May 30, 2025 • 24 mins
Do you ever have a big idea, but can't get yourself to work on it?
This is more than overwhelm - you may have a task, project or idea that is too big to begin.
In this episode, Renee shows you how to identify where it's too big and find ways to scale down tasks so you can finally take action.
Learn practical strategies to break down your to-do’s, find your starting point, and make steady progress, and actually accomplish what you want to get done!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:29):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
I'm Renee Allen, the host of this podcast, and I'm excited
to be here. I am recording at night.
That's a roadblock I've had in my mind of I
can't record unless it's daytime because I need the sunshine
to come through the window and it's dark as can be outside.
And I'm recording. I figured out another way to do it.
(00:52):
So I'm excited about that because it's been challenging when
I've had my four grandchildren here, to taking care of them
day and night, which I love, love, love, love, love.
But it doesn't leave time for recording.
So they are in bed and here I am. But thank
you so much for being here. I'm going to talk a
(01:15):
little bit more about things that we want to do and
what gets in the way of things that we want to do.
And in particular, when a project, a task, your
goal is just too big, it just feels too big,
or maybe it really is too big and what you can do about
that. Part of the problem with something being
(01:38):
so big is if it's going to take a lot of time, you
might need the perfect situation, the perfect scenario, a big
chunk of time, and you might not have that, or it might require
a lot of decisions to make along the way, and that
might be too challenging, that just might be too overwhelming,
and you just don't even know where to start.
(01:59):
Or if you do start, if you get stuck, you don't want
to just get partway done and so forth.
So what can you do? What can you do when things
are so big in your mind or in reality
that you can't get going on it and yet you really need
to get it done?
(02:20):
What you can do is
shrink the project. So even if you have a goal
to do something like put on a baby shower for
somebody or write a book, have you ever wanted to write
a book? I have. And if you want to
do that, it's not actually a current goal, it might change back
(02:43):
to that. But that was always just like, oh, yeah,
how would I even do that? I can write.
I love to write. What would I write about?
You know, it's like you have a goal, but you don't really know
what you want to do with it. What are the specifics with your
goal? I want to organize my house, but what does that
really look like? So sometimes it's just that you have the
(03:03):
big picture goal, but you don't even have
the first idea of how to begin that you have the idea,
idea of finishing it or getting the benefit of it,
but you don't know the little steps, you're not sure how to
do it, or even if you do know how to
do it, you just don't have the energy for it.
(03:24):
So there can be a lot of things that
are your roadblocks if your project is too big.
And scaling the project down or simplifying it may
be helpful. You want to throw a baby shower
for a friend. But what you have in mind, you
(03:47):
know, either you can't do financially or you can't do the
way that you think you need to do it, or the way
you think that person wants you to do it, or all the
imaginary people in your mind that are going to come and what
their expectation is. And if you have all these ideas that
are stopping you from doing it and you don't end up doing it
at all, what is the better scenario?
(04:11):
Are you an all or nothing person? Are you someone who thinks,
well, if it can't be done this way, I don't want to do it.
Maybe there are times that I'm like that and there are
other times that I think I want to do this, I
want it to work out, I want it,
I want the outcome. I want that person to feel cherished or
(04:32):
that person to get to be surrounded by friends and loved
ones and have a baby shower or whatever that is.
I want to have people in my home. I want to host this
event. And if you do, scaling it down, simplifying
it, looking at all the ideas that you have and
seeing what is more realistic, what is still doable and
(04:57):
will still be nice, but doesn't have to be so expensive
or so time consuming. There may have been a
time of your life that you did have the energy or
the patience or the time to do something on
a bigger scale. And maybe now it isn't the
(05:19):
same, and maybe you still have the same expectation, but you
don't have all those other resources that you once had.
And just noticing that and giving yourself permission to not
do it quite so big can, can be really beneficial.
You could give yourself that break of not having to do
(05:39):
something quite so big, or not having to do it in
the way that, that you have in your mind or that you
think or that you feel some kind of pressure to do.
So just scaling it down can reduce the overwhelm of what
you think it, it needs to be. It can take up
all that pressure. You can also feel better about yourself
(06:00):
because you can actually accomplish something and it can still
be nice, but it doesn't have to be done to
that level. And something that's not as big maybe as putting
on a party or something like
just reorganizing the kitchen or something like that.
