In this episode, Asher and Dusty share their personal experiences with various organizational systems that help them manage their ADHD. They discuss the importance of having a clear calendaring system, as well as how they prioritize appointments over tasks to reduce notification fatigue. Both hosts emphasize the need for simple, effective methods that cater to their unique preferences, such as using Google Docs for task management and pre-deciding meals to streamline dinner preparation.
The conversation also explores the significance of maintaining social connections and how their approaches differ. Asher highlights the benefits of eliminating social media for more meaningful in-person interactions, while Dusty shares strategies for keeping friendships alive through regular activities. Together, they illustrate that finding the right systems is a dynamic process, encouraging listeners to embrace trial and error in their journey toward organization and fulfillment.
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:00] Asher: Hi, I’m Ash. [00:00:03] Dusty: And I’m Dusty. [00:00:04] Asher: And this is Translating ADHD. Quick reminder before we get started, I have two group coaching courses coming up in the new year. Purpose begins January 13th and Project X, which is that thing that is important to you and only you, begins January 14th. Both classes meet at 8:30p.m. Eastern time. If you’re interested in finding out more about either course, including prices and to apply, visit the website TranslatingADHD.com and click on the group coaching tab.So Dusty, do you want to tell our listeners what we’re going to be talking about today?
[00:00:42] Dusty: We’re going to talk about ourselves today. [00:00:44] Asher: We are. [00:00:45] Dusty: We’re going to talk about, I want to know, Ash, inquiring minds want to know, what systems are working for you right now in keeping yourself organized with your ADHD? And also vice versa. [00:00:58] Asher: Oh boy, Dusty. We’re going to get real honest in this episode because I’ve genuinely had a tough year and my systems are very much in flux right now. So I’m going to start with a system of mine that is working really well. And that is my calendaring system. And it’s taken me a number of years to get it to a place where it works as well as it does so I do a couple of things with my Google Calendar that work well for me based on what I’ve learned about what does and does not work.Number one, my calendar is only for appointments. I very rarely put tasks or non time bound things on my calendar because I get notification fatigue. If I do that and if I do it too much. So if it’s something really important that I don’t want to forget, I can plug it into my calendar and that can be helpful.
But if I start scheduling non time bound tasks onto my calendar, it becomes this slippery slope where I start missing things, Where I start missing notifications for things like client appointments. That is something that has happened to me in the past. So for me, a calendar is appointments only. It’s what am I obligated to.
But I also have a second layover calendar that’s a master schedule of my clients and where their slots live. So for me, every one of my clients gets a day and time, and that is their coaching slot. I used to do it different.
[00:02:21] Dusty: I do the same thing. [00:02:23] Asher: I used to do it differently than that. And again, I ran into things where I would schedule people at off times or times where I wasn’t normally working, and I would just forget that those appointments exist. And in fact, even now, if I make an exception for a client, because they have a schedule snafu or something, and I have to schedule well into the evening, I have to make sure that I remind myself another way because I do know the rhythm of my days and weeks pretty well.And so it would be very easy for me at what would normally be the last client session or the quote-unquote end of my work day to just transition into home stuff and not even realize that appointment is there and maybe not even see it because my phone is often on silence. And in a different room than the room that I’m in, if I’m not in work mode.
So that’s how I run my calendar. And that’s been working really well for me for a number of years now, but it took me quite some time to get there and it took some learning along the way, some trial and error. So listeners don’t don’t hear anything that Dusty and I say as prescriptive as this is what you should try.
The opportunity here is what got us there. What did we learn about ourselves? along the way that helped us figure out how to use this tool well for ourselves. And by the way, I will add that another thing that makes my calendar work so well, I can’t calendar on the phone. I cannot do it. The phone view of the calendar could not be more useless to me in terms of relaying good information.
It just doesn’t make visual sense to me. I don’t like to use it. And so I do not schedule things. on my phone. I will send a reminder to myself another way and sit down and look at things I need to schedule in when I am sitting at my computer when I have a big screen because on the big screen my calendar makes sense to me.
On the phone it doesn’t. So I use it on the phone as little as possible because I know that I’m really error prone if I do calendar on the phone.
