Latest / JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain / 257: 3 ADHD Tips to Get Back on Track When You Can't Stick to Your Plans

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257: 3 ADHD Tips to Get Back on Track When You Can't Stick to Your Plans · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

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  Oh, the irony of the fact that the majority of content that you have probably consumed in 2026,
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  and frankly, every new year, has been about systems or routines or planning
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  or habits or how to change and how to stick to your changes.
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  But all of your best laid plans have already been busted. Can you relate?
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  Let's talk about what now. A wise person once said, Everybody is a genius,
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  but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
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  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 life.
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  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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  If you are any of my listeners from anywhere in America, you have likely been
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  hit by the recent winter storm event that just seemed to have covered all of America recently.
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  And your whole existence may have gotten thrown off kilter from power outages
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  or canceled trips or just being stuck in your home with kids at home that were
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  supposed to be back at school or maybe if you weren't affected by it,
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  you've been hit by the flu outbreak that seems to be very rampant here right now,
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  or any number of just life happenings,
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  which we don't seem to account for in our shiny new planners or the how to stick
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  to your goals by being consistent preaching that we have heard since the beginning
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  of this year and every year.
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  And when life happens, we have to be able to cope.
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  And this coping that we need to do has to take place in a way that will not
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  derail our whole mindset about what we're trying to achieve.
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  And I think particularly those of us with fish brains, this whole ADHD difficulty
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  of this all or nothing thinking causes us to literally give up.
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  Just, okay, well, that didn't work. It's over now. I tried.
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  It's January 30th and it's over.
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  I'm done. I'll start again next year And I don't want us to get stuck in that.
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  I want us to have some different perspectives. And I want to chat about three
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  different ways to think about what's happening if you're in the midst of a derail. That,
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  can maybe help us refocus. So the first one, and it's probably very obvious,
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  but it's worth saying, and that is, step one, I want you to get into your big
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  picture thinking, okay?
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  Right now, you've been living in the, I want to focus on what's happening today.
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  I want to stick to this new plan I had.
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  I got to get through today with these goals. It's the 10,000 steps.
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  It's the go do the exercise. It's to keep the sink clear.
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  It's to vacuum every other day.
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  It's whatever it was that you had set about doing. You were in that day,
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  every day, trying to see if you can make sure that you're doing what you said
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  you were going to do every single day.
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  And when we're zoomed in that closely and things start to come off the rails,
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  we can get incredibly frustrated at ourselves, at our families,
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  at our circumstances that we're in,
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  and we've lost the big picture.
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  And so I want us to zoom back out. There's a reason I called this the Joy Living Home Podcast.
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  Aside from the fact that that's my name, but the
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  joy-loving home is
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  not called the Clutter Clearing Podcast or
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  the Tidy Living Podcast or the Minimalist Mamas Podcast because I wanted us
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  to focus on the whole point of having our homes be this place that we're happy
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  in and excited about and that doesn't have to do with any particular kind of aesthetic.
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  It has to do with what we're prioritizing. So if you need to zoom out and remind
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  yourself that the most important thing that your goal that you're setting about
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  for your home is happiness and love and health of everybody in it,
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  if that's your bigger picture,
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  then ask yourself, what is the most important part to keep my overall goal for my home intact?
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  And if that is all that needs to happen right now is that my family knows they're
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  being taken care of, that I know I'm taken care of,
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  that I am not worried about things falling apart around us because all that
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  has to happen in this next hour is hydration and sleep and, you know.
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  Loved on because we just feel lousy and we just want somebody to sit with us.
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  Whatever it is that will make the people in your home feel loved and cared for
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  and nursed towards health, if that's a season you're in right now,
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  then lean into that season and quit beating yourself up about the fact that
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  the January New Year goal was falling apart.
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  So I just want us to shift into that,
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  okay, okay, let me get out of my grumpiness that I didn't get the 10,000 steps
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  yesterday, and let me ask myself, what am I prioritizing in this little blip, in this radar?
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  It is a big, long year, and this is a blip that we are in the midst of that has a finite end.
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  We are going to get through this and zoom out to that big picture.
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  Second idea, I'm calling the ad break.
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  Back in the day, every show came on with commercials.
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  And the commercial breaks were actually a wonderful chance to shift our focus for half a second.
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  We would jump up and go to the bathroom. We would go refill the water.
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  We would try and hurry up and load the dishwasher. We would do whatever needed
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  to be done and rush ourselves back to sit back and focus again on the show when the show came back on.
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  I actually miss it. The best we've got now are these ad breaks and these videos
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  we're watching if they even have been to be forced upon us.
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  And we're just sitting still and watching for the skip button to come on.
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  And we've lost any amount of sort of this intentional focus break that actually
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  sometimes can help us get other things done.
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  So I want you to zoom out and go, okay, let me look at this as the ad break to my plans.
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  My plans were to do X, Y, or Z for as long as I could all year long, but I am in an ad break.
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  I am in a disruption. I am in a lose focus on what you are focused on,
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  but what can I use this time for instead?
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  And if that helps you reset what your big picture was. If that helps you to
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  say, okay, you know what?
