76. Let's USE distraction to grow a business! Even with ADHD!

76. Let's USE distraction to grow a business! Even with ADHD!

Are you an entrepreneur with ADHD who feels like your distractibility is a curse? What if I told you it might just be your greatest asset?

Hey, I'm Katie McManus, your host of The Weeniecast, and in this must-listen episode, we're gonna flip the narrative on distractions.



In case you prefer watching me talk about how we can all use distractions to grow our businesses.. video version's above!☝️


Instead of fighting against distractions, I'm going to help you embrace these quirks and channel them into entrepreneurial gold.

The business landscape doesn't often cater to the ADHD mind, but who says we can't rewrite the rules? Right?!

In this episode, I'm explaining how to use distraction to grow a business.

I'll walk you through my personal experiences—from navigating the disarray of a busy workspace to expertly juggling family life alongside business demands.

I'll reveal the secrets of my 'idea bank' that captures those lightning-strike thoughts and discuss ways to turn the tedium into a catalyst for creativity.

But it's not just about me; this is about you.

I'll equip you with strategies for setting clear boundaries for both your dependents and your own wandering mind, transforming a world of distractions into a tailored entrepreneurial haven.


Redefining Professionalism: Embrace Your Quirky Workspace

First off, let's talk about shattering the mold of the conventional workspace.

If working from your plush bean bag or cozying up in bed with your laptop gets your creative juices flowing, then why not make it your office?

I've found that ditching discomfort for what feels good can keep the gears grinding longer and stronger.

Have you ever considered how the spaces we create can make or break our work vibe?


Banishing Boredom: Keep The Excitement Alive

And let’s not skirt around it – boredom can be a real buzzkill for us thrill-seekers.

I've come to see it as my brain's way of saying, "Give me something more stimulating!"

So why not gamify your grind?

Break down monotonous tasks with a dash of competition or a sprinkle of reward.

Have you considered how turning the mundane into a game can stave off that productivity-killing boredom?

Training Your Tribe: Getting Those Around You on Board

The people in our orbit can be the most delightful distractions or our staunchest supporters.

Educating our friends and families about our entrepreneurial journey is more than a nicety – it's a necessity.

So, how do you get them to respect the zone you're in without feeling like a productivity tyrant?

It's about opening the lines of communication and incorporating understanding as a two-way street.

Ever felt like you're in a tug-of-war between work and personal life?


By the end of this episode, you'll hopefully be seeing your distractibility in a whole new light, and armed with a whole new arsenal of strategies to master it.

You'll learn how to transform distractions from your biggest challenges into your most potent opportunities. You'll be a wizard at setting boundaries, become more adept at managing stress, and curate your environment to suit the unique pace and pattern of your ADHD entrepreneurial journey.

Get ready to join me in turning what looks like a vulnerability into one of your greatest victories—all here on The Weeniecast.

Timestamped Summary:

- 00:00: Overview of distraction and its stigma with ADHD

- 02:15: Redefining Professionalism – my take on embracing workspace personalization

- 06:45: Distractions of Mess – managing workspace clutter effectively

- 09:30: Internal Distractions – tips for overcoming daunting thoughts and idea overload

- 12:55: Boredom as Distraction – how boredom leads to innovation

- 18:10: The Mental Load & Stress – techniques for a clear headspace

- 23:40: Challenges of ADHD Entrepreneurship – How to navigate the fatigue from responsibility and strategy

- 28:20: Physical Distractions – the impact of comfort on work and interactions with clients

- 34:15: Being Kinder to Ourselves – embracing distractions and how to refocus

- 38:00: Scheduling Downtime – why prioritizing leisure and family time is crucial

- 43:45: The Power of Distraction – how to see distractions as opportunities

- 50:50: Setting Boundaries – advice on creating a work-life balance that respects your ADHD traits

Your next steps after listening

Realizing it's time to work with me? Book your free intial strategy call with me - weeniecast.com/strategycall

Get more support in your ADHD entrepreneur life by joining my hyperfocus community! - https://weeniecast.com/hyperfocus

Wanna get this content earlier, and totally unbleeped? Subscribe to the Apple Podcasts premium version of this show - https://weeniecast.com/winners

Want to just buy me a coffee in return for some helpful insight? Thank you! Here's where you can do that - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiethecoach


00:00:00
In this episode, we're going to explore how

00:00:03
adhd entrepreneurs can turn distraction into their greatest

00:00:07
asset. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money

00:00:11
mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast.

