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Adult ADHD ADD Tips and Support
Adult ADHD Tips – Why Tracking Works
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Adult ADHD ADD Tips and Support Podcast - A Podcast for Neurodivergent Creatives. Why Tracking Works. This podcast is an audio companion to the book "The Drummer and the Great Mountain - A Guidebook to Transforming Adult ADD / ADHD." In this episode,
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- [00:01]
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Hey everyone, just a quick note at the top here. As per all of your requests, we will be doing another ADHD mind mapping workshop. This is a live online workshop. This is our master course in mind mapping. This happens on November 4th and there'll be a second session on November 7th for Q& A and for people that can't make the first session. And this workshop also comes with the free software that we've personally designed to be helpful to us. It's easy to use and there's no limitations. You'll be able to use it during and after after the workshop. So we've taught mind mapping to countless people at this point and it can be a real game changer. And as I've mentioned, I use it for everything. I plan out our podcasts, our workshops, I plan my day, I do my quarterly business planning. There's so many applications for mind mapping and I don't know how I would be functional without it. I call it the number. And the reason why it's so helpful is it works how our brain works. So it can really help reduce the overall overwhelm, really increase your follow through. And it's a key tool for reducing flooding, which is all those details flooding together and you feel overwhelmed. It's also the antidote to having those giant lists that just get bigger and bigger and then you never want to look at them again. Mind mapping is that middle ground of how you get things out of your head and onto a map so you can organize, see them and prioritize. But what's most important is we show you specifically how to apply it to your life and what you're working on. So there'll be lots of demos, ample time for Q and A. And we teach both how to mind map on paper and on the computer and you need to know both. And as with all of our other online workshops, you'll be joined by our community from around the world. It's both fun and you'll learn an exceptional tool that can really boost your productivity. All sessions will be recorded and made available to you. So if you can't make either session or both sessions, you will get the recording and access to to the software. So if you're Interested, go to ADHD mindmapping.com and I'll leave a link in the description.
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Welcome to the Drummer and the Great Mountain, a podcast where we share effective tips and practices for working with adults. Addiction ADHD in a natural, effective way without the use of medications each episode. Join me, your host, Batman Saram, along with the author of The Drummer and the Great Mountain Michael Joseph Ferguson Join Michael and myself in an interactive discussion of sharing our stories as we journey together in transforming what can be the gift of being what we call hunter types. This podcast is intended to be your audio companion to the book written by Michael, who joins me each episode where we both will strive to foster dialogue, give you our personal insights, and share both of our experiences on this similar path that we are all on. Our intention and hope is that along with the book, this podcast gives you an additional perspective as you listen to us delve deeper into each chapter of the book to give you even more tools to go along with what it is that you are reading. Visit us at drummerandthegreatmountain.com to purchase the book and look for more tools, tips and updates as well as giving us feedback on this podcast. Join our growing global community of creative types, entrepreneurs and out of the box thinkers on our shared journey. Welcome to the Drummer and the Great Mountain Podcast.
