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&apos;re better off if we just power through until we&apos;re done, but if we really want to get the most out of our workdays, we need to have some breaks.In today&apos;s episode, we&apos;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.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:TwitterTiktokor ask me a question on my Contact PageFor show notes go to HackingYourADHD.com/breaksThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsTaking breaks allows us to separate our work into more manageable chunks. They let us refresh and come to our tasks with more energy.We should be scheduling our breaks so that we don&apos;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.As important as knowing what we are doing on our breaks, we should also know what we shouldn&apos;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.It&apos;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.

Hacking Your ADHD

Taking Breaks

One of the most important aspects of planning is knowing where you&apos;ve been and this typically comes from some kind of review process. The reason for the review is so that we can plan an accurate course based on where we are now. But that review is also a lot easier said than done. I&apos;ve sat down for many a review sessions and realized that I don&apos;t have a great way to look back. I&apos;ll skim through my calendar and wonder what exactly happened over the last few weeks or months and kind of shrug and go... stuff?And what that means is that we want to look at how we measure our success - so today we&apos;re going to be talking about how we set our goals, how we can work on measuring their outcomes and also questioning what actually makes a good measurement.Support me on PatreonSupport me on PatreonConnect with me on:TwitterTiktokor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/indicatorsThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsWhen we&apos;re setting goals we should focus on the small changes we can make that we can keep up for the long term.When we&apos;re thinking about goals we need to see if we&apos;re measuring them lagging or leading measures. Lagging measures are the outcomes based on what&apos;s happening with our leading measures. The best goals have a mix of the two measurements.What we choose to measure matters and influences our future actions. Make sure that what you&apos;re measuring is incentivizing the outcomes you actually want.

Measure What Matters

This week I am talking with Dr. Norrine Russell of Russell Coaching - Dr. Russell has a Pd.D. from Bowling Green State University with a focus on psychology and education and began her ADHD coaching practice in 2009. In our conversation today, we talk about what you can expect to get out of coaching, how we can work on working with our brains, and ways we can help our kids with ADHD.Today&apos;s episode is focused more on children with ADHD, but I&apos;ve always found that these are lessons that we can translate to our own experience.Get more information about Russell Coaching at RussellCoaching.comSupport me on PatreonConnect with me on:TwitterTiktokor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/russellcoachingThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsLearn about your ADHD - if you don&apos;t understand it, then they can&apos;t work it. Work on learning how your brain works so that you can best work with it.Give yourself permission to see what works. Often we get caught up in the idea that if we try something then we are going to have to do it forever - instead, we should be thinking about how we can make progress through trial and error.Work with others to Hack your ADHD, because while it&apos;s great to see what we can come up with on our own there are tons of resources out there that can also help you.

Coaching for your Brain with Dr. Norrine Russell

One of the easiest ways for procrastination to creep into our lives is through the thought that we just need to wait to do something until we feel like doing it. I totally get this. I feel this way all the time - it&apos;s super easy to put something off because we don&apos;t feel like doing it right then.But that&apos;s not always our best strategy - in fact, for a lot of things we&apos;re never really going to feel like doing them and so waiting for that inspiration to come means that we&apos;re never going to get to it.Today we&apos;re going to be looking at this idea of inspiration and some of the ways that we can try and get started anyway.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:TwitterTiktokor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/inspirationThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsBefore you can come up with a solution to your problem you need to know what your problem actually is. Some problems are just symptoms of other problems and if you can solve those root issues it makes everything else easier or unnecessary to fix.While gamifying boring tasks might seem like a great way to make your work more interesting it can also backfire and reduce motivation in the long run. It&apos;s better to just add in some small aspects of fun like listening to music or doing the task with a friend.Creating a warm-up routine can make it easier to get into your workflow, just make sure to make the warmup easy so you don&apos;t put it off as well.

