← Overcoming Distractions-Thriving with ADHD, ADD
Loading summary
Transcript4 lines
- [00:08]
A
I'm Dave Greenwood and this is Overcoming Distractions. If you are an adult with adhd, a busy professional, an entrepreneur, a high achiever, or just need some strategies to navigate your adult adhd, you're in the right place. Who am I? I'm an entrepreneur with ADHD and the author of two books, Overcoming Distract and Overcoming Burnout. I coach and mentor people just like you, and together we navigate the ups and downs of adult adhd, from getting out of our own way to helping people just like you thrive in the workplace. That's what I do. Want more info on working with me? Hit overcoming distractions.com ready? Let's get to today's podcast.
- [01:03]
B
Hey, what's up?
- [01:04]
A
What's going on, everybody?
- [01:05]
B
It's Dave. You are back on Overcoming Distractions and you're in the place that is built for the busy professional with adult adhd. So welcome. Welcome to a new year. I'm glad you're hanging out with me. And we got some really cool guests coming up in the next couple months. We're going to talk burnout. We're going to talk all kinds of things that I know that are on your mind. We've got some people who have even built businesses with adhd and I know we can always learn from their trial and error. So just keep your ear to the ground because we got some really cool stuff coming up. So, hey, real quick, if you enjoy the podcast and maybe you do got your kind of act together, so to speak, and you want to buy me a coffee, you can go to buy me a coffee.com overcoming D because it does take not only money, but brain power and awakeness and caffeine to actually do this thing every week. So. So it's just buymeacoffee.com overcomingd you can buy me one coffee, three, five coffees, whatever it may be. And your generosity is greatly appreciated by the home office here at Overcoming Distractions. And I'll just say this real quick. If you feel like you need somebody by your side to navigate the ups and downs of being a professional with adhd, I do work with people just like you, one on one, to navigate the complexities of an adult ADHD diagnosis or not diagnosis in the workplace, putting it all together, business, family, to do, list, procrastination, you name it. So, hey, we're gonna talk about adult ADHD and survival mode today, and I think most of you have a pretty good idea of what that means because I think we've all experienced this at one time or at some level, right? And you might even feel like you're in survival mode right now. And I feel that if you're not thriving to some extent or moving the needle in your favor, even if it's a little bit, then you could be in survival mode. So. And I have been in survival mode, whether it's my ADHD over the years, whether it's burnout, whether those both smash together a couple times during my professional life, I've been there. And to be brutally honest with you, it comes back every so often. And I think sometimes all of us, myself included, we just need to hit the reset button. We need to regroup, we need to dust ourselves off and figure out the direction we're going in. So I'm not going to give you some clinical explanation or advice on this because I am far from qualified to get that granular. This is as street smart as it gets from my own experience and from working with many of you who have experienced survival mode in some way and how we problem solve together. So, I mean, let's think about this for a moment. Survival mode for those of us with ADHD is going to work on Monday and then clawing your way to get to the door to Friday, right? It's the only thing on our minds. It's getting the hell out of there. It's getting what we need to get done and just getting out of there because it's maybe not working as best it can. It's at home when the shit hits the fan sometimes, right? Life happens, family demands happen, caregiving things, breaking in the house, throwing your routine and schedule off, redirecting your energy. Did I mention things breaking in the house? We've had a little bit of that here lately, so. And I think in my next life I'm renting an apartment. Just saying. I know some of you can relate, you know, having a routine, a home base in the house, things where they belong so you can find them, etc. Etc. It's a great start to minimizing survival mode because I think when, and I've said this before, and I'm just going to continue to pound this message, is that when we get the day off to a bad start, you're probably going to end up going through the day in some level of survival mode. And if we don't have a game plan or a method of working that not only works with our brain, but with our energy, our optimum working style, environment, etc. We just go from one task to the next without even thinking. And I don't think. And you know, this, it's just not sustainable. I mean, survival mode can go on for weeks or months or maybe even longer for some of you. So if you're in survival mode or you think you might be getting there or you've been there, done that, this is a few minutes of street smart advice and discussion about how to do, how to maybe move from that. So let's take a few minutes and let's take that street smart approach to minimizing survival mode and maybe being a little more intentional about how you attack your days and your weeks and your months. I think one of the first things we need to do is, I think we kind of just need to name it, right? You know what? It's survival mode. We are surviving. We're not having a good time at work, we're not engaged at home. You just go from thing to thing to thing. And I think what survival mode actually looks like is, it's not so much a weakness, right? It's like your nervous system just, it's a response to like that chronic ongoing demand and maybe some chaos, right? And I think some of the common signs for those of us busy people, busy professionals with adhd, I don't care. The CEO all the way down to the sales executive and the entrepreneur and the solo solopreneur, it's always reacting, rarely planning. Kind of sounds like a tagline for a business, huh? Always reacting, really