Unapologetically ADHD: Understanding the ADHD Time Zone
Time and ADHD, they’re just not great bedfellows Just as soon as time’s wind is at your back and you feel like the world is opening up to you, it can turn and make hours feel like days. We’re talking about the messy and inconsistent nature of time as we continue our exploration of our new book, Unapologetically ADHD (which you can order right here!)
Pete introduces the idea of time as an antagonist for individuals with ADHD, comparing it to a complex villain with a rich backstory. But it’s still a villain. And you know who does villains well? The Good Place, that’s who.
We emphasize the importance of recognizing and accommodating the fluid nature of time for individuals with ADHD, urging you to embrace strategies that align with your unique experiences. We highlight the significance of self-compassion and understanding in navigating the challenges of "ADHD time," encouraging you to find humor and acceptance in your relationship with time.
Links & Notes
The Good Place (TV show)
Jeremy Bearimy (Know Your Meme)
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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 Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Did you forget my last name?
Pete Wright:
No, I was doing like a sidekick voice, you know-
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, okay.
Pete Wright:
... Nikki Kinzer. That's how they would do it if it were like The Tonight Show.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's right. All right. Okay.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Did I forget your last name? It's not even Christmas.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, you had this like little pause there. Then I saw you looking to the side, like does he need to see that Kinzer is my last name? I don't know.
Pete Wright:
No. Oh. No, I don't. I know your last name.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. Do you know my maiden name?
Pete Wright:
No. I don't know.
Nikki Kinzer:
Isn't that funny?
Pete Wright:
I don't think I know your maiden name. What's your-
Nikki Kinzer:
Johnson. Nikki Johnson.
Pete Wright:
Oh. Did you move your maiden name to your middle name? Because you just-
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, on Facebook it's Nikki Johnson Kinzer because you know-
Pete Wright:
That's why. I didn't know that.
Nikki Kinzer:
... back in the day when you first signed up, you wanted to put your maiden name in there so people could find you and, yeah.
Pete Wright:
I don't think I ever... I knew that because as soon as you said it, I could like see it, but I couldn't remember where.
Nikki Kinzer:
You can see it on Facebook? Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, on Facebook. I was like, "Where do I know that from?" Awesome. Well, there you go. Look, we've just learned something about you just now.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's right. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And what's your social security number again?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, I am not going to tell you that.
Pete Wright:
Anyway.
Nikki Kinzer:
Good try.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Here we go. Here we go. We are talking today about ADHD time, the ADHD time zone. We're continuing our exploration, our little brief dance across the subjects that we talk about in our new book, Unapologetically ADHD. We're very excited as this episode, as we're recording it, we are, nay, just days away from the book being in people's hands. As we-
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and really, like a couple days away, from it being in our hands.
Pete Wright:
Our hands. Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Like we need to be checking the mail every day.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. It's really unnerving, and I can't wait to reenact the end scene from Back to the Future when he gets his books, and the family gathers around, and they open the box of his first 10 books. I'm very excited we're going to reenact the whole thing.
But as this episode goes live, books were delivered yesterday.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh.
Pete Wright:
I know. We're now in that crossover period where what we're talking about is real.
Nikki Kinzer:
Is real. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It's bonkers. I don't know how to go about the next 10 days. It's very, very strange. We're going to try, and today we're going to talk about why time is so wonky because right now in my head, time is wonky.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's wonky, yes.
Pete Wright:
It's so wonky.
Before we dig into the ADHD time zone, you know, head over to takecontroladhd.com/adhdbook. That's where you can find the book. We would love you to check the book out. We're just so excited about the book being out, and we're excited to share it with you, and we hope you like it and that it makes you... it teaches you some things, and you laugh a little bit along the way. And that's it. That's all we're talking about today. It's just book stuff. Go check out the book. That's all we want you to do.
Nikki Kinzer:
Great.
Pete Wright:
Look at that. That was an easy pitch. Easy pitch.
Nikki Kinzer:
I love it.
Pete Wright:
Now we're going to get into the show. Let's see if we can figure out the ADHD time zone.
Nikki Kinzer:
Ooh. We talk about the ADHD time zone. We've talked about it before, and everyone with ADHD lives in it. It's messy, it's inconsistent. There's just a lot of confusion.
One of the things that you'll hear in the community is time blindness, and this is more of a common term than... I think we coined the ADHD time zone just because it's random fun thing to say. But a more professional term is time blindness, which means it's a cognitive condition that causes difficulties in perceiving and managing time, often leading to challenges and punctuality and planning.
