April 18, 2025 • 41 mins
In this episode, Renee shares productivity tips that are helpful AND doable for women with ADHD—and spoiler alert: it’s not about hustling harder or color-coded planners.
If you've ever thought you could use a personal assistant to lighten the load, these tips can help. Renee shows how prepping and small acts here and there can shift everything so life goes a little more smoothly.
Highlights —
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Why traditional productivity advice doesn’t always work for ADHD brains
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How “being your own personal assistant” can make tasks feel way less overwhelming
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Practical examples of prepping ahead to reduce future stress
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A real talk take on self-care that actually helps you function
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Encouragement to find your unique rhythm instead of copying someone else’s system
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:28):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
I'm Renee Allen, the host of this podcast.
Do you ever talk too fast and you trip over your words?
That's what I'm doing right now. But I'm excited to be here
today. I am going to talk to you kind of
about prioritizing or why that is hard
(00:50):
for women with adhd. More importantly, why prep work?
Doing prep work, kind of behind the scenes work is really
valuable because it makes it so you
don't have to worry about the priority.
If you have a hard time determining the priority if that gets
in the way of you working on something because you either have
(01:11):
too much to do or you can't figure out what to do next.
So one thing I love is, and this is from long
ago, I mentioned it a long time ago, is in the 7
Habits of Highly Effective People, which I think came out
in the late 80s. I know I lived in Pasadena at the time
I moved there in 1990. Maybe it came out before then.
(01:34):
It could have, but I Pasadena, California, if
you know the Rose Parade and all that.
But I read that book and one thing that really hit
me, I think because it works with my brain.
It was so good with working with my brain is learning about
(01:54):
how to do things that are important but not
urgent. Because even though I have done well in
the past with someone's coming over, they're going to be here
in an hour, two hours, or they're going to be here this afternoon
and I run around and clean like a maniac because I know they're
coming and try to get things ready. Seems like the older I get
(02:15):
or the more my ADHD progresses, the less helpful
that is prep work does better for me than even the
under pressure deadline because sometimes deadlines are happening
and I get frozen and I have to think of ways to
get myself to get up and get things done and I have to come
up with a lot of other tools besides, oh, you have this coming
(02:39):
up and you should work on this. So the idea is
that if you want to make progress, if you want to reach a goal,
if you want to have your morning go smoothly, your goal could
be just to have your day go smoothly instead of to accomplish
some big task or some big project or you need to move,
you need to figure out how to do all that goes
(03:02):
into getting boxes, packing up, hiring movers, whatever it is
you do to move. All these things that you have to do in life,
take some sort of skill to get yourself going on
it, to have an idea of what you need to do.
And that could even just be your daily tasks.
And if you feel scrambled or frozen or not sure
(03:23):
what to work on first or kind of run from this to that,
it can be really hard because you want to be able
to act. But if you're acting on one thing and
then you think, well, I really should be working on this.
Well, I really should be working on that.
So a lot of people make to do lists and they think of
what's the priority. And I didn't know about this until I
(03:44):
was looking to review the four quadrants that Stephen
R. Covey had in his book that there's another matrix called the
Eisenhower Matrix. It made matrix. It.
I, I also thought it was called the Einstein matrix.
Okay. Is it called Bolt? I have to look this up.
And I know every time I touch the microphone, it makes a lot
of noise. I'm going to try to be really quiet.
(04:07):
Yeah, I think it's, there's, yeah, there's Einstein also.
Eisenhower Matrix. Einstein Matrix. I don't know
why they call them both Eisenhower, I guess is task management
tool, but I think they're the same thing.
So it's a way to identify, I think that they're, they're similar
things. It's a way to identify what's the most important
(04:29):
thing so I can get things done. And if you, if you're
like me, you see, you know, you look up,
you Google something like priority organization, whatever it
is that you want to do, and you look it up and you think,
oh, good, they're going to have all the answers.
I say this with such excitement because it just doesn't
(04:51):
always feel like that happens. You don't always get all the answers
right, but. And then you go to this article and
you see six or seven things or eight things and you think,
tried that, tried that. That doesn't work for me.
That doesn't work. Yeah, like, tell me something new.
Tell me something. And you want it to work for you.
And you think, well, obviously this is valuable to somebody.
This person wrote a book about it. They make a lot of money.
(05:12):
They make TED talks. It must be helpful to somebody.
Why isn't it helpful to me? Well, there's a reason your brain
might be different or what works for one person.
Going in a certain order or following a pattern might
really work. But for you, you might need to just find
skills or little systems or little methods.
(05:34):
You find what works for you and you find ways to do those
in your life again and again and again or in creative ways.
And if you are just learning about your adhd
and
you're discovering, well, I've done really well at this.
When I've done that, that right there is a skill that
(05:56):
you've developed that worked with your brain.
And tweaking it for other instances can be really helpful instead
of fighting against it. Because sometimes we think we have to
do it in a way that worked for somebody else, and then it doesn't.
So my problem with the Einstein matrix or the Eisenhower matrix,
I'm going to call it the Einstein matrix because I don't know
very much about Eisenhower. I was little, I think I was alive.
(06:19):
If he was president, I don't know. I didn't pay attention to
government when I was younger. But, but that, that matrix,
the one that's not the Stephen R. Kevy has you put things
into similar quadrants like, like Stephen R.
Covey, but with a different, a different reason.
(06:42):
And so it has. You put in the urgent.
So if you, if you make a four square.
Did you ever play four square when you're little and you.
Each person stands in a square and you hit the ball back and
forth. So you make four squares and there's the column
on the left that says urgent, there's a column on the right
that says not urgent. And then if you were to make
(07:02):
the rows on the left, like you're making a Google sheet or something
like that, it would say important on the first row and
not important on the second row. So first quadrant, urgent and
important. Second quadrant, if you're moving to the right.
If you read left to right, like we do in the US When I
went to Israel a couple years ago, they go from right to left.
(07:23):
I'm sure other, other countries have their languages do too,
but it was so weird getting on a plane and seeing people read
a book from the back to the front anyway, at least our backfront.
Just like if you're in the US and then you see people in a movie
in England driving, and you're thinking they're driving in the
wrong side of the car. How's that? You know.
Anyway, so urgent and important is square
(07:44):
number one at the top, square number two on the right.
Urgent, not important. Wait, I'm already messing it
up. Okay, let's start again. Urgent and important at the top,
not urgent and important at the top.
So both of the important things are at the top.
And that's good because we want to see the important things at
the top, right? So urgent is on the left side, not urgent on
(08:04):
the right side. Both of those are important.
On the bottom, you have things that are not important, but
you might have some that are urgent.
They're not important. Maybe they're not as vital to
get done. So if you're in a company, maybe it's not as vital
for the company to succeed, but it's still something that maybe
(08:29):
should be done. Like going through emails just to
kind of clean it out. That's not really important.
It's not urgent. Urgent, not urgent.
Not important is just total distractions, I
guess even, I mean, even junk mail is a distraction, right?
But maybe it's important to get rid of that.
But anyway, so you have to decide, do I delegate something that
(08:54):
needs to be done, but it's not super important.
Like it kind of has a timeline because the trash will pile
up or whatever, but it's not our most important thing of
the day. It could wait till tomorrow.
And then there's the things that could wait forever.
Like someone says, hey, come in and watch this TikTok.
And you're like, I don't really even need to do that.
(09:15):
Like, that's not important at all. But it might be something
we do. Right? So in the business world, when
they use this quadrant, these four quadrants, they say,
look at your to do list and see what is the priority.
Those would be the things that are urgent and important.
Do those do those things that are urgent and important and
(09:35):
those urgent things, There's a deadline and probably with a big
company, yeah, there's a deadline. We need to get that done,
that kind of thing. Right. But not urgent, still important.
There's no deadline. It could wait. So maybe
that's something that you put on your schedule for the next day
or you try to do before it becomes
(09:58):
critical, but you don't have to do it now.
So that would be further down the to do list.
And if you have time, you'll do that, that later.
So I can see how that could be helpful with
management and with running an office or things like
that and deciding, do I need to do it?
Is it a priority? Do I need to schedule it out?
(10:18):
That would be not urgent, but still important to do.
Make this phone call or something. Is this something that needs
to get done, but it's not as important?
