Stop Wasting Time With ADHD

DESCRIPTION:

Learn strategies to stop wasting time.

RESOURCES:

Blog:

TRANSCRIPT:

(00:00):

Are you ready to stop wasting 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 ADHD, so you can get what is important to you done without trying to do it like everyone else.

Once you’ve decided what’s essential to you and you have a task list that reflects this, it’s time to execute. And to do this, you’ll need to use ADHD time management tactics to decide when to work on your various tasks. Because just having a list of essential tasks is not a guarantee that you’ll follow through. Especially since as it’s common for ADHD adults, you may often default to your sense of urgency to decide what to work on at any given moment.

(01:06)

If this is the case for you now, even with a well curated task list, you’ll likely continue to feel stressed and overwhelmed unless you break this urgency cycle. To do this, you’ll need to upgrade your skills, be with the discomfort of operating differently, and trust that slowing down will help you do more of what is important to you.

Are you ready to learn how to use your time to be productive and feel more grounded? The first step to break free of over-relying on your sense of urgency for motivation is to learn which low return activities are contributing to your urgency cycle and which activities can help you escape this cycle by using the urgent important matrix. If you’re not sure how you are using your time now, rather than guessing, keep a log for three days. Once you know how you spend your time, you may choose to use it differently.

(02:09)

For example, you may want to learn how to minimize your distractions. You may also decide to upgrade your skills to better manage interruptions, set boundaries, and say no graciously to better manage your activities. Then you’ll have more time to incorporate the activities that will help you do more of what’s important to you. No doubt fitting these activities into your schedule will be hard, but with patience and self-compassion, you can do it. Of course, you don’t always have complete control over your schedule. There will be times when some last minute emergencies, time-driven deadlines, requests from your boss, et cetera, you can’t anticipate. So you’ll want to leave enough buffer in your schedule to account for these.

But you also have some urgency in minimizing your urgency activities as some of these are the result of not doing enough activities that are important and not urgent, that are seldom urgent, but help you minimize some of the activities like going to urgent care and missing work because you didn’t call the doctor when you started feeling sick last week pulling an all-nighter because you didn’t create an execution plan during your weekly review, slogging through your day, distracted because you didn’t take the time off you needed.

(03:41)

I’m sure you’re all too familiar with the above scenarios. Discovering where you want to reduce your urgent and important or urgent and not important activities include more important activities into your schedule is a good first step. Yet even when you have a list of what you consider your essential tasks, you might still look at it and think, I don’t have time to do all of that stuff. The list might still look overwhelming to you, and part of the reason is when you look at the list, you think to yourself, I can’t do all of this now.

No, you can’t, but you can do some of it now. You’ll need to think about how to execute on your task over time. Not easy for A-D-H-D-A adults, but you can do it step by step and the next step is preparing your execution plan, including breaking down your project into discreet task, which will make it easier to estimate the time needed, putting on due dates.

(04:53):

Also including rough time estimates for the discrete task. I know that this is hard, you might want to add 25% to your estimate. Also include a start date. You’ll need to defer some of the tasks. Perhaps a delegation plan might be part of this. You might need to delegate some of the task. Other considerations you can think of. These necessary preparations are all part of your execution plan as an adult with ADHD, it’s also important your execution plan includes identification of the value in doing the task.

This will help you tap into your mojo so you don’t end up at the critical moment of choice, deciding to work on a different task that feels more interesting or urgent. Then telling yourself about the original tasks. I’ll do it later, right later. Knowing the value for you in doing a task will help you feel a visceral connection to the reward, something good or avoidance of something bad.

(06:07):

This connection can help you choose to start the task when you intend as long of course as you remember the reward in the moment that you intend to act. For example, a former client, a professor, frequently ignored the reoccurring block of time he set aside for administrative tasks. Yet he valued being able to be seen as a professor and a professional at that and knew he would need to do these low interest tasks if he wanted the respect of his colleagues.

To remember this, he put be a pro next to admin time in his calendar. Then much to his surprise, as he built the muscle memory of how good it felt to follow through on these administrative tasks, it became easier for him to follow through and he was pulled to honor the administrative task because he brought the reward into the now, into the present, the moment when he needed to act to make executing easier.

(07:15):

It is also important to consider the ebb and flow of your energy in deciding when to do a task. Obviously, you won’t always be able to decide when to do a task, but when you do have the time to think about this and it will help you to have the energy you need to focus on the task at hand. As you take into consideration your energy, consider when typically is the best time to set reoccurring blocks of time to do certain tasks like finances, blog, writing, email, et cetera.

Also, how long can you focus on a task when you intend to, and then since inconsistency is the hallmark of A DHD, how much in advance of the due date would it make sense to start the task to allow for some off days? Again, your best work hours for different type of tasks and best time to take breaks during the day when you’re working on it.

(08:26):

Anything other that you can think of to find out more about how managing your energy can help you? Check out my article and I’ll include this with the blog on my website. Manage your energy, not your time. Be more productive If you’ve done all of the above, but the task is not intrinsically interesting, it may still be hard to start When you’re feeling the discomfort, the first step is to acknowledge the discomfort and remind yourself. Starting is often the hardest part.

Then just try to touch it. You may find once you start, you keep on working. For example, if you need to reply to an email you’ve been putting off, open the email and set the timer for 10 minutes. Then reread the email, sketch out bullet points for your reply on a piece of paper. If you still have time left, start typing. Once the timer goes off, decide whether you want to continue or whether you want to come back to it another time.

(09:39):

Then of course there are going to be times when you’ve got nothing left in the fuel tank, at least for a particular task. It might feel like wading through quicksand, but you still want to do some work because you have a lot on your plate. In these situations, you can use David Allen’s four criteria model to decide whether to direct your time and energy to those moments. This is how you can do it one time available. How much time do I have available? Two, energy available.

Do I have the capacity to do this right now? Three, what tasks could I do right now given my energy and time? And then four priority. Is this an important task to do right now? Using this model when you’re not sure what you can do to help avoid procrastination is really important. Then once you’ve decided to do a particular task, trust your past self that you made the right decision.

(10:55):

Otherwise, in the moment when you’re ready to act, you’re going to think other tasks you could do will be the ones that you should do right in the moment and you might decide to do these instead. That happens, doesn’t it? Resist this temptation. Think of how grateful you’ll be with your future self when you follow through on your intentions and remind yourself in the moment I’m doing this and not that I’m doing this and not that. Because if you end up multitasking, jumping from task to task, you’ll be less productive as you switch back and forth between different tasks.

This time loss could be due to the time needed to ramp up to do other tasks. Distractions, you’ll inevitably occur in the transition and also needing to fix the mistakes you’ll inevitably make when you are juggling too many tasks. As Dr. Hollowell noted in his book, crazy Busy Multitasking is a mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously. So when different tasks come to mind, write it down on a piece of paper or put it in your task manager later.

(12:24):

To be productive. You’ll need to have a combination of task management and time management. After reading this and listening to this and the previous podcast and post, what would you like to try this week to get more out of what is essential for you? Being strategic about how you prioritize your task and then executing on them can help you do what’s most important to you. 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, check out my website, marlacummins.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 benefit, and until next time, this has been Scattered Focus Done, and I’m Marla Cummins. Wishing you all the very best on your journey to reimagining productivity with ADHD.

If this was helpful, feel free to share or link to it in your own blog or newsletter.