The ADHD Perfectionist Cure: Be Sh*tty At Stuff!

I'm about to prescribe your perfectionist cure. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast! If you want to prepare to start a business before you even have an idea, before you figure out what your niche is, before you make any

plans to quit your corporate job, here is the number one most important thing that you can work on right now. And that thing is be bad at. Just be bad. Go and do things that you've never done before and suck royally at it. Get used to being bad at stuff, right? Because when you start a business, let me tell you, it's not just offering the service that you're going to be selling, it is doing a buttload of other stuff that you've never done before,

even if you come from sales. Oftentimes, my clients who come from sales, I have to retrain on how to sell their services because the sales process is very different. Selling your own time is incredibly vulnerable. It feels like you're putting yourself up for a whole ton of rejection, which you are. It's. That's the nature of sales. But if you're not used to being bad at, you're going to do it once and

then say, I never want to do that again. And then you're going to quit and then you're going to have to stay with your nine to five job and your dream of owning your own business is never going to come true. And it's not just sales that you're going to be bad at. It's marketing. It's writing content for social media, it's creating video content for social media. It's learning how to use an email marketing system. It's understanding how to create a website

or how to have someone else create a website. And then knowing how

to tell if it's good or not. It's learning how to speak, it's learning how to go on a live stream. It's learning how to be on a podcast. There are so many skills that you're going to have to learn when you start the business that you're just gonna have to suffer through being really shitty at for the first dozen times you do it or more. And if you don't have a resilience to being bad at it, then, my friend, I'm sorry, starting a business just isn't for you. This is what I call the perfectionist

cure. Because the reason we're afraid of being bad at stuff is because we expect ourselves to be perfect at it. We don't think anything is worth doing if we can't do it perfectly. And this is so hard for people with ADHD, right? Because we have this experience of learning incredibly fast when we're interested in something. And when we learn that fast, we gain this expectation that we're

just good at everything the first time we try. I can't tell you a single crafting hobby that I've ever had that took me a long time to learn because I was so interested in it. So much so that I will brag that my knitting teachers were really impressed with me, that I learned how to do, like, a cable knit with, like, minimal instruction and just like, kind of a glance over my work. I know you're super impressed. We're also incredibly good at avoiding stuff that we're bad at,

right. If you're bad at something in your job, you tend to find the workaround for the workaround. For the workaround that will help you avoid doing that thing forever. Or, and this is true for many of us, I know there's always that one task that you're bad at enough that your manager or your coworkers are like, don't worry, we'll do this for you because you cannot be trusted to do this well, okay. There's something about you that you just can't handle this. And that's

fine. You're good at other things. We will delegate this out to someone else. We do not have a great resilience to being bad at things. We don't have a great resilience to failing. So there are three tactics that I find really helpful. When you're trying to build your resilience to being bad at and move yourself away from that perfectionist mindset. And this serves you when you're starting a business. This serves you in jobs. This serves you in relationships. This serves you when you're

trying to learn a hobby or how to do something like cooking. It serves you in the sports, which I have a little story about. And really, it's something that once you learn how to be bad at stuff, you actually become unstoppable. When you learn how to deal with that feeling of, oh, God, I'm failing. I'm actively failing, oh, no, I just failed again. And I failed again. And I failed again. People are going to know that I'm a massive

failure. Once you learn how to be with that, nothing can stop you. No judgment from other people will stop you. You're not going to freak yourself out about this not being good enough. You're going to become a powerhouse, to get whatever you want in this life. Okay, so the number one most effective way to get good at failing is obvious. You have to fail on purpose. And when I say fail on purpose, I said this to a client the other day, and I was like, what's something that you are bad at? He's

like, skydiving. And I was like, cool. That's not something you want to be bad at. So don't try to fail with skydiving.

Then he's like, skiing. And I was like, cool. It's summer. You can't practice being bad at skiing in the summer unless you really want to hurt yourself falling down a very rocky mountain. It's funny. When I asked him that question, I was expecting him to say something like macrame or speaking a language or something. I don't know. And,

yeah, it didn't go the way I thought it would. So when I say this, I want you to think through what are the things that you can practice being bad at that won't end in a nice little memorial service for you or with you in the hospital? And disclaimer, anything that you do that gets you hurt is your responsibility. I take no ownership of that. As the host of the Weenie cast, this is all just for inspiration's sake. What it inspires you to do is hopefully something that keeps you safe.