Waiting for Inspiration

This week I&apos;m bringing back an episode from the archives while I&apos;m working on getting some new content put together.One of the hardest aspects for me with ADHD is that I can quickly become overwhelmed when I can&apos;t find a clear path forward - I know I could do the research, but setting aside the time feels like it&apos;s going to be too much and so I just procrastinate forever on starting. For me finding a therapist was one of those things that seemed too murky to get started on. There were just so many things to consider and so many things that I don&apos;t know. Not only did I not know where to start, but I also didn&apos;t even know what questions I should be asking. In my mind, I knew it would be good for me, but the process just seemed too hard to get started on.Today, we&apos;re going to work on clearing a path on how to find a therapist - we&apos;ll be looking into a few kinds of therapy and what we can expect to get out of therapy - and of course, we&apos;ll also be walking through how we actually find a therapist that is the right fit for us.Find show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/findatherapistHacking Your ADHD around the web:TiktokTwitterPatreonThis Episode&apos;s Top TipFind out what your insurance will cover and go from there. If you don&apos;t have insurance or it isn&apos;t covered, there are still a lot of options like University Clinics, Online Therapy, Group Therapy, and therapy offered in your community. For help finding a therapist check out psychologytoday.com/therapistsThe most common type of therapy for ADHD is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which focuses on changing your automatic thoughts. Another common therapy practice for ADHD is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) which focuses more on behavior patterns and mindfulness. Talk therapy is another common type of therapy, although it isn&apos;t specifically tailored to ADHD.When you go to your first session make sure you have a list of questions for your therapist - finding the right therapist is critical for you getting the most out of your therapy sessions.

How to Find a Therapist

While working on the last episode on laziness, one of the themes that came up was how we can become paralyzed when we don&apos;t know what our next step is - this can often be seen as laziness from other people or even ourselves. We know we should be doing something, we just don&apos;t know what. And this is where the importance of planning comes in.Today we&apos;re going to focus on how to plan our day because it&apos;s easy to let our days get away from ourselves when we don&apos;t plan them. It feels like we shouldn&apos;t need to do our planning because that&apos;s what we were going to do anyway. But planning lets us look ahead and fix problems before they come up. It lets us choose what we want to do with our time instead of just always putting out fires.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:TwitterTiktokor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/dailyplanningThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsWhen we don&apos;t know what to do next we can get paralyzed with indecision from a lack of executive function - we can help alleviate some of this paralysis through planning.While doing our initial planning it&apos;s important that we also set aside time to regularly do our planning. If we don&apos;t build planning time into our schedule it&apos;s easy for us to skip doing it.When planning it&apos;s important that we&apos;re not just scheduling things on our to-do lists but our breaks and things that bring us joy.

How to Plan Your Day

In last week&apos;s episode, I talked about the Hot-Cold Empathy Gap and how it can be hard for us to really remember or predict how our state is going to affect our actions - one of the consequences of this is that we often label ourselves as lazy when we didn&apos;t do something. Our cold state brain tells us that we should have just done the thing, all the while neglecting how we felt. This disconnect is what leads to a lot of our self-judgment and in particular, those of us with ADHD often find ourselves labeling ourselves as lazy.Why didn&apos;t I walk the dogs?I was feeling lazy - or maybe I feel overwhelmed with work or maybe I couldn&apos;t find the leashes.When we don&apos;t do something it&apos;s easy to label it as lazy, but often that doesn&apos;t tell us what was really going on.Today we&apos;re going to be exploring the idea of lazy and how what we might want to start looking at it a bit differently.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:Twitteror ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/lazymyth

The Myth of Lazy

Why do we make bad decisions in the moment?We&apos;ve all done things that we regret doing right? yeah me, neither - but let&apos;s say hypothetically there was something that we regretted doing - something that we said or did that we feel like doesn&apos;t really reflect on as a person.Why is it I can have the best of intentions and still when it comes time I still make the wrong decision?Today we&apos;re going to be exploring the hot-cold empathy gap and why it can be so difficult for us to predict what we&apos;re actually going to do in the moment.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:Twitteror ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/empathygapThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsThe hot-cold empathy gap occurs when we fail to predict how our emotions are going to affect our decision-making when we&apos;re in that state.This doesn&apos;t only apply to things like being angry or depressed but can also apply to our motivation or energy levels. Our ADHD can easily let us overcommit on projects because we fail to predict that we might have less drive and motivation when it comes time to actually do the task.We can work on mitigating some of the effects of the hot-cold empathy gap by making the decisions we want to make easier to make in the moment. We can also use tools like accountability and breaking down our tasks to keep us on track.

