Bumbling around like a fly in a jar. Laid on the sofa with your mind chasing butterflies. Relate?
This is what a lack of prioritising feels like to me.
You start the day with the best of intentions. ‘I am going to get so much done today!’ you optimistically tell yourself. ‘I’ve got all the time in the world’. The only problem is you haven’t and you don’t.
I had a day like this recently. It’s not that I don’t have a to do list - I do. A big one. A humongous one in fact (with strong contributions from my wife). But having that list is only the first step.
I found myself scanning down the list… ‘What task do I start with today?’. When you have ADHD this level of prioritisation can be a real nightmare. I found myself highlighting nearly 20 jobs. Never going to happen. It’s like when we’re late but we still somehow think we can beat google maps. I was setting myself up for failure, setting unrealistic expectations and unsurprisingly when the end of the day came and I bounced from job to job leaving them all half done if at all… I felt pretty rubbish about myself. And I didn’t feel any better when my daughter came home from nursery but my mind was still on all the jobs I needed to get done – that time is precious and I want to be fully present with her.
Now that’s not really a recipe for more motivation the next day is it? I’m not going to wake up feeling like ‘yer, yesterday was great, I want to repeat that effort today!’
So what did I do? I remembered the past. I thought hard about what had worked previously. So often the answer lies within, but those of us with ADHD regularly have a hard time remembering. This is my tantalising top tip and I’ll share it with you now.
Tantalising top tip
Simple. This is the answer. Keep it simple. The easier you make something to do, the better chance you have of doing it.
Clear. The less ambiguous a task is and you know what to start with the more likely you are to begin.
Decided. The more decisions you make in advance, the smoother you’ll find things in the heat of the moment.
I call this strategy ‘Three things’
I start the day by picking 3 things from my to do list and I write them on a clean sheet or my mini whiteboard. I think of nothing else till they are done. Being a short list, it is so much easier to order them in terms of importance – 1, 2 and 3. You could do this the night before or in the morning.
Keeping your to do list short like this gives you a high chance of achieving today’s goals. Success leads to motivation, motivation leads to action and action leads to more success.
If you give this a go, or want some further tips, get in touch, I’d love to hear how you get on – michael@michaellingcoaching.com
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