ADHD and the Art of Productive Procrastination: A Self-Reflective Journey

In the world of productivity, there's a hidden trap that many fall into. It's a cycle that gives us a false sense of accomplishment, but leaves us feeling empty and unfulfilled. Just when you think you have it all figured out, there's an unexpected twist in the story. A twist that reveals the true nature of your pseudo-productivity habits and challenges you to confront them head-on. Are you ready to unravel the mystery and rewrite your productivity narrative?

In this episode, you will be able to:

Boost your productivity by breaking free from pseudo-productivity habits
Overcome fear of failure and unlock your full potential
Take control of your finances by managing perfectionism
Set achievable financial goals and watch your savings grow
Challenge and conquer your pseudo-productivity habits for good

The key moments in this episode are:

00:02:33 - Dave's Personal Experience with Pseudo Productivity
00:05:59 - The Connection between Pseudo Productivity and Fear of Failure
00:08:19 - Different Types of Perfectionism
00:14:46 - Overcoming Fear and Perfectionism
00:15:19 - Continuous Growth and Learning

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Pseudo-productivity. Pseudo Productivity. Productivity that is not really productivity. And that's the topic of today's show. Guys, welcome back to the show. It's ADHD Money Talk. I'm Dave DeWitt. I've got ADHD. I'm here to talk to you about money and also just random things that come to my mind because that's what happens and it's going to be fun. I'm on YouTube now. Go to YouTube. Like and subscribe. I'm supposed to say that because if you do that, then things happen that are good. And we're going to get right into the show because apparently on YouTube you got to be quick to the point. So, uh, podcast listeners, check out the YouTube channel and people on YouTube. Hello, my name's Dave. Okay. So pseudoproductivity. This is when you spend the entire day organizing your desk or cleaning your house or calibrating a new budgeting app or budgeting planner or deep diving a thousand different topics that really are not important at all, but just give you dopamine. And so that's what we're talking about. And so we calibrate, we calibrate, we calibrate, we make things great, we go down rabbit holes, we go on social media, we scroll, we make to-do lists that never get done, we make Spotify playlists that are going to help us get work done, but we don't do the work. We say that we're going to go get 10 minutes of exercise, a 10-minute jog to get our endorphins going so that we can work really good all day. But then we decide, you know what, that's too boring just running. Let me go on YouTube and find a really great exercise. And then next thing you know, you spend the next 45 minutes of your life trying to find the right exercise to do. And that leads you to finding a really cool app that gives these exercises that you really want to do because they're like novel and new and awesome. So then what you do is you just kind of buy a new $30 per month subscription to a thing that you end up not even using, and then that subscription just sits there, and now you're more poor because, well, really because of your ADHD, and it's okay to say that. Um, it's okay to say that. Doesn't make you a bad person. Makes you somebody who literally can't control their brain sometimes, and it's a struggle. I've been very guilty of this lately. And in a profession where my work is work that is meant to be worked on and then delivered or given or shown or presented or collaborated with with clients, that's hard work. And you know what's not hard work? Finding a new daily planning app, or just finding a new shiny new thing. And then you spend a lot of time on that shiny new thing in the hopes or in the very highly rationalized and justified hopes that you'll become more productive and do better, or whatever. So, just like for today, as an example, because here we are, I'm going to be open and honest and vulnerable with you today because it's sharing day, because it's sharing day. And I spent probably an hour and a half, two hours, with maybe even three hours, gathering up my favorite blogs and stuff and importing them into or adding them to the feed of this new app called Reader, which I really like because it's connected to this app called ReadWise, which I've spent probably dozens of hours in the past setting that up. And I can take notes, I can highlight like you would in Kindle, and I can have all my book and reading and article notes all in one place, which is great. And it will help me like do podcasts and make content and stuff, but is that even close to my top priority today? No. In fact, I told my wife this morning that I was going to eat the frog, which means that I was going to do the hardest thing on my needed to be done in the next few days list of things to do first. I was gonna do that first. Turns out I did not do that first, and I still haven't done that. In fact, I've already pushed it in my little daily planning app, which again is called Sunsama, and that's one that I spent another probably 10 hours researching all the other ones and chose that one a few months ago. And so it my whole like if I look if I reflect on my past any any given day, past three months, it's hectic and chaotic, hard work right before it absolutely needs to be done, and then filled in in the gaps by this sort of la la land. Let me just avoid and procrastinate on that as hard as I possibly can. And so that's my life. And that's probably your life. I mean, I like following the rabbit hole. I like following the shiny object. But guess what? It's not just that simple. It's not okay to me. But I mean, it is okay. Like I've accepted it. But out of curiosity, I need to know more