079 - How To Manage An ADHD Life: The Episode To Reference!

Are you ready to ADHD coach yourself? Refer back to this episode. This is your self-coaching gold. You'll learn the acronym APT, and SET, and that a pee pee doo doo is not just what a toddler has in their diaper! It's a solid ADHD technique! What?! Yes....

From the episode:

The Rubiks Cube Video
Check out the ADHD Big Brother Forum
Contact Russ

The book I mentioned: ADHD Coaching A Guide For Mental Health Professionals by Frances Prevatt and Abigail Levrini

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Transcript

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I've been talking about ADHD for over 70 episodes. Maybe we need like a TLDR episode. Too long didn't read, or I guess it was the TMEDL episode. Too many episodes didn't listen. Like, I got ADHD. I need to get my shit together. What's the gist? I gotcha. This is the gist. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD and comorbid depression symptoms. I'm your host, Russ Jones, author of Destend You to the Top, believer that you can actually have a smile in your life despite this diagnosis. So let's make some sense out of the struggle. Let's learn some stuff. Let's laugh at some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for having me over to your ears today. Gonna do a quick shout-out today to the new forum members, Kent, Holly, and Zach. I'll see you guys in there. An extra shout out to Kent, who made it seven days in a row doing the thing that he said he was gonna do, and he earned his noodler badge. That's right, we're earning badges in there. We're on our way to becoming Skull Spaghetti Masters. That's how we do it. I was wondering what I was gonna talk about this week, and it occurred to me that I've covered a lot over the past 70 some episodes. It's a lot to binge, and I'm excited for you guys to binge it all. It's literally all ADHD coaching with some humor and personal anecdotes and my true love of metaphors. It's all in there. But it got me thinking, so like what if you're out there and you're just like, I just want to get some ADHD coaching insights? I just want to get to have something that I can refer back to. Just tell me what I can do, and then I so that way I can refer back to it. Okay, that's fair enough. I mean, if we refer back to anything, I mean, I I are we ever really gonna refer back to anything, ever? When I look back, I think I've referred back to something, maybe I don't know, 1% of the time. 0 to 1%, if I'm being honest, probably closer to zero. I don't think I've ever truly actually referred back to anything. The only time I think that I was ever referred back to something is when I've been looking for something else, maybe in a notebook, and then I stumble upon the thing I was gonna refer back to, and I'm like, oh, oh yeah, oh well, I should save that piece of paper. And then I don't, I just keep flipping and looking for the next thing. But that being said, here is the episode that you could refer back to if that is your talent, if you have that special ability. I may have actually even done an episode like this way back when, and wow, if that's the case, then I wonder if the information is the same. Like maybe back in the day, I'm like, wait a second, you were you told us to internalize everything back now, and now you're telling us to externalize, you flip-flopping son of a bitch. Which is it? Internal or external? Well, it's external. In 2023, everybody's externalizing. Anybody who's anybody is externalizing, okay? So this is it. Let's call it ADHD coaching 101. This is your self-coaching 101 skill building, manage your life skills uh episode. There's two components to this. The first component is about externalizing, and the second component is about your moment-to-moment activities. So this first component, externalize everything. We don't hold things internal in our mind. We're externalizing. There's three areas to externalize: it's planning, it's time, and it's accountability. If you need an acronym for it, what is PAT? It could be TAP, it could be apt. You'd be apt to succeed if you externalized your accountability, your planning, and your time. There's your APT. There you go. And now it's embedded. You'll never forget it. It's permanently neuron sealed in your cranium forever. It is now one of those random things that you're never going to be able to forget. It'll just come up to you and you'll be like, why am I thinking apt? What is that? Heard that on ADHD Big Brother? What it what was he even talking about? So let's break down apt. Number one, accountability. We don't mind letting ourselves down. We've done it historically, and I talked about this in length in the last episode, so you can check that out. For our entire undiagnosed lives, and even if we've been diagnosed with no motivation and no urgency, we let ourselves down. We easily, it happens frequently, often to a debilitating degree. So in order to combat that, externalizing our accountability. We do this with a coach, we do it with family and friends. We're