You want to, you know, you don't like how far you
(06:23):
have to walk to put the silverware away as you unload
the dishwasher, or how far you have to take the plates
to the table, or, I don't know if you ever run into things like
that where you initially set it up and then later think this
isn't actually
functioning, isn't set up in a functional way.
(06:43):
If you're picky about things like that, I can be picky about
things like that. And I'm always looking for ways to improve.
When I used to work in an office, I would think maybe I
should have the drawer for this file closer to where I'm
on the computer so I don't have to walk across the room.
It's not that I'm lazy about walking across the room, but when
you want to be able to be more productive or be
(07:07):
able to, I guess, just feel a little
more organized in the process or streamline the process, then
you might need to redo it. And scaling down the idea
of that can be helpful, meaning that you don't have to
get it all done at once. You might just take care of
(07:29):
this part of the kitchen or this part of the office, or
this part of your closet, and you work on that one drawer
or that one cupboard, or just reducing the clutter, going
through and getting rid of things first and then saying, well,
maybe it will work now I have more room to do this here
or there. And so just letting go of the idea
(07:51):
of this needs to be a full Saturday project or
a full weekend project, and just working on it for
an hour, and it just gives you also the
opportunity, if you start smaller, to improvise as you
go, to build on it as you go. You start simple, and you
might add on more later, or you might feel like, you know,
(08:13):
this was actually plenty. You know, I.
I didn't need to do as much as I initially thought.
This is just great. And then you have more
time. You haven't had to spend forever on that or creating
a bigger problem by having to move other things
out of your schedule or not do other things that might need
(08:35):
to be done on top of that. But, yeah, so there's
just a lot of things like,
instead of, I'm going to start a new business, and maybe
you will start A new business. But maybe you can't start a
new business in a month. Maybe you can't do it in a
weekend. I don't know who thinks they can do it in a weekend,
(08:55):
but maybe somebody does. But you might just do one thing.
You might just come up with a business plan or set
up a website and that could take a month.
It really could. There are a lot of things that take longer than
what people promise they can be done in.
Or if you feel like I need to do an hour long workout
every day this week, instead you just decide, I'm going
(09:19):
to walk into the gym every day this week.
Just walk in, choose one area to work out in.
Like it might just be over. I walk over by the machines and I
get on the treadmill or I get on a bike or I get
on the rowing machine. And you might do that the whole
time. You might not do it for a full hour.
It might be 20, 30 minutes. And then you think, I think I'll
(09:39):
go lift some weights or I think I'll go stretch and you take
off. The pressure of doing the big goal that
you had, it doesn't mean that you can't do that eventually, especially
if you really love it. But if that is getting in the
way of you actually doing it because you think, I don't know
if I can do that and it just sounds too daunting, then simplify
(10:00):
the goal, redefine what the goal is, what the end
goal is. And it might turn out that
you are there for a full hour. It might turn out that
you're just in there for 20, 30 minutes, but at least you get
some exercise and you're able to complete that.
Instead of going on a big hike, I want to hike this mountain.
(10:22):
You might do that sometimes, but other days you might just go
for a short walk in your neighborhood, just walk out the door
and start walking and see what happens.
Sometimes it's hard to simplify. That does involve making decisions
which could be challenging when you have adhd.
But if you even just take it and cut it in half and
(10:45):
try doing half of it, or cut it in half and then cut
it in half again, just doing a pinch of it, a step
of it, and even ask yourself what is the tiniest
task that I can take out of this and just work
on that and you might really enjoy doing that.
It might build from there or that might be plenty and then you
(11:06):
can feel good about yourself. Gives that increase of dopamine
of yay, I got this done. I got this tiny Task done, I
got this small step done and that is great.
So another thing, so setting a timeframe, like
I'm going to just like I said with the gym before, I'm
(11:26):
going to walk in the gym. That's just a tiny, tiny task,
right? Going to drive to the gym, I'm going to walk to the gym
and, and then I'm going to stay for 20 minutes.
I'm going to stay for a half hour. So setting the time frame
of doing something. I'm going to spend 30 minutes walking around
the house today and seeing if there's things that I can
(11:47):
put in this bag to get rid of, to throw away, to give to
the thrift store, to give away whatever that is.