So I don't need to do it, but maybe I could delegate it or maybe
I can get someone else to do, you know, I can pay someone else
to do it or ask somebody else to do it or something and then
just get rid of that. Even thought that this needs to
(10:39):
be done is the not urgent not important.
Don't waste your time. And that can be helpful.
But I think when I have adhd, I can
write out my to do list and I can say, okay, what are the most
urgent and important things? If I work on that first, that
can. That I might have five of those
(11:02):
things, honestly, and I can't decide which one to do.
It's hard for me to set that priority.
Or the most important thing to do, or the most
urgent thing to do is so big that I don't have the
confidence that I can get it done. Or if I do get it
done, can I get it done in the time that it needs to be done?
It might just put me in more of a frenzied state and then
(11:22):
I'm not as capable of getting it done.
So I look at these steps for things like that and I think, yeah,
I could delegate that, but maybe I'd enjoy doing that more,
even if it's not as. As important. You know, maybe I.
Maybe my brain needs to do the things that aren't as important.
And so I look at the quadrant differently because I'm not
(11:46):
working for somebody. I am setting my own priorities.
I do have responsibilities as a mom with older children,
but not in the same way as I did when I was younger.
Like an urgent and important thing might have been a diaper that
needs to be changed, a crying baby, children that need to be
(12:06):
picked up from school, that kind of thing.
It was easier to set those priorities.
But if you have a hard time figuring out the priorities or you
find these urgent important things are so big that you just
think, I can't even get that done, or you want
to do it in such a great way that you may not remember
(12:26):
all the things that are involved in getting it done.
Especially if you're heading out the door, you're trying to get
something done, it can just make it so you're not as effective.
The thing that I love about 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
is you need to be effective. It's not like, can you be the most
successful? The idea I think for the people who
bought the book, because it was a very successful book in the
business world, was that you could be successful using it.
(12:49):
But if I want to be effective with the brain that I have, if
I'm going around trying to meet deadlines and doing the most
important things and making to do lists, that's going to make
me crazy. That's going to make me just like, think honestly.
When I make to do lists, I kind of rebel against them.
I Think, But I don't want to do that.
I don't know. The urgent and important don't always call out
(13:11):
to me. Sometimes they have to, but they don't always call out
to me. So even on Thanksgiving Day, I had a hard
time going in and starting that turkey.
When I didn't feel like doing it, I didn't feel like doing it.
So with the Stephen R. Covey model, same
thing. Urgent,
(13:32):
not urgent at the top, but important.
And important at the top. Urgent, not urgent at
the bottom, but both of the bottoms are not important.
And he looked at things like urgent things are
things that have a deadline, so you know when that's due.
You know, like, okay, that needs to be done by this time.
Or it's. It's a problem. Like there's a leak in your ceiling,
(13:56):
and that's an urgent thing. We've. We've had that.
We've had too many leaks in this house.
Let's just say that we've only lived here for two years.
And every once in a while my husband says there's water coming
through the ceiling in the kitchen. One time it was even coming
through the. The light fixture. That's urgent.
That's scary. So that's more of a crisis mode.
It's a pressing problem. Those are important and they're urgent.
(14:18):
And sometimes you do have to drop what you're doing and take
care of those things. Children that, you know run out the
door and you need to go chase them. Those are things that I don't
have a problem figuring out that priority.
But there are a lot of things that fall into.
These are the most important things that I would put at the top
of my to do list. And I still don't feel
(14:38):
the need or the love of working on that.
And I have a hard time getting myself to do it.
The not urgent, but important. I've learned that that's
a really fun quadrant to be in. Those are things
like planning. Planning's really fun.
You still have to do. But planning things out can be more fun.
(15:00):
But planning isn't just imagining. It's not just dreaming.
It's not just writing things down. It's not just talking to people
and figuring out how you're going to do it.
It can actually be the pre. That's what can be really
fun to do. Because prep work a lot of
times is mindless work. So if you think of
getting ready to go to the gym, if you're going to go to the
(15:22):
gym, you're going to. That's something important.
And it actually has a timeline. Let's say, you know that at seven
in the morning you need to go to the gym and you
need to leave by 6:30 so you can get there and get to
work in time or get back and take your kids to school or whatever
it is. So that has some sort of a deadline.
It's not super pressing. It's not like you're going to get in
(15:43):
trouble or lose money or something if you don't do it.
But that's a goal and that has a priority in your
mind of being important to you and having a
timeline with it. But there are a lot of
things that you can do to make it easier to do that.
So it's not such a big thing on the to do list
(16:06):
that you can't just walk by and go, yep, we're doing that.
You don't have to, you don't have to scramble around doing all
the last minute things to make sure that happens.
So the prep work could be figuring out what
shoes am I gonna wear? Do I have socks?
Is the laundry caught up? Do I even know where socks are?
I went to a yoga full moon retreat. Mini class.
(16:30):
I guess it was a mini retreat class.
Cacao ceremony. Cacao, like you make the chocolate
into a really thick, bitter, hot chocolate.
It was good. I wished it was a little bit hotter, but anyway.
And I also wished it was dark because it wasn't dark.
Have I already talked about that this week?
Sometimes I get hung up on things when they.
When they don't meet my expectations.
(16:51):
I was hoping it was gonna be dark and we were gonna be doing
yoga under the full moon and it wasn't dark, but I guess it was
full moon time. So yeah, I tend to hash and rehash
in my mind. Do you do that too? So anyway, but when
you're prepping for this. I did a little prep work
before that. I knew that I wanted to be comfortable there.
(17:12):
I'm a high maintenance girl when it comes to camping.
I mean, not high maintenance, like tons of makeup, that kind
of high maintenance. But I want to be comfortable, I want to
be warm. I want to have a pillow that I like.
I'll bring all the extra things to prevent myself from
having shoes that aren't comfortable or whatever.
So I. Not only for myself, but for the friend that
(17:33):
invited me. I got out yoga bolsters, blankets, eye pillows,
socks. I didn't know, like should I wear shoes that require socks
or not? Either way, I'm going to have socks to put on while I
lay down on the yoga mat, I'm going to have a water bottle.
I'll have a hydration drink. Like, I have all this stuff because
I want to feel good afterwards. I don't want to feel
(17:56):
drained. I want to feel good throughout.
I don't want to feel thirsty, but yet I don't want to have to
go to the bathroom doing all these things.
I always. I wouldn't say it over plan.
I plan adequately for them. But sometimes I am
late to going things like that if I don't do the prep work.
So during the prep work, I got the mats out, I got the, you
(18:16):
know, I got all the things out that I needed beforehand.
But if I'd really done the prep work, prep work, I would have
been caught up on laundry, and I wasn't.
So I had to go through multiple baskets of laundry trying
to find two socks that matched. And I almost grabbed two
that didn't. I thought, no one's going to care.
But I thought, now I find some that match.
(18:36):
So I found some that matched. When I got there at the end, we're
supposed to go around the circle and say, like, what we liked
and stuff like that. And I told this one woman I really
like that her socks didn't match, because that made me happy.
Because as I thought, she's my kind of person.
I should have done that. I should have felt that comfortable
to not wear socks that match. But anyway, whatever it is
(18:57):
that you're gonna do, if you get the prep work done,
it could even be for cooking. Let's say you want to make
cookies, but when it's time to make cookies, you think, well,
I don't even know if I have all the ingredients or I don't
like making cookies. When the butter is hard, I like it to be
soft. So if you think that morning or even the night before,
(19:19):
I want to make cookies tomorrow, go into your pantry and see,
do I have the right sugar for that? Do I have the butter?
Maybe I'll take the butter and put it out on the counter.
Now, all of those things that are kind of the planning things,
the little prep work, they're fun and easy when it's not
time to do it. Cause it's like whatever timeframe that you
have in your mind of something that needs to be done, it is not
(19:42):
there during the prep work time. Prep work time is like the
free time. It's like, ah, I get to just help with this, and
I just get to help with that. At least that's how I feel.
And I think That's a really fun time to just do it, but.
Because you know it's going to make your life easier later,
there's no, you know, heart beating a little bit faster,
(20:04):
like, I need to get this done, or, oh, no, what if I don't
have enough butter? Because you don't care if you have enough
butter. If you find out that you don't, you go, oh, maybe I'll
order some to be delivered tomorrow morning.