And this is definitely happening in the ADHD mind. This is why things are hard to estimate, like how long things are going to take. Some things take longer than you expect. Some things take less time than what you expect. It's why hyper-focus, when you get into something that you're really into, time can just pass really fast because you're just in the zone. You don't see anything behind you or around you, and we'll talk more about this as we get into our conversation.
But time blindness is definitely a huge factor, and it's very difficult to plan when you have time blindness because you don't trust yourself. You don't know how to plan if you really don't know how long things are going to take or how to schedule the day.
Pete Wright:
We do talk a lot about this particular thing in the book, and the thing that, after reflecting on it and then starting to write about it, I came up with the way time relates to me, and that is that time is an antagonist to ADHDers, right? Time's the bad guy, more often than not.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, yeah.
Pete Wright:
But like all great bad guys, it's complicated-
Nikki Kinzer:
It's complicated.
Pete Wright:
... because it has a backstory, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Like it's just complicated.
I ended up telling the story of the Billy Bookcase at IKEA. This is the Grand IKEA Story in the book, which is that I'd thought about this experience of getting a Billy Bookcase, and I took the time to write out what it took me to get the bookcase because I had some things that needed to be updated, or needed to be stored, and I could not store them. They were on the floor. I needed to put something in place.
So I went to IKEA to find the Billy Bookcase, and if you look at the overall timeline of what it took me to do to do the whole project, it was like a year, and it never finished. Like I eventually got the Billy Bookcase up and standing up, but then it wasn't until my then-fiancee came over and told me, "You got to actually put the books on the shelf to make it work," that actually finished the job.
So just that experience of reliving that got me thinking about how time is more of a blob than a line, right? It forces us to completely change the metaphor we use for time. We cannot count on linear time like neurotypical folks because, while we feel like we find linear time sometimes, it's more like we're at an intersection with it, and then we move across it and go into blob time again. So we know it's there, it's just always moving in a different direction.
Then I got to thinking about The Good Place and oh, my gosh, there is that sequence, and I'm just going to put it in the show, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, good.
Pete Wright:
I'm going to put it in the show because there's like a 90-second sequence where he describes Jeremy Bearimy, and that is an absolute anthem for ADHD time in my head.
Audio:
Okay. Things in the afterlife don't happen while things are happening here. Because while time on Earth moves in a straight line, one thing happens, and the next, and the next, time in the afterlife moves in a Jeremy Bearimy.
What?
In the afterlife, time doubles back and loops around and ends up looking something like Jeremy Bearimy. This is the timeline in the afterlife, happens to kind of look like the name Jeremy Bearimy in cursive English so that's what we call it.
Sorry, my brain is melting. How can events happen before the ones that happened before?
Just the way it works. It's Jeremy Bearimy. I don't know what to tell you. That's the easiest way to describe it.
Okay, but what the hell is this? The dot over the I? The hell is that?
Okay, how do I explain this concisely? This is Tuesdays and also July.
And sometimes it's never.
That's true. Occasionally, that moment on the Bearimy timeline is the time moment when nothing never occurs.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, my God, that is great.
Pete Wright:
That is so it, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
It is. It's Jeremy Bearimy.
Pete Wright:
It's Jeremy Bearimy. It is Jeremy Bearimy. They figured it out that if you just swap afterlife with ADHD, you describe blob time. You describe the ADHD time zone.
Nikki Kinzer:
That is [inaudible 00:09:10].
Pete Wright:
What is that dot? That's Tuesdays and also July.
Nikki Kinzer:
And sometimes-
Pete Wright:
And sometimes never-
Nikki Kinzer:
... no, no, never. Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
... when nothing never occurs.
Nikki Kinzer:
Wow, that's really great.
Pete Wright:
So that's where we go when we're talking about what blob time is. It's Jeremy Bearimy. Thank you to The Good Place and Michael Schur.
Nikki Kinzer:
Wow.
Pete Wright:
It's just too good. So let's talk about what some of the challenges are that you find when you're in the ADHD time zone.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Well, and one thing I just want to go back to something that you said in the essay. You had a couple of them in the Time section, and I don't remember which one this was in, but you talk about how ADHDer's 24... 24 hours in a day is different for somebody with ADHD, which is where we were talking about with the Jeremy Bearimy thing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
But what I want to talk about, as I go into the challenges of time blindness, keep that in mind that the 24 hours is not... it doesn't feel the same, it's not the same.
