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Hi and welcome to ADHD Friendly. I am Patty. I'm an ADHD and executive function coach and my passion is finding ways to create more ease, less effort required in my life. And I'd like to bring them here and share them with you in the hopes that maybe they might do the same for you. This is episode 226 and today we're going to explore. Are you a time optimist? I'm going to talk about what that is. I'll also kick off the episode with a celebration about volunteering. I've got an ADHD Friendly tip to share and of course I've got a product that I'm going to highlight and my book of the week. If you'd like more support than I can offer in this podcast, I invite you to check out my website, ADHD friendly.com ADHD friendly is where adders get more things done. Foreign. Let's get going with my celebration. So this past weekend I volunteered at my local library. This is something that I had on my 26 in 2026 list, which is just list of 26 things I wanted to do this year. And one of them was to actually complete my volunteer application and submit it, which I have started, I have printed, I have done many times and just never and really, really struggle to go from something that's an application that needs to be filled out to getting it turned in. Especially if you have to turn it in in person. Like you can't all be completed digitally, which was how this application was. So I want to celebrate that I finished it, but also that I finished it in my own ADHD Friendly way. And that looks a lot like I outsourced it. So I printed it, I filled it out, and one of my kiddos was going to the library, so I just gave it to them and said, please drop this off at the circulation desk when you get there. And it was three days before the event I wanted to volunteer for, which I assumed was way too late, and I apologized and I wrote a little note saying, I'm so sorry, you know, if it's too late to do this, but here's my application. Well, they did the background check and cleared me within 24 hours. So I was able to volunteer this weekend. And the person that headed up the volunteer schedules was so excited because they had a couple of people back out and so she was really grateful that I submitted my volunteer application. So it just felt like a big win all around that not only did I get the form turned in a way that worked with me which was outsourcing it to one of my kiddos to drop off. But I also got it in in time to help for the event that I wanted to help with that I knew would be a bit easier for me. I knew kind of what it looked like, and it went great. All right. So that's my celebration. Had a great time. And I will look for other opportunities to volunteer in ways that are comfortable for me. This is particularly to do with my local library. They sent me an invitation to volunteer for an upcoming, like, Comic Con kind of thing that they host, and that's not my thing. I know how crowded that gets. It's chaotic. There's tons of people of all ages everywhere. It's loud. It's busy. Nope, not my. Not my jam. So that's okay. I'll look for another one. But I just feel so good that I've started this weekend with a volunteer opportunity that worked for me, and now I can just say yes to ones that I want to do in the future, because. Application turned in. All right. What I purchased this week. So the. I don't think I said the volunteer event that I helped with was the launch of. Our library has a seed library that they all year put together these little packets of different plants and vegetables and herb seeds, and they launch it with, I think they had 77,000 little things of seed packets this year that they were giving out. And because I was a volunteer, I actually got to go around and get seeds first, which I'm not. I've never done seeds, like plants from seeds. If you're a regular listener, you know, I barely keep things alive. Having things grow is a new thing for me, to be able to keep up with and not kill them. So seeds have always been. I've collected them before. I've gone to the seed library to borrow or to take some seeds before, but I've not successfully grown anything with them. But as I walked around, they had a few kinds of vegetables. They had cantaloupe seeds, which I was like, can we grow cantaloupe here in Illinois? And the volunteer was like, oh, my gosh, they're delicious. They grow really well. So I went to Home Depot after the seed library event ended, and I bought some supplies to try to grow some things from a seed, which right now feels like magic. But I bought some peat pots, I bought some starter soil, I bought some plant labels, and I spent about, I'd say, like, $30 total. I'm just gonna try it, so maybe I'll have an update in the future if I'm able to grow anything with it. But I'm excited to give it a try regardless of the outcome. I'm just going to try. My product of the week is not any of those yet because I don't know how they're going to work. I just got them. But I do have a product that I got in my stocking this year. My daughter shopped for my. My husband always fills my stocking and this year he gave my daughter the money to fill my stocking with and told her to go buy things that she thought I would like. And it was like the best stocking ever. So she bought me this Urban Decay brand. All Nighter. It's waterproof makeup setting spray. Here's a little picture of it from Amazon. This is what it looked like on there it is one fluid ounce. It's 18 on Amazon. And Urban Decay's description is it's a 24 hour for 24 hour wear. It's a fine mist that primes, blends and sets makeup in place. Waterproof