ADHD and Productivity: 6 Essential Strategies for Adults

[00:00:04]productivity and the maximum product we make over which I mean I've condensed this is it but I'm gonna go through each one one by one okay so you don't have to read this whole thing starting off with the first one which it's called grow the flow it's actually an e-book you can purchase by itself or or an eCourse or a short group coaching program but what it does it's really about matching tasks to the best time of the day here's an incredible thing that most people don't even realize you have moments in your day even when you have a TD when you aren't capable of the most amazing concentration there are periods every single addr has the ability to concentrate during the day and if you find though when those and it's it's usually in the pattern very rarely it is rare very rarely is it not part of a pattern okay so if you understand when is the best time for you to concentrate during your day and there are usually a couple of those types of periods and you decide to do tasks that require more of your concentration during those period of time you know what a lot of things will get done had a client who is she's actually a coach who found out chatty DeeDee and was struggling she was trying to as an executive coach trying to get a gig in a big corporation and had been trying to prepare this proposal for just about forever and she called me frustrated she'd been trying for the last three or four hours to do it and it didn't work and the first question I asked her is it okay when do you concentrate the best when's your best time well I'm a morning person okay so what time is it right now well six o'clock in the evening hmm wonder why you're struggling so what would happen if you cleared everything tomorrow morning and you did that instead and she did and half an hour after she had started it was almost all finished so that's pretty amazing the difference in how much Plus of course you're you're relieving yourself of a lot of frustration when you're doing things at the right time for yourself what do you do so a lot of people will say well yeah but I work eight hours a day my boss pays me for eight hours a day and I'm only able to be productive four hours a day or three hours a day well the rest of the time you're still able to you still have some energy you may have physical energy you may not be able to concentrate on long periods of time but if you were to do the shorter tasks and the tasks that are more physical or more interactive if you're the type of person who's comfortable with talking to people more interactive may not necessarily work for every d-dear I know that certain ada tears really don't do well with high amounts of interaction they they struggle with concentrating on what's happening and and so on so that may not necessarily work for you but interact in their case she was absolutely very interactive type of person loves talking to people so she started booking her her email responses in the afternoon she started making her phone calls during that period of time later on we found out that in the evening mostly the deers also have a period of time in the evening when they can focus and what's really cool about that is you don't have to work but you could do something you really really enjoy and possibly hyper focus doing it so look at the characteristics of a task look at your overall pattern you'll notice that one day to the next the pattern tends to be pretty much the same how many of you are feel that your morning you would be a morning person okay so you're probably the type of person who when you wake up you're bouncing off the bed and you're ready to go or just about okay how many of you are night owls okay so night owls of course probably have their biggest amount of concentration in the evening very possibly because there's fewer interruptions during that period of time more likely that than anything else it could be that your circadian system is a little bit backwards but that you know what if you're not working for somebody else and you can you can manage around that it's totally manageable I have a client who who is in California and works with people in Europe so often she's talking to them in the middle of night because for them it's the daytime and to be able to contact them that's when she has to do it so you have to to work around that so matching your tasks the tasks and the type of tasks to the right time of the day for you to do it the other thing that I find is so incredibly important ad deers have the most struggle when it comes through there there's a third period in their day when they really need some totally different self-care okay there are periods in your day when you feel totally brain-dead any of you relate to that okay and that period of the day that you feel totally brain-dead where you feel totally brain-dead is a period where you need to stop working and do something that gives you energy you know a lot of people say yeah but I work for somebody else you know what get up go go go at the other end of the office and talk to somebody there about something that you're working on take a walk take a break during that period of time I'm sure you're allowed breaks think in Canada you know there's no more slavery that isn't thought aloud so consider that there is a possibility that if you give yourself a break if you do something that gives you energy if you you know instead of pushing through that period you will regain your energy very very quickly okay usually often 20 minutes I've got I had a Canadian version of Richard Branson who is who was one of my clients I I mean he's a going to be a Richard Branson one of these days very hyperactive very charismatic very very successful person who in the afternoon is totally brain-dead at some point around