“If Everything is Important, Nothing Is Important” – The ADHD Trap of Doing It All

In this episode of 'Organizing an ADHD Brain,' host Megs dives into the critical concept of prioritization, especially for those with ADHD. Megs shares her personal life updates about preparing to move across the country and the importance of having meaningful conversations with family. She details her realization that trying to do everything at once leads to nothing being truly important and emphasizes the need to prioritize tasks. Megs discusses the challenges of executive function, time blindness, and impulsive tendencies associated with ADHD, offering practical advice on how to slow down, focus, and be effective in daily tasks. This episode is a reminder to notice what truly matters and to take care of oneself despite the chaos.

02:24 Decluttering and Selling Everything
02:50 When Everything is Important, Nothing is Important
03:43 Balancing Excitement and Focus
04:28 Managing ADHD and Executive Function
05:05 Overwhelmed by Busy Schedules
13:14 The Need for Rest and Self-Care
21:28 Prioritizing and Organizing Your Life

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The ULTIMATE Recycling & Disposal Guide: Disposal Guide

Transcript

0:42

Hey, welcome back to another episode of organizing an A DHD Brain. I'm your host, Megs, and I'm super excited to be talking to you today about something I say all the time on this podcast is when everything is important, nothing is important. What does that mean? So first, a little bit of a life update. We are still getting prepared to sell our house and move across the country. And this last week, my husband and I sat the girls down thinking this might be about 10 to 15 minutes of just talking about what we've been talking about for a while now, the girls have talked about their excitements and things like that, but we truly sat down as a family and started asking them questions about. What they wanted this trip to be. We told them a little bit more about the timeline and where we're gonna be, where, and helping them understand. And we sat there for an hour and a half having a conversation as a family. It was so darn cool. So Charlotte, my 8-year-old said that she wants to have travel Tuesdays. Then Thursday rolls around and she goes, oh, it's travel Thursday, which was so cool. We're like, okay, let's do it because why wouldn't we have travel Tuesday and travel Thursday? And we sat down and talked a little bit more about what our hopes and dreams and goals are throughout the trip and what we really want. It's been really fun and one of the reasons why I started this podcast is because having conversations is so important to me. I don't remember having conversations with my parents as a kid. My dad was in the Navy, so he wasn't around a lot. And my mom is deaf she was born deaf. Anyway, the art of the conversation I think is beautiful and I think it's something that is oftentimes lacking in our society, which is why having podcasts are so freaking cool. We get to start to understand people from a new perspective and have real conversations and go in with curiosity versus just assuming one thing, from people. So being able to go in with curiosity with my kids first has been fascinating. It's just been so interesting to get their perspectives, to get their full unique perspectives on everything that's going on in our life. My husband even asked the question, what do you think it's gonna be like when we don't have all the stuff that we have right now? We're going to be selling everything. And honestly, when he asked that question, I was like, oh, whoa. What a change we're going about right now. And if you're just starting this decluttering journey, that is not where you start. This is not where you start selling everything. That is a big journey. Because it does take a lot of time. Selling stuff is a whole nother part-time gig. But having these conversations has been truly fascinating and has allowed me and my husband to have deeper conversations about it as well. It got me inspired to share with you about today's episode. When everything is important, nothing is important. My boss used to say you get too excited about everything. He never explained what that meant. And I'm like yeah, I always get excited about everything because isn't that what I'm supposed to do? I'm excited about the mission. I'm excited about these projects. I'm excited about education. I'm excited about inspiring my team to get to where they want to go. In this world of corporate, so many things. But I get it now. I get it because as I left the corporate world and started my business, I wanted to start a podcast and I also got certified to teach manifestation. And I also became a coach, but I was also doing in-person organizing and there were so many things that I wanted to do, but without being able to fully focus and get really good at one thing, I didn't feel like I was actually thriving at anything. So that made a lot of sense to me. It doesn't mean that my brain has changed because I still get excited about so many different things. But I bring that up today because as we continue to attack the world and you listen to this podcast and you figure out how to get more organized or what you want in this life. Your brain isn't changing. Your A DHD is still there in full form. You're still gonna have executive function difficulties. You're still gonna