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Overcoming Distractions-Thriving with ADHD, ADD
Why I drove 1600 miles to relax my ADHD brain
00:20:48
Recently, Dave drove over 1600 miles to visit a long term client from his public relation days. He talks about how powerful long stretches of quiet time can be for busy professionals with ADHD. There are clear and powerful benefits to shutting down...
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- [00:08]
Dave Greenwood
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.
- [00:26]
Sam
Who am I?
- [00:27]
Dave Greenwood
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, gang.
- [01:04]
Sam
Welcome back to Overcoming Distractions. And this is the place for you, the busy professional with the demanding career. And maybe your brain's just wired a little different, right? ADHD diagnosed or not, everyone is welcome here. So welcome. And I'm actually going to welcome myself back because it's actually been, I think, three weeks since our last podcast episode because I took a little road trip. And that's actually what I want to talk about today, is a little bit about my road trip and why I do it. So. But we're going to, I want to talk obviously about what I just said, the road trip, why I do that, but also the importance of the quiet time, the pausing, whether it's small chunks of time, whether it's larger, enormous chunks of time, where we actually, I don't know, maybe take. We could call it a vacation, a mini sabbatical, just getting away from it all. Because here's what I know is when we are running around in our business, whether we're an entrepreneur or, like I said, we're. We're in that demanding career, going from meeting to meeting to then actually doing the stuff that came up, from meeting to meeting, serving clients, serving our constituents, whatever it may be, we just seem to jump from one thing to the next. And a lot of us, and tell me if this is familiar, we just don't get that opportunity to actually just slow our brain down and just process what's going on. Think about life, think about business, think about our priorities. Whether we're telling ourselves it or not, our brain is telling us that we don't have the time to do this. Maybe at our crossroads in your business where things aren't going well, and instead of actually having the time to solve the problem, you just keep, you know, trying to, you know, bust through that wall or live in panic mode or fear, et cetera, et cetera, so it's important for us to be able to have those big chunks of time to just slow our brain down. So, so I'm going to talk about the benefits of doing so because I believe this can be an enormous game changer for those of us with those busy brains.
- [04:19]
Interviewer
So.
- [04:21]
Sam
So most of you who have listened to me for a while know that aside from working one on one with people like yourself who need to problem solve, need some somebody by their side to kind of figure things out, develop some strategies and habits and tactics to actually, you know, make our personal and professional lives a little more enjoyable. I still have a handful of clients from my public relations days and one of them is out in the state of Michigan. Now I'm in the Boston area and what I love to do, and I've been doing this for years and people thought I was nuts, but I go out to see them probably once a year. And I drive. Now out from Boston to Michigan and back is easily 1600 miles. And I've only flown once. I hated it. So I actually take the time to get in my car and drive 750 some odd miles each way. Some people call it windshield time, right? But it is my opportunity at least once a year to just slow my brain down. It's time for me to spend time by myself and my thoughts and by doing so it, it actually slows my brain down. I'm out of the, the day to day thick of things. Everything from, you know, the home life, taking the trash out, doing the dishes, etc. Etc. To business, from going from meeting to meeting to marketing and then jumping to some of my, you know, old public relations clients. It's a chance for me to basically just shut down my brain for a little bit. Close to a week actually, so. And this time I actually took a couple extra days for myself and broke up my trip.
- [06:45]
Interviewer
So.
