Accountability, Community, and Actually Getting Stuff Done with Russ Jones

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: Hacking Your ADHD
Episode: Accountability, Community, and Actually Getting Stuff Done with Russ Jones
Host: William Curb
Guest: Russ Jones (ADHD Big Brother)
Date: March 3, 2025

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the challenge of translating ADHD knowledge into real-world change and highlights the transformative power of community-based accountability. William Curb and guest Russ Jones, host of ADHD Big Brother and founder of a coaching community, candidly explore how ADHDers often amass tips without implementing them, why community support is more effective than relying on family for accountability, and the creative strategies for making progress—especially with mundane or overwhelming tasks. The conversation is relatable, humorous, and packed with practical insights for anyone looking to actually “get stuff done” with ADHD.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Knowledge–Action Gap in ADHD (01:43–05:11)

• Many adults with ADHD “collect” advice and knowledge but struggle with implementation.
  • Russ Jones: “We’re really good at getting inspired...and then we leave. And we don’t do anything with that information. We just forget because we have no working memory, right?”
  • The frustration lies in being able to explain why something’s hard but still not being able to make change happen.
  • Community support, especially daily accountability, can bridge that gap.

2. Community Coaching: What It Is and Why It Works

• True accountability comes from daily, low-pressure check-ins—modeled after support groups (e.g., for quitting nicotine).
  • Russ Jones: “It’s showing up every day and posting, hey, I’m going to do this no matter what, come hell or high water.” (03:16)
• ADHDers benefit from being in spaces that are “shame-free” and “judgment-free”, allowing honest discussions about struggles like doing laundry.
• Community = multiple people sharing lived experience and practical solutions, often more relatable than professional coaches or close friends/family.

3. Why Weak-Tie Accountability Is Stronger (05:11–06:23)

• Accountability from acquaintances (community members) is often more effective than from close family or friends.
  • William Curb: "We do feel a stronger sense of accountability to people that we have, like, weak ties to, which is kind of counterintuitive.” (05:49)
• Community fosters an image of “who you want these people to see me as,” increasing motivation to stick to commitments.

4. Embracing Failure and Iterating (06:23–08:08)

• In community settings, not meeting goals leads to problem-solving, not shame.
  • “The conversation continues...what got in the way? What can you do next time?” (06:27, Russ Jones)
• Gamifying accountability (“day streaks,” small goals) makes persistence less punishing and encourages experimentation.

5. Community Engagement: Getting Out What You Put In (08:08–09:38)

• To benefit from community, members must participate and not just passively observe.
• External accountability must be paired with internal willingness: “I still have to do the work.” (08:47, William Curb)
• Building systems (not perpetual reliance on paid coaching) is critical for long-term change.

6. Creativity, Body Doubling, and Collective Problem-Solving (09:38–12:48)

• Communities of ADHDers are treasure troves of creative hacks and new tools.
  • Russ Jones: “We are creative. We are insanely creative people. And if we can get into a room full of creatives, somebody’s going to have a shiny fucking object for us on how to do stuff.” (10:29)
• Practices like body doubling (working alongside someone virtually/in-person) are “frustratingly effective.” (11:32, William Curb)
• Tools don’t guarantee success but make success “more likely.”

7. Integrity and Accountability Strategies (12:48–14:59)

• Publicly committing to goals increases follow-through.
  • William Curb: “If I’m saying that to someone else...I gotta do it.” (12:57)
• ADHDers develop “creative loopholes” for minimal compliance, so it helps to specify goals clearly (“10 minutes ass on the cushion” vs. vague “meditate”). (13:12, Russ Jones)
• Overcoming the belief that “I should be able to do this on my own” is crucial, especially for late-diagnosed adults.

8. The Simple-But-Not-Easy Paradox (14:59–18:18)

• Struggling with basic tasks is a universal ADHD experience—“We’re mistaking simple for easy.”
  • William Curb: “If I just did this every day it would never be a problem. But I’m also never going to do that without setting up systems to make this happen.” (17:13)
• Using tools like timers transforms loathed chores into doable tasks; “I’ll preach timers to the day I die for ADHD.” (15:50, Russ Jones)
• Accepting and normalizing one’s approach reduces self-judgment.

9. Navigating Comparison & The ‘Shoulds’ (18:51–20:33)

• Comparing internal struggles with other people’s appearances is misleading—others also struggle unseen.
• Normalize using hacks and systems without shame: “I don’t have to tell the normies of the world how I do stuff.” (18:18, Russ Jones)

10. Clever Task Starter Strategies: Pretending to Work (20:59–23:29)

• “Pretending” to work (starting with the smallest action, even if insincere) often triggers real productivity.
  • William Curb: “...I love the strategy of pretending to do work because so often it leads me to actually doing work...” (21:00)
• This incremental/habit-stacking approach keeps resistance low.

