240: Jumpstart Challenge for ADHD Brains

Welcome back to day two of our September start over, start again, start fresh, start moving challenge.

I don't know what I'm calling it. It's a five-day challenge, and if you happen to have missed yesterday, which was our first day, it's totally cool to back up to episode 239 and jump in. Yesterday's took 15 minutes. Today's is going to take 15 minutes. If you can carve out two 15 minute chunks or one 30 minute chunk. You can do easily both of these challenges today, be all caught up and ready for tomorrow.

I am issuing five completely different quick action challenges, that are going to be different every single day, but they're designed to get us up, get us moving, get us started because September can be a time when we feel really motivated because our kids are back in school and we had all of these big plans that we dreamed of when we had our extra time suddenly fall into our hands and yet we're having trouble getting going.

So these aren't the projects that we want to work on, but these are those things that help us get moving and help keep our house sort of intact while we work on those bigger dream projects that can tend to make our house fall apart around us. Yesterday, if you missed it, it had to do with a spit clean. And if you want more details, like I said, shift back into episode 239. But today, we're going to do a completely different challenge and I'll share it right after this.

A wise person once said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid. Well, fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys. It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your life. I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four, and fellow fishbrain.

If you're looking for a place to get understanding, encouragement, and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks, then I'm glad you're here. Let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique. Together, we could have a joy-loving home. Super quick, before I jump into today's challenge, I just want to share a quick aside.

I happened to be thinking, because this is episode 240, that when I started this podcast three years ago, that's hard to believe, I did every 10th episode was a break this organizing rule if you have ADHD. And so if you get up and get moving this week and you're really feeling it and you just want something playing in your ears while you work, it might be fun to binge every 10th episode. So do episode 10 and then episode 20, episode 30, and so on.

And you can hear that series. It's something that I just, I had a lot of fun doing because I know our ADHD brains work differently. And a lot of those organizing rules are put into place by type A monkeys for type A monkeys. And our fish brains just don't operate that way. And that's, that's cool. If you know, I have no idea what I'm talking about, about a fish brain versus a monkey brain, that means you skipped my introduction music.

You can go back and listen to that sometime. Anyway, I digress. And I'm going to digress one more time because I do want to share that on Tuesdays, I do a Tackle It Tuesday with my membership group, and it's just four different times throughout the day because we've got folks all across the U.S. In different time zones. We've got folks from Canada and Australia in there that are regular attenders of what I call our Tackle It Tuesday Zoom calls.

They are just the loveliest accountability sessions where we meet as fellow fishbrains and state the intention of what we want to work on and we get busy with just sort of a bodily, excuse me, body doubling exercise of knowing other people are working and we can share our wins.

And it's just, it's a really great time in there. So if you've ever thought about joining my membership, it is joylovinghome.com slash membership, and you can find out all about it there. All right, done with the sidebars. Digging into today's quick 15-minute challenge.

It is simple, but simple can be so, so effective. It is simply look around right now, pick a space that has been bugging you. Frame it up in your camera, and take a before picture. This is for you. Don't panic. It's okay. Just snap the picture. It is amazing what our brains convince us of, and it's that we never do anything. So we're going to latch on to some proof to prove to our brains that we can do a lot and we can do a lot in just 15 minutes.

So as soon as you've taken that before picture, I want you to set that 15 minute timer and I want you to get busy, do easy things, grab out as Danny K. White would advise, the trash and the easy things that you know have homes elsewhere. Move quickly, get them to where they go, get back to the spot that you're working on. Remember, you're trying to make a difference in 15 minutes in the same spot. This helps you harness in that brain that wants to head off and get distracted.

We are sticking to a spot for 15 minutes. Obviously, at the end, if we took it back before, I want you to frame up that shot in the same vantage point. And take your after, and then go to that camera roll of yours and slide back and forth and back and forth between your before and your after. You will be amazed at what you see. You can do a lot in 15 minutes. I want to give you bonus points. If you prop your camera up somewhere and do a time-lapse video recording of yourself, don't panic.

You'll be moving around so fast you can't pick yourself apart. We share some time lapses from time to time in the group and we have all agreed it's very satisfying to just reinforce to your brain that you can hustle around, you can see a change, you can see yourself in action and know that you are capable of motion and action and change in your home and in your space.

Super, super bonus points. If you would like to jump into my free community and you get there by going to bit.ly slash joy loving home community. It's bit.ly slash joy loving home community and share your win. Post your before and after. Post your time lapse. Whatever you feel comfortable doing, we would love to celebrate you and your wins in there. I will post mine later today, somewhere in between my Tackle It Tuesday sessions with my membership group.

All right, I'm going to stop so that I can get this up for you to take some action today.

And until next time, and next time is tomorrow, continue to choose joy.