Or maybe I'll get in the car and go.
Or ask my husband if he can pick some up.
You know, you just have all the solutions because you have a
lot of time when you're in that important.
(20:25):
But not urgent. Not urgent is a great way to.
To act under. What's the word for acting under.
Yeah. I don't know. Isn't it weird when you can't think of normal
words like exist? It's not exist, but anyway, so.
Yeah. Have you ever watched, like, the Great British Baking Company?
(20:45):
I never know what those shows are called.
They. They have all these. Okay, Great British Cooking show.
Oh, baking show. At least I remembered it was British.
It wasn't English. Great British Baking show.
I used to watch that. When is it? Is his name
Scott? What was his name? Scott? I thought he was really fascinating
(21:05):
to watch. Maybe I just thought his name was Scott because my
husband's name's Scott. But I liked.
I like the original judges, and I kind of stopped watching it
after that. But it was a little bit stressful when they
were saying three minutes to the people baking, because, you
know, these people love to bake. You know, they tell their stories
about how I live in this little flat and I love
(21:28):
to cook for my daughter and all this stuff.
And then they get there and they're making them do really hard
things, and they have to put it in the proofing oven.
And I learned what a proofing oven was.
And. And they put a lot of stress on them because
then they're like, oh, no, it didn't whip up.
The souffle didn't whip up like I wanted it to.
And then they start getting panic mode, and then they give them
the deadline, and. And it's super stressful.
(21:50):
And we can feel like that in our own lives.
We can feel like when there's some kind of weight
while we're trying to just process thoughts, get things
done, be in a mode of accomplishing things.
We don't want to always be in a mode of having to think and
have pressure. We want to have a mode of this is
(22:14):
fun and what should I do next? And when you're in
that freedom mode of I think I'll do this now
I have a little time. Yeah, I can watch a show and I,
I am one who loves to watch TV shows.
I have all the DVDs in the world to prove it from not only
like Disney and Harry Potter and everything that
(22:34):
everyone else used to buy DVDs for, but every, every little sitcom
I used to watch when I was little. I love to watch shows over
and over. I, I don't have a problem watching TV and
relaxing that way, but I do find pockets of
time where I think before I do that or while I
do that on my laptop. I can always watch something on my laptop
(22:57):
and do this to prep for that. You
know, maybe just make the cookie dough and then stick it in the
fridge and then bake them tomorrow. I like doing that too,
because then I can just take it out.
It is a little hard. It's nicer if you make them into balls first.
But that, you know, that takes more time.
So doing things like that. I love to make bread.
(23:17):
And yesterday I was thinking, you need to just get out the
wheat grinder. Have you ever grind grounded ground wheat?
I love to grind wheat. My mom used to do it.
I love the smell of it. I love to cook with whole wheat.
But when I run out of wheat flour, I have to grind the wheat
again. And when it's time to make bread, I don't want to
grind the wheat at the same time. That's too much.
(23:39):
It's, it's hitting my brain of, that's too much.
I'm not doing it. So I, I want to have the
flow flour's ready. But if it's just the afternoon
and I'm thinking, ha ha, I just cleaned the kitchen, I think
I'll go in there and work on my website or something.
I'll think, oh, why don't you grind some wheat first?
Oh, that sounds fun. Because I don't have any pressure of.
(24:01):
And then I'm going to make bread and then I'm going to make a
big mess in the kitchen. And then, you know, it builds up bigger
when it's part of the big process. But when it's a non
urgent but important thing, it's more fun setting out your
clothes the night before deciding what jewelry you're gonna wear.
If you wear jewelry. I like to do that stuff in advance
(24:24):
because if it's the morning of my brain's not functioning as
well, I can't find what I'm Looking for, even
though I know it's where I put it when it's time.
Yeah, it can be a lot, you know, so even just checking
the weather for the next day, if you're gonna go somewhere that
requires outdoor, knowing if you're wearing a jacket,
(24:45):
if you like being comfortable outside, knowing if you want to
eat outside or inside, if you're going to a restaurant, all those
kinds of decisions, if you don't want to make them on the
spot, if you want to lighten your load, even just decision wise,
do that prep work the day before. Do it the night before.
Do it while you're watching a show, do it while.
Do it while you're waiting in line in the store on your phone.
(25:06):
There are a lot of ways to do the prep work.
Yes, yes, yes. So let's see what else I have.
Do I have anything else in store? So, yeah, the not important
but urgent. Those are the things that aren't,
aren't as fun, like phone calls. Sometimes you get phone
calls or interruptions and they're not important, but you
(25:29):
have to pay attention to them because they're happening.
That happens in life. Those that, those aren't the places
that we enjoy spending time as much as the important.
And non urgent. Non urgent feels good.
Unless you work well under pressure.
Maybe even those who do, I would think at some point get tired
(25:51):
of the pressure. So, yeah, anyway, okay, so with
adhd, it's important to just know what works
for you and if and anything that you can do in
advance. I think of it like if you
had a personal assistant in the days of the Brady Bunch, they
(26:13):
used to say, you know, like, everybody needs an Alice because
Alice was the housekeeper. And when I watched the Brady Bunch,
I. And the Brady Bunch is my favorite show ever.
It might be why I have three girls and three boys.
But
I didn't know anybody in the world, in the real world
who had an Alice who had a housekeeper.
Not in my town. And that looked amazing.
(26:35):
You know, Carol Brady got to have Alice bring in the groceries
or the grocery delivery boy bring her, Sam the butcher bring
the meat. But Alice did a lot. She even
helped with the kids. And I didn't have an Alice with my kids
either. And that was okay. But as I get older,
I think, wouldn't it be nice to have a personal assistant?
(26:57):
Wouldn't it be nice to have an assistant who would do my
taxes? I know some people pay their.
Someone to do their taxes. But even if you do that, you have
to do the groundwork. Wouldn't it Be nice to have the personal
assistant to do that groundwork for you, to make sure
that every time you spent a dollar, they knew where it went and
they made sure that it wasn't too much.
Wouldn't that be nice? Anything that causes you pressure wouldn't
(27:20):
be nice if you had an assistant to take care of it.
So I look at the times when I am doing the prep work
is I'm being the personal assistant.
I am lightening my load for later. I am doing myself
a favor. I am helping myself feel less scrambled when
I go into the next day. Because sometimes we see the
(27:42):
next day or the time that what that when something
needs to be done as playing out in this beautiful way of
ease. And the reality is there are those disruptions
or there are phone calls or text or whatever
news that comes into your life that makes it harder for
(28:04):
you to be in an emotional state to do things as well.
So if you have your. Your own personal assistant yourself who
said, I'm gonna set you up for success, I'm gonna make it
easier for you tomorrow, I'm gonna make it easier for you tonight,
I'm gonna make it easier. People who meal prep know that they
think I'm gonna make my meals and I'm just gonna pull them out
(28:25):
of the fridge and put them in the oven or whatever.
I had a friend who dropped her daughters off for school
every morning. I can guarantee you she doesn't have adhd.
She has the opposite. She has extra organized.
Yeah, she's really, really good at all this stuff.
Anyway, she would drop her kids off for school and she would
(28:46):
think in the morning, what am I going to make for dinner tonight?
And on the way home from the school, she would stop at
the store if there were any ingredients that she didn't have
and pick them up and make sure she had them when she got the
mail. She was so good. She was the first person in the
world that I ever heard the phrase. And this is before Internet
and everything. Everything has a home, everything has a place
(29:06):
and everything in its place. I'm like, wow.
She had a trash can in her garage, and when she walked in
the house from the mailbox, she took any junk
mail and put it in the trash, right?
Then maybe if it was like credit card things, maybe she tore
it up into a million pieces because I have to put a lot of stuff
in the shredder. She didn't have paper piles.
She. She did all of these things. And.
(29:28):
And then she started making her dinner in the afternoon.
And honestly, anytime that I did well with eating, with
making dinner as a grown up. I did better when I
was in college and high school. But it was when at like 3:30
or 4, I thought maybe I should start making dinner now.
Most of the time I didn't want to make dinner right then.
