239 - Productivity for the Unpredictable ADHD Brain

You are a different person every single day, so let's talk about how that pairs with your ADHD, your depression, your anxiety....and doing stuff. 

Join ADHD Big Brother and let's have that free 1:1 coaching call to get you nudging down the mountain. - https://adhdbigbrother.circle.so/checkout/adhd-big-brother-subscription

The YouTube Video I mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XMgDCPCZcI

Give me your mental health report: https://www.adhdbigbrother.com/contactruss

Try the FREE ADHD Big Brother Episode Finder!  Type in your struggle, get two matching episodes. No emails, no sign-ups. Find your episodes →

For those of you that are wondering why nothing is sticking, why you read things and don't do the work, why you have epiphanies about what could work but it goes nowhere...Join myself and others at ADHDBB.  There is a 'team' component to managing ADHD. Join our team. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We're all really busy people, aren't we? We have a lot going on, and we have a lot of things to do, and that can be overwhelming, and it can also be very difficult to uh figure out what to do when we're overwhelmed or when we're depressed. And not to mention we have ADHD. And let's figure that out. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD, their comorbid depression, their anxiety. Oh, it's just a moot. I'm your host and your ADHD Big Brother, Rush Jones. I've got ADHD too. I've got depression as well. It's crap fantastic. So let's learn some stuff. Let's laugh at some stuff. Let's make some commitments to do some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff. Yeah, here's some stuff. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome to the show. No commercial breaks, though. It's like you paid for premium, right? The premium, no commercial access. You're welcome. That's my gift to you. Alright, let's do the mental health report real quick. Every episode we attempt the art of normalizing talking about our school spaghetti or our mood state, the good, the bad, and the weird because we aren't always fine. Let's be vulnerable together. Will you hold my hand while I share my mental health update? I'm fucked up, man. I'd say I'm weird, airing on good. End of day anxiety is ripe with me right now. It's mostly just life stuff. You know, taxes are coming up. Financial stuff is always fun. And by always and fun, I mean never and fun. But I'm feeling that life is good. I went kayaking with uh Alistair this time down in Long Beach last week. Super awesome time. The moon jellies are out. It's fun to pet them. They feel like rubber. It's super interesting. My brain shuts up when I'm out in nature. It is awesome. And I'm feeling really super silly. So that's great. I like that feeling. How are you doing? You can always go to adhgbbrother.com, click on contact, send me a message, do your mental health report. I'm not gonna solve anything for you. That's for you and your therapist. But I have ears and I have empathy and I will respond. Try it, see what happens. I'm interested. Let us discuss the doing of the thing. Now I'm gonna use laundry today. That's our metaphor and an actual thing we need to do because we all hate it. And we all, I think we all desire clean clothes, but man, laundry sucks. Uh, it is a great metaphor for adults with ADHD. It's one of the ultimate shitty to-dos, and we rarely even do it to completion, right? Hashtag uh sleeping in a with a pile of clean socks on my bed. So we look for a system. Uh I do laundry on Wednesdays at 3 p.m. That's my system. And remember, this is just a metaphor. So if you're killing it on laundry, what aren't you killing it on, right? Clutter, is it getting to bed on time, doom scrolling, finishing your resume? What is your thing that you say, I God, that's my Audiotch da. That's how my Audiotch doll surfaces and shows itself to me. I need a reliable dopamine intake experience to activate for that. Okay. What is your ADHD motherfudge? The problem as I see it is that it doesn't matter how good your system for doing a thing is, you're different all the time. Like you're not the same person every Wednesday at 3 p.m. One Wednesday you're tired. One Wednesday, something else is more important. One Wednesday your kid was being a shit and you totally forgot the laundry because you're stewing on it. One Wednesday you're on cloud nine feeling great and screw the laundry, I deserve to enjoy myself. And then one Wednesday, somebody that you know died. You know, we won't be doing the laundry that day. Conditions are reliably unreliable. So, what is this awesome system gonna do? We want them because if they work, the doing of the thing technically is becomes easier because it's a system. We got a system. I don't even have to think about what to do because the system tells me what to do and when to do it. There's no thinking needed. I don't have to make choices. Thank you, system. But every single Wednesday is gonna be a new version of you. Like who you're gonna be this coming Wednesday? You don't know. We have no clue what who we're gonna be on Wednesday. So, what needs to happen here? That is a great question. How do we reliably do the laundry when who we are in that moment is unreliable? Do we force feed productivity on ourselves? Like, I don't care if everyone's dead, do the laundry. That's a bit aggressive. Sorry, I can't make it to the funeral. My my ADHD coach says I have to honor my commitment to do the laundry. Condolences, I wish I could be, I wish I could be there. No, that's extreme. Like, let's not go that route. At the core of all this, from the ADHD lens, is taking a moment to have self-awareness of the moment, what's going on right now. Thoughtful decisions to me are the ideal. So when I'm coaching people on productivity with ADHD, you get a lot of like, I forgot, or something equally important came up. So I did that. And I'll tell you what I'm looking for from clients, which makes me go, okay, they got this. Or okay, there's still work to be done here. I'll give you two scenarios. And there's no judgment in any of these, but hopefully maybe you can extrapolate some coaching for yourself out of this if you