139 - The ADHD Secret Of The Day Before

There's so much hope the day before. It's the day of that tends to host all those struggles. Let's unravel that knotted up extension cord and straighten things out. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What is it about the day before? That offers so much hope. I mean, I could do anything tomorrow. The day before anything, everything is possible. But the day of, oh my God, good lord. What's going on with the day of?

unknown 0:14

I can't.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

It's so if we could just figure out how to day before our day of, God, if we could just flippity flop that, you know? Let's talk about that. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD and comorbid depression symptoms. I'm your host, Rush Jones, author of Destending to the Top, believer that you can actually have a smile in your life despite this diagnosis. So let's make some sense out of this struggle. Let's learn some stuff. Let's laugh at some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff. What's up, guys? Glad you're here. Or glad you're there. Glad you're there. If you were here, we'd be a little bit crowded. It'd be a pretty tight space. And I haven't showered yet, and that's it's better that you're there. I want to do a quick shout-out. Welcome some new members into the community. We've got uh Anthony and Amanath and Francois and Rivka. Oh holy shit. Rivka's got us motivated to do breath work in there. She brought a 30-day breathwork challenge to us into the community, and we're going for it. We shall see, Rivka. We shall see. I'm day two right now, and I've crushed it both days. I've got my breathing down, suckas. I love it in there. This community is growing into quite a hub of getting shit dunnery. So welcome to everybody. All right. So I believe that a big part of managing an ADHD life for me is it's a radical acceptance of my interest-wired brain. And what does that mean? That's a great quick question. Uh, who wants to field that one? Anybody? Seriously, what does that mean? I'm waiting for you to tell me. Radical acceptance. Was that hardcore acceptance? I think it comes from either like Buddhism or uh I know it comes from dialectical behavior therapy. Or maybe it's just like awesome acceptance. Dude, that's radical acceptance, bro. I'm gonna think of it like the you know the monks of monk town in Lower Monklandia. It's just acceptance. Acceptance is acceptance. We accept or we do not accept. And there's no kinda here, and there's no insane, like intense level of it. It's like it's like the uh the merchant and the credit card. You know, you either accept American Express or you don't. There's no we really accept it here, or there's no like kinda. You can't just tap the Amex card on the thing and see, you know, the guy said that they don't accept it. So it's a it's an unacceptable payment option in this case. And we're holding up the line, having this debate about it. So it's like, are you gonna pay cash or or what are we doing? Are we walking away with nothing? I think this is fresh for me right now because I suck at it. Self-acceptance? Accepting thyself or thyself, thyself? One of the selves. I'm the Amex card in this scenario. Acceptance, I suck at the you are more than welcome to do a reframe at me. Like maybe I say I'm working on it. Like I'm actively working on it, and that's true. And we're doing that in the ADHD Big Brother community. We're reading the happiness trap in there. Uh, that's the current book in the book club, which is a book about acceptance and commitment therapy, of which I am a fan. It's a good book. I recommend it. I wasn't paid to recommend it. Um, and you know what? And I'll prove it. I'm not gonna, you know, put it in the show notes. You're gonna have to fucking Google it yourself. I'm not sponsored by Google either. You could use Bang for all I care, or Yahoo, or Flizflackle, or or the you know, the gob chopster, whatever random name search engine thing you use. I'm just it's just a really good book. Oh, so how this relates to today, it's sort of accepting that like in any given moment, I'm driven by interest. Uh, you know, it's the ADHE stuff. I'm driven by interest, novelty or urgency. Um, you know, all those things, they have interest qualities to them. I've talked about that before. I'm I'm interested in interesting things, obviously. Novel things are interesting, and urgent things have an interest to them in avoiding the consequence. Like I'm interested in living. That's why I tuck and rolled outside of the car before it plummeted off the cliff. There's an interest in survival there. In the moment, many things have no interest to me. Mainly things that are good for me, oddly enough, like eating healthy, exercising, cleaning my environment, personal hygiene, and the things that have the long-term benefit, you know, the the things that generally have that pain, you know, it's like that stupid phrase, you know, short-term pain, long-term gain. Why does it have to be like that? That's exactly the formula for somebody that has an importance-wired brain, aka the normies. Normies can get started on shit that is important regardless of being interested. ADHD people, it's not so much. It's a bit of a slog. But oh my god, but do you guys ever do this where you fight yourselves to try to make it happen that way, like the normy? Like I feel, and this might be me, maybe, but man, I've spent years fighting so hard to try and will myself to do important things in like the normie way. Like it's important and I need to be doing this. And it's like failure after failure after failure. And what I think is so funny is that like the idea of making something fun or interesting, it always felt like I was cheating, or it's it's not right to think like this. It's not adult to think like this. It's got it's hard, this has to be hard work because working hard is hard work, and that's how you do the good work, and that's how the good work is supposed to be, because it's hard work. Like, but when we're in our element, when we're in the ADHD element and we're enjoying ourselves, we're so much more productive and we achieve hard work levels of output, but it just happens to be fun or