142 - Creating The Almighty "System"

Do you ever think how things would be so much better if you just had a "system" in place...for whatever things are frustrating you? Well, let's talk about these systems!

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Man, do you ever say to yourself, like, if I just had a system for this, like if I could just get into some kind of a goddamn routine, this would all be fine. I just need a system. And that's exactly what we're gonna talk about today. How convenient. Today it's all about the system. 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. Welcome to the podcast. Hope you're having a good day today so far. What's the plan? Do you guys have a what do you got going on for the week? You're gonna do that thing that's been lingering for a while, that thing that keeps been you keeps getting moved forward to the next week and the next week. Do you have that on the docket? I challenge you this week. Get that one thing handled. Set aside 30 minutes and move forward on it. I dare you. Email me if you do it and I'll high-five reply yeah. Let's get those shitty things done. You know, let's do it together. What's my shitty thing? You know, you know what it is? It's doing my walk in the early morning. That's I I always feel good after a walk, but I literally never feel like it. And that's the crap thing about ADHD. This this like the after effect is never enough to compel me into doing the thing. Like that knowing that I'm gonna feel good afterwards is just not enough. It won't, it doesn't compel me into action. So that's gonna be my shitty thing to try. That's gonna be my my shitty positive thing that I'm gonna I'm gonna leverage the power of this community to do it. I'm gonna invoke the power of community. This is my promise. I'm going to put my day streak on the line. I must do my walk in the morning before I get my kids up for school. I can't see my body is throwing an internal massive fit, uh, just thinking about it. But I just I have to allow that. I have to allow the fit. If you're not aware of what the day streak is, that's the thing that we have going on in the ADHC Big Brother community. It's where we do a daily accountability and we're gamifying it through like a day streak. So we just post the stuff that we want to make sure we get done that day. It's really quite powerful. If you're interested in that stuff, we welcome you. The link of Rooney will be in the show notes. But that's the uh the daily accountability is such a big deal. Oh, and then uh let before I move on, let me give you my mental health update. As we do, a couple of fellow podcasters introduced me to this practice of uh checking in. And it's uh like it's the in service of normalizing uh the process of talking about our skull spaghetti, right? Like making that uh comfortable. Like, let's talk about some of the shit that's going on. Uh, people don't really openly talk about this stuff very often. So uh hey, might be good. So uh you never know. So with that, uh, this is what's happening in my brain bowl this past week. I feel um I feel okay. All right, we're good, and we're done. No. Uh I think I still feel like I'm depressed, uh, but it's weird because the medicine is doing its job. So I really have been enjoying connecting with the members of the ADHC Big Brother community. We've had a couple of really fun Zoom chats. Just in general, that's been a mood booster. And uh, you know, we're working through the happiness trap in there. So it's a book about acceptance and commitment therapy. And that's been a really interesting experiment, uh, being my own lab rat with my feelings, and I'm really a big fan of that, I'm finding. And I it might even uh pass up my enjoyment of cognitive behavioral therapy in my hot list of therapy approaches. Like, what's the hot new way to deal with your shit? You know what it is, guys? It's acceptance and commitment therapy. That's the good stuff. Um, no, but I really like it. I mean, outside of that, it's it's like in my quiet times when my kids are gone with their mom. Uh, I find that I can get pretty lonely. So but I'm up and moving. And so that's so much better than being bedridden, you know, big time. Um, and then in other news, uh, my ADHD medicine sucks. There's that. I had to, I started a new medicine. And if you guys follow my journey at all, I'm not a fan of taking medicine for myself. It's a me thing. Um, I take blood medicine too, and blood pressure medicine. Um, it drives me nuts. I don't like it. And I I want to be able to manage my stuff on my own. So, and that's totally a me thing, and it's not me pushing any kind of life belief or anything. I love medicine. If I'm pro-medicine when you need it, but the long story longer is I felt like I needed help, and oh god, the I I don't know what it is, but like the ADHD medicine for me, it's uh you it always comes with something. There's always something attached to it, and it's frustrating the shit out of me. This particular case, um, I it's just there's a whole bunch of stuff. So I don't really feel like sharing all the specifics because it's you know, probably not radio friendly here. But it's just I I think I'd rather struggle with focus, you know. I have enough tools at my disposal to get started on shit. So I'm just I'm in the process of weaning off this one medicine. And in the meantime, I'm improving various aspects of my health to try to wean off of everything. Um, and I owe and I owe that to the ADHD Big Brother community. I mean, we're kicking ass in there and we're keeping each other motivated to move forward on our stuff. Like I'm making smoothies now, thanks to Rivka. Um, I'm weaning off coffee and weaning now. And that's uh Stephanie, that's a shout out to