doing that in the ADHD Big Brother Forum. Number two is planning. You externalize your planning. You get a notebook, you get an app, a place where you're going to externalize your planning. One place. And I don't need to tell you why, you know exactly why. The to-do list on the back of the utility bill envelope. That's why. You know, trying to juggle eight things in your mind. That's why. One notebook, not three, not one for the to-dos, one for studying, and one for, you know, just general journaling, you know, just writing my thoughts. It's one. How's everything in one? And this is the summary episode. This isn't the, hey, let's try a bunch of different stuff episode. There's millions of ways to um I was gonna say skin a cat. There's a million ways to skin a cat. That is so disturbing. Like there's more than one technique to skin a cat. Wow. Let me rephrase that. There's a million ways to amputate a dog. Nope, that's not any better. Okay. There's just multiple ways to do stuff. How about that? And like the Mandalorian, this is the way. One notebook. And then finally, we externalize time. You put time outside your brain. For everything that feels like, oh my god, this is gonna take forever. I just don't have time for this. Put that on a timer. Do this experiment. Set a timer for five minutes, five measly, meaningless minutes, and start cleaning a room, knowing full well that you're not gonna come close to finishing. But you're gonna nonstop clean for five minutes. We can all agree that five minutes it's a trivial amount of time. It's inconsequential to the day at large. If you clean for five minutes as an experiment, let me know how that goes. I will wager that you will actually clean more than you thought you would. And I bet you'll be surprised by actually how much you can accomplish in a short amount of time. We don't hold time internally, no biggie. So set timers, they work. Now that's the first component, the overarching summary of ADHD. Externalize what you can. And then the second part is okay, so in the moment, what does actively working on managing life with ADHD look like? In the moment, like how does one practice the art form of managing an ADHD life? What does the workshop look like? What kind of supplies do we need? What kind of skills do I need to practice? Is there gonna be a recital? Is Chloe gonna demonstrate how to show up to a meeting on time? Is Steven gonna demonstrate how one can do chores? You practice the art of managing an ADHD life by utilizing work sessions. And what that is the dumbest, most unmotivating term for doing a thing. I'm gonna do a work session, a session of work. Why is the word work in a term for ADHD? I don't and I even I use the word work session because that's all I've ever known it to be. But I know I'm not selling them by using that term. Dude, all you have to do is a work session. When you have ADHD, a scheduled work session. Oh my god, and now I'm adding the word schedule in it? What the hell? That's the answer to my ADHD. Screw you, dude. I get it. Let's maybe change the term. We can let's just call it a pee-p-doo-doo. I mean, that's fun to say. And it makes sense. What do you mean juvenile? Juvenile? It's okay, grown up. This isn't juvenile, it's legit. Pee pee-doo-doo. Pee pee stands for pre-planned. Doo-doo, yeah, it's you're doing a thing, but it's like you're double doing it. It's a doo-doo. Double-doers are badasses. Yeah, and then when people see you working hard, they're gonna be like, wow, Russ, you're kicking ass. What are you doing? And you're gonna be like, oh, it's no biggie. Just having a pee-pee-doo-doo over here. And they're like, wait, what? And you just roll your eyes and you just okay, it's a scheduled work session, Barbara. I'm not defecating in the corner. Gee, a pee-pee-doo-doo, it's an ADHD thing. You wouldn't get it. So let's talk about it. Let's discuss the pee-pee-doo-doo. What is a pee pee-doo-doo? What makes a pee-p doo-doo? It's basically something that you schedule in advance. You pre-plan it. The day before, five minutes before, it's planned. And it's gonna require the following ingredients. Number one, what are you doing? Specifically, specific specificity is the key. I'm working on getting a new job. Okay, that's vague. We'll most likely send you up in your head, and when you nothing comes to mind, we tend to think we're screwed and we're hopeless. So we're not gonna do that. Updating a resume. Okay, that's a little bit more specific. You can probably even nail that down to review my resume and see what needs updating. That's super specific. That's super specific. And there's your planning. What if you wrote that in your bullet journal, your notebook, your calendar app, or whatever the night before? There you've externalized your planning. And then number two is the easiest point of entry. What is the easiest physical thing that starts this task that you're about to work on? That's the elixir for a lack of motivation. It might seem or feel remedial, but everybody does it. We just sometimes need to consciously do it. Like