242 - Weekly Planning for ADHD: Overwhelmed, Exhausted Brain Edition

How many of us get an idea of how to manage our time and so we create a spreadsheet that blocks out every hour of every day... 

In this episode I'm going to appeal to you to try a simpler way of planning your week, with a focus on a few key areas. 

Mentioned in the episode:

Book a free chat with Russ 

The books I mentioned:

Stone of Farewell, Drop of Corruption, A Meditator's Guide to Buddhism, The Power of Wonder

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Transcript

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The week comes, we have these big intentions, and the week goes by and we achieved uh what maybe part of one? We forgot three others and like the the rest and we wonder what the heck happened here. I needed to do some things and I didn't do them. Oh my god, I suck as a human, I am broken, and like we know we're not broken because all the ADHD sites keep telling me I'm not broken. So what is going on? I'm gonna help you plan your week. Come on into the shop, let's tinker. 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 new. I'm your host and your ADHD Big Brother, Rush Jones. I've got ADHD too. I've got depression as well. It's crapastic. 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. Welcome to the podcast. I am coming to you with a brand new microphone today, the Samsung Q2U. What do you guys think? What do you guys think of the quality of the Samsung Q2U microphone? I freaking love it. I'm literally holding it right now like it's a stand-up comedy microphone. I'm just gonna pretend that's what I'm doing. I'm gonna do a bit. Guys, I'm gonna do a skit bit for you. Anyway, welcome to the podcast. I'm super glad you're here. Let's just kick this off with our mental health report. This is where we're normalizing talking about our school spaghetti. The good, the bad, and the weird. We gotta get comfortable talking about the uncomfortable, right? That's not always we're not always fine. I am actually feeling very good, to be honest. Anxiety is less this week. Depression is clearly on vacation. I don't know where he went. I do not miss him. ADHD, on the other hand, it's always with me. It's always lingering, getting into stuff, always messing with my skull spaghetti. I'm finding it very hard to read at night right now. That's been my thing. Like I'm doing a challenge inside ADHD Big Brother, and I think it's called the Bedtime Scholars or Bedtime Book Club. I just I have to read some fiction before bed. I say fiction because if I read nonfiction before bed, I usually get my wheels turning. So fiction it is. But I've noticed that my mental battery is so dead at the end of the day that concentrating on words is really tough. So I put my phone away, I get into bed, and I'm reading, and I get like a page or two before I give up. But here's the thing it counts towards my 30-day challenge. I didn't say how many pages I had to read. I just have to read. That's how you win a challenge, you guys. Parameters are important. What are you guys reading right now? I just recently finished Drop of Corruption, which is the second book after uh The Tainted Cup. Oh my god, super good books. I'm reading Stone of Farewell right now. It's the second book in that series. First one was Dragonbone Chair. Are you guys familiar with this one? It's a little harder to follow when the brain juice is low, but I'm going for it. I really like that story. Another thing that I've been doing that is helping uh with my brain is a morning qigong thingy. Uh I think I mentioned that last week. It's just 10 minutes while the coffee brews, then a short meditation, followed by maybe 10 to 20 minutes of reading. And the book I'm reading there is a mix. I mean it's either I'm either reading a meditator's guide to Buddhism or I'm reading uh the what the book we're reading in our book club, which is The Power of Wonder. I'll I'll just list the books in the show notes if you guys are interested, but you can look them up yourselves. Mental health-wise, I'm also preparing to eradicate all social media from my life. Uh even LinkedIn. God, I think they're all stupid. I hate all of it. It's the thing that they tell us we have to have, right? If you're building a business, you have to build your authority and your social proof and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm kind of hell-bent on succeeding without it. Uh, you know, just seeing if I can do it. I don't even like it as a placeholder thing. So, but who knows? I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I think I owe you guys the mental health report of it all, which is currently me getting very excited about just blowing it all up. It's the uh, this is me putting it out there. It's forcing me to reflect on it before I impulsively act. Because I am known to just be like, this is what I'm gonna do, and then push the button. They say you need it for social proof, and I'm like, I don't. Do I? My social proof is like fucking go into the community, take a peek, come on into the garage. Garage door's wide open. We'll show you what we're building, and you can play around with my tools, figure it out for yourself. What am I gonna say on Instagram or LinkedIn? It's just also it's like all all it is is an AI 47-year-old who says if you practice his Tai Chi in two days, your wife won't even recognize you. And I'm like, well then she's fucking crazy. Okay, she doesn't even know who I am two days into this. I'm your husband, remember? Good lord. I think all the ads that are AI generated, they say they're 47. I'm like, where did they come up with that age? That fascinates me. I'm convinced that they figured out that like that was the perfect age to say, and that's what AI does. I don't know, man. I just feel super oddly bad about like marketing to you guys on the platform that is destroying you. It's like, how many clients do I have that I have to challenge out of a doom scrolling habit? And so what I'm gonna try to interfere into there and be like, hey, and here's how you get I don't know. It's uh I'm still processing my feelings about it. Um, but you're here, right? You found me. Great. Uh if you want to reach me, you know how to find me. I have a website and a contact form and an email address and everything. That's my DM, guys. My contact form is my DM. Alrighty, that's my mental