When you think about failing on purpose, I want you to pick something that is disparate from your work. It is not associated with the thing that you want to do for your business. Because what we don't want to start doing is we don't want to start creating a story that you suck at the thing that you want to do. We want to give you something that is in a complete other sphere where you get to practice just being bad at something.

If you listen to, like, one or two episodes of the Weenie cast, I bet you know that I know nothing about this. Sports. Half the time I start a metaphor that involves sports, and then I get confused halfway through. And then Neil has to go back and edit it so it sounds smart. It might surprise you to find out that I actually played tennis when I was a kid. And when I was in high school, I was not popular on my own tennis team because I didn't play to win. I didn't really care about

the competition of it. I just played to have fun. And my tennis partner, Jackie Blut, got really, really frustrated with me, that I was trying to have fun with the other team and that I was being friendly with them. And I wasn't like out for blood, not my style. So anyway, so I quit the tennis team. I didn't really play. Gave up when I moved cross country to California. My tennis racket was actually stolen out of my car in Tucson, Arizona, which of course, like I could have

absolutely replaced it. But you know, I wasn't good at tennis. So why, why? I don't even know why I brought a tennis racket in the first place. It's like, you know when you're traveling and you're like, oh, I'm going by car. Throw it in the car, I might want it. Yeah. So I recently decided that I wanted to get back into tennis and so I signed up for a one on one class. No, I'm not good. No, I don't remember a

whole lot. I'm not terrible. But it's been this really incredible experience going and doing something that I would expect myself to be better at because 20 years ago I was somewhat good at it. God, I feel so old when I do math on when I how old I was in high school. That's so depressing. Sidebar. I went to this political event for the Massachusetts governor a few weeks ago and I walk into the event and I see one of the history teachers from

my high school, Mister Dixon. And I was never in Mister Dixon's class, okay? So I'm not gonna bash him. I don't know his teaching style. He was never terrible to me. He was always super nice. He actually got me into rowing one summer, which was kind of fun. Great workout, by the way. Anyway, so I go up to him and I'm like, oh my God, mister Dixon, so great to see you. And he was like, oh my God, Katie, so great to see you too. And he's like, how old are you now? And I said, oh,

I'm 36. And he's like, wow, you're so old. And I was just like, I'm old. That makes you ancient. So great. Anyway, how did I get there? Oh yeah, so anyway, the math on high school. Yeah. So 20 years ago I was somewhat good at tennis. Not good at anymore. But I'm on this mission to be bad at. I'm on this mission to put myself in situations where I am going to fail in another way. I have signed up to take french lessons again. I was a french major. I lived in France for half a year so

that I can learn the language. I really immersed myself. I passed their fluency exams and then I never spoke it again for 15 years, which again makes me feel very old. I recently started taking these classes online through this program called Lingoda, which if you're looking to learn a language, I can't recommend them enough. I wonder if I should sign up for a referral code if I'm sending you

all to go there anyway. If you want to go to weeniecast.com lingoda, I'll link it there because it is such a great resource if you're looking to learn a new language or brush up on a language that used to speak a long time ago. One of the things that I really, really liked about how they onboard you is that first lesson that you're signed up for is an orientation. And in the orientation they like, make it the purpose to make

errors, to make mistakes, right? Because it's really the only way that you learn a language is by saying something, thinking it's gonna make sense. Hearing someone say, I don't really know what you're talking about, or I think you're saying this, is that right? And then teasing it out with them until you figure out the exact right way to say the thing that you want to say. Could you imagine trying to learn a language and then getting all freaked out every single time that you make a

mistake? And I know a lot of people try to learn a language and they get all freaked out about making mistakes. And yeah, you look stupid, like you probably say some stupid, but there's really like, you said stupid shit when you were a baby. Also, you said stupid things when you were a toddler, when you were learning your native tongue, right? And it wasn't that you were stupid or trying to be funny, it was that you genuinely were just misunderstanding how to use your own language.