Just set that time frame. Set a buzzer, set your watch.
If you have a, you know, buzzers, if you leave the kitchen.
I mean usually for me that the buzzer's in the
kitchen, but I know a lot of people have
(12:09):
that A L E X A. They can just say
set it for 30 minutes or something. My daughter does that.
And I think, why don't I think to do that?
But I don't, I don't. But if you're in the
same room and that goes off, you'll hear it.
If you go in another room, you might never know the buzzer rang
and you don't know why it rang. But.
But yeah. So time based sprint of I'm gonna do
(12:32):
this quick or turn it into a game. I'm gonna set the buzzer
for 10 minutes and see how much I can get done.
And then I'll set another 10 minutes and see what else I can
get done. And there might be times that it's not that
helpful. You might get sidetracked, see an email, think, oh,
I need to answer this first. That buzzer goes off and you see,
oh, I just spent 10 minutes answering an email.
(12:53):
Maybe that was important. But if you can stay on
task, that is helpful because I have set the buzzer many times
before and just thought, well, there went another 20 minutes.
I didn't get anything done because I keep seeing other things
that need to be done. But trying to focus any way you can
can be helpful. And eventually if you just keep making
yourself set the buzzer, then it might pay off even if
(13:18):
it's an hour later. But another thing you can
do is just tell yourself this is the rough
draft of whatever you're gonna do.
Tell yourself it doesn't have to be perfect.
And believe me, I know this is hard.
I know it's hard. Every time I make a podcast, I
(13:38):
think of all the things that, ideally, if I spent the
time doing it, that I. That is required to
meet my expectation,
most of the time I wouldn't be recording a podcast because I'd
see something that I just think, no, I can't release that
because of this, or I should do it over because of that, or I
(14:02):
should spend more time with whatever it is.
If I don't have the time to do it. I need to tell myself
it's okay to do it the way it is now.
And later you can change it. You can get better at
it as you go. Thank you for being patient with me on
that. But also just recognizing that.
(14:22):
That perfectionism doesn't matter to as many people as
you may think. And we might put a lot
of pressure on ourselves. We might just.
We might just have a brain that wants to get really
particular about things, that might want to be perfectionistic
(14:43):
about things, and it just might not be
healthy to hold on so tight and have an
expectation for yourself. That is difficult to live
by. It's also difficult to let go of the perfectionism.
But you might feel a little better about things
(15:04):
if you. If you learn to do that. So, yeah, just get
used to the idea every once in a while.
Just tell yourself, it's okay. It's okay if I don't do it
this way. It's okay if I just do the rough
draft version. I can improve it later or not.
And a lot of times you just keep going.
(15:24):
You just keep going, and that's okay.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can also. Sorry.
I'm so. I'm. I. I shouldn't have. I.
I told myself in the last episode that I wasn't going to apologize
for how I am, but you apologize for getting overwhelmed.
I. I don't know if you can sense it, but I get
(15:47):
a little hyped up when I talk about the things that are hard
for me because that anxiousness wells up inside
of me. So, yeah, that was my. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whatever it was that I said, that came out of nowhere.
But, yeah. So back to small steps, just
(16:08):
breaking it down. Even if you give yourself little notes, little
sticky notes that not only remind you to do something, but just
map out what you're gonna do. First I'm gonna do this, then
I'm gonna do that, then I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do
that. If you have a big meal to cook for a holiday or something.
Just doing that, writing the list. Sometimes I'll put the Post
(16:29):
its on the fridge because, you know, a lot of the fridges
don't have magnetic fronts anymore. And so I'll just
put the post it note on there that reminds me not only of
what I want to, what I plan to make, but helps
me see it so I can just go, okay, this,
then this, then this and this. And it breaks it into those
(16:51):
tasks. And it's easier to manage as I
go instead of walking around like, you know, the chicken
with his head cut off, like, what am I doing next?
What am I going to do next? So anyway, yeah, you
don't have to climb the mountain every single day.
You don't have to do the big, big thing and identifying what
(17:12):
that mountain is that you do need to climb.
There may be times that you do need to climb a mountain, but
not giving yourself so many to climb.
