← Overcoming Distractions-Thriving with ADHD, ADD
Overcoming Distractions-Thriving with ADHD, ADD
The ADHD Edge is Working With Your Energy, Not Against It
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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. Hey everybody, it's Overcoming Distractions and you are back. It is me. And this is the place for you, the busy professional with the demanding career that just happens to have an ADHD brain or you feel like you have adhd. So we don't, we don't discriminate here. So I want to talk about working with your energy and not against it because I think it's something that we constantly need to maybe refresh our memory a little bit about. And so I want to dig into that a little bit. But real quick, if you love the podcast, you've gained some value out of it. It's helped you in your everyday life or, or work. You can support the podcast by going to buy me a coffee.com overcomingd. You can buy me some coffees, you can buy me one, you can buy me five, ten, whatever the number. And if you know me, you know how much I value my coffee every day. And if you are that busy person with ADHD and you need the do some problem solving or need to create some new systems or routines or strategies to, to navigate the, the season of life you're in, just hit my website Overcoming Distractions dot com. Hit that 15 minute button and see if we are a good fit. So hey, let's, let's paint the picture a little bit for many of us or paint the reality packed calendars, constant demands pulled in a thousand directions and for some reason we still feel behind right now. If you are that adult with ADHD or think you have ADHD and you have that demanding career, I'm probably not telling you anything new, right? We know it, we live it. There's ups and downs. But I think a key kind of strategy, if you haven't thought about this, and I know we've talked about this before, but I think it's just such a key piece of managing and thriving as A busy adult with ADHD is time management alone isn't the solution. I mean, years ago we saw these time management courses and time management books and it was time management, this, yes, that's important, but it's not the only solution. And I think energy management is a massive part of that and they have to go together. I mean, think about this. Have you ever had time but zero energy to actually use that time? I mean, hell, but that, you know, that almost happens to me on a weekly basis, right? I mean, let's just keep it real, but let's talk about the energy to time getting stuff done type of person we are, right? Our ADHD brains are. They're interest driven, they're energy driven, they're not so much driven by the clock, right? Those of us high achievers, we often rely on that urgency. But operating like that, day after day after week after month, after some of you years, that leads to stress and chronic stress leads to burnout. And we can't always operate in that kind of just urgency mode. It is not sustainable. So we have to work with our energy, not against it. So let's kind of figure out how to map our energy. And I really want to keep this simple because I do not think this needs to be a massive process. But we need to, you know, we need to identify when we feel the most focused, energized. I mean, that's just at the most basic level. This is where we start. It's ground zero. It's mornings, it's the middays, it's the late nights, right? Not that I'm a proponent of you working late at night, unless that's actually just your job, but, but some of these things like kind of consistently crash into each other right? When we actually do have energy and when we need to get work done. So that's a little bit of that equation, if you will. Right now, some experts, I'm putting up my quotes here, okay? I'm being, I'm being a wise guy. They say track your energy for three to five days and then make this chart and blah, blah, blah and you know, don't overthink it or what have you. The only thing I really agree with is the not overthinking it, right. I really believe if you just sat down and hit the pause button and chilled out for a few. I really think you can answer that question right now, today. These patterns, as far as I'm concerned for the most part already exist. Maybe you just haven't been using them to the extent that would benefit you. And help you actually get stuff done. I also think when we're talking about energy, I'm a big fan of, we've talked about it before, I'm talking about it again. Aligning the type of work to the energy that you have. High energy, I mean those times are for that deep work, the problem solving, the creative tasks, the. Maybe you're cranking out proposals for clients or whatever. You know, things that involve a deeper level of concentration and focus and less interruptions and the ability to maybe not get so distracted are when you need to jump on those high energy times. The low energy ones are the admin, the, the emails. And I know I've talked to so many of you that just, you know, they sit there or you sit there and you say too many emails. I have my inbox right now. You know, I'm with you, I hear it, been there. But the low energy can be for the admin. It could be for maybe knocking out or deleting emails or maybe kind of some more routine tasks. If you are that small business owner, that entrepreneur, maybe you need to kind of button up your invoicing or maybe you need to deposit some checks or whatever the case may be, maybe you need to pay a couple bills, right? So, but you need to give yourself permission to stop forcing productivity during low energy. Windows. Windows. I mean that this was, this was a hard lesson for me. Okay? We just try and smash through that, that you know, low energy wall, the, you know, feeling like a sloth, right? Sloths are cute, okay, but sloths don't get much done. Okay. So if you're feeling like a sloth, then maybe not the best time to actually be cranking out important stuff. I do believe though that small shifts, if you will, over time are going to pave the way for a, you know, a more energy based type of productivity system. I firmly believe this and I've done it here for several years. So let's break down some of the things that might help you get that high energy time back for yourself, protect it, reset occasionally. And I actually think that our ADHD brains, maybe it's every brain, we get a little bit of a recharge through a little bit of movement, not just so much rest. Maybe it's novelty. As I like to say, you do you when it comes to adhd, as long as you understand what works and what doesn't and what's effective. And I think some practical ideas are, you know, a short little walk. I do that multiple times a week until it's, you know, below Zero degrees here in this part of the country. I saw someone said that, that to keep up their energy they do task switching intentionally, which I'm going