Creating a Meaningful Work Day with ADHD

Hi, I'm Shelley. And I'm Cam. And this is Translating ADHD. Before we kick off this week's episode, quick reminder that we have a Discord community for our listeners. If you'd like to join, visit the website translatingadhd.com. Click on the Patreon button in the upper right-hand corner, and for five bucks a month, you're in. This week, we're going to build on last week's episode, and particularly something that had Cam's attention.

about my experience. And I'm really excited about where this is going to lead. So Cam, I'm super stoked that my experience sparked all this idea generation and creativity in you because... This is going to drive our next several episodes, and it's really going to get to the heart of one of the things that we're passionate about, which is helping adults with ADHD be more successful at work.

whether that be entrepreneurship or career, we are passionate about helping our clients find that greater success. So Cam, you want to take it away and kind of talk about... What has your attention from last week that we're going to build on today? Absolutely. So a couple of things happened as we were talking about your sleep and how you were being successful with sleep.

You tied it to the shifts around work, of working for someone else, working in an organization, versus you putting your own shingle out as an organizer and having to show up. and realizing that showing up and doing that one-on-one work with your clients demanded more. And not only demanded more, you lit upon a term that you used that got my attention. You said,

That you had to have a certain amount of sleep in order to show up with a certain amount of positivity. And that we identify these sort of, or you identify these emotional markers. If you don't get enough sleep. you get kind of growly and negative, gruff. But if you do, there's a positivity there. And it got me thinking about around the work part, right? I think today's Labor Day when this episode drops.

I'm noticing. It's an appropriate shift into work and creating a meaningful work day. That's going to be our thread for the next several weeks, is really thinking about how can we be successful. So it was in part that of you seeing kind of how your sleep needs are connected to your work needs. So very contextual. And I want to dig in.

to that positivity with you later in the show today but there was another spark and it actually came from one of our discord participants under the channel of episode ideas they were like hey You know, these crazy rules are these sort of motivational statements around getting things done. And we all know about them of hers in particular was under promise and over deliver.

So there's this statement, it says to do this, but what does that mean exactly? And how do I take that and put that into practical terms? And if you think about that, that statement right there is... It can be a general good statement, but it also can be sort of fraught with pitfalls for those of us with ADHD and around managing executive functions.

What exactly is it to under promise and over deliver? Because if we're going to over deliver, we're going to give them the moon when we just need to give them something much more tangible. So that got me thinking about like. Okay, there are these statements of like the Nike one, just do it. Or Covey statement of, you know, first things first. We have this sort of love-hate relationship with them, but it's like...

Well, how do we convert that into a meaningful day of work? So today, what we're going to do is actually kind of start to shift into that and sort of see where these statements can help us. and inspire us, and where we just need to chuck them and toss them. And I've got some thoughts there, and I think I came to sort of this realization of what's driving many of those thoughts.

And I want to introduce that and roll that out today. But I think it's going to give us legs for a couple weeks here. Absolutely, Cam. Under promise and over deliver always feels like a gut punch to me because that one in particular is one that haunts a lot of my entrepreneur clients and one that haunted me in my organizing days. Because with professional organizing, some organizers will set time parameters around a job.

and do a really good job of managing and making sure that the job is on time. Now I never liked working that way. I liked working with my clients. to create change that was going to last over time, no matter how much time that was going to take. But it took me a few years. And a whole lot of getting myself in hot water over and over again and finding myself basically working for nothing in order to...

over deliver in order to at least do what I had promised if not more to realize that that's the way that I needed to work with my clients. It didn't only not happen overnight. It took a lot of mistakes and a lot of pain. for me to shift my own limiting beliefs that this was the only way to work with clients was to promise a result and then do better than that. Yeah. And it was the same way for me too. You know, again, I was a school teacher.

And there are natural limiters that are built into a school day. Thank God for the school bell. Because if I have a great class, you know, great. But if I have a terrible class, well, at least it ends. The bell goes. I'm like, oh, my God. Thank God we muscled through that. And I can have a do-over and start again. But when we're in a job.

where there's external structures in place and others that are modeling around us to show up at this time, leave at this time, and you do these things during these times. And it's all around and it's an expectation. And I was fairly successful with that. When I made the shift to coaching and I had to create all of that myself, created all of that.

That imposter syndrome, the sense of worth of like, well, boy, I don't have a lot to offer, so I better really give them everything plus the kitchen sink. And so it was really thinking what I needed to do was quantity and not considering what quality actually was. So then guess what? I'm up till 11 o'clock at night working basically. to that over-delivery piece because we don't know any upper limit. We don't set those limits easily ourselves. And so if we think we need to give them the moon...

By God, we're going to give them the moon. And then what does it do? It takes away from other areas like self-care and last week's episodes on sleep. We're going to borrow from other areas.

