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Hi, welcome to ADHD Friendly. I am Patti Blunderman. I'm a professionally certified ADHD coach specializing in coaching adults who have ADHD and executive function skills impacts. This is episode 228. So quick overview. I'm going to share Social Win. It's actually four social wins. I'll talk about what that looked like for me and then I have a tip on how to clean up declutter, organize your board game collection. I have a product of the week and then our main topic for today is the Goldilocks rule for adhd. So how to navigate a routine, a schedule that's not too busy, but also not too open. I'm going to talk about what that looks like. All right, so I want to highlight. I've shared. If you are a longtime listener to this podcast, you know, I've shared a lot about how we can struggle with social skills, we can struggle with social connections and maintaining friendships, making friends, keeping friends, ending friendships when they're no longer serving us. A lot of these things are impacted by the executive function impacts of ADHD brain wiring. So I have a section in my personal owner's manual, specifically in my Expecto Paternum journal, which is my visual success journal, where I capture social wins. Evidence I can social is what I call it. Because I'm fairly introverted, I am very happy with my alone time. It takes a lot of energy and effort to put myself out with other people. And when I moved to Chicago a number of years ago, I knew I was going to have to do it to make friends because my kids were not at the age where they needed me to set up and host play dates. And I was just gonna have to go out there and make some friends. And it has been a slow process, a challenging process, but there have been wins along the way, and those felt like they really culminated last week in four different social things in a row. So I had plans on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week. And I just want to celebrate that. The work I've done over the last number of years has really helped me to create that. But I also picked activities that were really fun and interesting to me, so. So that I could maintain my energy and not get drained from so many things in a row. So I did my book club membership, which I do pretty much every month. So that was kind of a standing thing last week. And I had my knit group on Wednesday, which I've been going to for years, also a standing thing. So those two were my. My kind of regular commitments that are social, that I really enjoy. But I had two specific things that I felt really made the week possible for me to tolerate four things in a row. Because for me, that that's an awful lot for some people. You might do four social things in a week or in a day, and that's not a big deal. Or you always do four social things in a week. I next to never do because I don't want to. And if I see that many things, I'll cancel something. It just feels overwhelming. But because I wanted to do all of them, they didn't drain me as much as they could have. And I, you know, really planned downtime over the weekend and made sure I had nothing on my schedule so I could kind of recharge my batteries. But I had a lot of fun. So the other two things were I went to an owl program with a friend where we got to see four different owls that are in the wild in our area, where they're in a wildlife refuge, takes care of them because they are no longer able to. Either they were injured or something happened that that prevents them from living in the wild anymore. So we got to see those. And that was super interesting. Really, really enjoyed that. And then the other thing I did was I took a calligraphy class a friend invited me to go to with her. And I've always wanted to learn calligraphy because I always say I have ADHD font, I have really, really messy handwriting, and I've always been self conscious about it. And I had a lot of fun. But what I learned was I'm not going to be able to tolerate the precision and the focus. It just didn't interest me. It was funny because there are four people in our class and three people were like buying additional, like pens and nibs and all of these things. And I was like, I'm good. Like, this was fun, but I am not going to be. It was messy. I got ink all over my hands. I get just. It was interesting that I didn't have an interest in continuing. I thought this would be the beginning of something I would really enjoy. Doesn't mean I'll never try it again. But for right now, I was like, I'm good. I've got my piano and my knitting and reading and, you know, everything that I've got to occupy my time. I really didn't feel interested in continuing beyond the, the one evening. But it was super fun to go out and learn and play with and be social with. So those are my social wins that I want to celebrate. Okay, so what I purchased this Week, nothing. But I do have a product of the week that I received as another stocking stuffer Christmas gift from my husband that my daughter picked out because she did my stocking gifts this year for my husband and she did so well. I love everything that she picked to put in my stocking. So this is. I don't even know if it's chi or chai chi. I have the flatiron that my daughter also gave me a number of years ago for Christmas and she got me their helmet head extra firm hairspray. So this is a 10 ounce can. It's hold level number five. I found a 10 ounce can on Amazon for same thing, the helmet head. They have