“Finished, For Now”: Planning, Overwhelm, and Motivation
Pete’s in the hot seat this week as Nikki walks through a listener question of the motivational variety. For reference, here it is:
“When we have a plan of quadrant two tasks, important but not urgent, it is impossible to focus on those at all if there are ANY quadrant one tasks... urgent and important... unresolved. What’s interesting is that you might think, sure ... do those. They’re urgent and important. But the problem is that maybe you’ve done your part on them. You’re waiting for an email response... you are time-blocked from doing anything about it because a store isn’t open... something like that. It’s unresolved, AND you can’t do anything about it, AND you can’t focus on anything else that is on your list that would move other projects forward as a result.”
There’s an emotional yo-yo at work here, and you can bet there is a healthy dose of limiting beliefs. But there is also a very real connection between this attachment and the ADHD brain. Nikki walks Pete through an exercise that aims to make this relationship a bit softer.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody, and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright, and I'm here with Benedict Arnold.
Nikki Kinzer:
That is not nice.
Pete Wright:
Well, you're the one who traitored me and decided not to post it because you want to surprise me. And I know this has not historically... Over 12 years, we've been doing this show, and it's never been a John Wick vengeance podcast until today. I know it's because you were in the coaching seat last week, and now you want to get me back. And so you've-
Nikki Kinzer:
But-
Pete Wright:
You're saying yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes-
Pete Wright:
You're acknowledging-
Nikki Kinzer:
... it's true. But this is your fault. This is not my fault. I did not encourage this. I went in yesterday to work on the outline for today's show. And I go in there, and there's this like, "Nikki, I was meeting with my friend. And he wants your help, and I want your help too. And this is the situation." And then Melissa chimes in and says, "Oh my God, 100% agree, I need help with this too." So you're getting the help that you need, but I'm not giving you any kind of chance to think about the answers. We need to have answers that are just coming up for you.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
And not-
Pete Wright:
So, this is a podcast that's going to be dedicated to long stretches of silence, of contemplative silence.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, it's going to be wonderful. I believe in you.
Pete Wright:
Well, we have some setup to do first, and you know how to do that. Head over to takecontroladhd.com to get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list. Each time a new episode is released, we're going to send you an email and let you know that it's there.
You can connect with us on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest at Take Control ADHD. But you know what? Just come on over to the Discord server. The Take Control ADHD Discord server, you can sign in at takecontroladhd.com/discord, and you'll be whisked over to the invitation, and log in. If you've never used Discord before, it'll guide you through signing up for the first time. If you do already have a Discord account, you can jump into our server and see the public channels.
And if you really want to check out what's going on behind the curtain, head over to patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. If you sign up for a few bucks a month, you'll be absolutely supporting the show and supporting the work we're already doing on the podcast, which is huge. But you'll also get access to the members-only channels on Discord. If you connect those two accounts, you'll get, I don't know, what are there? It seems like two dozen more channels that are hanging out in there, depending on tiers.
And you can hang out there and get a sense of how other people live with their ADHD and get help and support and kindness and jokes and memes and all the great things that you might want from a community. It's really a fantastic place. So check it out. Patreon.com/theadhdpodcast to learn more. And Nikki, you know what this week is. It's my favorite week of the month. Are you ready?
Nikki Kinzer:
I just had this terrible thought.
Pete Wright:
What's that?
Nikki Kinzer:
I think I missed your birthday.
Pete Wright:
You didn't, but now it's an even more terrible thought.
Nikki Kinzer:
When is your birthday?
Pete Wright:
Because you didn't know you didn't miss my birthday.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, I think I did miss your birthday.
Pete Wright:
When would you have missed my birthday?
Nikki Kinzer:
It's in November.
Pete Wright:
Yes, it is. That's true. You nailed it. See, you're already crushing life today.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, but I feel horrible. When is it?
Pete Wright:
It's not yet. As we record it-
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay, good.
Pete Wright:
... it's not yet. You're okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
But is that why you're so excited about this week? Is because it's your birthday?