I said this to my mom when I was visiting my mom
and dad recently because I was helping him with a lot of very
difficult tasks. They had just moved.
They lived where they lived for 30 years.
(17:33):
It's not where I grew up, but they were moving away from
friends and loved ones and adjusting to living in
a house with my brother while they're trying to sell their house
and buy a house. And. And I was there mostly helping with
all the, the bills and organizing what's paid, what's
not paid. Can I get you set up online?
(17:55):
They weren't set up online with hardly anything.
And helping them see that that was a better
way, all these things. And at one point my mom came
in and she was telling me about something that
was becoming a big thing in her mind.
I have no idea even what it was anymore.
(18:17):
But I said, mom. And I wasn't trying to discount what
she was worried about, but I was trying to give
her the perspective that this doesn't need to be
so big. And I said, mom, you have a lot
of mountains to climb. Don't make this one of them.
And it just came out of nowhere. But when I said it,
(18:39):
I realized we often do that. We have real mountains
to climb. We have things in life that are difficult.
And if we have the power to take something that doesn't have
to be that difficult, whether it's a task you need to do or
problem you need to solve or something you are emotionally involved
with that maybe you can back away from and tell
(19:02):
yourself it doesn't matter that much.
Do I need to be as involved in this?
Do I need to go so deep with this and have
this take over my life right now? And if the answer is
no. This doesn't need to be a mountain to climb.
Then don't make it a mountain. Make it a tiny little step.
Make it a. A little leap off the porch and don't trip
on. That's how I've tripped a few times.
(19:24):
But yeah, make it a safe leap off the porch
and not a big mountain to climb. Yeah.
Thank you so much. I know my episodes have been
a little bit shorter lately, or maybe a lot shorter lately, and
that is because life picks up. It sure does.
(19:44):
It sure does. I am loving, loving, loving, taking
care of my grandchildren. It's bringing back so many fantastic
memories for me of being a young mom, even though I'm not
nearly as young. Twice as old as I was
when I had my fourth child. But I
(20:08):
am loving it. It just doesn't allow as much freedom for being
on here. Next week I'll have short episodes, too, hopefully
two of them. After that, I'll be back home with just my
normal life without my grandchildren.
Next weekend. Next week I'll be with them, but hopefully I'll.
I'll get some recorded before then. But thank you so much.
And I'm getting closer, closer, closer to having my website built.
(20:32):
That has definitely been a mountain to climb, but I'm starting
to make my way through it, breaking it into tiny
tasks. So it's not so overwhelming. Yeah, getting past
those big things or those things that are big and just kind of
taking it into chunks. You can't eat something gigantic
(20:54):
all at once. You have to take tiny bites to be able to eat
it, digest it, and maybe not eat it all in one day.
So that is my little bit of advice for
today. You're doing wonderful. I hope you know that having ADHD
is not the easiest thing. In fact, I've been thinking of making
some YouTube episodes just to get out there
(21:14):
to the world to help people understand us.
Not us, understand us. But if you have someone in your
life who's like this, this, or this, understand it's not easy
for them, be patient with them. Anyway, that's one of my new
tiny tasks. I need. Or something. I need to break it
down into tiny tasks because I get these ideas and then what
(21:35):
do you do with them? In fact, my grandson who's here who has
ADHD told me that he wants to be somebody
who decides what houses look like and draw
drawings of them and decide how the building is going to
look and be so people can build it that way.
And I said, oh, that's what an architect is.
And he said, yeah. And I would be a really good architect.
(21:58):
And I said, why is that? He's nine. And he said, because with
my adhd, I have so many ideas all the time.
I would have so many ideas of how these houses could look.
And I thought, that is fantastic. That is fantastic that he's
understanding himself and that I understand him.
It makes me really happy. But thank you so much for being
(22:21):
here. Feel free to go to my website, even if
you just see a partially made website.
Renee-allen.com I'm finally getting my email set
up there because I had to transfer things around.
I haven't been able to email as much.
Oh, dear. I'm trying to move my bangs and it's sideways.
This is backwards on the camera. If you're watching on YouTube,
I usually have a mirror behind the my laptop so
(22:45):
I can see what my real way to move my hair
is. If it's bothering me, I'm just gonna have to live
with it. So thank you again. I will see you again later.
