Latest / JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain / 245: The ADHD Mom’s Tactical Game Plan for October–December

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245: The ADHD Mom’s Tactical Game Plan for October–December · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  Are you by chance an ADHD mom, or at least suspect that you are?
• 0:07
  I'm guessing that's possibly why you have discovered my podcast,
• 0:11
  but I want you to know that we are in the final quarter of 2025,
• 0:17
  if you're listening to this in real time,
• 0:20
  and that means we have 92 days left in this year to accomplish all of the goals
• 0:26
  and dreams that we set upon ourselves on January 1st.
• 0:31
  The good news is our brains thrive on this urgency and your motivation is about to kick in big time.
• 0:42
  The incredible optimism we have about our own abilities and focus when it is
• 0:51
  time to kick in and get things done,
• 0:53
  despite knowing that it's very stressful and we have some proof that things
• 1:00
  have gone astray in the past.
• 1:02
  We still feel that incredible optimism and I love that about us.
• 1:07
  But the bad news is you are about to run the gauntlet that is Halloween,
• 1:13
  Thanksgiving, Christmas, and kids home a ton.
• 1:15
  Now, that sounds really bad to call that bad news.
• 1:19
  And I'm not meaning that's bad news. That's like literally the point of life.
• 1:23
  But I'm just speaking in terms of how dangerous this time of year is for our
• 1:31
  brain's incredible belief in our own productivity.
• 1:34
  And we're going to dig into some actual tactical ways to manage this energy
• 1:41
  or harness it for the good right after this.
• 1:46
  But grab your calendar, three pieces of blank paper and a pencil,
• 1:51
  and join me for some actual tactical planning and setup right after this.
• 1:58
  A wise person once said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its
• 2:03
  ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid.
• 2:07
  Well, fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys.
• 2:12
  It's time to jump in the water and learn
• 2:15
  how to swim with the current of your life I'm Joy a
• 2:19
  professional organizer mom of four and fellow
• 2:22
  fish brain if you're looking for a place to get understanding encouragement
• 2:26
  and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks then I'm glad
• 2:31
  you're here let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains
• 2:36
  and our homes unique together we could have a joy loving home.
• 2:43
  If this is your first time here, welcome. I hope you listened to that intro
• 2:47
  and you know what I'm all about.
• 2:48
  If you've been a listener for a while, welcome back. I want to dig in today
• 2:53
  to this push of these last three months. It is an exciting time in the year.
• 3:00
  It is an exciting time for our brains and I just want to harness and control
• 3:05
  what we're about to experience.
• 3:07
  So prior to that little intro being played, I asked you to grab some pieces of paper.
• 3:12
  If you haven't done that yet and you want to do this in real time with me,
• 3:16
  awesome. Pause. Get your stuff together.
• 3:18
  If you are out walking or driving and you just want to listen to it one time
• 3:23
  through so that you can listen to it later and take action, that is totally
• 3:27
  cool too. All good. Either way.
• 3:29
  But what I was wanting you to do is lay your calendar in front of you.
• 3:35
  Maybe have pulled up the website with the kids calendar and these three blank
• 3:41
  pieces of paper that are this source of, you know, inspiration that we're hitting in stride.
• 3:48
  And we are either great to over plan and not execute, or we don't plan at all
• 3:54
  and we wing it completely.
• 3:56
  I am wanting us to kind of find a nice little middle ground.
• 4:00
  And if you are not familiar with what I call non-linear pending lists,
• 4:06
  I'm going to do the short version right now, but I will link in the show notes
• 4:11
  where I first introduced what non-linear pending lists are.
• 4:15
  But just in a nutshell, what we're going to do is brain dump on these pieces
• 4:21
  of paper in no particular order.
• 4:24
  So you can write October in the middle of one, November in the middle of the
• 4:28
  other in December in the middle of the other.
• 4:30
  If you remember those old mind maps you used to do in school,
• 4:35
  those were actually good for the ADHD brain because we didn't have to worry
• 4:41
  about prioritizing, which is not a strength for us.
• 4:45
  You just get the information down.
• 4:47
  I do not want you to edit yourself.
• 4:50
  Dream, write all the things you can think of, all that stuff you had pinned
• 4:54
  to all your Pinterest boards of all those quote-unquote good moms who do all
• 5:01
  the fun stuff with their kids and you keep hoping you'll figure that out.
