251 - The Abyss Between Wants and Needs

Adults with ADHD have an enormous gap between wants and needs. Even our definitions for the two are different. Today I'll be talking about the definitions, and how we might bridge the giant gap between the two! 

Mentioned in this episode

Rebel Momma Pod: I was on Rebel Momma podcast recently. In that episode, Sarah and I had an honest conversation about social media addiction, doomscrolling, entrepreneurship, accountability, and building a life that aligns with your values. Here's the link to the video podcast on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-O5LmrzBNw

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When we want to do something, we'll do it. When we need to do something, we activate. But those words, they mean different things to different people. Like it's a different want and need are different for normies than for ADHD or so. Let's unpack that. You wanna let's get the suitcase, put it on the bed. You guys want to unpack that a little bit? All right, let's go. 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 newt. 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. Let's do this. I'm super, I'm actually super motivated today. That's good. Um well I'm gonna kick this off with a mental health report, but I want to share that uh I was on Sarah Casaneda's uh podcast recently, uh Rebel Mama. Go check that out. We talked about uh we touched on depression, we talked about social media and how I destroyed it. Um go check it out. Super fun chat, and she's got a great show over there. So it is uh I'll put the links in the show notes. Go check it out, right? All right, let's kick this off with the mental health report. Every week we talk about our Skull Spaghetti, uh just to try to normalize the conversation. Like we it's the good stuff, the bad stuff, the weird stuff. We're not always fine. I'm finding. Are you finding that too? It's not we're not always uh I'm doing okay. Let's peel the onion a little bit sometimes. You wanna? And so I'll go first. So there's some things that basically what happened this last week. Uh I the thing I look forward to the most on Father's Day or it's the uh or on my birthday is that uh my boys will hand write these really cool messages and they're so thoughtful and they literally always choke me up. I'm a softie though. It's not hard to choke me up, but it oh god, and partly because I uh these things choke me up because you know when you have depression and you just you think that you're a piece of shit, that's like your baseline. It's funny to say out loud because it's you we all know it's bullshit, but it's um that's how you feel, right? And so someone tells you something amazing about you, and there's just there's really an odd like a relief to it that that brings tears to me. Um that it's even kind of choked me up thinking about it. But um, so one of those things Alistair mentioned to uh to me in the note saying that at school his friends they'll flex about their dads and how their dads have car collections and they're they have wine collections. And Alistair said that when he tells them that his dad plays video games with him, they all get jealous. And that to me, it means the world to me because partly because I don't have a car collection. I don't have car collection money, I don't have wine collection money. I barely have a lint collection, although it's growing. But that's one thing that brings me super great joy, and it's it's literally perfect for a divorced household. Like when they're with their mom, they don't we don't phone call each other. We get on a headset and we uh play trios in Fortnite and we chat, we check in that way. It's freaking great. Let me share my I'm gonna share some parenting philosophy with you. Uh, and this is not backed by anything except for my own personal experience, you know. But my philosophy with video games is is that they're awesome. Um, I get coached by my children on how to play better and how to practice. It's awesome. It's collaborative, there's teamwork involved, there's strategy. We have fortnight conversations about play styles. I'm a video gamer. I mean, from back in the day. I mean, back in the Commodore 64 days. I had a Commodore 128 actually. To play games, I had to type in Go64 Enter. And then it would say, Are you sure? I'm like, Yeah, I'm sure. Fucking I want, let's go. And I'd type Y enter, and then I would play my game. Space Taxi, pad five, please. Or Impossible Mission. Do you remember that one? Destroy him, my revolts. Or Y R Kung Fu. God, it was good times. When the boys were younger, my stance on video games was take care of your chores and your homework, and then your free time is yours. I don't police free time, and I don't judge it to be good or bad. Uh, you do whatever you want. I don't judge unless it's criminal, then I will judge it. And then I'll be like, you can't do that. Um, but when the boys were younger, I I only did a time thing. You know, some people will be like, oh, you only get a certain amount of time. I I only did that once. I probably read it in a dumb parenting book at some point, you know. You know how we deep dive into everything, like, I don't know how to parent, so I'm gonna read all the books. Uh, but I was giving Noble anxiety uh when I tried to do it because I was like the clock was ticking on his fun. And Noble's an or me, just he does he's not ADHD. Timers don't do for him what they do for a lot of us. And so if he knew he only got an hour to play, the whole time he's thinking about the time being up. And I can I can kind of relate to that a little bit. I have clients that will come to me and community members who they use that time timer thing where you visually see time elapsing. I hate that. I don't want to see time passing. So you know how we're all different, even though we all have similarities, but I personally