Why We Make Decisions We Don't Understand

Hey team, good news, I am finally over Covid - it took me a bit longer than I would have liked but I&apos;m healthy again and ready to get back at things.This is an episode that I started working on before I got sick, and one of the areas that we had been looking into was that of planning and goal setting. So I thought it was time to shift a bit onto an area that we often forget about - leisure time.Now, I want to be clear here, leisure time is not in opposition to goals and planning, in fact, it&apos;s just as important to our well-being. There are a myriad of health benefits we get from taking time off work, but not all leisure activities are equal.In this week&apos;s episode, we&apos;re going to be looking at how we can work on reframing the ways we look at our free time, how we can be a little more intentional with how we&apos;re spending that time, and then look at a few of the things we can do to make that time, time well spent.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:FacebookTwitterInstagramor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/leisureThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsYou don&apos;t have to earn your time off - denying ourselves real leisure time because we "didn&apos;t earn it" is counterproductive only leads to burnout.Don&apos;t rely on discipline to keep yourself from falling into low-quality leisure time like scrolling social media - use blocks on your phone to divert yourself from the path of least resistance.Our five pillars of quality leisure time are: Prioritize doing, over consumingPrioritize things that take some skill to doThink about making somethingSeek activities that foster social interactionPrioritize Self-Care

The Trap of Low Quality Leisure Time

We&apos;ve all got things that we think we should be able to just do - for example, I&apos;ve had on my to-do list for weeks to make a phone call to the bank - it won&apos;t even take that long, but I keep putting it off. I keep finding reasons not to do it - what I&apos;ve done is I&apos;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&apos;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.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:FacebookTwitterInstagramor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show notes at HackingYourADHD.com/wallofawfulThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsThe Wall of Awful is the emotional impact of repeated failure and it makes activating on tasks even more difficultWhile our wall starts off being built up with failure bricks, it is also built with things like disappointment, rejection, and shame. It doesn&apos;t matter if these bricks are based in reality, it matters how you perceive them.There are 5 ways people try to get past the Wall of Awful, two don&apos;t work, one works, but is damaging to our relationships, and then two that work - the two that don&apos;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 wallClimbing the wall is about sitting with the emotion that built up our wall and understanding what&apos;s stopping us - it can often look like staring at the wall, but it&apos;s more about gearing yourself up to get over the wallPutting 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&apos;t actually just trying to go around the wall - it&apos;s easy to let that one TV show turn into four because you were just looking for a way to procrastinate.

The Wall of Awful with Brendan Mahan

One of the hottest trends to come out of the self-help world over the last few years is gratitude. And it&apos;s no surprise, gratitude has been found to be one of the greatest indicators of overall well-being. I&apos;m usually pretty skeptical about things that get hyped quite as much as gratitude has been - I mean when you see the list of things that a gratitude practice can help with it&apos;s pretty easy to roll your eyes. I mean can gratitude really do all those things that people say it can?Today we&apos;ll be exploring the mechanisms that make gratitude work - and also perhaps tempering some of the hype around it - then we&apos;ll be looking at ways we can find things to be grateful in our lives as well as looking at some ways that we can start a gratitude practice.And I&apos;ll admit, this episode is a little less ADHD-focused - but gratitude was something that was on my mind, for reasons that I get into during the episode. And so even though this episode is a little less ADHD specific I still think everyone can get a lot out of it.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:FacebookTwitterInstagramor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/gratitudeThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsGratitude is showing thanks and appreciation and it has a tremendous impact on our brains. Gratitude can help us release build our relationships, regulate stress, improve sleep quality, build self-esteem and make us happier.One way we can practice gratitude is through mindfulness and seeing all the things in our lives that are going right. It&apos;s easy for us to latch onto the negative things that happen during our day. We&apos;ll miss all the things that went right because when things go according to plan they can often become invisible.We can also practice gratitude by journaling or writing a letter to someone in our lives that has greatly impacted us.

Building Gratitude

Sequencing is all about the order in which we do things. Sometimes it seems like it doesn’t matter what comes first, but also try putting your pants on after you put on your shoes.Sequencing is something I’ve come to realize is a big deal with ADHD. The order in which we do things has a big impact on our overall productivity, but more than that, some of our other issues with ADHD make the sequence in which we do things much more important.Today we&apos;re going to be exploring how the order we do things is important for our ADHD brains and then we&apos;ll be looking at some ways that we can use sequencing to our advantage.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:FacebookTwitterInstagramor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the show note at HackingYourADHD.com/sequencingThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsSequencing is order in which we do things and it matters because it can have a big impact on how we remember things and execute our plans.Planning can help with our ability to sequence things properly - one technique that can be especially helpful in making sure we don&apos;t forget steps is to start our planning from the end and working our way backwards.Part of sequencing is making sure that we&apos;re paying attention to tasks that will get us off track and making sure we&apos;re not putting those right before things we actually want to do.Batching tasks is a great way to make sure we&apos;re not getting ourselves off track - but remember we don&apos;t have to an entire batch at once, we can still break batches into reasonable chunks.