two o'clock totally brain dead and he says you know what I would really need is an app an app would be so amazing why not why don't you take a nap what are my staff gonna say shut the shut the shutters cuz he's got one of these offices with like an aquarium and shut those shutters and tell your assistant that you're not to be bothered you're doing so creative thinking and just shut your eyes for 20 minutes and that's it and he started doing that it made a big difference okay so that's one strategy the matching the pass to the energy level using systems habits to streamline your life I told you before before about the financial issues that we had and it's not because I'm proud of it I am NOT we were really silly we made some major mistakes but a lot of it was EFT and was it was really in terms of budgeting budgeting doesn't work very well through the years how many of you are really good at budgeting will love it and you look forward to budgeting every single month nobody that's surprising okay you don't like budgeting because it's paperwork it's boring it's totally boring even for linear people it could be pretty boring so what you want to do is you automate a system so that certain bills are paid automatically and certain things are done automatically I have a client who actually went to her bank and said I think she deals with the CIBC went to the bank and said you know what I need someone to pay my visa bill every month could someone do that automatically and I want it to be done at this time of the month and what she did was all of her her cable bill her cellphone bill her phone bill everything was charged to her credit card and automatically somebody set up a system to paint her credit card bill and she had nothing else to pay okay if you want savings you want to say wow last year some of you know this but last year my celebrated my 25th anniversary with my husband and we had decided two years before that we were going to Italy and we were going to Italy for a month now in the past our modus operandi maybe some of you were linked to this would be to say oh yeah we're gonna go to Italy in two years yeah yeah yeah and then when it's almost time to go if you buy the ticket even though you have no money you're buying it on the credit card that's almost maxed out and you go and the whole time that you're there you worry about whether or not you're gonna be able to feed yourself under there or or go somewhere to sleep and and so on so we've we've managed that by creating a somewhere automatically our money we open an ING account I love IMG I you know I don't know if you you guys know about it but IMG direct dot CA you can open an online account it doesn't cost anything and you could set it up so it automatically puts money in that account and that's how we did our savings we had decided while we we figure it's gonna be about this much to do this trip if we want to do it right we want extra money more extra money to be able to to go to the art galleries and so on Duane's an artist and and and so we're gonna need so much money put aside per month and that's what we did automatically I very very soon before the time that we had to leave I check on the account I hadn't checked it since I set it up two years before I like Eureka man we've got tons of money this is gonna be a lot of fun and we had a ball we didn't we splurged we we did the things that we wanted to do and there was no worry no regret in doing that my daughter is getting married my oldest is getting married this summer same thing as soon as I found out when's the wedding day okay how much money are we are we talking about when we set up a system to automatically put the money in the bank so that's creating systems it's looking at you know it's not a lack of will that you have when you're when you're dealing with boring tasks and it's certainly not laziness we know that I know my clients work harder than most people do just to get by it's really it's a it's a difficulty with being able to focus on boring things your brain does not wake up when you're faced with something that bores the crap out of you so you want to be creating systems that streamline that and systems can conquer boredom you know when you create a system that takes so little time less time they went what it would have taken otherwise you're actually conquering boredom because it takes it takes you last time and give you a really good example of a system a few years ago my youngest daughter who has a ledian learning disabilities very inattentive type of person she's also very hyperactive which is kind of unusual she comes to me and she says mom I know you're looking for a cleaning lady I'm your girl okay I saw your room and I don't think so okay so what what what makes you think that well I need a job yeah I know but I'm not sure that this is the best job for you just as you know what mom I'm gonna make it work okay so you're gonna write down everything that you expect me to do not necessarily expect me to do but what results you want important okay because 80 deers don't do things necessarily the same way as everybody else but when you know what the results that is that are expected of you you can do pretty good stuff you know you can get it done as long as you're not told this is how you have to do it because this is how you have to do it may not be the way that you would normally naturally do it so she says tell me what results you want from me put it in a list and I will take care of it yeah but you know it's a board these are all boring tasks and and it's a big house you know it's gonna take a while to do she says I've got it covered I'm going to inject interest she's been hearing me for a long time talking about I will inject interest okay how do you inject interest well I've got my iPod and I've got I've downloaded all