Bye.
Shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(23:10):
Without.
A call.
Time for a
(23:31):
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
(23:55):
Sam.
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with adhd.
I'm Renee Allen, the host of this podcast, and I'm excited
to be here. I am recording at night.
That's a roadblock I've had in my mind of I
can't record unless it's daytime because I need the sunshine
to come through the window and it's dark as can be outside.
And I'm recording. I figured out another way to do it.
(00:52):
So I'm excited about that because it's been challenging when
I've had my four grandchildren here, to taking care of them
day and night, which I love, love, love, love, love.
But it doesn't leave time for recording.
So they are in bed and here I am. But thank
you so much for being here. I'm going to talk a
(01:15):
little bit more about things that we want to do and
what gets in the way of things that we want to do.
And in particular, when a project, a task, your
goal is just too big, it just feels too big,
or maybe it really is too big and what you can do about
that. Part of the problem with something being
(01:38):
so big is if it's going to take a lot of time, you
might need the perfect situation, the perfect scenario, a big
chunk of time, and you might not have that, or it might require
a lot of decisions to make along the way, and that
might be too challenging, that just might be too overwhelming,
and you just don't even know where to start.
(01:59):
Or if you do start, if you get stuck, you don't want
to just get partway done and so forth.
So what can you do? What can you do when things
are so big in your mind or in reality
that you can't get going on it and yet you really need
to get it done?
(02:20):
What you can do is
shrink the project. So even if you have a goal
to do something like put on a baby shower for
somebody or write a book, have you ever wanted to write
a book? I have. And if you want to
do that, it's not actually a current goal, it might change back
(02:43):
to that. But that was always just like, oh, yeah,
how would I even do that? I can write.
I love to write. What would I write about?
You know, it's like you have a goal, but you don't really know
what you want to do with it. What are the specifics with your
goal? I want to organize my house, but what does that
really look like? So sometimes it's just that you have the
(03:03):
big picture goal, but you don't even have
the first idea of how to begin that you have the idea,
idea of finishing it or getting the benefit of it,
but you don't know the little steps, you're not sure how to
do it, or even if you do know how to
do it, you just don't have the energy for it.
(03:24):
So there can be a lot of things that
are your roadblocks if your project is too big.
And scaling the project down or simplifying it may
be helpful. You want to throw a baby shower
for a friend. But what you have in mind, you
(03:47):
know, either you can't do financially or you can't do the
way that you think you need to do it, or the way
you think that person wants you to do it, or all the
imaginary people in your mind that are going to come and what
their expectation is. And if you have all these ideas that
are stopping you from doing it and you don't end up doing it
at all, what is the better scenario?
(04:11):
Are you an all or nothing person? Are you someone who thinks,
well, if it can't be done this way, I don't want to do it.
Maybe there are times that I'm like that and there are
other times that I think I want to do this, I
want it to work out, I want it,
I want the outcome. I want that person to feel cherished or
(04:32):
that person to get to be surrounded by friends and loved
ones and have a baby shower or whatever that is.
I want to have people in my home. I want to host this
event. And if you do, scaling it down, simplifying
it, looking at all the ideas that you have and
seeing what is more realistic, what is still doable and
(04:57):
will still be nice, but doesn't have to be so expensive
or so time consuming. There may have been a
time of your life that you did have the energy or
the patience or the time to do something on
a bigger scale. And maybe now it isn't the
(05:19):
same, and maybe you still have the same expectation, but you
don't have all those other resources that you once had.
And just noticing that and giving yourself permission to not
do it quite so big can, can be really beneficial.
You could give yourself that break of not having to do
(05:39):
something quite so big, or not having to do it in
the way that, that you have in your mind or that you
think or that you feel some kind of pressure to do.
So just scaling it down can reduce the overwhelm of what
you think it, it needs to be. It can take up
all that pressure. You can also feel better about yourself
(06:00):
because you can actually accomplish something and it can still
be nice, but it doesn't have to be done to
that level. And something that's not as big maybe as putting
on a party or something like
just reorganizing the kitchen or something like that.