and sweat resistant, transfer resistant. So I've been using this every day since right after Christmas. And it's just a simple little, you take the little cap off, you get a little shake and then you just close your eyes and do a little misting. It's okay. I've never done that while talking. Doesn't taste great. It has just a very light mist. I can't believe the difference from this tiny little misting spray. I can't believe I didn't know about this before. I am not hugely into makeup and all the different primers and I don't even know, like, there's so many things that just feel overwhelming to me. I wasn't brought up, you know, with a mom that was really into makeup, teaching me how. My, my best girlfriends weren't really, really into like a lot of makeup. So I've never really been a big. I have like basic makeup knowledge. So this has been a game changer for me. I'm just sharing it in case it's something that might interest you. It has not bothered my skin. I have not noticed. And I wrote down the description. I thought it was interesting. It said transfer resistant. Like maybe you can get on clothes. I don't know. I don't know what. I haven't noticed it staining anything or discoloring anything. So my personal experience thus far has been positive. So I'm just basing this highlight of the week, you know, the product product I'm highlighting based on my own personal Experience. I can't guarantee yours will be the same, but if you're looking for something or this interests you, might be something to experiment with to see if it might be a good fit for what you're looking for. I just love that my mascara, my eyeliner that always runs from the corners of my eyes, no matter I have very oily skin. So no matter what I do, it always runs. And it really almost doesn't happen at all now. And that to me is a game changer because I've spent so much money on different types of, you know, eyeliner, ink. And like all of these things are supposed to be water resistant and smudge resistant and they just haven't been. But this makes them more so than anything I've used thus far. And it's not even the eyeliner itself, it's just a setting spray. So that's my, my find for this week. All right, now for a tip. This is a really fun one. So I was reading a quote from James Clear, who authored Atomic Habits, one of my favorite book on habits. And he talks about this concept of doubled or halved. And so what he, what he said was, which activities in your life, if you doubled them, would make your life meaningfully better? And so some examples of things you might double might be double the amount of time you're exercising. So if you're not, you know, you're exercising once a week for five minutes, double it to twice a week for five minutes, adding up to 10 minutes total, or once a week for 10 minutes. Like, whatever it is, think about what could you double that would meaningfully make your life better? Some other examples might be volunteering, like how much time are you volunteering? Or how many, how frequently are you volunteering? How much are you saving? So maybe you want to double your savings or double the number of pages you read a day. I just thought it was a really sparkly way to think about what could you double that would make, whatever you're doing would make a meaningful impact but wouldn't overwhelm you. It might be double the amount of time you're brushing your teeth. Double the amount of time you brush your teeth. I don't, I mean, it's just limitless. But it sounded so sparkly. And then the, the reverse of that is the halves. So he says, which activities in your life, if halved, would make your life meaningfully better? So what would you half? So this is the what would you remove side. So it might be, I'm going to cut my sugar intake in half or I'm going to have half the amount of soda that I typically drink. I'm going to cut it in half. Or maybe I'm going to spend half of the money on miscellaneous things that I've been spending each week. Or maybe you're going to half the time that you spend scrolling on your phone or watching tv or maybe half the negative self talk or the amount of gossip you participate in. But think about what would you double to increase or half to decrease to make a meaningful impact in your life which feels most sparkly to you? I love how this can help to break away from that all or nothing. It's not I'm going to cut out sugar. Maybe I'm just going to half my sugar or I'm never going to, you know, do this again. Well, maybe you just half whatever you're trying to do. So it's not so restrictive that you end up throwing in the towel because it feels too difficult. But the same thing with doubling it. Not like I'm going to go out and run five miles every day. Maybe I'm going to go out and run one more mailbox. Like I'm going to double the distance I was running to one mailbox. I'm going to run to two mailboxes. Whatever it is. That was my example when I started running years ago to prepare for a run that I was using accountability for. So just a sparkly way to think about what would you do that's a little more than what you're currently doing or a little bit less so that you're meaningfully improving your life? If that's sparkly, if you'd share what you half or double in this episode's notes, episode 226. All right, so now our main topic, and that is are you a time optimist? So if you've ever thought about, you know, I'm just going to do this really quickly, it's only going to take 10 minutes, and then suddenly it's a half hour later or an hour later and you are late and stressed out. This is a description of what happens very often if you're