You Don’t Have to Be Productive All The Time
What if the relentless chase for productivity isn’t a sign of progress—but a trap?
This week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast, Pete and Nikki return to the idea they began exploring with Dr. Ari Tuckman: the Productivity Trap—a psychological cul-de-sac where effort doesn’t equal accomplishment, and perfectionism becomes performance. But this isn’t just about missed deadlines or overloaded to-do lists. It’s about identity. About shame. About what it means to be “enough” in a world that rarely says you are.
From a deceptively simple mantra—“You don’t have to be productive all the time”—springs a story of emotional reckoning. Pete recounts how Nikki’s offhand remark evolved into a viral merch moment, while Nikki shares coaching experiences that reveal the heartbreak (and humor) of managing ADHD in a culture obsessed with output. They dissect the nuance between urgent and important, spotlight how AI can support executive function, and confront the myth that productivity is linear.
This is not a conversation about how to get more done. It’s a conversation about why we believe we must.
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 Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Oh, hi. Hi, Nikki. We had so much fun last week with the good doctor, Ari Tuckman talking about productivity and the productivity trap, that we're going to continue that conversation. We have more to say. Ari's not here, but we will not be silenced.
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
About productivity. That's the truth. Before we get into that, you know the drill head over to takecontroladhd.com, get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list and we'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. You can connect with us on Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest @takecontroladhd. But to really connect with us, join us on the a ADHD Discord Community. It's super easy to jump into the general chat channel at takecontroladhd.com/discord. But if you really want to explore the depths, the deepest depths of Discord, you should venture into patreon.com/theadhdpodcast.
No, it's not just about Discord, it's really about supporting this podcast and the work that the whole team does behind the scenes to make this podcast come every week. It is listener supported podcasting. So through Patreon, a few of your bucks add up to a lot of life supporting bucks on our end. It's really, really great. And you get access to the Discord channels, you get access to live stream recordings of this show. You get access to early access versions of this show, ad free. They come out to your very personal Patreon Podcast Feed, plus more. There's just a lot of stuff that we're doing behind the scenes and your support in a questionable economy really helps keep things moving. patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. Nikki, I have a very special announcement.
Nikki Kinzer:
You do?
Pete Wright:
Yes. Hold on. I'm putting on my Take Control ADHD merchandise chief merchandising officer hat.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, okay.
Pete Wright:
We have new merch.
Nikki Kinzer:
We do?
Pete Wright:
And it's based on something you said. This is going to fall off my head, I'm taking it off.
Nikki Kinzer:
What did I say-
Pete Wright:
It's based on something you said-
Nikki Kinzer:
To get merchandise?
Pete Wright:
Last week, at the end of last week's show you said something, I don't even think you know you said it, but man, it stuck with me like a splinter. And I've been saying it all week to myself, all week. It is a mantra, it is permission, it is freedom. And I would like to introduce you to the, "You don't have to be productive all the time" T-shirt.
Nikki Kinzer:
Wow, look at that.
Pete Wright:
"You don't have to be productive all the time." Oh my God, it's so true. "You don't have to be all the time." This is a nod to those of us whose ADHD puts us into a perfectionist spiral. If you just need a reminder that you don't have to be productive all the time, here you go. We've got it on shirts and hoodies-
Nikki Kinzer:
That's so cool.
Pete Wright:
And tank tops and hats and stickers. I've already got my order on the way. The mug is very tidy. You can get the travel mug or the coffee mug. It's a new design in the store, and if you need a reminder yourself that sometimes you don't have to be productive. Look, you can get a trucker hat, or look at this, a dad hat apparently.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh, yes.
Pete Wright:
I'm a dad hat guy. I didn't even know this was a thing.
Nikki Kinzer:
That is so cool. Look at that. Who knew that something like that could resonate and stick with you to put it on merchandise? That's awesome.
Pete Wright:
I'm telling you. Oh, you can also get a pillow. That's always a thing-
Nikki Kinzer:
That's kind of nice, right?
Pete Wright:
You get phone cases and of course the pillow.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I love pillows with our own stuff on them-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
And I think this is just really, really fun. So the link will be in the show notes. You know what else? I'm just going to put it in chat.
