that I use. When it comes to time management, no doubt, adults with ADHD often want to improve their ability to estimate time better and be more aware of time passing.

But that really is the extent to which you can manage time, so to speak, because, as you know and you’ve heard before, we all have the same amount of time, 24 hours. And we obviously can’t change that, at least that I know of.

Definition of Time Management For ADHD Adults

(01:53):
The only thing we can really manage is where we decide to focus our time. And that is why I think it’s better to think of task management. I think of a task very generally as anything that you’re doing. It could be sleeping, working on a project, playing with your kids, going for a walk with your partner.

You get my point. It could be anything. When trying to untangle the conundrum of having too much to do and not enough time, I think one of the best places to start is by adopting an essentialist mindset. This means being more discerning about how you use your time and energy by deciding where you want to excel first.

In other words, where do you want to go big? According to Greg McKeown, author of Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, it means deciding where you want to make your highest contribution to what really matters to you without stretching yourself too thin.

Essentialism Helps ADHD Adults Decide What To Do With Their Time

(02:55):
Some of the areas where people decide to go big are family, profession, hobbies and self-care. What are the essential areas in your life? Once you’ve decided which areas you want to go big in, the next step is to define what that actually means. What exactly do you need to do to go big in those areas?

Answering that question helps you drill down into how you want to spend your time. For example, one of my clients is a professor. She wanted to make her highest contribution at work, but that meant first making some specific decisions about how to use her time.

Her responsibilities included producing papers, presenting at conferences, doing service for the university and her department, mentoring grad students and sometimes undergrads, and teaching classes. She needs to get really specific about what going big in her profession actually would look like. How many papers did she need to submit in a year or in a semester?

(04:01):
Which papers should she prioritize? For those papers, did she need to be the first author, or was it okay to be second or third? Which conferences should she attend? And how much service should she take on for the university and her department?

She consulted with her mentors to get a clear understanding of the expectations for someone at her career stage. Their input helped her determine which activities to prioritize and where she needed to focus her time and energy.

It took her time to get the clarity she needed, but once she did, she felt much more grounded and focused because she had a better understanding and sense of what she wanted to do to accomplish her wish to go big and how to allocate her time.

ADHD Adults Need to Create an Execution Plan to Follow Through

(04:51):
I’m sure you know all too well that identifying the areas where you want to go big and the accompanying tasks necessary to do so just isn’t enough to ensure it actually happens. You’ll also need to create an execution plan. And not only will this help you follow through on these tasks, but it will also give you a better idea about how much time is really available to you for other pursuits.

Yes, your calendar gives you a picture of the hard landscape of your life in terms of what you’re doing on specific days at specific times, but even if you’ve blocked off time to work on a task and it’s reflected in your calendar, that doesn’t necessarily reflect the total time you need to commit to going big in an area that’s important to you.

And having an execution plan that accounts for that additional time that you need to spend will help you get a better sense of, again, how much time you actually have available.

Assess How Much Time You Have Available Before Making a Commitment

(05:54):
For example, producing these podcasts isn’t reflected in my calendar, and they’re an important part of my ability to go big in coaching. And I know that, on average, it takes about 12 hours, uh, maybe eight to 12 hours over the course of two weeks to produce one podcast.

That time has to come from someplace. There is a lot that could go into an execution plan, and the scope of the task will determine how complicated your execution plan needs to be. You don’t necessarily need a complicated one. My execution plan for producing these podcasts is to work on each for at least 30 minutes a day and then set aside a good chunk of time, usually two to three hours at the end, for recording and production.

An execution plan may also include a deadline, the order of the tasks, when you’re gonna work on them, what kind of support you’ll need to follow through, and maybe strategies for minimizing potential distractions.

(07:00):
For example, the professor in the example I’m using meets with colleagues in person three times a week just to write together. She also maintains a spreadsheet of all her papers and reviews it monthly, and then she creates a plan to determine where she’ll focus in the fall, spring, and summer.

If you’d like to learn more about creating an execution plan, check out my podcast episode titled How ADHD Adults Can Follow Through on Priorities. I’ve included a link to this episode in the show notes on my website.

