246 - ADHD and the Curse of the Weekly Plan

How the hell do you plan and work toward long term goals when every day is filled with our "Oh I gotta" tasks?! Oh I gotta get groceries! Oh I gotta take my kid to his friend's house! So many things that we "gotta". When the hell is there time for my self-care, or my big vision?! 

Today I'm talking about a way to go after those bigger things that always seem to get pushed forward/away. 

Mentioned in the podcast: join ADHDBB and you can experience the magic of planabilibuddies like Lise! https://adhdbigbrother.circle.so/adhdbb

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Surviving the day is hard enough sometimes. And now you want me to think about the week? Seven days of a thing to think about? Like who do you think I am? Some kind of organized human being? Who uh today that's what we're talking about. We are gonna solve the whole week. 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 Joe. 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. Welcome to the podcast. I'm glad you're here, even though I don't even know you. I'm glad you're here. Some of you I do know, but a good many of you I don't. Why is that? So I don't have your contact information. So this isn't on me. This is on you. You have my contact information. The ball is in your court. Tell me how you're doing. Fill it out, and then I'm gonna spam the bejesus out of you. Cool. I'm just kidding. I'm not gonna, I'm just kidding. I'm actually shutting down all my email sequences. So it's gonna be less. I'm just gonna keep the newsletter. Um, you know, because maybe I have something exciting I want to tell you. But I I do not love the email sequences right now. They love they rub me the wrong way. I think you solopreneurs know what I'm talking about. You know, you're like, we gotta have a drip sequence. You gotta email 18 emails after you the people download your free resource. And I, you know, it's not working for my brain at the moment, so I'm just gonna delete them. So moving forward, you want a free resource? You can have it. I'll just give it to you. You're just gonna get the email with the thing and then my weekly newsletter. I might just personally send you an email to ask you how the resource is going, but that's just gonna come from me because I'm interested. Um, all right. So let's do the mental health report first because it's all kind of we can all kind of see it tying in here. So this is where we talk about our school spaghetti, right? We peel the onion, we share, and because we do that, the world becomes a better place to live. We're not always fine. So maybe there's a place where we can be not fine together, and we can't get support until we put visibility on what needs support. So let's practice the art of visibility, and I'll go first. My name is Ross. I'm your ADHD big brother, and uh this past week I've been swimming upstream, I'd say, against some depression crap. How it feels for me is that I'm I'm really pretty darn good when I'm in the company of others. That usually helps. You would never guess my mood state if we were just hanging out. So what ends up happening for me is that I see the darkness in a lot of things where oftentimes where I would normally see light. And that's my big poetic phrasing for everything just seems shitty. Everything just I see it's not like the glass is half empty, it's just the glass is filled with poop. Um I am stoked though that right now, so we chose to read the book No Mud, No Lotus by TikNon Han for the ADHT Big Brother Book Club. TLDR, lotuses are beautiful, mud is stinky and gross, and you can't have a lotus grow without mud. So big metaphor for you can't have your happy without your shitty. Perfect timing for my mood state. The way that mine manifests right now is uh my shitty, I'd say, is that I'm way more unfocused, I'm way more cynical, way oppositional. Uh, maybe we all saw this coming. Maybe like I the past couple weeks I've been like, I'm so oppositional. Um, but then in my quiet times alone, I've been tending to just sink a bit. And what really helps, I'm it's venting it, making it visible. I happen to have the world's greatest online community where it's normal to do the venting. I have a space for just checking in. No productivity in that space, just happens to be like a, hey, I'm here. This is my life right now. Could be good, could be bad. And voicing it out acts kind of like a vent for me, takes some of the steam out of it. For me, it's not about reframing. I like not in this mood state. I don't have the battery to challenge my temporary shitty outlook. Like, I don't really care to waste uh like it what I some of my precious little executive function juice that I have on homework. Cognitive reframing is fucking homework, man. And homework that I'm just not gonna believe. Like, you ever try to think different when you're depressed? Do you ever try to convince yourself that things aren't awful? For me, my track record just does not reflect success for that. I don't want to fully knock uh this as a general awesome thing. Like I use CBT type stuff when I have uh RSD, like that rejection sensitivity. Like when I get really butthurt by something, I find that cognitive reframing is super helpful. It helps me when I'm feeling reactionary and I'm trying to intervene before I react. But for mood state, oh man, I don't know, man. It's I would so much rather just know that a negative outlook is not the person that I want to be. Therefore, it's my brain being a douchebag and it's it's gonna spit out whatever, you know, toxic chemicals that make my neuro zappies think I'm a loser. Like whatever the scientists say is happening, right? The dopacorta creams are lower than they should be, or my serotonics are missing. So rather than the