00:00:15
The ironic thing about the topic today is that we have had to deal with

00:00:18
multiple distractions before we started recording, which makes it

00:00:22
so much fun to do a whole episode on on how to deal

00:00:26
with distractions because my producer and I are immediately going to start

00:00:30
getting self conscious. Distraction is one of those symptoms of

00:00:33
ADHD entreneurship that is most perceived by the

00:00:37
outside world. As people with ADHD, we don't really

00:00:41
perceive when we're being distracted. Our attention

00:00:44
is just kind of refocused on this thing and then refocused

00:00:48
again on this other thing and then refocused again

00:00:52
on another thing. It really comes

00:00:56
up as a problem for us when we have a

00:00:59
task that we need to do. And

00:01:03
usually my clients who are starting businesses, they're

00:01:06
breaking away from working a corporate job where there's a lot of

00:01:10
structure. Distraction is one of those things that

00:01:13
becomes a lot worse as a

00:01:17
solopreneur. And it's also complicated because

00:01:20
we actually love distractions. We

00:01:24
love when we can find a creative way to

00:01:27
avoid doing something that we think is boring or that we don't want

00:01:31
to do. The only time I take joy in cleaning

00:01:35
my space is when it helps me avoid doing

00:01:38
something that I really, really don't want to do in my business, like taxes.

00:01:42
And if you're my accountant and you're listening, I know I owe you some stuff

00:01:45
and some paperwork. I apologize. The

00:01:51
other thing about distractions for an ADHD entrepreneur, sometimes the

00:01:55
distraction is actually a massive spark of creativity.

00:01:59
It's a new idea that we have to jump into and

00:02:02
play with for a little bit or else we're going to lose it. So

00:02:06
as we talk through distractions, I'm not saying

00:02:09
that there's a way for you to never be distracted again.

00:02:13
In fact, I'm not even saying that you avoiding all distractions is good

00:02:17
for you. I think being distracted is one of the major

00:02:21
gifts of being an ADHD person. A

00:02:24
good distraction can be the thing that recharges us enough

00:02:28
that we can throw ourselves fully into whatever task we need to

00:02:32
do. A good distraction can be the thing that inspires

00:02:36
a brand new idea for our business, a new offer, a

00:02:39
way to help our clients that we hadn't thought of before. And quite

00:02:43
honestly, being distracted is actually how we are productive.

00:02:48
There are all those reels and TikToks of the

00:02:52
ADHD person who sees a shoe and they're like, oh, that shoe

00:02:55
is out of place. Let me take it to the bedroom. They get to the

00:02:58
bedroom, they're like, oh, this towel is on the floor. I should put this back

00:03:00
in the bathroom. Then they get to the bathroom and the toothpaste has been left

00:03:03
open and it's kind of squirted on the sink. And they're like, oh, I should

00:03:06
clean that up. And then while they're at the sink, they're like, oh, my gosh,

00:03:08
I forgot to take my antidepressant today. I have to take my medication. And they

00:03:11
open the thing like, wow, there's a lot of old antibiotics here. I

00:03:15
should be disposing of them, and so on and so

00:03:18
forth. We don't do things in a linear way. We don't do things

00:03:22
in a container. We do things randomly

00:03:26
in a way that makes sense to us. But the point is that

00:03:29
things generally do get done. The things that need to happen get done

00:03:33
just kind of in a weird order. So if you're someone who really

00:03:36
struggles with distraction, I'm going to give you some tactics,

00:03:40
some real simple, doable tactics that you can

00:03:44
use to manage distractions better.

00:03:47
And I invite you to stop vilifying distractions.

00:03:51
They're not evil. They're not bad. They just are. And

00:03:55
when you learn to use them in a way that works for you, life gets

00:03:58
a lot easier.

00:04:02
I've broken down distractions into four categories. The

00:04:06
first one is other people. The second one is

00:04:09
dependence. The third is your space,

00:04:13
and the fourth is internal you.

00:04:17
I'm going to go through them. I'm going to be talking about the different things

00:04:20
that can happen and what's really helpful, especially for those of you who are in

00:04:24
the beginning stages of starting your business or who have

00:04:27
just taken your business full time, especially when we're talking about

00:04:31
your space and managing other people.

00:04:35
One of the hardest things when I started my business and I went full

00:04:39
time was that I didn't have anything on my

00:04:42
calendar. I didn't have an office that I had to go to

00:04:46
from 07:00 a.m. To 03:00 p.m. I worked really early hours

00:04:50
when I lived in San Francisco, where my manager would notice if

00:04:54
I wasn't there. I just kind of had quote unquote free time.