a time optimist. So time optimism is the tendency to underestimate how long tasks will take. We also tend to overestimate how much motivation we're going to have in the future or how much energy and focus we'll have in the future. So it's that I'm sure I'll feel more like it later syndrome. We also assume things are going to go smoothly or even perfectly. So this is where that perfectionism can show up too, where we'll. We'll assume things will go along exactly how we need them. I think of this in terms of not building in time buffers to get your morning commute from point A to point B. We assume we're not going to get stopped at traffic lights. There's not going to be construction. There won't be an accident that slows us down. There won't be a train that is going to come across our path at the time we need to go, you know, from point A to point B. It might be like, I can get to work in 12 minutes. But we don't build in any buffer time. We just have 12 minutes. So anything else that happens automatically sets us up to run late. So if this sounds like you, you are not alone. There are lots of us with ADHD that experience this because our brains are vulnerable to, to time optimism. And this is due to a few reasons. I'm just going to highlight a couple of them. The first is we have challenges with time blindness, that sense of not experiencing the passage of time. We, we don't have a strong sense of it. It just feels like time just kind of slips away from us. We also have weaker working memory. So our past experiences aren't necessarily informing our future predictions. We aren't estimating as accurately how much time we're going to need. And then our executive function weaknesses as a whole don't support us where our planning doesn't equal our doing. We often plan a lot of things, but we struggle with the implementation. Go back to my example with the volunteer application for the library, where I tried and I thought about it and I filled it out and I printed it and I left it sitting and then I had to redo it because I couldn't find it. And it's just the planning doesn't equal the doing. So thinking about all of those things that can get in the way, but we'll believe that we can this time. That's that, that optimism again, that this time is going to be different. But without structure to make the outcome different, it's often not our reality. We keep repeating the same frustrating scenario that we have been experiencing often for most of our lives. So here are some examples of where that might show up and what it might look like. Maybe we're thinking it might just be 10 minutes and it becomes an hour because maybe you got interrupted. It's like, just give me 10 minutes and I'll wrap this up. But something came across your radar and distracted you. So you got interrupted or you couldn't find what you needed to do the thing. So even in my example, I spent time looking for the application I'd already filled out and printed and couldn't find it. So that 10 minutes it would have been for me just to grab the application, look it over, make sure I had it completed, and just sign it turned into more like an hour because I had to look for it. And then I had to start again because I couldn't find it and, you know, created a much larger task than I had on my list. Or maybe you forgot something and had to start again. Like, again, my example with the volunteering form. Another example is maybe you scheduled appointments back to back and you didn't build in transition time. We often do that. We'll look at our schedule and we'll see. Okay, I have something for 11 to 12, but I'm free at 12. But we don't take into account, well, what if a friend is like, well, look, great, let's meet for lunch at 12. Yeah, I'm free at 12. But we don't build in the time to get there, so we're late. Or even if it's going from like one zoom call to another, we don't build in time to transition off of this zoom call and open up, you know, find the other link for the next zoom meeting, give it time to load to get on there. We tend to think, I can see the time is available in the calendar. I can do that. I can go. And that's if we're looking at a calendar, we might just, in our mind think, I've got time, I've got something at 11 that I have nothing after that. I can do 12. So think about if you, if that describes you, if you're just scheduling back to back things, or maybe you're thinking, I'll do it after work tonight. So we're pushing it to our slightly future self to do later, but we aren't accounting for whether or not I have the time to do that tonight. Or maybe forgetting we already have a commitment that slipped our mind because again, we're using our working memory to filter through what's going on. And what. Yeah, I'll just, I'll just do that tonight. And then we realize we have dinner plans with neighbors or whatever it is. Maybe we won't have the energy later on. Or we'll have decision fatigue, so we can't even decide what to do first to get the thing we're putting off until later done. Or we're just not going to be motivated later on. I always try not to push things to my future self later in the day. I'm much less likely to get anything done. So I have learned very difficult lessons personally to not push things to my future self if they can be done earlier, because I will pay for that almost every time. So the impact can be pretty significant. It can lead to us being chronically late. We are often embarrassed or maybe even have some shame around our repetitive running late, arriving late, over committing, not being able to fit something in that we thought we could. We might also