about why, because the pseudo-productivity thing would be better called productive procrastination, for me at least. Imagine a world where everyone had ADHD or everyone loved people that had ADHD and they fully embraced it, and no one ever gave you a hard time about it. And you were just fully embraced and encouraged and enabled just to be your ADHD self at all times. Sounds awesome, right? That's not the case. But in that world, like we still would have the executive function struggles because it is our brain that has a problem. So we still would struggle with impulse control. We still would follow the shiny new object, the rabbit hole. We still would crave dopamine and do some silly things and be impulsive and have trouble starting things because it would still be hard to organize and prioritize a task that requires lots of coordination of different things and all this kind of stuff. And we still would get mentally tired because our life is like every day we expend twice as much energy as everyone else because half of our energy is spent just combating ourselves. And in that world, we still would struggle and we would still do some pseudo-productivity stuff. However, is it any surprise really when you think about it that the work that I'm avoiding doing is work for clients that will be given to clients? To me, it's not at all, and it makes all sense in the world because, for instance, why would I not do that? Which is work that just requires coordinating steps and it requires looking at a client's situation and making plans and creating budgets and creating investment strategies and creating all the stuff that I do. But why is that so hard? I mean, I know my I know that stuff, I know it pretty well. I do enjoy it. I mean, I mean, it's hard for me to say that and feel honest about that when like I'm not doing it, but like this is my passion, so why is it so hard for me to do it? And then why is it so easy for me to download a new personal knowledge management app and create a thousand different tags and structure everything and get everything data talking to each other? And that's also hard, right? That's a lot of moving parts that I that's like a puzzle that I love solving. But why can't I solve the puzzle? Wait, I do solve the puzzle for clients, however, it's what I'm saying is it's harder for me. I'm not trying to make myself look too bad, it's harder for me to get started on that and do it or get into it. What what's the difference? Well, there's a huge difference. The huge difference is that one means that I'm going to have to be, I feel like I'm going to be judged. I have to have my work be given to someone or to be collaborated with, and then it opens me up to the idea or the possibility of being criticized. And that's a fear of failure issue. And that's what I'm really getting at here. Is it's a little bit of rejection sensitivity, but it's a fear of failure, and it's BY it's so irresistible to find something that feels productive, that feels like it's feeling some, you know, that feels like I'm getting stuff done, but really uh I'm avoiding uh feeling like I might fail. And that's something that I've come to grips with. And then and um and it makes sense because people with ADHD are way more perfectionistic, which is really just a well, there are different ways to be a perfectionist, but the way that I relate to it most is fear of failure version, where you feel like you have to make something perfect for someone, you have to please them, you have to, you know, because you you almost want to go above and beyond on any given thing you're doing for somebody else because you want to leave no doubt that they're going to criticize you, but even then you still don't feel like it's enough, probably, or it's not perfect because that's what it is. There are other perfectionisms, I think I was doing some research on this, and like uh self-oriented perfectionism, which is associated with unrealistic, irrational standards for the self and punitive self-evaluations. Okay, so this type of perfectionism can reveal a vulnerability to a host of mental health diagnoses, such as generalized anxiety, depression, and eating disorders. Oh my goodness. Um, so that's that. But then the socially prescribed perfectionism associated with beliefs that others are harshly judging and criticizing you with the kind of perfectionism you may think that you must be perfect to obtain social or approval or acceptance from others. This type is also directly connected to social anxiety. All this stuff is where I'm coming at at it, you know, in my mind. This is how it all makes sense to me. I am doing productive procrastination, pseudo-productive activities because I avoid doing deep work, partially because just ADHD, and I'm just procrastinating in general, but I think mostly it like you I'm not procrastinating on everything because otherwise I'd be doing nothing. So it's just on the work that puts me to this into the spot, like into the even doing these podcasts. I mean, sometimes I'm sitting here, I'm like, how do I sound? Like, how do I how do I look? I'm on the camera now, I'm going into the YouTube world, and I'm like, Am I doing this right? I've already restarted this thing like three times, and now I'm just like, screw it, I'm just gonna talk, and if whatever, if they don't like it, they don't like it. It's okay. That's okay. And part of this is acceptance and yada yada yada. Uh, I think Russell Barkley said something about that we need to be viewing ADHD more in the lens of uh emotional dysregulation. When I'm doing the work, the the the pseudo-productivity work, there is there, the only background anxiety that I have is like the anxiety of like I should be doing something else. But genuine, but truly, I'm kind of having fun and I'm kind of uh exhilarated by this new thing I'm