this Buffy music and that's what I'm I'm sure she didn't use Bach because that's mine that's in my time I really funky music I don't know what they use nowadays but so I've downloaded all this really cool music and I'm gonna be listening to music while I'm cleaning so I'm in my office which is in my my home and I'm hearing something that sounds really scary like a cat stuck in the grinder or something I pull I come out and there she is she's dusting and dancing and screaming in the end while screaming singing it was singing but it sounded like screaming so it worked it worked for a long time she was my cleaning lady for quite a while until she started back full-time in school so that works systems layered learning a lot of people will wait until they know absolutely everything before they get started what you want to do is learn just enough of a significant step you know just enough to make a difference so an example of that my husband lost 120 pounds we talked yesterday a little bit about obesity and a DD I think there's a lot more than what most people know about it the tendency to eat impulsively or to be inattentive and forget that you just finished eating so he was quite obese and decided he needed to lose weight of course there was fuel he had to figure out why and I talked about that in the last session it's important to have a compelling reason and a compelling reason for him was he wanted to be there for his kids the doctor that we had spoken to who had told him you know Dwayne you're at the time he was 28 years old you've got high blood pressure you've got some some serious issues here you're very obese you don't exercise you don't do anything you know I see you love your daughter you know yeah you seem to have a really nice relationship with her how are you gonna feel knowing that you're never going to see her get married or never see her graduate or you're not going to be there when she has her first heartbreak you know how are you gonna feel about when how you're gonna feel when you realize that you've missed out on the possibility of seeing her grand you owe your grandchildren and being able to play with them and have fun and how you gonna feel when you're not with your spouse having the fun that you're having mind you we weren't having that much fun he didn't know about it back then but that's okay so the fuel was there he realized that yeah those are really important so emotionally he was attached to the idea of changing of losing weight took a long time before we found the solution and the solution was really layer learning figuring out you know what I don't have to change radically everything that I do today I just have to change one that will make a significant difference so I looked at his overall eating habits and decided you know what I eat a lot of margin margarine why don't I get a margarine that's less fattening so that's and we tried 20 different types of coaching we threw all of them out because some of them were really crappy and the margarine that we chose back then this was quite a few years ago before he found out he had a DD quite a few years ago and we still use the same larger then when when he started using this Bernard Rainey decided you know what I need to exercise more now we had tried going to the gym three hours a day not working very well for us even if he's got a buddy didn't work very well too much so instead he decided I'm gonna walk up seven steps stairs that not stairs but steady flights of stairs thank you very much I'm tired I guess flights of stairs to get to my office everyday and down to go to the cafeteria and back up and so on and that's what he did for a while at the beginning he thought he was gonna die he'd get to the top of the stairs you know huffing and puffing sweating like nobody's business but after a couple of weeks it became too easy so he decided to add some difficulty so you see Laird learning instead of going to the gym for three hours I started doing small steps that made a significant difference and as you're doing that your body and that's really how we learn how do you how do kids learn to walk have you ever watched a kid learn to walk they get up they fall down parents panic especially if it's the first kid but eventually you see that they could they could do it quite often if it doesn't seem to bother them too much they cry a bit they'll get up again they'll fall but you know that every single time that they attempt to get up they are becoming stronger they're making their muscles and their legs stronger they're making their their body balance better they take that first step they fall on their face they bawl their eyes they you get up again they try it again and eventually and that's they you're learning that's how we learn naturally as humans okay and eventually they walk and and then they own limbs enough to think about do you think when you're walking you say okay I have to put that foot first that for the first not anymore okay so they're learning really works and eventually you create a system and a habit of walking you know I don't need to think how to walk it's become a habit and that's how you what you manage systems and habits to streamline you guys conquering procrastination I've had that people ask me okay what do I need to do to conquer procrastination and they come up with their pen and a paper okay tell me what do I need to do and it's more than just it's an uphill it's not it's like one strategy you know some people will say do this but that doesn't necessarily conquer procrastination you first have to figure out what is it that you're procrastinating okay and if I look at some examples I had a client who was a journalist and she was procrastinating and procrastinating and we trying to figure out what is that she was procrastinating was a writing the journalism no