health report. Anyway, if you see me without a LinkedIn profile, you'll know. It's not because I unfriended you if you're if I'm connected to you. It's not you, it's me. I just I'm just taking my life in a different direction, you know? I still like what you have to say. Send me an email. I'll email you back a thumbs up emoji and I'll give you your like. That's my mental health report. At ADHD Big Brother, we do have a lot going on. $10 for 10 days is back. If you want to see what the hell makes us so special, you know, and different than all the other communities out there, here's your chance. It's uh you come into our garage, you can play with our tools, we're building the implementation engine, you know. We're we've got we're building these little engines that could. I'm currently helping members learn how to plan and become planability buddies. It's like accountabilities, but for planning. If you're a current member, by the way, and you want to be a part of this, reach out to me, let me know. Um, I sent out some emails, but we'll set up a call. You and I will plan your week. I'll educate you on why I ask you the questions that I ask, and then I'll partner you with a member, and then you guys can practice planning your week together. It is just, it's just so helpful planning out loud with another person. I literally, that's I do this with one-on-one clients. It's a lot higher touch because I do daily accountability with my one-on-one skis, but it is my belief that you can improve dramatically if you learn a couple of skills and get with a member and practice them together. Anyway, so far it's going really well. I'm really excited about it. Shout out to Liz and Lisa who gave me some great feedback. And we're continuing to iterate this as we go. Side effects are pretty big, so you gotta be aware. If you're allergic to getting shit done, if you're uh feeling good about yourself or confidence in yourself is gross, then you know, just be aware that that could happen. Um, you might want to ask your doctor if that's okay. Like, can I feel good about myself? Is that okay? The big thing here is like, okay, many of you can hear this podcast and you can implement the strategies that we talk about. That is so freaking cool. A lot of you have the support of your spouse, a lot of you have people in your circle that are supportive and help you to do the things. Super. You get educated on a thing and you execute. That's okay. So many of us just don't. Many of us want to be able to suck it up and have the willpower to do a thing, but we can't. Like we can't do it on our own. Not yet. I'm gonna throw the yet in there. You've tried everything and nothing works. That's totally normal. There's a lot of shit that I I myself cannot do on my own, even though I can technically do it on my own. And I have done it on my own before. I cannot reliably do it on my own. Big fucking deal. Give me some accountability and a thank you. So if you can, plan your week with a friend, done and done. Whatever makes it happen for you. Planning a week is just, it's just super important. Does everybody have to plan their week? I I don't I doubt it. Probably not. If you're not debilitated, if you have no complaints about your week and how it's getting done, then you just keep on keeping on. If you're tired of feeling overwhelmed, and like if you have a daily ritual of beating yourself up for the shit you didn't do that's now creating a backlog of shit to do, then yeah, look into planning your week. Here's a couple, here's a here's a couple of ineffective weeks as I have experienced them in my past and as I have seen with you guys. There's this thing that we'll do where we'll plan every single hour of every day. It's like in a burst of motivation that could be used to get shit done. We create a badass Google Sheet or an Excel spreadsheet that's got a calendar, it's got all the slots for all the hours, and we allot every single bit of time to something. The intentions are awesome. It will typically turn into like how many failures can I cram into my day? Like we underestimate time, we don't build in transitions, we just have these really nice, solid hour-long chunks. And you know, and they're color-coded based on category. And as soon as one goes off the rails, then the whole thing crumbles and it becomes a day of failures. And then how are we gonna migrate all that shit we didn't do because there's no spot available in my week? Now the whole week goes to hell, and we convert to dealing with fires only, whatever's urgent, whatever I'm getting yelled at for. And then at the other end of that spectrum is when we don't want structure at all. We go with what's in our head at the moment, what it feels right. And this is filled with, oh, I got us, right? Like, oh, I gotta email that guy back. Oh, I gotta go do that errand. And like a hamster zigging and zagging in an open field, we just go and do. It's a fun way to live for sure. And I'm happiest personally when I can just freely zig and zag. But long-term goals, they don't exist in that world. Long-term goals are so far away that they always easily become, yeah, I'll start on that tomorrow because we have time. Right now I gotta zag, man. Maybe I'll zig. Maybe I'll see what a zag feels like. These are the extremes. And there's varying forms of success and failure on this spectrum. I think that we are on this quest for learning how to manage our ADHD, which includes learning how to plan stuff, and then do that stuff that we planned. That is so huge. It doesn't change the fact that we still get emotionally dysregulated, you know, keep going to therapy and work on that. It doesn't fix your time blindness, it doesn't change your extreme lack of desire to do shitty tasks, but oh my God, does it boost self-confidence? And that's a pretty awesome side effect to doing what I said I was gonna do. It's super easy to do, especially with another person. But for those of you that are like, hey, just dude, just tell me what I need to do and I'll try it. All right, here you go. And this is planning ADHD style. Here you go. First of all, pick a time when you know you have the mental battery power. Don't plan your week at the end of a busy day when you're dead tired and all you can do is eat food and doom scroll. There's no thoughtful thinking and planning on the horizon when the executive function tank is empty. When are