• 5:04
  It's okay. It's okay to have those dreams.
• 5:08
  They're not any better moms than you are. Just saying that. We all have our
• 5:13
  own focuses and that's okay.
• 5:15
  But I want you to not edit yourself. I don't want you to squash that excitement
• 5:21
  before it starts. We're just going to write it all down.
• 5:24
  And so let's say, for example, just to make this super tactical,
• 5:28
  you put October in front of you and you write down things like get the costumes,
• 5:33
  decorate outside, decorate inside, grab the pumpkins,
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  put together some boo baskets, buy the candy.
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  Write down any big projects that are happening at school, actually go up to
• 5:44
  your calendar if you need to and write out, you know.
• 5:49
  Book character day at school and, you know, Halloween party at school that you have to show up for.
• 5:56
  Whatever the things are, make sure you write down any days that they happen to be off.
• 6:00
  Then slide that sheet aside while
• 6:03
  you're thinking and on November you might be putting invite the
• 6:07
  family to your house or accept invitation to somebody else's and ask them what
• 6:11
  dish you need to make create the menu create a grocery list set a table nicely
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  have a fun activity to distract kids while they're cooking find recipes for
• 6:22
  themed smelly play-doh with.
• 6:25
  Cookie cutters that are turkey shaped, a bunch of paper feathers where we're
• 6:30
  all going to write what we're grateful for.
• 6:32
  If you grab December out, I have actually done in the past some very detailed
• 6:37
  Christmas things, and I will again this year if you want to kind of like hold
• 6:42
  that one off a little bit.
• 6:43
  But if you want to start writing while your brain's active, that's awesome.
• 6:47
  Make sure you slide that calendar down in front of you and start marking all
• 6:51
  the days that your kids are off and all of the known events at your kids'
• 6:56
  schools or practices or recitals or plays or whatever your kids are involved in.
• 7:03
  You want to get all of those things down. If you happen to have any family birthdays
• 7:08
  in these next three months, that adds to your level of chaos that's about to happen.
• 7:16
  And you need to get all that down. If you need to pause me right now and spend
• 7:20
  some extra time doing this.
• 7:21
  That is totally cool. I'll wait.
• 7:25
  I'll wait because you're going to pause me, but I'll keep going right now.
• 7:28
  I want to point out, and I've said this in podcasts in the past,
• 7:33
  but I want to hammer home when we write all of this down and the anxiety starts
• 7:39
  to pour onto ourselves about how are we going to do all these things?
• 7:45
  How is this not robbing the joy of what these holidays are meant to be from us.
• 7:52
  I want us to remember that.
• 7:56
  Life is about these moments. You're not pausing life to make moments happen.
• 8:01
  You are acting on these life moments.
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  And the fact that the house might get to be a mess or some things might slide
• 8:12
  or you have to put everything into some perspective, that's all well and good.
• 8:19
  The whole point of this podcast is we're creating a joy-loving home,
• 8:25
  something that is about the joy in each moment. It's not about,
• 8:30
  did I do all the check marks perfectly?
• 8:33
  Did my house look like Pinterest?
• 8:35
  Am I ready to post pictures about my perfect, shiny, happy family existence?
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  No, it's about being there in the moment and experiencing it and not worrying
• 8:47
  about logging it on some social medium.
• 8:50
  It is just, it's yours to live. It's yours to live.
• 8:54
  So we are going to let life happen and not worry about the rest. Okay.
• 8:59
  So now that we have all of these things, what this pending list is about is
• 9:06
  it is anything on this list that you then choose to make a decision about,
• 9:15
  that is you tackling that item on the list.
• 9:18
  And the reason I wanted you to go through this exercise is I wanted your brain
• 9:23
  to see because we can't catalog it all on the inside. We have to actually take
• 9:28
  our brain and put it down on paper and look at it.
• 9:31
  That is the whole executive function thing. We can't figure that out on the
• 9:36
  inside. We have to see it outside of ourselves.
• 9:39
  And that's why I like paper and pencil over digital.
• 9:41
  But what I'm wanting your brain to see is that this is a lot,
• 9:45
  and it just has to do with the holidays.