just have overpacked schedules where we're back to back to back to back with things and it creates a lot of stress. We might miss deadlines, we might over commit. So yeah, sure, I have time for that. But we don't stop to think, well, if I do that, what do I have to do in advance? So it might be a quick example, might be like, oh, that that book club meeting looks interesting, I'll go to that. But we don't have the structure built in to actually read the book that's going to be discussed. We just know I have to be there at this time and I have that time free. So I'm going to go. But we don't necessarily back up and plan. Well, to be ready for that, I'd have to do these things. We also might get burned out from the things that we're trying to fit in or we might feel like we're just not good at being places on time, at honoring our commitments or just overall that adulting phrase that a lot of us can really despise that term of adulting, but it's how it's often described. If that describes you, you very likely are being impacted in some way with that time optimism, that that being a time optimist. But the real problem isn't that you can't be on time or that you're not good at honoring time or commitments. It's that you lack a plan for what works for you. Right. So it requires us to slow down enough to think about what might help to work with your time optimism. So it's not getting in your way, it's ending up being a strength for you. So the first thing I want to do around that is build some strategies around it. So let's just talk about some things that might help you manage that time optimism a little bit more easily. The first is to triple the time you're estimating. So if I go back to my 10 minute example, I'm just going to, you know, spend. I just need 10 minutes to wrap this up, triple it. That means Give yourself 30 minutes. If you don't have 30 minutes, find another time to do it because it's likely going to take longer than 10 minutes. So estimate the time you need and if it's over the time you need, adjust. If it's under the time, you'll know. A lot of us do need to triple or quadruple the time estimates we typically give common tasks because we're off on our time estimation. Remember that goes back to our timeline as we don't experience passage of time. So time 10 minutes just feels like a good estimate that we'll throw out there without any evidence that we can actually do it in 10 minutes. So try tripling it and then adjust accordingly as the first tip. The next is to list the invisible steps to get the thing you're trying to get finished. So instead of submit volunteer form to the library, it might be number one, find the volunteer form. Number two, you know, complete it if there's something that's not completed. Number three, sign it. Number four, get it to the library. Like how much time is it going to take you to literally drive it to the library or outsource it? If it's something simple like, you know, do the laundry. That's a multiple step task. We can't just go do the laundry and be done. It requires us to maybe sort the laundry into baskets. Sort of bring the baskets into the place where the laundry is, whether it's a laundry room or a place that the laundry is done. Start the first load, set a timer to come back and transfer that first load to the dryer and put in the second load. Literally list out the tasks from start to finish so you can check them off and see your progress along the way. So that's number two. List the steps. Number three, plan for future you. So if you're low energy or have very low motivation, then. So I love if then kind of flowchart. So if I'm low energy then I'll turn on music, I'll make a phone call to talk to somebody while I'm doing it, I'll build it in a reward, etc. So think about your future self. So if I'm moving it tonight, then I need to build in a reward, or if I'm moving it to tonight, then I need to plan for low energy and turn music on before I start. What does it look like if you're supporting your future self to be able to do the thing that you're pushing to your future self. Number four is plan for good enough or plan be it. So if perfectionism is something that will get in the way of you getting something done in a timely manner, make a good enough plan. So if do laundry is not possible to get done in the time that you have, make a good enough plan. Good enough might be I'm just going to sort the laundry and put it in the laundry room so I can start a load tomorrow. I'm not good at starting loads and not coming back. I'll forget it's in there and it'll just sit and then I go back to it. It has to be washed again anyway, so I'm better at setting up the laundry and then coming back to it at another time to actually start the laundry in a wash and then moving it to the dryer because it makes it easier to come back to. Because the laundry is all in one place, it's already sorted. I can just start doing a load when I have the time to transfer it. If I do a load before I go to bed, chances are pretty good I'm going to forget it's in there and it's going to sit there. So make a good enough plan or a plan B. So if you don't have time for everything, what's one thing you can do so that you're still starting? Or what's a smaller piece you can do so that if you're like, I'm going to go for a 30 minute walk and you don't have 30 minutes, your plan B that could be good enough might be I'm going to go for a 10 minute walk. Allow yourself to adjust by having a good enough plan or plan B and then finally use time estimates. So pick one routine task that you do daily or multiple times a day, something that you're