homework, I'm choosing to use my limited juice to do my laundry and to talk to people and get outside of my head. So that's me, that's my mental health. And I honor that we're all on a different journey. So what works for me might make your life worse. I don't know. Um, but this is my mental health report, goddammit. Okay, so that's it. I'm in a depressive episode. I hate that term, it sounds like a fucking TV show. Hey, you have seen season five of Rust, it's the depressive episodes. Whatever. This too shall pass. In the meantime, let's just hang out. Let's check in. I just checked in and I feel a little bit better. So you can check in, join the community, send me an email, let out some steam. Okay, so let's just get into it. So we spend a lot of time taking care of tasks, daily tasks, survival stuff, like oh-y gotas, right? A whole bunch of oh-y gotas. Oh, I gotta send that email. Oh, I gotta get the kids somewhere. Oh, I gotta make sure I get that groceries today. It's that swirl of things going on right now. And we are now or not now people. So, how the hell am I supposed to do a long-term goal then? Going to the gym is never now. Like, are you kidding me? Unless that's your jam, unless you enjoy it. But this whole long-term health thing that requires what feels like an inconsequential decision right now. Make a better eating choice, make an exercise choice right now, please. I have other things going on right now. I can do that later. I can just beat myself up about this later, because right now I'm handling my oh I got us, and there's an abundance of them. So what ends up happening is that we're only ever in the moment and dealing with the moment, and that feels normal, because that is normal for our type of school spaghetti. But what doesn't usually feel normal is planning something dumb like a task for a specific time and day. Work on that feedback email for Troy Wednesday at noon. And it it shouldn't take more than five minutes. I'll just do it at some point. That's the red flag statement. Or what if I get it done before that? Okay, cool. But how are you gonna protect yourself if you don't? Give yourself the deadline. And I do want to chime in real quick about the whole deadline thing. I am not an advocate for manufactured urgency, not necessarily, but we herald it as our strength, but fake deadlines don't tend to mean anything. And real deadlines tend to give us anxiety. You know, that whole I'm shitting my pants because this is due in an hour, and that and that anxiety, uh that's not fun. Uh what works for me, this is what I teach, is it's basically exposure therapy to the discomfort of planning. Pick a few things, schedule them at a specific time, and then practice the art of honoring that time and knowing that the inner feeling is most likely going to be one of discomfort because it's a behavior change. When has a behavior change ever been painless and easy and natural feeling? It's a behavior change. Our brain hates us for it. So it's about putting in the reps. Experience that, the planning and the doing. Experience how you feel afterward. Spoiler alert. Typically, people don't regret getting shit done. There's usually a thank God that that item got checked off and it's no longer gonna haunt my dreams. We're gonna suffer one way or the other. It's like suffer now or suffer later. You get to at least choose when. And if we're leaning into our ADHD strengths, the true gift, the miracle that is our ADHD, makes us gifted at always choosing now. Does it really surprise you that so many of us struggle with addiction? Interesting, right? How drugs and alcohol and nicotine, they all tend to be wonderful escapes from a shitty right now. The best way through all this, in my opinion, is with other people. You know, in addiction, we've got sponsors, we've got mentors, we have other people that help us to stay accountable. We hire coaches, we hire therapists, we hire trainers, we go to the yoga class because we're not going to follow the video at home. It's better to pay money and show up somewhere. We outsource because it works. Other people works. We started doing a thing at ADHD Brother called planability. It's accountability for planning. It's part of our peer accountability situation. I'm teaching people how to plan their week, their way, not the this is Russ Jones way. It's my five-point system. It's just generally how to effectively plan a week. What does that look like? Yeah, it's just a skill that we suck at naturally, you know, because we're hunters, right? We're not gatherers. The hunters never planned their weeks in the olden days. They rarely, if ever, considered their long-term goals when they were in the cave ooging and auging about the hunting of the saber tooth. It's not a natural state. So we practice that at ADHD Brother and how to do that with another person. So both people take on the role of coach and client, right? One person listens while the other person talks out their week, and then the coaching style questions are asked. And I give people a template, so like if they need it, and then they switch. Lisa and Liz in our community, they've been trying this and they formed a great accountability partnership. And Lisa agreed to come and talk to me about it. So let's talk to Lisa. I say this shit all the time. Let's hear it from somebody else. Can somebody else please help us talk about this? Um, at the time of this recording, uh, Lisa and Liz, they'd met twice. Uh, but since then, they've got a weekly cadence going on, and I believe they met like five or six times now. But here you go. Let's talk to the ADHD member Lisa about Planabillibuddies. Pretend somebody doesn't know what the hell we're talking about right now. If someone said, What is Planabillibuddies? What would you say to them?