have time blindness, you still may act on impulsive tendencies, but part of that is now being aware of so many of these things that you weren't aware of before. And that awareness allows you to start to question some of the things that you wouldn't have questioned before you just would've done, because that's the way you've lived your life, your whole darn life. So as we approach this change coming up in our world, right? We have sold our house. We're under contract, so we're doing all kinds of different stuff. We did a bunch of painting. We did a bunch of like hole patching. We changed all the pictures in our house to not include our family, which was a little sad, but we're also selling a bunch of stuff. But then the girls are. Finishing school and they just turned six and eight, and then it's gonna be my birthday. And then we had a joint birthday for them. And then we have sleepovers coming up and then they have extracurricular things that they're doing. But then my husband is finishing his job and he is trying to find a new job right now. And of course there's things that I wanna be doing and I'm building this business at the same time, in fact, like there's so many things I wanna be doing that it's very hard to not try to do them all at once. So right now the things that are truly pulling my attention is like getting my community moved over to circle. They're so like it is an executive function mess because there's so many things that I want to accomplish by moving the community over there, but I have to really break it down and do things one at a time to make sure that it's not only simpler for me, but also for anyone who's joining the community. And then I have my clients, and the more I systemize things to make it easier for myself, the easier it is for me to accept new clients, to be able to support everyone in a way that makes sense. But if I were to also start classes right now and to also have a group coaching program and all of these other things that I want to do, it wouldn't allow me to truly put my best effort into the community and being the best coach I could possibly be. So while I'm excited about all of these other things, I have to bring myself back to reality and say, while those things are still possible. I've got to be able to focus on the things that I wanna do right now. Like I've got to be able to bring it back in, even if they're not done right. Like I, I've got to be able to bring it to a sense of completion where I feel like I've got control over what's going on, and I feel like I'm really good at all of these things before I start to build upon it. Especially before I can start to hire more people. But in the sense of, like when we're thinking as a mom or as a parent in general, we often take on so many different things and so many different roles because we feel like we have to. And if we don't, then we're not gonna look good to Suzy Homemaker down the street or to this badass woman who's working this amazing job and also manages to have the perfect lunches for her kids every single day. I don't think any of us truly have it together in a sense that we don't all cry a little bit on the inside because I don't think that we are ever meant to be this busy. I really don't like. We're so busy. There's so many things going on on a regular basis, but when everything is important and nothing is important, how do we possibly get to the point where we can start to take things off of our plate? Ultimately when we have so much going on, we are so focused on getting everything done that then it's hard to even know where to start. We go into fight or flight mode. So oftentimes our nervous system plays a huge role in the way that we react to things, especially when we have so much going on. And oftentimes we prefer chaos because we operate in a state of like calm and ease when there's chaos around us because we know that there's always gonna be something to do next. When it comes to our stuff, our clutter, we have clutter by the door and we've got clutter in the kitchen and clutter on the kitchen table and in the living room and in our kids' room, and then in our room, and then in our closets, and then in our front hall closet and then in our office, how do we possibly know where to start? And oftentimes because all of those things are so important, we try to do a little bit of everything, and sometimes it leads us to flitting from one room to another, trying to do a little bit of everything where we don't actually leave any visible results. And part of it just prevents us from starting in general because if I have to do my office and then in my laundry room, and then in my room, do you guys ever ask yourselves what's the point of even starting when this is gonna take so much longer than I want it to take? Like why would I start to learn a different language? Because I'm not gonna be fluent right away and that's gonna be so annoying. Says me, who's been on Duolingo for I don't know, 72 days now and I'm still not fluent and it's so frustrating Even eating healthier. I know I wanna eat healthier, but what does that even mean? I don't know what it means, and I don't know how to cook healthy. Why would I even bother starting now? There's too much work that goes into it that's gonna be too much of a change, and knowing me, I'm probably just gonna fail. That's because we put so much pressure on ourselves to be so perfect at things right