You want to, you know, you don't like how far you
(06:23):
have to walk to put the silverware away as you unload
the dishwasher, or how far you have to take the plates
to the table, or, I don't know if you ever run into things like
that where you initially set it up and then later think this
isn't actually
functioning, isn't set up in a functional way.
(06:43):
If you're picky about things like that, I can be picky about
things like that. And I'm always looking for ways to improve.
When I used to work in an office, I would think maybe I
should have the drawer for this file closer to where I'm
on the computer so I don't have to walk across the room.
It's not that I'm lazy about walking across the room, but when
you want to be able to be more productive or be
(07:07):
able to, I guess, just feel a little
more organized in the process or streamline the process, then
you might need to redo it. And scaling down the idea
of that can be helpful, meaning that you don't have to
get it all done at once. You might just take care of
(07:29):
this part of the kitchen or this part of the office, or
this part of your closet, and you work on that one drawer
or that one cupboard, or just reducing the clutter, going
through and getting rid of things first and then saying, well,
maybe it will work now I have more room to do this here
or there. And so just letting go of the idea
(07:51):
of this needs to be a full Saturday project or
a full weekend project, and just working on it for
an hour, and it just gives you also the
opportunity, if you start smaller, to improvise as you
go, to build on it as you go. You start simple, and you
might add on more later, or you might feel like, you know,
(08:13):
this was actually plenty. You know, I.
I didn't need to do as much as I initially thought.
This is just great. And then you have more
time. You haven't had to spend forever on that or creating
a bigger problem by having to move other things
out of your schedule or not do other things that might need
(08:35):
to be done on top of that. But, yeah, so there's
just a lot of things like,
instead of, I'm going to start a new business, and maybe
you will start A new business. But maybe you can't start a
new business in a month. Maybe you can't do it in a
weekend. I don't know who thinks they can do it in a weekend,
(08:55):
but maybe somebody does. But you might just do one thing.
You might just come up with a business plan or set
up a website and that could take a month.
It really could. There are a lot of things that take longer than
what people promise they can be done in.
Or if you feel like I need to do an hour long workout
every day this week, instead you just decide, I'm going
(09:19):
to walk into the gym every day this week.
Just walk in, choose one area to work out in.
Like it might just be over. I walk over by the machines and I
get on the treadmill or I get on a bike or I get
on the rowing machine. And you might do that the whole
time. You might not do it for a full hour.
It might be 20, 30 minutes. And then you think, I think I'll
(09:39):
go lift some weights or I think I'll go stretch and you take
off. The pressure of doing the big goal that
you had, it doesn't mean that you can't do that eventually, especially
if you really love it. But if that is getting in the
way of you actually doing it because you think, I don't know
if I can do that and it just sounds too daunting, then simplify
(10:00):
the goal, redefine what the goal is, what the end
goal is. And it might turn out that
you are there for a full hour. It might turn out that
you're just in there for 20, 30 minutes, but at least you get
some exercise and you're able to complete that.
Instead of going on a big hike, I want to hike this mountain.
(10:22):
You might do that sometimes, but other days you might just go
for a short walk in your neighborhood, just walk out the door
and start walking and see what happens.
Sometimes it's hard to simplify. That does involve making decisions
which could be challenging when you have adhd.
But if you even just take it and cut it in half and
(10:45):
try doing half of it, or cut it in half and then cut
it in half again, just doing a pinch of it, a step
of it, and even ask yourself what is the tiniest
task that I can take out of this and just work
on that and you might really enjoy doing that.
It might build from there or that might be plenty and then you
(11:06):
can feel good about yourself. Gives that increase of dopamine
of yay, I got this done. I got this tiny Task done, I
got this small step done and that is great.
So another thing, so setting a timeframe, like
I'm going to just like I said with the gym before, I'm
(11:26):
going to walk in the gym. That's just a tiny, tiny task,
right? Going to drive to the gym, I'm going to walk to the gym
and, and then I'm going to stay for 20 minutes.
I'm going to stay for a half hour. So setting the time frame
of doing something. I'm going to spend 30 minutes walking around
the house today and seeing if there's things that I can
(11:47):
put in this bag to get rid of, to throw away, to give to
the thrift store, to give away whatever that is.
Just set that time frame. Set a buzzer, set your watch.