interesting. But that feels weird to say. I don't know if you guys like that. I need this to be fun. Like, no, it's too important. This is no joke. This is important work. But if it was a joke, if it was a joke, I'd probably get it done quicker. Ugh it's interesting. This is why I like I like body doubling during doing my taxes or body doubling while I'm trying to do job searches, or you know, that's what I'm body doubling for right now in the community a lot. It's it adds an element of interest, connection to a shitty, shitty thing. We also, and I I think it was Stephanie. Stephanie, if it oh my god, I think I'm pretty sure it was you because you themed out your days. But Stephanie in our community created poop day. It's poop days on Saturdays. And everybody that participates picks up shit: dog shit, cat shit, clean the toilet, something in the theme of poop day. And that's how we gamify and turn an uninteresting, unmotivating, god-awful task into something more doable, something that makes us feel like we're part of a group. We create the interest, even if it's not directly at the task. That's why I'm so hardcore about joining a community. If you have ADHD, a supportive community, it's like the last piece of your puzzle. You gotta join a community. And I only say join the ADHD Big Brother community because it's it's just because it's the greatest community on the planet, you know. I'm not so arrogant as to say it's the best in the universe because, you know, there's there's probably a multiverse, and in that multiverse, there's probably another ADHD Big Brother community, and may they've probably iterated or tried some new things that we haven't discovered yet. And so it's like, you know, I'm not trying to be like Mr. Cocky Pants over here. That's you know, I'm just trying to shoot you straight. The people in here are really fucking cool. So getting back to interest or lack of interest, I'm not a person that can manufacture interest for something that sucks. I need workarounds, I need ADHD tools. Okay, no biggie. But one of the most profound or one of the most beneficial things that I found in moving my needle forward on an uninteresting task is pre-scheduling it the day before. And this is why I think that is. It doesn't take a lot of mental energy for me to plan a tomorrow because there's nothing but possibility. Tomorrow is like can be whatever I want it to be. Mood doesn't factor in to tomorrow. I can just look at my day, I can see what appointments I have, can't mess with those. Okay, kids at school, picking them up, dropping off, okay, anything going on. And then what do I have left? Objectively, where's my time blocks? I try not to plan to the minute because I and probably you as well are notoriously shitty at predicting accurate times. So when I have a comfortable pocket of time, I'll toss a 45-minute work session, or maybe a 30-minute work session, maybe a 10-minute work session into that pocket of time that I know that I'll have. I'm not looking at when I'll want to do a thing or when I can see myself doing it. It's only when I could realistically block out a time for the shitty thing I'm gonna do, whether or not I want to. Can I do it? And let's call that thing uh cleaning out my paperwork bin. So I have 30 minutes tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. I schedule cleaning out my paperwork bin as an appointment at 1030 a.m. And then when the time comes, I use all my ADHD tools and strategies and I keep the appointment. The ADHD pushback here uh is typically, well, I'll forget the appointment. Or it doesn't matter, I still won't do it. And to that I say, you're correct. Those are both correct. You will forget and you will still refuse to do it. Some of the time. But for me, the likelihood of me doing it at the appointment time is monumentally higher than if I didn't. We're going after likelihoods here. And if there is a goddamn snake oil salesman that is selling perfection, then I mean, I don't know. I mean, forward me the info because I'm in. I I would love that. That would be great. We're going after likelihoods on the path to to hit or miss, right? And as we continue on to more often than not, until we reach the final gold standard of usually. It usually happens. I usually keep my appointments to myself, but we need to practice though. Isn't that so much nicer than I either do it perfectly all the time or I'm a big dumpy loser and I failed not only at this, but as a human being? Total failure. Like it's the perfectionistic version of failure. Perfect failure. I'm if I'm going after perfection, failure is the easiest. I can guarantee failure. My hope is that we can all collectively reach this pinnacle. This apex, I think it's called the the top, the the the creme de la creme of usually. Oh, to get to usually. That is the ultra challenge this week. I dare you. It's a dare. A double dog, triple dog, dare you. To plan a task for tomorrow. Try it on like a winter coat, see what happens. And then try it on again, like a new shoe. You know, probably feels a bit stiff, but maybe if you walk around in it for a while, you wear it in, and maybe you get to a place where it's comfy. I mean, who knows? That's the challenge. Plan one work session as one appointment for one day in the coming week and do it the day before. Let me know how it goes. And I dare you guys in the School Spaghetti Club in the community to try and post it in the daily accountability. One day, I dare you. Oh, or maybe we create the day before challenge, 30 days in a row. That would be good. I'm already doing three challenges right now. I don't think I have another one. I'll put that one on the up-and-coming challenges. God, we gotta keep this shit fresh and exciting. Or dare I say, we have to keep it interesting. Alrighty, guys, that'll do it for this week. If you are uh resonating with the information in this podcast and you want to take your getting shit dunnery to the next level, click on the link in the show notes uh to join our community. There's also a link in the show notes to the eight essential episodes that I think is the perfect primer for getting that ADHD managed. Clicky clack on that. And uh with that, I hope you guys have a fantastic week, and I shall talk to you later.