(29:49):
I just got, you know, I got the kids home from school and stuff
like that. I wanted to enjoy my life.
But, but if I, if I thought maybe you should
start making dinner now because that was more of a low pressure
time because it wasn't brush, it wasn't dinner time.
It was like, oh, I could do this and then I could do this.
That was kind of being my personal assistant.
If you do a little bit of this now, then later instead I would
wait and then it's just like, I can't do that in time.
(30:12):
Then I try to do stuff in a different way and it wouldn't, wouldn't
turn out very good. This is before I gave up on making,
making dinner bits. But anyway, yeah, anytime you can do
yourself a favor, do it. Maybe you do have a personal
assistant and that's great too. And you already know what
that's like. But there are probably ways that you can do that
for yourself too, that you can help yourself not
(30:36):
feel so pressured in the situation or not have as
many things to do as you go. It's just like, you
know, people who used to iron, My mom still irons, but people
who would do laundry and iron, then they'd put
things in their closet that were perfectly ironed and they would
have them to wear. I never really enjoyed ironing and
(30:59):
part of that would be because I'd pull something out.
I think, well, I have to iron that if I want to wear it.
Then you're like, get out the ironing board.
And I learned about the spray bottle where you can get
things wet and just kind of flatten it out.
And then I learned it doesn't matter if it's ironed, but still.
Do you ever use the curling iron sometimes or not?
Curling iron, the flat iron, hair straightener.
(31:22):
Sometimes I use that because I do like wearing linen if I
ever wear something besides a sweatshirt or a T shirt.
Sometimes I like wearing linen and it's kind of hopeless for
that to ever stay ironed. But it looks really bad if the bottoms
are super crinkly. So I'll just get a little bit wet and take
the flat ironing and put it across and try not to
burn my clothes. So yeah, those are my little,
(31:45):
my fun little hints for today. But yeah, if you haven't
read Stephen R. Kevity's book. You don't have to read it.
You can. You can ask the Internet to tell you what
some of his best things were, or you can ask me and
I'll. I'll tell you about more. But that's one of my favorites,
is living in that quadrant, that second quadrant of important
(32:06):
but not urgent. It is a lovely, lovely place to exist.
And his other phrase that he had in one of his seven steps
was about sharpening the saw, and that was more
about what you do for yourself. Because if you were to
cut down a tree. I've never tried to cut down a tree,
(32:28):
but I have. I did dig up an apple tree once and
move it to the backyard. And it grew.
It did. It was in a driveway, and I had to dig it up.
It wasn't too big, but they're always bigger than they look.
When you start digging and find the roots, they're always bigger
underneath. But, yeah, I. We needed to put a driveway
on that side of the house because we had a guest house and we
wanted to have a renter. And there was an apple tree there, so
I dug it up and dragged it across the yard, replanted it,
(32:53):
and it produced apples. One of my very few
gardening success stories. Most of my gardening stories are
survival of the fittest, because whatever I do, it doesn't work.
But.
But, yeah. Was I talking about, oh, a tree?
I've never tried to cut down a tree, but I have used a saw before
(33:13):
on limbs, on bushes and things that are growing the
wrong direction. Maybe they're tree limbs.
And I've actually never looked to see if the saw
was sharp. I just find some hand saw in the garage.
That's my husband. And you have to go, you know, back
and forth a million times to get it to cut.
(33:33):
And if you have a sharp saw, it's gonna be a lot easier than
a dull one. And the idea with sharpening the saw is
if you take time to sharpen the saw, it'll work better.
And the same is true for ourselves with self care.
That's why everyone talks about self care, is it's, well, partially
(33:54):
for emotional health, mental health, but also if you want to
be more effective in your life, if you want to be able to
function. Maybe that's the word I was looking for earlier.
We know about executive dysfunction as part of adhd, but we
want to function with our brain that has executive dysfunction.
And if you want to function, then if you are a
(34:18):
sharper tool, if you've Gotten enough sleep.
If you manage your emotional health to some degree, you're able
to get yourself to calm down. When you're revved up, if you're
in a panic mode and you're thinking, I made an episod
last week about living in that place of fear and
(34:38):
anxiety and panic. And I think it was because I
kept thinking, this is urgent. You need to be doing this, you
need to be doing this. But it wasn't just the this.
I had about five to 10 things that were going
through my head of these are the urgent things to do.
And so when someone says, just make a
(34:59):
list and decide which is the most important, it doesn't speak
to me a lot of the time because I have so
many important things. Maybe not in real, you know, in
real life, but to me, they're that important.
And as moms, women, we often have
(35:20):
a lot of responsibilities, especially as moms.
Everyone looks to us as well, mom will do it.
And whether we need to or not, if we've set that up
in our lives, we take that on. And if you
do have that more nurturing, hostess like aspect, whether you're
really being in the hostess, when people come over or not, you
(35:42):
may have that feeling of, I need to take care of this, I
need to take care of that. And I have to keep telling myself,
you don't have to do all this. But I kind of want
to. I want to be on top of it. So. Oh, life, life,
life. Isn't it great? Thank you for listening to me.
I hope it helps. I hope it helps. And I have to tell
you, I'm making progress on my website.
(36:03):
It doesn't really look like it, but I finally figured out something
that wasn't working for a long time.
And more than anything, I'm just taking out a lot of things on
the template that they put up there that I could fill in.
I'm just like, I really just need to keep it simple right
now. I don't have, I have some free offerings right now and I
just want to have spots for my blog articles.
(36:25):
My plan is I have my, my podcast episodes and
I have my yoga videos and I want to bring them all
in to my website so the people who do yoga with
me can find the courses in there. I'm not putting taking people
to all these different places. And then when I have blog
episodes with some of those, there's information that
(36:48):
might be nice to have just in a bullet proof way, you know,
just to find the information quicker.
That would be my blog article. So I started doing that before
I switched. My website is trying to make not every episode needs
a blog article, but trying to get some of that information in
written form. Because for me to remember something later, if
something clicks with me, I like to see it in writing.
(37:11):
Kind of like I talked about in the last episode.
It's nice to have a visual, a visual picture of
what that is so it makes sense to your brain in a different
way. So that's kind of where I am
with that. I don't know. We'll see. Oh, thank you
for being here. Like I said before, and I appreciate.
(37:32):
I saw. I have some reviews, some new reviews on my podcast.
Thank you for that. If you get a chance.
I know it. I have to tell you, it is really hard to figure out
how to give a review, at least on Apple podcasts.
I did it for a few people that I listened to
their podcast a couple weeks ago and went to leave them
a review. And it's crazy hard to even find out where
(37:54):
to do it. Maybe not for everyone, but it was for me.
So if you do leave me a review, I appreciate it because I know
it's not easy to get there. But also tell a few friends
about the podcast because I'd love to spread the word or if you
want to watch me on YouTube, it is fun to make the videos.
I'm getting more comfortable with it.
But every time I come on, I think, oh my goodness, what's going
(38:15):
on with this lighting? Why is it it's hard to get past
seeing yourself and whatever. It's just.
It's just what we look like, right? It's so crazy how we base
so much in life about what we. On how we
look. And to a great degree, we can't
help it. I mean, we can in some ways.
(38:37):
We try to take care of ourselves. We can cut our hair, we can
color it, we can do some things. But a lot of it
is genetics and it's not really who we
are. It is kind of crazy to think about.
Are you somebody who likes to get curious and ponder and ponder?
I am. I also want my website to be there
so you can write to me or, you know, I'd love to be
(38:58):
in touch with people. And I have a newsletter which you may
not be able to find right now anyway, because I don't have the
website set up. But I do send out a newsletter every week or
so and send out tips and I'm doing accountability groups
and that's been fun too with exercise.
It's helped me quite a bit not only with being consistent, but
figuring out. In the last year or two, my exercise routine
(39:22):
has changed a lot. And I keep trying to push myself to
do what I used to do time wise. And I'm learning from
going to the doctor, different tests and things like that, that
actually that's not wise for my body and that's a relief.
But just even focusing and getting the accountability to like
I'm going to do this is helping me see how my body's responding.
(39:43):
And yeah, maybe I do need to dial it back.
But yeah, we're all here for each other.
So thank you for being here. I'll be back again next week
and I'm sure I'll think of something later that I wish I'd said.