- [06:47]
Sam
And it's, I thought it was awesome because, you know, I could put on the radio, I could put on books, audio books, and I did that. But a lot of time I just sat there driving down the highway, looking at the cornfields with nothing on at all. And it really just gave me an opportunity to kind of sort things out and give me some clarity. So I highly, highly encourage it. Some people hate road trips and some people think I'm completely insane for driving all that way, but, but I say don't knock it until you try it. So it's an opportunity to actually just, just kind of shut down and sort your thoughts out. And I feel so much better when I Get back here. So there's a couple of the shorter things that. That I've done over the years, I think I've talked about. There's a lake near my house. It's about two and a half miles, but it's. It's in nature. It's super quiet. Sometimes people are walking by you with a dog or something, but other than that, it's just, like, super quiet. And on a nice, you know, day, blue skies, it. It is. You know, it's 45 minutes to an hour of just super quiet time. And I've always sorted things out when I do that. And this is a funny one. When I was really in the thick of running my public relations firm, I would go to these networking events in Boston, and I would actually take my car, I would drive down to the bottom floor of the parking garage, and I would sit there for, like, a half hour by myself. And you want to talk. Dead silence. I mean, you're like a hundred feet under the street, right? Dead earth, so. And it was super quiet, except for the occasional, like, door slamming and what have you.
- [08:47]
Interviewer
So.
- [08:48]
Sam
But I. The point of all this is that we need to take the time not only to pause, but to find some quiet time. And I know maybe for some of us, that's difficult, but when you start to get into it and realize the benefits of. Is just a game changer. So that being said, you know, you got to find your own spot, you got to find your own road trip, you got to find your own parking gar. But here are some of the things that I believe slowing down at a more deeper level can actually offer us and the benefits of us practicing this on a regular basis to our ADHD brain and as a result, our personal and professional life. First of all, when you do slow down at a deeper level, it does reduce that mental overload. I don't think there's anyone out there listening right now that can tell me they don't have even a little bit of overload in the brain. That's. I mean, hello, that's. That's our brain, right? The ADHD brain is often in just constant motion right from, like, the minute we wake up. We're juggling multiple ideas and concepts and tasks and. And, you know, and then the distractions, right? There's just a million things going on in our brain from the moment we get up to, for many of us, that the moment we go to bed and then we just do it all over again.
- [10:35]
Interviewer
So.
- [10:36]
Sam
And I think without pausing, those thoughts pile up. They feel Overwhelming and, you know, pile up. Think of, think of like the car crash, right? And I think just taking a few minutes to stop or even longer chunks of time, like I talked about, it just helps us kind of clear out that, I don't know, call it that mental traffic jam, right? It's going to lower our stress, it's going to reduce the, the anxiety. It might even reduce our panic, you know, our panic mode of running our business. And it actually, I think helps with decision fatigue, which I think a lot of us have challenges with. The next thing is, and if you've listened to me for any length of time, you know, that clarity is one of my favorite words because many of us really need that again, whether it's our business, whether it's in the job we're in, the, you know, the, the, whether we're an executive, whatever it is, okay? And I think slowing down at a much deeper level, it boosts our clarity, it boosts our focus. And I think it allows you to separate what actually matters from all the noise that, that we're, that's kind of distracting our brain. It helps you move from reactive mode, okay, Which I don't think we can live in for very long, to more of that kind of intentional thinking and choosing where you should put your time and your energy. Right? I've said this before, when we live in reactive mode over and over again, that's, that, that's fuel for, for getting to burnout. And we don't want to get there. So large blocks of that kind of time where we can reflect. I think it can actually lead to breakthroughs. We can kind of spot some patterns. We can understand our priorities and we can actually, maybe we get that aha moment where maybe opportunities come up that maybe just aren't that obvious when we're just going at a thousand miles an hour, you know, day to day to week to week. So slowing down at a deeper level, longer periods of time is going to boost our clarity. It's going to give us some focus. It also encourages creative problem solving. I can tell you, for years I would walk around that lake I talked about many times a week. And if things were bugging me or I had a challenge in my, my business by the time, you know, and again, it was like it's about a 2 1/2 to 3 mile walk by the time I got back to my car. I always solved a problem. It just allowed me to just clear my head. I don't know the science on it. I'm sure it's there but it works. So I also think as, as I think, you know, there are positives to being adhd. So let's not, let's not discount that is, we thrive on the creativity, but that creativity needs that space to like, blossom and emerge. Right? So pausing gives us a little bit of room to, you know, connect the dots, generate new ideas, smooth out those ideas and maybe think about or approach things from like a different, more relaxed angle, such as nature. So I mean, you all know that a lot of us busy brains, sometimes our best idea come from taking that walk. Maybe it's the shower or it's that walk so out in nature, away from our desk. So I know we've proved the concept, we just need to stick to it. So I also think that slowing our brain down at a much deeper level, longer times, it's going to support our emotional regulation. And I think a lot of the challenges that those of us with ADHD, us busy people, entrepreneurs, business owners, etc. Some of the challenges that we face do kind of revolve around that emotional regulation.