• 9:49
  If your brain is saying, oh my gosh, I had all these goals for 2025,
• 9:55
  and I'm ready to just knock those out too, you might want to tell yourself,
• 10:00
  I appreciate your enthusiasm.
• 10:02
  I appreciate that you want that to happen.
• 10:04
  But we are going to channel our energy this year into making the holidays maybe
• 10:12
  a little less chaotic and a little more on time.
• 10:16
  Channel and keep championing, champion, it's a hard one to say,
• 10:21
  champion your brain into wanting to do the holidays first.
• 10:28
  And we have this incredible ability to, to procrastinate in a way that seems
• 10:36
  productive, but it's actually, it's still avoidance.
• 10:41
  It's still avoidance. So we're going to keep focusing it on these lists,
• 10:45
  these things that make the magic of the holidays. And that's what you're striving for.
• 10:50
  So decisions that you can make on all these items in your pending list.
• 10:54
  There are three types of decisions.
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  You can decide right now not to do something.
• 11:00
  That means you tackled it. You made a decision. You can check that one off.
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  Complete. Done. The done is that you decided not to do it.
• 11:09
  That's a valid way to tackle anything on that list.
• 11:13
  You can decide to offload it to someone else, whether that be a professional
• 11:20
  or someone else in the family.
• 11:21
  You don't have to do all things. You can say, oh my goodness,
• 11:26
  I am not great at the meal planning.
• 11:31
  I'm going to ask, you know, I'm going to say, I'll host, but I would love for
• 11:37
  you to send me back the menu of what you want to have.
• 11:41
  I would love to host, but do you mind deciding for the family,
• 11:46
  everybody who's going to bring what dish? Like, can you orchestrate that?
• 11:50
  Or maybe you're not the host and you're like, hey, I love that you're willing to host.
• 11:58
  Could you just tell me the one dish you want me to bring or two dishes and if
• 12:03
  you have specific recipes you wanted me to use can you send those to me too these offloading.
• 12:09
  Parts and pieces that are not your strength is part of tackling this.
• 12:14
  And you are allowed to have that, check that off the list because you've decided
• 12:20
  to delegate in some capacity.
• 12:24
  Your other decision is to decide to actually complete it. Like,
• 12:28
  that's my wheelhouse. That's something I love to do.
• 12:31
  I'm going to start taking action to complete it. So you have three decision
• 12:35
  points on a pending list.
• 12:37
  Decide not to do it. decide for someone else to do it or decide to take action to do it. All count.
• 12:44
  That's the beauty of a pending list. So let me give you a for example.
• 12:48
  On my November sheet, I have wallpaper the dining room.
• 12:53
  I know I'm hosting. I've been wanting to wallpaper the dining room forever.
• 12:57
  This is my excuse. This is my deadline. This is the way I trick my ADHD brain
• 13:01
  into wanting to do something like this.
• 13:03
  However, if I'm being super realistic, I have been looking at wallpaper samples
• 13:09
  for the better part of a year and a half.
• 13:13
  I keep changing my mind about what I want or getting lost in what I want.
• 13:18
  Or now I discovered a new site because I looked one wallpaper site up and now
• 13:22
  I get 15 wallpaper sites and I can design my own and I can pick my own colors
• 13:26
  and maybe I should and I want botanical.
• 13:28
  No, I want block print. No, I have already burned 18 months to zero progress.
• 13:37
  Do I still want this on my November list?
• 13:41
  Nope. I'm going to make the conscientious decision to circle that and say, not this Thanksgiving.
• 13:50
  That one's now off my list. Done. So look and see if there are any pipe dream
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  options that are listed out on your sheet and go ahead and mark them off.
• 14:02
  We are done with those. All right.
• 14:05
  Then fun little task if you'd like to add to it is you can grab highlighters
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  and whatever colors make sense to your brain.
• 14:13
  I am not designating a color for you. You can like have red for urgent or you
• 14:19
  can have green for green like this.
• 14:22
  Whatever whatever makes sense to your brain.
• 14:25
  But if you were to go through and highlight all the date sensitive tasks,
• 14:32
  those are going to pop off this page so that you know there's a specific deadline associated to them.
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  Those are get the book character costume together for the book character date at school.
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  They are the have purchased the frozen turkey by a week before so it has time
• 14:54
  to thaw it in your fridge. There's the.