But until then. See you later. Bye.
(40:08):
Spread some grape jelly. I don't mean to
bus but I'm a chef and a good one.
My grandma can't hear me the breakfast is done
Getting colder ever older so I run
(40:33):
Open windows, broken shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(41:06):
rewind I've run out of time to
sing melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
I'm Renee Allen, the host of this podcast.
Do you ever talk too fast and you trip over your words?
That's what I'm doing right now. But I'm excited to be here
today. I am going to talk to you kind of
about prioritizing or why that is hard
(00:50):
for women with adhd. More importantly, why prep work?
Doing prep work, kind of behind the scenes work is really
valuable because it makes it so you
don't have to worry about the priority.
If you have a hard time determining the priority if that gets
in the way of you working on something because you either have
(01:11):
too much to do or you can't figure out what to do next.
So one thing I love is, and this is from long
ago, I mentioned it a long time ago, is in the 7
Habits of Highly Effective People, which I think came out
in the late 80s. I know I lived in Pasadena at the time
I moved there in 1990. Maybe it came out before then.
(01:34):
It could have, but I Pasadena, California, if
you know the Rose Parade and all that.
But I read that book and one thing that really hit
me, I think because it works with my brain.
It was so good with working with my brain is learning about
(01:54):
how to do things that are important but not
urgent. Because even though I have done well in
the past with someone's coming over, they're going to be here
in an hour, two hours, or they're going to be here this afternoon
and I run around and clean like a maniac because I know they're
coming and try to get things ready. Seems like the older I get
(02:15):
or the more my ADHD progresses, the less helpful
that is prep work does better for me than even the
under pressure deadline because sometimes deadlines are happening
and I get frozen and I have to think of ways to
get myself to get up and get things done and I have to come
up with a lot of other tools besides, oh, you have this coming
(02:39):
up and you should work on this. So the idea is
that if you want to make progress, if you want to reach a goal,
if you want to have your morning go smoothly, your goal could
be just to have your day go smoothly instead of to accomplish
some big task or some big project or you need to move,
you need to figure out how to do all that goes
(03:02):
into getting boxes, packing up, hiring movers, whatever it is
you do to move. All these things that you have to do in life,
take some sort of skill to get yourself going on
it, to have an idea of what you need to do.
And that could even just be your daily tasks.
And if you feel scrambled or frozen or not sure
(03:23):
what to work on first or kind of run from this to that,
it can be really hard because you want to be able
to act. But if you're acting on one thing and
then you think, well, I really should be working on this.
Well, I really should be working on that.
So a lot of people make to do lists and they think of
what's the priority. And I didn't know about this until I
(03:44):
was looking to review the four quadrants that Stephen
R. Covey had in his book that there's another matrix called the
Eisenhower Matrix. It made matrix. It.
I, I also thought it was called the Einstein matrix.
Okay. Is it called Bolt? I have to look this up.
And I know every time I touch the microphone, it makes a lot
of noise. I'm going to try to be really quiet.
(04:07):
Yeah, I think it's, there's, yeah, there's Einstein also.
Eisenhower Matrix. Einstein Matrix. I don't know
why they call them both Eisenhower, I guess is task management
tool, but I think they're the same thing.
So it's a way to identify, I think that they're, they're similar
things. It's a way to identify what's the most important
(04:29):
thing so I can get things done. And if you, if you're
like me, you see, you know, you look up,
you Google something like priority organization, whatever it
is that you want to do, and you look it up and you think,
oh, good, they're going to have all the answers.
I say this with such excitement because it just doesn't
(04:51):
always feel like that happens. You don't always get all the answers
right, but. And then you go to this article and
you see six or seven things or eight things and you think,
tried that, tried that. That doesn't work for me.
That doesn't work. Yeah, like, tell me something new.
Tell me something. And you want it to work for you.
And you think, well, obviously this is valuable to somebody.
This person wrote a book about it. They make a lot of money.
(05:12):
They make TED talks. It must be helpful to somebody.
Why isn't it helpful to me? Well, there's a reason your brain
might be different or what works for one person.
Going in a certain order or following a pattern might
really work. But for you, you might need to just find
skills or little systems or little methods.
(05:34):
You find what works for you and you find ways to do those
in your life again and again and again or in creative ways.
And if you are just learning about your adhd
and
you're discovering, well, I've done really well at this.
When I've done that, that right there is a skill that
(05:56):
you've developed that worked with your brain.
And tweaking it for other instances can be really helpful instead
of fighting against it. Because sometimes we think we have to
do it in a way that worked for somebody else, and then it doesn't.
So my problem with the Einstein matrix or the Eisenhower matrix,
I'm going to call it the Einstein matrix because I don't know
very much about Eisenhower. I was little, I think I was alive.
(06:19):
If he was president, I don't know. I didn't pay attention to
government when I was younger. But, but that, that matrix,
the one that's not the Stephen R. Kevy has you put things
into similar quadrants like, like Stephen R.
Covey, but with a different, a different reason.
(06:42):
And so it has. You put in the urgent.
So if you, if you make a four square.
Did you ever play four square when you're little and you.
Each person stands in a square and you hit the ball back and
forth. So you make four squares and there's the column
on the left that says urgent, there's a column on the right
that says not urgent. And then if you were to make
(07:02):
the rows on the left, like you're making a Google sheet or something
like that, it would say important on the first row and
not important on the second row. So first quadrant, urgent and
important. Second quadrant, if you're moving to the right.
If you read left to right, like we do in the US When I
went to Israel a couple years ago, they go from right to left.
(07:23):
I'm sure other, other countries have their languages do too,
but it was so weird getting on a plane and seeing people read
a book from the back to the front anyway, at least our backfront.
Just like if you're in the US and then you see people in a movie
in England driving, and you're thinking they're driving in the
wrong side of the car. How's that? You know.
Anyway, so urgent and important is square
(07:44):
number one at the top, square number two on the right.
Urgent, not important. Wait, I'm already messing it
up. Okay, let's start again. Urgent and important at the top,
not urgent and important at the top.
So both of the important things are at the top.
And that's good because we want to see the important things at
the top, right? So urgent is on the left side, not urgent on
(08:04):
the right side. Both of those are important.
On the bottom, you have things that are not important, but
you might have some that are urgent.
They're not important. Maybe they're not as vital to
get done. So if you're in a company, maybe it's not as vital
for the company to succeed, but it's still something that maybe
(08:29):
should be done. Like going through emails just to
kind of clean it out. That's not really important.
It's not urgent. Urgent, not urgent.
Not important is just total distractions, I
guess even, I mean, even junk mail is a distraction, right?
But maybe it's important to get rid of that.
But anyway, so you have to decide, do I delegate something that
(08:54):
needs to be done, but it's not super important.
Like it kind of has a timeline because the trash will pile
up or whatever, but it's not our most important thing of
the day. It could wait till tomorrow.
And then there's the things that could wait forever.
Like someone says, hey, come in and watch this TikTok.
And you're like, I don't really even need to do that.
(09:15):
Like, that's not important at all. But it might be something
we do. Right? So in the business world, when
they use this quadrant, these four quadrants, they say,
look at your to do list and see what is the priority.
Those would be the things that are urgent and important.
Do those do those things that are urgent and important and
(09:35):
those urgent things, There's a deadline and probably with a big
company, yeah, there's a deadline. We need to get that done,
that kind of thing. Right. But not urgent, still important.
There's no deadline. It could wait. So maybe
that's something that you put on your schedule for the next day
or you try to do before it becomes
(09:58):
critical, but you don't have to do it now.
So that would be further down the to do list.
And if you have time, you'll do that, that later.
So I can see how that could be helpful with
management and with running an office or things like
that and deciding, do I need to do it?
Is it a priority? Do I need to schedule it out?
(10:18):
That would be not urgent, but still important to do.
Make this phone call or something. Is this something that needs
to get done, but it's not as important?
So I don't need to do it, but maybe I could delegate it or maybe
I can get someone else to do, you know, I can pay someone else
to do it or ask somebody else to do it or something and then
just get rid of that. Even thought that this needs to
(10:39):
be done is the not urgent not important.
Don't waste your time. And that can be helpful.