doing, and but it's a it's really just an escape. It's a form of escapism. I'm escaping into an alternate reality where I just get to do whatever I want instead of doing what I need to do. And I'm just avoiding negative emotions because when I start doing the hard work, the work that's going to get in this, and it doesn't just I keep saying client work, but it also applies to even when I do social media posts, when I'm writing a blog, when I'm doing anything that's going to be put in front of others. Anything, anytime it has a chance to be judged, as soon as I start doing it, the negative emotions come into my mind of like the it's like a it's like a low-grade hum of anxiety about making like of like having to make it perfect and and feeling so much pressure, and that's really stressful. And I and I'm saying this all talking about me as a way as a way to hopefully relate to you because I'm sure and I know there's a lot of you out there that feel this way because I mean it's pretty clear from statistics that uh we've got a lot of this. So, yeah, there's other kinds of avoidance, procrastination, putting off or delaying a task that seems too difficult or extremely unpleasant. Another thing is that's related to this all is um avoidance procrastination results in putting off or delaying a task yet. Because uh I sometimes I feel like an imposter. Like, do I really know my stuff? I'm I'm a certified financial planner, but can I really call myself that? Do I really know all this knowledge? Am I able to apply it well? Like, am I gonna get found out by clients or the the public at large that like I'm I'm I'm a fraud? Oof, that's a tough thing to be thinking, but if it's and part of ADHD for a lot of us, and for me, it comes back to always when I reflect on childhood and stuff, micro-traumas. I used to think trauma was a car crash, like literally, like that's a traumatic event. Well, it's been pretty interesting to find out that um all the little things that happened to me that was uh just teachers being mean and coaches being mean and being teased, and that's trauma too. And I've had to accept that and I embrace that now, and it helps. It helps. The good news is that I do work with other people with ADHD, where so we're all in the same boat, you know. We're kind of like uh we're very grace, graceful with each other, and that's part of what you gotta do. You have to take criticism gracefully, it's not easy to do, but you have to just you know try. You have to try to receive feedback with grace because you're gonna feel that emotional response. You're gonna feel it hard, it's gonna come in and be like, ah, jeez, or it could it just be a funny look? Like someone could say, like, to me, like, oh, this is great, oh there's a slight tone of not great in there. Oh gosh, life is coming to a crushing end right now. And so, yeah, another way to deal with this is what we're talking about now, is just like becoming very aware and learning, understanding what's brought you to this point in your life. And I knew I was maybe not going to be able to make a connection to money, but there is a connection to money here. I mean, all the things I said are can be pretty much related. Like uh the pseudo-productive behavior with getting your finding sets together is simply clearly finding the shiny new budget app or book or you know, notebook or worksheet, and spending a lot of time filling it out and filling it up. But I hear the story over and over again. I something happened that blew it up, and then I got overwhelmed, and then I stopped, and I thought I was a failure. So lowering your expectations for one can help with all of this. Set yourself really easy goals can help. If you have imposter syndrome, address it. How often have your worst fears with this kind of stuff ended up like how much how often have they ended up being not a big deal at all, or like not even close to the scenario you imagined? Um, talk to yourself, say nice things to yourself, tell yourself it's gonna be okay. I am going to be okay. It's okay, it's okay, I'm okay. Deep breath, I'm okay. That helps me. When it comes to money, you have to address your fear of failure because a lot of it might be that or come down to that, or the perfectionism. It may come down to feeling like an imposter or feeling just a complete and absolute lack of knowledge that just doesn't that just makes you feel like you can't do it. So you don't try really. The point of this show was, and you can see like this podcast, like I in my mind, it had this like like great start, great beginning, great middle, great climax, if you will, great, you know, what's the what do they call the next part? Descending, you know, the the cooldown after the climax, and then we're gonna have a nice resolution. There's no real resolution, you have to just keep fighting, keep becoming aware, keep learning, keep investigating yourself with curiosity without judgment. That's huge for me. And when you are thinking about money, all I want you to do is just start with the easiest possible thing and tell yourself, no matter what happens over the next week of trying the very easy goal, like I'm going to spend fifty dollars less this week on groceries or on whatever this week. And if you don't do it, just say, okay, I accept it. Let's try again. And so, yeah, get aware of your pseudo-productivity habits because it's productive crowd procrastination. It really is just procrastination. I'm terrible at it, but we're gonna get better together as a team, as an ADHD team. We're gonna get better, we're gonna figure it out. And so, with all this said, now I'm gonna let you go. And I hope you enjoyed the podcast. And I look forward to talking to you again, and I'm gonna get better at this.

unknown 16:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:48

All right, see you guys.