If you have a, you know, buzzers, if you leave the kitchen.
I mean usually for me that the buzzer's in the
kitchen, but I know a lot of people have
(12:09):
that A L E X A. They can just say
set it for 30 minutes or something. My daughter does that.
And I think, why don't I think to do that?
But I don't, I don't. But if you're in the
same room and that goes off, you'll hear it.
If you go in another room, you might never know the buzzer rang
and you don't know why it rang. But.
But yeah. So time based sprint of I'm gonna do
(12:32):
this quick or turn it into a game. I'm gonna set the buzzer
for 10 minutes and see how much I can get done.
And then I'll set another 10 minutes and see what else I can
get done. And there might be times that it's not that
helpful. You might get sidetracked, see an email, think, oh,
I need to answer this first. That buzzer goes off and you see,
oh, I just spent 10 minutes answering an email.
(12:53):
Maybe that was important. But if you can stay on
task, that is helpful because I have set the buzzer many times
before and just thought, well, there went another 20 minutes.
I didn't get anything done because I keep seeing other things
that need to be done. But trying to focus any way you can
can be helpful. And eventually if you just keep making
yourself set the buzzer, then it might pay off even if
(13:18):
it's an hour later. But another thing you can
do is just tell yourself this is the rough
draft of whatever you're gonna do.
Tell yourself it doesn't have to be perfect.
And believe me, I know this is hard.
I know it's hard. Every time I make a podcast, I
(13:38):
think of all the things that, ideally, if I spent the
time doing it, that I. That is required to
meet my expectation,
most of the time I wouldn't be recording a podcast because I'd
see something that I just think, no, I can't release that
because of this, or I should do it over because of that, or I
(14:02):
should spend more time with whatever it is.
If I don't have the time to do it. I need to tell myself
it's okay to do it the way it is now.
And later you can change it. You can get better at
it as you go. Thank you for being patient with me on
that. But also just recognizing that.
(14:22):
That perfectionism doesn't matter to as many people as
you may think. And we might put a lot
of pressure on ourselves. We might just.
We might just have a brain that wants to get really
particular about things, that might want to be perfectionistic
(14:43):
about things, and it just might not be
healthy to hold on so tight and have an
expectation for yourself. That is difficult to live
by. It's also difficult to let go of the perfectionism.
But you might feel a little better about things
(15:04):
if you. If you learn to do that. So, yeah, just get
used to the idea every once in a while.
Just tell yourself, it's okay. It's okay if I don't do it
this way. It's okay if I just do the rough
draft version. I can improve it later or not.
And a lot of times you just keep going.
(15:24):
You just keep going, and that's okay.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can also. Sorry.
I'm so. I'm. I. I shouldn't have. I.
I told myself in the last episode that I wasn't going to apologize
for how I am, but you apologize for getting overwhelmed.
I. I don't know if you can sense it, but I get
(15:47):
a little hyped up when I talk about the things that are hard
for me because that anxiousness wells up inside
of me. So, yeah, that was my. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Whatever it was that I said, that came out of nowhere.
But, yeah. So back to small steps, just
(16:08):
breaking it down. Even if you give yourself little notes, little
sticky notes that not only remind you to do something, but just
map out what you're gonna do. First I'm gonna do this, then
I'm gonna do that, then I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna do
that. If you have a big meal to cook for a holiday or something.
Just doing that, writing the list. Sometimes I'll put the Post
(16:29):
its on the fridge because, you know, a lot of the fridges
don't have magnetic fronts anymore. And so I'll just
put the post it note on there that reminds me not only of
what I want to, what I plan to make, but helps
me see it so I can just go, okay, this,
then this, then this and this. And it breaks it into those
(16:51):
tasks. And it's easier to manage as I
go instead of walking around like, you know, the chicken
with his head cut off, like, what am I doing next?
What am I going to do next? So anyway, yeah, you
don't have to climb the mountain every single day.
You don't have to do the big, big thing and identifying what
(17:12):
that mountain is that you do need to climb.
There may be times that you do need to climb a mountain, but
not giving yourself so many to climb.
I said this to my mom when I was visiting my mom
and dad recently because I was helping him with a lot of very
difficult tasks. They had just moved.
They lived where they lived for 30 years.