So this had me thinking a lot about these statements. And it's not about the statements so much, people. It's just the statements or these motivational quotes are just a starting place. It's just a starting place to look at this bigger thing because I noticed this. I noticed a pattern. I noticed that the people on Twitter were sharing the different statements that worked for them and didn't work for them. And I think that there are a couple that have actually helped me.

And sort of like, in a way, help my ADD. Wayne Gretzky, the famous quote, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And so for that, it was like, I would hesitate. I would hesitate starting in that realization of, okay, if I don't even try, I'm missing anyway. So take the shot. So take the shot. And that was helpful to kind of move me over that inertia of kind of delaying.

starting, delivering, sharing, right? Again, back to self-advocacy and that hesitation that can occur for those of us, especially those of us who have the inattentive type, where we need that ability to start, to get started. So there's that one. The Pareto principle, which is 80% of the effects come from 20% of the cause. And that was sort of, again, that really helped with, guess what, prioritization.

I realized very soon that it was if I focused on 20% of my roles and what I could do, it would create 80% of the impact. And that was really helpful for prioritizing. So some of these statements are great. I love Covey, by the way. I love Covey. And actually, if you go to my blog. at CameronGott.com and you type in Covey, you'll find all these little riffs I do on Covey's Seven Habits because they're aspirational, but...

With respect to execution, it just can be absolutely maddening. So you can take these statements and when we start to tweak them and consider them, and again, I'm just thinking about you, Shelly, with some of your core values around flexibility. Let it be easy. Freedom too. It's that sort of like hold those with a soft grip to sort of consider how you can modify them so they can be beneficial for you to have a meaningful day of work.

Cam, I love that you bring up the ones that do work because for me, the ones that do work are the ones that I came to sort of organically. Let It Be Easy was introduced by an organizing colleague in service of helping our chapter survive at the time. But it's something that just sort of stuck with me and lived in the back of my brain. And when I started applying it...

in my own life, it felt right. It just made whatever the conundrum I was having at the time seem easier. Freedom from freedom to, same thing. That was actually a client. that came up with that language, a client that also happened to have that flexibility value on board in a big way. But when she said it, I went, ooh, yeah, I like that. I really like that.

Another one for me, and one that I share with my clients and I've shared on the show before, is productive versus constructive. Not thinking about my time just in terms of output and not valuing activity that produces output. over activity that gives back to me because I can't produce output.

if I'm not taking care of myself. So productive and constructive are both important. They're both valuable. And that one allowed me to let go of a lot of that entrepreneurial guilt of I should be, I ought to be, I could be, I can't take time for my... Because there's always things I could be doing to improve my business. And in each case.

They're things that just made sense to me in the way that my brain works. And I think that's the challenge we run into as people with ADHD is a lot of these principles that are by and for neurotypicals. seem on the face like they ought to work, seem like we ought to be able to make sense of them and do something with them. But in reality, they don't work with our brains. They don't work with our brain wiring.

Love those examples. And going back to the ones that don't work. Early bird gets the worm. And I think, again, there can be listeners out there like, wait, I love that one. You know, it works for me. Fine. Fine. It's cool. If it works for you, great. I don't know that that one's cool, though. I think that one's a little ableist because I think that one really...

It moralizes people who get up early as superior. I take issue with that. Yes. I was actually referring to the next one of a Brian Tracy, one of like eat the frog. Yeah. Right. Some of my clients love eat the frog. I brought that one up in sessions before. Yeah. But what can happen is you sort of hold that, you know, as such a principle that, well, you know, I got to eat the frog before I can do anything fun.

And then you can't eat the frog because you've got overwhelm and activation challenges. And then you deny yourself everything else. I can't do eat the frog at all. So my mom, who is a realtor, so she's also self-employed. She was the one that introduced me to eat the frog. And not only does it not work for me, I will sit there and envision.

the frog getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger while i'm sitting in my inaction while i'm punishing myself and not allowing myself to do anything because i'm not eating the frog so right so yeah so if it's if it's a statement

It's a motivational statement that is punishing. Good sign, listener. Good sign. So here's the thing is that, again, there's a couple of things that were kind of coming together in Cam's brain here. But it was really this. Many of the motivational quotes that we, I think that the basis of these quotes that we struggle with is this basic statement. that has been underlying work for 150 years. And that is, you must account for your time. I'll say it again. You must account.

That, if you think about it, take your statements that aren't working for you, your quotes, and sort of consider, is there like an accountability piece? is to be answerable for your actions, to show up with your work done at a specific time on a specific day in the future. Nail that. Nail it like a neurotypical. And again, then the time aspect, this accountability piece and the time that all day you're being productive. I think that.

Again, this is a subliminal message that all of us receive of we have to be accountable for our time all the time and be productive and that we get up on a meaningful day. Because that's our theme here. A meaningful day is a full day. Going back to what you were saying about productive and constructive is that really you're saying no thank you to that in the sense of there's balance.