[00:04:22] Dusty: Oh my god, it’s so funny to hear you say that because I’m exactly the same way. Like, I’ve totally missed client meetings if I schedule them out of the regular time because, like, the same thing, I have a rhythm. So, like, if I ever schedule a client, like, early or late or on a different day, I’ll go into my alarms and I’ll set an alarm for the night before that’s, like, that goes off at, like, 8 pm that’s, like, don’t forget you’re, like, meeting this client early or, like, whatever, like, and I have to do it that way.So, I’ve totally done the same thing. And it’s funny to hear you talk about, like, that, you know, the small screen versus the big screen. Have you seen these, like, I’ve been getting relentless ads for this thing called Skylight Calendar. Have you seen this, Ash? Cause I’m like, I’m very curious about it.
I’m not, like, no, this is not a sponsorship thing, cause I don’t know, I don’t have it, but Do you know what I’m talking about? Have you been
[00:05:04] Asher: I haven’t, I have no idea because I’m not on social media anywhere so I don’t get targeted ads for anything. [00:05:10] Dusty: It’s like this, it, I don’t, I think it’s literally just like a screen that displays your calendar. I’m not exactly sure how it’s different from like having an iPad or something that displays your calendar.Except for it’s, it seems to be like, you know those picture frames that are digital pictures and they show you different pictures? It seems to be just that, like a digital picture frame. But for your schedule, I think, if I’ve understood what it is. And I’m like, really curious about it because it’s not that cheap.
So I’m like this seems like a lot of money to spend for like, just my, you know, my Google Calendar on its own dedicated screen. But then also, how many times this year, so many times this year, Ashley, I’ve been like, oh, I wish I just had like a dedicated screen for my Google Calendar because I’m the same way.
And so what I do, I actually have a planner, a paper planner. I use, I like the Passion Planner. And I do the Google Calendar, and I spend time making sure that they are always, like, matched up. And it’s a very laborious system, but like, I need both. I need, like, there’s something about having a paper planner that I can physically write in, but I need to make sure it matches my Google Calendar.
And the thing is, I don’t always check my Google. I’m more likely to forget my Google Calendar than I am To forget to look at the planner, but sometimes I’m out and I don’t have the planner. And so for me, like just layering those two systems and spending, like spending the extra time matching them up is actually a better investment than like the risk I run of them not matching up or only having one or the other.
[00:06:32] Asher: It’s so funny because so often when Dusty and I are talking off mic, we are marveling at how different we are. And so it’s so funny how similar we are in this regard. I used to keep a paper planner as well. And the only reason I don’t now is because I don’t have to. My life is pretty simple week to week in terms of what’s happening when, whereas you have a lot of moving parts.In your days and your weeks and a lot more variety than I do, just because of the differences and what our lives look like right now. So if my life started to look more like yours, I would need to go back to some sort of secondary system because again, relying on the phone as that secondary system would not work for me.
And I can’t always reliably be sitting at my desktop computer at home. To know what’s going on.
Also, I’m appreciating Dusty. You’re talking about The fact that yes, it does take time to invest into this redundant system. That’s something I run into a lot with my clients in coaching is frustration with the amount of time it takes to plan. I think so often with ADHD, we’re, we discount that time as non time.
I had this really hilarious coaching session with a client where he came and he’s like, all 45 minutes. I wasted 45 minutes before I wrote this meeting agenda that took me five minutes to write. Why did I do that? And when we really started to talk about it, it wasn’t wasted time. He was gathering the information that he needed in order to be able to write the meeting agenda.
But in his brain, after that was done, the story was, I just wasted 45 minutes. What was I doing? And I think we so often do that when it comes to planning. We’d. Discount the time as not time. It doesn’t take time. And then we can get really frustrated when it does in fact take time.
[00:08:22] Dusty: Okay, so I think you’re so right about this and I’m really interested in this because I think it’s two things at once with ADC. One, a hundred percent, so many people don’t value or like, don’t value or consider that they need to give themselves more time for planning. Right? Like so often, especially with new clients, I find out that they’re not taking time at the beginning of their day to plan out what they’re going to do that day.They’re not taking time for the week to plan out their week. They’re not taking time for the month to like, look at what’s going on that month. And I do think that probably like neurotypical people, Do this more often, even if they just do it in their heads, you know, like, I think we might, I have a client who calls them invisible or like nested tasks, right?
They’re like tasks inside of tasks. So like in a course of a day, your task is to do whatever you need to do, but there’s an invisible task of like taking a step back and prioritizing what you’re going to do that day. And like, because we don’t see other people do it, we just like, don’t give ourselves that time.