SPEAKER_00 11:44

Um, let's see. I would say it is getting together with somebody to talk through your plans for the week. So, like I would show up with my calendar and with my to-dos, and my plan abillibuddy might say, Yeah, first of all, we talk about how our weeks were, what came up, what worked well, what didn't go well. And then we talk about what we wanted, what we want to do this week. And through talking about our to-do list and looking at our calendars, we can see where we can actually schedule things. And actually scheduling things for not just a day, but also a time just makes it more likely that we will do it.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

I love that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Yeah. So, and that that is very um hard for me to do to put a time on things. Days, yes, but then I end up with a day that's got 47 to-dos on it. I think that I resist it because I realize I can't fit 47 things into one day.

SPEAKER_01 12:40

Yeah. Okay, and then how many times have you guys met?

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Okay, so we've only met twice so far, and we are still getting to know each other. And it's funny to hear, like, to hear her side of things and how she experiences it because she's she talks about being vulnerable. And I guess for sure, we're definitely having to say, you know, well, I'm I'm or at least I think I'm terrible at this, and I failed at it 47,000 times. And yeah, there's a lot of of that, but it's funny how much we have in common and how our struggles are similar. Um, and I think you could probably match with anybody in the community, and you'd have a different set of commonalities, but you would definitely have things in common. And so it turns supportive. I hope that she's feeling supported by me. I certainly feel supported by her. And it's just encouraging. And honestly, it's like you said, you're not the she is not telling me what to do, no matter how much I want her to, she won't. She's just there for me to like have somebody to talk through things with. Yeah, I don't think that we're gonna be replaced by AI anytime soon.

SPEAKER_01 13:48

Well, I have a feeling about that, which is that AI is like the next thing of learning. Like, we can outsource a lot to AI. We can have our weeks planned by AI. AI can absolutely plan your week, but you're still accountable to yourself in that respect. Look at what you and Liz have right now. You both are checking in weekly. So who cares if you don't do the thing this week? If you're just planning with AI, just tell it you didn't do anything. Yeah. But if you have to show up and tell Liz that you didn't do your stuff, yeah. I think.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Well, one thing that's always been missing from my planning is the the part where you reflect on how did it go.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:35

And that is um built into having plantability buddies because that's what you're gonna talk about first. So it means that if I know that, I'm gonna have to take a look at my week. How did it go?

SPEAKER_02 14:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Did I screw up? Why did I screw up? And one of the things that I realized was I had something on my list. The one thing that was on my list that I didn't do turns out I didn't want to do it. I had 14 reasons, and they were pretty good that I didn't want to do it. And so I ended up um having to talk about that with Liz and coming up with a new thing that would still meet the same what I thought was a need. It's just about going walk in with a neighbor, basically. But I hadn't thought it through, and failing at it made me. We were talking about contingency plans. And in most cases, my contingency plan is well, reschedule it because there's something came up and there was a reason I couldn't do it. So then I put it on the schedule for a different time and then I get it done. And that's what happened the first week that we did our plans, except for that one item, but it just made me think that through more carefully and realize that it I didn't get done because it doesn't, it shouldn't get done.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