planning, constant, constant urgency, even for non urgent things, right? How many of us get to our office, wherever that may be, in the home in a, you know, when you, or you work in a office building or wherever, and you sit down and everything's urgent, right? Everything needs to be done right now there's no game plan, right? I think that's survival mode to some extent. It's mental exhaustion. But we, maybe we have difficulty slowing down. Been there, done that. Feeling behind no matter how much you do. And that, that was a big one for me. You just always felt like there were like 25 things still to do before you can rest. I think at work it's like putting out fires. The deadline pressures, the decision fatigue. And like I just mentioned on what to do, sprinkle in a little chaos at home. It's emotionally depleted. Maybe your temper is a little off, maybe you've checked out, maybe you feel a little guilty, you know, maybe it's like effort. I'm not cooking tonight and we're going out for food or we're getting food delivered, right? And I think, think about it, when everything feels urgent, nothing feels meaningful anymore. So, and I think why those of us call us high achievers, busy professionals, demanding career, I think we get stuck here. And I think it can be common for those people who are driven, who are capable, who have adhd. And let's think about this for a minute. I think sometimes our success comes from a high responsibility, right? So we are a CEO, we're in a management position sometimes that, that determines success in people's eyes, right? It's being relied on by others. I can't tell you how many people I've talked to over the years that I've worked with, one on one, where there's like just a constant flow of people who are reporting to that person. It's just they, you know, and the constant flow in their office all day, so. And then getting nothing done, you know, and they're just surviving throughout the day saying yes more than no. I'm sure some of you can relate to that. And I think survival mode is probably rewarded early on in our careers and we actually got by somehow, right? But it's not sustainable without feeling burned out. And I think there's a little bit of a trap there, right? I'll slow down once things calm down. But do they ever calm down without being more intentional and strategic? Sometimes not think about this. Also, let's make sure we, because I think we beat ourselves up a lot, is I think survival mode is just like a state. It should not be our identity. And I think we need to continue to remind ourselves of that. We're not broken, we're not lazy, we're not shitty at running our life. I think our systems have adapted to this building pressure and now it needs new systems and strategies and inputs and, you know, a new game plan. So. And I also think going on that is that we don't really have to have a goal of doing less, but we have to be more intentional instead of being in reaction mode the time. Again, I can't tell you how many people I have met with individually that that's just their default mode is just reacting, not even a game plan when they get to work. So, and we have to choose how and what to work on instead of, you know, just operating out of urgency, fear and stress. So one of the first steps, if not the first step, I think is awareness. We've talked about this before. I mean, most people try to fix survival mod with more productivity tools, right? Apps, new notebooks, give me something, anything, right? I mean, those five new apps on my phone will surely, you know, solve all my problems, right? Oh, that Red new notebook. Yes. I have just fixed my adhd. I'm not surviving anymore. I'm the most productive person on the planet. So we gotta ask if we feel that way is like what am I constantly reacting to? I think that's a big piece of awareness. We have to ask ourselves that question. What decisions am I avoiding? Because I'm just too tired, exhausted, stressed, beat down. I also think where do I feel I have no choice? I mean, let's talk reality for a moment. You're a busy person, you have a demanding career, you have a family, maybe you're a caregiver. Some things you don't have choice. And you need to figure out how to make choice things work. I think survival mode thrives on some of these kind of things that are going on in our head. But you know, our systems and routines break down sooner or later. And I think awareness alone can just start the process of kind of lowering our stress and just hitting that pause button, doing a little thinking. Why am I like this is often answered by what's going on, right? So let's see, what else do we have here? Let's stabilize ourselves, right? Before we try and create a new system. I don't think we need a perfect routine, but we need a little bit of predictability. And I think moving slowly towards how you want to get out of survival mode is important. Some of those things that help us stabilize ourselves are that consistent start or predictable start or end to a workday. For example, a home base, which I have talked about. I did a whole episode on why a home base in my house where all the kind of mission critical things are things like deodorant, medication, what have you are there. They don't move. And if they do move or something happens, then my day turns into chaos. Some of the things that stabilize us as well is that one protected block of time at some interval during the week. I say one, but you really should have more than that. You know, is it a block of time a day? Is it a huge chunk of time a week? Is that entire day where you don't have meetings or anything. So how can we make fewer decisions, so to speak, where we're not, you know, shredding our energy? These can stabilize us a little bit. Systems and routines to do, lists and understanding of what we're going to be working on the night before we get to the office. Those are the things that allow us to make fewer decisions. And then just the frickin pause button, right, hit the pause button. How many of you don't hit the pause button, raise your hand. Yeah, at home, some of the things that can stabilize us we can work slowly