00:04:58
And it wasn't actually free time, it was work time. But

00:05:01
because it didn't have the structure that I was used

00:05:05
to, I would get invitations from friends to go to lunch. And

00:05:09
another friend might ask, hey, I'm going to go work out. You want to come

00:05:11
work out with me? There's a yoga class we go to. Family would ask me

00:05:15
for favors knowing that I didn't have anything planned. And

00:05:19
I would say yes because I'm an extrovert and I like

00:05:22
spending time with my friends and I like doing favors for my family. And

00:05:26
what I realized I was actually doing to myself is I was causing myself

00:05:30
a great deal of anxiety because as I was out to lunch with my friend,

00:05:34
and as I was going to yoga with another friend, and as I was helping

00:05:37
my family member with something around their house, I knew in the back of my

00:05:41
mind that I wasn't doing the work. I wasn't doing the foundational work to

00:05:45
get my business up and running full time. And I found myself

00:05:48
actually resenting my loved ones because how dare they

00:05:52
ask me to do this stuff? They know that I have a job.

00:05:56
But I realized that they actually didn't know that I had a job. As far

00:05:59
as they could see, I just quit my job and I was unemployed. And

00:06:03
sure, they thought I was, like, starting a coaching business, but who knows what that

00:06:06
means as a new business owner, as someone who has

00:06:10
to really buckle down and get those

00:06:13
beginning clients. Figure out your marketing, figure out how to do

00:06:17
your sales funnel. Figure out a whole bunch of other stuff. From

00:06:20
the outside, it looks like you're not doing anything. It

00:06:24
looks like you're just hanging out, playing on your computer all day.

00:06:28
And so the people around you are going to see that and think, oh, cool,

00:06:32
they're free. Let's invite them to do fun stuff. And it's

00:06:35
hard to say no because we all love fun stuff. I'm a

00:06:39
big fan of fun stuff, personally, and I bet you are, too.

00:06:43
And it's hard to say no to something when you don't have an

00:06:47
appointment scheduled, when you don't have a client call or a sales call or something

00:06:50
on your calendar, but something that you're going to have to get really good

00:06:54
at is saying, no, I can't do that. I'm working

00:06:58
on my business right now. No. My work day starts at 09:00 a.m.

00:07:02
And ends at 04:00 p.m. I'd love to hang out with you. Can we go

00:07:05
to a yoga class this evening when your family asks you

00:07:09
for a favor? Absolutely. I'd love to help you. Can I come over this

00:07:13
weekend and help you today? I'm actually working. You have

00:07:17
to be the one who trains everyone around you that you

00:07:20
are working on your business. They won't be able to see it otherwise

00:07:24
because for them, you working looks like you going out of the

00:07:28
house and going to the office. It doesn't look like you sitting on your couch

00:07:31
in your pajama pants with a blouse on, with your computer in your

00:07:35
lap. Honestly, that just looks like you've kind of lost it connected to

00:07:39
this. Your phone notifications. You are in charge of how

00:07:43
many notifications you get. You're in charge of what text

00:07:46
messages can come through from who, when you get notified

00:07:50
of them, what social media notifications you get throughout the day.

00:07:54
As someone who's easily distracted, you have to

00:07:58
set the boundaries with your technology. If

00:08:01
you don't, then you're just going to have this constant like

00:08:05
ping. Someone posted a new Instagram ping, someone

00:08:09
did a new TikTok. Someone texted you, oh, it's your mom. Oh, she

00:08:13
wants to ask if you want to help her with something. It's never

00:08:16
ending. There are so many settings on

00:08:20
different phone types for you to manage this. I'm not even going to walk you

00:08:23
through it. You can figure this out, and I've already kind of touched upon this.

00:08:26
But you do need to schedule time with your loved ones.

00:08:30
If they think that you have all this free time all of a sudden and

00:08:33
you're not wanting to spend time with them during that time, they're going to start

00:08:37
feeling really rejected. And especially if you have

00:08:41
ADHD, you probably have a lot of friends with ADHD and you probably have family

00:08:45
members with ADHD, which means you have a whole group of people that

00:08:48
have rejection, sensitivity, dysphoria. So you saying no, that you would

00:08:52
rather sit under your computer doing what they perceive as nothing

00:08:56
rather than hang out with them is going to be really bruising to their

00:09:00
ego and their feelings. So you do need to

00:09:03
prioritize scheduling time to spend with them.

