Hacking Your ADHD

I know the term spiritual energy is going to throw a lot of people - so let's start off by getting clear on what I mean here. When I'm talking about spiritual energy I'm not talking about anything religious here, I'm simply referring to the idea that you have an energy reserve that you can tap into when you're doing something that matters. And specifically, something that matters to you - this doesn't have to be some higher calling type of idea.

One thing that really illustrates the idea of digging deep into that energy reserve for me is when I'm doing something like weight lifting. As I get to the end of my set I can find myself flagging, I can feel like I'm not going to be able to push the bar the 3 more inches it needs to go to rack my bar - and yet I can have my spotter tell me "you've got this" and my brain hears that and I push just a little bit harder and I finish out. Where did that energy reserve come from? As far as I was concerned I was already pushing as hard as I could and yet, with just a few words I was able to find that motivation to push a little harder.

Access to the human spirit isn't just limited to athletic endeavors. And our motivation to dip into this energy source often comes from doing meaningful work. Many people don't recognize meaning and purpose as potential sources of energy, but when we're doing work that aligns with our values we are able to accomplish so much more.

Today we're going to be looking at three areas that we can use to access our spiritual energy: living their core values in their daily behaviors, doing the work that we do best and enjoy the most, and allocating time and energy in our lives for the things we deem most important. Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/spiritualenergy This Episode's Top Tips

1. There are three areas we need to focus on for our spiritual energy: Living our values, working with our passion, and scheduling time for those things that matter to us.
2. Spend some time exploring your values by asking yourself what you can't stand - when you define what you won't put up with it is often helps define what we do stand for.
3. Work on finding what you are passionate about by defining what you are willing to put up with - further refine your passion by finding your work "sweet-spot" by finding where you are effective, effortlessly absorbed, inspired, and fulfilled.
4. Use your calendar to schedule your most important work - follow your energy patterns and try to schedule those most important tasks early in the day.

Emotional Energy isn't as cut and dry as physical energy - there are no emotional calories that we can track and measure. And while there is no scientific delineation of how to measure emotional energy it's still something that we can all feel - we're not robots. We know that when we're feeling those positive emotions that sometimes we can barely contain the energy we're feeling - when we're seething with rage it can feel like we're going to burst. When we're sad it can feel like we want to melt into our beds and never be seen again. When we're overstressed it can feel like if we don't do something our skin is going to crawl off but even the idea of attempting that first step still feels like too much

Our emotions play a big role in our energy levels throughout the day. Just because we don't have a good way to measure them doesn't mean that we should write them off. Find the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/emotionalenergy This Episode's Top Tips

1. Our emotions play a big role in our energy management throughout the day - but emotions are complicated. While we can derive energy from both positive and negative emotions, we're better off using the energy from our positive emotions - The energy we draw off of emotions like fear or anger often comes with a price.
2. We want to build our emotional intelligence by trying to observe ourselves - check-in with yourself throughout the day and ask, what am I doing? and how is that making me feel? You can also go beyond that by asking how you feel about the emotions you're feeling.
3. When scheduling your day make sure that you are giving yourself time to recover after emotionally draining activities.
4. If you need a quick fix to calm yourself down, try taking deep belly breaths. Deep breathing creates a physiological response that encourages your body to relax - as your body relaxes, your mind will follow.
5. Give yourself some time to let yourself think. With ADHD we spend a lot of our day go from one distraction to the next - but when we let ourselves have the goal of just letting our minds wander it can help us explore how we're feeling and recharge our emotional batteries.

We've all got things that we think we should be able to just do - for example, I've had on my to-do list for weeks to make a phone call to the bank - it won't even take that long, but I keep putting it off. I keep finding reasons not to do it - what I've done is I've created a wall of awful around making this phone call (really most phone calls) and the more I put it off the more it builds it up. Today we've got Brendan Mahan from ADHD Essentials to explain what the Wall of Awful is and some ways that we can work on getting past it. Find the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/wallofawful This Episode's Top Tips

1. The Wall of Awful is the emotional impact of repeated failure and it makes activating on tasks even more difficult
2. While our wall starts off being built up with failure bricks, it is also built with things like disappointment, rejection, and shame. It doesn't matter if these bricks are based in reality, it matters how you perceive them.
3. There are 5 ways people try to get past the Wall of Awful, two don't work, one works, but is damaging to our relationships and then two that work - the two that don't work are staring at it or trying to go around it - the one that works but is damaging is trying to hulk smash through the wall - the two that work that we want to focus on are climbing the wall and putting a door in our wall
4. Climbing the wall is about sitting with the emotion that built up our wall and understanding what's stopping us - it can often look like staring at the wall, but it's more about gearing yourself up to get over the wall
5. Putting a door in the wall is about changing your emotional state so that you can get past the wall - it could be doing things like taking a walk, listening to some energizing music, or watching a funny TV show to brighten your mood. Make sure that when you are trying to put that door in that you aren't actually just trying to go around the wall - it's easy to let that one TV show turn into four because you were just looking for a way to procrastinate.