When I lived in France, I was in this immersive school that basically you had 5 hours of french lessons in the morning into the early afternoon, and then they would release you and you could go on all these excursions and you could live with a french family if you wanted or in like a student apartment. And I was in class with this australian woman. She and her husband had just moved to France and she was a nurse. She was like passing all of her licensing, getting all of her licenses so that she

could be a nurse in France because they, you know, wanted to live there. And I remember we're in this class and the teacher asked us to explain what our dream for our future was. And we were going around the table and her thing was like, she's like, I want to go and I want to nurse the whole world. But she translated wrong and what she actually said is, I want to go breastfeed the whole world. And the teacher was like, I don't know if that's what you want to. And I was, of

course, next. Cause we're sitting next to each other, so we're laughing and we're just dying. And she's like, no, no, no. I don't wanna breastfeed anyone. It's fine. Like, I want to heal people. And then I was like, yeah, I wanna go, and I wanna have a lot of adventures around the world. And I used the word Les Avantur, which I thought meant adventures, just like in English. It doesn't. It doesn't. It means a lot of sexual encounters, which I just announced this to the whole class,

and the teacher looked at me, she's like, this is what it means. Like, no judgment. No judgment if that's what you want. But, like, I don't think that's what you meant. I was like, no, that's not what I meant. I meant adventures, like, do cool, go and see exciting things and have interesting stories. And she helped me figure it

out. Throwing myself back into learning French again and throwing myself back into tennis again has really been eye opening for me, because I think one of the things that helped me be so successful so quickly in my business early on is that I was fully down to fail. I was used to failing. I was all about it. Fail fast, fail

forward all that jazz. And over time, I've moved away from it, because, like, once you start your business and you get good at it, you're just kind of used to being good at everything, you know? And I realize that there are a few things that I'm going to be doing in the next year that I'm probably going to be bad at. You know, there are a few business schools that I have that I've, like, never done before and things that are way outside my comfort zone and, like, has

massive opportunity for failure. And I realized that I was never going to be able to go and do those things if I didn't build my resilience to failure back up to where it used to be. So I urge you, if you're thinking about starting a business, or if you're in the process of starting a business, or if you're in the process of scaling a business and there's opportunity for failure and you're afraid of it, which is pretty much everyone in the world except for sociopaths. So if you're afraid

of it, congratulations, you're not a sociopath. I invite you to go and be at something. Pick something. Go actively be bad at it. Practice being bad. It's going to be absolutely life changing for you. And over time, when you really commit, you'll actually get good at it. Well, that's what I'm telling myself with tennis. Well, it still remains to be seen, but I'm

getting better at French, in case you were wondering. Now, the next thing you want to be very conscious of as you're actively being bad at stuff is, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel. Now, the next thing you want to be very conscious of as you're actively being bad at stuff is correction, not punishment. So in french classes, when I say something wrong, the teacher corrects me,

and when I say something wrong, I try to correct myself. I look for the correction. I'm not, like, determined to always be perfect, right? Because that's not going to help anyone. If my friend, who was determined to be correct with her phrase saying that she wanted to breastfeed the whole world, could you imagine the conversation she'd have later in her career? Like, she'd probably be fired from the hospital that she got a job

at? They'd probably be like, I'm sorry, like, you can't do that with patients. And she'd be like, what do you mean? I can't nurse people? And they'd be like,

no, it's so weird. Get out of here. Thinking she was planning on going up to patients and trying to BReastfeed them in tennis. So there was one day where I went, and I was, like, practicing tennis on my own, and. And how do you do this, you might ask? Well, there's machines that I'm sure you've seen in movies that basically have, like, a whole bunch of balls on top, and they shoot a ball out at you and you're supposed to just hit it. And the point is to work on, like, one swing at a time.

And so I rented a court, and I rented this machine, and I go to my little tennis club that I'm a member of, and I was the only one on these three courts, right? So I'm the only one. I'm the center of attention. There's a wall where all the treadmills line up, and there's a window. So everyone who's on a treadmill up on the second floor of this gym is looking out, watching me, because I'm the entertainment. It's a tennis club, so people like watching tennis.