different levels. I like the, the super firm hold, but they have, you know, lesser degrees. You can go all the way down to a level one if it interests you. But this was 13.94 when I looked it up on Amazon this morning. When I'm recording this, prices can always change. But I thought not too, too horribly bad for, you know, this size can. This is the 10 ounce I keep saying canister of hairspray. What I love about it is it works well. My favorite thing, besides it working well. And this is a deal breaker for me if I don't like. Smells so good guys. I mean it just smells so good. I love the smell and I've shared before. I'm very sensitive to scents. Now I'm breathing in hairspray. But I just really do enjoy the smell. So that's my product of the week. If it interests you. You're looking for a new hairspray. This is in your, your price range. You're interested in checking it out. If you set up my newsletter, there'll be a link directly to it in the newsletter. It comes out every Friday. The newsletter is free. So if you'd like to get a little more ADHD friendly info and insights and tips, there's a free newsletter. You can sign up for my website, ADHD friendly.com All right, now for my tip this week and that is to clean up your board game collection. So I always dreamed of having a game closet from the time that I was, before I was even married. I just thought a game closet full of games that my family would play like on family game nights was just the, the ideal vision for when I had a family. But I ended up with a, with a, a great number of kids. I have four kids like perfect like for getting together for family game nights. Even if a couple don't want to play. I got a couple More that would. They just didn't love board games. And even if they did like them, we had different ADHD elements at play that made it really hard to have fun with them. So there was a lot of competition, there was a lot of emotional dysregulation. If somebody didn't win, they might not be able to handle that emotionally and they would melt down. And it just made it create a lot of stress and not fun, which was really disappointing. And they were really sensitive. So if anybody kind of like, you know, ribbed them jokingly and, you know, they would maybe, you know, have a hard time with that or even just agreeing on a game to play that everybody could agree on was such a chore that I've, you know, I still love board games, but I had to come to an appreciation that my love of board games wasn't shared by everybody in my family and certainly not for the same games and to the certain same degree. So a lot of the games that I have in, I have a game covered. Not a game, not a game closet. So it still is perfectly aligned with my vision. But they have not been played in years, some of them more than a decade. And they're pretty bulky and they take up a lot of room. So I decided I was going to go through and declutter them because not only were they filling this one pretty decent sized cabinet, they all didn't fit in there. So they were in three different locations in my house. So I gathered them all together and that's step one. So if you would like to do this, if you have, this is good for, you know, pretty much anything that you're trying to declutter. But this is my process that I use to declutter my games. So my first thing was to remove all of the games and put them all in one pile and ask yourself, have we played this in the past year? If it's a yes and you guys enjoyed it, that's maybe all you need. Yep. Going to keep it. We love playing this. If it's. I'm not even sure when the last time we played this was, but I think we liked it. Put it in a test pile, prioritize playing it in the next one to three months so you have a chance to decide if you want to keep it, if it's worth holding on to and taking up that valuable real estate wherever you're storing it. And if the answer is no, that might be all you need. Maybe just let it go, donate it, let somebody else take the game and engage with it and Play with it if you've just moved on or you've outgrown it, or it just isn't something that you have time for interest in anymore. Excuse me. For the test pile, prioritize those, put them up front. Maybe stick a post it on it that says trial test so that you remember your intention to try it out. Number two, whole family members or whoever you're living with to see does anybody else really want to play that game again. So I did this with my kids because I had like Disney, Trivial Pursuit. I had different kinds of Monopoly. Same game, different themes. I'm like, okay, do we really need three different Monopoly board games? I don't think we do. Let's pick one. Inherited down to two. We kept two. But still think about what would work for your family. So ask your family members to give you maybe a thumbs up, thumbs down if they want to keep it. If no one gives it a thumbs up, it goes. So kind of defining what the criteria are for you and your situation can help you to make a decision on whether to keep it or donate it. Maybe you decide to limit it by category. So I noticed we had a lot of strategy games, a lot of games of chance. So maybe if you want to have a mix, think about, well, I don't want more than for strategy games. I'm not big on strategy games personally. A lot of members of my family, it takes a lot of effort to get into them. So we're not as likely to play those. So just notice if you guys like more card games or if you like more long campaign kind of games. If you