you because you're the one that screamed, do not go cold turkey. And initially I was like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going cold turkey. I'm gonna do this. I've done this before and I will go cold turkey again. But then I'm like, no, well, I I thought better about it. So I've been weaning off of coffee. Um, but I god dang it, I can't stress enough how important any community is for adults with ADHD. They've got plenty of them out there. I'm not the only ADHD community out there, so find one. This is my big appeal to you. Find one that matches with you and join it, really. Seriously, it is such a big deal. If getting shit done and not feeling like a loser because you struggle with basic life stuff, oh my god, man, ADHD community. Dudes, it's the shizbiskies. Okay, so that's my supp that's supposed to be my mental health ramble. Uh, took a little journey there. But uh with all the previous stuff said, I'm feeling hopeful, actually. And I I've got some gratitude going. So there's positivity in the air, you know, it's and I can smell it. It's like it's almost like if somebody else farted, but you're not like, wait a second, God, really? You couldn't go somewhere else. It's you you're actually like, oh wow. Hey, thank you. That's that's a pleasant smelling fart. So thanks, life. That could have turned so it could turn into a metaphor for life crapping on us, but it's like, no, no, no, life's not crapping on me right now. It's just sort of farting. It's just sort of farting on me right now. Oh God. Okay, so what's up with systems? Do you guys have a system? Do you guys have do you do systems? A system to me, the way that I see it, it's like a fantasy about a situation where there's this crappy task, and that the fantasy is that it would become autopilot. Like I wouldn't have to think about it, because it's part of a system. If if I had a system for putting away my laundry, I wouldn't have to, it would be in place. A system that's in place that I wouldn't have to be like stressed about or anything. If I had a system for filing my taxes, or like a system for handling my emails, or what if I had a system for responding to my friends when they email me, or like a system for taking care of my hygiene or something? Or what if I I had a system for like putting clean dishes away or something? Like it's just a system to rely on that works, you know? It they sound so beautiful because they feel to me like they don't require effort. Things are just in place and I don't have to think about it or something because it's a system. Is that how you guys see it? That's kind of the vibe that I get when I think about a system. The need for a system, the way it is I see it for me in my world, is it's the great spin on procrastination. No, I'm not talking about the system, I'm talking about my my thinking that I need one. It's like permission to not do the thing now because it's in the quote unquote, well, I just am waiting for the system to be figured out. Like it's it's in that mode. So there's a forgiveness to not doing the thing. Like I'll leave the dishes out, maybe, and like let's say before I go to bed, if I see the dishes, I'll be like, oh god dang, I need a system for dealing with this shit. And I'll figure it out later because like this this has got to stop. We've got to deal with that, but I'm gonna do it later. And then I have permission to forget because I've declared that I needed the system. And that's I'm not bashing a good system like at all. I have some systems. I have a planning system. I have a planning system weekly, daily, and it runs. I have systems are awesome. I have a system of checking in with our accountability club every morning to declare my intentions. I've got a system for getting my kids up for school, making pancakes. That system works, but it seems like whenever there's an issue with getting started on stuff, it's easy for me to declare the need for some kind of a system to deal with it. Like if I had a system, I wouldn't have trouble with this because it would be part of a well, well-crafted system. And then the routines would be in place. I would do A and then B and then C, and it would work like clockwork because it's my system. And that's clearly why it's not done, because there's no good system in place for it. So obviously. It kind of sounds like I might be anti-system, but I'm not. I'm actually pro. Pro system, I love a good system. But I think systems are formed. They aren't really uh for me, they're not really created from thin air. And there's two points I'd love to make uh that apply to me. So if they apply to you, great, and if they don't, you know, to the garbage galls, put it in the trash can. But the first is that systems for adults with ADHD, uh, hashtag me, uh, they're awesome while they work. And it's incredibly common for a system to work great at first while it's super novel, while it's exciting and it's full of interest, and then it will fail at some point. And that's not an indicator that the system sucks or that I suck or that you suck. There's no there's no sucking going on here. It's just the system has run its course and it's time for something new. No biggie, you know, no big whoop, no big whoop-de-doo. Um, and the second thing that I found is that a good majority of my systems, they've happened because they've formed over time, like bit by bit. Uh, in terms of like daily planning, I use a very sloppy version of the bullet journal. This has taken me years to come by, but I finally found that certain aspects of bullet journaling work for me. And I use an incredibly dumbed-down version of writer Carroll's methodology. It's uh I have you ever it's called the bullet journal method. You can Google it, it's it's very