There's I'm going to do some output and production, but I'm also going to do things that are beneficial to me because no one else will do that for us. And this is why I think many of us, we made this choice to have our own work hours. And then COVID has added to that too. By the way, I will say that neurotypicals aren't great with accountability either because there are two problems in corporate America. People don't do what they say they're going to do.

And then they don't tell anybody. And then accountability gets a bad rap, Shelley, right? If you think about accountability now, it's this sort of like, they shall be answerable. You and I subscribe to this idea of accountability that's much more positive and engaging because accountability is this, you know, this ability to take responsibility and have an impact.

and have a meaningful day, accountability is a necessary piece. If it doesn't work for you, that's okay. So we want to give you an alternative statement to play around with. Because what happens is people take that statement, like you must be accountable for your time, and they throw out everything. F it. Forget it. You know, neurotypicals can have that. I'm not going to have any of that.

Well, accountability and time are elements that are at play, number one. Number two, both of them are very, they're structures that are process rich. And we struggle with process rich. So time is process rich, being accountable for your activity, boundary management in relationships. These are structural elements that are at play.

I think people, what they try to do is they focus on the time piece and maybe back off from that and go to, okay, how can we work with this accountability thing? What I would do is start with, okay, responsibility. So to have a meaningful day on a consistent basis, that developing some responsibility for your impact. As workers, we want to have some kind of an impact.

There is a matter of we've got to produce something, but it doesn't have to be this consistent thing that happens over eight hours in a certain timeframe. I'm appreciating what you were saying about. how you set up your calendar where you have work time and you have some away time. What I do is I work with clients and I teach and work with clients Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday.

Guess what I'm doing on Tuesday and Friday? I'm at home and I'm with my kids and I'm the parent at home while my wife is off working. And so it gives me this kind of break. a real break where I'm not slogging because that's how it used to be for me. I sort of like get up and like, you know, make the donuts again. But this is sort of a creative interpretation of what it is to be productive.

And letting go of this idea of I've got to be productive all the time, which is, by the way, an interesting manifestation of ADHD with this whole idea of kind of like black and white thinking. Oh. Here's my workday. I've got to fill it and be productive all the time. So if you're noticing that, take a step back from that statement. How much is that statement sort of coming into play, clients? A couple of things I want to say.

based on everything you just said, Cam. My brain just went pew. You ever do that where your brain just goes two directions at once and it's like, oh, two totally different threads that I want to latch onto here. So I'm going to start with the main thread of what you just said and accountability.

So what Cam is really talking about here is changing the way we think about accountability from something that is punitive to something that supports who we want to be, who we are becoming, the impact that we want to have. For most of us with ADHD, because we have an interest-based attention system, it is important to us to feel like we are doing something meaningful, whether you are at a traditional job or you are working for yourself.

It is important that there is meaning, that there is some reason for doing what we do every day. So when we talk about having a meaningful work day, We don't mean that every minute of that day is going to be rich with meaning. But what we do mean is there's more time spent getting to what matters. And there's less time spent sort of in the moment in stress and overwhelm.

And accountability is coming from a positive place, a place that is future looking, building toward that future self rather than a punitive place of... rigid deadlines and self punishment. The second thing I want to mention is Cam's talking about his schedule and sort of rethinking what productive means. We recognize that not

everyone has the ability to have the flexible schedules that we have. And that's okay. But what I've noticed when I work with work teams or I speak at large workplaces, is that those of us with ADHD tend to feel a lot more guilty when we're not milking every hour of our eight-hour workday, when in reality, most workplaces are sort of... anticipating that productivity is not going to be a steady measure over an eight-hour workday.

traditional jobs and with the clients that I've worked with who have more traditional roles, there is an opportunity there to rethink what that eight hours looks like. So you may have eight hours at the workplace. And you may need a certain amount of those eight hours to be highly productive.

But there's still room there to step back and do some of the constructive or the self-care in service of having the executive function needed to tackle those bigger, more important things. Well said. So I want to go back to...

If we're kind of like setting aside time as a measurement, and again, this statement of you must be accountable for your time. So what we're asking you to do is kind of like, let's set time aside and look at other ways we can measure. a meaningful day. And you said something last week, Shelly, about, again, it was this term of positivity, of when you get a certain amount of sleep, you're able to show up with positivity.

And we surmised from that, that when you have positivity, you're adding value, you're having an impact, you are delivering the goods. And it's a different way. You're not measuring it by putting in hours. Can you say a little bit more about what are the elements of positivity? I guess I'm kind of curious from your client's perspective. When you're there, what are they getting?

Cam, to answer your question, I want to go back to my mom, who is a neurotypical, who throughout the years has tried to help me with statements like eat the frog. And who is a big believer in carpe diem and man, is she a morning person? So that was the siren song of my teenage years is come on, Shelly, carpe diem, seize the day. And I'm in bed like.