want to limit to create some structure to how many you're keeping, that might be a way to do it. It's just a limit by category what you're going to hold on to. Number four. And this is one of my favorite questions to ask. Would I walk into a store and buy this game again today? So just because we have it, we tend to not want to let go of almost has that. Well, you know, just in case. I'm a huge just in case person. I hold on to things just in case all the time. So the just in case might be just in case we have company or, you know, a situation changes and we want to play it. I want to have it just in case. But if you lost it, if it got damaged, if pieces were missing and you can't play without them, would you buy the game again? Like I did for my Othello, it was missing one piece. And I ended up noticing when I, when I Opened it up that the Othello board itself was so old. I've had this game for probably 30 years, and it just looked awful. Like it has like this green kind of crushed velvet, kind of little pieces in squares that you put the. The circular discs into, and they just look awful. And I love that game. So I was like, I'm going to replace this. And I did. So, yes, I would buy it again. So that might be a good kind of question to check in and say, would I spend money on this again? And if not, maybe let it go. If you wouldn't buy it today. Number five might be contain the collection rule to try. So by that I mean decide where your games live, and you can keep the number of games that fit in that space. So my goal in cleaning these out was to take the games from the three places they were in and pare it down to enough games that would fit into the one cabinet I want to serve as my game cabinet. And I want the game cabinet to not be so full we can't get to games. So I wanted it to be easy to access, easy to see what's in there so we'd be more likely to play them. So maybe thinking about limiting the number of games that you keep in your collection by containing the collection to the space that you've designated for it, and then prioritize playing the games that you put into the test pile, especially if you have a large test pile, maybe put some structure around it and reinstate Friday game nights or Wednesday game nights, or, you know, something that lets you go through and test them. And if you don't play them in a set amount of time, give yourself a deadline. 30 days, three months. Keep it. You know, I would encourage limiting it to no more than three months. And if you don't play it within that amount of time, donate it. So there were a couple of games I know my family had a great time playing, but we haven't played them in so long. Like, Ticket to Ride is one of them, which is one of those hugely popular games. But I remember when we played it thinking this would be a lot of fun if we played this consistently enough to remember the rules. But I have zero interest in going back and learning the rules again. I just don't. I like games I can pick up and learn really quickly and play, not games that take me forever to learn. And then if I don't play it for a year, I have to relearn it. That's not fun for me. So think about what's fun for you and for those who are playing the games with you that will help you to see what's worthy of holding on to so that you have the games that you're excited to play and not a bunch of games that are getting in the way of getting to those fun games. So to see me go through my games, I did this on a I recorded myself going through them using the 9090 rule, something I'll talk about in this month's episode of ADHD of Fun with adhd. So that will be out sometime in the next week or so when this this episode airs. So check it out if you want to see me go through my games live. I had about, I think, over 30 games I went through and pared down. And it was an interesting thing how well recording myself do it held me accountable to really being honest about what games I was going to keep. And I've already finished going through them from that video and outsourced donating them to my son. So they're all gone and everything is fitting in the cabinet done. So I'm super happy with the results. So that's my tip for this week. All right, now for our main topic, the Goldilocks Rule for adhd. Not too busy, not too open. So Goldilocks, if you think about the fairy tale, is all about just that right size for Goldilocks and right sizing your schedule is a key piece to really thrive with an ADHD brain. It's fitting your schedule to not only your brain, but your energy and your capacity. Kind of like what I just talked about with my celebration around the social win wins that I had last week was noticing I did have the open week that allowed me to have four different things going on and it was a little bit busier than I normally would choose. But I also could see that I had a really open weekend that would allow me to tolerate being so busy during the week because I could decompress and relax over the weekend. So one thing I just want to really highlight is that when our schedules are too full, we get flooded with all of the decisions what to do, how we're going to get it done. It leads us to feel overwhelmed. But on the flip side, if our schedule's too open, we feel the same. We don't know where to start, we don't know what to do with the time. We don't know how to structure the time. So deciding what to do with it, prioritizing, planning, starting is all overwhelming. So whether we have too much or too little, it