Time management is one of the biggest challenges for people like myself, living with ADHD.
What is the role of synchronicity in the ADHD brain’s management of time, priorities, and even values? Having come onto this planet with something that scientists classify as an ADD brain, despite all my personal improvements I find it hard to follow a plan of action that guides me through the day. How many of you experience the same frustration?
ADHD Time Management Experimentation
Out of this frustration comes experimentation. And what I’m learning lately is that I can make spontaneous decisions that lead to an orderly and productive day. The approach I’m creating is one where I enter blocks on my daily calendar of things that are priorities for that day. What I find when I look back at the end of the day is that I rarely address them in order, that I insert things that aren’t there, and there’s things I don’t have time to complete. In the past I would find this “lack of follow through” to be disappointing, disheartening, and a source of self-criticism.
But now what I’m discovering is that having the ability to pivot is serving some other longer-term needs. Here’s an example: I have been spending a lot of time working in my garden this summer. I was ready to go out and repair my irrigation system. All of a sudden I remembered that the patent attorney that I called the day before never returned my call. I also remembered seeing a number of different patent attorneys on a referral list. Even though my invention has not been a priority, I decided to stop what I was doing, pivot, and revisit the list of attorneys. I found one that I really connected with, contacted him, later he called me back and it has begun a conversation that is really timely. As a result of that conversation I’m now looking at how I can develop a second-generation of this idea that has far more potential than my original prototype.
From a time management point of you, the world looking in would say “this doesn’t make any sense at all”. But from a synchronicity point of view, I allowed the wisdom in my body to know the right moment to make contact. The decision that I made was an energetic decision. I’m recognizing how much energy I had in that moment when I pivoted. And now I see myself devoting a lot of energy and attention toward the second-generation idea. What I created in that moment of pivot was new momentum. And in the process I’m taking my idea and myself more seriously. That would not have occurred if I instead fixed my irrigation system. This leads to the question, what am I learning about myself? What I’m learning is that for me, a person who can’t follow a plan to save his life, what is emerging is that my energy is a more important domain to manage than my time.
There was a time in my life when I used the Franklin Planner. My sister bought me the training and binders and all the forms. She was using it and she really wanted me to succeed. As siblings we both struggled with staying organized in our lives. The system forces you to take a look at an entire year and to begin planning around your values. In the Franklin planner, which later became Franklin Covey, everything hinges around your values. At the beginning of this blog I mentioned time, priorities, and values. One of the really interesting factors for me is that an important value is spontaneity. I discovered through my improv community the name of a book that’s entitled, “Life Unscripted: Using Improv Principles to Get Unstuck, Boost Confidence, and Transform Your Life” by Jeff Katzman and Dan O’Conner.
The Role of Spontaneity
So another way to look at pivoting is to see it as the application of spontaneity. What I observe in my improv classes is that the way players access their genius is by being lost in the moment and allowing whatever is inside to come up, unedited. I’m not suggesting that our entire lives need to be unscripted. What I am suggesting is that if we don’t spend some part of our lives unscripted, we are going to miss out on who we are, at our core. That leads me to another value, the importance of authenticity. All of us who have gone around with our ADD brains, being shamed at school, criticized at home, and ridiculed by relatives who have different genes and are able to exercise their executive function at will, we have learned that it is not safe to trust our impulses. We have also come to believe that distraction is inherently a bad thing. My proof that it is not inherently a bad thing comes from the following question. Who among us wants to go on vacation and not be distracted.? Distraction is a value neutral proposition.
In order for us to step upon the train platform of wonder and discovery, we need to temporarily set aside our script. We board the train without a ticket and wing it with the conductor. We get kicked off the train and discover that this quaint town in England is actually the home of my ancestors. In the world of magical thinking all kinds of exciting outcomes can occur. Not a for stucco the dam plan. Plans are scripts and plans are not inherently good or bad, structure is not inherently good or bad, what is good is that which serves our needs, and what is bad is that which takes away our joy. I have no desire to be buried in my plans. My desire is to use the elements of my plan as steppingstones to accelerate my progress along my life path. Going back to the example of pivoting, contacting the attorney, and now gaining momentum toward the development of a product that would allow me, with a bad knee, to go out and keep up with anyone on a mountain trail, elevates what was a thought into action. Right now I’m more interested in action that I am accountability. I can tell you this, action is a hell of a lot more fun and energizing and inspiring and motivating than accountability.
Time Management & ADHD Motivation
Us ADD’ers often stall because we lack motivation. There is a principal in permaculture, if you don’t know what it is you’ve set look it up, it says “the problem is the solution”. And what I’m finding is that if the problem is motivation all I have to do is tap into whatever I want to do in that moment and do it. The motivation is there. I know from my ADHD coaching so many of my clients get stuck with prioritization and motivation. And when that happens to us we are like stalled cars. And where the motivation gets blocked is in the key in our hand. Because if we don’t want to go where we “have to go” we will not even start our engines. But if we could just take a break and decide “I’m to go get an ice cream cone”, then there’s no end to the motivation that we could create. At least if I could get my engine started I could get my car going , and I can get used to being on the road. And after my ice cream cone I go to the hardware store by parts for my irrigation system.
The problem is the solution. When we have a lack of motivation we need to do what is inherently motivating for us in that moment. Screw the accountability, get on with the action, get on with our lives, get on with who we really are, and plan our lives around our authenticity.
Oh, and by the way, that irrigation project is done.
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