And like, that is, that’s very, I think like a very ADHD thing. I still marvel, personally, at how often I go from one task to another without remembering to leave myself buffer time to say like, clean up after the first task. And then I’m like, why is my house a disaster? Oh, I did six things today, but I went from thing one to two to three to four to five to six, and I didn’t leave myself time to like, clean up from thing one or thing two.
And this is why other people that I know who don’t have ADHD, Don’t get as much done as me, they do three things in a day, but it’s because they’re actually getting more done than me because they remember that they’re gonna need time to like, reset things in between. I still really have to remind myself to do that.
So on the one hand, I see how people with ADHD like, we skip steps, we skip the planning step because like you said, we don’t value it. On the other hand, I do think that planning for us takes more time and effort than it would like a neurotypical person, because we don’t have that inborn working memory where we can just check our data bank and go like, what do I have to do today?
Or like, what’s coming up this week? Like, For me to plan out my day, my week or my month, I do have to do exactly what your client did. I have to go to this source and that source. Okay. What plans did I make with someone? What’s coming up on my daughter’s school stuff? Like I have to, I can’t count on myself to remember anything.
So I have to do all of this stuff manually in the long way that I have frankly seen, like some of the neurotypical people in my life, just like. They just, like, remember. They don’t have to think about, and they don’t have to do the math on paper of, like, how much time they have to, like, go to the doctor.
Do they also have time to go to the shopping mall and do Christmas shopping today? Like, I’ve seen people just be like, oh yeah, no, I don’t have time for that because I have to do this other thing. Whereas I am like, Do I have time to do both these things? Let me sit down and actually, like, map out how long will it take me to, like, drive here to there.
What do I have to I even have to remind myself, Oh yeah, I have to remember to get home and cook dinner. Because if I don’t sit down and do that math, I will literally forget that dinner exists and that I have to leave time and energy and space to cook it. So it literally also does take me longer to plan out Like my life on any scale.
[00:11:24] Asher: Speaking of dinner, this is a really simple one I can toss in. That’s been a struggle in my household, particularly in the last year where my child switched school districts and is now with me. all week, every week during the school year. So I have to solve for dinner for not just myself, but for the not so tiny human these days.She is 14, but the still not all the way grown human that relies on me to feed her every day. And something I realized pretty early on is dinner is a lot easier to solve. If I’ve decided what dinner is, if we get to dinner time, and I do not know what dinner is, that makes it a Exponentially harder to address the question of dinner.
It just is. I like to use the language of pre deciding. I think that could be really helpful with ADHD because you know, if you don’t know what’s for dinner and it’s dinner time, like, Now there’s an executive function cost in figuring out what you can possibly make or order or how to solve for dinner.
And then you actually have to do the thing of making dinner. And so for me, if we get that far to it’s dinner time and there’s no dinner, chances are I’m going to order takeout or do something in that vein, because getting from one to the next can feel really impossible. And dinner requires sometimes Thought the night before, right?
So that’s kind of what I’m getting to is every evening. I asked myself the question, what is dinner tomorrow? What is dinner tomorrow? And that way, if I need to take something out of the freezer, or I need to stop by the grocery store, I’m a little more consistent with the grocery store with that question now too, because if there’s something I want to make for dinner that we don’t have all of the things for, then it’s like, okay, can tomorrow be a grocery shopping day or not?
Right? So what is for dinner tomorrow is one of my systems that has been working really well, just answering that question consistently every evening. And it just makes that task so much easier to approach because it’s like I’m mentally prepared for making whatever it is I’ve committed to make by the time I get there and I know I have all of the things and that alone makes engaging in that task so much easier.
[00:13:34] Dusty: Yes, I really struggle with this as well. And I really, I don’t, I think that most people with ADC struggle with the question of like how and what and when to feed themselves. And then I also have to like feed this tiny human too. And I realized at a certain point I had to start taking this more seriously because like you, I wouldn’t think about dinner till dinnertime.And then sometimes dinner wouldn’t be done till like nine o’clock. And now my kid’s like getting to bed late. Or she’d be like, I’m hungry. And I’d be like, Oh my God, I don’t have anything in the house. And so before I was just solving this with like an obscene amount of like ordering in. And then at a certain point, I was like, maybe I won’t spend a fortune on like ordering in all the time.
And like the thing I want to say about this, cause what, at the heart of what you and I are talking about Ash is like, what systems are working for us now. And I like that question now, because I think if you’re new to your diagnosis, you’re always looking for that, like, silver bullet where it’s like, Oh, I’ll find this system.