00:09:08
This will also help you decompress on a regular

00:09:11
basis because as a new business owner, you're going to feel this

00:09:15
immense pressure to spend every waking moment

00:09:18
working on your business. Until you're making enough money that you have your normal

00:09:22
salary back, you cannot spend every waking moment doing that.

00:09:26
You're going to burn yourself out. So schedule off time with your loved

00:09:30
ones. If you live with your partner and you both work

00:09:33
from home or you both have a reason to be home, maybe your partner is

00:09:37
a full time parent. You need to design with them that sometimes

00:09:41
during your workday you're going to be on YouTube watching

00:09:45
puppies. Learn how to do the stairs for the first time. You're going to be

00:09:48
on Facebook, scrolling, kind know, stalking friends from high school.

00:09:52
You're going to be doing things on your computer that looks like

00:09:56
you are slacking off. But you and I both know in those

00:10:00
moments, you're not slacking off. What you're doing is you're actually giving

00:10:03
yourself a little dopamine boost so that you'll have enough dopamine to

00:10:07
get to the next task. And we need to find ways to communicate

00:10:11
to our partners that if they come up behind us and make a

00:10:15
comment, that can come across as a judgment like, oh, I thought you were

00:10:18
working today. Looks like you're having fun. It can completely take the wind out of

00:10:22
your sails. And you get to explain to them that things

00:10:26
like that are actually productivity boosters for us. So that

00:10:30
is how we are dealing with other adults in the world. Now,

00:10:33
technically, adults and dependents are other people, but like,

00:10:37
dependents have different requirements because

00:10:41
you can't have the same expectations for a four year old to

00:10:45
respect your time and your boundaries as you can your partner. And

00:10:49
if you have a four year old who knows how to respect boundaries, then good

00:10:52
on you. I'm not speaking to you.

00:10:59
So when I talk about dependence, I'm talking about children and pets,

00:11:03
any kind of living being that depends on you, that's going to

00:11:07
need care throughout the day.

00:11:11
Now, the key here is you have to set them up for

00:11:14
success first. All right. I don't have children, so I'm going to use my

00:11:18
dog as an example here. If I'm expecting to get

00:11:22
a good 4 hours of work done in a morning or in an

00:11:25
afternoon, I need to make sure that she's set up for success, which

00:11:29
means I have to get her outside and exercised. I have to go

00:11:33
and run her. I have to take her on a long walk because if

00:11:36
I don't, she's going to have this neurotic energy that just comes up and

00:11:40
she's going to constantly want to play with me while I'm trying to get work

00:11:44
done. And I love my dog. She is the cutest thing in the world and

00:11:47
I love playing with her, but I have to

00:11:51
pay the bills. I have to be able to afford all the fancy treats that

00:11:54
I buy her. I have to keep her in a very good lifestyle. I

00:11:58
can't do that if she is distracting me from my,

00:12:02
you know, I told you I'm not a know. Your

00:12:06
kids may need similar care to Luna. They may just need exercise.

00:12:09
They may need to get some energy out so that they can focus on other

00:12:13
things while you're getting work done. Depending on their age,

00:12:16
you may also need to outsource the childcare. I

00:12:20
know this can be expensive. Often for my clients who are

00:12:24
parents, there's a stage in their business where the amount of money that they're

00:12:27
bringing in is only covering their childcare costs. That's a

00:12:31
really difficult thing to deal with emotionally. As someone who is

00:12:35
ambitious and also cares about your kids but wants to find that

00:12:38
balance, one of the reasons why it helps to work with a strategist who can

00:12:42
help you figure out how you can make the most amount of money in the

00:12:45
least amount of time. And this is often what I do with my clients who

00:12:48
are stay at home moms or parents who share the responsibility of

00:12:52
taking care of the kids. If you have the right strategy,

00:12:55
sure, you're going to go through a phase where your money, all the money you're

00:12:59
making from your business is going to childcare, but it won't last.