Nikki Kinzer:
"You don't have to be productive all the time."
Pete Wright:
"You don't have to be productive all the time."
Nikki Kinzer:
It's true.
Pete Wright:
And I love it. So check it out, it's in the notes, it'll be on the merch store. And we appreciate you considering that.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, that was a fun surprise.
Pete Wright:
Very special announcement.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Cool. Well, now we're going to talk about being productive.
Pete Wright:
Let's go ahead ... No, that's not true.
Nikki Kinzer:
Okay.
Pete Wright:
Not all the time.
Nikki Kinzer:
No, we're going to talk about the productivity trap, which is different, right?
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Nikki Kinzer:
There's a trap that we want to get out of.
Pete Wright:
There is a trap. And so let's first do the recap of last week of what we talked about with Ari. And we did, we talked about the productivity trap. We talked about getting ourselves wrapped up in the idea of productivity without being productive. The idea of getting stuck in that repeating cycle of social and emotional pressure to make things perfect because we're trying to account for our own ADHD perceived deficiencies. And I also want to just call out, I'm going to put another link in the notes. I don't know if you've seen this. Did you see the New York Times profile in the study, the ADHD Meds Study?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, I did.
Pete Wright:
Do you have strong feelings about it?
Nikki Kinzer:
I think there was a lot of things missing in it. I think it's troublesome in some ways.
Pete Wright:
In some ways it is. And there's an interesting sort of thought experiment in there that I was relating to, because right now I'm not doing any ADHD meds, I'm doing anxiety medication. The whole conceit of this sort of Meta study is that when you are on medication for ADHD may make you feel more productive, but the quality of the work that you're doing is less than, you're actually doing poorer work, but you're feeling more productive and you're doing things on schedule. And I've had trouble with it.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
That's a vast simplification, but I've had some challenges with it and it's circulating everywhere in my circle.
Nikki Kinzer:
It is, there's definitely some-
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Missing pieces to that article.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. So I think there is this, all of that falls into this-
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
Sort of performative productivity. And so we talked a lot about the importance of self-awareness and this honest self-assessment of our own existence with ADHD. So reflections, where do we struggle? What do you see as a coach, especially after conversations like Ari's, that lead to some common stumbling blocks?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because one of the things that stuck out in Ari's conversation was definitely around the emotional components and the social layers of productivity and highlighting those, because often we don't talk about that. But there was something too that Brooke said in one of our duos, in one of the duo podcasts that has really stuck with me around productivity. And I don't even remember how it came up, but she asked the question, "Is this urgent or is it noise?" And that really stuck with me because I think that that's the core issue that so many people with ADHD have is that everything feels urgent. Everything feels important.
And as I was saying to Ari last week, I can have somebody explain to me their list and give me all of the reasons why they feel like they're urgent. And I believe it, like, "Yeah, you're right. You got to do everything here." Because we deceive ourselves thinking that everything is urgent, there's this belief here. And so I think some of it is the productivity trap, but it's for me as a person who leads so many planning workshops and the GPS Membership and everything, I see it as a prioritizing issue. And really believing that we can do more than what we can, believing that we should do more than possible, even when we know it's not possible and avoiding making those hard decisions. So it's easier to believe that we're failing. It's easier to believe that everything's important and I'm behind than to actually sit with your list and say, "Okay, I need to prioritize this thing and figure out what really are the most important things for me to do. But be okay with not finishing them, getting started on them."
I mean, we talk about visiting, we talk about moving the needle just a little bit. There's so much power in that where we don't go all or nothing. It doesn't have to be finished.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. It gets back to this, you don't have to be productive all the time. That hides a secret message, which is the less you feel like you have to be productive, the more productive you end up being. I find.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. I mean, I think that the expectations are just more realistic. So then you feel like, okay, well I set out to do two things today instead of 10, and I got those two things done. I feel really good.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Now, you can still get those two things done, but expect 10 things and now you feel like crap-
Pete Wright:
And feel terrible, right? You feel terrible about it.