It’ll take care of everything forever. And what’s interesting is alarms, calendar reminders, Google calendars, planners, you know, paper things written on paper, whiteboards. I literally use everything. Every layer of every system that you guys could think of for everything that I do. I do so many things. I’m a very busy person.
And I fairly, I think I fairly nail most of them, but at every level of my life there are several systems. But the thing is, the reason that’s all working now and it’s keeping me on track now, Before, when I was like a very disorganized, like, not very cognizant of my ADHD person, it’s not that I had less systems.
I tried to use alarms and Google calendars and planners and stuff, but I didn’t, like, know how to make them work for me, and they mostly just served as this, like, reinforcing a failure. Like, oh my god, I wrote it in my planner, but then I didn’t check my planner. Like, Oh, I had this alarm, but it didn’t work.
Right? And the difference between using all these layers of structures before and using all of them now is understanding that like the true nature of my ADHD is that things phase in and out often based on novelty and what feels fun and cute and happy to my brain. And so I switch up and I change out my systems at a regular interval.
Like I, as soon as I noticed that something’s not working anymore. I change it in some way. So for example, I used to have this list, I would keep this list in my kitchen of foods that my kid likes. Because when I go to feed her, I mean, she’s little, so it’s always changing, but I literally have to be like, okay what will she eat?
And sometimes I’m like not ready with those foods, and there’s like nothing So I have to like make a trip to McDonald’s. So for a while I kept a list of all her like favorite foods and I would update it. And then at a certain point I just stopped looking at that list. Like we just stopped using it for some reason.
And so now what I started doing is I start making her up a weekly meal. Meal like a menu and I got this tip from a woman called Dr. Becky at good inside. So good inside is like an online parenting resource and this was like a tip I saw on social media from like Dr. Becky where she said like to avoid struggles with your child because you know, a lot of the time you cook something for your kid.
They’re like, I don’t want that. And on the one hand, you want them to eat. On the other hand, you don’t want them to eat. Be entitled and think that they can eat whatever they want when you’ve spent good money and time making this healthy dinner Whatever, right? She said okay the way to avoid that is give them choices But what she does is she gives her kids a menu the night before with limited options She has them pick what they want for the next day and she found that really got to her Around like the power struggles.
So I was like, okay, that’s great. I’m gonna do that So I did it for the whole week where I gave my daughter and I went into Canva if you know what Canva is It’s like a graphic design site and I made this little menu and I made her like three or four Breakfast options for the whole week three or four lunch options for the whole week and then for every night of the week I laid out what we were doing for dinner based on What we had going on and so again kind of going back to that like I have to really get this overhead view for me every week I have to I have planned my routine around like what am I doing Monday?
What am I doing Tuesday? What am I doing Wednesday? Because well every day is the same often every day is different, right? Like oh my daughter has a Christmas concert this week or like oh somebody’s Coming into town to visit from out of town this week or like oh, there’s a holiday this day. So there’s no school Oh, normally we would be home Monday night, but my dog has a vet appointment, right?
All those moving pieces, I find that if I sit down and think through each day, I can go, Okay, how am I going to do dinner on this day? How am I going to do dinner on this day? So for the past couple weeks, I’ve been giving her this menu where she gets to pick her breakfast and lunch every day. And it’s exactly as Dr.
Becky said, no, no arguments, no fights. She eats what I make her. And then I’m also more organized because she told me last night that she wanted, like, Ham and eggs for breakfast. So I made sure that I knew where the like ham was in the fridge. She told me she wanted like a salad for lunch. So I made sure that I had all the ingredients.
And then each day, because I’m thinking through what are, what is our agenda, what’s on our, you know, to do list. I’m letting her know in advance what dinner is going to be, and I’ll give her options if I can, but this is like a new system that I just started a couple weeks ago because the old one failed, right?
And so all my, again, I use whiteboards, I use clipboards, I use paper, I use alarms, I use everything. Whenever I notice that something doesn’t work, I like change it or I make it more interesting or I buy like a cute, I just started doing this with meal planning. I got a cute like meal planning template.
You know, it says like, Oh, what are you eating this day? And so it makes me want to use it. And so now all of my systems, whatever they are, and this is why we said what’s working for you now, it always changes for me. And the key is like not the perfect system. The key is like, what do I feel like I want to use right now?
And what do I feel like I need?