away. Which is again, why we sign ourselves up to do all of these things, because we wanna show up and say, oh, like I got snack for the kids' soccer game. In fact, you know what? I'll just take over snack and why don't you just allow me to do all the party planning too, because that sounds easy. I'm good at party planning and that's not gonna take up any time at all, when really it takes up. So much time and we don't truly realize it, until it's too late to ask for help, because it's the night before this party, and you've gotta get all of these things that you've waited until the last minute to actually do and coordinate. But it's because when everything is important, nothing is important, you still get things done, but now you shame yourself because you're not getting everything done. And then your to-do list continues to get longer. You continue to put yourself on the back burner because who has time to take care of themselves when they're also trying to plan for everyone else? And especially when you're a mom and you are basically the business owner or the coordinator of everything that's going on in the house. at some point the schedule will get a little bit lighter and then I'll take a break, then I'll take care of myself. But when's the last time that actually happened? In reality, when's the last time your schedule got so clear that you actually had time to do something that you wanted to do? Because I bet most of you don't even know what the heck you would wanna do if you had just even a little bit of time in your schedule to actually sit down. So coming back to organizing, if you're not used to being an organized person, if you never learned how to be an organized person, or even if you used to be, maybe you had more help previously and now you're in a position where you have no help whatsoever, you have to do it on your own. You are now having to try to fit it in or catch up in between doing all of these other things and your schedule is not going to stop just so that you can start to be more organized. And so that's where we have to figure out how do we make room in our lives where we understand truly what we're capable of in these moments and what can get put off for the future. Because like I said earlier, I wanna plan classes. I really wanna do group coaching. I'm so excited about doing it, but I want it to be really good. If I want something next week, it would be fine. It wouldn't be really good. It wouldn't be exactly what I want it to be. And I'm not saying make it perfect, but I am saying that's not my priority right now. My priority is my kids and my husband, and my business and my clients and my community. And adding that in would take away from all of these other things that I'm doing. I'm not ready. I don't have the capacity to do it right now. So why don't we do that when it comes to our personal schedules too? Because our personal schedules keep getting fuller and fuller, and we keep saying yes and yes. I saw this idea the other day that said, what if we had a to not do list. Okay. And then if someone says, would you like to do this? You could refer to your to not do list. So you could say no, that's actually something that is not on my to-do list. It is on my to not do list. So that we could start to understand what we can say no to, even if we truly still want to say yes to it too. When it comes to seeing family and doing all of these things for my business, it's so easy for me to still say yes to everything, it's because I know a little bit more about my brain that I understand that if I say yes to everything, I am not going to have the ability to do everything, and I'm gonna let myself go first. So a lot of it comes down to the dopamine too. Like we genuinely wanna be around a lot of people, and I'm an introverted extrovert, I love to be around people, but I also love my rest, but I forget that I need rest. I actually forget that I need time away from people and to have some solid downtime before I'm recharged enough to go out and have fun again. There used to be times that I would plan something on Friday, on Saturday and Sunday, and after enjoying Friday so much, Saturday comes around and I'm like, I don't even wanna do this. And then we're doing something again the next day. It's exhausting. We forget how much we truly need to recharge our batteries. Having kids has really helped me understand and see their need for rest and understand that they need a break during the day to understand that, oh, maybe this relates to me too. Maybe I also need a break during the day. But part of it is that need for dopamine, right? But it's also our need to prove ourselves to the world and perhaps to ourselves. Then part of it is this people pleaser nature that a lot of us have that we grew up with. It's about going above and beyond. It's this perfection that we're seeking and oftentimes it's so much easier to show up and help someone else than it is to help ourselves. That's so interesting, that's a super deep question is why is it so easy for us to go and help other people versus helping ourselves? When you continue to prioritize your to-do list and everyone else's needs above your own, you are never going to prioritize your own. That's part of where the noticing takes place. When you start to notice that you're always putting other people in front of yourself, you look at yourself in the mirror and you realize why the circles