Nikki Kinzer:
So it's like, all right, how do we want to feel? And it's so much around what our expectations are and really getting to the core of some of these things are going to have to wait.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I went through a list just the other day with a client, and in our GPS Membership we call them green tasks. And green tasks are those things that are important, but they're not urgent this week. They're not due this week, right? So they're the things that help us be proactive. Those are the things that we can, let's say that there's a presentation that I'm doing next week, obviously I don't want to wait until next week to work on the presentation. I want to start working on that now. Well, those things sometimes get pushed because we're so involved in all of the urgent things, the day-to-day things that we have to do.
So I was listening to him and I was looking at his green tasks, and one of the green tasks was a retirement task where he needed to consolidate his past employer's retirement, talk to a financial advisor and do all this stuff. Well, this man is at his 30s, retirement is not just right around the corner for him. But it's still something that's very important to do. And then we're looking at some other tasks where one was to set up some more therapy appointments, okay? So that we have that. Again, it doesn't have to be done this week, but it's pretty important, right? It's therapy.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
We want to make sure that that's taken care of.
Pete Wright:
He needs to go to therapy before he retires.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right, right. Yeah, yeah.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
And then there was another task about, it was a work task where he had to look at past employees and make sure that the end dates were all accurate or something like that. It was a report that he had to look at. Again, nothing is drastic here. Well, when we go through this, we're like, okay ... Oh, the other one, and this is important to say, because the other one was more time sensitive because they just done a survey and he needed to analyze the survey.
So it was more time sensitive because you don't just send a survey out to your employees and then not analyze it at the time that you get the survey, right?
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
You want to have it all fresh in your mind. So we go through all of this and we're like, okay, if we look at the therapy, like that's important, right? So we want to go ahead and make that appointment, so we're going to put that on the list. The other thing with the employees, the survey, that's important because that's more time sensitive. And then the other with the past employees, well, that can wait until next week if even later. And then the retirement, yeah, it's important, but you know what? It's not going to happen right now. So it's important, but it's not anything to feel bad about because you can't get to it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And so what I want people to see here, and I know this was kind of a long way to explain this, is that take the time to really look at these things that are on the list and pick them apart because they're not all the same value.
Pete Wright:
Right. The example highlights a persistent fear that I have, which is if I truly prioritize the way you just described, the retirement thing is going to continue to be kicked down the field-
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
I will never do it because-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Everything is just a little bit more urgent than retirement until I retire.
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly.
Pete Wright:
That's really hard to get to the other side of.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that's where we have to, I think, be okay with putting it aside right now and revisiting it later. So maybe in three months I'm going to have that pop back up and it's going to say retirement consolidation. This is where intentional planning comes in. And this is what we talk about in our membership is that when you have a task like the retirement, it will continue to get passed over. You are absolutely right, it's going to continue to get kicked down the road. At some point you're going to want to get it taken care of because it's annoying you or it's that little thing in the back of your mind that's just like, "Oh, I just want to get this done because it's just annoying." So if you make the discission that, "No, I'm really going to at least get this started and get the ball rolling so that I can start getting this closed up," then that's where the intentional planning can come in. And that's where the next part of our coaching conversation went, is how do we make time for these green tasks?
And so what we decided to do, or at least practice a little bit, is he was going to have his assistant set one hour, three days next week for green tasks. And so, I have no idea if that's too many hours or if that's not enough. We don't know, we just wanted to try something. So we just threw it, we're going to stick it to the wall and see what happens. And next week when we meet, we're going to say, okay, you had three hours of time blocked in your calendar that says you're going to work on green tasks. The retirement was not going to be part of that. It was going to be those other green tasks that we talked about, and we'll see if it works or not.
But this also goes back to the time blocking of making the decision. Let's say that the retirement is next week, right? It is making the decision that next week I'm taking care of this, I'm owning this. I'm not going to let it go, I'm not going to let it get kicked down the road. And so that first hour, I'm just going to do whatever I need to do to get the information, whatever, right? And then you treat it as a project until it's over. So there does have to be some intention behind it because as we know, if we say, I'm going to do it this weekend, this weekend comes, it doesn't happen. So we need to be more mindful and more intentional with how we're going to get these things done.
And that's also where accountability works, right? Because he's working with me, now not everybody has to have an ADHD coach to have accountability. They are in our community. If you're part of our Discord Community and you've got something like this retirement project, let us know in the community that you're working on it and now you've got a whole group of people that are supporting you that know it's out in the universe, and now you're going to be more likely to do it too. So you're using the tools and resources that you know help you and your ADHD, instead of just saying, "I'm never going to get to it," or just believing that it's not going to happen until I retire.