But I think when I have adhd, I can
write out my to do list and I can say, okay, what are the most
urgent and important things? If I work on that first, that
can. That I might have five of those
(11:02):
things, honestly, and I can't decide which one to do.
It's hard for me to set that priority.
Or the most important thing to do, or the most
urgent thing to do is so big that I don't have the
confidence that I can get it done. Or if I do get it
done, can I get it done in the time that it needs to be done?
It might just put me in more of a frenzied state and then
(11:22):
I'm not as capable of getting it done.
So I look at these steps for things like that and I think, yeah,
I could delegate that, but maybe I'd enjoy doing that more,
even if it's not as. As important. You know, maybe I.
Maybe my brain needs to do the things that aren't as important.
And so I look at the quadrant differently because I'm not
(11:46):
working for somebody. I am setting my own priorities.
I do have responsibilities as a mom with older children,
but not in the same way as I did when I was younger.
Like an urgent and important thing might have been a diaper that
needs to be changed, a crying baby, children that need to be
(12:06):
picked up from school, that kind of thing.
It was easier to set those priorities.
But if you have a hard time figuring out the priorities or you
find these urgent important things are so big that you just
think, I can't even get that done, or you want
to do it in such a great way that you may not remember
(12:26):
all the things that are involved in getting it done.
Especially if you're heading out the door, you're trying to get
something done, it can just make it so you're not as effective.
The thing that I love about 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
is you need to be effective. It's not like, can you be the most
successful? The idea I think for the people who
bought the book, because it was a very successful book in the
business world, was that you could be successful using it.
(12:49):
But if I want to be effective with the brain that I have, if
I'm going around trying to meet deadlines and doing the most
important things and making to do lists, that's going to make
me crazy. That's going to make me just like, think honestly.
When I make to do lists, I kind of rebel against them.
I Think, But I don't want to do that.
I don't know. The urgent and important don't always call out
(13:11):
to me. Sometimes they have to, but they don't always call out
to me. So even on Thanksgiving Day, I had a hard
time going in and starting that turkey.
When I didn't feel like doing it, I didn't feel like doing it.
So with the Stephen R. Covey model, same
thing. Urgent,
(13:32):
not urgent at the top, but important.
And important at the top. Urgent, not urgent at
the bottom, but both of the bottoms are not important.
And he looked at things like urgent things are
things that have a deadline, so you know when that's due.
You know, like, okay, that needs to be done by this time.
Or it's. It's a problem. Like there's a leak in your ceiling,
(13:56):
and that's an urgent thing. We've. We've had that.
We've had too many leaks in this house.
Let's just say that we've only lived here for two years.
And every once in a while my husband says there's water coming
through the ceiling in the kitchen. One time it was even coming
through the. The light fixture. That's urgent.
That's scary. So that's more of a crisis mode.
It's a pressing problem. Those are important and they're urgent.
(14:18):
And sometimes you do have to drop what you're doing and take
care of those things. Children that, you know run out the
door and you need to go chase them. Those are things that I don't
have a problem figuring out that priority.
But there are a lot of things that fall into.
These are the most important things that I would put at the top
of my to do list. And I still don't feel
(14:38):
the need or the love of working on that.
And I have a hard time getting myself to do it.
The not urgent, but important. I've learned that that's
a really fun quadrant to be in. Those are things
like planning. Planning's really fun.
You still have to do. But planning things out can be more fun.
(15:00):
But planning isn't just imagining. It's not just dreaming.
It's not just writing things down. It's not just talking to people
and figuring out how you're going to do it.
It can actually be the pre. That's what can be really
fun to do. Because prep work a lot of
times is mindless work. So if you think of
getting ready to go to the gym, if you're going to go to the
(15:22):
gym, you're going to. That's something important.
And it actually has a timeline. Let's say, you know that at seven
in the morning you need to go to the gym and you
need to leave by 6:30 so you can get there and get to
work in time or get back and take your kids to school or whatever
it is. So that has some sort of a deadline.
It's not super pressing. It's not like you're going to get in
(15:43):
trouble or lose money or something if you don't do it.
But that's a goal and that has a priority in your
mind of being important to you and having a
timeline with it. But there are a lot of
things that you can do to make it easier to do that.
So it's not such a big thing on the to do list
(16:06):
that you can't just walk by and go, yep, we're doing that.
You don't have to, you don't have to scramble around doing all
the last minute things to make sure that happens.
So the prep work could be figuring out what
shoes am I gonna wear? Do I have socks?
Is the laundry caught up? Do I even know where socks are?
I went to a yoga full moon retreat. Mini class.
(16:30):
I guess it was a mini retreat class.
Cacao ceremony. Cacao, like you make the chocolate
into a really thick, bitter, hot chocolate.
It was good. I wished it was a little bit hotter, but anyway.
And I also wished it was dark because it wasn't dark.
Have I already talked about that this week?
Sometimes I get hung up on things when they.
When they don't meet my expectations.
(16:51):
I was hoping it was gonna be dark and we were gonna be doing
yoga under the full moon and it wasn't dark, but I guess it was
full moon time. So yeah, I tend to hash and rehash
in my mind. Do you do that too? So anyway, but when
you're prepping for this. I did a little prep work
before that. I knew that I wanted to be comfortable there.
(17:12):
I'm a high maintenance girl when it comes to camping.
I mean, not high maintenance, like tons of makeup, that kind
of high maintenance. But I want to be comfortable, I want to
be warm. I want to have a pillow that I like.
I'll bring all the extra things to prevent myself from
having shoes that aren't comfortable or whatever.
So I. Not only for myself, but for the friend that
(17:33):
invited me. I got out yoga bolsters, blankets, eye pillows,
socks. I didn't know, like should I wear shoes that require socks
or not? Either way, I'm going to have socks to put on while I
lay down on the yoga mat, I'm going to have a water bottle.
I'll have a hydration drink. Like, I have all this stuff because
I want to feel good afterwards. I don't want to feel
(17:56):
drained. I want to feel good throughout.
I don't want to feel thirsty, but yet I don't want to have to
go to the bathroom doing all these things.
I always. I wouldn't say it over plan.
I plan adequately for them. But sometimes I am
late to going things like that if I don't do the prep work.
So during the prep work, I got the mats out, I got the, you
(18:16):
know, I got all the things out that I needed beforehand.
But if I'd really done the prep work, prep work, I would have
been caught up on laundry, and I wasn't.
So I had to go through multiple baskets of laundry trying
to find two socks that matched. And I almost grabbed two
that didn't. I thought, no one's going to care.
But I thought, now I find some that match.
(18:36):
So I found some that matched. When I got there at the end, we're
supposed to go around the circle and say, like, what we liked
and stuff like that. And I told this one woman I really
like that her socks didn't match, because that made me happy.
Because as I thought, she's my kind of person.
I should have done that. I should have felt that comfortable
to not wear socks that match. But anyway, whatever it is
(18:57):
that you're gonna do, if you get the prep work done,
it could even be for cooking. Let's say you want to make
cookies, but when it's time to make cookies, you think, well,
I don't even know if I have all the ingredients or I don't
like making cookies. When the butter is hard, I like it to be
soft. So if you think that morning or even the night before,
(19:19):
I want to make cookies tomorrow, go into your pantry and see,
do I have the right sugar for that? Do I have the butter?
Maybe I'll take the butter and put it out on the counter.
Now, all of those things that are kind of the planning things,
the little prep work, they're fun and easy when it's not
time to do it. Cause it's like whatever timeframe that you
have in your mind of something that needs to be done, it is not
(19:42):
there during the prep work time. Prep work time is like the
free time. It's like, ah, I get to just help with this, and
I just get to help with that. At least that's how I feel.
And I think That's a really fun time to just do it, but.
Because you know it's going to make your life easier later,
there's no, you know, heart beating a little bit faster,
(20:04):
like, I need to get this done, or, oh, no, what if I don't
have enough butter? Because you don't care if you have enough
butter. If you find out that you don't, you go, oh, maybe I'll
order some to be delivered tomorrow morning.
Or maybe I'll get in the car and go.
Or ask my husband if he can pick some up.
You know, you just have all the solutions because you have a
lot of time when you're in that important.
(20:25):
But not urgent. Not urgent is a great way to.
