← Overcoming Distractions-Thriving with ADHD, ADD
Overcoming Distractions-Thriving with ADHD, ADD
Why you need professional and personal clarity as a busy professional adult with ADHD
00:22:59
Clarity is essential for executives with adult ADHD because it acts as an anchor in the midst of constant internal and external distractions. Without clear priorities, objectives, and next steps, the ADHD brain can easily become overwhelmed by...
Loading summary
Transcript1 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. All right, gang, what's going on? It's Dave. It's Overcoming Distractions. And this is the place for you, the executive, the entrepreneur, the business owner, the vp, the person in leadership that just happens to have ADHD or you think you have adhd. This is the place for you. This is the place where we don't just talk about our adhd, but we try to solve some problems together here and today. Now, if you've been listening to me for any length of time, you know that I have a kind of a few favorite things in my. My busy person ADHD toolbox. Some of them are a little. I hate the word hack, okay? But some of them are just little things that help me and I think others to be able to navigate the complexities of ADHD and even burnout. Some of them are much larger themes, and that's one I want to talk to you about today. We've talked about this before, but I want to drill down a little more because we haven't really talked about this, and some of these things just need to. We need to have a refresher on some of these things. And today I am talking about clarity, because clarity has to be just part of our game plan in so many areas of our busy ADHD life. And clarity is essential for you, the executive, the entrepreneur, the business owner, vp, whatever you are. It's just, you know, clarity gives us, like, an anchor, like, in the middle of, like, constant internal and external distractions. Call it priorities, call it what you want. But without those kind of clear priorities, those objectives, next steps, understanding where we're going, going, we can easily become overwhelmed by those, like, competing demands for our time and energy. Our unfinished tasks and things are shifting responsibilities that can lead to that kind of, you know, hitting the brick wall. The analysis paralysis. It also leads to working in reaction mode and reactive decision making, which I All know that many of us have experienced more than a handful of times. And you know that if you are in any type of leadership position, again, I don't care if you're a solopreneur or you've got a bunch of people under you in an organization, we're just asked to drop everything at a moment's notice like pretty regularly, right? So having clarity in kind of where we're heading, what we're doing, et cetera, is just mission critical. And if you fall into that category, you know, we're operating in somewhat of a high stake environment, right. Ambiguity quickly snowballs into everything from missed opportunities. Maybe it's poor delegation. If we got people under us, maybe we're wasting our time. You know, it's missing deadlines, it's not understanding exactly what needs to be done, even down to the day or on a more larger scale, right? And when we have clarity and we tell ourselves clarity, clarity, clarity, I think over time it's going to reduce friction, it narrows our focus a little bit, which I think is a good thing. It simplifies some choices because it gives us like a roadmap, right? It makes it easier, I think, to take action and follow through, you know, some of the philosophies that you might want to dig into. And you know, I always recommend, quite frankly, books that have nothing to do with adhd, but we can get a lot of lessons out of them is, you know, slow productivity. Just go ahead and Google it. And I've actually been digging into a book called the Science of Scaling that talks about organizations. But it, it, you know, it does follow kind of the same theme about not like going in a million different directions. So, and for those of us who are in a leadership position that just happen to have adhd, those clear structures, those defined outcomes, it's not just nice to have they provide us with some of that kind of, you know, that game plan, that scaffolding. It helps us harness, maybe our creativity, lets us be more strategic thinkers, it builds our strength as leaders so we don't get derailed by a million things that are going on in our ADHD brain. So yes, we are, we, we are not just teenagers with adhd. We are grown adults that have gotten into a really good position business wise. And we're just having some challenges with our brain at certain times. So nothing to feel guilty about. It's how we are. Go back and listen to my podcast about honoring your ADHD brain, okay? Our brain is our brain, okay? Whether we are a CEO or whatever. So let's talk about some of the areas where I believe clarity must win out or we just get bogged down in, quite frankly, the negatives of our ADHD world. The first one is providing clarity to others. And I want to just get this one out of the way because a lot of our problems and challenges and frustrations, I feel can be mitigated by making sure we are clear with other people. Clear about our expectations, our needs, everything down to I need this document so I can do my job right. I learned in the public relations world and having clients that wanted to be on TV that if I was not crystal clear on the expectations of getting media coverage, I would just get in arguments. The fact was, in public relations, a lot of things are out of your control, right? And some people think, you know, I hired a PR firm and they have this magic wand or this, like, key