I just want to forget time. That's what I do naturally. So I want to create the scaffolding that allows me to forget time. Anyways, I so I love playing video games and I love playing video games with my kids. So that's like the long story short of this, the video gaming lately for me has gone unchecked because it's this shiny new thing. And uh, I'm someone who I have an addictive personality. I go in hard on something that's exciting and good. Um, and I think we have a fun word for that. What's the fun word we have for abusing ourselves with excitement and joy? I think we call it hyperfocus, like this gift of ours. It's the that we must channel like sorcerers calling forth the mystery energy. That's not how it works for me. How it works for me is I'll get really focused and then I cannot turn it off until I burn out or until someone or something else intervenes. Some of the times I think of this the hyperfocus is like an um it's an evil gift that allows me to escape the world, which I never quite feel like I'm fitting into, anyways. So I get to focus on something other than how shitty I am or all my negative self-thoughts. I'm like, thank God I get the reprieve. Let me lose myself in this thing, because it's providing excitement and joy. Um, so anyway, long story short, I had to put my video gaming in check. I just really want to get good at Fortnite so that I can impress my kids. Um and I genuinely enjoy it. But I also have laundry to do. And oh yeah, I also have a solopreneur business to grow. So there's that. So long story short, I had to put my video games in check. By the way, my mental health is pretty good lately. I still have this weird lingering melancholy, but it's subtle. To me, it's like it's it's not even worth a conversation. But if I'm around Emily or my kids, it's not there when I'm alone, you know, but it's subtle, it's not debilitating. It's just uh it's like it's just the absence of my childlike enthusiasm for life. Which, like if I'm ever in a conversation with you, you'll see it for you. I have it, I have it infinitely for you. Um, you'll be like, man, he's really excited and enthusiastic for me. Yeah, all day long. Okay, so that's enough chattering about that. But for the video games, what I'm doing is I I'll put a timer on for like 45 minutes to an hour, and then I'll know what's coming next. So I'll say I can play video games for an hour, but then after that, I need to set a 15-minute timer and clean. Or I need to set a 15-minute timer and it'll be I'll have to do something physical and other like not sitting down. And then I'll play again for another. I mean, this we're talking about the end of the day kind of type of stuff. So um, that's what I'm doing. All right. Okay, that's enough chattering about that. Let's talk about the divide between want and need and what to do. Um, so adults with ADHD, we do what we want to do. We're compelled by interest. Novelty is a form of interest. Um, and so that's what I'm talking about when I say want. We want to work on the tinkering project in the garage that has nothing to do with anything, but we can't stop thinking about it, so we lose ourselves in it. We want to work on it. Need is not the normie need. Need to us is urgency, and urgency is also a form of interest. I'm interested in not getting fired, I'm interested in surviving this fire, uh, and so I act. So when we talk about need, it's truly need, immediate need. We we say we need to file our taxes, but do we? What happens today if I didn't file my taxes? Nothing. What happens on April 16th if you don't file your taxes? Nothing. Not on April 16th. Maybe some things are in motion to give you late fees and things like that, but you won't experience that not until I don't know what, months later, and then you get a uh a late fee or whatever, whatever it would be, but you don't get the ramifications of it until later. So it's not now. We'll say things like I need to get in shape, but like I said, we're very much now and not now people. So today, right now, we don't need to get in shape. We want to get in shape, but we don't actually want to do the getting of the in shaping today. So we don't want that, and we don't need that. There is this massive gap between our version of want and our version of need. Want is something that we have motivation and activation energy for, and need is something that if we don't do it right now, there isn't an immediate, awful consequence. So what about what about literally everything else in life? Things that have no impact on today, things that are for future us, things that require ongoing effort, and the results will compound over time. All those things in the important but not urgent quadrant of the Eisenhower matrix, literally everything can be pushed forward until it can't. So many of us have things that we have determined are important to us, and we would like to activate on them: health, fitness, career, family, leisure, spirituality, finances. These are all like wedges in the wheel of life exercise. So if you're a member of ADHD Big Brother, you can just search for Wheel of Life. It's in the community, it's in the resources section. You can Google it, you can find out where you are most out of balance. And I'm not just an ADHD coach, I'm very much in the holistic sort of like whole picture deal. We can visualize ourselves in this ideal state. Who are we ideally to ourselves? And then where are we literally? And then what needs to happen to move us towards the ideal. Normies can take it from there. Okay, so then just do that thing. Just work on that thing. ADHD adults need to address the skills training required to do that thing. These ideal visions, they're not just like I run a million-dollar business. That's who I that's my ideal vision. It can be things like one of my ideal visions of myself is someone who's always a little bit early to meetings, because