are so dark under your eyes, why you're not getting sleep at night, because you do feel like you always need to be going. You might be waking up in the middle of the night because you feel like there's something else that you've now forgotten to prioritize. But that's where filling yourself up is so important. And this is, oh my gosh, like being selfish is incredibly important and not selfish in a, like you're ruining other people's lives because you're selfish type of thing, but selfish in that. You genuinely know how to take care of yourself first, because when you do, you're able to fill your cup up so darn much that you are able to shine your light in this world so much more when you are selfish about getting up early and prioritizing your day, making sure that you drink a cup of coffee, making sure that you're planning your day. Making sure that you get a couple of deep breaths before other people wake up in the morning. Call it selfish, call it whatever you want. If you take time to breathe during the day, just 60 seconds of noticing your breath, that's taking care of yourself when you take a walk for 15 minutes. That's taking care of yourself when you watch trashy tv. That is taking care of yourself. But when you rest where you think you're resting and then you still have 20 other things going on in your mind because you can't possibly shut your brain off, that is not prioritizing yourself. The first things to go when we are busy is ourselves. We stop prioritizing moving our body or eating healthy or drinking enough water'cause we forget that water exists or we're skipping meals because we don't have time because other people come first. But the truth is that when you stop being selfish, oh my gosh, why is it such a negative word? But like when you focus on taking care of yourself, you literally are just prolonging the life you get to shine your light on here in this world. The amount of light you have to give to your kids because you're literally hydrating your body with the appropriate amount of water on a regular basis. This is me being really real for myself right now because I have not been prioritizing water and I need to. I live in Colorado. It comes back to when they tell you on the airplane to put on your own mask before you put on your kids. It just means that you are ensuring that you get to live while you help your kids live too. It's important that you stay alive so that you can ensure your kids stay alive. You know that when you're getting air into your lungs, you will absolutely make sure that your kids get those air masks on. But if you put theirs on first and you forget about yourself, you might pass out and they're not gonna be able to help you. They don't have the capacity to do it. That's why we need to learn how to regulate ourselves and show our kids what it's like to take care of ourselves so that they can learn how to do it too. Because being mamas and dads out in this world is freaking hard. It is a lot of work. I think almost every person I've talked to that's become a client or is in the community, has talked to me about how they just need time. They just need someone to come over for an entire week to revamp their entire house, and then everything will be fine. Or they just need to come up with this perfect schedule and then everything will be fine because things will start to fall into motion. But that's not the way that life works. No matter how much you think that your life is gonna slow down or your to-do list is gonna get shorter, or one day you'll be able to breathe. That's just not the case. Life continues to happen. There's always ridiculous wrenches getting thrown into your plans. But when you're trying to do everything, you're never gonna have time for yourself if you don't have yourself in that everything mix. This continues to show up for me lately, and it happens often. My brain has not changed just because I talk about this and I know how to be organized. It's just that I'm now aware of it. And so this morning I knew I wanted to go to yoga, but as the time kept creeping closer and closer, I wanted to go less and less. I was like, I don't wanna do it. I don't wanna prioritize myself. I know moving my body is important. I'll do it some other time. I was coming up with all of these excuses not to go, and I went and I felt really good about it. But oftentimes when I'm so busy and I'm so frustrated about everything that I have to do, I oftentimes sacrifice myself the most, and I forget about taking care of myself and I forget about drinking that water. So Megan, this is great. Like thanks for telling me I do too much. I already get it, but how do I possibly slow things down? Part of it and we've talked about this in previous episodes, about just understanding that you don't actually have to rush through everything that you're doing, what. does it look like to slow down bringing awareness to it, even just driving to the next game. You don't have to speed. If you went the speed limit, it might make a difference of one or two minutes, but let's be honest, it actually doesn't make a difference at all with all the lights so what does it look like to slow down a little bit? Even just in the day to day? Or what if instead of having 20 things on your to-do list, you planned three that you got done that day. Three bigger things that you actually accomplished and then you could say, wow, I'm a champion. What if