Pete Wright:
No. By the time the public listens to this, my birthday will have passed, I will have become even senior citizen. But I'm really excited because I get to talk about Text Expander, which is what I use, which is what I will use to send you a grouchy you-missed-my-birthday note when you don't... I don't do that. But it is one of my very favorite invisible tools in my tech tool chest. So a reminder of how it works, if there is a piece of text that I type more than once at all, it's a signal that I need to add it to Text Expander. I keep my most used emails, phrases, text messages, URLs, and more, right in my Text Expander Library. A snippet in Text Expander can include anything: texts, links, images, code, account numbers, contact addresses, phone numbers, anything you want.
And the trick is, for each one of those snippets in my library, I assign a unique abbreviation, just a couple of characters on the keyboard. When I type those characters, it replaces those characters with the text that is assigned to it from the library. So when I type :dss, that is date stamp, and I use that more than anything else because it just gives me today's date.
Anywhere I type, I type today's date. I use :em for my email address. Anytime anybody asks for my email address, I don't have to type my email address. So that's just the basics. You can even get your entire team or family access to all the content they need with a shared snippet library. You can organize it by department or group and make sure that all your snippets are used consistently wherever they're needed.
Now, this month's Text Expander tip goes out to all monopolists. Y'all, if you're writing long form text at all, if you're writing books, if you're writing technical manuals, if you're writing a thesis or a term paper, please do yourself a favor and get yourself set up on Text Expander. Take a half hour to put all of your characters, terms of art, technical jargon, all of that in Text Expander, and just set the trigger for each one to the first few characters of the word.
Then you have a custom auto-complete with your words: fictional words, technical words, whatever it is. I'm just wrapping up my 20th national Novel Writing Month myself and having all the crazy spellings of character names that I created on page 20. They are still going strong and spelled right on page 200. It saved me real time. With Text Expander, it is just so easy, and it's available on Mac, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. And for listeners of the ADHD Podcast, you can get 20% off your first year of service. Just visit takecontroladhd.com/textexpander, and you'll be whisked over to our page on their site where you can get started.
Again, if you get started now, you'll save 20% off your subscription. They're great people. The way we work is changing rapidly. Make work, work the way your brain works, by saying more in less time, and with less effort using Text Expander. Our great thanks to the Text Expander team for sponsoring the ADHD podcast. Okay, Nikki, let us begin.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
I'm ready. I'm centered. I'm at peace.
Nikki Kinzer:
Good, good. Well, why don't you share with what you wrote in the podcast notes?
Pete Wright:
Okay. Well, all of this starts because I have a weekly lunch with my dear friend, Dr. Dodge. He's been a guest on this show. He's told us his story before. He does also live with ADHD, and he is a psychoanalyst. And he had this question about task quadrants because he thinks very much in task quadrants. This is kind of an Eisenhower Matrix thing where you have urgent and important, important but not urgent, not urgent/not important. And I think there's the fourth one, but my brain is not tracking the four quadrants right this second.
So the deal was this: when you have quadrant two tasks, tasks that are important, but they are not urgent, if there are any urgent and important quadrant one tasks that are unresolved, it's impossible to focus on the important ones, on the quadrant two. If quadrant one is open at all, quadrant two is not addressable.
The problem is, maybe you've already done your part on the urgent and important ones on the quadrant one tasks. Maybe you've already sent the email that you need to send, and now the work, the attention is in somebody else's quadrant one, not yours anymore. The issue is, the way Dr. Dodge talks about, it's very challenging to let go of quadrant one if it is unresolved. Your attention is still fractured on that thing that you can't do anything about.
And he said this, and it just hit me. I suffer from this too, all the time. And it's not even urgent and important tasks. Let's say I'm editing a podcast, and I have to render it out. Now, I have a pretty fast computer, but it still takes minutes on long shows. And those minutes I have to just sit and stare at the progress bar. I can't go check my email. I find myself really fighting to say, "Okay, let that process run right now. I'm going to turn my attention here because there's nothing I can do about this other thing."
Or a video project. Those take much longer to render out when I'm finished with them. I can't just sit and let that go. My attention demands to be paid to the progress bar, to the ticking clock. That is very, very challenging. And so Dodge, and by extension myself, I'm wondering what you have to say about that.
Nikki Kinzer:
And Melissa too, because she weighs in.