[00:19:14] Asher: I love that Dusty. And yeah, novelty is a big thing. I had a really interesting this was years ago, but this was great learning for me as a, at the time, quite a bit greener ADHD coach. I had a client who was just relentlessly in search of the perfect system. And I worked with this client for a couple of years before we got to this really cool place in a coaching session where she realized that novelty.Was in fact the system that something about going through that process of rebuilding, reorganizing a new tool was helpful for her. Interestingly, I’m kind of the opposite of that. I don’t like a lot of options or technology between me and my tasks. Right now, my task management system is a Google Doc, just a plain Google Doc.
With three categories now, soon, and not now that was born out of desperation and overwhelm. A few weeks ago, I needed to sit down. I was getting to a place where, you know, it’s the end of the year, right? So there’s so many important and urgent things that happen this time of year. I need to sign up for health insurance.
There are a couple of other things that I really need to attend to and that are time bound, including preparing for Christmas, stuff like that. Most of the time my solve for myself is to keep my life simple enough that I can keep like a sticky note to do list and know what the things are that I really need to be attending to.
When I get more overwhelmed than that, it’s a Google doc or sometimes a Trello board, but it’s really simple. And again, just, I started with, all right what’s now, what’s urgent, what’s soon. And what are all of the other things rattling around in my head that are not for now? And something about that not now category is really nice because then I can look at the problem and be like, . I see you shed in my backyard with a giant hole in the roof and lawnmower in my office because of the shed in the backyard. It doesn’t keep things dry anymore. But that’s not a problem for right now. That’s on the not now list and it will eventually get promoted up through. And then from that list, I’ve been looking at my days and weeks, much like you were talking about looking at where do I have space and how much time and space does do these tasks take up and finding opportunities there.
So at the very top of the Google doc, I have like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday on down, and that’s where I kind of plan out, okay, these are the things from the now list that I’m going to address and when I’m going to address them. So it’s just a very bare-bones, basic system. But for me, simplicity is.
Is key a system that requires a lot of overhead or set up that has to, I can get overwhelmed by options. I actually don’t have a visual brain. I have a Fantasia and I think that’s a big part of the reason I’m so adverse to a lot of technology tools is a lot of them are designed around visual elements to lay things out visually in a way that makes sense. And I’ve had clients battle with this, right. I’m trying to find systems that visually represent information in a way that works for their brain.
And I think for me. Visual representation is just not that helpful, right? Just getting the words out somewhere where I can look at them. That is helpful. I don’t need a visual representation. So I think that’s why I’m kind of adverse to systems that have a lot more overhead because of what they’re giving you back in terms of visual representation that I don’t really need.
If that makes sense.
[00:22:46] Dusty: I hear you. And this is the thing, right? Like, I see a lot of clients, You know, doing this thing where they’re trying to find the one system that’s going to do everything for them. And that’s it, right? Like there’s so many, there are so, there’s an endless amount of like productivity and like to do apps.And like if it’s fun to use, great. But where I see people, I think, Making, get, getting into trouble is investing a lot of time building this one system that’s supposed to do everything for them. And then if it doesn’t, everything fails. And so that’s I think the thing I really want to communicate that I, was a big aha for me is that I don’t need everything in one place.
I can have different systems. And that doesn’t mean that all of them are working perfectly at all times. Like there’s always something that could be doing better. But like, for example, I went on Etsy and I found a like a, template, a cleaning template, and last year I printed it out and it had like daily, weekly, monthly, biannual, and like quarterly like cleaning things, and I put it up in my kitchen, and it was really helpful last year because I could just reference it to be like, when was the last time this or that was cleaned, or like, oh, okay, It’s February now.
What am I cleaning in February? Like, I had pre decided what my monthly tasks were going to be, and I love that. This year, it’s still up, but like, I abandoned it quite early in the year. It’s just not working the same for me as it did last year. There’s just less time, maybe there’s less energy. So, I mean, like, things are getting, you know, clean, more or less.
Like, they’re, you know, they’re maintained, but it’s a lot more chaotic because we’ve detached from any kind of system or routine. So, it’s happening as it happens. And the, you know, the structure is still there, but it doesn’t, it’s not working the same. So instead of trying to force it or panicking about it, I’m like accepting that, okay, like right now sort of house maintenance tasks are just going to have to get done however they get done because my focus is elsewhere.
And that’s kind of what I mean as well, right? Like for me, I have these different layers of systems and sometimes like certain things are less like Just, you know, I’m aware that they’re not being attended to, you know, as much and, you know, they sort of, they phase in and out, they go like a cycle, right, you’re never nailing 100 percent of them all at once, but you’re not just like out there in total maniac mode, like with no idea what’s going on.