can both overwhelm us. And the the key is right, sizing your schedule, finding that Goldilocks level so it's just right for you. Not just right or if I compared my four social wins to an extreme extrovert, they would probably need more outings than I could ever even conceive of where that's great for them. We're looking for what's right for you. So I'm going to go through and and really highlight how to lean into making your schedule just right for you. But I do want to highlight as well, if you want more help with your schedule, with planning, prioritizing, mapping out your time so you can see it in a concrete way that works for you with more ease and less effort. Check out the ADHD Friendly membership for more live interactive resources on time management, planning and prioritizing. ADHD Friendly. MN CO is where to check that out. Okay, so ADHD brains need to conserve cognitive energy. And keep in mind every single decision we make requires energy. So the less decisions we need to make, the less energy we're draining from our reserves and the more we have to do the things we're trying to do. So avoidance increases as we have to make more and more decisions. So if you think about a day where you have nothing planned and it can feel so luxurious, I've got nothing I have to do. But you might have things you want to do or things that you know you need to get done at some point during the day, but it doesn't matter when. That can be really, really hard to navigate because it's left to us to put the structure around it to create the motivation, the urgency, the interest to get it going. So when we have to make more decisions, we end up actually creating more avoidance and our judgment gets worse. So we tend to go to default decisions, which are often the easiest for us, but not, not necessarily the one that serves us best. I think of these, as we call them, default mode decisions. So if I want to have a really healthy lunch and I'm picturing like, oh, I'm going to make a great salad and, and I'm going to cut up some fruit for a sweet treat when I'm done. And then we keep thinking, yeah, I probably should get around to making that salad so I don't have to do it when I'm hungry. It's already ready. Yeah, I'll do that later. I'll do it. You know, I'll. I'll just do it before I eat. There'll be plenty of time. Whatever your your entire internal dialogue looks like. And then you're hungry and you haven't made the salad and you haven't cut up the fruit. And there's Oreos, like my, my default is always Oreos, like, oh my gosh, there's Oreos there. Keep Oreos in the house at least 360 days out of the year because I'm not good with them. But if there's Oreos there, I might just have a few Oreos because they're right there. That's a default mode decision. That's what I'm going to. Because it's simple, easy and satisfying, but not what I planned and not what I wanted to do. So to make decisions that serve us, it requires the use of our executive function skills. And remember, with ADHD brains, our executive function skills are impacted. So that ability to plan, prioritize, manage our time, manage our emotions so that they're supporting us are all impacted by adhd, which also makes those decisions themselves feel overwhelming. And studies show that ADHD brains are more activated during the decision making tasks than neurotypical brains, meaning they're exerting more energy to make those same decisions. It suggests that there's more cognitive energy required for those same decisions that a neurotypical brain might make. Needing less energy. What I really want to underline here is the less decisions you have to make, the less energy you're draining. So let's find ways to create structure because the structure takes away the decisions if the structure can be repeated. So the Goldilocks rule is all about right, sizing your path. We want to support ourselves, to not be as impulsive, not procrastinate, and not get overwhelmed. So if it's too rigid, that kind of one size is it, that's it, you got to do it or not. It leads to that black and white thinking. We want just right. We want it to have just enough structure that it doesn't overwhelm us. But it's also not so open that we have to just figure out how to do it. We want to make just right structure because that feels like freedom. My example for this is, and I apologize, I'm chewing on a cough drop because I had a cough. I always share the Apollo 13 example where the astronauts needed to find a way to filter the carbon dioxide in the air and they could only create a filter with what was already on the spacecraft. So the astronauts on the ground were given the exact same supplies that they had on the spacecraft to make a filter with so that they could replicate it out in space the same is true for our ADHD brains. If we could use anything to create the structure that works for us. We want to really limit what works for us and not have every option available because that distracts us and creates overwhelm. So I want to share some, some strategies to experiment with that might fit that for you. Again, take what works for you, leave the rest behind. It's all about where do you feel interest and energy and some energetic H that might be fun to try. That's what we're looking for. So the first is pre decide your routine decisions. Maybe you eat the same breakfast every morning or the same lunch every day. Maybe you work out at the same time. Maybe you have kind of a rough uniform where you have a bunch of polo