problem she loved to research she would be constantly you know doing some really good interviews and really good research and so on no problem there what she was procrastinating was the writing when we got into what was the reason why she was progressing what about the writing was the problem is it that she hates writing does she have a problem with writing is she editing yourself as she's ready the problem was that she couldn't take all the information that was in her head and organize it in a actual writing that made sense so what she did was what we looked at was then looking at the problem and its source so if it's all in your head that there that there's a problem you're having an issue we're organizing your thoughts let's externalize those thoughts let's find a different way to think about how to deal with these things and and how to communicate this so she started she started with a recording she recorded herself talking about it but she couldn't didn't really fit for it for her she called one of her friends in New York and had a discussion with her and had her interview her and and recorded the whole conversation and then had it transcribed and that worked really well for her she could have used mind mapping she could have used just about anything that externalizes the thought but if we hadn't figured out what it was specifically there was a source of the procrastination we wouldn't have figured out what the real solution is so depending on what it is that you're procrastinating look at the real reason really break down that that thing that you're trying to do and figure out what is it about it that you're struggling with and then you can your better set up to deal with with the problem at its source and and you're more likely to have this problem pretty much vanish afterwards do the right thing is probably the most unspoken part of my program but it's probably one of the most important part of the program it's about doing the things that are right for you and now I spoke about it earlier for those of you who were in my first program but the whole idea of strengths what are your strengths what are your interests what are you really good at what are your values and making sure that you you continue to honor your values and if you're going against your values you will definitely put yourself in the situation where there will be conflict and you will sabotage yourself had a client who was she was an animal health technician and she went into that why because she loved animals except that the only job that she was able to get was working in a lab testing on animals so we didn't take long for me to figure out why this was a third job that she was losing she lost the first two jobs because she couldn't there she couldn't hack it it was too much it was too difficult well we realize is that this was so totally against her values to be doing this to animals that no matter what she tried he would not work until she decided that you know what this is against my values I can't do anymore when you go against your values you don't even realize it but you are in total conflict there's what they call cognitive dissonance you're going against your gut feeling against the way you really feel and as a result you actually sabotage yourself so very important then we do talk about it in this particular area managing your weaknesses I gave you I give you four quick ways of managing your weaknesses but there's more than that drop you know drop it and see if anybody even notices happened I had somebody who did that in her office she'd been doing these reports and finally decided you know what I don't not sure that anybody reads them she stopped doing them nobody noticed for a couple of months okay so maybe she only needs to do that every two months instead of every week delegate delegate two systems or delegate to somebody else okay barter you can barter with somebody who is who has strengths in your areas of weakness and you have strengths in their areas of weakness or at least you you manage much better in those areas barter with someone and I've done that before I had a claw I one of my colleagues this was before a DD it works also for nineteen years one of my colleagues was very good with doing travel she knew everything about the travel industry so you wanted your flights to be booked properly and on time and and so on she knew how to do it and she knew where to go and which was the best airline and what he needed to consider it so she was good at that and I hated it I I was talking about some of the horrors that I've had with booking travel I tend to book two or three times and then I get into trouble trying to get the money back because airlines are not even required to pay you to give you your money back even if there's a problem with their system than anyways so we bartered there were some things she wasn't very good at managing meetings I was very good at managing meetings so I did the managing the meeting management she took care of dealing with the travel and partner we talked about that earlier somebody was talking about partnering with someone again in the same kind of situation one of the things that I find that a lot of organizations struggle with is they they tend to teach you in your area of weakness where you know they'll you could be the most amazing I'll take the example of a project manager because I've done that in my former life and as a project manager you need to be able to manage people you need to be able to manage time you need to be able to manage money and budgets okay you put two people who are project managers and one is an amazing people motivator he or she's very good at communicating what needs to be done and is very on top of things but terrible at budgeting and then you have the other person who hates talking to people don't talk