Today we're going to be looking at ways that we can work on cutting down distractions and staying focused. We'll also be looking at ways that we can better schedule our time to focus on when our brain is going to be working best and we'll also be looking at better ways to end our workday. Find the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/mentalenergy This Episode's Top Tips

1. Mental energy is about our ability to focus and keep our focus. To effectively do this we need to stop trying to multitask and reduce the number of distractions we have around us. This means limiting notifications and creating a work environment where we won't be easily interrupted.
2. We can create smarter time blocks using our ultradian rhythms to guide us - breaking our scheduling into these 90-120 minute cycles allows us to focus on working when we've got the most energy and taking breaks when we're going to need them the most.
3. Schedule your most important tasks for early in the day. By completing what's most important first you'll never find yourself at the end of the day having missed those tasks. You can decide if it's best to eat the frog with this task or to ease into it.
4. End your workday with a shutdown routine to signal to your brain that you are really done with work. By only working while you are at work you'll make better use of your time and you'll allow yourself real time to relax and recover while you are at home.

Before we get going here, I just want to make sure you know that I'm not a doctor, and while this episode is a lot about your health, it is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice. Just because I say something on this show doesn't necessarily mean it will be the best advice for you - be smart and be safe. And when in doubt always consult your doctor before changing your diet or exercise routine. Today's episode is a follow up to last week's on Energy Management, but this week we are just going to be going over the area of physical energy.

When we think about our energy levels, our physical energy is what we tend to primarily think about. We think about being tired or just needing a quick pick me up to get through our day. And our physical energy tends to be a basis for all our other types of energy (quick reminder those were: mental, emotional and spiritual along with our physical energy) - when we're physically exhausted it's hard for us to draw on our other wells of energy. Have a bad night's sleep? You might be feeling that brain fog all-day - blood sugar low? You might be more likely to snap at a family member over something not that important.

We need our foundation of physical energy to power our bodies and to let us fully engage with our other energy sources. In today's episode, we're going to be covering the three main areas that we get our physical energy from: sleep, diet, and exercise.

Show note at HackingYourADHD.com/physicalenergy This Episode's Top Tips

1. Getting enough sleep is one of the most important things we can do for our energy levels. To help get a good night's sleep make sure you are allowing yourself to get 4-6 sleep cycles of 90 minutes. You can improve your sleep quality with a dark, cool room and by creating a routine to get you ready for sleep by your bedtime.
2. Instead of focusing on what foods you should or shouldn't be eating, focus on ways that you can make the habits of eating the right foods easier. By making the lifestyle changes you are more likely to stick to your new dietary plan - making mistakes isn't a set back it's just part of the path to changing your habits.
3. Aim to get 20-30 minutes of moderate exercise per day - we're just trying to get our heart rate up here. If you are just starting up, then maybe try starting with a light 10-minute walk and work your way up.
4. Along with getting enough exercise during the day, you also are going to want to be moving more throughout the day. During your breaks be sure to get up and stretch a little and don't let you're self stay in one position for too long.

It's an hour after lunch and your staring at your computer monitor. There are words in front of you, but you've read the same sentence over and over again five times in a row. Your eyes are glazed and curling up under your desk for a quick nap like George Costanza is seemingly a better and better option by the minute.

Except you have things to do - you have stuff on your schedule and taking a nap is just not an option.

Enter Personal Energy Management - this is an idea of scheduling your work around when you have the energy to do it rather than just when it's entered in on your calendar. Now to be sure this is more than just doing things when you feel like doing them - we know how that can turn out. Instead, this is about using your calendar and understanding that you aren't going to be at peak performance all day.

Today we're going to be discussing how we can work on creating our schedules around when we do have energy instead of just when we've got a free spot on the calendar. We'll be looking at some of the different areas of energy management as well as how our energy levels fluctuate throughout the day. And we'll also spend a little time on how you can make a little more energy. Find show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/energymanagement This Episode's Top Tips 1. Energy management is about realizing it's not just about how many hours you have in the day, but also how much energy you've got during the day. 2. Your energy levels are going to fluctuate up and down throughout the day, and if you want to get the most out of your schedule try scheduling your most important tasks during your high energy times, preferably early in the day. 3. Limit your commitments so that you have enough time to work on the projects that are important to you. 4. If you're low on energy try having some water or a healthy snack - you can also try to change your state by listening to some music or going on a short walk.

We all know that one of the biggest hurdles from ADHD is starting, but paradoxically one of our other hurdles is stopping. Sometimes it feels like we're better off if we just power through until we're done, but if we really want to get the most out of our workdays, we need to have some breaks.