need it. So let's say the commitment was gonna do the laundry Wednesday at 3 p.m. That's the plan. We meet, and the client says, I didn't do the laundry, totally forgot. I got caught up cleaning the living room because I noticed the uh baseboards had a rim of dust on the top, and that took me down a rabbit hole, but my baseboards are so clean right now. Or maybe the client says, uh, I didn't do the laundry because Wednesday came and I realized I was gonna take too long, and I had dinner to go to that night, and I I had the clothes for the dinner, so I just rescheduled the laundry for Thursday at a time when there would be no interruptions, and then I doubled down on it by making it visible to the community I'm a member of, so it was more likely to happen. And so uh myself and a fellow member committed to each other that we would text each other when the clothes were put away, because we both have that feeling that the job is done when the clothes are dried, but we know that's not true, so we were gonna text each other at the end. Both these people totally failed at doing the laundry when they said one person the ADHD won, and the other person the ADHD lost because the person was thoughtful in the moment, didn't let it go, was curious about it, made a non-judgmental pivot. Done. What's a non-judgmental pivot? Great question. Here's a judgmental pivot. It'd be like this You fucking suck at planning. Duh, you had a dinner to go to. What an idiot. You didn't remember that? Why would you schedule laundry, you moron? Well, you better do it tomorrow then, you dummy. That's a judgmental pivot. It's a pivot laced with self-critique of the negative variety. ADHD to me, it's uh it's skills training. We all have RSD like crazy. We have varying levels of trauma that is just craptastic. We have depression, we have anxiety, we have a lot going on. It's really hard to do the quote unquote laundry of life with all this shit going on. So let me help. Um, first up, I think just, I mean, should we call it like we see it? We all need to be in therapy. Uh, if we can afford it, if it's covered with our insurance, we all need some therapy. Therapists are my favorite. That is hard work, and I have a soft spot in my heart for therapists. Um, that's always gonna be my stance, I think. We need therapy. Rewire yourself if you can. And in the meantime, I will help you do your laundry because I'm not keen to wait around for all my inner shit to be dialed in before I do the laundry. I'm not gonna process my trauma tomorrow. I but I do need to get that laundry done. Like I'm definitely not waiting around for conditions to be right to do my laundry. I want to be able to do shit even though, even though all of that. My personal fascination, God, I'm riding this thing to the end. Is it what does it take for a person who is overwhelmed by all the things in life? What does it take for that person to do the laundry? I love chewing on that. And that's gonna be different than for a person who is bedridden with depression. It's the same person, but it's a different Wednesday. Oh my god, ADHD fucking sucks with all these comorbidities, it's really stupid. You're like, no, but it's my superpower. Gemini Christmas! Really? It's not a character flaw. I'm not broken. I get it. We we all get, but does that do your laundry? Because I sure feel broken a lot of days and nights. We gotta go to therapy, and then while we're in therapy, let's do the laundry together while we feel broken and while we're working on not feeling broken. But maybe the clean laundry gives us a data point that we're not broken. That yay, look, I can do a thing. At least we'll have fresh clean clothes to be sad in. What does it take for us to do the things? It doesn't happen by listening to a podcast, it doesn't happen by reading somebody's blog post about the seven steps to do laundry when you're sad. It's it happens when you move your body to do the laundry and take it to the wash. What does it take for you to do that today? And then what about tomorrow, when tomorrow becomes today? That's so fucking fascinating to me. Really quickly, because I called out anxiety and depression and doing stuff, uh, I'll tell you the two things that I do. Because I am formally diagnosed with depression, and I have a formal diagnosis of anxiety. Guys, this is just who I am. These are my gifts that were bestowed upon me. I have I have a certificate at the Institute of This Is All Too Much. And I also have extensive training in both the academies of why bother and what's the point. Um, that one is mostly just lying around in bed, apathetic, but I aced all the classes. If I'm feeling overwhelmed physically, uh and I'm self-aware in the moment, my brain it never wants to comply, so I don't really give it too much say-so in this. Uh, but if I'm physically anxious, I do that polyvagal thingy bob where I try to push the wall down. I learned it from a random occupational therapist video about how to help kids who are in a high arousal state. It works for adults too. Who to funk it? But this is what I want. When I'm feeling anxious, I want to dampen that stuff down. I'm gonna put a link in the to the video in the show notes. She doesn't know me, she doesn't know that I'm doing this. She's gonna be like, I wonder why my wall pushing video got some views this week. Once I get the energy out from pushing on the wall, then I will do the task at hand. And always with a timer on the task so that I can be free from the feeling of being in hell for eternity. The timer gives me a window, and when it goes off, I get the option to quit. The option to quit is really, I cannot stress enough, it is very, very important to me. Um, and then when I'm depressed and I want to do the laundry, I mean, I don't want to do the laundry, but you know what I mean. One thing that works for me is creating the half-ass version of it. Like, what's the barest of the bare minimums that I need to do? And I'll try to make it about anything but the laundry. And it might be as bare minimum as today I'm just gonna put the clothes that I need to wash uh just enough for one load, I'll put that in a basket, and that's the win for the day. What's the smallest nudge that moves the laundry needle