(17:33):
It's not where I grew up, but they were moving away from
friends and loved ones and adjusting to living in
a house with my brother while they're trying to sell their house
and buy a house. And. And I was there mostly helping with
all the, the bills and organizing what's paid, what's
not paid. Can I get you set up online?
(17:55):
They weren't set up online with hardly anything.
And helping them see that that was a better
way, all these things. And at one point my mom came
in and she was telling me about something that
was becoming a big thing in her mind.
I have no idea even what it was anymore.
(18:17):
But I said, mom. And I wasn't trying to discount what
she was worried about, but I was trying to give
her the perspective that this doesn't need to be
so big. And I said, mom, you have a lot
of mountains to climb. Don't make this one of them.
And it just came out of nowhere. But when I said it,
(18:39):
I realized we often do that. We have real mountains
to climb. We have things in life that are difficult.
And if we have the power to take something that doesn't have
to be that difficult, whether it's a task you need to do or
problem you need to solve or something you are emotionally involved
with that maybe you can back away from and tell
(19:02):
yourself it doesn't matter that much.
Do I need to be as involved in this?
Do I need to go so deep with this and have
this take over my life right now? And if the answer is
no. This doesn't need to be a mountain to climb.
Then don't make it a mountain. Make it a tiny little step.
Make it a. A little leap off the porch and don't trip
on. That's how I've tripped a few times.
(19:24):
But yeah, make it a safe leap off the porch
and not a big mountain to climb. Yeah.
Thank you so much. I know my episodes have been
a little bit shorter lately, or maybe a lot shorter lately, and
that is because life picks up. It sure does.
(19:44):
It sure does. I am loving, loving, loving, taking
care of my grandchildren. It's bringing back so many fantastic
memories for me of being a young mom, even though I'm not
nearly as young. Twice as old as I was
when I had my fourth child. But I
(20:08):
am loving it. It just doesn't allow as much freedom for being
on here. Next week I'll have short episodes, too, hopefully
two of them. After that, I'll be back home with just my
normal life without my grandchildren.
Next weekend. Next week I'll be with them, but hopefully I'll.
I'll get some recorded before then. But thank you so much.
And I'm getting closer, closer, closer to having my website built.
(20:32):
That has definitely been a mountain to climb, but I'm starting
to make my way through it, breaking it into tiny
tasks. So it's not so overwhelming. Yeah, getting past
those big things or those things that are big and just kind of
taking it into chunks. You can't eat something gigantic
(20:54):
all at once. You have to take tiny bites to be able to eat
it, digest it, and maybe not eat it all in one day.
So that is my little bit of advice for
today. You're doing wonderful. I hope you know that having ADHD
is not the easiest thing. In fact, I've been thinking of making
some YouTube episodes just to get out there
(21:14):
to the world to help people understand us.
Not us, understand us. But if you have someone in your
life who's like this, this, or this, understand it's not easy
for them, be patient with them. Anyway, that's one of my new
tiny tasks. I need. Or something. I need to break it
down into tiny tasks because I get these ideas and then what
(21:35):
do you do with them? In fact, my grandson who's here who has
ADHD told me that he wants to be somebody
who decides what houses look like and draw
drawings of them and decide how the building is going to
look and be so people can build it that way.
And I said, oh, that's what an architect is.
And he said, yeah. And I would be a really good architect.
(21:58):
And I said, why is that? He's nine. And he said, because with
my adhd, I have so many ideas all the time.
I would have so many ideas of how these houses could look.
And I thought, that is fantastic. That is fantastic that he's
understanding himself and that I understand him.
It makes me really happy. But thank you so much for being
(22:21):
here. Feel free to go to my website, even if
you just see a partially made website.
Renee-allen.com I'm finally getting my email set
up there because I had to transfer things around.
I haven't been able to email as much.
Oh, dear. I'm trying to move my bangs and it's sideways.
This is backwards on the camera. If you're watching on YouTube,
I usually have a mirror behind the my laptop so
(22:45):
I can see what my real way to move my hair
is. If it's bothering me, I'm just gonna have to live
with it. So thank you again. I will see you again later.
Bye.
Shadow
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(23:10):
Without.
A call.
Time for a
(23:31):
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
(23:55):
Sam.
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