So one of the challenges, of course, is estimating time because things take longer. We have no idea how long it's really going to take to do something, especially if it's something we've never done before or it's something that we haven't done in a long time. If there's a lot of emotion that is around the task, that can stop us and take us longer to get started. So there's a lot of things to think about when you're estimating time, and it's frustrating and so, again, it's just one of those challenges because 24 hours doesn't feel the same.
The hyper-focus, we talked a little bit about this at the beginning of the show. It's that intense state of concentration, and this happens when you are really highly engaged in something. It happens when you buy the Billy Bookcase, and you're really excited about this organization thing, and you get it all like set up. Then you get bored or you get distracted, and then you don't go back to it, right?
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Kinzer:
So in that moment you were really into this bookcase, right?
Freeze. I think this is something you added-
Pete Wright:
Well, you know, I have my way with the outline.
Nikki Kinzer:
... and I love it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, because this is the other side of hyper-focus, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
This is this ADHD paralysis when time slows to molasses, and it creates clogging tasks. Because neurotypical time keeps moving, while you're stuck in the stasis bottle, the frozen bubble, and it makes it impossible to feel how you're going to start time up again. It's executive dysfunction, and it really happens when the lack of dopamine causes time just to feel like it just stops.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, yes. And-
Pete Wright:
So that's the evil twin of hyper-focus.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely, and I'm really glad you brought it up because that's where people down, that overwhelm. All of that starts to happen.
Transitions. This is something that in my program in GPS, in our membership program, we talk a lot about transitions because it's something that's so often forgotten about. That it takes time for you to stop doing something and then to move into doing something new. There has to be some space there.
And you're having that space anyway because you don't usually just jump from one thing to another. So if you're planning your day and you're thinking, "Okay, I'm going to get done with this appointment at two o'clock, and then I'm going to jump into my next appointment at two o'clock," you're forgetting that you need some transition time. You're going to take that time anyway because you're not going to be ready to go into that two o'clock meeting.
So the challenge is, is that you're probably taking it, but you're not planning for it. You're not scheduling that into your schedule so it's leaving you feeling behind all day long and really scattered.
Pete Wright:
I just want to take a little aside-
Nikki Kinzer:
Sure.
Pete Wright:
... because these two things, like getting stuck in transitions, or getting stuck in the ADHD time paralysis, time freeze, I think one of the meta challenges here is that from the outside, to others, it looks like what it is not, right? It looks like, "Oh, you're just lazy." "Oh, if you would just get up and do it, you'd be done, and then you wouldn't have to worry about it anymore."
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Right? "Oh, are you depressed? Is this depression? Because if it's depression, we should go take care of that." And maybe part of it is depression at that point.
Nikki Kinzer:
Sure, yeah.
Pete Wright:
But when you're stuck in this place, when you can't figure out how to move from one thing to the next, maybe it comes out, like it does for me sometimes, in rage. Like I get mad at myself and sometimes at others, and I get snappy when I'm asked to change context from something that I'm really into to something anything else, even if it's a good thing. I really struggle with those context shifts, and that can look like something that it's not, or that it's adjacent to.
But really it's my ADHD that is holding the reins, and I have to figure out how to be the one to take agency away from the ADHD, and that's so hard. It's one of the biggest challenges to me for the ADHD time zone is figuring out how I'm the one who gets to have agency in whatever exchange I'm taking part in. Whether at work, hyper-focus, social time, whatever, I'm the one in charge.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's hard to remember that, and it's hard to believe it when you've got so many things coming at you at one time, or things that you feel like you have to do.
The last area here that I think sometimes doesn't always get talked about, too, is the now/not now type of time zone that people live in. So ADHDers are great in living in the present because now is what matters, and oftentimes, you feel so behind that really all you can think about is, "How can I get caught up? How much can I do today?" So what happens is you don't think about the future. You certainly don't look into longer than just a couple of days, and then that will bite you later, too.
Because then, all of a sudden, what feels like next week is tomorrow. And if you've procrastinated or waited to start something, or didn't realize, it wasn't even a choice at this point, you just didn't even realize that it was coming up so quickly, then that is a part of time blindness is living just now and not in the future, not seeing what's coming up.
Pete Wright:
So it just occurred to me, one of the things that we've talked about a lot on the show is just the importance of analog for addressing time blindness.