11. Funification and Gamification (25:10–27:59)

• Making tasks fun or novel (e.g., using dice/card games, “funification”) leverages the ADHD need for interest.
  • Russ Jones: “It’s a way for me to enjoy the unknown. The dopamine burst of I wonder what the shitty thing I’m going to have to do is. Roll the dice, you flip over the card and it’s like dishes...” (26:32)
• Mundane tasks become manageable through randomization and small time commitments.

12. Novelty, Interest, and “Leaning Into” ADHD Wiring (28:10–31:21)

• Accept that importance/urgency isn’t always activating; interest and novelty are.
  • “We have interest-wired brains...implementing fun and interest and uniqueness into the mundane, that’s our way.” (28:23, Russ Jones)
• Community helps question unhealthy conventions (“Why do I have to fold clothes this way?”) and fosters experimentation.

13. A New Perspective on Goals for ADHDers (31:21–32:57)

• Conventional goal-setting—top-down, big mountain—intimidates most ADHDers.
  • Russ Jones: “Movies are made of, right? Where you’re like, oh, it’s at the top of the mountain. ...That’s not how ADHD works.” (31:30)
• Instead, imagine starting at the top and nudging yourself downward with small actions toward the goal, accumulating momentum.

---

Memorable Quotes

• Russ Jones [03:16]: “It’s showing up every day and posting, hey, I’m going to do this no matter what, come hell or high water.”
• William Curb [05:49]: “We do feel a stronger sense of accountability to people that we have, like, weak ties to, which is kind of counterintuitive.”
• Russ Jones [10:29]: “If we can get into a room full of creatives, somebody’s going to have a shiny fucking object for us on how to do stuff.”
• William Curb [11:32]: “I’ll do a body doubling session and I’ll be like, what am I even doing? There’s just someone over here and I’m just working. Why is this effective? It’s frustratingly effective that it works.”
• Russ Jones [15:50]: “I’ll preach timers to the day I die for ADHD.”
• Russ Jones [18:18]: “I don’t have to tell the normies of the world how I do stuff.”
• William Curb [21:00]: “I love the strategy of pretending to do work because so often it leads me to actually doing work...”
• Russ Jones [26:32]: “It’s a way for me to enjoy the unknown. ...The dopamine burst of I wonder what the shitty thing I’m going to have to do is. Roll the dice, you flip over the card and it’s like—dishes.”
• Russ Jones [28:23]: “ADHD 101, we have interest wired brains. ...Implementing fun and interest and uniqueness into the mundane—that’s our way.”

---

Important Timestamps

• 01:43 – Community Coaching overview
• 03:16 – The power of daily accountability in community settings
• 05:49 – Why accountability from weak ties (community) works
• 10:29 – Creativity and peer solutions
• 11:32 – “Frustratingly effective” body doubling
• 15:50 – Timers and embracing unique strategies for chores
• 21:00 – “Pretending to do work” as a task starter
• 26:32 – Gamifying chores; the “funification” approach
• 28:23 – ADHD is wired for interest, novelty, and fun
• 31:30 – Flipping the mountain metaphor: goals for ADHDers

---

Takeaways and Top Tips

1. Bridging the Knowing–Doing Gap: Collecting information is common among ADHDers; implementation requires daily, supportive accountability.
2. Community > Solo or Close-Family Accountability: Progress comes more readily from low-pressure, judgment-free spaces with “weak tie” accountability.
3. Gamification and Small Steps: Break big, boring, or “should” tasks into tiny, interesting, or novel pieces for much easier starts and momentum.
4. Participate to Benefit: The more you put into a community, the more value and accountability you’ll get out.

---

For listeners seeking support, inspiration, or tactical hacks to actually get things done with ADHD, this episode offers practical, real-world wisdom and empowers you to leverage community and creativity for lasting change.

Transcript

[William Curb]

Foreign welcome to Hacking youg adhd. I'm your host William Curb and I have ADHD on this podcast. I dig into the tools, tactics and best practices to help you work with your ADHD brain. Hey team. Joining me today is Russ Jones, the host of the ADHD Big Brother podcast and founder of an ADHD coaching community of the same name that helps adults get out of their heads and into action. Russ is an actor and comedian, a background that shines through into his work, giving his content relatability and charisma. Russ and I really got into our talk, so I've ended up splitting this episode into two parts. In the first half of this conversation, we get into why so many of us struggle to turn knowledge into real life change and how a strong ADHD community can provide the structure and support we need to actually follow through. Russ also shares insights from his own journey, like how quitting a 20 year nicotine addiction helped him discover the power.

[Will]

Of daily community support.

[William Curb]

If you've ever struggled with consistency, this is an episode you won't want to miss. If you'd like to follow along on the show notes page page, you can find [e-mail] 213. All right, keep on listening to find out how community coaching can provide the structure and support to help you actually follow through.

[Will]

All right, well, I'm here with Russ Jones and we're going to be talking about ADHD Big Brother, his community and podcast. And one of the places that I want to start with is there's individual coaching and group coaching. But you're really into this idea of community coaching which plays off of all of this. And so can you tell me a little bit more about what community coaching is?