Pete Wright:
And Melissa too.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Actually, yeah, that's right. Melissa weighed in. "I 100% suffer from this. Recently, I have just had to walk away from my desk altogether because I know if I stay, all I'm going to do is think about that thing that needs to be done that I can't do anything about." For sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right. I want to just point out the key what I'm hearing. And then what I want to do is ask some questions, engage in the conversation, and then I'm going to actually go back and explain why I asked what questions I did, because I want people to be able to walk away from the show of maybe what are some questions they can ask themselves when they come into the situation.
So basically, if I'm hearing you right, the priority tasks, the things that are urgent and important, they're not completed yet, but there isn't anything you can do about it. They're pending, right.
Pete Wright:
Correct.
Nikki Kinzer:
And you're saying, and two other people are saying it's impossible to focus on important and not urgent tasks right now. You can't focus on anything else that is on your list that would move other projects forward. Right?
Pete Wright:
Correct.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. This is what's happening in the ADHD Mind. And so I'm going to talk a little bit about the explanation of why this is happening. Important and not urgent tasks are absolutely the worst ones for ADHD. Your option is to go from something that is pending that you can't do anything about, which doesn't feel comfortable, to go into a stack of tasks that are also really not comfortable because there's not that sense of urgency, right?
The other thing that's happening is time blindness, where you have the things that are now and not now. And so your brain immediately is going to focus on the now. And those tasks that aren't important or that are important but aren't urgent, are not now. They're not now tasks. So again, now you're asking yourself to go into something that really doesn't mean anything to you right now. Right?
And then the motivation is driven... Well, internal and external motivation for ADHD, if it's just internal motivation, it can still be very difficult to start things. So again, these tasks that aren't important, there is no external deadline or any kind of motivation for you to even get started. You're still thinking about the unresolved stuff. So this is where anxiety likes to pop its head with your ADHD mind, especially if it's something that has a lot of emotion. What if you're waiting to hear back from a coworker on what they think about what you just gave them or a client? Or there's some kind of fear possibly, that's wrapped around what you have to leave and wait for. So we're dealing with all of those emotions as well. It could be anything.
And now we're ruminating. We love to ruminate, us anxiety people. And you keep thinking about all of those things. And then really what's happening too is the black and white thinking. You've already made a choice that, I can't do this when this happens. So you are leaving yourself with no options.
Pete Wright:
Yes. Except stasis.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. When I read this, the two words that popped out were impossible and can't. So you're saying, and to other people, that "it is impossible to focus, and I can't focus. It's impossible, I can't do it." How does that feel to you when you hear that back?
Pete Wright:
Well, crappy. Right? Because this is a head and a heart separation. I have internalized that belief system for so long. Or, I should say, I've internalized it but haven't spoken about it clearly for so long that I can know what the behavior outcome is. I know that I can just sit there and stare at stuff and wait for the Q1 tasks to come back around and have it be my turn again, without thinking about the fact that I have so limited my experience with the Q2 tasks. Those two things are completely separate because all of my attention is focused on the Q1 tasks, not on the fact that I'm actually ruminating about Q2 tasks and not having that presence of mind to be aware of it.
If we go back to, I've really been thinking about with Dr. Rosier, that aligning a behavior, the behavior character alignment, my behavior would seem to indicate that I am somebody who is too single focused to be able to let go of one thing and has too much emotional attachment to this one thing that I can't focus on another thing. And that's not the person I want to be.
I want to be the person who can be flexible and adaptable and open to change. And that's not what my behavior is saying. And I've been thinking about that. What is it? What is the behavior... For your example was, "I want to be a good mom. I want to be seen as a good mom." And for me, I want to be seen as somebody who is productive and flexible. And the behavior needs to align to that. And I get so stuck sometimes in, "This stuff is urgent and important. I need to be responsive at a moment's notice," that it actually prevents me from being adaptable and flexible. And, as you say, start ruminating about it.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's interesting. So the feeling when I go back and talk to you about the absolute wording, you're saying it feels crappy. What you want to feel is you want to be more flexible. You want to have that behavior match more of how you want to feel, correct?
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, for sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
So now that it's out in the open, what do you want to do with this?