As another aside, like I have a giant, you remember the clocks that you'd have in like classrooms?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Just big black frame, white clock, black numbers on it, big red second hand. And it's an analog clock because I need my brain, my ADHD needs to see time passing, and I don't see that with digital. Even on my digital watch, I have a face that is analog, right? I need to see that.
But the other thing that you just brought up got me thinking about is the passage of time over days and months, not just hours. And, as a result, I also have a physical calendar hanging right next to the analog clock where I can see days pass.
Because I would often run into the problem of thinking I'm on a day and looking up and realizing I'm in, literally, the wrong week. A week has passed, and I could not conceptualize how the last week has gone. I couldn't account for what I did. I couldn't account for what I'm doing now, like time just disappeared. I was in routine or whatever, and time passed. And it's not hours, it's in entire days, and that seems super important to me to acknowledge.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, I think it's important to acknowledge, and it's also a strategy on how to curb time blindness because you want lots of clocks around you. Analog clocks are great. Hour glasses, you can get hour glasses. For the people on the live stream, you can see this. I have one here. And you can get them at different time... Yes, and Pete has one, too. You can get them at different time...
Pete Wright:
Intervals.
Nikki Kinzer:
Thank you. Forgot the word. But that's a visual way of you seeing time, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And the thing about the calendar, and this is something I learned for someone who doesn't have ADHD like myself, the Google Calendars are great. Like what you have on your phone is great to see what's going on today. It's okay if you're on a computer to see what's going on for the week. But anything above that, it's no good because it's just a little dot. It's that Jeremy Bearimy dot that just looks like Tuesday and any month, it could be any month, right?
So what I found in my business for planning purposes, I needed an annual calendar. I need to be able to see all 12 months at the same time and be able to plan when we're doing certain preps, when we're doing promotions, when things are opening. Otherwise, I got in trouble with my team because Discord Mom told me, "You've got to give me some more time," because I wasn't thinking ahead. I was just like, "Oh, it's September. We need to start getting... We needed to start promoting GPS." Well, that doesn't give her any time to actually do the prep.
So I use that example just because I agree with you. I think that you have to have that visual of here I... It's kind of like those things in the mall. "You're here now and this-"
Pete Wright:
Those things that you mean a map?
Nikki Kinzer:
The directories? Yeah, those maps.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, the map? Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
You know, "You're here now." Thank you for clarifying that because I just think that everybody can see what I'm seeing because I have that visual of me standing, trying to find Macy's or something. But yeah, "You're here now, and this is where you're going." That visual is so, so important.
I just want to be clear, too, because when we... In the book we talk about specific tools and planning tools, and this type of calendar that we're talking about isn't necessarily the calendar that you're putting all your appointments in or anything like that. It's just to visually see time passing. There's not a lot of maintenance. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
I don't write anything at all on this calendar. I just need to be able to see the relationship of one day to another.
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, love that.
Pete Wright:
I think that your metaphor of the mall directory and looking for Macy's-
Nikki Kinzer:
That thing?
Pete Wright:
... there's the other side of that is, is I think what you're talking about with the calendaring, too. It's like I come into the mall, I'm really beating this dead horse, but I come into the mall and the first thing I think is, "Well, I can't trust myself, so I'd better look at the directory," and I see, "You are here." Then I look and look for the that I'm looking for, and it's like the store that's right next to me. It's like the store right next to "You are here."
That happens more maybe than actually figuring out where I need to go. Could I just figure out to use my senses, too? Like that's the balance. That's the tension between like using my eyes and knowing that I have a system that I can trust, too. You got to live somewhere in between.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, especially because when I say Macy's, I kind of chuckled to myself after I said it because I'm like, "Those are big anchor stores."
Pete Wright:
It's an anchor store.
Nikki Kinzer:
"How do you miss that?"
Pete Wright:
Like, you park at Macy's.
Nikki Kinzer:
Like, maybe I'm looking for the candy store that's like down at the end of the mall, but yeah. No, I hear you.
Pete Wright:
I like the bespoke Oregon Lotion store. That one's buried somewhere.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's buried.
Pete Wright:
That one you need a map, and like a secret code word to find. Like it's very complicated, but Macy's, you're okay. Fine.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, right.
Pete Wright:
All right. So living in the time zone, we talk a lot about it. We offer a bunch of exercises in the book.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, and time tracking. And I just want to say something because I had a conversation with someone yesterday about time tracking, and she was saying, "I don't have time to time track," which just I think is funny because really I think a lot of people feel that way. It's time-consuming, for sure.