[Russ Jones]

It is born out of the idea that so many of us, and I can speak to myself a hundred percent and then from the experience that I have in coaching is that we're very good at getting inspired and going, oh, that's a great idea. Like, oh. Or we go to therapy and we're like, oh yeah, I got an epiphany or a breakthrough. And then we leave. And we don't do anything with that information. We just forget because we have no working memory, right? It's not for lack of intention. We, we left there going, this is gonna be, this is gonna change everything. And then we realized we are hours away from our next appointment a week later and we're like, oh shit, I have to cram, I have to do something, so I have something to show for it. And so the accountability and the doing of the work is missing. Sometimes it's missing in group coaching as well. This is modeled after a quit group that I was in. I had a 20 year nicotine addiction. And one of the most important things to me was community. The accountability that I got through a community. I'll say that it's showing up every day and posting, hey, I'm going to do this no matter what, come hell or high water. In my case, it was, I'm not going to use nicotine. And it feels awful. There's horrificness to it. But I show up the next day and I show up the next day and there was daily accountability. And I'm like, that is the thing. It's so missing with adhd. We're so good at knowing why we can't do the thing. This is kind of a bird walk. But we're really good. We learned that we have ADHD and then we go do a deep dive. We watch all the videos, we listen to all your podcast episodes, Jessica McCabe's YouTube channel. We read all the books, Ned Hallowell, Russell Barkley, everybody. Or we buy the book and we like look at the glossary or whatever. We look in the cable, condense, and we go, yes. Oh, this explains everything. And we don't do any of the work. We literally just go, now I can explain to the world why I'm not doing the work. And there's a power in that. It's great. And we can connect with people, right? And we can go, oh, we can identify with people. My heart is in like, but I want to fucking do my laundry.

[Will]

I can tell you why I'm not.

[Russ Jones]

Doing my laundry, but I want to still be able to do my laundry. I have found that there is a massive strength in the accountability that you get from a community. I'd say a like mind community of ADHDers, right? We want shame free. We want judgment free. We want people that go, oh, it's. I'm not a piece of shit loser. I have ADHD and these are my struggles. And people get each other, right? And then if you add accountability on top of that, the doing of the work is the thing that I believe is missing. I could go to a coach and I could get one great idea, right? Maybe I can get daily accountability, right? I typically do that with the people that I coach. Text me that you did the thing that you said you're going to do. Let's move the needle forward. Same with group coaching, with the community. You get like literally many people who have all their lived experiences, and they're all sharing what's working for them. And you go in there with a problem and like, I can't do my laundry. And so then you get 10 people going, oh, me neither. But here's what I've. Here's what I'm finding that works. Here's what I'm doing, here's what I'm doing. And you get ideas.

[Will]

Well, and there's a lot of things that I'm hearing that echo some other things I've been reading and talking with people about. One of them that really resonates with me here is what gives us the best accountability. Because often we think of like, oh, we want someone very close to us to give us accountability. But research has shown that's not really that effective because those people are more likely to be like, have an understanding of why you didn't do the thing. And so we know, oh, if I don't do this, well, my wife's going to understand why I didn't because I've had a rough week or whatever. And this isn't saying that we need to push through having a rough week or anything, but we do feel a stronger sense of accountability to people that we have, like, weak ties to, which is kind of counterintuitive. But having this community where we're like, oh, I know all these people. I mean, I don't know them know them. I'm not living with them. I'm not. If you didn't do a particular thing, I wouldn't be like, well, this is. I'm really upset about this. I'd be like, oh, maybe you should try this other way. And that kind of community gives such a better sense of accountability because you're like, oh, yeah, this is painted by the brush of who I want these people to see me as, as opposed to, you know, your family who, like, sees a very different brush of who you. You are.

[Russ Jones]

I was just talking to somebody from the community earlier today about the idea of being in a space where it's okay to not do the thing that you said you're going to do, but you don't walk away from it. Where I didn't do my laundry. Everybody gets it, everybody supports it, but the conversation continues. And like, what got in the way? Coaching questions, right? What got in the way? What can you do next time? Can you set a timer? Can you do this? It's a place to be. Okay, with that uncomfortability of quote unquote failure and not walking away from it. And that's so helpful when you're around people that are having that same struggle. Like I remember, like we do a day streak in our community, right? Where we gamify the hell out of everything. I mean, I have like, if you look, I think I've showed you these before. Like I have games to do in life. And we were talking offline about like trying to get back into exercise and like how making it smaller and smaller and smaller. I spent probably a week in my community saying, day one, I'm gonna, I'm gonna exercise for 30 minutes and then I would show up the next day. Day one again, oops, I'm gonna work out. But you also add in like I woke up late or I didn't feel like I had enough energy in my body. Or this allows you to look at what's going on and knowing that you have adhd, but like you're constantly trying to move the needle forward as opposed to day one, I'm gonna exercise. And then you don't exercise. Then you're like, I guess I suck. I'm going to go away for a month and a half and be depressed and beat myself up until I have a spark of motivation to be like, let's do this again. I'm like, let's get that going faster.