to call bullshit on, so. But again, you do you. Okay. But that would never work for me, so. Because we have problems task switching, right? I mean, I mean it's kind of a little bit of a, what do they call it, a conundrum or, you know, clash of ideas. But maybe it's a reset break instead of scrolling. There were times where I used to like hop on social media for five minutes. I'd kind of reward my a little bit, right. And then I would get back to work. Not so much anymore. Can you sit quietly for five minutes? I love to do that. I love to sit in a quiet room for five minutes. It just, it clears my head really quickly when I'm kind of under the gun and I need to get stuff done. And I haven't talked about this in a while, but it is one of my, one of my secret weapons is throwing ice cold water on my face. And yes, I just said that. And don't knock it until you try it because there's actually a little bit of science behind that where it actually does give you a shot of dopamine because it is so, it is so brutal. Right on your face. So. But when I find myself at certain times of the day where I know I need to get some stuff done or maybe I need to jump on a meeting or and I'm really not in the mood, I will go run in the bathroom and I will throw ice cold water on my face. It's a shock to my system. And most times it works in terms of protecting that energy. We got to talk about that. You know that word, boundaries, right? And I think you need to protect that high energy time, like a meeting with somebody else, right? It's a meeting with yourself. You have to protect that high energy time or you're gonna get behind quickly. You know this. I'm not telling you anything you don't. But you have to protect it. And that's where a little bit of discipline, if you will, and maybe protecting yourself from the, the novelty and the interruptions, etc. And if you're gonna protect your high energy time, you have to say no or not now to those low value demands to not only other people, but to yourself, right? That's, you know, that's a big thing is actually saying no to yourself when you find yourself getting off track because you've got a time frame where you know your Brain can kick some ass and you have to protect it. The other part of the energy discussion is how we quickly can get into that overworking kind of trap, right? I know many of us high achievers, busy job, career, business with adhd, we push hard and we can crash hard, right? Which isn't, that isn't good. Okay? Because then there's no kind of fluid motion or flow to your days and weeks. I mean, you can't, you can't totally kick ass, bust through a low energy period and then feel like crap the next day. That's just not a way to, to operate. So. But I mean, some of those signals or you find yourself working through that fatigue or stress, you know, ignoring those signals to knock off for the day or just take a quick break. And also if you see, you know, productivity dropping despite more hours, right. You know, 9, 10, 11 o' clock at night, you're working your ass off and you're just not getting anything done. I mean, what good is that, right? Sometimes it's just, you know, you got to say, hey, I'm, I'm out of here, I'm going to bed and I'm going to live to fight another day. We also, I think if we can reframe rest as like more of a performance or productivity strategy rather than an actual reward. But again, we all receive different messages, we all crunch those in our head the way we do. And if you need a reward, cool. But if you need to protect yourself for the next day's productivity and performance, then reframe that rest period. Even if it's a five minute throw ice on my face, do it. So some of the things that I think backfire are like the doom scrolling instead of actually like a real recovery. And I think I just mentioned that. But you know, are you hopping on social media versus maybe just sitting in that quiet room? Can you, can you truly just reset and slow your busy brain down for a few minutes, you know, or is that, that kind of like, kind of resting but you're still kind of working, right? You're kind of muddling around, but half resting, whatever the hell you want to call it. But I think sometimes we need a better way to recharge. Like just to fully disengage for 5 minutes, 30 minutes maybe that is taking a lunch, whatever. I think we need to choose more intentional type of recovery strategies. And again, whatever it is, you could put on your headphones and crank heavy metal music. For me, it's a super quiet room, whatever it is. So think about this as we Wrap up because I want to keep this quick. I want to get in and out. I want to get you thinking. Sit down quietly. I do this often. I do this several times a year because life changes, right? Sit down quietly, think about where you have the most energy. You know, you don't need to build a big spreadsheet and track it and build algorithms. Okay? Just sit down quietly and just think to yourself, what parts of the day do I have the most energy? What days do I have the most energy? Not every day is equal, right? And which days suck? Okay, let's just keep it real here. And then I think from there, once you kind of understand that, start to perform a little bit of surgery on your calendar, your schedule, your commitments, your meetings, how people bother you on a hourly or daily basis and interrupting your flow. And take a look at that schedule and where can you make the most impact? Where can you grab some of your time back? Where do you have the most energy and what are you going to do with that energy? Okay, blocking out time, take the win. What are you gonna do with it? That's the question. Rinse, repeat, adjust regularly because life changes, business changes, demands change. And just think about progress over perfection when it comes to managing your energy so you can actually get things done. I do not think for the most part, and this maybe not every type of business, but maybe we don't need more hours in the day. We need to manage the energy within the hours that we already have. And I think that just takes a little work, a little bit of self awareness and trying to figure out where you can actually get stuff done. Last. Last comment. What would change if you trusted your energy instead of fighting it? Right. And how would things be better, even slightly, if you thought about energy instead of just trying to manage the clock? So there we go. Energy management and time management need to coexist. They can't be separate. All right, gang. Hey, hit overcoming distractions dot com. Book a 15 minute chat with me if you need some one on one time. Maybe the podcast isn't enough and you need somebody by your side to actually just build better systems and strategies with your busy demanding career and your different type of brain. So overcoming distractions dot com. All right. Hey, we'll, we'll catch you next time.