ADHD and...Planning 🤦🏻‍♀️

A few months ago, I went to a Modest Mouse/Flaming Lips concert. If you’ve never heard about a Flaming Lips show, let me tell you: it’s performance art alongside the music. Huge crowdsurfing balloons, giant inflatable pink robots, confetti cannons…SO fun.

Anyway, when Modest Mouse was on the stage, they played a song I’ve maybe heard a few times before, but this time, it hit different. I heard this repeated a few times:

I knew I wanted to write something about it. But usually, I see or hear something that stands out to me and I just think, “I’ll remember that later.”

Do I ever remember those things later? Nope. Thanks for the short-term memory problems, ADHD!

So this time, I actually took out my phone and made a ridiculously quick note for myself in my Notion.

(Side note…maybe I’ll talk about using Notion for ADHD some day, but mine is kind of a mess so we’ll see if that day ever comes 😅)

And now, here we are! I actually followed through and remembered something I wanted to remember.

ANYway, let’s talk about planning. “Making plans in the sand as the tide rolls in” is such a perfect descriptor of how my planning attempts tend to turn out a lot of the time!

It’s not that I can’t plan…I really can. In fact, I kept a bullet journal going for a year or more, updated it constantly, and even tracked my habits. And in college and high school, I absolutely had to be a meticulous planner. Without it, I would have forgotten to do half the assignments.

In my adult life, I’ve gone back and forth with planning. Of course, with any job I’ve had, I’ve needed to rely on planning like I’m clinging to a life raft. But in my personal life? Eh, it kind of comes and goes.

And then…

Enter: freelancing, a.k.a. running my own damn business.

I jumped into freelancing quickly, and took on a bunch of work right away. I didn’t really do it on purpose, but it happened, and I needed a way to deal with fitting everything in.

So, naturally, I turned to my planner. It’s actually just a notebook because I can never find a planner that’s built for the way my brain works, but I draw out a week in boxes on one side, keeping the other side empty for notes and tasks. Then, I turn the page to make daily agendas when needed.

At one point, in order to actually get everything done, I started making daily time-blocked agendas. Seems like a good strategy, right?

Well, thanks to A) time blindness and B) dopamine seeking, I can never. manage. to follow the dang schedule that I create. Not only can I not truly conceive of how long I actually take to complete tasks, but I’ll also write down plans in the morning and then choose to work on a different task when the time rolls around.

When the article I thought I’d finish in 2 hours actually takes 5, then the whole day is just wrecked so I scrap any plan there was, anyway.

Guys. It’s so frustrating to live in my brain sometimes.

If this sounds familiar and you have a similar struggle, well, I’m sorry we have to go through this. But at least we have each other? 😂

Rolling into that rec…

ADHD Rec #4