[Will]

One of the things I'm thinking about here too is just that aspect of how you, what you get out of community is also what you put into it. Like, you can't just be like, I mean this is true for any form of coaching, but I think it's especially true with community aspects of things because like, you're probably not going to have like, you know, if you're doing one on one coaching and then you don't show up, you're going to have the guy going like, hey, you're still getting charged for your session.

[Russ Jones]

You're paying a lot of money to do nothing.

[Will]

Yeah, but with community coaching it's kind of like, oh yeah, I have to do the work too. And I think that's like, there's this gap between knowing and doing that we often suffer from and sometimes we really want to feel like that. That's kind of like the allure of a lot of coaching stuff is like, oh, they're going to make me do this because I'm going to give the money and it's going to happen. Oh yeah, I get that approach. But I'm also know that I need that internal shift myself to say, like, I still have to do the work. Like, I'm not going to Be paying this coach forever. I need to be able to do this afterwards. And building those systems and I think community is such an important part of that system. We have these built in ideas of like, we should be doing these things alone. And that is wrong. And so we go, okay, we're going to pay someone to help us. And that does work. And I think a lot of people get a lot out of coaching, but this is like the step beyond that. What do you want to do once you have the skills, once you have the knowledge.

[Russ Jones]

Yeah, I see this a lot, is that as soon as we find a thing inside of us that makes it magical, then we can do our thing. And where I'm coming from is that hyper focus feeling that we want that we know what it feels like. I know what it feels like when I fire on all cylinders and I'm just kicking ass. I want that feeling now. And I sometimes come to coaching thinking like, I want you as the coach to help me to get to that feeling for doing my taxes. I'm like, that's not a real thing. We have to, in my view, we have to learn how to do shit that the normies can do because it's important and we need to learn how that we can do important things our own unique way. And man, we are creative. We are insanely creative people. And if we can get into a room full of creatives, somebody's going to have a shiny fucking object for us on how to do stuff. Someone's going to have the planner that is like, wait, what? You do things that way? I'm going to try that for a week and a half. And now we have a week and a half of productivity. It's not working anymore. Who's got another shiny like playing to the. What works for us, right?

[Will]

Yeah.

[Russ Jones]

And in a community of phenomenally creative people with insanely cool ideas, for me it's the funnest place to be.

[Will]

I see this too. Like, accountability comes from the body doubling.

[Russ Jones]

Right.

[Will]

And planning sessions. And a lot of these things feel like things that we should be able just should be able to do on our own and theoretically can and have. Like I've written out my schedule for the day and I'm like, yeah, I can do that. But it is the consistency aspect that is often what eludes me the most. Where I'm like, yeah, oh yeah. It is not just doing the day the one time. One of the things that's most frustrating for me about accountability and stuff, I'll do a body doubling session and I'll be like, what am I even doing? There's just someone over here and I'm just working. Why is this effective? It's frustratingly effective that it works because I'm like, right, what is happening? Why is my brain like this? I should just be able to do this. But I'm great. Well, I have to recenter myself in reality. Like, well, it's easy to not do it and if there's someone there it's less easy. So that's a great tool to use.

[Russ Jones]

Absolutely. 100 we do that in our community. We do that. We have the 247 body doubling thing. We'll do workshops and stuff. I work with people in terms of like, I'll show up to the body doubling room and I'll just be like in the public chat saying, hey, I'm gonna be in the body double room. Right? I'll go in there and I'll just have it on and there'll be nobody in there but me looking at me. But there's something about. I've caged myself in an activity. I've said for 45 minutes I'm this and somebody might pop on. So I've already, I've. I've created this boundary around myself and I'm a subscriber to like. It doesn't guarantee that I'm going to be focused on the work. It doesn't guarantee anything. But it does make it more likely. And I think we're in service of more likely a lot of times.

[Will]

Well, I know for me one of my like core values is integrity. And I say I'm going to do something, it tends to make it a lot better. If I'm saying that to someone else. If I'm saying it to myself, well, that I mean lying. I lie to myself all the time so that I don't have self integrity at all. Like that's like saving. But saying to someone else, I was like, oh God, yeah, fold Russ this. Now I gotta do it.

[Russ Jones]

I bet you anything you'll look for a million loopholes to find your way out of it. Our brain will like be like, oh, what can you say? What can you say? What? What could I do? Like I'll do that in. We call it the school spaghetti room, right? This is our daily accountability club of. Of like post what you say you're going to do. I'll say meditate, right? And this is back in the day where we'd be like, oh, I'm going to meditate. That's the thing that I'm going to do today. Or I'm back to day one on my streak and it'll be at night and I'll be like, oh, I forgot to say I forgot to meditate. Oh, okay, maybe I'll just close my eyes and breathe for five seconds. I meditated. So then you start to get more complex with your integrity of what you announced. You say, I'm gonna meditate for 10 minutes ass on the cushion. Or I'm at day one. It's like, okay, well, now I have to. I have to raise the bar on myself on what I say I'm gonna do.