common. And I don't use the quote-unquote whole system because I've tried aspects of it and then they don't stick. But I've actively been in pursuit of a planning system for myself probably my whole life. And it's been this cobbling together of things, trying stuff, ditching stuff, sticking with stuff, iterating to keep things interesting. Oh, and I used to go for every god dang shiny object. Like I used to be the type of person who would pay a good amount of money for that fresh Franklin planner. Do you remember Franklin planners? I think they still make them. I mean, do you remember? They're so amazing, and they represent hope and being on top of my shit and just organized so beautifully. And I just never used them. Like literally after the first week. That's a system. That's a system that was put together for me. All I had to do was buy the system and then use the system, but it wasn't my system, so it didn't take off. I couldn't make it stick, and it's going from zero to this fully a hundred percent organized dude in one daily planner. It's not realistic, not for somebody with ADHD in my mind. No, no shaw. This is a bit of a ramble, but I it's my appeal to you to find your system. Uh like you have ADHD, man. Like you're a creative tsunami. You have ways of being and doing in the world that are probably incredibly unique. My appeal would be for you to try setting up a routine that would like fit into the end goal of your system, like that you're trying to create. So if you're trying to create a system for handling your laundry more effectively, maybe instead of coming up with the perfect system that just sounds super cool, what might be a realistic time of the week that you could put towards your laundry and then practice hitting that time each week? Like make an appointment for laundry at that specific time, do whatever you can to make that time work because you predetermined it would work, and then give that a thwack for a while. That's part one of the bigger system. It doesn't mean that you're putting your laundry away. Maybe it goes back under your bed, like in a big pile to be cleaned, and then you need to figure out what's my system for getting it off my bed. But it's like this is a an aspect, a routine to begin with, that if it if it gels, then maybe a system forms over time. And you know I'm gonna suggest accountability partnering or some externalizing this somehow. You probably already know where I think you could get that support, but get yourself some practice at hitting that mark. And you never know, that may develop into your system over time uh for handling your laundry. I'll tell you one that I wish I had right now. I wish I had a system for managing my diet. Like my eating is all over the map, and I can envision I I could easily tell you this perfect system where I meal plan, I prepare all my meals, my fridge looks like it's an organized hub of easy access meals. There's always a smoothie ready to go, and I know the vitamins and the supplements that I'm taking, and it's all perfectly laid out for me. Excellently done. There's no chance in hell that I can go from where I'm at now to that system, even though I can create it in my mind's eye. I can see it happening. There's just way too many tension points, way too many choice points, way too many things to add, and it is instantly overwhelming. But here's what I can do. Like first, self-awareness is rad. Knowing what I'm capable of and being cool with whatever that means, that's step one. Done and done. Kabow! And then what one thing can I focus on? And if I can get more, great. But what's one thing that I'll make sure that I do? And because I got inspired by Rivka in our community, I decided to pull out the blender and make smoothies. Challenge accept it. And that's an easy point of entry into this. So since then, I've added spending time just looking at healthy food, getting educated, putting in that time has informed some decisions and gotten me excited to try something new. And so I was able to stretch my muscle, give myself the challenge of trying one new healthy recipe. Not a healthy recipe every meal on every day, literally one meal for the whole week. The idea here is that one meal, and then I experience it, and then I realize that I can do it, and then that goes to two meals. And then when I'm good with two meals, then that goes to three meals. And literally, if you do the math on that, I could be up to all the meals probably within uh a number of months. Not it's not too hard to do, but going from zero to all the healthy meals is literally ridiculous. I have a very lofty one-year goal that includes not being on depression medicine or blood pressure medicine, and it has multiple systems in place. And because I have ADHD and I recognize that just because something is important to me, it doesn't mean I'm gonna do it. I have to find that interest component. My challenge to you guys for this week would be look at the system that you're thinking that you need to have and ask yourself, well, what's one component of that system that you could focus on for the week and then set it in your schedule like a goddamn doctor's appointment. Like work on that one thing this week and see how it goes. And by all means, reach out, let me know how it worked for you or if it didn't work for you. I love hearing updates from you guys, so keep them coming. I respond to every email. It brings me a great joy to connect with you guys. Alrighty. So I hope this episode's been helpful for you. If it was, please consider uh heading over to whatever podcast platform you use and uh shoot a rating over there or uh leave a review. That would be amazing. And with that, I hope you guys have a great week, and I will talk to you later.