The bottom line is, once you’ve decided what matters to you and what you need to do to get there, you’ll have to figure out what will help you actually follow through. And if you’re like most adults with ADHD, there’s a lot that can capture your attention. And even though you want to go big in an essential area, you will also have other priorities and commitments, right?

(07:58):
I’ll stick with the example of my client, the professor, for now. She also has two young children, and aside from her academic career, parenting is another area where she wants to go big. What this looks like is making sure she spends time each day with each of her daughters.

It also means helping out with Girl Scouts, but she no longer has an active leadership role. Rather, she volunteers on an ad hoc basis. She also stopped serving in a leadership role on the PTA for their school, but she still attends events and volunteers there occasionally, too.

She also plays Ultimate Frisbee, certainly not an area where she wants to go big, but it’s something she enjoys doing and wants to keep doing. The key is, once you’ve identified your essential areas, to assess how much time you have available before committing to any task in these essential areas or any other task, for that matter, because just because you want to go big in one area, it likely doesn’t mean that that’s all you’re gonna focus on, right?

ADHD Adults Need To Recognize Their Fear of Missing Out

(09:04):
And I know you already know this part, too, but the reality is that most adults with ADHD listening to this podcast don’t have enough time to do everything they want. So part of the journey to managing your tasks within the time you have available is being more accepting of this and being aware if you have a tendency toward FOMO, fear of missing out.

At some point, you need to slice and dice how you spend your time, and this may mean not trying to keep up with every interesting email, newsletter, article, or other information that comes your way, or not signing up for every webinar or learning opportunity that catches your attention.

For some of you, it may mean not accepting every social invitation or passing on a new hobby that sounds really interesting, or maybe not doing a project that you’d really like to pursue, or saying no to volunteer opportunities even when they seem really worthwhile.

(10:08):
In the example I’ve been using of my client, the professor, her FOMO shows up when colleagues ask her to collaborate on a paper or invite her to speak at a conference. These may be great opportunities, and they often are, but she still has to consider whether she has the time to take them on without sacrificing other things that also matter to her.

Learn How to Set Boundaries Around Your Time

(10:31):
And once you’ve identified the areas where you want to go big, and you’re clear on what that means in terms of the tasks needed to go big in that area, and you also have a fair sense of how much time you’ve committed to tasks in those areas or other places, either because it’s reflected in your calendar or because you know how much time is needed to execute on tasks, and you’ve addressed your fear of missing out, the next step may be to upgrade your skills in setting boundaries around your time.

That means learning different ways of saying no. I’ve included a link in the show notes on my website to an episode titled What to Say When Setting Boundaries with ADHD. It’s about setting boundaries with your time. And just to give you a bit of a preview for those who are gonna listen to it, setting boundaries doesn’t necessarily mean always saying no categorically.

(11:34):
For example, you might say, “I can’t do that now, but I’d like you to keep me in mind. I may be able to do it down the road.” Or you might explain that you can’t do something exactly the way someone is asking you to do it, but you can offer a different variation. If you’d like to learn more about how to do this, I encourage you to listen to that episode.

So what I hope you’re taking away from this episode is that even though you may not have enough time to do everything you might want to do, there are things you can do to make better use of the time you do have. And I hope some of the strategies I’ve shared will help you focus on what matters most to you so you can feel more in control of how you do spend your time.

(12:20):
That’s it for now. I’m really glad you joined me today, and if this resonated with you and you want to hear more strategies for working with your ADHD or executive function challenges, hit like and follow so you don’t miss future episodes.

And until next time, this has been Reimagining Productivity with ADHD. I’m Marla Cummins, reminding you that ADHD doesn’t define you, but how you work with it can shape what’s possible.

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Resources To Help Adults Learn About Managing Time

• Learn how to plan better with my Free Guide: 6 Common Planning Mistakes Adults with ADHD Make.
• Join other adults with ADHD and Marla in this virtual live adult ADHD education and support group.
• Learn how to follow through better in this episode: How ADHD Adults Can Follow Through on Priorities.
• Listen to this episode, What to Say When Setting Boundaries with ADHD, and find out how to set boundaries around your time.