to the TV studio, right? It wasn't that way, okay? But I had to get crystal clear because people would pay me money and they would say, how come you didn't get me on this TV program or this news program? So my point, providing absolute clarity to clients, your team, others, I think saves you an enormous amount of aggravation. I've talked about this before where it's just like, you know, we need to be talking to others about getting the things we need. So when we actually do sit down and actually do our work, we have what we need and that's clarity. So I know we're already having a tug of war with our own brain, right? So hopefully some of the pointers moving forward that we're going to discuss now will help you when it comes to providing clarity to others. So. So let's get to clarity with ourselves. And I think the first one is like our priorities and goals, right? Why does that matter? As you know so well, your ADHD brain is easily pulled towards novelty and even urgency, right? Sometimes we're even pulled towards the path of least resistance. In fact, some of these things I described are just kind of how we're wired, right? And without that clarity on what kind of truly matters, everything is going to feel like equally important. That's that, you know, scenario where we go sit down at our desk in the morning and we have a hundred things to do and we want to start 100 things, right? This is going to lead to overwhelm, it's going to lead to procrastination, chasing the wrong tasks or doing nothing. How many of you get to five, six o' clock at night and you can't tell Yourself, what you got done, right. That's because you didn't have any clarity over even that single day. So. And I think priorities and goals are not only that daily thing, but it's also the bigger picture. And as you know, again, I'm not telling you anything or some of these things that you don't know. Okay. We're just refreshing our, our knowledge of this. But those of us with ADHD are pretty good at having a million things we want to get done all at the same time. We're also good at having 10 new business ideas if you're an entrepreneur or small business owner, what have you, and then none of them get traction. So clarity, both daily and longer term, bigger picture is essential for us busy people with adhd, we have to know where we're going. And you know, the, and I mentioned the slow productivity and the science of scaling. You begin to kind of realize that you need to kind of tighten up your goals and priorities and that's far more effective than maybe chasing 10 or 20 things at the same time. Okay. And I don't. That's not a maybe, that's just that that is fact. So let's talk about clarity on your structure and your systems. And I think we, as you know, ADHD is an executive function challenge. I don't care if you're 50 years old in ADHD, we still have challenges with our executive functions. That's organization, that's planning, that's short term memory, that's, you know, getting things done. Right. And I think without that clear system, even some of those smaller tasks can kind of slip through the cracks and the bigger projects never get done because big projects are a bunch of smaller tasks. Right? Go back and listen to my thoughts on atomic habits and adhd. Because I think consistent, repeatable systems in the long run win out almost every time and that's going to give you clarity. So think about this structure. Systems we can follow include how we structure our days, our weeks, how we block out that time in, even how we create those repeatable systems. So we're not recreating the wheel over and over again. This is, this can come down to something as simple as, you know, creating templates for your regular documents you produce, organize your folder on your computer, etc. Etc. Okay? But you know that structure and systems is going to allow you to have clarity on, on, on, on a number of levels. So let's talk about roles and responsibility. I've talked to so many people where maybe a CEO and then somebody else is talking to somebody Maybe they're in a leadership position. Maybe they're like a senior vice president. Maybe they're, you know, what have you. And there's like conflicting kind of roles or demands, right? And I think ambiguity is gonna breed, like, paralysis, right? And I think when it's clear, not, you know, who owns what or where, and if it's not clear, those of us with adhd, we can delay or we can avoid things altogether. This is what bugs me about some of these gurus. I'm putting up my quotation marks here. I'm being kind of a smart ass, okay? But some of these gurus on social media and they say sometimes procrastination is a good thing, right? It's never good. And we need to know the difference. Lack of clarity is fuel for procrastination. Think about this. I'm not sure what the client asked me to do, okay? I'm not going to do anything. How's that going to work out? So in theory, we need to make sure our roles are defined, we know our limits. We need to clarify expectations with our colleagues, our clients, our CEO, our leadership team. And if you don't have clarity, you need to ask for it. Don't wait weeks and weeks and weeks to ask for it, because that's not good. Tackle it now. So decision making, right? We can get stuck in indecision, right? Analysis, paralysis. And part of that is then we leap to, like, impulsive choices. And I think clarity on decisions is needed. It prevents wasted time. It prevents wasted energy. You know, think about, you know, like a quick reference for yourself. Does this align with my goals that I'm working on this week or this month? Will this move revenue forward? Those types of things? Ask yourself those quick questions. If you're