How To Save Time with Sequencing

Hey team, I&apos;m going to be taking a little time off in August and I thought that I&apos;d dredge up a few episodes from the archives.Today we&apos;re going to be hitting on an idea that has been a reoccurring theme in the last few episodes and that&apos;s personal energy management.While many of us have realized that we only have so much time in our day, we tend to still believe that we&apos;re going to have the same amount of energy from sun up to sundown. But we know this isn&apos;t true. Our energy levels vary throughout the day and if we want to be getting the most out of our days we have to try and work with these rhythms of energy.Today we&apos;re going to be discussing how we can work on creating our schedules around when we do have energy instead of just when we&apos;ve got a free spot on the calendar. We&apos;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&apos;ll also spend a little time on how you can make a little more energy.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:FacebookTwitterInstagramor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/energymanagementThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsEnergy management is about realizing it&apos;s not just about how many hours you have in the day, but also how much energy you&apos;ve got during the day.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.Limit your commitments so that you have enough time to work on the projects that are important to you.If you&apos;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.

Beyond Time Management

I want to start this episode off by saying that this is something I&apos;m bad at - and not in the sense that what I do to celebrate is bad or that I&apos;m not celebrating the small wins throughout my day. It&apos;s bad in the sense that I almost entirely skip the whole thing.Recently this podcast tipped past half a million downloads. That&apos;s a pretty big milestone and is pretty indicative of how successful this endeavor has been. But it was barely a blip for me. I didn&apos;t want to acknowledge the success because it can be hard for me to acknowledge when I do things well.So this episode is as much for me as it is for all of you and in this episode, we&apos;re going to be exploring what it means to have small wins and also how we can celebrate them.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:FacebookTwitterInstagramor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/winningThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsCelebrating our wins is a way to boost our confidence and it will actively encourage us to seek out that same success again.We can differentiate intrinsic and extrinsic motivation by thinking of intrinsic as what to do because it&apos;s interesting and inherently satisfying. Extrinsic motivation comes from rewards or from avoiding punishment. Both can be important parts of how we celebrate our success.Start celebrating your wins by acknowledging when they happen and then letting yourself do something fun to celebrate that success.Don&apos;t get down on yourself when the wins aren&apos;t coming - we&apos;re not always going to have smooth sailing, but only focusing on what didn&apos;t happen tends to make us overlook all the good things that did happen.

Celebrating Your Wins

As we&apos;ve been working on goals one place I want us to take a step back on and think about is meeting ourselves where we are.As we get going with our planning we tend to decide that well we want to do all of the things. And I mean why not, there are a lot of things that I want to do, if I don&apos;t start now, when am I going to start? I can&apos;t tell you how many ill-fated adventures I&apos;ve started because of that whole "if not now, when?" line - there are so many things that I should be investing my time in now. I need to be meditating and exercising more and eating healthier and saving money and work on business and building my relationships and learning new skills and on and on and on.I&apos;m sure everyone listening has that list of things they know that they should be starting on now because the sooner the better results you&apos;ll see down the line. But we&apos;re not starting on them... or when we do we don&apos;t stick with the changes.Today we&apos;re going to be looking at what it means to meet ourselves where we&apos;re at and then some of the ways that we can work on making that happen.Support me on PatreonConnect with me on:FacebookTwitterInstagramor ask me a question on my Contact PageFind the full show note at HackingYourADHD.com/whereyoureatThis Episode&apos;s Top TipsWe only have so much time and energy we can put into any given day - giving ourselves the self-compassion to accept this is our first step in meeting ourselves where we&apos;re at.When we&apos;re trying to add things back into our life that we&apos;ve previously done it can feel like we picked up the wrong puzzle pieces and this is because we often don&apos;t think about how our circumstances have changed. Just because we did something before doesn&apos;t mean it will be necessarily easy for us to just pick right back up.After we approach what we&apos;re capable of with self-compassion we need to decide on some of the things that we&apos;re not going to do. This gives us the mental space to focus on the things we can do right now.Celebrate your small wins because they are the stepping stones to reaching your goals.

Meeting Yourself Where You're At

ADHD can be a struggle, but it doesn't always have to be. Every Monday, join William Curb, as he explores ways that you can work with your ADHD brain to do more of the things you want to do. If you have ADHD or someone in your life does and you want to get organized, get focused and get motivated then this podcast is for you. Part of the ADHD reWired Podcast Network.

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Hacking Your ADHD

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