Pete Wright:
Well, I want to fix it.
Nikki Kinzer:
But what does fixing look like to you?
Pete Wright:
It's interesting because when I think about what fixing looks like, the practical... Well, let's say, the emotional application of fixing is that I am able to disconnect my emotional experience with all the quadrants of tasks. And what that would mean is I don't feel so allegient to urgent and important tasks. And on the other end of the spectrum, I don't feel allegiant or guilty about tasks that I've delegated and can't let go of. Because that's kind of the other expression of this is, there are tasks that are not urgent and not important, and I delegate them, or I figure out a way to get them done, or I put them in my not do list, but how do I let go of the fractured attention that is still paid to those tasks?
It feels like the same trigger. It's the stuff that I feel bad about not doing or I feel bad about not doing myself. Or I feel bad about not being able to be completely tied to these urgent and important tasks on the other end, and I get burned out because all I'm doing is thinking about those. And then the middle tasks, the Q2 tasks are the ones that I want to be able to approach without the emotion tied to it. I think that's it. I think, as I wander around my words here, I think that's the nut of it. I want to build a practice around separating emotion from the work.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. So you want to separate emotion around the work. So what does that leave you then? What options does that leave you when you think of it that way? This is what you want. And now you're in this situation, and you're noticing that you're getting pulled into the impossible. What does it mean to separate emotion from the work for you? How would you do that?
Pete Wright:
Well, I don't know how, but I can put myself in a feeling of what it would feel like.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. What would it feel like?
Pete Wright:
If I'm empathetic with future Pete, if I put myself in a position of being able to give future Pete a high five, then I'm working on a... And let's say it's probably has something to do with taxes, right? It's probably something like paying real estate tax or property tax or something like that. There's something that I'm waiting for some word that something was received or... I don't know. It's probably something significant like that. That I'm able to take that task and finish it to a degree that my effort is done on it and then put it away. And that means both not looking at it on my task list, so using my systems in such a way that I can make sure that it will come up as a reminder later because it was urgent and important, but also that it has been demoted from my attention.
That is, I think, the term: demoting it from my attention. I need it to fall out of my buffer because that's the part I still feel. When I try to turn my attention to quadrant two tasks, I still feel guilty about not being completely finished about the quadrant one task, and I have to be able to cut that tie. That's what it would feel like, that I've cut the emotional tie from work.
Nikki Kinzer:
So cutting the emotional tie from the urgent task, there's guilt there. You mentioned the word guilt. Where is that guilt? What is that feeling coming from with the urgent one?
Pete Wright:
Letting somebody down. Letting somebody who's counting on me down.
Nikki Kinzer:
But in this situation, we're actually waiting for somebody to get back to you or something, right?
Pete Wright:
It's the potential of letting somebody down. That's really it. If somebody who comes back to me and says, "Hey, did you do that thing?" "Yes, I did." "Okay." But I'm waiting. I'm waiting for response because I want to be able to act quickly. And I need everybody involved in this urgent and important task to know that I'm waiting and I'm ready. And I recognize in my head, that's not a realistic position to take. I can't be ready and waiting for everyone's urgent and important tasks.
And the truth of the matter is, my assessment of urgent and important tasks is probably not even the same as the other party that I'm dealing with. They might see it as important, not urgent. They might see it as not urgent and not important at all, which is why I'm doing it in the first place. I just tie so much of that to reputational alignment that I want anyone I'm working with to know that I'm thinking about them all the time. Oh my God. That is a thing that I feel like I struggle with. And yeah. Does that answer your question?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. I'm going to take off the coaching hat and just talk to you as co-podcast host, right? Because what's so interesting about that is I don't know, and this is just a personal opinion, I don't know if it's realistic to actually cut out the emotions from how we feel about our tasks. I know that that's what you would want, but it's so interesting to hear you talk about where that guilt is coming from and how you want to be there for everyone, and you want everyone to know that you're here and ready for them and you're thinking about them, but that's also not a true situation because, like you even said, "I don't even know if this is important to them." So you're making up the story in your mind about why you should feel guilty. And then that is that anxiety that's creeping up, that's making you stop being able to focus on anything else.