[Will]

Yeah, absolutely. Because yeah, it is. Yeah. My phone. I technically did what I said I was gonna do. So.

[Russ Jones]

We are hardcore. That's what made we're so damn creative.

[Will]

Yeah. Our ability to justify just about anything justification is so easy when you're just like, oh, yeah, well, this is true. And I was very vague in what I said.

[Russ Jones]

To your point too. Of earlier of my heart goes out to. I'm in almost 50. A lot of the people in our community are in their 40s. Like, I think that's the demographic for my podcast is typically later in life diagnosed people. But there's this feeling that we're supposed to be able to do stuff on our own. There's this feeling of like, these are remedial tasks. I should be able to do them to try to normalize the fact that these things are. It's okay to not be able to do them, but that doesn't mean we can't do them. We can do them. We perhaps just need unique ways to go about it that are yet to be discovered for ourselves or something.

[Will]

You know, especially with this demographic of late diagnosed, you know, later in life. ADHD is that again, it's this should. We should be able to do these things because that's the messaging we've got through all our life. We've got lots of negative things about it. And it's also weird with the things that we can do. Like I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm putting out this podcast every week and it's something I could do. And also my car is full of trash that I'm like, it's like, oh, this smells. How did I not take care of this earlier? Like, I'm only taking care of this because I had a banana a week ago and now it's awful in my car and I have to make sure that my children don't complain when we drive to school.

[Russ Jones]

Yes.

[Will]

It's like, how am I doing? The hardest thing but this not easy but simple task just eludes me so badly.

[Russ Jones]

Oh, for sure, man, for sure. To this day, I think doing the dishes is one of the levels of hell on earth. I really, it's so internally dramatic torture to me. And I think learning how to be cool with myself about the fact like, no, no, yeah, this is hell. And I accept that it is hell. The only way that I can do the dishes more often than not is to use these simplistic ADHD tools. Like, I'll preach timers to the day. I die for ADHD. I'll set a timer for 10 minutes and I'll half ass clean the dishes because that's the shortest amount of time that I can see myself working on this God awful task. And then my reward is that I quit. Like, if 10 minutes is up, fuck it, I'm done. I quit. Yay for me. I did what I said I was going to do for 10 minutes. More often than not, the dishes are all the way done, but it's right.

[Will]

That's like the other frustrating thing with being like, in my head, the dishes take forever. In reality they take a couple minutes.

[Russ Jones]

Yeah.

[Will]

As long as I'm not like, haven't left it for a week and it's really built up a normal amount of dishes does not take that much time to do. And I'm like, oh, this is so frustrating because if I just did this every day, it would never be a problem. But I'm also never going to do that without setting up systems to make this happen. And I think it's the deception of something that feels easy. Like it's simple. But we, we, yeah, we're mistaking simple for easy. And so we're like, a lot of the times, like the easy things that I'm not doing is because I haven't spent the time like, well, they're easy. So I don't need to use the tools because I can just do it. But it's the just. And it's like, no, I can't just do those things. Like, I don't just write my podcast. There's a bunch of stuff that goes into making sure it happens. And yeah, because of all those tools, it makes it not hard. But if I didn't use the tools, then it would be incredibly difficult. And then I'm like taking the other very like, oh, well, it's simple. I should just do it and then not doing it because I'm not using the tools that I should be using even though I know about them.

[Russ Jones]

Yeah, I don't know if you feel this way of like, oh, once I've done the tools enough, all of a sudden, dishes will somehow become mentally easier. I think being cool with myself about the fact that like, this is the way it is, is the way it will always be. I will always be time blind to this stuff.

[Will]

Big deal.

[Russ Jones]

I use a timer. That's how I do dishes. I think it's this thing of like, if I were to tell somebody how I do the dishes, I would feel really stupid. But I'm like, I don't have to tell anybody how I do the dishes. I don't have to tell a room full of grownups. This is how I do these things that are super easy that you guys all do every day. I set a timer and find the easy point of entry and then I'm super specific about my task and like all these things, these dots that I connect in my brain to then go, I don't need to tell the normies of the world how I do stuff.

[Will]

One, we also have this comparison we're making to someone else's outsides, to our insides where we're like, this is what? And like, good point. I was at the bus stop talking with other parents the other day and they're like, man, I feel terrible about not having gotten like, I've gotten my outside Christmas decorations down, but not my inside ones. And I'm like, oh, we got those put away like two weeks ago. So that's a win for team ADHD here.

[Russ Jones]

You took care of your insides. Good deal.