Pete Wright:
Sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, does it make sense?
Pete Wright:
It totally does. And I think I'll just throw in what you're making me think of is that on those kinds of tasks that I'm uncertain, they're far out in the distance. Using the tools that I have to continue to refine how well I've broken them down into small pieces-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Can help you move them forward. Because if I have one task that's going to take me an hour or five tasks that'll take me 10 or 12 minutes each, I'm much likely to carve away at one of those five tasks than I am sit down and do the whole hour at once.
Nikki Kinzer:
And how could you break that down? What tool do you have in your toolbox that could help you break down?
Pete Wright:
It's funny, I was doing some journaling in public last week and we wrote an article on using these AI tools to break down tasks. And it is stunning just how effective the tool is to just take a thing that you're not even sure how to completely conceive of and say, "Hey, make sense of this, and break it down into its component, smaller tasks." And it just most times it works. And it works because either it'll be right and you'll know it when you see it, or it'll be wrong-
Nikki Kinzer:
And you'll know it.
Pete Wright:
And you'll know how to fix it, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Those are two things that are beneficial. They're both working in your favor.
Nikki Kinzer:
They're both working, and you're not doing it alone.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
You don't have to figure this out on your own because the executive functioning isn't working in that moment because you're stressed, you're feeling horrible about all of these things.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
But the other thing I want to add is that I've update our will on my list forever, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I don't even think my daughter's in it. I think there's something that says if we have children after Jayden, then I think there's something in there, but it needs to be updated. So let's say that I had the retirement project and I had update my will, these are not two things that should be happening in the same week.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
That's the other thing is that choose one. And what was so fascinating about this conversation that I had with my client who I've worked with for a long time, so I know him very well. And when we started talking about green tasks, I said, "So what are one or two of those tasks that are really important to you right now?" And the thing he said to me is that, "Oh, I have more than one or two tasks." And then as soon as we started unwrapping all of this, I said, "Do you understand why I asked you about one or two of your green tasks?" And he just laughed. And I said, "Yeah, I've been doing this for a long time."
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
"I knew where your head was jumping, but I needed to pull you back to, Nope, we're only looking at one or two that we're going to focus on next week." And so it takes time, folks. I mean, what we're talking about is something that Pete and I, have talked about for a long time, but have also worked on with clients for a long time in our membership. And it's hard to wrap your head around productivity and what that looks like for you and what's good enough, than that perfectionism, man that gets into play. I mean, there's a lot of things going on, but I hope that it does resonate some with our listeners of, "Okay, what can I let go of here? What can I actually let go of?"
Pete Wright:
Yeah. And feel good about.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Not beat myself up over. I want to share this because Melissa wrote it in the notes dutifully and gives us permission to share it> because the comment was, what traps have we found ourselves in? What productivity traps? And I think this is really good. That's a great example.
Melissa says, "Recently, while creating new graphics to include on the new GPS Membership platform, I found myself spending much more time on each design, constantly tweaking and editing over and over with the intention of a "perfect final product." I would even get to a place where I thought I was done, upload it to where it needed to go, and then decide it didn't look right and take it down and edit some more. In this and other situations I find myself in perfectionism feels like an insurmountable hurdle because my work isn't just for me, it's for my job. Ultimately, my job is to represent Nikki and TCA, this fantastic company she has created to help people like me living with ADHD. Much of my perfectionism comes from a place of feeling responsible to produce a better than good result. Yes, I'm aware that much of those deep feelings of responsibility or self-imposed, while I know Nikki likes and appreciates the work I do, she has never expressed an expectation for me to strive for perfection. And in fact, often encourages me to stop with good enough."