And it's a black and white kind of thought pattern when we really say to ourselves, "I can't," or "This is impossible." It limits everything. It limits all options. And so if that was true, then you would just be staring at the rendering thing, and that's what you would be doing all day. But we know that's not true in every situation. So it's also going back to that limiting belief and saying, "Is this true, in every single situation when I'm waiting on a task, that I can't do anything else?" Probably not. And you also have to ask yourself, are you avoiding specific green... I am sorry, I said green tasks, 'cause that's what we call them in GPS. But are we avoiding that important/not urgent task, and we're using the idea that I can't focus to continue avoiding?
So we have to really start asking ourselves some questions here. If you really want to feel different than crappy, and you don't want to just settle for this, like, "This is not comfortable, I don't want to settle for it," then we really have to start asking ourselves some questions of, "Well, what are the options? What do you want?" Is it realistic to take emotion out of tasks? I haven't been able to do it yet.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. And actually, I think it's probably not the right word, because taking emotion out of tasks, to me, also implies that I don't care about the work. And that's not true. Categorically not true. I wouldn't take on the work if I didn't find a way to care about it. That's the emotion.
Nikki Kinzer:
Isn't it interesting though, Pete, that it's so interesting how I perceive that, because when we talk about emotion and you said, "Take out the emotion," I immediately think, take out the negative emotion, but you keep all of the beautiful emotion there, the caring and wanting to help people and really doing a service. And it's so interesting 'cause when I see that I think, oh, take out the negative. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Which is good. That's a good assumption to make. I just feel like I need to say it out loud because it's not an assumption that I make and because I'm not a robot person. And it would be so easy to, if I were a robot person and could just flip a switch and turn it off. I think what I'm talking about specifically is the emotion around deadline, the emotion around deadline, and recognizing that deadlines do exist in the world. And I have to live according to deadlines in many respects with the things that I do every day. And if I put too much of that kind of emotion, that is what turns into guilt and shame when I'm running slow or when I'm not able to get things on time or when things are out of my control. And that's what we're talking about, is that being in control of my Q1 tasks when I'm actively working on them. As soon as I hand them off, I'm out of control, and my brain doesn't know what to do.
Nikki Kinzer:
So that would be a really good time to add a little bit of buffer time in your schedule because you're transitioning. It's so interesting. This is the stuff that just fascinates me, and this is why I love answering questions from people rather than just talking about stuff. Because it really is also about transition, and it didn't really dawn on me until we started talking about it. You're transitioning from a task that you've been working on, you care very much about, it's a high priority, and now you need to transition into, what do I do next? And that's where the issue's coming. So it's not necessarily that you can't focus on other tasks necessarily. It's just you need maybe some transition time to process where you are with this urgent task and to give yourself some space to transition into something different.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, maybe. I think in practice, buffer time is solid, but there is this sort of... Man, I keep coming back to the emotional connection, the negative emotional connection, being able to let that go, because I think the reality is that I can distract myself with other activities fine, but there is a yo-yo effect. I wonder if others feel this way about these tasks, that there's this yo-yo effect of tasks that are in limbo that are urgent and important, where even when I've distracted myself, the yo-yo keeps coming back to my mind when my mind really is working hard to be attentive to a new thing. And giving myself enough buffer time to transition is useful, but doesn't really address the bottom line, which is my attention is fractured, and I don't know how to bring it back to center.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I really-
Pete Wright:
I don't want this to be a thing where it's just like, "Oh, Pete's throwing up roadblocks to everything you suggest."
Nikki Kinzer:
No, no, no, no.
Pete Wright:
I'm just trying to make sure I zero in.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I think that it's important to recognize the context of what we're doing or what we are walking away from, because I think that in some situations, it's going to be easier to say, "Okay, I'm going to wait for Nikki to get back to me. It's not a big deal. I can move on." But then there might be something else that means more, and then that's when it's really more stuck. I don't believe this happens all the time with every single thing that you're pending, right? So we have to-
Pete Wright:
No, no.