00:13:03
You'll start making more money if you stick to the

00:13:06
strategy, if you keep up the action plan. So

00:13:10
setting your dependence up for success is

00:13:14
the only way to set yourself up for success. The other

00:13:17
element here is you have to set realistic expectations for

00:13:21
yourself. If you have an eight month old and

00:13:24
they've been consistently napping for an hour and a half every single day,

00:13:28
guess what? That's not going to happen forever. You have to set

00:13:32
realistic expectations. You're probably not going to want to schedule calls in

00:13:36
that time because there's going to be a day where that eight month old is

00:13:40
like, I don't want to take a nap or where they're going to nap for

00:13:42
ten minutes and then wake up and be really upset. In setting realistic

00:13:46
expectations for myself, I know I can't sit down and do 8 hours

00:13:49
of work because I'm going to have to take my dog outside to pee at

00:13:52
some point. I'm going to have to feed her. I'm going to have to play

00:13:55
with her. I'm her one roommate. I have to keep it interesting for

00:13:59
her. When you set realistic expectations for yourself, you prevent yourself

00:14:02
from going crazy. And you also help everyone who has to

00:14:06
work with you because you're not constantly having to change the

00:14:10
game.

00:14:13
The third category of distractions is your

00:14:17
space. And this is something that is massively different

00:14:21
for everyone. Some people, to keep

00:14:24
themselves from being distracted, need absolute silence.

00:14:28
They cannot have a single sound in their space. For

00:14:32
others, absolute silence is deafening.

00:14:36
You need ambient sound. You might

00:14:39
need music going on in the background. You might need to go and rent

00:14:43
a space in a co working office so you can have background chatter. Hell,

00:14:47
you might need to go into like a busy cafe and do work

00:14:50
there. You have to figure out what kind of space is

00:14:54
most conducive to you getting work done and what kind of work

00:14:58
you get done in that space. For me, I don't even drink, but I

00:15:02
find it's really helpful when I have to put together a PowerPoint

00:15:05
presentation. Or hell, if I'm plotting out a podcast

00:15:09
episode to go to my local pub and grab

00:15:12
dinner and have my laptop open and just start working.

00:15:16
The key for me is it needs to be loud enough that I can't discern

00:15:20
any particular conversation around me. If I can hear what the people next to me

00:15:24
are talking about, then I'm going to get completely sucked into eavesdropping on

00:15:28
them. I'm very nosy. I'm going to want to know all the details. I'm

00:15:31
not going to get any work done, but obviously, if I'm on a call, if

00:15:35
I'm on Zoom, I need to have a very specific space set up for myself

00:15:38
so that I can do that successfully. And there's no right answer

00:15:42
here. It's whatever works best for you, whatever works best for your

00:15:46
business. So, for instance, if you're a copywriter and the

00:15:50
work that you do that's paid doesn't require you to be on a

00:15:53
Zoom call or on a phone call with someone, you get to work wherever you

00:15:57
want. Whatever makes you most able to

00:16:00
concentrate is going to be the best place. Other things that

00:16:04
as ADHD ers, we have to kind of deconstruct for

00:16:07
ourselves is this idea of professionalism

00:16:11
in a workspace. A couple of years ago, I went through this

00:16:15
certification called trauma of money. And one of the things that they

00:16:18
trained us on very early on is that wherever

00:16:22
you feel comfortable and safe is going to be the best place

00:16:26
for you to take the class. It's going to be the best place for you

00:16:29
to do work. Sometimes that means from bed, sometimes that

00:16:33
means in your living room. Sometimes working on the floor feels the

00:16:36
best. I give you permission to work wherever

00:16:40
the feels best for you. I had a friend

00:16:44
in San Francisco, and to prove the point that it really doesn't matter, I

00:16:47
had this friend in San Francisco. He was the chief people officer at a tech

00:16:51
startup. Okay? The CEO at this company

00:16:54
was real difficult to manage.

00:16:58
They had brought in so many different executive coaches to try to

00:17:02
work with this guy, and he was pretty uncoachable. And finally,

00:17:05
as a last resort, they actually hired a woman who works with

00:17:09
movie stars out of LA. She was exorbitantly

00:17:13
expensive, but she had this kind of smack you in the

00:17:17
face approach that was no bullshit. And he

00:17:20
was laughing because she charges so much money to work

00:17:24
with her. And the very first call that he had with her, with the

00:17:28
group explaining who she was going to be working with, she was sitting

00:17:31
on her bed in Malibu. She was sitting on her bed cross

00:17:35
legged, and she's laughing and she's talking and she's

00:17:38
swearing and she's talking about what she's going to do with the CEO. And

00:17:42
she was massively effective. And the key here

00:17:46
is that she normalized it. She chose that.