forward? So if you're listener to the podcast, um, you know that I view goals in reverse to the normie metaphor. You know, like instead of climbing the mountain and you win by reaching the top, I start the visual at the top of the mountain, and winning is getting to the bottom of the mountain. So all it takes is just a nudge to get rolling down the hill. Like, what is that nudge for you? And like you never know. Like, there is a world where doing that little thing will give me enough juice to keep going, and then fuck it. I'm gonna do the next step. I'm already moving. So that's that. Those are my current anxiety and depression things. Uh, you can give them a try. A lot of ADHD stuff is around having the juice to do the stuff. I know you want me to say the word executive function. You probably want me to say dopamine. Uh, I'm not doing it. I'm calling it juice or battery fluid. Battery power works for me on the soul level, right? The battery to be and do. Uh, you you can call it dopamine. You can call it dopamine, whatever. Uh, I notice this with some folks in the in the community and myself as well. Like when we talk about looking at our to-do list and just the act of looking at all that shit is overwhelming. It's such a big list. There's so many choices. So, what's the right choice? How do I categorize? How do I prioritize? And by the time we finish looking at it and trying to figure out what to do with our chaotic lives, we've drained the battery. All those decisions cost us, and the battery is now empty before we even attempt the first to-do. We wasted it on prep. Damn it. I think I'm teeing up another episode, but so I'll talk about that more later. But I will tell you a thing to do here. It's a solution in a sea of solutions. You gotta just remember you're unique. So your solutions, they need to be colored by your uniqueness. And I will talk about this more in the future episode, but the answer from my perspective is that I'm experimenting with right now is that doing planning as a body double can help. Doing things together make them oddly less battery draining because someone is there being the thought partner. I already do this in coaching one-on-one with people where it's it's just helpful sometimes to sound it out. Verbalizing just seems to drain the battery less than thinking to ourselves. Having someone else to ask questions and handling that side of the inner dialogue, it drains less battery than like sitting in that tension, trying to, you know, figure stuff out alone. And that is something that I can do for you. I'm pretty good at that. I do a free one-on-one coaching call when you join our membership because I like I'm in this for you to get rolling down the hill toward what's important for you. Like the important stuff is the stuff we struggle with. So, this would be a great use of that on this one-on-one call to help kickstart the prompts and the dialogues for this kind of work. And then I'll show you how to bring that into our accountability club in the body-doubling room so you can actually be more likely to do the thing. I'm in this. I built this for the doing and helping each other do stuff, even though. Like, how do we make doing the thing easier for us? If joining is something that's been on your radar, do it now. Click on the link in the show notes to join, and I'll just take care of the rest. We have a lot of members who joined after listening to the podcast for like two years, and now they're getting their shit done. If you're ready to be out of learning mode and into the doing mode, then jump in now. I honor the fact that you will forget. It's easy to forget this stuff. So click that link, pull the trigger. I will personally hold your hand. And then after seven days, if you're like, you know what, big mistake, turns out this place isn't for me, Russ. Oh my god. Really? No. I totally I'll refund you. Done and done. I'll eat the processing fee. Totally 100% full refund. I do not have RSD for this for some reason. You know, we could still be friends. I think because I believe in it so much and I honor that we're all unique, so obviously it's not right for everyone. You know, and some people aren't even actually ready for change. Like you're always welcome to join and follow along, watch other people. You can lurk. You will literally see me managing my life in there and what I'm doing in real time. Because I built what I needed. I built what I use and I what I believe in. And you are invited to be a part of that. Come on in! When I was writing this episode, I was gonna share uh the various badges. You guys you might call them wins that the community members earned in the past uh like two weeks, 14 days. It was super cool writing it all out. So this is why I do this. This is like to be able to see this happening. I get a front row seat to this. You might call them transformations, um, but I was gonna share some of these community wins because it's exciting to me and it shows what's even possible, right? It shows what's possible even though. Because these are people who have ADHD, they have Audi HD, they have anxiety, they have depression, and they did shit even though. But when I typed it all out, it was overwhelming. And my fear is that people will hear it and go, Oh god, that's too much. That's too much transforming happening, and I'll never be able to do that. So I so I I didn't do it. So I'm just gonna give you the total. There were 16 badges given out in the past two weeks, so that averages more than one successful achievement a day, and that's pretty fucking cool to be around that and to be a part of that. Um, so there you go. You are invited. Um, if you're ready for things to be different, if you want your spouse to wonder, like, why are you so productive lately? Like, what the hell got into you? Why am I so turned on by you right now? Yeah. Joining ADHD Big Brother statistically has a 73% chance to improve your sex life. Yeah. I don't need to cite it. Why are you asking me to cite that? Like, why are you asking me for a study? It's facts. This is this is the truth. It's all truth. Truth doesn't need a beaker and bunts and burners, it's a study, it's a 70% chance. No follow up questions. Quit following me. Have a great week. Bye.