Nikki Kinzer:
We have-
Pete Wright:
Especially because I don't spend my time in Q1. Even when we task rationalize, I spend most of my time in the not urgent/important category at all, right? That's where I spend my day.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. I think the buffer time is more than just time to, "Oh, let's take a walk or let's..." All these things that we talk about that are really good. Don't get me wrong, you got to do those things. But I also think it gives you some time to maybe just check in with yourself. How am I feeling right now? How am I feeling about this task? If I am feeling like, I'm hyper-focused on it, I really feel like I can't focus on anything else, then is it okay to stop working that day? What's right for you in this moment?
Pete Wright:
Okay, so walk through that.
Nikki Kinzer:
One of the things I've learned about this book 4,000 Weeks, and just in doing my own work with planning and to-do lists and everything...
Pete Wright:
You're talking about the Oliver Burkeman book?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I think you mentioned it in the-
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, in the pre-show.
Pete Wright:
... pre-show.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. One of the things that I'm noticing is a lot of my clients, and you're doing this today too, you're fighting with yourself all day long. And so what happens if we stop fighting this and start just embracing that this is where I'm at right now? I'm really stressed about this, and I'm going to be leaning into that and letting go of any high expectation that I have of myself that's just not realistic.
Pete Wright:
I want to bring this back to, and he's not here, so it's not really fair, but since he asked the question, Dr. Dodge. I've seen his calendar, right? I've seen what it looks like. And he's a very busy therapist, and he is working all day into the night with groups, with individual people. And so, one of the things that I know comes out of that is this desire to be as close to 100% present as he can to other people. And I think you face the same thing, right? When you're working with individual clients, a desire to be a 100% present, or as close to it as you can, as is rational, for other people.
And I'm wondering, how... When you add that to it, when you can't say, "Okay, I got to step up and walk away," what it really is, okay, I got to find a way to let go of this thing that is occupying 97% of my current capacity and shift all of that to this person who expects me to be attentive to their Q1, to their emotional Q1.
And that, I think, is the gap. And that, I think, is the thing that we're facing, which is sometimes buffer time does it. I think the thing that resonates the most with what you said is you're fighting yourself, figuring out how to stand up emotionally and stop fighting against yourself and your own sense of awareness. Doesn't necessarily mean you have to step up and walk away from the office. It just means you have to be aware that you're fighting yourself.
I use all the time, as my favorite thing to say about myself, is who am I lying to right now? Well, maybe the corollary is, who am I fighting right now? Who am I resisting right now? What is the resistance that I'm feeling here?
And it may be that I'm resisting, I'm fighting letting go because there's some place maybe, some bit of inner shame that says, hey, if I really cared about this task, I wouldn't just electronically send it to whoever needs to do work on it next. I'd get in the car, and I'd drive there, and I'd put it in front of him, and I'd say, "You do this thing right now because it's urgent and important." And I want to be known as a guy who would go to those lengths, even though those lengths are not rational 99.999% of the time.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think it's that space. I'm getting the sense you don't like the word buffer time. And so it's giving yourself the space to ask yourself those questions. How am I feeling right now? Who am I fighting right now? What do I really want out of this? Do I want to do those important non-urgent tasks? Or maybe it's okay for me to be done with the day. So what do I really want? What's in my control right now? What's true? What's coming up for me? And then what are my options?
So, I'm stuck here at the end of the road. Am I going left, right, or straight? Or going backward? You get to choose that. And if you want to feel differently than what you're feeling right now, what does that look like? And that does not mean that you have to do one of those important not urgent tasks. We got to get rid of the should.
Pete Wright:
But it does mean that you have to become accustomed to waiting.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, for sure. But that's life.
Pete Wright:
Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
That's life.
Pete Wright:
Of course it's life. But isn't that the problem.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right? Isn't that the problem?
Nikki Kinzer:
But that's what-
Pete Wright:
That's centrally the issue.
Nikki Kinzer:
But that's also what you're coming to terms with. And something about this book that really resonated with me is that we all have 100 tasks to do.
Pete Wright:
Of course, yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's never going to go away. We're never going to get caught up. We're never going to not have anything to do. But what we do have is choices. We have choices, and they're hard. And when you have to wait, that's hard. But that is how you cope, and it is how you move on and move along.