Don't you find that uh uh this is a commonality across the board with us ADHD types, is that like first of all, we just do intentions and then we stop there. We're like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to get these things done this week. And then in the reflection, there's no reflection. There's just like, did you do it or did you not do it? And then you the the person's like, okay, I'm gonna do it this week. But there's no conversation about, well, what got in the way? What's gonna be different this time? What how that to me is the conversation to have with another person.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah, that's exactly what happened um when we got together. When we get together, that's exactly what happens because um we're kind of we're also watching each other since everything gets um put on daily accountability, and or we DM each other and say, here's what I did different times in between. Um, like if there's something specific that I said I was gonna do, like right after we get off this call, I'm gonna do this, then I might DM Liz and let her know, especially if it's not already on my daily accountability. So, but also what I really enjoyed doing was looking at her, the way she posts her daily accountability, and she puts a picture of her schedule or a picture of her to-dos for that list or important things, and seeing how many of them we had talked about and how many of them were getting done. It's also interesting because she makes so many, so many like you come into it, I guess, thinking, oh, I feel bad because I failed at whatever, or I did this, but I only did it sort of okay and not perfectly. But really, we should be celebrating these things because she did them. I did one thing that I had scheduled for 11 a.m. I did it at 5 p.m. I did it on that same day, though. And I and I was aware of what was happening when I couldn't do it at 11. I knew what I needed to do between then and five. Otherwise, I wouldn't have paid any attention to it. I would have said, Oh, well, I didn't do that, I'll do it sometime.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah, and it just goes away, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

And it goes away.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

Isn't that amaz?

SPEAKER_00 17:45

I love that.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

And then you even said something that I think I this is something that I get as a coach and that you guys are getting is you get to feel good seeing somebody else succeed because you were a part of that. Yeah, right. Yeah. Oh my God. I that stuff juices me up so much to be like, oh man, you're doing it.

SPEAKER_00 18:03

Yeah, it was funny. I was the one that was excited about what she was getting done. Sometimes it's hard to remember it because you're talking about you failed to fold the laundry or something that it's like, what's the big deal about that? But it is a big deal if it comes from a lifetime of failing to fold the fucking laundry.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Big deal. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

Oh, but who can you share that with? Right? It's yeah, who do you share that with that's gonna get it?

SPEAKER_00 18:28

I have somebody. It's my planability buddy. You're planability buddy, and it's everybody, it's everybody.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

I think it's everybody in the community, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Yeah, it absolutely is.

SPEAKER_01 18:40

That is maybe this is gonna be a conversation I'll share on a planability buddy episode because this is really we're really hitting like um I I should mention planability buddies is where uh I'll give everybody a one-on-one coaching call and plan your week with you. And so it's basically that was yeah, yeah. Did that work for you guys when we did that?

SPEAKER_00 19:02

For me. You mean when we um did the follow-up with you or when we had like when we you had my the individual planning session with me, that was fantastic. Yes. Okay, and it was um it helped me understand what you were looking for in terms of you know, not saying, Well, here's how you should do it.

SPEAKER_02 19:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 19:21

Um just more eliciting responses from the other person that are gonna make them think through if I plan it on this day, what could possibly go wrong? And if that's you know a possibility, how should I plan for that ahead? Yeah. And then by the end of the day, by the end of the hour, although it has taken us a little bit over an hour, but it's because we're having fun talking.

SPEAKER_02 19:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

I'm having fun talking. I hope Liz is having fun listening. That's funny. Anyway, um, by the end of it, you know, you've got your schedule. And it's not a whole lot, it's not an intimidating, overwhelming number of things. We have each told each other or asked each other to take to back up, take a look at the list and see if maybe there are too many things on a given day, or is that a good number of things to have for this week? And um, you know, just for a little reality check. But by the end of it, there's at least three or four things that are scheduled for a specific time on a specific day, um, and it works with our overall schedules, and we also know what obstacles we might come up against and how we might handle those. So it doesn't mean we're gonna be perfect.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

No, but like listen, you're be it's you're literally speaking like a coach, really. Like the way that you're talking. I I think that is like at the at the core of this is talking out our schedules out loud is just so much easier. And so then having some sort of like coaching. Um I say coaching, I just fucking hate that word, but it's like it's ways to talk to each other where you're not telling each other how to do it, but you're asking people what's going on. And even you you mentioned one thing, which here's a a hack for you to take into one of your future sessions or whatever. But it it's really sometimes we have to bite our lips because we'll see somebody say, I'm gonna do this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and you're like, Oh, can you do you think you can get all that done this week? Yeah, yeah, I've got to get it done this week. And so you uh not give people the rope to hang themselves, but like you because you who are you to say they can't do it, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:33