you sat down in the beginning of the week and you said, what are four things that I would really like to get done by the end of the week? What would I feel really good about doing? And then you focused on those four things, or even just coming back and saying what's one thing I could do today that would make me feel like 10 years from now. Megs is so proud of me for getting that done. We don't have yesterday. We don't have tomorrow. We literally only have the day that we're in and we're so good at procrastinating. We could totally put it off until tomorrow, right? Or we could also beat ourselves up for not doing it yesterday. So why not do it today? But you can't do everything today. I am curious, if you were to look at your to-do list right now, whether you have it written down or if it's all floating up in your head, I would recommend writing it all down. What would you see as the most important thing on that list? Is it your kids? Is it kids' activities, sports games? Is it meals? Is it to-do list projects around the house? Is it art projects? Is it scheduling things? Is it doing taxes? What kinds of themes are coming up for you? I am curious if you could start to take notice of that because when I decided to really take control of my to-do list and what I was getting done on a regular basis, my common themes were myself, even though I didn't want to. This was something that I put on the list because ultimately I wanted to see that I had something for myself down each day, and it could even be reading a book for 15 minutes. I found free audio books on Spotify the other day, and I started listening to one and it had me captivated within the first five minutes. I was like, oh, this is great. Then it's my family. And different things like spending time together on Travel Tuesdays or travel Thursdays, or maybe we were just outside. Maybe we would love going to the movies lately. That's been really fun. Minecraft was hilarious. Or even just doing gardening outside. My girls love helping with gardening, even if their friends distract them and then they decide to go play with them instead, that's fine. Totally cool. What matters for the home? Things like meals, things like regular cleaning stuff or decluttering and getting things in their place, putting things away, getting things back to a place where we don't feel so overwhelmed by all the stuff in our home all the time. And then my last priority for myself is my business. I like to, as I plan my week and my day, I try to plan my day each day, and I'm not always successful at it, it's just continuity. I come back to it whenever I don't do it for a couple days, I come back to it, and that makes it easier to accomplish. But for my business, then I say, okay, these are the things I'm gonna get done today for my business on my to-do list. I have six things that I accomplish each day. I do have a download on my website. If you go to organizing an A DHD brain.com, and then click on store. You can see I have a to-do list download there. It has priorities at the top, then the date, and then you fill in the time slots to see if your to-do list is actually achievable.'cause we are time blind and it's very easy to say, we're gonna do all of these things, but then we see that time is not actually going to be on our side when we try to accomplish these things. It's something that I created for myself and I put out there because it's a really good foundation. I wanted to keep it as simple as possible to make it feel like it was. Something that you could accomplish. So go check it out. Otherwise, I did a couple episodes last year on planning your day, and I like super structured it out. The episodes is called Less Busy, more Bliss. Prioritize Your Schedule with A DHD. So there's part one and part two. There's also one I did earlier this year called A DHD and prioritizing taming the overwhelm when everything feels important. And so honestly, this episode is likely very similar to things that I talked about in there, but it's about repetition. It's about what is gonna work for you, because not everything I say is gonna work for you. I found what works for me, and that's why I asked so many questions to help you figure out what's gonna work for you too. So this week I have a challenge for you, if you write everything down and start to see the common themes, amazing. But if you don't get around to it because you're in constant fight or flight mode right now, and just listening to this podcast is amazing because you found time to listen to this amongst the other insane life things that you're doing. So start to notice as you go from one thing to another, what are the things you're going from Just bring notice to your life. Are any of them for you? And if they're not, why not? And if they're for everyone else, is there anything that you could possibly say no to? Is there anything that you're saying yes to because you feel you have to. Is there anything you're saying yes to because you think that people will look at you negatively if you say no? And if so, I'll think you're pretty darn awesome if you say no to something that's gonna allow you to have a little bit of space and time for you to think clearly, for you to not feel like you're in constant go mode all the darn time. Honestly for you to feel like you have a little bit of control over this to-do list, because sometimes we've got so much on our to-do list that we go