spinning your wheels for days on something and you realize it's not moving my business forward or my department forward, my whatever, okay? That's the clarity you need. I mean, think about this. Guess what? Like, how many times have you looked at like 10 shirts to wear in the morning, right? You picked one and you still go to the office and it was missing a button. I mean, something as simple as that, right? So next, boundaries and commitments. We're going to talk about boundaries coming up real soon and how those of us in executive leadership, you know, ownership positions, need to have them. But we do say yes. Too often that leads to over commitment. And it is, it is a major factor in feeling burned out. Okay? Throwing a little bit of ADHD and we're all of a sudden feeling chronically stressed and without that clarity on, on, on your boundaries, we're going to sacrifice focus, energy, etc. Etc. So we must have clarity on our capacity. And if you're working till 1am consistently, you're not clear about your capacity. That's pretty much evident to me. So understanding your boundaries, what you're committed to, what makes sense and how that leads to understanding your capacity I think is huge. Have some clarity on that. Be honest with yourself. Workflow, next steps with things. Right. I mean, you know this, but again, we're just kind of, we're refreshing our memory on this, but vague tasks. Work on, project it. That just, that just makes. If there was like a video of our brain, your brain would be like, you know, all these electrical circuits, like it would just be overwhelmed. Right? You work on project. Okay, what the hell does that mean? Right? You got to have clarity on the next steps or our ADHD brain just can't start right. Again, more podcasts on these. But you know how we break things down, but you know, clarity on, on how you're breaking your tasks. Maybe it's visible, concrete actions. Email so and so the outline, open the spreadsheet, get this document from Joe. Right? All the way down to your projects. You know, when I was a vice president at a very large nonprofit organization, I kept my projects so caveman and so street smart that you might even laugh. But I had a wall of clipboards. I bought clipboards, I bought legal pads and I bought a bunch of colored sharpies and I nailed these clipboards to the wall and I used sharpies and I put a big bold thing on the top and then I outlined all the little things that needed to be done on those certain projects. Okay? And guess what? It worked. It was in my face. It was colored. It was, I got to check things off. It wasn't buried somewhere in my computer in a document and a to do list in some folder that I couldn't find. Right? I don't care how much money you make, no one's above a clipboard and a sharpie. Okay, so that's just me. Some people like digital things. Okay. But this is going to allow you clarity on your workflow and your next steps and your progress and getting things done and checking things off feels good, so. Oh, cool. So here's the summary part. Why clarity is especially important for those of us with ADHD brains that are business owners, executive leaders. Okay. It's going to reduce our cognitive overload. Right. Our ADHD brain already might have maybe working less efficiently. Let's put it that way and that ambiguity is going to add to your mental clutter. So clear goals, systems, knowing where you're going, understanding all that is going to cut down on that noise going on in your head. You're going to minimize decision fatigue. Okay. With clarity, you're going to maybe have fewer little decisions throughout the day and that's going to leave you a little more energy. And we've talked about that before, right? If we talk about time management, we need to talk about energy. Clarity is going to boost your motivation. I believe that when you have a clin like a clear specific path, I think it's easier to see that progress and feel achievement. And you will. And I know our ADHD brain loves like 10, 20 ideas, but when you can kind of hone that down and understand where you're going, I think that feels good. It's just you got to work the muscle to be able to stay in that lane. So clarity is going to maybe help you with a little bit of follow through. Right. Once again, ambiguity leads to avoidance. Clarity creates that path and I think it makes following through maybe a little more automatic for us. And having clarity is going to support your confidence. When expectations next steps are clear, that self doubt releases your performance I think will increase. Especially when we're in a like a demanding career with adhd. Okay. I know when I have confidence on certain things and when I had confidence when I was running my public relations firm and I had a lot of clients, when I had confidence, it was no problem me moving forward and doing what I needed to do. All right gang. I love clarity. Clarity needs to be part of your playbook every single day. If you are that busy person with adhd. I know many of you have listened to the podcast and then you contact me and say, dave, I've listened to the podcast totally. You're, you're you, you're resonating with me but having trouble going at this alone. So if you fall into that category and you need to do some problem solving with me, you need to start to work on a game plan to make things less stressful, more productive, more effective, have more energy, be more fulfilled. Then please just hit My website, overcoming distractions.com, click that button that says book a 15 minute meeting with me. Let's see if we are a good fit. And I would be honored to help you navigate the ups and downs of being that busy person with adhd. Alright, catch you next time.