00:17:50
That is the best place for her to take a work call and went

00:17:54
with it. You are the boss of your own business, wherever

00:17:57
you want to work, your clients are just going to have to get

00:18:01
used to that. And any client who's not willing to work with you because you're

00:18:05
working someplace that's comfortable for you, they're not the right client for you. So

00:18:09
comfort rather than professional, we get to redefine

00:18:12
what our standard for professionalism is. For me, it's that

00:18:16
you're good at what you do and you deliver it. It's

00:18:20
pretty basic. I always laugh when someone books a generate

00:18:24
income strategy call with me and they get on and we're talking about their business

00:18:27
and they say something like, shit. They're like, oh my God, I swore. And it's

00:18:30
like, have you listened to anything that I talk about?

00:18:35
So yes, if you ever book a call with me, you are allowed to swear.

00:18:38
I invite it. The last little bit about your space is

00:18:42
mess. Different folks have different

00:18:46
resilience to levels of mess. I'm pretty resilient.

00:18:49
I'm a very messy person. I'm a clean person, but I'm a messy

00:18:53
person. I just do not notice the piles of paper

00:18:57
that are gathering around my desk. I don't notice the random

00:19:00
doom piles of stuff until all of a sudden it becomes too

00:19:04
much. If you're someone who gets distracted

00:19:08
by mess when you start working and you're not

00:19:12
taking care of that first, what you're actually doing is making everything that you're doing

00:19:15
a layered task. Because for you to get to work, you have to

00:19:19
clean your desk. For you to clean your desk, you might have to do something

00:19:22
else, you might have to vacuum, you might have to do this, you might have

00:19:25
to do that. If mess is one of the things that distracts you

00:19:28
the most. And it's always something that gets added into your

00:19:32
day because you have to deal with it before you can get to work. Start

00:19:36
prioritizing that first. Make it a must do in your business

00:19:40
dealing with a mess, because it's going to have to get dealt with either way.

00:19:43
If you're going to get into whatever task you've assigned yourself for the day,

00:19:47
it's better to plan around it and build a buffer of time

00:19:50
than to let it kind of derail your whole day.

00:19:58
And lastly, my favorite category for

00:20:02
distractions is you. In

00:20:05
my intake form for my generate income strategy calls, I have this question

00:20:09
and it's like, what are the top three things that typically get in the way

00:20:12
of you reaching your goals? The number one answer to this

00:20:16
question is me, myself and I. I cackle every time I

00:20:20
see this because it's so true. We are

00:20:24
our biggest obstacle. It's our mindset. It's our

00:20:27
shiny object syndrome. It's our ability to shift gears so

00:20:31
fast and completely lose the plot. So when we talk about the

00:20:35
distractions that come from us, our internal selves, there

00:20:38
are a few different things that happen. So there is what goes on in our

00:20:41
mind and what goes on in our body. One of the best things about being

00:20:44
an ADHD entrepreneur is how creative we are. And also it's one

00:20:48
of the most distracting things because ideas strike us at

00:20:52
any moment, in any place. Along with all the ideas

00:20:55
that we have as ADHD entrepreneurs, we also have this

00:20:59
underlying fear that this is the last idea we're ever going

00:21:03
to have. This weird belief, like there's no proof that it's true

00:21:06
because we're coming up with ideas constantly, but we tend to

00:21:10
have an idea and think, oh my God, I need to grab onto it right

00:21:14
now and run with it because if I don't, then I'm going to lose it.

00:21:16
I invite you to look around your house right now as you're listening to this.

00:21:20
If you're home and look at all the piles of paper that you don't want

00:21:24
to throw away because there's good ideas in it, there's good information that might

00:21:27
have a good idea in it. We are

00:21:31
idea hoarders. And sure,

00:21:34
sometimes we'll write an idea down and go back to it,

00:21:38
but oftentimes we don't. But I want to just call attention to the fact

00:21:41
that you have never run out of ideas. You are an

00:21:45
idea generator. There's a reason why there are so

00:21:49
many people with ADHD who do things that are so innovative,

00:21:53
because we are far more creative than neurotypicals,

00:21:57
but you have to learn how to manage it so that you can get done

00:22:00
in your business. And this is why one of the things that I recommend to

00:22:03
all of my clients who have this issue of oh my God, I got this

00:22:06
great idea, I'm going to run with that instead of all the things that I

00:22:09
said I was going to do today, is to create some kind of idea

00:22:13
bank. I also like to call this a back burner book.

00:22:17
So if you're cooking multiple things, you can't actively cook all of them.

