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235: Completing Tasks with ADHD - Are You Getting the Credit You Deserve? · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

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Bear with me. I have a little story to share. So I live near the busiest airport in the world.
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It has been the busiest airport in the world since 1998. 28.
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27 years, the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, International Airport,
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in Atlanta has been, I should have looked up the stats while I was sharing stats.
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Just think about how busy airports you've been in. This one is the busiest.
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And I actually think they take pride in that title to the tune of the fact that
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we have talked a lot about it because I live a good hour and 15 minutes north of the airport.
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And we talk all the time as a family about how many other major cities have multiple airports.
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Atlanta has one. And it would be so great if they would build one on the north
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side of Atlanta, but they won't.
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And I think it's because they like this title, but I'm digressing.
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What's cool, though, is I think because they have this title,
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it makes for a really easy excuse.
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You can complain about how long it takes to get luggage, but you could go,
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well, you know, for as busy as it is, they do a really great job.
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Or you could complain about delayed flights, but you can go,
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percentage-wise, it's really quite small.
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So when you are dealing with that kind of volume, you know,
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you get a little grace kind of built in.
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I actually tease sometimes that is why I had four kids because you're a little
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unusual once you hit the four and above mark.
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And so people would be like, wow, for a mom of four, you insert anything.
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You have it really together. Or I can't believe all that you do for a mom of four.
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It was a great built-in excuse, particularly once I look back on life and realize
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that I'm most likely ADHD.
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And so it kind of covered for me for a really long time, because why would I
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not be chaotic? I was the mom of four.
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Like these built-in excuses work. But anyway, I'm a little far off on a tangent
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from the story I wanted to tell you.
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But what I was going to tell you is that this time of year, which if you're
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listening to this in real time is sort of late spring, early summer.
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The pop-up storms in the South can be vicious and can wreak havoc on flight plans.
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So we have a son that lives in Florida, and he has had several occasions of
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late where he has had to fly in or fly out of the busiest airport in the world.
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And probably eight out of his last 10 flights in or out have been delayed.
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Sometimes just a little bit sometimes a
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very large amount but it's
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happening regularly right now and so
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this most recent trip he was in over the weekend he had
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delays in both directions not too bad either way but one of them I was thinking
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I should have heard from him they're really good he's really great about saying
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taking off now just landed those are the things and I know about how long the
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flight is so I know when to expect to hear from him and I wasn't hearing from
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him and I wasn't hearing from him.
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So I pulled up the Delta app because we're a Delta hub and I looked up his flight
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and what's really cool about the app is it has this lovely little dotted line.
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Of what the flight path should be and then you can see where your airplane is on that flight path.
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Well, when I pulled it up, his flight path dotted line is a pretty direct line north to south,
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give or take slightly east or west, but you get the point.
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His actual line was this chaotic line.
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It was not straight. That's the word I'm trying to say.
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There was circling, there was avoiding some sort of storm.
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He actually ended up having to circle in the air for an hour before landing when he was coming.
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And then on the way back, what should have been a pretty straight line that
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was just slightly southeasterly, ended up going due east for a while until he got to the coast.
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Then it was down the coast and around to avoid this storm that I'm sure it was
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trying to fly away from on the way home.
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And so he says to us, hey, I'm trying to get flight status.
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Do I get credit for all those extra miles while I was in the air?
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We just laughed. We're like, of course you don't get any credit for the extra
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miles you were flying around.
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Although I think that's a fabulous way to penalize the airlines when they're not doing things right.
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Although I don't ever blame storms safety first 100% of the time.
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But when they're delaying you for other reasons, it'd be nice if they gave you
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points for how long you should have flown in the air and the hour it took to
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delay you or whatever. But anyway, I digress again.
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I might have to rerecord this whole intro. But anyway, this whole thought of
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him saying, do I get credit for the extra effort in the air,
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made me think of those of us trying to complete tasks with our ADHD brains,
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and it is not as simple as going from point A,
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starting a task, to point B, completing a task.
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There is a whole lot of flying off the flight path in the middle of that.
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And are we getting credit for all those miles?
