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Hi and welcome to ADHD Friendly. I am Patty, an ADHD and executive function coach, and I am here to support you to thrive more and struggle less with your ADHD. That is our mission here at ADHD Friendly. This is episode 241 and I'm going to kick it off with a phone call celebration. Then I have a tip about how to support yourself this summer through ADHD Friendly. More on that in a minute. And our main topic today is ADHD Friendly summer planning. Five strategies to design the summer of your dreams. I can't believe it's June. All right, so let's start episode 241 with my celebration. I have shared in past episodes how a lot of us with ADHD brain wiring have some social skills challenges, some, maybe even some social trepidation, anxiety, stress. And one of those is often linked to phone calls, something playfully termed telephonophobia, which I just, it lightens the, the weight of the reality. I just like saying it, but the reality is it, it really can be difficult to make phone calls. All of the executive functions that are often impacted by ADHD can make it really difficult to hold in mind what you want to say. Manage taking in information with what you wanted to have the outcome of the phone call. Be, tolerate boredom if you have to wait, unknown how long, you know a phone call might take. Anxiety or stress about forgetting what you were going to say or how you were going to say it. A lot of things come up when we think about phone calls. And I definitely struggle with phone calls. I'll do just about anything to avoid having to make a phone call to. Not to family, but to anybody that I don't know whether it's like my cell phone provider, the Internet company, doctor's appointment, anything. I don't want to make a phone call. So my celebration is that I, I got a manicure, which is a celebration in and of itself. But my last manicure lasted four weeks without any chips. So I wanted to go back to the same person that had done my nails that time because I noticed that when she does my nails, they do tend to last longer. I get a no chip variety and it's nice if it doesn't start, you know, kind of coming up and chipping a week or 10 days into it because it's kind of like a splurge for me to get them done. And I like them to last a long time. And they lasted four weeks through chores, gardening, I mean, lots of digging in the dirt, which typically they never last through. And there's no way to do this online. I can only schedule an appointment online with any it just says technician. It doesn't give me a choice. And in order to book the same person I knew I was going to have to call and I did that and I got them done yesterday. So my celebration is I called, got them done by the person I wanted to get them done by, and it felt really good to make the call, not making the call, but to have the call done and knowing I was able to look forward to having my appointment with the person that I wanted to do my nails instead of hoping that that's who I got, made sure it was who I got by making the phone call. So that's definitely a win for me. If you want more on that, check out my episode on Telephonophobia where I have lots of strategies to help you make phone calls with more ease. Understand why it's so hard to do that sometimes so that you can have some strategies maybe to explore to make it easier for you too. All right, now I didn't purchase anything this week, but but my Product of the week and my Tip of the week are the same. And that is to explore the ADHD friendly membership to support you and your brain as we move into these quote unquote lazy days of summer, a lot of us find that the changes in our routines and often less structured routines can feel really freeing. I remember when my kids were young enough to be in school, I didn't have to carpool, I didn't have to worry about homework every night for them. I didn't have to worry about packing lunches or making sure we had what we needed to get everything out of the house in the morning on time. And as freeing as that was, it was also fraught with challenges because our routines would just kind of fade away, our sleep schedules would shift, our habits were all interrupted, and it can get pretty easy to lose momentum when we ease into the summer relaxed, lazy days. And that's one of the reasons why ADHD Friendly is here is to help offer sustainable structure and support that helps keep you moving forward without perfection or judgment. It's just meaning where you are so we can build from there. So I just wanted to highlight inside the membership. Our focus in the month of June is designing your ADHD friendly dream summer. So we have workshops and structure supported to help you do that. We're kicking it off around the webinar on Friday all about designing your dream summer. We'll also have live workshops and this is every month we have a theme, but the whole summer season is structured around building sustainable routines, helping you to anchor your days, exploring what is ADHD friendly summertime looks like for you so that you can prioritize what you want most and give yourself permission to let go of things that aren't serving you. So together we'll explore flexible summer routines, planning for vacations, camps, just whatever schedule changes might be on the horizon. Staying connected to essentials without a rigid structure. I always call it the Goldilocks level. We want to hit that sweet spot for you so that it's not so unstructured you can't get anything done. But not so much structure that you get overwhelmed and can't get anything done. We need that, that sweet spot in the middle. We'll be creating an energizing and realistic summer and supporting future you while still enjoying the summer. So if you're looking for more support this summer, I'd love for you to join us at ADHD Friendly. Check out ADHD friendly.com for more information. All right, now to our topic for today and it is about designing an ADHD friendly summer. How to plan for it. So I'm going to share some different ways to design the summer of your dreams with five strategies that can