In the book, we do give you some different ideas and some different things to track. And one of the things I just want to be clear about is that it's not tracking everything. It's only tracking certain things that you want to track. So this data, we call it personal data that you're basically collecting. It is a really important piece to the planning system. It feels cumbersome, it feels like it's going to take a lot of time, but I just want to really emphasize the importance of it.
Because once you learn more about who you are and how your ADHD impacts you on a daily basis, you will become a better planner because now you're going to start really incorporating what you naturally do and being more realistic with your plans, that a lot of that stress and chaos and going from one meeting to another and all of that can start to decrease because you're just being more realistic, and you're being unapologetically you. You're being who you are with ADHD, and that's not something to mask or be ashamed of or to hide.
Pete Wright:
Considering ADHD in your planning, like we talk about that a lot, and I think what you just said is really important, like the value of collecting data. And it can sound like, to my ADHD brain that, I mean, you said it. It sounds like a lot.
But I want to reframe that to how it's impacted me, which is much more simply, like I don't... Once you reframe that you're not talking about like detailed journaling of every step of your day, you're talking about hash notes on a piece of paper or hash lines on a piece of paper, or a simple categorization or one-word bullet and a time. Like those kinds of quick notes, as long as you have a piece of paper and a pen, the only behavior you need to change is making a little note as you change time. You can focus on what to do with those notes later, but you don't have to consider this upending your entire day. We're talking about injecting five seconds between events, between meetings, maybe less, to just write this thing down in the same place. Get a field notes book, get a notebook, whatever you're happy with, and just make a little note.
So I think that runs counter to, "I don't have time to plan" because we're not... Like planning in context with your ADHD or in conjunction with your ADHD doesn't have to upend your entire life. It doesn't have to be so frustrating. And that's the point. That's the point is just being aware of how you handle these kinds of transitions emotionally, and you just got to write it down so you can see it in one place. You just have to see it.
Nikki Kinzer:
And we guide you through how to analyze it, how to look at it, how to use the ad information. So it's not just written down, and then you forget about it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. Okay. So I just want to leave with a couple of things to help jar you out of time.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, please.
Pete Wright:
Is that fair?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
So what jars time? And I mean jar. I don't mean like put in a jar. I mean like shake. What shakes time for you when you're in ADHD? It's anything that shakes your energy. Because so many of the things that we talked about about living in the ADHD time zone are related in some way, shape or form to how your dopamine is working in your body.
So number one, how many times have you heard us and everyone else say, "You've got to figure out a way to move your bod with ADHD?"
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
And we'll call it exercise, but it doesn't have to be exercise.
Nikki Kinzer:
Movement.
Pete Wright:
It's any movement at all. Go-
Nikki Kinzer:
Stretching.
Pete Wright:
... dance... I don't know. Get on one of those horrible Pilates machines. Do whatever you need to do-
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly.
Pete Wright:
... to stretch your body and move it and really like moving your lymphatic system.
I read this fascinating so I was... Yeah, okay, I went into on a little bit of a rabbit hole yesterday and-
Nikki Kinzer:
You did?
Pete Wright:
... I did. Don't judge me. I was looking up-
Nikki Kinzer:
I'm not. I'm excited. I want to know what you learned.
Pete Wright:
... [inaudible 00:26:25] the Black Plague.
It turns out one of the things that early medical practitioners, you know the guys in the coned masks, one of the things that they used to do was, and they didn't know why, was to jolt the lymphatic system. So your lymph nodes in your neck and under your armpits, and in your groin, like they would just rub them vigorously. They would encourage people to bounce because your lymphatic system needs to flow, it needs to move things through. It also helps you fight diseases. It helps all of those things. When your lymphatic system gets clogged, everything kind of falls apart.
So keep your lymphatic system moving, and that's what exercise does, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It just keeps you moving. And I thought that was really, really interesting. They thought that... It turns out the Black Plague was pretty bad and just shaking out the lymphatic system didn't do it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Wasn't enough? You're kidding me.
Pete Wright:
It wasn't enough. The rats were also to be suspicious of.
But it all comes back to exercise and how you want to... or how you're able to move your body. So that's one.
Number two, better food. People, join me in my crusade to eat less cereal and more protein, and that's a huge one. Protein for everyone.