I am so ... Well, I'm glad you shared that, Melissa. I'm proud of you for sharing that because I totally relate to it. It's this idea that when you're doing something for someone else, the responsibility to do good work just fuels the drive for perfectionism. It just fuels your anxiety that you're going to let someone else down in spite of all of the evidence to the contrary.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Right. Well, and what's so interesting about that is when we checked in with each other on Friday, she talked about doing work over the weekend, and I'm like, "No, no, you don't be doing work over the weekend, this all can wait." And it is again, letting go of ... And I think in that situation, it was understanding what is the priority, right? And then letting go of the other things because they can come later. And what she ended up doing was beautiful, it looked great. And so yeah, it is that internal-
Pete Wright:
But the question is, Nikki, you are praising the finished product after the cycle of perfectionism-
Nikki Kinzer:
For so many-
Pete Wright:
This is the kind of reinforcement that's so hard. So what would you have said to the first draft, right? Which may really have been good enough? It may have been great.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Right?
Nikki Kinzer:
I think in that situation, let's say that she had put something out there that I didn't love, I would've said, "Okay, let's put it out there for now because it's better than a blank space, right? So let's put it there for now, and then we'll continue to tweak it and make it what we all like." And I don't mean perfect, but just something that we all like and that we all feel good about. Yes. Because what's so interesting about that example is it's so personal, right?
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
I mean, it's Melissa and I and you, and the rest of the team at TCA. I can tell you, as a creator of this company, I would rather see something than nothing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And so that's something just to share that I would rather see something. Because if I don't see anything, then I don't know what's going on, and I don't like not knowing what's going on.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
And I don't know if other people feel that way or not, but that's it. And she did beautiful. It was great.
Pete Wright:
Well, and the fact is that Melissa does great work on her worst days-
Nikki Kinzer:
I know.
Pete Wright:
When she's-
Nikki Kinzer:
That's the thing.
Pete Wright:
Freaking phoning it in, she does great work.
Nikki Kinzer:
People are your [inaudible 00:25:25] critiques.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right. So there you go. Melissa, you're amazing. We all think you're amazing and we're glad you're on the team. And I totally relate to this trap.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
So let's talk about the emotional side of our productivity as we move this train along.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
The emotional barriers, Nikki, shame, guilt, overwhelm, fear of disappointing others. If this isn't a great example, I don't know what is. But the challenge is the intermittent reinforcement that my favorite catchphrase.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Why are some days good and some days so awful?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. And that's the roller coaster of ADHD. You know, Ari talked about this. He mentioned disappointing others. He also mentioned that we talked about that roller coaster of having a good day and then having a bad day And having a great start of the week and then the end of the week. And it's like that is part of the patterns that you want to start paying attention to, right?
Disappointing others though, that's going back to Casey Dixon, that's huge. We have to be okay with letting people down. We have to have to be okay with saying something's not going to happen on Friday, it's going to happen next week, early next week. That communication is really important. And again, going back to, I would rather know that it's not going to happen than to not know it's happening on the day of and then not hearing from anybody. And that's where ADHDers get into that trap of if I avoid it and they're not coming to me asking for it, then maybe it's okay. And so just being careful that opening that communication and what you think you're disappointing is probably not as disappointing as you think it is, that other person's probably really not that disappointed. Now, some situations are different and you have to go with what is going on in your world.
But the patterns of energy too, I think are really important when you think about productivity. When do you work at your best? Are you better at the beginning of the week than you are towards the end of the week? Fridays are not great days for me. I need to be done by 14:00. I don't want to be working at 15:00 or 14:00 in the afternoon on a Friday if I don't have to. So I think understanding that pattern and just being okay with the fact that yesterday was a really great day, and today I'm recovering.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And that's okay. It's okay not to be productive all the time, right?
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
So it is part of living with ADHD.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. So let's talk just briefly as we wrap up. What are some practical things that you're recommending folks do right now as we revisit this effort to make the tools that we use work for these real life constraints? We talked about using AI as a tool. That's a new one for a lot of people-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
And I would encourage you to experiment with it. We had a really interesting Coffee with Pete session last week. We were talking about AI and did some demos, and I just brought up a screen share. And somebody asked a question about a very specific technical platform that I know nothing about, right? It's a field I know nothing about. I've never experienced this platform at all. But she wanted to tie it to another platform by way of Zapier, which I know pretty well. And I didn't know what the constraints were, so I just dictated, I said, "Ask me the question that you want to get the answer to." And I wrote it into one of our AI tools and just screen shared the result. And the result was exemplary. It gave step-by-step instructions. And all I had said was, "For a non-technical user, tell me how to do this thing?" And it said, "Okay, here you go. I'm going to tell you how to do it."