to me the phone rings they don't want me to answer it but they're amazing with numbers why not pair these two people and have them work together they work together on the two projects one is the Rawat person and the motivator and the person who gets the direction the other one works on on all in the backward the the back stuff that works beautifully unfortunately what companies do is they'll send the person who's really bad at budgeting for two weeks of budgeting training in the meantime his team is dying because there's nobody there to rod them and motivate them and communicate what needs to be done and and and so there's there's some issues that area and we do that in the same thing in schools eliminating obstacles of productivity okay here's here's something that you need to understand when you say yes to something you say no just something else okay we have 24 hours a day seven days a week and you cannot bottle the time that you save you cannot there's none of that that you can do if you save time you can't bottle it and put it so that you can use it in another time the time is is moving and you're with it or you're not so when you say yes to everything that excites you when somebody talks to and that happens a lot with AD theories you know a person will come in and say I have this project and I'm doing this and you want to be involved in they're all excited yeah I'll do it and then they realize they can't they just have so much already on their plate so they tell me my but Linda I can't say no but you are you're already saying know you've been saying no for a long time every time you say yes to those things what are you saying no to your sleep you're saying no to exercise you're saying no to other projects you're saying no to other project that might be a lot more interesting than this one okay so you're saying no to your sanity maybe to your family so understand that when you're saying yes you're also saying no so you're totally able to say no you just gotta switch it and learn the language I actually work with my clients on a script on how to stop themselves from saying yes before it's too late okay the first thing that they need to realize is they need to say to the other person sounds like an incredible idea it really excites me but you know what I want to make sure that if I get on board that I'm able to get on board full off you know full-on so let me look at my schedule and my other projects and I'll get back to you gives you some time to think before you say yes and really look at your projects and realize a baby there's there's not the time or maybe it is you know there's a and I worked with a number of different scripts depending on the situation if you really really really really really want to but you really really can't because you've got too many things then it's managing what the other person you know what I really am interested in working with on that with you and if you really want me on your team the only thing is I have these extra projects that need to be taken off my plate if you can help me take those off my plate I will be glad to work with you on your project okay so those are the types of things so creating boundaries are very important and eighty tears really struggle with boundaries they don't know where you know where they're pushing your luck and where they need to pull back sometimes creating boundaries and boundaries are how you tell people or how you teach people to treat you when people treat you poorly I hate to say it but it's it's part of your your doing you know your allowing them to do it if somebody treats you poorly and you pipe up you know what I don't I don't particularly enjoy you're talking to me like that I would prefer that you not say some something like that it's not true or it hurts my feelings or whatever maybe maybe they would say oh I didn't realize most of the time they would say I don't I didn't realize because you know what most people do the best they can with what they have at the time and you have the information that they have is that you look like you have it's very funny for you then they'll continue to do it so you need to create those boundaries and create the scripts that's a system master self control this is where I usually have the biggest resistance for most of my clients master self control means mastering it to do this and it to do this for me is not to do this that that continues I have clients who come to me I remember if one client who came to me but not what to-do list but a to-do book jet 684 I still remember 684 items on that list and she's and I said where did those come from just saw some of them have been there for years you know and and I just procrastinated and I'm procrastinate so much that I never get them off off my list and I said what do you do when you have let's say you find out you have half an hour free a free time while I go through my to-do list but how long does it take you to go through 684 items so that you can one right so obviously that's not something that works well ideally you want to work with to do this for each of your projects and you want to make sure that you don't have more than three maybe five projects more than that it's getting a little bit too much unless they're projects that are almost in crouton cruise-control there's some projects that all you have to do is a little bit of work on them every week and it sits there on cruise control it's not so bad but ongoing projects three to five max okay and each project has is its task list it is not a task list for every that you develop every single part of it I I was in charge of a project that was gonna take three years to implement well if I had done my to-do list for the next three years two years later I would have started the project okay so instead we figured out what were the first