00:22:21
You can focus on one or two things at the most at a time.

00:22:24
So sometimes you just have to put stuff on the back burner to keep it

00:22:28
warm before you get to it. Now, a back burner book or

00:22:31
an idea bank can look a lot of different ways. It can be a journal.

00:22:35
It could be the notes app on your phone. Hell, you could have an

00:22:38
email chain to yourself from yourself where you're just sending

00:22:42
back and forth different ideas. And if

00:22:46
you're more advanced than I am, and you've figured out how to use project

00:22:49
management tools like notion or ClickUp, you can absolutely create a

00:22:53
board in there to manage all of your ideas. I always tell myself I'm

00:22:57
going to learn those things, but every time I try, it's just so confusing.

00:23:01
I know what I want it to do, but I don't speak the language to

00:23:04
figure out how to make it do what I want it to do. And then

00:23:07
I try, and then I get frustrated, and then I get mad, and then I

00:23:09
get discouraged, and then I have to go for a walk and recover. It's

00:23:13
a really ugly process. I just get bored and I

00:23:17
tune out. So they explain it to me and it's like it goes in one

00:23:20
ear and out the other. So I apologize to those of you who've tried in

00:23:23
the past. I just don't think I'm destined for project

00:23:27
management tools anyway. So on the one side, we have ideas that are

00:23:31
distracting to us. On the other side, we have complete

00:23:35
and utter boredom. Sometimes the boredom sets

00:23:38
in for a task and you just can't continue with

00:23:42
it. There are two ways to really deal with boredom.

00:23:58
Can be that you need more stimulation. It could be that you need

00:24:02
to go and give yourself like a quick hit of dopamine. So maybe

00:24:05
you need to go and do a really simple task like go and comment on

00:24:08
five posts on LinkedIn to get your engagement up. It could also mean

00:24:12
respond to an easy email, or go take your dog for a ten minute

00:24:16
walk it could be something that you can put on your to do list and

00:24:19
very easily just cross off and get that satisfaction.

00:24:22
Boredom can also mean that you are

00:24:25
overstimulated, meaning that you're trying to

00:24:28
do too much in too little time. You've taken

00:24:32
in too much information, and you actually need to go sit

00:24:36
in silence without your phone, without a book, without a

00:24:39
journal, and just kind of stare off into space and disassociate for a

00:24:43
while. I've learned this about myself, and I have to tell you,

00:24:47
I'm not perfect at figuring out which one I need most.

00:24:50
Oftentimes when I am feeling the boredom, that means I'm

00:24:54
overstimulated. I get kicked into executive dysfunction.

00:24:57
So it's hard for me to even get that get up and go to go

00:25:00
and do other things. I start doing them, and I'm like, I just don't have

00:25:04
the juice for it. And so I kind of back off. That's when I realize

00:25:07
I have to just kind of put a chair in the center of the room

00:25:10
away from everything and just sit there for a bit until I feel

00:25:14
rested. With the understimulated boredom, it's

00:25:18
usually that I'm just really antsy to get to the next thing, and it's easy

00:25:21
for me to get to the next thing. I just kind of, like, bounce off

00:25:24
the boring task into the exciting task and do that for you. This is

00:25:28
going to be different. The signs are going to be different. So pay attention

00:25:32
to when you're feeling bored. Are you getting kicked into

00:25:35
executive dysfunction and you have a hard time getting into another task, or are

00:25:39
you feeling like a ton of pent up energy that you need to get out

00:25:42
in some way and deal with it appropriately? The other

00:25:45
mental thing that can get in the way, that can distract us from the work

00:25:49
that we need to do is stress about other stuff. This is one of the

00:25:53
reasons why in the Monday sprint that I do three Mondays a month for all

00:25:56
of my clients, I have them do a complete brain

00:25:59
dump of everything that they're tracking in their minds

00:26:03
that they have to get to that week. Anything that's stressing them out goes on

00:26:07
that list. You want to fix world hunger? Great, it goes on the list.