This is, I think, the thing that, and this person said, "You could have told me to use AI to try this, and I would not have done it because the word AI is a complete block to me. It feels so foreign and so technical, I would not know how to talk to it." But the experience of watching me do it in their words was just that, just talk to it and see what happens. And has that made all the difference, just being able to see it in action. So I think that goes to the same thing, find the tool that helps you break tasks down. In Todoist, my tool of choice, there is an integration you can turn on in settings that says, Todoist's AI. And then you can just right click on a task or click the little three dots and say, break this down using AI. And it creates sub tasks already for you to set dates for it. Is just perfect.
So that's one of the tools to make this work in real life is give yourself permission to try this new thing and do it on top of the fear that you're experiencing about using it. So there's one, that's mine.
Nikki Kinzer:
I would say that another really clear action step that you could do right now too is look at your list whatever you're on, whether it's a digital platform or it's just a to-do list that's on a piece of paper. Look at that and take out the things that aren't going to be done in the next two weeks and decrease that amount of what you're seeing. Because what's happening is you have a lot of visual clutter when you're looking at everything at once. And this is where you're going to have to be very honest with yourself and not convince yourself that they all need to be done in two weeks. So this is where we have to really catch ourselves basically lying to ourselves that this has to be done. But if we can really think about is there a timeline? Is this deadline driven? What's the impact here on getting this task done?
And so if you have 40 tasks that you're looking at, get those out of there and see what you have left. But let's get the visual clutter out and really focus. And it's not that you're not going to get to those things or you're never going to see them again, I just want you to look at what is really real and trying to get rid of the visual clutter.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
And then I would at that point then really take some time to evaluate each task and figure out how do I get this zeroed in to really know what I need to focus on and not be distracted by everything else.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I'll make a plug for revisiting the ideal daily schedule. We've talked about this a number of times. I think annually I bring it up maybe at this point, the idea is that you take a calendar, I do it digitally. I'm using my calendar app and I have a separate calendar or a separate calendar color that just defines what do I want to do at every minute of the day? And I include sleep and meals and family time, and then I hide it and I go about my day. And when I'm feeling overwhelmed, I make that calendar visible and I get to see how I overlay the work I'm actually doing and the meetings I've actually scheduled with what I've said I want to be doing it that time. Usually right after I go through this exercise, it's perfect. It's beautiful. And after a few months, six months, a year, it starts to slip because I let my guardrails down.
For some reason or another, somebody says, "Please, can we do this one thing at this one time? I know you're not usually available." And I say, "Okay, for you." And because I need to people please right in that moment, and it starts to slip. But when I make it visible, I actually find myself really cognizant of those slips and bring things back into control.
I also find on my regular calendar, I hide the ideal one and look at how many times I have overlaps in events that appear to be happening at the same time. That happens, I imagine it's not just me, it happens to me all the time. And I have to really continue to work that muscle of saying, "Look, you just committed to a meeting at a time you said you were going to edit this thing." If you do that meeting, you lose the time to edit this thing, and this thing is important, and it was there first.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
It has dibs on your time.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
And so being aware of the opportunity, cost of time is critical and I think the ideal daily calendar is a way to help you get there.
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Most of all, you don't have to be productive all the time. That's the mantra.
Nikki Kinzer:
You don't have to be productive all the time.
Pete Wright:
And you might just feel a little bit better once you start saying that out loud-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. And one last thing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Is you are being productive. We forget about all of the things that we are doing.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
You got out of bed.
Pete Wright:
Maybe you took a shower?
Nikki Kinzer:
You got dressed for the day.
Pete Wright:
Maybe you just did your hair.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, you did read the email. We forget about all the things that we are doing, and we're only focusing on everything that's left, and we have to appreciate what is being done. And yeah, you don't always have to be productive.
Pete Wright:
It's good.
Nikki Kinzer:
There you go.
Pete Wright:
That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you, Nikki, as always. And thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. Thanks for your time and your attention. Don't forget if you have something to contribute to the conversation, we're heading over to the Show Talk channel in our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the Deluxe level patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. 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.