• 14:57
  You buy a pumpkin before October 31st so you have time to carve it,
• 15:03
  not while the kids are actually in their costumes about to walk out the door.
• 15:07
  Whatever date-sensitive items exist on there, highlight those.
• 15:12
  Those are important to have them pop off of these lists.
• 15:16
  So that's awesome.
• 15:19
  You could choose to do some other related color coding, but I feel like you
• 15:25
  water down all of them when you start putting colors on all of them. So it makes sense.
• 15:30
  So your goal is every time you look at this list, you want your brain to notice
• 15:35
  the colored ones that mean urgent because they're date sensitive and those need
• 15:40
  to stay forefront of mind.
• 15:41
  Now, I would love for you to take these three sheets of paper and tape them
• 15:47
  somewhere that you have to walk past them every single day,
• 15:50
  whether that is your mirror in your bathroom or a wall in your kitchen or somewhere
• 15:56
  where they stay front of mind.
• 15:58
  If you have a type A, what I call monkey-brained spouse or child living in your
• 16:07
  home that is responsible enough, you might say, hey,
• 16:10
  every few days, can you tape these in a new spot?
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  That's like your task because your brain will start noticing that place you
• 16:18
  thought there's no way you could miss as just blending back into the background
• 16:23
  with some blindness of existence if it doesn't keep moving around.
• 16:28
  So that might be a fun game for them to do for you as helping you stay on top of things.
• 16:33
  So now that we have sort of this plan that is, it works for our brains.
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  We don't need a list. We don't need numbers. We don't need to prioritize anything
• 16:48
  in a certain order that we're going to stress about.
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  What if we didn't prioritize it correctly? We have everything has some equal
• 16:55
  weight, except for we are noticing the things that have time constraints.
• 17:00
  The value of that is that our brains will gravitate towards something that interests us.
• 17:07
  And if we think we're supposed to do number one, then number two,
• 17:12
  then number three, but our brain wants to do number seven today.
• 17:15
  And so we don't do anything because we can't get our brain to focus on one through
• 17:20
  six when all it wants to do is seven.
• 17:23
  We need to let our brain head towards that interest. High interest activities
• 17:28
  are something we can get done.
• 17:30
  So when you step up to that paper at the beginning of a day and you go, wow, you know what?
• 17:36
  I would love to decorate the outside today. It's a gorgeous day.
• 17:44
  It's not have been the day to do outside had you numbered things in a certain
• 17:50
  order. We don't have to worry about that.
• 17:53
  It is a nonlinear list. So each day, attempt to find one thing on there that
• 17:59
  your brain is gravitated towards and let that motion start your motivation.
• 18:06
  The motion, the action of moving will fuel your fire to go, okay,
• 18:12
  now what else can I pull off of this list? Now what else can I pull off of this list?
• 18:16
  You will get such a dopamine hit from continuing to tackle the next thing and
• 18:22
  the next thing and the next thing.
• 18:24
  If you are really wanting visuals of what this could look like,
• 18:28
  I will add them to my free community later in the week.
• 18:34
  I'm not promising which day because when I promise things on this podcast,
• 18:38
  I'm not always delivering on the same date.
• 18:43
  So if that's something you're interested in seeing, my goal is to get it in
• 18:47
  there by the end of next week. and that's okay. It might happen today. I don't know.
• 18:52
  It might happen tomorrow, but right now I'm not promising a specific date,
• 18:56
  but it will be there. It is a group you can join.
• 18:58
  To join the free community, you just go to bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity.
• 19:06
  That would be an option. Another option is to, I am trying to get back into
• 19:12
  newsletters as my fall sort of finishes out.
• 19:17
  And if you wanted to join my newsletter, you just go to joylovinghome.com.
• 19:22
  There's a place to join it right there on the homepage.
• 19:25
  I am still updating my website, but that link exists.
• 19:30
  And then, yeah, I guess that's all I wanted to share for today.
• 19:35
  I hope this tactical effort is useful.
• 19:39
  If you want to reach out to me, if anything you're screaming in your head right
• 19:43
  now, joy, you should have shared this, you should have shared that,
• 19:46
  or how it's working for you, or showing me what your pages look like,
• 19:53
  you can email me anytime.
• 19:54
  I'm joy at joylovinghome.com. I'd love to hear from you.
• 19:57
  I will stop there. Until next time, continue to choose joy.