you alert and able? Is it a weekend morning? It's maybe before the kids wake up. When can you carve out 45 minutes for yourself? It probably won't even take that long. And if you can't find that time, if you're just way too busy, then I want you to reach out to me in my contact form, tell me your schedule, and I will get back to you with ideas. Tell me all the reasons why you can't do that, and I'll help you find that time. And you are not wasting my time. I'm really good at this and I love doing it. Give me a few days to get back to you, of course, but like this is why other people is so helpful. Because I'm not consumed with the chaos of your life. I'm not overwhelmed by your schedule. I can zoom out, I can be an objective, thoughtful partner to help you find that time. It is doable. Even though you might be saying, it's not doable, Russ. You're so arrogant. You don't know my life. Bro, the jobs I have, the responsibilities, the overwhelming chaos. I barely have time to eat. Yeah, I can do it. It just happens to be one of my favorite things to do. I'm a productivity freak. And what can I say, guys? This is my jam. Take advantage of me while I'm all juiced up about it. Like maybe there comes a time when I'm like, yeah, I don't care anymore. You're on your own. Enjoy your chaos. I'm out. Doesn't it seem like all of us like in our rock bottomist are so overwhelmed by our life, then we think we need to fix all of it to fix any of it. And I just challenge you to try this and or join ADHD Big Brother. I will help you find not only the two minutes to log into ADHD Big Brother, but the time to do this planning, and you can do it with us. Okay, I can feel myself sidetracking, so let's get back on track here. We're gonna do this as a way to get started practicing the art of weekly planning. So this is not masterclass level stuff. You have to achieve this consistently for a few weeks before we kick it up a notch. Give up the whole, I have to fix it all, and let's just do this. Win it this and then we'll move on. We're gonna go against the grain of, oh, I get what you're saying. Okay, let me just build a spreadsheet and we'll apply this to every minute of my life. We're not gonna do that. I'm not worried about your big ass brain dump with 500 things that you have to do that's on multiple pieces of paper strewn about. Let's just sit down, okay, pour yourself a hot cup of tea. Okay, there you go. All right, now you're gonna ask yourself, what are the few things that say three things I want to make sure I get done this week? Just pick a few. And there's no wrong answer because you weren't gonna do any of it anyway. So any three will do. And if you can't decide, roll a dice, let your God decide for you, put it in fate's hands. It truly doesn't matter. You're learning a skill, you're not picking the right thing to do. So let's start with the first one, and then we're gonna repeat this for all three. Ask yourself, how long will it take you to complete this task? Start to finish, right? It like you finally hit send on the email or you drive home from the post office. So many tasks they have like an I don't know, man, it could vary. It really depends. Make a guess, and then once you have that best guess, double it. Because you're time blind, I know it, and you know it. We all know it. Double it. You might even triple it. You're like, oh, this this task will take me 15 minutes. All right, we're gonna put that as a 45-minute task. The worst thing that happens is that you bang it out early. Okay, so now that you have that time, think about when you have that time this coming week. Not when do you want to do it, but realistically, when does that time exist for you? Be objective. Knowing yourself, pick a time when you will have the bandwidth, the executive function energy, typically to deal with a very loud internal, no, I do not want to do this. Because that's what the body's gonna do when that time rolls around. You can rely on that. All right, so you have that time slot available. Great, put that on your calendar. Or how else are you gonna remember when Wednesday shows up? Because you're going to forget. Trust in that. Knowing that, how do you prepare? You put in a calendar, do you have an alarm? Do you post it, tattoo on your forehead, paint it on your wall, whatever your method is, do that. Then do that with the other two tasks. And when you have completed that, you have officially, according to Russ Jones, your ADHD big brother, you've planned your week. Your week is about those three things. You're going to do everything else, or you're going to put off everything else. You get to have your freedom and your chaos and that overwhelming life that you have at all other times during the week. You get to stay the normal, regular you, except in these three small areas of your life. All right. This isn't a podcast episode about how to do what you said you were going to do. This is all about the planning part. And I'll talk all day long about the inner tantrum, the fact that when Wednesday comes along, you're going to be presented with something else that feels more important. And then that is a whole other dialogue and a different nut to crack. But we do crack that daily in ADHD Big Brother. This planning methodology is what we do every week, also in our group coaching. I don't do general ed group coaching. It's small pods. We four people max. We talk about those things that we planned, what happened, did we do them? Did something get in the way? I coach you on that. Then we work through the obstacles and we get your few commitments for the following week. I'm all about doing stuff. So if you're interested in that, I'll put a link in the show notes to book a free chat with me and we'll see if it's right. You could even use that free call to challenge me to find your time. Oh, challenge accepted. I'm up for it. And if you join our consistency crew, that's what we call it, I give you a free one-on-one coaching call before you jump in. So that way you can I can get you started. I think it helps to have a bit more direct attention at the top. It just helps. Alrighty, that is gonna do it for this week. If you plan your week, your few things, reach out and tell me how it goes. I'm super interested. If you got questions, you know how to find me. Hashtag not on socials. Okay. Have yourself a fantastic week, and I shall talk to you later.