Transcript
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Find it hard to prioritize when everything seems important, but there’s only one of you and just not enough time. You’ve tuned into Scattered Focused, done Re-Imagining Productivity with ADHD, A podcast for ADHD adults like you who want to learn how to adopt 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 and I’m glad you’re joining me today on this journey to re-Imagining Productivity with A DHD, so you can get what is important to you done without trying to do it like everyone else. So you wonder what you should be working on and also why is it so hard for you to make these decisions like other ADHD adults? You may find this hard for two common reasons. One reason is that it can feel like everything on your plate is equally important.
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You may also feel as though it all needs to be done right now, if not yesterday. Obviously, this can make it hard to choose what to do each day and contributes to your feelings of overwhelm and stress. One of the ways you can turn this around is by becoming an essentialist. Becoming an essentialist will help you be more confident. You are doing what is most meaningful to you each day because you will be doing more of what is in alignment with your values and goals rather than just busy work ready to dive in and learn how to do this.
First, your executive functioning skill challenges because of your ADHD can get in your way of being able to prioritize to get better. You’ll need to upgrade those that are getting in your way right now. One of these is decision-making skills. If you struggle with this, you’ll need to work on it now so you can get better at differentiating between what to work on now, what to defer or what to drop entirely.
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Also, for many adults with ADHD, there is now and not now time blindness. This can contribute to your tendency to operate too much in the present at the expense of working toward your future goals. So you may end up doing what feels most urgent right now, but not necessarily what is most important. Trying to prioritize in your head is another reason. You may find it hard to make these decisions. You’re ADHD brain just isn’t equipped to hold, sort and process all this information to come to a decision.
Another reason prioritizing can be so difficult for you is that there’s so much you’re interested in doing. So even though you have a lot on your plate right now, it may be hard for you to resist the next shiny penny that comes along. It’s also possible you’re finding it hard to prioritize because you’re being asked to do too much, so it feels like you are drinking from a fire hose and you can’t turn off the spigot because you’re not in control.
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The last reason prioritizing may be a challenge is because you are not using your values and goals to guide you. It may be because you’re not clear on what these are, or you just don’t know how to use them as a guide, just as there are many reasons contributing to your challenges with prioritizing. There are also many reasons you might want to get on top of this. First, when you don’t have a sense of your priorities, you may never be quite confident you are spending your time in the right way.
So while working on one task, you might wonder whether you should be doing something else and this contributes to your stress. You may be more stressed because you end up jumping from task to task, but you don’t close the loop and maybe not do your best work. Then at the end of each day, you might even feel you didn’t do enough work.
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Some days you may even feel you didn’t do any work because you have a nagging sense you didn’t do what is most important. As the stress increases because of your multitasking, you may end up procrastinating on what is important to you. Alternatively, you may engage in procrast, which is working on less important tasks like cleaning your email box at the expense of doing what is most important to you. You can turn this around to be more discerning about how you use your time and energy. The first step is to decide where you want to excel.
Go big according to Greg McEwen, author of Essentialism, the Disciplined Pursuit of Less. These are the places where you want to make your highest contribution toward what really matters to you without stretching yourself too thin, some of the places people decide to play big are self-care, hobby or sport, family or kids, profession or business or school.
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What are the essential areas in your life? You’ll likely need to limit your involvement in some of your current activities to go big in the essential areas in your life. In some cases, this may mean even giving up an activity entirely. In other cases, it may mean taking a good enough approach to the activities that you are in right now. One of the benefits of adopting a good enough approach is that you can save time and energy because you are not trying to excel at them, and this will help you in those areas you decide are essential and where you want to go big.
For example, you might take a good enough approach to writing emails, but right now you might alternate between procrastinating or trying to write to the perfect email. Taking a good enough approach to managing your email can help you address these tendencies.
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More examples, when you take a good enough approach might be enjoy a hobby even if you’ll never be a pro. Get work done in a timely way because you are not trying to excel. Take time to experiment as you learn and improve in areas and decrease your overwhelm stress, and then you’ll have the time and energy you need to spend on activities in the areas where you want to go big. So how can you choose where to excel?
Let’s look at the example of Aisha, a married professor with two school-aged kids. She’s very active in her mosque, helps her elderly parents who live nearby and volunteers at her kids’ school. Initially, her goal was to figure out how to fit it all in and feel less stressed, but she was not spending as much time with her family as she wanted. Her work was also slipping through the cracks and she was not taking care of herself.
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Finding the time to do everything she wanted to do seemed impossible to her. On top of that, when she was with her family, she felt guilty about not working, and when she was working, she was worried she wasn’t spending enough time with her family sleep. What was that? She also wasn’t eating well and rarely exercised. You get the picture? Maybe it sounds familiar. She was stretched so thin, she felt like she was constantly in a fire drill. Eventually she acknowledged it was impossible to do everything she wanted to do though really she already knew this.
With this newfound acceptance, she decided in this season of her life, she would go big in three main areas, family, work, and self-care. The next step she took was to identify the right activities that would help her excel in these areas because without doing this as McEwen notes, you may always be in motion, busy, but not necessarily productive, stretched too thin, overworked and majoring in minor activities.
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So first, Aisha made three commitments. One was that family dinners would be sacred. Second, when she would not multitask at her daughter’s soccer game. The third commitment was to plan family outings on Saturday and not work. Sure Aisha felt good making these initial commitments, but she wasn’t confident she could keep these promises to herself or her family. Because this wasn’t her first rodeo, she had tried making commitments to spend more time with her family before, but it never seemed to work to maximize the chances she would follow through.
She created an execution plan to help some of the ways that she did that. One, she put her phone on do not disturb and sat with other parents at the soccer game, volunteered with a friend at the school so that she would be sure to show up, added family dinners to her calendar so no one would schedule over them.
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Scheduled meetings to end no more than four 30 and scheduled a shutdown routine from four 30 to five so she could feel better about ending her day. It was an experiment to be sure, and that’s what you need to do initially when you create your execution plan. Then you can refine it as you see what works and what doesn’t work. To have the time and energy to do all of these things.
Aisha also needed to do less in some other areas to start, she put boundaries around how much she would volunteer for one, she stepped off the leadership team at her mosque and she offered to help lead services once a month. She also declined the constant request to volunteer at her kids’ school, but made a firm commitment to volunteer twice a month. She also started to decline consulting opportunities as she decided consulting would only take up 15 hours of her work week.
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This was a hard decision as there was so much going on in her field and she wanted to be part of it. She then hired outside help for her parents, though she was ambivalent about doing this as she thought she should be the one helping them out, not some strangers. As she leaned into being an essentialist, she continued to refine how she spent her time and energy and stopped acting by default so she could excel in her chosen areas. Again, family work and self-care. Becoming an essentialist can be a heavy lift for ADHD adults, no doubt, but also can reduce your stress and overwhelm and maybe even allow you to enjoy the journey a little bit more. What do you think?
Are you up for trying? So where are you going to become an essentialist and how are you going to do it? That’s it for now. I’m really glad you joined me and stayed until the very end. If you’re interested in learning more about my work with adults with A DHD, please check out my website, marla cummins.com. Of course, if you’ve learned a thing or two from today’s podcast, please pass along the link to anyone else in your circles you think might also benefit. And until next time, this has been scattered focused, done. And I’m Marla Cummins. Wish you knew all the very best on your journey to re-Imagining Productivity with A DHD.