- [15:05]
Interviewer
So.
- [15:08]
Sam
ADHD is, you know, it's a brain that has heightened stress responses and maybe more frustrations than our typical friends. I'm putting up my quotes there.
- [15:19]
Interviewer
So.
- [15:22]
Sam
Taking time away, it creates that kind of distance right from the challenges and allows you to react, I think, in a different way. And this is gonna, if you do this on a regular basis, I think it does build resilience and actually does go a long way to, to mitigating the devastating effects that some people who burn out can, can experience. So next, think about this. It actually, I think gives you a little bit of self trust. And I know a lot of us kind of sometimes we don't trust ourselves in certain situations. But I think that regular deeper reflection helps you see progress, helps you kind of recognize the achievements that maybe we otherwise kind of discount. When I work with people individually, busy professionals, entrepreneurs, business owners, we always spend even a few minutes just talking about what were your wins? What was it, a small win. I don't care if it was personal, professional, what are the positives from the last time we actually met? And I think because so many of us, we want to just dig into what's wrong or what's bothering us or all the shit that's just like in our way, right? But we got to trust ourselves sometimes. And I think chilling out on a long road trip like I did, it's going to build those confidence. It's going to allow your brain to get to a place where you can Actually maybe handle those challenges a little more methodically without, without the, the freak out mode. Right.
- [17:12]
Interviewer
So.
- [17:13]
Sam
All right, cool. So I think those are some of the things.
- [17:15]
Dave Greenwood
Let's just recap real quick.
- [17:20]
Sam
What I think can be achieved with those kind of larger chunks of quiet time by yourself. And I'll distinguish this, don't get me wrong, vacations with family are awesome. They are super awesome. But time kind of alone, as long as you don't lock yourself in your bedroom for six months, can. Time alone can actually be a good thing. Strategic thinking, you can maybe some long term visioning, maybe some career of business planning. Maybe you need to realign your goals with your values, right? Our deeper ability to problem solve, you know, untangling those challenges that have been just persistent. Maybe it's a complex project or challenge in your business that you just need to, you need to unwind and kind of figure out how to tackle next, right. Maybe it's your business or your industry is going through some changes and you need to refocus, you need to develop a different way of, you know, building and growing your business. That's hard to do in the day to day when we're in freak out mode. Right. At the basic level, recharge and renew, allowing your brain and even your nervous system to just hit that reset button, right. Just slow it down. And the creativity and innovation, right. I think those big ideas just rarely happen like in the middle of those back to back meetings, right. They emerge. That quiet space where your brain is just free to kind of wander and chill out and develop that clarity and focus. So, all right, hey, if you have the time, I highly recommend jumping in your car and going for a road trip. I don't care if you're looking at corn and trucks and what have you, cornfields and farms and windmills. It's super cool. I highly recommend is one of my secret weapons, at least on an annual basis. I guess maybe it's my New Year's kind of thing. Whatever you call it, I highly recommend it. If you can't do that, at least find somewhere to chill out and slow your brain down in nature. So hey, if you're that busy professional, you're in that demanding career, you are having some challenges. Maybe you feel like, hey, I've listened to some stuff, but I still feel like I need to work one on. And you want to work with somebody that will meet you where you are currently, then just hit my website, Overcoming Distractions.com, right on the homepage. Hit that button that says book a 15 minute chat. Let's see if we're a good match. And I would love to help you do some problem solving to get where you want to be. All right, gang. I'll catch you next time. And welcome back. I'm welcome back to me. See you soon, Sam.