[Will]

Yeah. So often it's like, yeah, we're making these comparisons like, oh man, this is so easy for so and so. And like, we have no idea because I'm again, we're not normally being, going out and being like, look at this thing. That should be easy. That's hard for me because that's just not how we communicate. And I don't think people would be like, I don't know, have I talked to my bust up parents about how difficult it is to be washing dishes? They'd probably be like, yeah, dishes suck.

[Russ Jones]

Yeah, probably everybody. Yeah, it's, I think it's the, the growing up in a world of like, yeah, they suck, just do them. Just freaking do the dishes. You're like, yeah, I wish, I, I, I really wish. That would be great.

[Will]

Yeah. And it's comparing myself to my parents and being like, yeah, but I'm always comparing them to like when they were at a much more mature state than I am now, like comparing my 20 year old self to when my parents were in their 50s. I'm like, that doesn't make any sense. Well, yeah, of course they're better at these things at this point. Even if we both have adhd, we both have developmental delays, but mine's way, way further down. I'm more like 16 right now, and they're more like 40, which is being months away from 40. I'm like, yeah, there's. I still feel behind, but, yeah, I still feel 16.

[Russ Jones]

God damn it.

[Will]

There's days where I'm just like, man, I don't want to do anything.

[Russ Jones]

Yeah.

[Will]

But, yeah, being. Be more mature, I'm like, well, I don't feel like doing anything, but I guess I'm gonna do stuff anyways, because I know I'm gonna be. I can look ahead to how I'll feel in the evening and be like, wow, yeah. If I don't do any of these things, I'm gonna be kind of mad at myself. So let's be nice to future Will and kind of get at least pretend to do work, which is.

[Russ Jones]

Oh, my God.

[Will]

I love the strategy of pretending to do work because so often it leads to me to actually doing work where I'm like, oh, I'll just type these things and, like, I'm gonna put the titles here. Okay, well, I'm just. I'll write this part, and then before I know it, I'm, like, actually doing a thing, and it's just like, oh, dang, that's fascinating.

[Russ Jones]

Can you talk about that really quick? That strategy, is it a. Literally, like, you pretend to do the thing that you say you're gonna do?

[Will]

Yeah, I'm just like. I'm like, oh, well, I'm like, that's cool. Okay, I want to write a new episode. Okay, well, I don't know what I want to write about, but I use notion to, like, organize all my things. I'll create. I'll create a new thing in my spreadsheet, and I'll thing, and I'll write a couple words down just to be like, okay, like, this is the idea. And I'm like, well, that's. And then, like, the frustration of, like, it not being complete leads me to keep going, and if it doesn't, I stop. It's kind of just like a. Do a little bit. Do a little bit. Do a little bit. And if at any point, I'm like, not any point, but after a bit, I'm like, man, I still really don't want to do this. Like, I don't. But it is the take the step and then it's easy to see the next step. And then I do that next step. And it's like, I love that. Like the. The journey of a thousand steps starts with a single one. It's like, yes, absolutely. And if you need to take a.

[William Curb]

Break and do something else for a.

[Will]

While, go do that too.

[Russ Jones]

Yeah.

[Will]

But, yeah, a lot of the times I'm like, yesterday I need to do a number of things and I was just like, okay, I'm just gonna open up the email I need to respond to and just read it one more time. And then I'm like, I don't want to close this. I just want to respond to this. It's gonna take a sentence. Send that off. Okay. Well, I'm like, oh, well, the task is now done. And it was just taking that smallest first step was what really drove it. And it was just like, I'm not going to really do work. I'm just going to pretend to do work. And then it leads to me doing work. And sometimes that's frustrating. And so I won't pretend to do work because I know it's what's going to happen, but I have to be okay with that.

[Russ Jones]

Some days I love it as a strategy to get started. I think that's brilliant. I'm going to adopt that or I'm going to give it a thwack. I always think that we're all lab ratting ourselves on trying things. I love that. That's what I love about reading a new book on ADHD or therapy type stuff. I'm like, let me try it. Let me see what happens. And so I love that idea of just starting the act of it. Yeah, right. It's just pretend like you're doing it and seeing if the momentum comes or seeing if the. Yeah, I love that. I think that's cool.

[Will]

Basically, I'm just doing it. Like, if I saw, like, I had a boss over my shoulder and they were kind of like watching me, like, what would I do to make it look like I was doing something? Click here and here and like, they'll be typing. Yeah. Like, oh, yeah, look, there's words appearing on the screen.

[William Curb]

Those are bad words.

[Will]

Okay, let's make them good words.

[Russ Jones]

That's awesome. I do really well myself when I cage things. Kind of as a side note, like the structure. I used to always fight against structure. And then when I realized that, oh, if I have structure, I actually can get more unstructured time. The time to follow my whims and everything. Like that. So caging a process like that around some kind of a time to work session ends up really helping me out.