in first of all the milestones and what were the first steps that we needed to put in place and each project every week I look at each project and Sookie what do I need to do with this project that goes I like to do this which is actually almost blank okay what about that part those three things okay that goes on my to do this what about that thing so you're going you're looking at each one of your projects and the task list and you're only putting on your to-do list the things that have to be done in the next week and then you're doing something that is really really crazy really crazy you're putting it in your agenda you're committing to it to yourself and a lot of a leaders struggle with commitment commitment to others but mainly commitment to themselves they for some reason they they truly struggle with that and I am working diligently to find solutions for that there are some but they're not that easy to tackle so the the day that somebody gives me has a solution please call me I want to know about it I I will I will give you the credit for it I don't care but I want to be able to help my clients but there are solutions they're just really long-term solutions they take they're very difficult using one single agenda for your life you have one single life you have one single agenda that's how I see it so one single agenda and then it take you to do this if how long each thing is going to take any put in your agenda if you've never done it before here's Patrick a lot of people say well yeah but I thought it was gonna take five 15 minutes and they tipped a lot more time than that I say triple triple whatever you don't know how much it's gonna take so if you estimate it's gonna take half an hour put it put it down as if it's gonna take an hour and a half if you have an extra time bonus man you can do whatever you want okay but triple it because more than likely well it will take that long to do choosing the right thing to do at the right time that's where the agenda comes in if you know you're a morning person you you you tackle the two dues that require more concentration in the morning if you're an afternoon person in the afternoon and so on yeah there is a section missing and I'm not sure if it's in your in your handout let's cut the crap eliminate well no maybe it is there it's about really managing interruptions around you okay managing interruptions around you and that means being okay with people and telling them you know what I am very busy right now I'm very busy and there's no time for me to be doing this right now how about we make an appointment to talk later on okay it's a very simple script you get used to it you read it to yourself constantly until it becomes part of your ear blah blah you know it just comes out before you couldn't think about it somebody comes and this came from one of my colleagues years ago who I was in charge of this big project and my big project was everybody dropped whatever they were doing every time I came over to talk to them okay cuz it was a very important project it was very high on the on the scanners for everyone in the organization even in Germany because I was working for a pharmaceutical company in Germany and and so everybody dropped whatever they they had to do and yes Linda what do you want didn't matter when I did and when I came what they were doing at the time so I came to see her she didn't drop whatever she was doing I was kind of really miffed about that she says well I'm really busy right now I've got some deadlines coming up and I can't talk to you right now let's make an appointment is that okay with you okay and I left I took the appointment with her I thought the goal but today I see her and I remember that when you gave her something to do and she said I commit to doing it this day it was done this day and it was done within a reasonable amount of time some people would commit but like five five months later you know she would do it very quickly because she was so totally in control of her life and she was able to control all of these and we lived in cubicles we were working in cubicles so it's not easy to do but it's possible to do it she eventually put a sign in front of her cubicle and she told everybody that she worked with regularly when that sign is up tall coming but don't come in bug me email me send me a voicemail or whatever voicemail is another issue we know that voicemail gosh or or her phone the phone rings phone rings phone rings if you don't answer your your business phone your cell phone rings if you don't answer that you've got I am messaging coming in or you've got your you know your emails coming in the same person call it all over the place so you want a minute you want to manage that to the point where you know what during my peak performance time I do not answer those people it's important to manage expectations as well explain to people this is why I'm doing I want to make sure that when I commit to doing something to you for you I do it in a timely manner and then I actually meet my commitments but I can't do that if everybody is constantly disturbing me so there's a what's in it for that situation here what's in it for them is that they'll get whatever they want much faster and when I commit to doing it I'll get it done on time and more and more in the in work situation that we have today people are having to work in teams and when one team member is last-minute for everything it affects everybody in the team and that's that's an important thing so some some resources for you productivity myths busted comm I've spoken about that maximum productivity makeover comm so it was a wonderful talking to you there's anything if you needed some some information I'd say about maximum product if you make over or you just wanted to talk to me I'll be around for sure thank you