Nikki Kinzer:
You know, my doctor told me to eat less cereal, too. Seriously. She asked me, like, "What do you eat?" And I'm like, "I eat cereal." And she's like, "What kind of cereal?" I'm like, "Any kind of cereal. Every kind of cereal." She's like, "Yeah, we need to cut that down."
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah. So that's the thing. Unless you're eating like Meatball-Os, you're not getting enough protein.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, and it's too high in sugar.
Pete Wright:
And that's for everybody.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, it's for everybody. It's not just ADHDers. So you want to also like look at what you're eating, what you're putting in your mouth, and that's really important.
Number three, vitamin D. Get some sun and-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Well, and for our Pacific Northwest people, vitamin D is a supplement you probably need to take because we just don't get enough sun. And that's-
Pete Wright:
And way more than you think you should.
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly. Like definitely check that out because that's a huge vitamin deficiency that a lot of us here in Oregon and Washington have.
Pete Wright:
Yep. Yep. Right. So Vitamin D. I told you my mom's sun story, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-mm.
Pete Wright:
People are going to love this. This is very exciting. This is great advice that is heretofore, unattributed, don't know where it came from.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
When I was in college, my mom calls me, and she says, "You need more sun. So for 10 minutes a day, I want you to like take off all your clothes and lay down in front of a window and sun your genitals."
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, my God.
Pete Wright:
She said, "I read that in an article so you've got to sun your genitals." And that, of course, when I was in college that I told everybody-
Nikki Kinzer:
Of course, you did.
Pete Wright:
... and that became a mantra in our freshman dorm. "Did everybody sun your gennies today?" And it became a thing.
So 10 years later I go to Mom, I say, "Remember that, when you told me to sun my genitals?" And she says, "I never told you that."
Nikki Kinzer:
Of course.
Pete Wright:
I said, "What are you doing to me right now? Are you gaslighting my-"
Nikki Kinzer:
[inaudible 00:29:37] are you exactly.
Pete Wright:
"Not only does this actually line up with getting sun, but it's totally a wacko thing you would tell me to do. What are you trying to disown this, like loud and proud, sun your gennies?" "I don't know what you're talking about."
Nikki Kinzer:
That is so funny.
Pete Wright:
"I don't know what you're talking about." So anyway. Yeah. And there's-
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, that's great.
Pete Wright:
... Oh, Discord Melissa. "Every time you talk about getting sun, I'm reminded of the podcast episode recording during COVID lockdown, where I'd talked about sunning your genitals." Yes. That must've been it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, okay. All right.
Pete Wright:
I have talked about that. Thank you so much.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Because I was going to say after you said it, it sounds familiar. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That is so funny. Oh, my gosh.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, dear.
Pete Wright:
Yes. So thanks, Mom.
And change, change. Sometimes you just need to change, and what does that mean? It means get up and sit at a different seat at the table. Go sit on the couch for a while with your laptop. Go to a coffee shop. Like just change something in your environment, right? Are you not seeing your tasks? Change your tools. Like, figure out a way to change. It's okay to change.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
That's all right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
People, community, get with people. If you're feeling-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, connection.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, connection is huge.
And last, sometimes it's just meds. It's just the meds. Sometimes you may actually need a little bit of med support. I do. I do.
Nikki Kinzer:
And put a timer on to remember to take them because time blindness will have you forget. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. That's it.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's great.
Pete Wright:
That's the whole story.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right. Where can people find our book?
Pete Wright:
Oh, check out the book, takecontroladhd.com/adhdbook, ADHD book. Easy to remember.
Nikki Kinzer:
We're so creative.
Pete Wright:
Well, this way you don't have to spell unapologetically-
Nikki Kinzer:
I know because-
Pete Wright:
... because we can't.
Nikki Kinzer:
We can't.
Pete Wright:
There are so many Ls in that word when I write it. And way too many Ps.
Nikki Kinzer:
And Os and yeah-
Pete Wright:
Ugh, they're everywhere.
Nikki Kinzer:
... there's a lot of lot going on in that title.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, takecontroladhd.com/adhdbook. Thank you everybody. We appreciate your time and attention. Thanks for hanging out.
If you want to talk about anything, head over to the Discord channel. You can join there for free at takecontroladhd.com/discord. That's all we have. That's it. Thank you.
Nikki Kinzer:
Thank you, everyone.
Pete Wright:
Thanks for your time, your attention. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright. We'll see you next week right back here on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