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Welcome everyone. Thanks for tuning in. I'm your host, Michael Joseph Ferguson. How are you all doing? In today's episode we are going to be discussing why tracking works. Why is that helpful for us? What does it do for us? How does it make life better? How does it clarify things? How does it remind us to do things? So the strategy of tracking can take many forms. So this includes habit tracking, mood tracking, and just taking basic notes on how your day went. So the practice of tracking works on many levels. And in this session we're going to cover all the various components of tracking to really dial in, like why is this important? How can this be helpful? So we're going to talk about how to track, what's most helpful to track. And the big thing, and this is the reason why I did this episode in the first place, is we're also going to provide you with what I think is the ultimate PDF tracking sheet. So I spent a lot of time looking through other tracking sheets. We've had one that we use on our workshops for many years now, but I wanted to update it a little bit to give it a little more flexibility and you can get this totally free. You can go to drummerinthegreatmountain.com Episode 111 that's episode 111. I will also leave a link in the description so you can download it, print it out and start using it. And at the end of the session today I'm gonna walk you through specifically how to use that tracking sheet. Okay, just a couple quick community announcements. First off, our hearts go out to all of you who have been affected by the recent hurricanes and extreme weather events that have been happening in the United States, specifically, I have a very strong connection with Asheville, North Carolina. I have a lot of friends there. I used to live there for a while and I know there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast from Asheville as well as who have joined us in previous workshops. So I just want to say I hope you guys are safe and doing okay. I've been interacting with a lot of people on the ground and I want to recommend two or three charities that you can donate to that would specifically help the artist community there, as well as getting good, healthy food to people who have been displaced. I will leave a link in the description for those. And also a little bit of sad news. My good friend Jeff Fishman, who has joined us in many of our workshops, has passed away. He passed away from lymphoma a little while ago. And again, really great human being. Someone who I met when I first moved to Kauai in the late 90s, I worked on a number of projects with him. Definitely one of our crew and gonna miss him. This episode is dedicated to him. Okay, so let's talk about tracking. So let's start with what problem or problems is this trying to solve? So to begin with, you can make all sorts of changes in your life. You can change your exercise routine, your diet, maybe your supplements you're taking, maybe meditation. All these things are great. But if you don't measure what's working, it can be very blurry and unclear about what is working, what isn't working, is it working at all? And as we'll discuss a little later, there's three key metrics I always track with my clients that tell me and them whether or not a strategy is working or not. So other problems that we might be aiming to solve are just remembering what you agreed to do. If you've created a routine, if you don't have a method of reviewing that routine, it's easy to forget to do it. But also you're losing this extra juice that could be extracted from you accomplishing this particular task. So that's a problem. And another problem could be losing motivation. So you may do something for a couple days and then you're like, oh, I didn't do it for one day. So then you just give up. Those are really common issues that we all struggle with. And all of that relates to better follow through and consistency, wanting to have more follow through and consistency. So one possible solution to those Challenges could be having a method of tracking, having a method of doing tracking on a daily basis in a simple way that you can see, here's what I'm doing, here's what I've accomplished, here's what's working, and here's what's not working. And that's what we're going to talk about. Okay. I want to give you a little bit of backstory on my personal experience with tracking because I think it would be helpful. So tracking was never something that someone pulled me aside and said, hey, you really should try to do this or you have adhd, so tracking is helpful to you. It was none of that. This is way before people were even discussing these kinds of things. So this is probably back in the late 90s. I was starting to do this and it started with just starting a daily routine of doing yoga, meditation, and maybe some journaling. I think that was. Those were the three things that I was doing that is not easy to build that kind of habit. So I had a sheet of paper and all I did was. I don't remember what I wrote at the top, but I basically just wrote the date. And I just had this sheet of paper where every day I did it, I would just write the date over time. I filled up one sheet and then I flipped it over and it was the other sheet. And over time, I had built up multiple sheets of paper with just dates on it. And that became a very sacred object to me. If you asked me what were my most prized possessions during that time, that sheet was definitely one of them because that sheet represented a lot of effort and focus and intention. And if I was losing motivation, I would look at that cheat and go, okay, look, I've already. Look how many times I've done this. I've done this this many times. I can do it again. And that's the power of a very simple tracking practice. It has, it meets a lot of needs, it gives you feedback, it gives you some motivation, it gives you a sense of celebration where you're like, check, I did it. And just that little celebration, that little dopamine hit of checking the box or scratching it out or writing the date, that can keep you