To act under. What's the word for acting under.
Yeah. I don't know. Isn't it weird when you can't think of normal
words like exist? It's not exist, but anyway, so.
Yeah. Have you ever watched, like, the Great British Baking Company?
(20:45):
I never know what those shows are called.
They. They have all these. Okay, Great British Cooking show.
Oh, baking show. At least I remembered it was British.
It wasn't English. Great British Baking show.
I used to watch that. When is it? Is his name
Scott? What was his name? Scott? I thought he was really fascinating
(21:05):
to watch. Maybe I just thought his name was Scott because my
husband's name's Scott. But I liked.
I like the original judges, and I kind of stopped watching it
after that. But it was a little bit stressful when they
were saying three minutes to the people baking, because, you
know, these people love to bake. You know, they tell their stories
about how I live in this little flat and I love
(21:28):
to cook for my daughter and all this stuff.
And then they get there and they're making them do really hard
things, and they have to put it in the proofing oven.
And I learned what a proofing oven was.
And. And they put a lot of stress on them because
then they're like, oh, no, it didn't whip up.
The souffle didn't whip up like I wanted it to.
And then they start getting panic mode, and then they give them
the deadline, and. And it's super stressful.
(21:50):
And we can feel like that in our own lives.
We can feel like when there's some kind of weight
while we're trying to just process thoughts, get things
done, be in a mode of accomplishing things.
We don't want to always be in a mode of having to think and
have pressure. We want to have a mode of this is
(22:14):
fun and what should I do next? And when you're in
that freedom mode of I think I'll do this now
I have a little time. Yeah, I can watch a show and I,
I am one who loves to watch TV shows.
I have all the DVDs in the world to prove it from not only
like Disney and Harry Potter and everything that
(22:34):
everyone else used to buy DVDs for, but every, every little sitcom
I used to watch when I was little. I love to watch shows over
and over. I, I don't have a problem watching TV and
relaxing that way, but I do find pockets of
time where I think before I do that or while I
do that on my laptop. I can always watch something on my laptop
(22:57):
and do this to prep for that. You
know, maybe just make the cookie dough and then stick it in the
fridge and then bake them tomorrow. I like doing that too,
because then I can just take it out.
It is a little hard. It's nicer if you make them into balls first.
But that, you know, that takes more time.
So doing things like that. I love to make bread.
(23:17):
And yesterday I was thinking, you need to just get out the
wheat grinder. Have you ever grind grounded ground wheat?
I love to grind wheat. My mom used to do it.
I love the smell of it. I love to cook with whole wheat.
But when I run out of wheat flour, I have to grind the wheat
again. And when it's time to make bread, I don't want to
grind the wheat at the same time. That's too much.
(23:39):
It's, it's hitting my brain of, that's too much.
I'm not doing it. So I, I want to have the
flow flour's ready. But if it's just the afternoon
and I'm thinking, ha ha, I just cleaned the kitchen, I think
I'll go in there and work on my website or something.
I'll think, oh, why don't you grind some wheat first?
Oh, that sounds fun. Because I don't have any pressure of.
(24:01):
And then I'm going to make bread and then I'm going to make a
big mess in the kitchen. And then, you know, it builds up bigger
when it's part of the big process. But when it's a non
urgent but important thing, it's more fun setting out your
clothes the night before deciding what jewelry you're gonna wear.
If you wear jewelry. I like to do that stuff in advance
(24:24):
because if it's the morning of my brain's not functioning as
well, I can't find what I'm Looking for, even
though I know it's where I put it when it's time.
Yeah, it can be a lot, you know, so even just checking
the weather for the next day, if you're gonna go somewhere that
requires outdoor, knowing if you're wearing a jacket,
(24:45):
if you like being comfortable outside, knowing if you want to
eat outside or inside, if you're going to a restaurant, all those
kinds of decisions, if you don't want to make them on the
spot, if you want to lighten your load, even just decision wise,
do that prep work the day before. Do it the night before.
Do it while you're watching a show, do it while.
Do it while you're waiting in line in the store on your phone.
(25:06):
There are a lot of ways to do the prep work.
Yes, yes, yes. So let's see what else I have.
Do I have anything else in store? So, yeah, the not important
but urgent. Those are the things that aren't,
aren't as fun, like phone calls. Sometimes you get phone
calls or interruptions and they're not important, but you
(25:29):
have to pay attention to them because they're happening.
That happens in life. Those that, those aren't the places
that we enjoy spending time as much as the important.
And non urgent. Non urgent feels good.
Unless you work well under pressure.
Maybe even those who do, I would think at some point get tired
(25:51):
of the pressure. So, yeah, anyway, okay, so with
adhd, it's important to just know what works
for you and if and anything that you can do in
advance. I think of it like if you
had a personal assistant in the days of the Brady Bunch, they
(26:13):
used to say, you know, like, everybody needs an Alice because
Alice was the housekeeper. And when I watched the Brady Bunch,
I. And the Brady Bunch is my favorite show ever.
It might be why I have three girls and three boys.
But
I didn't know anybody in the world, in the real world
who had an Alice who had a housekeeper.
Not in my town. And that looked amazing.
(26:35):
You know, Carol Brady got to have Alice bring in the groceries
or the grocery delivery boy bring her, Sam the butcher bring
the meat. But Alice did a lot. She even
helped with the kids. And I didn't have an Alice with my kids
either. And that was okay. But as I get older,
I think, wouldn't it be nice to have a personal assistant?
(26:57):
Wouldn't it be nice to have an assistant who would do my
taxes? I know some people pay their.
Someone to do their taxes. But even if you do that, you have
to do the groundwork. Wouldn't it Be nice to have the personal
assistant to do that groundwork for you, to make sure
that every time you spent a dollar, they knew where it went and
they made sure that it wasn't too much.
Wouldn't that be nice? Anything that causes you pressure wouldn't
(27:20):
be nice if you had an assistant to take care of it.
So I look at the times when I am doing the prep work
is I'm being the personal assistant.
I am lightening my load for later. I am doing myself
a favor. I am helping myself feel less scrambled when
I go into the next day. Because sometimes we see the
(27:42):
next day or the time that what that when something
needs to be done as playing out in this beautiful way of
ease. And the reality is there are those disruptions
or there are phone calls or text or whatever
news that comes into your life that makes it harder for
(28:04):
you to be in an emotional state to do things as well.
So if you have your. Your own personal assistant yourself who
said, I'm gonna set you up for success, I'm gonna make it
easier for you tomorrow, I'm gonna make it easier for you tonight,
I'm gonna make it easier. People who meal prep know that they
think I'm gonna make my meals and I'm just gonna pull them out
(28:25):
of the fridge and put them in the oven or whatever.
I had a friend who dropped her daughters off for school
every morning. I can guarantee you she doesn't have adhd.
She has the opposite. She has extra organized.
Yeah, she's really, really good at all this stuff.
Anyway, she would drop her kids off for school and she would
(28:46):
think in the morning, what am I going to make for dinner tonight?
And on the way home from the school, she would stop at
the store if there were any ingredients that she didn't have
and pick them up and make sure she had them when she got the
mail. She was so good. She was the first person in the
world that I ever heard the phrase. And this is before Internet
and everything. Everything has a home, everything has a place
(29:06):
and everything in its place. I'm like, wow.
She had a trash can in her garage, and when she walked in
the house from the mailbox, she took any junk
mail and put it in the trash, right?
Then maybe if it was like credit card things, maybe she tore
it up into a million pieces because I have to put a lot of stuff
in the shredder. She didn't have paper piles.
She. She did all of these things. And.
(29:28):
And then she started making her dinner in the afternoon.
And honestly, anytime that I did well with eating, with
making dinner as a grown up. I did better when I
was in college and high school. But it was when at like 3:30
or 4, I thought maybe I should start making dinner now.
Most of the time I didn't want to make dinner right then.
(29:49):
I just got, you know, I got the kids home from school and stuff
like that. I wanted to enjoy my life.
But, but if I, if I thought maybe you should
start making dinner now because that was more of a low pressure
time because it wasn't brush, it wasn't dinner time.
It was like, oh, I could do this and then I could do this.
That was kind of being my personal assistant.