In today's episode, we're going to be looking at the benefits of taking breaks, some different ways that we can take breaks, and also exploring going beyond breaks and actually taking some time off. For show notes go to HackingYourADHD.com/breaks This Episode's Top Tips

1. Taking breaks allows us to separate our work into more manageable chunks. They let us refresh and come to our tasks with more energy.
2. We should be scheduling our breaks so that we don't forget to take them. To help out our future selves we should also be planning what we want to be doing on those breaks as well.
3. As important as knowing what we are doing on our breaks, we should also know what we shouldn't be doing on our breaks. Avoid things like phone games and social media that are going to be hard to tear yourself away from at the end of your break.
4. It's also important to take time off entirely from work to recharge your batteries. While it might be hard to take a traditional vacation right now, we can still work on thinking about other ways that we can take time off, like working on fun projects at home or just taking a few days to catch up on Netflix.

Making the right choices isn't always easy - we've got so many options of what we can do and when I'm tired I don't want to weigh all my options. It would be great if I could just get a gentle push in the right direction. Something that would make the choice I want to make easier to make.

What I'm talking about here is a nudge and that's what we're going to be talking about today. We'll be learning about what a nudge is, why they work, and when they don't. We'll also be looking at some of the various ways we can nudge ourselves and why it's so important for us to know when someone else might be nudging us. Find the full show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/nudge This Episode's Top Tips 1. At its basics, nudging is an attempt to change someone's behavior by changing the environment or conditions. A nudge shouldn't alter the incentives, it just makes the option we want to pick the easiest option. 2. Nudges works because our decision making isn't rational, in reality, we actually usually just take the path of least resistance. 3. We can nudge ourselves in several different ways. One way many of us already use nudges is through reminders. We can also alter our environment (like having a water bottle on our desk to nudge us to drink more water) or we can change our default options (like having our web browsers default to a blank page instead of opening up to countless tabs). 4. It's important to be aware of nudges because many companies use them to influence our behavior. When we know that we're being nudged we can decide if that's really the decision we want to be making or if there is actually a better option for us.

Last week we started off our discussion of resistance - a term that I got from Steven Pressfield's book, the War of Art.

While there are parts of the book that aren't that ADHD friendly, I do like this idea of resistance. And basically resistance is what is keeping us from doing our work. It's procrastination, rationalizations, comparison, perfectionism, and everything else that keeps us from working all rolled into one idea. It is the embodiment of the "I don't wanna's

In part one I talked about some of the ways resistance keeps us from starting, how comparing ourselves to others slows us down, and what we crave and what we need to grow don't always match.

Today we're going to keep exploring the idea of resistance. We'll be looking at ways we can work on overcoming resistance by planning, setting our intentions, and even calling in a little help. You can find the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/resistancepart2 This Episode's Top Tips

1. Our first step in fighting resistance is accepting that we are always going to be facing resistance. Resistance wants us to believe it doesn't exist because when we don't believe we don't do anything to stop it.
2. Planning is a critical part of overcoming resistance. Without a plan, it is easy for us to get off track and not even realize it.
3. When we're creating our plan it also important to break down our tasks into their component parts so that we are able to clearly state our intentions when we start our work.
4. We don't have to fight resistance alone, by enlisting the help of our accountabilibuddies we can get clear on our intentions and help strengthen our resilience in fighting resistance.

"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What's keeping us from sitting down is resistance."

This is how Steven Pressfield introduces the idea of resistance in his book the War of Art, and to me, resistance is the root of the "I don't wanna's."

While I don't agree with many of the things in Pressfield's book (I mean, he states that ADHD was made up by pharmaceutical companies), I do think resistance is a great way to express this idea. Because when I don't want to do something, it's not necessarily that I just don't want to do it - it's that I can't get myself to start.

If I'm planning on going on a run, I know that I'll feel better once I start running - but it's in the starting that I feel resistance. It's putting on my exercise clothes and slipping on my shoes. It's the getting out the door. Once I start putting one foot in front of the other, it isn't so hard anymore. I mean, sure there is the physicality that can become difficult, but the mental block has lifted.

And this is just going to be an introduction to this topic. While I was writing this episode I discovered I had a lot to say and so I've split it into two episodes.

Today we're going to be exploring the idea of resistance and how it keeps us from doing meaningful work. We're then going to look at some of the ways resistance sinks its claws into us, but also how we can work on loosening up that grip. For show notes go to HackingYourADHD.com/resistance This Episode's Top Tips

1. Resistance is the inertia that keeps us from starting. It is also the inertia that slows us down and stops us in our tracks. If we want to be doing meaningful work we need to look at ways we can fight our own internal resistance.
2. Comparing ourselves to others is an exercise that is never going to lead us down a good path.
3. We need to abandon struggle as a metric for success. Everything gets easier as we do it more and just because something is difficult to do doesn't mean it is more worthwhile.
4. What we crave and what we need to grow don't always match. This means we have to work on rewiring our desires so we're not always fighting resistance to go on a walk. We can do this by being mindful and taking note of how we feel after we do things that are good for us.