going. It's a little sense of well being that comes from doing. It's a very satisfying experience. Okay, so zooming ahead, I started to. When I was working on the book the Drummer and the Great Mountain, I went deeper into this tracking system and I wanted to really track what's working and what wasn't working for my daily routine. And and so the three metrics that I find are most helpful as the guiding light as to whether something is working or not working are the three metrics are energy, mood, and focus. And when you're tracking those, you give them a number between one and five. So a mood of one is you're feeling absolutely miserable, and a mood of five is you feel great. And energy. If your energy levels are really low, then you give yourself a one. And if your energy levels are really high, you give yourself a five. And same with focus. If you're able to focus really well, then your focus level is a 5. If you were totally blurry and unfocused and very scattered, you'd give yourself a one. So one in five are the extremes, but in general, most of us will range between 2 and 4 on those three metrics of energy, mood, and focus. So a good day is typically three or four. Right. Three is right in the middle. Four is a little above average. That's probably like, if you're hitting fours, that's good to me, that's great because five is, like, really good, and we get those occasionally. But it's the range. Three to four is going to be probably your average. But when you're hitting days where you have ones and twos, it's really helpful when you're tracking because then you can see, well, what did I do yesterday? What happened today? That's going to give you some information. And most of the time, you know, barring extraneous external circumstances outside your control, you're going to get a sense of like, oh, I did or didn't do X. And when I look back at my tracking sheet, when I was doing these things, life was going better. I need to pay attention to that. And that really summarizes why tracking is helpful, especially when you give it this kind of objective, which we're tracking. Three metrics. At the end of the day, after we do all the things that we're going to do. Mood, energy, and focus. That's going to. Those three metrics are going to tell us whether or not these activities are helping or not helping. Okay, so what specifically can you track and what would I recommend that you track? So, first one is exercise. And that could be many different things. But as you hear me talk about on the podcast, ad nauseam, cardio exercise. Ten to 15 minutes a day, maybe five days a week. Okay, that's something you can track. You can say, I did it or I didn't do it for a given day. And then you can look back and say, did that affect my mood, energy and focus? And that's a good one because there's a pretty high likelihood that it will. But it's really helpful when you actually do it and you look back and go, wow, the day went better. I was more emotionally regulated, I had more focus. Those are things. But again, track it. See, prove to yourself whether or not that's working or not. When you've done an activity and then you've tracked it back and said, oh, you draw a line between the activity and how you felt, that's powerful and that's reinforcing that behavior. Because then you're telling yourself, oh, this works or no, that didn't work. You can also track your sleep, how many hours you slept that night. You can track your nutrition. Did you get enough protein per meal? So one thing that I track is 20 to 30 grams of protein per meal. At this point it's automated. So I know I just do it every day. But if you're starting out and you're starting to change your diet, it's really helpful to say, oh, I added more protein. Did that affect my mood, energy and focus? You can also track supplements. If you're adding supplements into your diet, like L tyrosine or maybe you're adding more zinc, some of the ones that are recommended for adhd, you can also implement those and then see do those have an impact. You can also track activities. Did you do your planning in the morning? I talk a lot about planning and time management. That may be something you want to track. Did you do your 10 minute planning in the morning? Maybe you did a mind map in the morning and did some planning. You can check that box and say, I did that. So again, you can implement just about anything. You can have the pomodoro technique on there and say, did I use it today or did I not use it Again, it's about you saying, I did these things and they potentially had this impact on my mood, energy and focus. So when do you track? When do you do this? My recommendation is you do this after dinner. You fill the sheet out after dinner so you'll have a natural dopamine increase after dinner. Usually you'll have some food and you'll have probably about an hour or less of like real clarity before you get that dopamine drop as you go into the evening. So what I recommend is have dinner and ideally go for a short walk. Get outside even, especially if it's cold or it's not comfortable outside, especially if it's cold, so that it kind of wakes you up a little bit and you come back and you do your tracking sheet and you don't have to do this forever. What I recommend is try to do seven days in a row, especially if you're implementing new strategies. That's going to be very helpful to you. But the sheet that I'm going to give you is a monthly tracking sheet. So if you want to keep doing this on a regular basis, you'll have the tool to do that. Okay, so I'm going to walk you through how to use the tracking sheet that we've put together. So if you go to drummerinthegreatmountain.com Episode 111 or follow the link in the description, put your email in, you'll get the tracking sheet emailed to you, Bring it up, and I'll walk you through how to use it. So hit pause, do that, come back, and we'll go through it. Okay, so here's the benefits of this tracking sheet. I spent a lot of time looking at both what we were using and also what other tracking sheets are out there. And I try to just give you as much as possible in one