into complete freeze mode and we're just like, Nope, not doing any of that. I know I could do some of it, but Nope. Uhuh, and it's our body's reaction to it, and we're just like, Uhuh not doing any of it. I think when you start to recognize that not everything on your to-do list is a priority, it helps you start to understand. How you could go about your day in a different way. It's hard.'cause there's so much more to this, like there's the regulation piece of it and being in constant fight or flight mode or dysregulation, so to speak. Even pausing for a second to think about this is a lot. So like I will do more episodes on that. But just understanding that it's not about saying no forever, it's just no, today it's just not right now. What are the things you have to do today and what are the things that would be okay if you put off until tomorrow? And sometimes that does become us, right? And so coming back to, is it important that you fill up your own cup before you fill up others? Yeah, it really is. It's so important that you take care of yourself. And I'm not talking self-care, like going to a spot a although. That's amazing. Also get yourself a massage, right? Go get a facial. Awesome if you can afford it, if you can make that a part of your life. But no, taking deep breaths and even just recognizing how grateful you are for this life that you live. And if you're not yet there, that's okay too. What I have noticed with my clients, with anyone that I meet with A DHD and with myself is that sometimes we need some time to think about this before we truly start to take action. The one thing that I just want you to take away from today is notice. How could you start to notice what things matter the most? How do you start to notice? What does that look like in your life? I'm curious, without needing to take action on it right away, because you're not gonna change your schedule in a week. Your brain is gonna over complicate it anyway, and then you're gonna fail and you're gonna feel like you're a failure because you didn't complete the 20 things that you had on your change of plan scheduled planning thing. Just what's something you can take notice of this week? That's all you gotta do. I'm not gonna give you anything more complicated to do than that. I am gonna invite you into my community. I would love for you to come to my community. It is right now close. However, you could go to my website and sign up for the wait list for the community that is going to be launching on May 15th. So the price of the membership is gonna be$37. If you're on the wait list, there might be some exciting. Delicious freebies and other excitements that'll be coming your way before it officially launches on the 15th. I would love to see you there if you're interested in coaching. I have one slot left available for the month of May, and I may shut it down for the summer as we're traveling keeping the clients that I already have. So I'd love to chat with you about coaching, even if you're not ready to sign up right away, just to see. What's piqued your interest about it, and I can help you understand what coaching is versus therapy, things like that, and I'd love to meet you, which would be so cool. Oh, another thing, when you sign up for the community, there may be an opportunity for you to coach one-on-one with me for 30 minutes for free. More about that as you sign up for the wait list. And I will keep you in the loop. So next week we'll be even closer to the launch of the community. I'm so excited. There's gonna be some really good stuff in there. And Circle is the community we're moving to. And it's so much more A DHD friendly than where I'm at right now. I'm so excited to share it with you. I just can't wait to see you guys and support you through this journey of getting organized and understanding that you don't have to change your life. So much to feel like you have to also stop your life to get organized before you can continue on feeling successful. And one more thing, you don't actually have to earn that self-care, right? Like you don't have to earn taking care of yourself. You don't have to get 20 things done off your to-do list in order for you to say yeah, I can finally take care of myself. Now, you don't have to put everyone else first in order for you to do it. In fact. It's not recommended. When you sacrifice yourself, you grow resentful. No matter how much you do it. You could shove all those feelings down inside, but when you put everyone else first, constantly, the resentment grows. And it's not pretty. Not for anyone else and not for you. But when you take time to put yourself first and then you take care of everyone else, oh, that light you shine is so beautiful. If this podcast resonated with you at all, I would love for you to share this with just one person. When the podcast gets shared, we grow and it helps other people with a DHD brains get seen and heard just like you. And if you're feeling extra feisty please leave a review anywhere that you listen to podcasts. It means so much to me and to the podcast. It's still. Such a small podcast. I am growing. I am building this business, and I am so grateful to have you along for the ride. But any time you share with just one person, it goes so far. I hope to see you in the community or even just on the wait list. On that note, I hope you have a beautiful spring week, and I will see you again soon. Bye.