cleaning the kitchen was that vague project, right? Okay, so specifically you're gonna empty the dishwasher. And then the easiest point of entry that might be open the dishwasher. That's the thing, that's the nudge. That's what starts you rolling down the hill towards your goal for that period of time. And number three, you set the timer for 45 minutes or 30 minutes or 10 minutes. That's your way of saying this is just a task or a chore that I'm getting through. There's an end to it, and the reward is that when the timer goes off, my pee pee-doo-doo is done and I will take a break. When it comes to these timers, you guys might be thinking to yourself, okay, these are some ideas I should try them. These are all aspects of standard ADHD coaching. Timers are critical, and I will not shut up about it in here. You know what? All right. This is all right, we're gonna do this. This is from page 95 of the book. I'm literally flipping through this page. This is from the book ADHD Coaching, a guide for mental health professionals. And I'm not, I'm not even a professional. Don't let anybody read these books. Okay, so this is from page 95. Time management. One of the most common long-term goals set by clients involves improving time management. Clients with time management goals will rate the following items high on the coaching topic survey: improving time management, establishing routines and good habits, organizing school and work, getting to class or work on time, scheduling classes or meetings, and managing long-term projects or assignments. These are these are common things. These are things that happen to all of us quite commonly. So we can take some comfort in that, I guess. And then in a header font, italicized timers. And I quote, almost every client with a time management goal should consider using a timer of some sort. And I agree with Francis Privat and Abigail Lavrini, the authors of that book, whose names I may or may not have pronounced correctly. I talk about timers all over the place, so I don't want to go on too long. You can Google about it. There's a technique named after it, it's a pomodoro. Look, Google up at the Pomodoro technique. You like it. I use it. I create my own time lengths for my pee pee-doo-doos and breaks and scheduled tasks, but it is crucial. You guys want another acronym for that? That's so specificity, easy point of entry, timers. Set. It's like ready, set, pee-p. This is how you get stuff done that you want to do, but you have no motivation to do when you have ADHD. And I want to give you a warning and some encouragement about this work. If you try to fix everything all at once, it might not work. And I say that with 78 to 83% confidence that you're totally screwed if you try that. And I've always thought about it like um, like we're cocooning. Do you guys ever do that? Where I'm gonna tuck away and I'm gonna apply everything all at once, and I'm gonna change everything, and I'm gonna emerge into the world this new butterfly. I'm a new me. I changed it all. That never works for me. I go into the cocoon and then I end up turning into like a brundlefly. Like I'm a half human, half disfigured butterfly antenna coming out of my chin, one wing. Like, who am I? In ADHD coaching, and this is self-coaching here, this is how you do it. You chip away at things, you practice skills, and it's a process. And as you practice, you're gonna get better at it. I'll use that cheesy video that I the cheesy video I made. I made a cheese ball video relating to ADHD, to uh relating ADHD to solving a Rubik's Cube. I'll put the link in the show notes. If you guys get the newsletter, I know I sent it up through through there, but uh but using that when what we're talking about, you don't go from not solving a Rubik's cube to I'm now all of a sudden able to solve it in five minutes. But if you print out the algorithms and if you practice them, and the more you practice, the easier it gets to the point where you start to remember the algorithms. And then over time, with practice, you get to the point where now you've memorized the process. And you could pick up any Rubik's Cube in anybody's house and then impress the hell out of their eight-year-old kid. And that's what it's all about. Do that with your pee pee-doo-doos, and you will be on your way to managing your ADHD life. Alrighty, there's the fun summary for you guys. I hope it was helpful and that you guys are moving your needles forward. If you need any help with anything specific, feel free to reach out. I'm here for you. And if you're ready to start getting your shit together and you're looking for that externalized accountability, you can come join me and the others in the ADHD Big Brother Forum. That's where I live, that's where I'm externalizing my own accountability. And finally, if you found value in this podcast, please consider rating it on Spotify, reviewing it on iTunes, and sharing this with anyone you think will benefit from it. And I'll thank you kindly. Now, please have yourselves a fantastic week, and I will talk to you later.