00:26:10
Anything that you feel like you need to be stressed out about that could

00:26:14
be turned into a to do list item. Put it on the list even if

00:26:17
you never get to it. Something that we don't talk about

00:26:20
enough is the mental load that we carry. When you're

00:26:24
an employee, you go to work, you have a certain set

00:26:28
of responsibilities. You do those things and then you go home. You're not having

00:26:32
to figure out what the responsibilities are and what the

00:26:35
responsibilities of the other departments are and what the actions are of those other

00:26:39
departments. And then you're not responsible to do the actions

00:26:43
of the responsibilities of the other departments as well. As a business

00:26:46
owner, you have to be all the people, you have to be

00:26:49
all the strategists, and you have to be the

00:26:53
prioritizer. Okay? That's fucking

00:26:56
exhausting. It's a lot more

00:26:59
mental work than you are used to. But because we've been trained on

00:27:03
a 40 hours week, we expect ourselves to do 40 hours of

00:27:07
action every damn week. It's impossible because you're having

00:27:10
to do about 20 hours of mental work. Now.

00:27:14
Part of the mental load is keeping track of what all the work

00:27:17
is, getting it down on paper, even if

00:27:21
it doesn't make the cut for your priorities, this week is going to

00:27:25
be a way for you to offload it, to free up some ram in

00:27:29
your brain, for lack of a better term. Because we all know as

00:27:32
ADHD ers how our computers tend to like to

00:27:36
crash when they have too many tabs open. The same happens in

00:27:40
your brain. The last little bits about

00:27:44
distractions that come from you are how you nourish your body and

00:27:48
how you dress your body. If you're not feeding yourself

00:27:51
properly, like this is going to go wrong,

00:27:55
you're going to have a sugar crash, your stomach is going to hurt, you're going

00:27:57
to be so hungry that you're going to start getting hangry and clients are

00:28:01
going to start firing you because they can't handle it. If you're not drinking water,

00:28:05
you're going to start getting really murky in your mind. You're going to start

00:28:09
getting dark and depressed, and things are going to start looking

00:28:13
real bad, real fast. If you're wearing clothes that are distracting.

00:28:17
If you're wearing wool and it's itchy, why are you wearing wool?

00:28:20
Stop it. If you need to go through all your clothes and cut out all

00:28:24
of the tags, go and do it. We talked previously about

00:28:28
you getting to define your version of professionalism that

00:28:31
includes your wardrobe. I don't care what you had to wear to the office

00:28:35
when you worked in corporate. I care about what you want to wear now.

00:28:39
I care about how that facilitates you being able to be in your business

00:28:43
100%. Sometimes it's going to look a little cozy, sometimes it's not

00:28:46
going to look flashy and professional, and that's okay.

00:28:50
So long as you're showing up and doing the work and providing the

00:28:54
services to your clients who paid you for them, your

00:28:58
distractions are never going to go away. New distractions are going to happen

00:29:02
all the time. New world events are going to start distracting

00:29:05
you. New ideas for your business are going to distract you.

00:29:09
The occasional client who needs a little more attention is going to start distracting

00:29:13
you. As a person who's running a business who also has

00:29:16
ADHD, the key here is to not punish

00:29:20
yourself when distractions happen. When

00:29:23
you get pulled off course, to do something

00:29:27
else when you meant to get X, Y and Z done, that's okay.

00:29:30
That's the nature of things. What doesn't help the whole distraction

00:29:34
cycle is when you get distracted and then you start punishing yourself for the

00:29:38
distraction and then you feel bad like you failed in everything and then

00:29:42
you can't go back to the original task because it's now associated with

00:29:45
failure. It's exhausting, but it happens to us all the time. I know I've

00:29:49
talked about this in relation to New Year's resolutions with going to the gym. If

00:29:52
you say that you're going to go to the gym every single day and then

00:29:55
you miss on day four, day five, you're not going back. You already

00:29:59
failed. Like you're going to go to the gym and that everyone at the gym

00:30:02
is going to boo you because you failed. You didn't show up for day four.

00:30:05
How dare you. This doesn't count. It doesn't matter if you work out

00:30:09
twice as hard on day five. Still doesn't count because you missed day four

00:30:13
failure. I know I say that and it sounds

00:30:17
ludicrous, but we know how it feels. The most powerful thing that you

00:30:21
can do for yourself, for your productivity, for

00:30:24
your business, is to have forgiveness for all the times you

00:30:28
got distracted and gently, kindly with

00:30:32
acceptance. Just bring yourself back so that you can do whatever you need to do.

00:30:36
Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. If you're ready to stop being a weenie

00:30:39
and actually run a business that makes money, then go ahead and book a

00:30:43
generate income strategy call with me by going to

00:30:47
weeniecast.com strategycall.

00:30:50
On this call we will talk about your goals, your dreams,

00:30:54
and your frustrations in getting there. And if it's a fit

00:30:58
for both of us, then we can talk about different ways to work together.