shirts and you just mix it up. There are different colors, you know, keeping it simple so you're not having to every day make big decisions on things that maybe don't matter as much to you. So find where you can pre decide routine decisions so that you know when you do the thing or how you do the thing or with what because you've already decided it. Number two is to create a default schedule. So anchor activities to specific days. Like Wednesdays for me are typically library days because I took the kids to the library on Wednesdays when we were little. When they were little. And it just to me still feels like library day. Unless there's an activity I'm going to. If it's just open, I don't have a plan at the library. I'm going on Wednesday because that's the day that works for me. Maybe you have like a Tuesday taco night or a Friday game night. Think about what would help you be consistent with the weekly things or the daily things by creating a default schedule with things that consistent times during the week. Number three is to find your good enough. So good enough means if you expect yourself like me, like if I expect myself to have four social outings every single week, it would never happen. Like the fact that I had four in one week, I can't even think of the last time that happened. That is very, very rare for me. So think about what is good enough for you that can help you hold a boundary around. If you get more invites, it might help you to see. Like I've already got two appointments this week, adding a third. If it feels like it's exciting and you would enjoy that and you have the space of time in your calendar, great. But if you don't, limiting yourself to what good enough is can really help you with managing Those expectations. So it could be, oh, my gosh, I can't this week. But if it comes up next week or, you know, some other time in the future, I would love to. Or if you want to have a minimum of one or two social outings a week, if that's your good enough, what do you do to look for something to fill that time? Or how do you get it? If you go back to number two, like in a default schedule so that it automatically happens, like, I have my knitting on Wednesdays. It's done. I don't have to think about it. I know where it is, I know when it is, I know what time, everything. I just go. It makes it super easy because I don't have to. Where are we going to do this? Do you want to do something? What time? What day works for you? It's just set number. Oh, that was it. I had three. Number four. No, three. Just three little strategies. Remember, decision fatigue is about cognitive load. So if you're overwhelmed, you've had a lot of decisions that you've made, It's a result of that decision fatigue, not laziness. So the goal is to find your just right schedule that Goldilocks level. Because when you're just right with your schedule, your brain is able to start because it isn't overwhelmed. You're literally leveling that playing field so that your brain can activate with the structure you've created instead of being overwhelmed by too open or too filled of a schedule. So that's my. My tip and my topic for this week. And as you know, we finish with a book of the week. I feel like I've been talking for a really long time. I'm really curious how long this episode is. All right, Becca's not here to rein me in. Here is my book for this week. It's here One Moment by Leanne Moradi. Something wrong, Moriaty? Mariah. Mariah. I don't know. Sorry, I'm terrible pronouncing names. Nope, not gonna try it. I don't know why that looks so hard for me, but it is not. I'm just gonna hold it up. If you're listening to this, check out the YouTube channel if you want to see it. So this is about a woman on a plane from Hobart to Sydney, Australia, who suddenly gets up during the flight, so mid flight and starts going down the aisle and predicts the age and manner of death of all of her fellow passengers. She would go down and she would just look at somebody and she would say, I predict age of death, 84 manner of death, stroke and she go to the next person. I predict age of death and it was just without emotion. She was older. People, you know, kind of dismissed her or didn't even know she was talking about. Some of them didn't hear her. So the passengers received these predictions in various ways. Some were stunned, some were confused, some didn't even understand that she was talking to them or what she said. Some were uncomfortable and some were just dismissive like oh my gosh, she's crazy. I don't know what you know, she's now she thinks she's a fortune teller until within a few days of that flight ending they start coming true. I gave this a four and a half out of five. I loved it. I loved the idea of it. I love books that make me think how much would I believe that? How much would I let it influence me. It was a really interesting idea and well written story so I really enjoyed it. I have a quote from the book to finish out this episode and it is that everyone loves a particular version of you and when that person is gone, that version goes with them. Think about that one for a little while. That one made me think. That's it for this episode of ADHD Friendly. If you would like to share how the tip or the strategy, anything from this episode, if it was helpful for you or if you have an additional tip or something to share about what you've done, this is episode 220. No, I'm not going to have me 8228 post in the comments. Until next time. Tally hi.