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Let's talk about this on the other side of the intro.
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And something I think that might be able to help either yourself or any monkey brains in your life.
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And if you have no idea what I mean by monkey brain, please listen to the intro.
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A wise person once said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its
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ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid.
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Well, fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys.
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It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your
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life. I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four, and fellow Fishbrain.
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If you're looking for a place to get understanding, encouragement,
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and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks,
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then I'm glad you're here.
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Let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique.
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Together, we could have a joy-loving home.
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Okay, wow, that was a really long-winded intro,
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but I have to say one other sort of analogy because one of the things I pride
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myself about with this podcast is I am trying to give language to you when you're
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having conversations with your monkey brain people in your life so that they
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understand how you operate a little better,
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so that you understand how you operate a little better.
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And so that you can have some talking points or analogies that will help sort
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of drive your point home.
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Because if you don't experience what we experience, it's hard sometimes to understand
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and it's hard for us to explain sometimes.
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And yeah, so I give lots of stories about things like that.
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But the other one, if you have a sports loving monkey brain,
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think about the running back. So running back stats are a big thing, right?
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They're trying to get as many yards per carry.
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They're trying to get as many total yards in a season as they possibly can.
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There's records that are set based on that.
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And the success of their career is based on that.
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And there are times when you can watch a running back get that ball handed off
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to them, and they are running their heart out.
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But it is left to right. and by the time they get tackled,
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they may have gained one yard forward for the amount of running around that they did,
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which might have been 10 or more yards, or they get tackled backwards and lose
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yards even though they were running around like crazy during that play and they
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stand up and they're winded and they're exhausted and yet the only thing on
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that stat sheet is one yard.
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Your existence of completing tasks on your task list is that same feeling that
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I am running around like crazy trying to get all of this done.
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It has set me on side quests or setbacks or stumbling blocks or distractions
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and I feel like I got to the end of a four-hour stretch and I can't even fully
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check off a single thing on my task list.
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What the heck? We are not getting credit for those air miles or those yards run.
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And that can be super, super frustrating. So what's the tactical here? What can we do about it?
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Well, first off, when we talk about task lists, you know, I prefer a pending list.
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And a pending list is that sort of brain dump to get everything out that you
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can possibly get out of your brain.
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All of it doesn't ever have to be done. It's pending some sort of decision.
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It's pending, well, you know, that was really ambitious of me and there's no reason to do that.
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That's, wow, I thought that might be a priority, but it wasn't and I really
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don't ever need to do that.
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I put something down and forget that it exists and checklists later and realize,
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oh, that was already done.
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And I didn't even remember needing to do it, but it just kind of got done on
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a side quest. And now I can mark that off my list. Those are fun ones to get.
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But sometimes when you put something down on your pending list.
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Your brain can see it and go, oh, that's actually 12 steps.
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Let me break that out to some more steps so that I can easily accomplish them
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in little bits versus thinking just clean the house is a checkbox on a to-do list.
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So that is one part. And the other piece to the pending list is that you have a tackled list.
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And a tackled list are the things that you actually tackled.
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And you can tackle, like I said, by just making a decision not to do something
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or by making a decision to break
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it into more pieces or a decision to delegate it off to someone else.
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All of those are ways to tackle something. And the reason I encourage tackled
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lists is because we do this running around, not thinking we are accomplishing anything.
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But if we were to actually break down and write down what we actually did,
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that's our way of getting credit for those extra miles in the air or those extra yards on the field.
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We can get credit for them on the tackled side.
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So if you have never heard me talk pending lists and tackled lists,
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go back to episode 139 and take a minute to listen to that.
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I really think that's a way more useful tool for our brains than some sort of
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to-do list. All right, so that's one thing.
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The second sort of tactical that I would like you to consider is to play around
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with it, the possibility of a little mini time audit.
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I'm not saying do this as a rule, and I'm not saying do this as something,
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as a way to feel guilty or something punitive in your life.
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It is just a cool snapshot.