If you do a little bit of this now, then later instead I would
wait and then it's just like, I can't do that in time.
(30:12):
Then I try to do stuff in a different way and it wouldn't, wouldn't
turn out very good. This is before I gave up on making,
making dinner bits. But anyway, yeah, anytime you can do
yourself a favor, do it. Maybe you do have a personal
assistant and that's great too. And you already know what
that's like. But there are probably ways that you can do that
for yourself too, that you can help yourself not
(30:36):
feel so pressured in the situation or not have as
many things to do as you go. It's just like, you
know, people who used to iron, My mom still irons, but people
who would do laundry and iron, then they'd put
things in their closet that were perfectly ironed and they would
have them to wear. I never really enjoyed ironing and
(30:59):
part of that would be because I'd pull something out.
I think, well, I have to iron that if I want to wear it.
Then you're like, get out the ironing board.
And I learned about the spray bottle where you can get
things wet and just kind of flatten it out.
And then I learned it doesn't matter if it's ironed, but still.
Do you ever use the curling iron sometimes or not?
Curling iron, the flat iron, hair straightener.
(31:22):
Sometimes I use that because I do like wearing linen if I
ever wear something besides a sweatshirt or a T shirt.
Sometimes I like wearing linen and it's kind of hopeless for
that to ever stay ironed. But it looks really bad if the bottoms
are super crinkly. So I'll just get a little bit wet and take
the flat ironing and put it across and try not to
burn my clothes. So yeah, those are my little,
(31:45):
my fun little hints for today. But yeah, if you haven't
read Stephen R. Kevity's book. You don't have to read it.
You can. You can ask the Internet to tell you what
some of his best things were, or you can ask me and
I'll. I'll tell you about more. But that's one of my favorites,
is living in that quadrant, that second quadrant of important
(32:06):
but not urgent. It is a lovely, lovely place to exist.
And his other phrase that he had in one of his seven steps
was about sharpening the saw, and that was more
about what you do for yourself. Because if you were to
cut down a tree. I've never tried to cut down a tree,
(32:28):
but I have. I did dig up an apple tree once and
move it to the backyard. And it grew.
It did. It was in a driveway, and I had to dig it up.
It wasn't too big, but they're always bigger than they look.
When you start digging and find the roots, they're always bigger
underneath. But, yeah, I. We needed to put a driveway
on that side of the house because we had a guest house and we
wanted to have a renter. And there was an apple tree there, so
I dug it up and dragged it across the yard, replanted it,
(32:53):
and it produced apples. One of my very few
gardening success stories. Most of my gardening stories are
survival of the fittest, because whatever I do, it doesn't work.
But.
But, yeah. Was I talking about, oh, a tree?
I've never tried to cut down a tree, but I have used a saw before
(33:13):
on limbs, on bushes and things that are growing the
wrong direction. Maybe they're tree limbs.
And I've actually never looked to see if the saw
was sharp. I just find some hand saw in the garage.
That's my husband. And you have to go, you know, back
and forth a million times to get it to cut.
(33:33):
And if you have a sharp saw, it's gonna be a lot easier than
a dull one. And the idea with sharpening the saw is
if you take time to sharpen the saw, it'll work better.
And the same is true for ourselves with self care.
That's why everyone talks about self care, is it's, well, partially
(33:54):
for emotional health, mental health, but also if you want to
be more effective in your life, if you want to be able to
function. Maybe that's the word I was looking for earlier.
We know about executive dysfunction as part of adhd, but we
want to function with our brain that has executive dysfunction.
And if you want to function, then if you are a
(34:18):
sharper tool, if you've Gotten enough sleep.
If you manage your emotional health to some degree, you're able
to get yourself to calm down. When you're revved up, if you're
in a panic mode and you're thinking, I made an episod
last week about living in that place of fear and
(34:38):
anxiety and panic. And I think it was because I
kept thinking, this is urgent. You need to be doing this, you
need to be doing this. But it wasn't just the this.
I had about five to 10 things that were going
through my head of these are the urgent things to do.
And so when someone says, just make a
(34:59):
list and decide which is the most important, it doesn't speak
to me a lot of the time because I have so
many important things. Maybe not in real, you know, in
real life, but to me, they're that important.
And as moms, women, we often have
(35:20):
a lot of responsibilities, especially as moms.
Everyone looks to us as well, mom will do it.
And whether we need to or not, if we've set that up
in our lives, we take that on. And if you
do have that more nurturing, hostess like aspect, whether you're
really being in the hostess, when people come over or not, you
(35:42):
may have that feeling of, I need to take care of this, I
need to take care of that. And I have to keep telling myself,
you don't have to do all this. But I kind of want
to. I want to be on top of it. So. Oh, life, life,
life. Isn't it great? Thank you for listening to me.
I hope it helps. I hope it helps. And I have to tell
you, I'm making progress on my website.
(36:03):
It doesn't really look like it, but I finally figured out something
that wasn't working for a long time.
And more than anything, I'm just taking out a lot of things on
the template that they put up there that I could fill in.
I'm just like, I really just need to keep it simple right
now. I don't have, I have some free offerings right now and I
just want to have spots for my blog articles.
(36:25):
My plan is I have my, my podcast episodes and
I have my yoga videos and I want to bring them all
in to my website so the people who do yoga with
me can find the courses in there. I'm not putting taking people
to all these different places. And then when I have blog
episodes with some of those, there's information that
(36:48):
might be nice to have just in a bullet proof way, you know,
just to find the information quicker.
That would be my blog article. So I started doing that before
I switched. My website is trying to make not every episode needs
a blog article, but trying to get some of that information in
written form. Because for me to remember something later, if
something clicks with me, I like to see it in writing.
(37:11):
Kind of like I talked about in the last episode.
It's nice to have a visual, a visual picture of
what that is so it makes sense to your brain in a different
way. So that's kind of where I am
with that. I don't know. We'll see. Oh, thank you
for being here. Like I said before, and I appreciate.
(37:32):
I saw. I have some reviews, some new reviews on my podcast.
Thank you for that. If you get a chance.
I know it. I have to tell you, it is really hard to figure out
how to give a review, at least on Apple podcasts.
I did it for a few people that I listened to
their podcast a couple weeks ago and went to leave them
a review. And it's crazy hard to even find out where
(37:54):
to do it. Maybe not for everyone, but it was for me.
So if you do leave me a review, I appreciate it because I know
it's not easy to get there. But also tell a few friends
about the podcast because I'd love to spread the word or if you
want to watch me on YouTube, it is fun to make the videos.
I'm getting more comfortable with it.
But every time I come on, I think, oh my goodness, what's going
(38:15):
on with this lighting? Why is it it's hard to get past
seeing yourself and whatever. It's just.
It's just what we look like, right? It's so crazy how we base
so much in life about what we. On how we
look. And to a great degree, we can't
help it. I mean, we can in some ways.
(38:37):
We try to take care of ourselves. We can cut our hair, we can
color it, we can do some things. But a lot of it
is genetics and it's not really who we
are. It is kind of crazy to think about.
Are you somebody who likes to get curious and ponder and ponder?
I am. I also want my website to be there
so you can write to me or, you know, I'd love to be
(38:58):
in touch with people. And I have a newsletter which you may
not be able to find right now anyway, because I don't have the
website set up. But I do send out a newsletter every week or
so and send out tips and I'm doing accountability groups
and that's been fun too with exercise.
It's helped me quite a bit not only with being consistent, but
figuring out. In the last year or two, my exercise routine
(39:22):
has changed a lot. And I keep trying to push myself to
do what I used to do time wise. And I'm learning from
going to the doctor, different tests and things like that, that
actually that's not wise for my body and that's a relief.
But just even focusing and getting the accountability to like
I'm going to do this is helping me see how my body's responding.
(39:43):
And yeah, maybe I do need to dial it back.
But yeah, we're all here for each other.
So thank you for being here. I'll be back again next week
and I'm sure I'll think of something later that I wish I'd said.
But until then. See you later. Bye.
(40:08):
Spread some grape jelly. I don't mean to
bus but I'm a chef and a good one.
My grandma can't hear me the breakfast is done
Getting colder ever older so I run
(40:33):
Open windows, broken shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(41:06):
rewind I've run out of time to
sing melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me.
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