[Will]

Yeah, I'm having this other really funny thought with. If I'm choosing to do a task, I'm going to do some cleaning and watch some TV at the same time. What I'll end up doing is I'll start cleaning, turn on the TV and end up just watching tv. But the reverse is true too. If I'm watching TV and I'm like, oh, I should pick this up, eventually I'll be like, oh, I'm going to need to go into the other room. So I'll just pause. And then I don't get back to watching tv because now I'm cleaning. Like, my brain's like, whatever the first thing is, we're not going to keep doing that.

[Russ Jones]

Like, pick one, dude, what are you doing? Are you watching TV or you're cleaning?

[Will]

Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, it's funny how. And I mean, this is exactly what the community aspect you were talking about. Like, people just be chatting be like, yeah, this is something I tried. And someone's like, oh, awesome. I didn't really think about the fact that whenever I try to clean, I turn on the TV and then I end up watching some random show that I don't even care about. End up sitting and being like, oh, what's that? It's really boring. Why can't I stop watching this?

[Russ Jones]

It's so interesting. It's also like the funification. Is that a word? Funification? Sounds like you could have. Let's coin that one. We'll put that in the dictionary. There was a time when I create, like, I found a website, by the way, that you can create games. Like, I'm talking to a fellow board gamer, right. That you can make playing cards. So I created a card game for doing bullshit like cleaning dishes, laundry, all these things I would do. I don't know if I can explain it really quick if it's going to resonate, but it's basically like you put down all the things that you need to do and you get out one of your Dungeons and Dragons dice and you roll it. That's like the, the, the, the basic version of it.

[Will]

It's.

[Russ Jones]

I complicated the shit out of it, my card game. But it's a way for me to enjoy the unknown. I don't know, the dopamine burst of a. Of I wonder what the shitty thing I'm going to have to do is roll the dice, you flip over the card and it's like dishes. So you set a timer for 10 minutes and you just do that thing for 10 minutes. And then if you get done in time, you roll the dice, flip over another card or you roll the. Whatever it is. And I hate talking about dopamine, but it's like the boost of dopamine that you get or whatever it would be right, is from finishing a thing, from completing the timer to finish the thing, from the unknown of finding out what the next thing is going to be. Because for me, it's just knowing what I'm doing. If I'm going to spend an hour cleaning, forget it. I don't want any part of that. It sounds like it's the rest of my life and. And it sounds awful. But if you go, I'm only going to do a bunch of random stuff for 10 minutes and I'm going to let fate decide. I had my entire apartment just spotless within an hour. I mean, I know we all have varying levels of clutter, but like basic pickup, there's so much we can achieve in 10 minutes in 10 minute increments. It's ridiculous.

[Will]

Yeah. And there's like things that make it more fun or easier to do. You like and listen to music. One thing that I've discovered I really love is like the grabber arms with like the thing like you use for like a trash pickup. Yeah. I walk around my house and I pick like, I have children and I have dogs. I. The fact that I don't have to lean over makes it infinitely easier. Like, I had heard someone like recommend this tip and I was just like, I'm not going to awesome. But like, there was a time when I'm like, oh man, I can't lean over. And I like used them like, oh, well, just keep grabbing these things. I'm like, well, this is now part of my life forever.

[Russ Jones]

That sounds awesome. And I think I have to buy one of those because that literally sounds like the funnest thing ever. Picking up trash, picking up stuff in your living room, carrying it around.

[Will]

I love that. It's like, oh, there's a little piece of paper on there. Can I get that with this? And I'm like, it would be so much easier for me to lean over at this point and pick it up.

[William Curb]

But now I'm going to do it this way.

[Will]

Exactly.

[Russ Jones]

Yeah.

[Will]

And it's doing things like that where it's just like, oh, I'm just going to change this up a little bit. It'll be not necessarily easier, but just more Enjoyable. And I think that's such a huge piece of like, oh, I don't have to do this in a way that makes me miserable.

[Russ Jones]

Yeah. Across the board, right? ADHD 101, we have interest wired brains. We need things to have some level of interest to them. Or we say novelty and urgency as well. But I think everything in its core is interest. Like urgency means we're interested in not losing our job. We're interested in not dying.

[Will]

We.

[Russ Jones]

Right. But novelty is like, oh, we're interested in this new thing. So, like the idea of implementing fun and interest and uniqueness into the mundane, that's our way. That was very Mandalorian. That is the way. More like we. We grew up with the normies who are importance wired. And they can go, like, I'm going to do this shitty thing now because it's important to me. Like, that's great. But I'll. I don't think I'll ever have that in me.

[Will]

Just because something is important does not mean it is interesting for me to do. And it feels like it should be. But we need to ground ourselves in reality. It doesn't matter what should or just. Or any of those mean. It's like we have to do this based on what we literally can and can't do. And living with our brain, it's getting beyond that. Like beating ourselves up about what we want to just be and be like, okay, well, can we just make this happen some way that works for me. Another thing great about community, because so many times I've seen with other community have been people post like, you have to do this thing this way, blah, blah, blah. And someone's like, why? And they're like, because that's how you do it. And they're like, are you sure? And they're like, oh, shoot, okay, maybe I don't have to fold all of my clothes like this. I can just put them in these bins or hang them up instead or do this other way. I just didn't think about, because I was just raised that this is how you do things.