help you do just that. So my summers used to have such a consistent pattern where I was so stinking excited that have the kids out of the school. I have four kids, a couple of different years there. They were in four different schools and I had like one in elementary school, one in middle school, one in high, two in high school, but they went to different high schools. So literally trying to keep up with things was unbelievably overwhelming. And I just loved so much the end of the school year where I just was like, okay, I have like a little like break to not have to keep up with so many things. But while I love that, I learned that the trick to having a summer that felt good overall was to have enough structure to hold us together without losing, you know, kind of like that, that there's so much open space we don't know what to do with it. So it was about creating structure and a predictable rhythm that supports supported our executive function skills. Even though I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time, I didn't have that terminology. That's literally what I realized we needed and what I needed to create for our family to enjoy the summer months. Because summer brings schedule changes. So if you have kids, unless they're on like a year round schedule, they're out of school, maybe they have camp, maybe they have different things going on. Maybe you're planning family vacations, maybe you're traveling somewhere in country, out of the country, long weekends. There's also the change in daylight hours. The days feel so long and the light is, you know, earlier and later. So it can disrupt our sleep routines. We might have flexible work schedules. Maybe you have, you know, half day Friday or you're working longer Monday through Thursday to have every Friday off. I know there's a lot of variety. In the summer months we typically have more social gatherings because the weather is nicer. So we're getting out more and doing more things. All of this can feel very novel and exciting to our brain. But ADHD brains depend on routines to lessen that mental load. So if we don't have structure to plan, prioritize and support ourselves, it creates some real challenges for us. So without that structure, we'll experience maybe losing track of what we're doing more easily. Or we'll stay up too late and then it's impacting our energy and our ability to focus and it negatively impacts our executive functions. If we're not getting the sleep we need, we might forget to take our medication because we're off of our typical schedule. We might spend impulsively. It's like, oh yeah, we're going to go here. That sounds like so much fun. Without pausing and hitting the brakes to see like wait a minute, is that going to fit in our budget? Because when non summertime routines are going, we fall into a structured routine. If summer's disrupting that, it can impact so many of these different areas. We might also over commit our time. We might, you know, kind of have that fear of missing out where we're getting invited to things and it's like yes, yes, yes, I want to do it all. And then we're burnout because we've overcommitted. So open ended time without structure can actually increase our procrastinating because we just feel like, oh my gosh, there's so much time, I can do that another time. Or we can feel overwhelmed instead of relaxed because it's just like if there's so much time to do something, how do I pinpoint when and how do I make myself start when it's, I've got all summer. So this is a chance to design this summer for you that's ADHD friendly for you, your brain and anybody else that you are sharing your life with. So here are five strategies that I, I invite you to Explore. As with anything I share, take what works for you. Leave the rest behind. I want you to give yourself permission to notice what's sparkly for you, what feels like. Maybe the one thing that could help you to move from where you are into a summer that's more in line with what you want to get from it. All right, so number one is look at anchor habits to maintain. So instead of trying to keep everything in place, so if you have maybe like a bunch of family members that are having a different routine, if you have kids that are out of school and you no longer have the carpool routine and you know, all of these things that forced you up and out in the morning, maybe just look at what are maybe, you know, one, two, maybe three or four the most anchor routines, anchor habits that can really help keep you grounded. It might be like we're just going to wake up at the same time every day. So you're kind of honoring the wake up time, which will also support the go to bed time because you'll be tired if you exercise in the morning. Maybe keeping that in place, going for a walk at the same time every day, looking at the calendar every day at the same time, medication routine, you know, just identify. These are like the anchor things. These are things if I'm not doing them. The days untethered. I literally think of those, those parachutes we used to use in, in gym class where you, you know, all the kids would hold one of the little tethers and hold it down. And if anybody lets go it like, you know, the, the little pieces start flying away in the wind. So think how many anchors do you need to kind of pin down your day enough where you're not floating around in space. You have enough structure to hold you down so you can keep moving forward. So think of it as your minimum viable structure. Just enough to keep you going. Again, that Goldilocks level. Second strategy. Define your summer rhythm. So we don't want to expect too rigid of a schedule. Rigidity is something that will resist. So we want to look at what does your rhythm look like. Creating that flexible framework to navigate within. So it might be like in the morning, every morning I do this and it might be like the 1 priority task for the day. The one thing that has to get done in the afternoon is our social or outside time. Evening might be kind of wind down, reset time. If you have kids, it might be looking at the days of the week to create structure