The first round the first 20 minutes, I was so angry, I was missing, like, the ball was hitting the same spot on the court over and over and over again, and I kept missing it. And every time I'd miss it, I'd be like, oh, my God, you suck. What's wrong with you? That's terrible. Oh, my God. That's awful. What are you doing? You know, I started just getting really tight and frustrated and angry with myself, and eventually the machine ran out of

balls. And so I went around with that stupid tube that you go around just, like, popping the balls inside and just being so angry with myself. And I realized, oh, my God. Me being angry with myself for doing this badly isn't helping. There's nothing about this process that's actually helping me get better. It's actually making me worse. I was hitting more balls in the beginning than I was at the end. And so as I'm collecting all the

balls and putting them back in the machine, I made a deal with myself. It's like, okay, like, let's correct me rather than punish me. And so I filled up the machine again. I went back to the other side of the court. I hit the little remote control button, and I hit the first ball, and it was too long. And I just said, oh, too long to myself, you know, no one's around. And then I hit the next ball, and it was to the left. It went outside the court, oh, too far to the left,

you know? And then I hit the next ball, and it was too far to the right. And then I hit the next ball, and I hit the net, and then I missed the next ball, and it's like, oh, you swung too late. Oh, this is the thing that you did wrong. Like, here's the action that you can make better. And what was miraculous, and actually, it's not miraculous, it makes perfect sense, was by the end of that next

20 minutes session of the machine shooting balls at me. I was hitting every single ball by the end, and I was hitting balls most of the time where I wanted it to go, in the other side of the court. Side note, I should have switched hands. I couldn't use my right arm for about two days afterwards because it's not normal in tennis that you just spend, like, 40 minutes straight just hitting with one arm the exact same swing. So next time, I will go

back and forth. But I'm so glad I learned this lesson, because it really helped me understand how I learned best and helped me coach my clients on how to be good at failing in a way that they learned from it. And don't just create a story that they suck at everything. So I urge you, like, as you're being bad at stuff, correct yourself. Don't punish yourself.

The final thing that I want to offer, as you're working on your perfectionism, as you are leaning into failing, because so many of us have this idea of how perfect looks like, but it's also just not like a firm idea. I'm in the midst of redoing my website right now, and actually, this is one of those moments where I'm like, oh, my God, I need to be taking my own advice because I'm designing it and I'm realizing, like, oh, my God, it's not exactly how I want it, but

how I want it is just perfect. There's no specific idea I have of what perfect looks like. The mentality we want to adopt when we're in the middle of a project that's actually going to impact our business is we want to look at what would half ass

look like. Because oftentimes half assed is more than enough. Half assed is done, whereas waiting for perfect is never done. Because perfect is a moving target. Perfect will never happen. One of the great questions that artists get asked is, when do you know that your painting is finished and a lot of them can't tell you. A lot of them are like, eh, like, eh. You just kind of like, you know,

have to be okay with it. And the cool thing about doing something half assed is that you get to be with it for a while and you get to see, okay, cool. What do I want to correct here? What do I want to correct? Instead of punishing yourself for not being perfect, for instance, with my website, I could say, oh, you know, I don't really like how this drop down menu goes. Maybe I should change it the next time I redo my website. I can do this, this, and this differently, but in the

meantime, I still have a website to send to people. I still have a place for people to discover me and to find out more about me and to hopefully scare some people away who aren't my ideal clients. And I would like to just say something to the family members of my listeners, those of you who may have adhd also or who are

neurotypical. I just want to apologize in advance for all the hobbies that are about to come into your house that your loved one who listens to this podcast is about to take on, who is about to be really bad at who's going to get frustrated with it. Yeah, my heart goes out to you. I hope you

understand this is for the greater good. You're a loved one. Learning to be bad at stuff and maybe developing some more hyper focuses and getting more hobby supplies and things like that will make them better able to start a business in the future, which hopefully makes them super rich. And then you can retire. Right? And you can just, like, be taken care of. Hopefully. If it doesn't work out that way, not my problem. I'm sorry. I invite you. If you're committed to being bad at

something, I would love to hear what you're committed to being bad at. If you want to get in touch with me on the socials, you can find me on Instagram at Katie the coach or on TikTok at Katie KDHD. You see what I did there? Or if you're listening to this on Spotify, then you can go ahead and leave a comment for us. And I can't wait to see it. Oui, je enfin frapper la putin bal quin's amouritevere. Ha. Squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.