[Russ Jones]

Yeah. Even take it to the level of where we do have to do important things. Right. We do have to. We don't have to do anything. I'm sorry to say that, but it's like, it would be great if we saved for retirement, if we took care of our health because we want to be agile when we're in our 60s. It would be great to do these things that are important, that we've deemed important. So then how do we as adhd years do the work to say, this is important to me and then dial it all the way back down and go, okay, I've made a determination of importance. Now how can I make this interesting and fun? These stupid little daily slogs like the consistent effort that we need to make towards this long term vision. How do we fun that up a little bit? Because it sucks. Working out blows. I'm not going to see my ripped ABs after 20 minutes of like walking. So how do I. I don't know. That's where the whole leaning in and being cool with the fact that we think a certain way and we do things a certain way so we find our way to do things that they can do their way.

[Will]

This is also making me think we were talking briefly before. This perspective you have on goals too, how that's a bit different than what a lot of you typically would see. Yes.

[Russ Jones]

Like the way the normies look at goals. Is that right? The goals at the top of the mountain. It's beautiful. It's what movies are made of, right? Where you're like, oh, it's at the top of the mountain. And you know, blood, sweat and tears. And you're going to have setbacks and you know it's going to hurt and that's how you know it's working and you're going to bleed and that's how you know you're. You're tough. And then when you get to the top, you look and behold all the land and you've achieved your goal. And oh, man. Pretty freaking rad. But that's not how ADHD works. Like ADHD works that we're at the bottom of the mountain, right. And we look up and we're like, holy, that's a long way to go. And I'm gonna need a coat probably. I'm probably gonna need ropes and harnesses. I should go price those out at the REI and see what. Who's got the best deal on ropes and harnesses. I should probably take a class on climbing. So let me go research the best classes on climbing and we'll spend forever at the base of the mountain and we'll never start. It's too much. And I'm like, if we could. If we flip it, it's just a stupid metaphor. So like, what if we just pretend. Yeah. Let's just magically start this visualization at the top of the mountain. Right. We start the goal at the top and the actual goal is somewhere way off in the distance below the cloud line. We don't even actually quite know where, but we know if we get to the bottom, we're there and all it takes to get started is just a nudge.

[Will]

Just like a little boop.

[Russ Jones]

Maybe somebody pushes us a little bit and then we start rolling down the mountain. Doesn't that feel easier to achieve? To just be like, oh, just nudges, just little nudges forward, beep, beep, beep. And then eventually we get our roll.

[William Curb]

Thanks again to Russ for coming on the show, and thank you for sticking with us all the way to the end. If you want to check out more of Russ work, be sure to go check out ADHD Big Brother. But before you go, let's do a quick rundown of today's top tips.

[Will]

1.

[William Curb]

ADHDers love collecting information, tips, tricks, hacks, but we often can struggle to implement it. Having a community to provide some accountability is a great way to help bridge that gap. Having consistent, low pressure accountability like a daily check in can often work better than having those big coaching sessions spaced out over weeks where we're scrambling to.

[Will]

Get to that thing we said we.

[William Curb]

Do right before our session. 3. Community support works best when you're actively engaged. You get way more out of it when you're engaging with your community rather than just lurking. That's it. Thanks for listening. I'd love to hear what you thought of this episode. Feel free to connect with me over at hackingyouradhd. If you would like links or to read this episode's transcript, you can go to the show notes [e-mail] 213 if you'd like even more hacking your ADHD, be sure to sign up for my newsletter any and all distractions, which comes out every other week. In it, I give out my best distractions of the week, be they what I'm reading, what I'm playing, or what I'm watching. I also try to give a few bits of actionable advice in each newsletter, although I'm sure your mileage is going to vary there. If that sounds like something you're interested in, head over to hackingyouradhd.com newsletter to sign up. I also want to let you know about our Patreon that I've been reworking. You can easily find [e-mail] Patreon I'm trying to go with a pay what you want model, meaning that all levels of the Patreon will receive the same stuff. You can pay $0 or $2 or $10 and it's all the same. The only real difference coming from the roles that are assigned on the Hacking youg ADHD Discord. Which reminds me that I also wanted to announce that we're now on Discord, which you can get access to from the Patreon, which again is pay what you want. So if you want to come check out the Discord or the Patreon, you can get yourself some Access [e-mail] Patreon Also, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel which you can find at YouTube.com ackingyouradhd and I'm also now on Blue sky which you can find again hackingyouradhd. Finally, if you'd like to support the show, the best way to do so.

[Will]

Is to tell someone about the show.

[William Curb]

Especially if you think a particular episode would resonate with them. Just click the share button on the podcast player and send it over to them. And now for your moment of dad. Some people believe that no two people see color the exact same way, which means that color would just be a pigment of your imagination.