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  I might not be able to do the exact plan that I had, but what can I do right
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  now in this crappy time that we're stuck in right now?
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  So if it's, well, all the kids are stuck at home and I hadn't planned on figuring out.
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  Spring clothes because that seems really far away, but they're all going to
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  be shot up another three inches.
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  And maybe while I've got them all here, we're going to have summer party day
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  inside so I can make them try on all their summer clothes.
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  And they don't even know we're making them try on their summer clothes.
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  And it's a fun way for me to see what needs to go.
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  If they start trying things on and I need to hand them down to the next kid
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  and pack some others up to go.
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  And this was completely out of the cycle that I thought I would do this in,
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  this is what an ad break is for.
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  Like just if you're stuck with a kid who's not feeling well in their bed and
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  you can't go that far or they're on the couch sleeping and you are trying to stay still,
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  maybe it's the time to go through all the excess emails and work your way through those.
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  Something that you're like, I wasn't planning on doing this.
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  This wasn't any part of my plans.
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  But all of a sudden, here I am stuck in this ad break, and I'm going to shift
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  my focus for a little bit.
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  And when this season passes, this moment passes, this ad is over,
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  I can see if I want to refocus back on what the initial January plan was.
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  The next one I'm calling time to swipe. And I hesitated what I wanted to call
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  this because when I hear the word swipe, I think it's something we do every three seconds.
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  And I don't want this to feel that quick. I'm going to actually call it,
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  maybe it's time to find a new show.
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  Forgive the dogs barking in the background if you're hearing that somebody's
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  using a blower outside and they're.
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  When you might be watching a show and maybe you loved it the first season and
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  you're tuned into the second season and you're like, I don't know what they're
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  doing here. Like this completely fell off.
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  Oh, but we've done this far. Let's stick to it. Okay. I'm like forcing myself
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  to sit down and watch this.
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  Or you're partway through a movie and it's aggravating and you're like,
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  why are we wasting our time with this?
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  But you feel like you're supposed to see it through to the end. maybe not.
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  Maybe you're okay to cut your losses and say, why do I want to waste another
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  minute doing something that isn't enjoyable, that isn't working for me,
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  that isn't doing what I wanted it to do,
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  which was maybe I needed something light and easy and I'm watching this scary,
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  down, depressing movie right now. Maybe there's another time for that.
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  Whatever the case may be, If you are getting through this tough moment and you're
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  already dreading trying to get yourself the energy to go back to what you were doing,
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  maybe this is the time to say, okay, the pause was because I needed to change.
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  There is a lot of energy that goes into starting something new.
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  That is this excitement and momentum for our very novel-seeking brains that
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  gets us rolling. It gets the ball going.
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  But when a routine or a new way to try something has been interrupted,
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  the energy it takes to restart something that your brain already understands
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  and already knew and there's no novelty to it anymore is horribly,
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  I mean, it's drudgery.
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  And so instead of beating yourself up and going, but it was working, but it was great.
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  Why can't I ever, I'm such a failure to not be able to pick back up.
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  Why can't I pick back up where I left off?
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  The spark of the newness has run its course.
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  And now maybe it's time to go, okay, let me in the ad break,
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  in this season of things not going right, maybe I search out the next thing that excites my brain.
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  And look forward to starting that when this little season of a blip is over.
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  This is one of the biggest aha revelations when I started the membership group
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  and we would change topics every month.
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  And some people were like, oh, but I love that month and that month was great.
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  And it doesn't mean it wasn't great. It doesn't mean what we did that month was worthless.
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  But the longer we do the same thing, the more our brain starts losing the dopamine
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  for it and needing something new and different in a shift.
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  So maybe it's time to swipe.
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  Maybe it's time to abandon what was good about that first thing.
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  Be happy you did it. It's almost the end of January anyway.
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  Maybe you get excited to spark something new for February.
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  And instead of feeling bad about that, lean into it.
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  Think the spark we need to get going sometimes is worth more than the beating
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  ourselves up energy of trying to go back to what we had started with.
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  So think about three ideas. Make sure you're zooming out on the big picture.
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  Take advantage of this ad break that you're in.
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  And maybe it's time to swipe and start something new once everybody's healthy
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  again, or they're all back in school after the snow or whatever it is that you're
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  facing that took you off the rails.
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  And if I can add one little piece of bonus commentary, if you are sleep deprived
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  because of whatever season you're in, if that's little babies,
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  if that's kids that are teething, if that's kids that got sick and are up all
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  night, if you're in my case and you've got two dogs that are going through some
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  physical ailments that are causing them not to sleep, so therefore you're not sleeping.
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  Give yourself some grace. When we are sleep deprived, everything is harder.
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  Everything seems gloomier. We lose all perspective.
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  So start with the get your sleep, hydrate well, take care of you,
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  move around so your brain can clear, and then look at one of these three approaches.
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  Because let me tell you, sleep is a gift.
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  And I don't think we appreciate how much it affects us when we're in it,
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  and really going through it.
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  So anyway, I will leave you guys there.
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  I hope that sort of shift in perspective might be helpful to really rethink
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  and quit beating ourselves up on what's currently a rough blip in our radar.
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  All right. Until next time, guys, continue to choose joy.