But the systems that are the most interesting to me right now, Ash, that are like, actually, I think are like my biggest triumph, are the systems that I have for like, having fun.
[00:25:11] Asher: Ooh, tell me more about that. [00:25:13] Dusty: I would love to tell you more about that. Okay, so, I, you know, like a lot of people with ADHD, when I think about a thing that I objectively know is fun for me, I often don’t have, like, a feeling in my body like, Oh, I want to do that, or that’s going to be fun, right?Like, I feel like I want to scroll on my phone or watch shows, and then I find those things unfulfilling, and I think like, Oh, why don’t I, you know, do crafts or make music or go for bike rides? But in the moment, It never feels like I actually want to do that. And I’ve heard that from a lot of clients too, so I kind of figured I needed some systems to get myself to do more of what I know I like to do.
So one of the things I did was I signed up for the like, there’s this app called Goodreads and every year they ask you to like make a challenge. So my challenge to myself was to read like 25 books. Okay, so I wanted to read a book every two weeks, but I also keep a huge list of books in Goodreads And so what I would do is I would pre-choose my books And like I put so many of them on there that I don’t even remember why I put them on there So to me, it’s like totally there’s that like randomness of like, oh, what’s this next book i’m gonna read?
I don’t know what it is, but i’ve already like i’ve already like pre-chosen it and then there’s the there’s the competition of like, oh, I only have so much more time this year, like, I, I’ll keep myself reading. Sometimes I’m not in the mood to read, but I just want to like beat my challenge. But then, so I’ll be like, oh, I better like do some reading.
But then once I sit down and I start reading, I’m like genuinely enjoying it, right? So that’s like an example, like the Goodreads like challenge actually forces me to read because I want to beat the challenge. But then I, yeah, I’m enjoying it, right? Or like, even just like, habit trackers around like, playing music, right? So, if it’s the end of the night, and I’m tired, I’m like, yeah, I don’t wanna pick up the guitar. That feels like it’s gonna be work.
But I’ll make like, a habit tracker for myself, where I’m like, I wanna play the guitar X number of times this week. And so I’ll do it just cause I’m like, well, it’s on my habit tracker. But it’s, you know, lo and behold, as soon as I sit down and I turn it on, it’s on. It’s just like the startup energy isn’t there.
It feels like it’s going to be hard on this side of the task. But once I am sitting there doing it, I’m like, oh my God, like, why don’t I do this all the time? I don’t want to stop, right? Like, I genuinely enjoy it, but I kind of have to like, trick myself into doing it in a way by like, making it about something else.
So by like, almost creating like, structures and routines around the, like, fun things. I get myself to follow through on doing them, and then I end up getting, like, way more quality of life, like, way more relaxation. But it’s like this thing I have to, like, plan and execute in this, like, weird way. It doesn’t happen on its own.
If it’s just, if you leave it to me, all I’m gonna do is sit there and scroll on Instagram and watch the same boring thing on Netflix and be like, Ugh! Life is boring!
[00:27:53] Asher: Yeah, I struggle with the same thing. And as you were talking, I was thinking about a couple of solves that I have for that too. So the first one is around making it to kickboxing in the morning. I try to go like, three to four times per week. And I’ve noticed that I am so much more likely to go.If I have done a couple of things the night before, if I have made my overnight oats so that I don’t have to worry about not just breakfast, but a breakfast that’s going to sit well on my stomach for a pretty intense workout, it’s already there. I just got to get it out of the fridge and eat it. That’s it.
I also don’t like to eat in the mornings, right? So the food is a function of, I need it as well. workout. Otherwise, if it wasn’t a kickboxing morning, I wouldn’t be eating at all. So it just takes breakfast completely out of the equation. And if I pack my gym bag, so I’ve got fresh wraps for my hands. I know that I’ve got clean clothes.
I’ve got, it’s winter, so I need sweats to wear over the clothes that I’m wearing in the gym because it’s freaking cold outside here right now. So if I know where all of those things are in advance, I know that I have clean clothes, I’ve rolled up my wraps because it makes it so much easier to wrap your hands.
Then that makes it really easy to get past the wall of awful of getting out of bed. Cause bed is cozy and getting into my car. And once I’ve gotten into my car it’s all easy from there. And I’m Always glad that I went. It’s fun. I have a good time. I love seeing my friends there. And I even enjoy the workouts these days.