around. So if they are not enrolled in camp and you're trying to Keep them occupied. It might be okay. We have playgroup with friends on Monday. On Tuesday we have an arts and crafts project. On Wednesday we go to the library. On Thursday we go to the pool. On Friday we go to the movies or we have movie day with popcorn at home. Whatever it is, look at what would work for your family so that you're creating structure that's repeatable, that you don't have to get up every day and decide, what are we doing today? What's going on? Give yourself those, those that rhythm of the summer that you can lean into and look forward to. My dogs are in here hanging out, so if you can hear them, that's what it is. All right. Third strategy. This is a big one because it really does impact our brain. Protect your sleep routine. This is hard in the summer time because it does get late so early and it does stay light so late. Sleep disruptions worsen ADHD symptoms. This is true for everybody with adhd, children and adults alike. So keep in mind that sleep routines are harder to maintain because of just more daylight, but also if you're additionally off your regular routine because of the changes in the summertime. So explore ways to support your sleep routine so that you're protecting it. It might be having an evening wind down alarm, something that lets you know and reminds you, hey, it's 8 o'. Clock. You might want to start brushing teeth, getting pajamas on stories even for yourself, like taking care of your sleep hygiene things so that you're setting yourself up to transition to sleep. You might want to have like a nighttime playlist or you know, something that again is, is kind of letting your mind know over time that you're repeating it, that it's now becoming time to get ready to go to sleep. Perhaps charging your phone in a different location or a different room so that it's not keeping you scrolling on it. Wake up at the same time. As I mentioned in our first strategy, getting up at the same time supports going to bed because you will be tired. If you're consistently getting up. Even if you stayed up late, it will eventually, hopefully pull you into going to bed earlier because you'll be tired. Or maybe something like curtains, blinds, blackout. You know, something that's going to make it darker in your room to make it easier to go to sleep. I used to do that for my kids because it was so late and they're going to bed at 8 o' clock at night when they were little and it was still so late outside, so I had to get curtains. That made it darker in their room so they could fall asleep. My fourth strategy is to plan ahead for transitions. So look at the start and the end for like what are your camp schedules or what about vacation, like what's going on that's changing in your schedule? Maybe your work schedule is different in the summertime. So if you have camp or vacations, travel, that kind of thing, it might be starting a packing list in advance so you're planning ahead for a transition that's coming up so that it's less disruptive because you've done a little bit of that pre planning. Create re entry plans for when you come back. So if you've gone on a long weekend, leave a little note for your future self, a little transitional step that gets you back into your routine to make it easier when you return from a vacation, long weekend, anything leave visual prompts for yourself so it might be little post its reminding you what the next thing is to do when you come back. And then remember schedule ahead for pets. This is the thing that I literally have as part of my vacation planning list that I go back to when I print whenever I'm getting ready to go somewhere to remind me to check ahead for my pets to see am I needing to schedule a reservation for them to be boarded? Make sure that I have any medications that they need, if they need to get any vaccinations before we go, that I have a chance to do that because I give myself enough advanced time to take care of it. And then my fifth and final strategy is to design around your actual energy, not your ideal energy, not your perfect. You know, you're kind of like imagining your perfect amount in the future. Plan for realistic, not fantasy energy. Avoid planning a perfect summer with tons of goals, activities, projects, tasks. Aim for a sustainable pace. Focus on your priorities. Think about what do I want most this summer? Not what's everything I can fit in to my summer. Remember, it's about creating enough structure to support a summer that you actually want and it's ADHD friendly so you can enjoy it. All right now we are at the end where I share my book of the week. This was a book that I found on Netgalley and I want to thank Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy. It had an interesting title and it's about the history of queer bookshops and the title grabbed me How Queer Bookshops Change the World. And this is by AJ West. So in this book west traces the evolution of queer bookshops and reveals how they offered support and champion the LGBTQ rights. From Shakespeare and Company in Paris to the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in New York, the booksellers in this highlighted in this book sold books that others wouldn't and that through that process they created a community. I found this fascinating, led me into a deep dive of Oscar Wilde, who I only knew his name, but I did not know that he was a gay man who had gone through horrific experiences. And so now I'm trying to find there's a movie about his life. And now I'm like, oh my gosh, I want to see this. So I love books that open up new windows, new windows of learning to me. So this was a book I gave a four out of five, really enjoyed. Comes out on June 9, so you can advance order it and you only have to wait a week. So there you have it. This week's quote of the week is from my one of my favorite from Charles Schultz, Snoopy. Snoopy says there is no sense in doing a lot of barking if you really don't have anything to say. Wise, wise beyond his time for a dog especially. All right, that's it for episode 241. Until next time, Belly ho.