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Sometimes if you feel like there's been days and days where you're getting to
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the end of the day and you're exhausted,
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but you don't have any clue what you have to show for it,
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if you set a recurring 15-minute timer on your phone, or if you're afraid that
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will disturb you too many times,
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a recurring 30-minute timer on your phone, and you have a notes app sort of
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pre-pulled up with 15-minute increments or 30-minute increments,
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each time that timer goes off, just pop open that note and do a quick jot of
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what you were doing in that time.
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Sometimes it's going to be doom scrolling. Sometimes it's going to be stared
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into space because I couldn't figure out where to start.
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Sometimes it's going to be, well, I was working on my pending list and I was
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supposed to start the meal I want to have tonight because it needed to start
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early and I have nothing to show for it.
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But then you actually audit that time and you go, well, I emptied the dishwasher,
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I reloaded the dishwasher,
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I hand washed the dishes, I put them all away, I pulled all the ingredients
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out of the refrigerator,
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I grabbed the stuff out of the pantry, I realized I was missing an ingredient,
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I looked up what is a good substitute for that, I figured that out.
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And so no, if I literally was looking at the point A to point B and my task
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that I was trying to complete was start the meal, then I got nothing done.
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But if you audit for all those things I just said,
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suddenly you realize you're staying very busy with some things that are actually
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furthering you towards the cause, but you can't check it off as a checkbox because
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it's not actually complete yet.
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So that's where that list pops in. You pop over there and you write down all
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the things you actually did do.
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So another quick example of this.
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This is a dreaded one for a lot of us.
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Phone calls can be hard because we think, okay, all I have to do is I'm calling
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and making this appointment.
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I'm calling and I'm making sure that, you know, this medicine gets refilled.
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I'm calling and I'm making sure that, you know, the bill that there was a confusion
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on, somebody clarifies it.
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Those sound like four quick phone calls.
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One, somebody won't be ready to talk to you. Two, it'll bring up another question
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that you then have to go research.
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Search three you had to get more information so you have to do a call again
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four the date you wanted wasn't available and now you got to find your calendar
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and pull it back up and get it set.
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There's never shouldn't say never there is rarely a quick point a point b so
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that's when you have to give yourself credit that every step towards the right
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direction making the phone call making a note of what happened,
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making a note of what still needs to happen, making a note of what you need
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to get together before you can return that call,
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making a note that somebody's calling you back,
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making a note that they needed it in email form because they can't take the
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information over the phone.
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All of those are steps on the tackled list that you should get credit for because
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those are miles in the air or those are, you know, steps on that football field.
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But you need to take care.
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The action to, at the very least, if you're not, if you're like,
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Joy, that still sounds too complicated. I'm not going to time audit myself.
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I am not going to remember to write all the things down that I do.
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Then at the very least, add to your awareness.
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Have a moment when you're actually tackling something where you go,
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huh, I'm off course. I'm flying off course, but I'm doing something that needed to be done.
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I'm avoiding a storm. I am avoiding a setback. I'm avoiding getting myself stuck.
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So I'm going to go the weird way around this so that I can get past that storm and keep myself moving.
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At least be aware that you're flying off course, but that in this case,
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it's an impressive evasive maneuver so that you can eventually land safely on the other side.
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I hope that analogy worked for you.
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I will say, I'm going to plug one thing before I get off.
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I know where I am and what my time audit is for four hours every Tuesday because
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I run a membership group where we do four Zoom calls every Tuesday that we call Tackle It Tuesday,
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and we have accountability with each other.
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We declare what we're going to work on in 15-minute increments,
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and we go do it. And then we report back.
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And sometimes we report back that we got sidetracked. But that's okay.
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We're still actively in motion.
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And if that is something that sounds fabulous to you, we are opening back up
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again in September for new members.
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And if you want to be the first to find out when that's happening,
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go to joylovinghome.com slash membership and get on that wait list.
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Send me an email at joy at joylovinghome.com and just be ready to join up with
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us because I am telling you the biggest benefit from that membership is knowing
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that you've got some accountability partners to help you stay focused and on course.
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And they're the best group of ladies. I love them. So just quick plug on that.
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Until next time, continue to choose joy.