Like, yes, they’re tough, but they’re tough in a way that’s fun and rewarding. The other thing that came to mind is how I manage my social life now. So, I have a pretty active social life these days. I’m involved pretty heavily in queer community, and I’ve made a lot of friends, which is really nice, but also I’m an amnevert, and I do need downtime.
If I overschedule myself, I start to become resentful of social events. And so a couple of things have helped there too. Number one, paying it, really paying attention, making sure that social events make it onto my calendar and that I’m checking my calendar before I agree to anything else. And number two is actually kind of the same thing as I was talking about with kickboxing. I’ve noticed that I am much more likely to dread an upcoming social event if I haven’t done the thing that I intended to do that day. If I haven’t done the laundry for the thing that I want to wear that night.
If everything is kind of coming up to the wire and I’m in, in the shower and my clothes are in the dryer. and I need to leave in half an hour or less, that’s going to stress me out. I’m really bad about waiting until the last minute to quote unquote, get ready to leave where I used to be. But now I kind of make that my priority first is if I have a social thing later today, then what does my day look like leading up to that so that I have all of the things that I need and I’m prepared well in advance.
And I go ahead and get ready first. If I end up with an extra 20 minutes, half an hour, whatever, I can find ways to fill that time. There are other things that I can do versus this mad scramble of like, Oh gosh, I got to get out the door. Where’s this? Where’s that? Where’s my stuff. And then I do stupid things like forget my wallet or some other critical thing that I meant to bring with me.
So something about the combination of making sure to take care of myself and making sure that I have Down time and quiet evenings to and then just being more intentional about that social event and the many steps that it might take. Is there a load of laundry that needs to be done? Do I need to take a shower?
Do I need to shave? Do I? What all do I need to do? And how am I going to intentionally? Build that into my day so that I don’t feel like I’m running out the door in a mad scramble.
[00:31:42] Dusty: You touched on something important here, which is like managing, like treating your social life as a system as well, because like it is, and we hear from a lot of people with ADHD that like, they have that friendship languish thing where they forget about friends, they forget to check in on them.And there too is something where I’ve used different systems. So in the past, one of the things was I, that I did. In the past, one of the things that I did is I had a daily habit of reaching out to someone. It was just a daily recurring habit that’s like, reach out to someone! Like anybody, like who’s on Facebook right now?
Say hi to somebody. Because, like, I had so many friends where I wasn’t, like, maintaining the friendship. You know, if it wasn’t someone that I was, like, seeing regularly anyway. And while I don’t do that anymore I do, and this is like going to sound funny, but like I literally keep a list of like who’s having a hard time because I hate feeling like that person who, like somebody tells me they’re going through something and I’m like, Oh my God, like that’s so awful.
That sucks. And then my, my, in my brain, I go, okay, well remember to keep checking on that person. And then a month later I’m like, wait, what, wait, what happened? It’s a month later. Oh my god, I haven’t even talked to so and such in a month. I’m such a jerk, right? So literally it seems very manual, but I keep a list and I update it and like every so often I like check the list And I’m like, okay, who’s you know, who’s going through stuff like check in on them.
See how they’re doing Don’t forget that they exist and for me instead of trying to like check in daily with random people now You know that system stopped working. And so now what is working for me is You Like, just having recurring things that we do together in advance with, like, something that we’re doing, right?
So, like, one of my friends and I will always go swimming every week, like, with my daughter. And we, like, fell off that for a long time, but, like, now we’re getting back to it because otherwise her and I might not see each other. And like, I don’t like, I don’t like the weird thing of just like, Oh, let’s hang out.
What are we gonna do? Let’s get coffee and stare at each other. I hate that. I would, let’s go swimming, you know? Or let’s go hiking or let’s run our errands together. Or let’s like, let’s have a thing that we do together that’s our thing and it, you It happens at recurring intervals, if we want to do extra stuff we can, but this way I know I’m going to see my people, but I’m also going to, you know, probably get something done that I want to do as well.
It’s going to be productive, and because there’s a structure and a framework, I’m not going to feel anxious or bored. What’s worse, like bored, right? I don’t want to be with my friends and be bored and be like, this sucks. I want to enjoy seeing my friends, but I don’t like small talk. I need to be stimulated.
So for me, that’s like, what can we do together? Let’s, you know, let’s do this activity that we do together once a month or once a week. And so right now, that’s how I organize my social life and it works really well for me.