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

So the idea is to be like, okay, let's see what happens.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

As long as we're keeping things visible and we're gonna keep the dialogue going, we will see next week whether that ambitious plan was successful or not. And if it was, holy shit, tell me what worked. And if it wasn't, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

We're not recording our sessions or anything, but we um definitely are very aware of what the other one has has promised to do. That's aw I mean I I write it all down. And um yeah, I'm sure Liz does.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Why is planning with somebody else better than planning alone?

SPEAKER_00 22:08

Oh, because I know that I'll tell myself lies all day long about what I can do, about what I will do, and I mean well. It's not that I don't mean well, but I mean I can feel at the time that I'm writing stuff down. Oh, that's not gonna happen, but I still write it down. Why I do that, I don't know. But I don't I won't do that with somebody else because they're gonna ask me, and I do have to answer them. I've never been that responsible to myself.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

But is there a difference with doing that with somebody inside our community as opposed to doing that with someone in real life?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Um, I don't think I've ever tried it with somebody in my physical world. Yeah, I don't know what it would be like with somebody that didn't quite get it. Like, you know, because we'd be like, yeah, of course you can do all those things. I mean, I've I'm always watching people, it feels like probably probably just my perception, but I feel like I I see people all the time who get a million things done every day, and they still get eight hours of sleep, and I don't understand how they do it. We also um both have whoever we are, the both of us in the community have the same goal for our I mean our goals may um look different from the outside, but the goal is to make the plan and do the plan.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Make the plan do the plan, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Make the plan and do the plan. And so um yeah, I think I feel like people in in the real world are making the plan and doing the plan. So why is that a goal? Yeah, you know, like this is the week you're doing the laundry, big deal. Like it's a big deal.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

I always will go to laundry as the thing because it's universally known and we universally suck at it, and it never ends, and it and it is that it is all the time, it exists in perpetuity.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

Yeah, like dishes, terrible.

SPEAKER_01 24:00

Oh, the worst. Um, Lisa, this was awesome. This is a great conversation. I love these conversations. This has been super fun for me. I can't wait to have more of these conversations and share more of them. This place is just freaking magical. You know, I also noticed that you know when I do that $10 for 10 days deal, that's when people tend to check out the community. And then the statistic is like 60% of the people that check it out are like, oh my god, you're my people. This is the deal. So I think I'm gonna open up the 10 for 10 like on the first few days of the every month or something like that, just to give you guys a window, makes it clean and easy for me. Lisa was one of those very 10 for teners back in February of 2025, back when we did it way back then. Since then, oh my God, I'm looking at her thing right now. She's earned uh, I think 14 badges, 13 badges. We get badges that we get awarded for like you know, going through challenges. 100 Days Sober, uh body doubling challenge, workout challenge, hands off the machine challenge, linen lended legend. We that's I got that one too. It's like for making your bed. Uh decaffeinated. She's not drinking caffeine anymore. And she started out by like, we'll see what this place is all about. This place is just freaking amazing. All right, guys, there you go. Plan abilla buddies for the win. We are just so much more likely to have success when we loop in others and make our world and our plans visible. This is my belief. And you know what? It's not even something you need to have faith in or a mindset about. You can actually try it and experience what it's like to plan with someone else. And you know what? Screw the scientific studies. You are the data point that matters. So test yourself. You be your own evidence-based study, you're the lab rat. Please treat yourself humanely and see if you can't test this out on yourself. If you can't do this on your own, try the magic of other people. And our doors are always open. It's what we do every day at ADHGB Brother, like every possible angle of getting shit done. Even if the shit that you're trying to get done is to take a nap, to have self-care, to do something for yourself, to massage your feet, to practice your polyvagal stuff. If you aren't doing these things on your own because you just can't do them, then oh my god, I know a place where you can go. And it rhymes with ADHD Tweak Brother. All right, have a great week. I'll talk to you later.