So, is waiting hard? You bet. But I still have to do something with this minute, this hour. What do I want that to look like? And how do I maybe ease the waiting by distracting myself or doing something else, whatever that is for you? But I think it's making also the hard choices of, I can only do one thing at a time, and what is most important to me right now? And can I let go of the shame and frustration of not getting to all the other tasks? Can we let go of that emotion?
And something that someone said to me in GPS this last week that I thought was wonderful is she said that I gave her a sense of freedom when I suggested that she stopped trying to estimate how long things were going to take her. And she said, "As soon as I stopped trying, it actually felt a lot better to do time blocking."
Pete Wright:
And that, as it turns out, is the secret to time blocking.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Don't try to estimate-
Pete Wright:
Stop estimating-
Nikki Kinzer:
... how long things-
Pete Wright:
... task time.
Nikki Kinzer:
... are going to take. But that's the thing is that I think that it's really connecting with your emotions. It's not necessarily ignoring them or pretend that there's not a real connection between how you feel and doing the task, but really connecting with them and feeling, what do I want to do with this?
Pete Wright:
I hear that. And I think you're right. And I think that probably what I mean is figuring out what emotions exist in that bubble called resolution. Because that's what allows me to move on from a given thing, is that I've resolved it to the best of my ability. And I think maybe that's the open question, is stopping at the end of a big urgent and important task and saying, "Have I resolved this to the very best of my ability?"
Nikki Kinzer:
"Is this good enough?"
Pete Wright:
"At this time?"
Nikki Kinzer:
"Is this good enough right now? Can I let this go right now? Is it good enough?" Because the problem with complete resolution is, if you have any kind of perfectionism tendencies, that is going to overtake your thinking.
Pete Wright:
Right. But as soon as you add, "to the best of my ability right now," then-
Nikki Kinzer:
It's good enough.
Pete Wright:
... you are allowed to move on. And I think that's the... When I think through examples of experiences where I do move on, it's because I am finished right now. And finished right now can be a mantra. "Am I finished right now?"
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, I love that.
Pete Wright:
"With this thing, right now?" Because then I can still experience the sense of completion that allows me to start something new, without feeling like I have loose ends and threads that are following me throughout the day.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's a really good point. So what is that again? Let's write that down.
Pete Wright:
Am I finished right now?
Nikki Kinzer:
Am I finished right now?
Pete Wright:
Yeah, because that's... Finished, I know, for people who, like me, who believe words have meanings, finished does connote finished at the end. But I do think, as a mantra and a play on words, "Finished right now," as a question, does give me a sense of I've gotten to the end of all the tasks I could possibly do to the best of my ability, and I'm ready to move on to something else or play a video game or take a walk.
Nikki Kinzer:
And it puts a very much more positive spin on it. And it's interesting because in my task manager system, I have a tag, and it's "Pending." It's just a pending tag. That is a word that I've always used, so it resonates with me. But it's the same thing as what we're talking about. We're waiting for somebody else. And so I never realized this before until we started talking about this, but when I put things into Pending, there is actually a sense of relief. And that's what I would want people to feel, is have a sense of relief, and add that, "Am I finished right now?" and have that be a positive thing and be able to do whatever is next for you, yeah. See, this is great. Thank you. Thank you for not seeing my outline.
Pete Wright:
Well, I hope it's useful for somebody to listen to Pete bleed all over the podcast for a little bit. And thanks to Dodge, seriously, because he and I had that conversation, and our minds just blew that we both had a different application of the exact same challenge with our ADHD, and that's always fun. Fun in the way that you have when you live with ADHD and kind of relate to somebody else.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that's why too I wanted, at the very beginning, for us to cover what's happening in your mind, so that you don't think that, oh, this is just me being stupid or crazy or lazy, or not wanting to do the work or not caring. No, this is your ADHD impacting you in a very specific way. And you're certainly not alone because look at what... He asks the question, and both you and Melissa were like, "Yes, yes, yes. I get it."
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. I get it. Well, thank you everybody for hanging out and listening to the show. We appreciate your time and your attention. If you have something you'd like to contribute to the episode, we'd love to hear it. Head over to the show talk channel in our Discord server. You can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. Definitely jump in there. I am sure we're not alone. Love to hear your thoughts. So on behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