doing really frequently. It could be emptying the dishwasher, folding a load of laundry. Whatever it is, estimate how long that task takes before you start and then time it. Save how much time it takes. I like to do it in my notes app on my phone where I'll just list how long something takes. So it's right there with me. But you can reuse it over and over. So once you have some data, you can sort tasks by how much time they take and then you can plug in. If you have like an ongoing task list that you're repeatedly doing these things pretty frequently, it will let you know about how long they take so you can start plugging things into the time you have instead of using your memory of how long things take, which we know isn't probably very accurate and then assuming you can get it done because your your time optimist brain is telling you that you got this, you can get this done when if the reality is you can't, we want to plan for that so that you're successful with your time. So if you're a time optimist, remember it means that your brain is wired for hope. You're hoping you have the time to get it done. It's a positive thing. We just need better systems to support that optimism to be accurate. So pick a strategy to experiment with this week. Just try one thing and I would love it if you share what you learned and how it worked for you in the show. Notes. Again, this is episode 226. Anything you learn is helpful for us because we all learn from each other. So if you are a time optimist and you try a strategy or you have something that you know already works for you, would love to hear about it because we all learn from each other. All right, so that is it for time optimists. Now we just have a quick book of the week share and my book for this week is actually a middle school book. So typically like 6th to 8th grade but thoroughly enjoyable. I saw the movie, ironically with my daughter and did not realize it was a book. Started reading it because I saw it recommended this is the Wild Robot by Peter Brown. It's the first in his series. There's multiple books in this series. I realized when I started reading I'm like I know this story. I saw this movie and I called my daughter who I watched it with. I'm like did we watch this movie? She's like yeah mom, you loved it. I'm like, well I'm now reading the book so here's a quick description. It's a playful story about a curious robot named Roz who accidentally becomes part of the wild. She learns how to survive, how to make friends, and discovers what home in quotes actually means. This is again a DreamWorks movie. It's a very sweet movie. I gave it a three and a half out of five stars for the read. Really quick, enjoyable read by Peter Brown and part of a series. So if you are looking for something that's quick and enjoyable or you have a kiddo that's looking for a good read, I love recommending books to kids that are part of a series. Very easy to get into. Really enjoyable and I think middle school age kids and younger if you read it to them and they'll just love it. It could be a great little read a chapter a night with your kiddo book. All right, now to wrap it up, I end with my quote and this is a James Clear quote since he gave me my motivate, my inspiration for the tool this week. The tip I should say I want to share a quote from him. So this is regarding how I started one more thing when I was trying to get started so I started a Fun with ADHD new podcast. If you haven't heard about it or checked it out yet, I invite you to check it out. I'm just going to do one episode a month, but this quote really helped me to start it. So here's what he said. He said, here's a rule I find useful. You should attempt things that are difficult enough to guarantee some early embarrassment, but important enough that long term regret is unlikely. Trying something difficult will usually make you look foolish or inexperienced, and that's fine. That's the cost of learning. But if it's important to you, then you'll work through the early failures and even if things ultimately change shape or don't work out, you'll never regret going for it. I love this because I definitely am somebody who gets in their head and worries about how it's going to appear and if I'm going to look stupid and if people won't like it and they'll judge me and you know, all that rejection sensitivity comes up for me. But if it's important enough to me, I know I can't learn unless I start. So this quote so spoke to that fear and small side of me that keeps me small and reminded me that if I don't start, I'll never learn and I'm never going to get better. So it's how I started this podcast, which is still a work in progress. I'm still, you know, there's lots of things that I wish I knew more about and could do better, but I'm allowing myself to continue doing what I can from where I am and learning. So I hope to continue to do even better for both myself and and for anybody that comes along and checks out my work. Again, if you would like to work with me a little bit more individually, I do offer individual coaching, but I created my ADHD Friendly membership as a really price friendly, accessible way to get what you need when you need it. And that does include live sessions to work with me. Check it out at ADHD Friendly CO mn actually it might be MN CO Becca Put a little image up there. I. I always bite myself to say it out loud, but I'm like, no, you know this. You've got this. No, my working memory. Not the best, guys. But if you can't find that idiot, she friendly.com will take you there too. That's it for this episode. I'll see you next time. Tally ho.