sheet that you can just print out and print 12 of them out. You got a whole year of tracking. So first order of business is at the top. Whatever month you're in right now, circle that month that gives you, that tells you the month. And then you'll see that you've got a line of numbers that is just the days in the month from 1 to 31. Some months will only go to 29, but so just ignore the last two or one depending on what month it is. And then you'll see that, that list of items, that column of items on the left. Okay, so that's where you fill out the things that you want to track. And I gave you the first three that I mentioned. And those are hard. They're. They're worked into the system. Mood, energy and focus. Underneath that are the items you want to track. Okay, so for example, on my list, I have cardio, I have yoga, I have meditation, I have weight training, I have sleep, I have protein, I have supplements like L, tyrosine, L carnitine, taurine, zinc, and a few other things. So, and you can also add activities, as I mentioned, so you might want to add planning on that list. So you can start with a few items and you can always add more later. For the bare minimum, I would recommend maybe cardio, I would recommend protein, I would recommend sleep. Start there. Those are good ones to track to see Whether or not as you do those, are those having an impact on mood, energy and focus. Okay, so here's how you use it. So you just look at the column and you say, okay, it's the 1st of January, and that's that column. And you're basically going to either put in a number. So for mood, energy and focus, you're gonna just be writing a number in that, the bigger box. You'll also notice that there's a quadrant in there. And I'm gonna explain how that works in a second. If you're just saying, did I do something or did I not do something? You just basically, if you did cardio, you fill in the box. You just fill it in, or you put a checkbox, whatever you like. I find it easier when you look back to just color in the box. That tends to be more easy to look back at. So that's what I would recommend. So if you did cardio, you just color in the full box. Now, you could also track times of day. So, for example, with protein, you want, you're going to have protein multiple times a day. So the quadrant is there to help you with that, to track that. So the way I like to do it is upper left quadrant is the morning, upper right quadrant is midday or lunch. Lower left quadrant is afternoon, and lower right quadrant is evening. Okay. And so that gives you more a precise way of tracking a certain thing like protein. So if you had protein for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, maybe you scratch in the upper left, upper right, and lower left. Does that make sense? And then you can track any other thing you'd like. If you're tracking things that happen multiple times a day, you scratch in that smaller quadrant and that gives you another thing to track. So it's super flexible. As you start to look at this and think about things you want to track, it can track just about anything. And so what I recommend is it can either be a number. So, like sleep is a number. It could be yes or no. And that's either scribbling in the whole box or not. Or it could be time of day, and that would be those quadrants and anything else you would like to use it for. But what's nice is this one sheet can do all these things. And it makes it really easy for you to say, here's what I did today. And then as you look back, you've got a really nice visual of like, oh, okay, yeah, I see that I did cardio three days in a row. It's very clear because I scribbled it in and then I skipped a day and oh, that day didn't go as well. My mood was lower as an example. And that's basically it. It's very simple. All you're doing is saying each column is one day and you're tracking on that day. What did you do or what didn't you do? That's basically it. And at the end of the day you say, okay, what was my mood from 1 to 5, what was my energy level from 1 to 5 and what was my focus from 1 to 5? Or if you want to use 1 to 10, use 1 to 10. I did not hardwire that into it. So you can put in, you can use whatever numbers you want. That's the general premise is here's what I did and here was my mood, energy and focus. So I can see what helped and what didn't help. Now a quick note on printing. It's important to make sure that when you print this out, you use the high quality printer setting. When you bring up the pop up box, whether you're using a Mac or PC. If you don't, it may not print that thin grid inside of the bigger boxes. Sometimes it just won't catch that grayscale and it'll just, you won't see it. So make sure you use high quality printing when you print it out. And print out a couple is what I would recommend. Instead of printing out 12, maybe you consider printing two or three just to get started and that's it. So I hope that's helpful to you. Please reach out, let me know if you're using it. Would love to hear from you. And as a reminder, we will be doing our next ADHD Mind Mapping Live Online workshop that'll be happening on November 4th and the follow up session will be on November 7th. So if you're interested, go to adhdmindmapping.com and until next time, be well.
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Thanks for joining us. If you'd like to learn more about the book the Drummer and the Great Mountain, visit Drummer and the Great Mountain. To join us on social media, click the links at the top of the homepage. Help us spread the word. We're a small press and reviews really help. If you've been enjoying the podcast or the book, consider writing a review on itunes, Amazon, Goodreads or your podcast app. If you're new to the podcast and want to quickly get up to speed on the concepts we discuss, check out our free 5 day mini course, visit drummandthegreatmountain.com minicourse if there's a topic you'd like us to cover on future episodes. We'd love to hear from you. Please send us an email@infodrummaandthegreatmountain.com.
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SA SAM.