[00:34:22] Asher: . Dusty, a big source of support for me, and this is not a value judgment on anyone and how you manage your life, but a big source of support for me was actually eliminating social media and really, Boxing in methods of contact, right? You can text me and it’s really funny how my younger friends find that.So novel. Oh, you text to like, that’s so cute and novel that I text versus using WhatsApp or Snapchat or Instagram or whatever else. But that’s what works for me. If you want to be in communication with me, we text or we discord because I’m in discord for this podcast. So that is another. app that I reliably use, but just having less places where I need to keep up on things.
And also for me, I not knowing what’s going on with my friends in advance, because that for me is what will prompt those check-ins, right? Oh, I haven’t talked to so and so in a while. I wonder what’s going on with them and this thing. And a little differently than you, I’ve also realized that I just value FaceTime so much more than Facebook.
Then text dialogue and not that I don’t have like ongoing text conversations with certain friends that I enjoy, but I really value FaceTime. And so for me, if a friend is going through a hard time, I’m going to be looking for that opportunity to invite them out to something based on what I know that they like.
Like you said, what do we like doing together? Where is the opportunity there to get some FaceTime with this person to spend some. with this person versus having it live on a text message. Like written communication just is not my strong suit. It never has been. It’s always been a bit of a challenge for me and I love conversation.
So for me, it’s been a lot about taking those, Relationships offline and bringing them into the real world. And that’s been a learning curve in a couple of ways because my social circle has shrunk in some ways. There are people I have lost touch with now that we don’t have that digital tether keeping us in each other’s spheres.
But I’m also able to be so much such a better friend and so much more attentive to the people that are in my sphere because they’re people I have access to, they’re people that I do see regularly, they’re people that is easy to make plans with and we spend quality time together and so that shrinking I think has actually been a good thing for me more so than not.
[00:36:44] Dusty: Yeah, I love that. And that’s, you know what, that’s something I never thought about actually is that there’s more to talk about when you don’t know what’s going on and I don’t think that ever actually like occurred to me as because obviously that is the way that it used to be. And now you’re totally right.Like I always know what’s going on with most people if they’re like, if they tend to post about their lives on social media. So like, yeah, there, I guess there is like less catching up to do with most people, which is interesting. I never thought about that.
[00:37:13] Asher: Yeah, I kind of enjoy being in the dark and I have that reputation now, right? Like everyone knows that Asher’s not on social media and Asher did not see your Instagram posts and I have no idea what’s going on with you unless you or someone that we mutually know has told me about it. So yeah, it really does make those touch points that time together a little more special, I think, because I get to hear it from them.I get to hear what’s going on. And it’s all new and novel for me and they get to share differently too, right? Because rather than shouting it out into the void, right? It’s different when you’re sharing with a friend, which can be really cool.
[00:37:46] Dusty: That’s an area where we are the opposite because as a teenager, I had such bad FOMO, not knowing where anyone was or what they were doing. And it like, I like, I just always had this idea that everyone was somewhere having fun without me. And even though you get a certain kind of FOMO.You know, when you see people doing awesome stuff on Instagram, and like, I don’t know, you weren’t invited, like, that’s a particular kind of FOMO, but like, knowing what everyone’s doing is actually weirdly, like, is very calming to me. It actually makes me feel more comfortable about, like, like, I just, I’m, I have, it’s, it makes me feel secure that, like, everybody is not off living some awesome life without me.
Like, I don’t, I can’t explain it, but like, it’s weirdly comforting. I like it. I like it.
[00:38:25] Asher: Yeah. And I’m definitely the opposite. I think it’s exhausting to keep up on and I’m prone to the opposite. I’m prone to, to sort of seeing only people’s best posts or when they’re putting, you know, that, that good news forward and go in the opposite direction where I get into comparison traps. So it’s been really freeing for me to have no idea what.What any of my friends, except for those that I am close enough to that. I’m more or less know their daily or weekly lives, no idea what they’re doing. And that is okay with me. It’s comforting for me. So yeah, we are exactly opposite there. So Dusty, we have a lot more that we could talk about here that we didn’t get to today.
So why don’t we pick this one back up next week? What do you think?
[00:39:06] Dusty: Let’s do it. [00:39:07] Asher: All right. So listeners we will be back with more of this topic next week. And until then, I’m Ash, [00:39:14] Dusty: I’m Dusty. [00:39:15] Asher: And this was the Translating ADHD podcast. Thanks for listening.