towards. Is that kind of clear transition between work and getting home. It's also letting maybe good enough replace that perfection bug that many of us have. And, you know, that starts at work, but when we get home, then we realize, okay, I'm tired. I'm done. I'm done operating in survival mode all day. I'm gonna live to fight another day. I'm gonna cut it off, I'm gonna chill, and I'll get back at it tomorrow. Agency or control or whatever you want to call it, it's totally the opposite of survival mode. And I think when we're in survival mode, we basically say to ourselves, as, I have no control or I can't control this. When we have agency, we understand that we actually can influence it in some way and control it some way as well. And I have to tell you, embarrassingly so. It took me a very long time to realize that part is that I actually could make certain decisions that would influence how my days and weeks operated. But it was an embarrassingly long time for me to actually understand that, that I could actually put my foot down and even put some boundaries in place. So it's like choosing what not to work on this week. It's that strategic delay we talk about where it's just like, I don't really need to do this right now. I need to do the things that are mission critical, that are important. I'm not telling you to procrastinate because that's not what I'm saying at all. Procrastination is bad. Strategic delay is saying, I need to put this in a certain place and time where it is just a smarter move on my part. Okay? It's controlling demands from other people, such as time, meetings, all those energy drains. Maybe it's rethinking one expectation of yourself. Maybe you got the expectation a little wrong. Maybe our, you know, our ADHD brain took that thing and ran with it. Right? And I think it's also when we talk about just creating a little bit of agency or control, it's creating a little bit of space in our head before responding instead of just like, totally reacting like, there's water dripping in my house. Before I lose my shit, let's pause, let's take a. Let's take a look. Then I can lose my shit, right? There's water in my house. But we can't live in response mode forever. We have to do our very best about being intentional about how we take on our. Our days, our weeks, our months. We have to be intentional about it or these days are going to get the best of us. And we're going to end up being chronically tired and exhausted and stressed out. Get nothing done, and we're going to get burned out. So here's the next thing that I think is super important. Again, I've talked to so many people that. And this is especially important for people like juggling a demanding career and family. Maybe you really kicked ass and had a ton of energy when you were younger, but now you have young children or you have other responsibilities, and we need to recognize that life looks a little different right now for some of us. Again, I use the example of young children because that's. That's very common in some of the people out there that I talk to, is that, you know what? I was crushing it. I was. I was working. I was, you know, going out and networking. I was, you know, now I got two little kids and. And I'm freaking tired. So. And success might just have to look a little different. Right? Success might look like more sustainable energy and not so much that constant output because we just don't have it or we have other demands. Maybe it's fewer wins, but it's more alignment in our life. We talked about, like, values and vision last week. What do I want out of life now, given the circumstances that are going on in my life? What is important to me? What's going to make me get out of survival mode and into thriving mode and fulfillment and, you know, regain my energy? It's feeling present instead of productive all the time. I want to show up. I don't want to fall asleep in that meeting. I don't want to daydream in that meeting. I don't want to have to, you know, go back and say, I had no idea what you said in that meeting because I was exhausted. Right. It's one of many examples. And I think our survival mode kind of keeps us maybe chasing a definition of success and productivity that just might not fit your season of life right now. So I don't think you need to quit your job. I don't think you need to blow up your life. I don't think you need to fix yourself unless you want to quit your job or you want to sell your house and move to the mountains, which all of us have thought about some days, right? It's just like I'm selling everything and moving to a shack. So you do need awareness. You need to Own it. Okay. There's no cutting, cutting that out. You need to regulate your nervous system. This isn't a clinical discussion. It's gym. It's walking, it's maybe going out and getting a massage. It's short mindfulness sessions. It's other things we've talked about, such as, you know, if your nervous system is really shot, like tapping or explore other things, acupuncture, whatever it may be, it's support and structure that are going to match today's reality of you and your commitments in your life and everything going on. So if you do need that support, you do need that structure. You do need somebody that gets you, that understands you, that has been where you are right now. If you're in survival mode, then just hit my website, Overcoming distractions dot com. Click the button right on the front page that says book a 15 minute chat with me. That, that link, by the way, is right in the show notes. So whether you are on Apple or Spotify or wherever, that link is there too. You don't even have to go to the website. So. And just remember this, survival mode is a signal that something needs to change and work a little better. So. But you don't have to live that way forever. I know it feels like it sometimes. I felt like that sometimes where it's just like when, when, when does this survival mode thing stop? Right? But you have to be intentional about it. All right, gang, I hope that helps. I'm sure that resonated with some of you. Hit up the website if you want to chat and I'll catch you next time.