2: Time management ADHD challenges faced by busy ADHD-preneurs

Time management ADHD challenges faced by the busy ADHD-preneur

Hi, I'm Katie McManus, and this is Business Strategy for Weenie ADHD-preneurs.

So one of the things that I've learned about myself in my lifespan of having ADHD and going from being a full time employee to working for myself is that I both strive in structured environments and I massively suck at creating structure for myself. And this really becomes a problem when you're trying to manage your time. And managing your time as a business owner is critical. So if you spend too much time on one thing, say doing your taxes, which you know, can take a really long time, and you're not marketing, you're not going to have any clients. Likewise, like spending too much time on marketing and not fulfilling stuff for your clients, that's not good. You have to be able to balance all of the different hats or all of the different responsibilities that you have in your business. And following neurotypical advice is never going to serve you.

I have had so many clients come to me who have ADHD diagnosis, and I've experienced this myself, where you get this advice from neurotypical who say, you have to time block. You should do the Pomodoro method where you set a timer for 30 minutes, work hard for 30 minutes, and then take a five-minute break.

Where they say, well, just chip it away at big projects like a little bit of day and we try it. We genuinely try it, and it just doesn't work for us. And I'm going to be going into why this doesn't work for us, but what ends up happening because it doesn't work for us, we start getting down on ourselves.

It becomes this kind of self-punishing cycle where we are just constantly reminded of how we're quote unquote, broken and not like other people. And so I just want to normalize for anyone who's listening that you're not broken, your brain just works in a different way and you're getting advice that doesn't work for your brain. Likewise, if you have a guy who has a boat and a car, and the boat's malfunctioning... if someone who is a car mechanic tries to give him boat advice... maybe this is a bad example because I don't know a lot about cars and boats. I'd use a sports analogy, but I also don't know a lot about sports.

Side note that's another thing that people with ADHD do is we start down a metaphor and analogy and then we realize halfway through that we have no idea what we're talking about.

Back to the topic.

So let's go with a metaphor that I actually know something about.

So if a client were to come to me to try to get advice on their bookkeeping systems, I would probably not be the best person to talk to about that. My advice would probably be like, cool, well, play detective on yourself. Go through your bank statements and your credit card statements, highlight the stuff that seems like business stuff, and then forward that to your accountant to figure it out. Right? That's probably not good advice. And any accountant out there who's listening to this is going to just be like raising their fists at the sky saying, damn you, Katie McManus, don't tell people to do this because it's bad advice and I agree with them. But this is the exact same thing that happens when ADHD people take advice from neurotypicals. Neurotypicals are telling you what works for them with their neurotypical brain. A neurodivergent brain operates differently. It's diverse from what's typical, okay? So that advice just simply does not fit. So if you thrive in a structured environment and you also suck at creating structure for yourself, there are some ways to work around this.

There are three truths that you need to reckon with and accept in your day to day.

First and foremost, time blocking in a typically prescribed way is just not going to work for you. Typically, time blocking is done in half hour or 1 hour increments. And for the ADHD brain, shifting gears is where we lose so much of our energy. And we also have this fear of running over. We have this time anxiety because we have all gotten so sucked into a project that we forgot to show up to the next two or three zoom calls. So instead of setting up your day so that you're shifting gears every half hour or an hour, it's really helpful to do uninterrupted time blocking.

And what that means is that you're giving yourself, especially when you're working on creative projects, you're giving yourself anywhere from three to five hours to get into deep focus on whatever it is that you're working on.

Now, when I talk about deep focus, this is really typical for ADHD. We know what this is. It's how we get, like, it's that flow mindset where we're really interested in what we're up to.

And we start working on it and all of a sudden it's like we're in a different universe. It's five or 7 hours later.

We haven't eaten, we haven't peed.

We've accomplished more than what a neurotypical person could do in a week. In that five to seven hour period. I've made like, full historical costumes in a five hour period. I have quilted quilts in 5 hours.

We can do amazingly creative things in those five to seven hours. But when we're running our own business, we feel guilty taking that time out of our week. Don't feel guilty. You need this.

Especially if you're doing any done for you work or if you're creating a new offering or you're designing your new marketing strategy. You need time to get into it and get inspired.

And that's okay. You're going to get so much done in this big block of time. So that's the first thing that I want you to start blocking out in your calendar.

For number two, I want to go back to that idea of gear shifting. So when I started my business, I had this guilt. I felt like I owed all of my clients, all of my availability all of the time. If I was going to be awake and sober, they deserve to be able to book on my calendar. And so it was basically a free for all. But what ended up happening is it would be like a Tuesday at noon, and I'd look at my calendar and I'd see that I had a 3pm. And I would mentally say, cool, so I just have to wait for the 3pm. And then I can do stuff. I couldn't get into work because I was so concerned that I would miss my 3pm appointment.

So the best advice I got for managing my calendar is instead of letting all of my clients book willynilly whenever they want, is to pick two or three days where I accept client calls and the rest I block off for other stuff.

And so literally in my business, if you were to look at my calendar, you would see Monday mornings are all meetings with my team, getting structured and organized for the week, setting my priorities for the week, outsourcing what they need to be doing. Wednesday afternoons are for sales calls and for creating content for social media. Tuesdays are for client calls. I start work at 10am. And I take client calls until about 4pm. And then I'll leave a little time in the evenings to do a little admin work as needed. And Wednesdays are also for client calls. And I typically go from ten to five with a couple of hour breaks in there for going for walks and having food because remember, if we get too into work, we forget to eat. And then on Thursdays, my mornings are all about admin. I need to catch up with work from the last two days. Anything that's come through that, I haven't been able to give my full attention because I was working with clients. Thursday afternoons I work with my BYOB group, and Thursday evenings I typically do a lot of lives or other admin work that I have to catch up with. And on Fridays I have my Brave Biz Lab call, which I'm super excited about, and I sometimes take client calls then.

So the reason I block out my calendar this way is because if I know an interruption is coming, it's going to be really hard for me to get into deep focus. And so I know every single ADHD person knows that experience of waiting for someone to come to your house, maybe you're going out with friends and they're late, and so you're like, okay, cool. Well, maybe I'll do something around the house, but you literally cannot get into it because you don't know when they're going to show up and interrupt you, even when you know they're going to interrupt you.

Even if you're planning on going to see a show or something and you have a half hour, it's really hard for you to get into reading a book or watching a show or something. I had an ex-boyfriend who told me that I was like a golden retriever who was waiting for their human to come home, because every single time I was waiting for someone, I would sit on the couch for a minute, and then I would go to the window and I'd look out and be like, are they here yet?

Are they here yet?

And then I come back and sit on the couch. I'd like, look at my phone for a second, and then I look around, and then I go back up to the window and, Are they here yet? Are they here yet? We do this in our business. We do this when we're waiting for a client call to happen. We do this when we're waiting for a meeting with our team to happen.

The way to mitigate this is to just have your calls back to back.

Honestly, mitigate, the waiting time.

That's why I have all my client calls on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. They're all blocked together because that way I'm not having a golden retriever moment looking, are they here yet? Are they here yet?

So each entrepreneur is going to have their own struggles with time based on what their business model is, what kind of clients they have, and what projects they're working on.

So if you're struggling with time management in your business, I invite you to come to the Brave Biz Lab call this week and ask me, lay out your life for me, and I will help strategise what will work best for you. This is a free group call that I do every Friday at 11am Eastern Standard Time, and I can't wait to see you there.

Look for the link to register in the show notes.

© 2022 Katie McManus – Business Strategy (For Weenie ADHD-preneurs)