right now I'm always late, causes me great anxiety every time, and I think people are getting frustrated by me. My ideal self is someone who is reliably on time. Cool. Not really common for adults with ADHD. So we don't actually want to leave with enough time because we've got a bunch of shit we need to do real quick, you know? I just real quick got to do a thing. Or we get distracted with thoughts that we want to follow. And we don't need to be on time because if we're late, nobody dies. Can always just apologize. So to bridge this giant abyss of things that are impossible to do as an ADHD, we must practice skills. And I'm gonna, I will continuously speak to this exact same thing, but work on one thing at a time. Whatever that thing is, even though everything is fucked up and all of it needs fixing immediately, work on one thing and work on the skill for that one thing on multiple things, even stuff you don't need to work on it with. And I'll explain that in a minute. The only way to get better at a skill is to practice that skill. And practice often sucks. So don't go practicing 20 skills at once, practice one, but practice it. Example for you. Here you go. You want to be on time for appointments, practice the skill of keeping time. It's literally a math problem. So do the math problem for multiple things. So here you go. So you you have a lunch at noon with your friend. All right, so you scrutinize the shit out of this process. And again, I'm gonna repeat that there is a component to this work, and that is the team part. This work is done more effectively, efficiently, and with less tension when it's done with another, your coach, your peer, somebody else. It's homework and it sucks. Behavior change sucks, and it takes ongoing effort. Do it with support. All right. So you scrutinize with your partner every single step leading up to leaving for that lunch. Getting ready, what does that look like? Hair, how long does it take? Getting dressed, how long does that take? Real quick, quote unquote, is not a thing. I just have to get dressed real quick, then I have to do this other thing real quick. Every real quick adds time. And this could very well be why you're late. You also have to walk to the car, you have to drive, you have to find parking, you have to exit your car, you have to pay for parking, you have to walk from the parking area to the lunch area. All those steps individually take time. And we think, oh, lunch is at noon, and it's a 15-minute drive to get there, so I'll leave the house at 1145. So you will begin walking toward the keys from your living room, maybe at 1145. That's interesting. And that is the recipe for toddiness. Um, okay, so when you do the math, and then I will usually have people double every estimate because we suck at time. No, biggie. Uh, time blindness is a thing. And then this will give you an idea of when you have to leave, or it'll give you an idea of when you have to start getting ready. And that is the skill you practice. And here's you don't just practice it on the one lunch and say that you're good. This is a skill. It's a skill to practice on multiple things, even things that you don't have to be on time for. How about that? Going to the hardware store. Okay, when do you want to get to the hardware store? Practice this stuff and see if you can hit it. Do this for a few weeks and then watch how you'll start to get to know yourself and what it takes for you to be on time. You'll start to be able to iterate the process, you'll come up with unique ideas in ways that are unique to you to manage this process. It only comes through practice. It's more than just declaring. Like, I need to be better about this, I need to be on time. You don't. You don't need to be on time. You don't need to be better about this. Truly. This lives in the great abyss between the want and the need. But wouldn't it be cool if you were on time? Give it a try. And I'm I'll echo it again. I'll beat this over everybody's head. And I will echo this again. ADHD, it's a team sport. This is not a solo effort. I do not manage my ADHD alone. So perhaps this is why I speak to this from the mountaintops. I have an entire community built on skills training through accountability. I get my own accountability in my own community. I have masterminds that I'm a member of. I have a walking buddy. I use my children for accountability. We all have people. Whether your people are family and friends or whether you're hiring your support, this work gets done when a support system is involved. Otherwise, it's just another fucking idea, it's just a neat idea that gets forgotten. Or it's just a neat idea that we tried once and then we say it doesn't work. You know what I mean? Requires a team. Alrighty. Hope that helps. Okay, so join ADHDB Brother. Um, this is gonna come out at the start of July. So uh at the beginning of July, you try out ADHDB Brother for $10 for 10 days. That's gonna be active until the 3rd of July. Um, I like to kick it off for the first few days of the month. Join our body doubling room, join our daily accountability club, soak up all the resources, but do something with them. Use us as accountability to do your thing. It works. It's inspiring, it's motivating. I mean, Stephanie is 900 days in a row of doing the thing she said, even on the days when her thing was to not do anything. Just rest, just show up. It's super inspiring, it's so motivating. And I I I love it there. I know I'm biased. Whatever. Alrighty, that'll do it. Okay, so I'm on one man show. So if you like this podcast, you get value out of it. It would mean the world to me if you'd share it with someone that you think it would help. And as always, reach out if you have questions about anything. I anything that I ramble about, hit me up. Uh if I can help, I will. And with that, I hope you have a great week. I shall talk to you later.