But for me, if you take the time element out of it, so take my mom and her 4.30 a.m. craziness out of it, carpe diem does kind of describe it. It is the difference between... Feeling like I am ready for this day and I am ready for what the day brings and I'm looking forward to the day versus I'm having to get through the day.

So who are my clients getting when I'm looking forward to the day? Well, they're getting a really enthusiastic partner that can't wait to talk to them and find out how their week has been and what has happened since the last time we spoke and where they're at. They're getting... that person that is excited to be on this journey with them rather than that person who is showing up for an hour session because it's on my calendar. And those are two very different people.

And it goes beyond just clients, although that is a big motivator for me is to always show up for my clients the best I can be, right? We talk about coaching presence as coaches. And so showing up with that coaching presence is important to me. To the point that if I really feel like I'm not going to have it, I'll cancel a session if I have to. I'll still do that to this day. But it makes the other things of the day.

The things that happen between client sessions. Right now, all of the do's of divorce, which... are a lot. I have a lot of extra tasks on my plate. My whole life's plan of let it be easy is kind of out the window right now because there are a lot of not easy things that I have to do. And I'm just talking about the logistical stuff, the opening new bank accounts and the whole nine yards. But when I start the day well slept and I'm looking forward to the best parts of my day.

which is stuff like doing this podcast and having my client sessions, then tackling some of the difficult stuff between those things is just so much easier. And not that there aren't other challenges there.

but it eliminates one big barrier of looking at it through that grumbly, growly lens. I love the way that you put that and to really start to think about and distinguish and anticipate the best parts of your day. Because I think that you can get up and if you're kind of locked in this, what's the point, soldier on and put in another eight hours. That mindset is a big part of establishing how we show up in our day.

But also, it's a good ADHD muscle to flex is to sort of challenge that notion and to really think about what are the best parts of my day coming up. And to kind of get up, get ready for those. I know we need to finish up. I'll say, again, this reminds me of a client who is in IT services and has a number of clients.

Again, he's on the front line of folks who are, you know, have server problems and email problems. And it's that very emotional. I don't remember my password, you know, and he's got to go in and kind of help him through. But he realizes that. When it really comes down to it, there are these sort of command performance moments that add up to about 15 minutes, four times a week, where he has to stand there in front of his customer and say, you know what?

It's going to be okay. And that's the real value right there in that moment. And if he's distracted or if he's like, again, not anticipating that and really showing up for that moment, well, that's where he came. you know, again, turned up all the volume to be present and then dials it back for everything else. You know what this reminds me of? It reminds me of Rosemary. Way back, the teacher who would, again, it was that over-deliver.

over deliver all the time. And she's showing up for every single thing, 110% comes home and thank God the bell rings and she comes home and she just flops on the sofa exhausted. But when she sort of realized, oh, wait. There are moments when I can dial it up and there are moments when I can dial it back. I don't have to bring everything all the time. There's that variability and we can be a little more strategic there.

And I think that that's the elements or those are some elements that really contribute to creating a meaningful workday. There's so much more here to explore. I'm so excited to look at this going forward, Shelley. Me too. I think it's an exciting topic and a theme that I'm hearing with your examples and with my own experience is shifting from a survival mindset to one of thriving.

I think those of us with ADHD can get stuck in a loop of surviving each day, waking up and oh, gotta muscle through, gotta. drag my way to the finish line day after day, and we're not looking at that bigger picture. So I'm excited to continue to have this conversation of how to thrive. So you're reminding me, I'm going to make two cam plugs.

And it's related to what you just said there of survive and thrive. I want to introduce one more. And this is something that I'm working on with Tamara Rozier at the fall conference, the fall ADHD conference, the big one. people. It's the big annual conference. It's virtual this year. And we're looking at the emotional health ladder. And you're distinguishing basically two of the ladder rungs. And so there are five in all.

And the three in the middle is, I think, where we mostly operate and sort of at the low end is surviving. In the middle is autopilot. It's kind of like going through the motions. You're not quite in survival. but you are kind of going through the motions and it's like, and it's autopilot. Where you create change is that the next one up is that thriving one. And we call that attending to.

That's what I'm noticing, again, in your work. When you really addressed your sleep and to show up with that positivity for those moments in your day with your clients, you're attending to. You're attending to. and recognizing what are the needs here? What are my needs in these different areas? And it's this attending, it's this presence, which I know it's hard with ADD when we're distracted, when we've got a million thoughts in our brains.

And we're going to talk about those million thoughts coming up of how to manage that. And not just like, oh, manage your distraction, people. We're never going to do that. The other plug is I wrote a book. on accountability. Is it okay if I plug this, Shelly? Is that all right? Is it okay if you plug your book on our show?

Is that okay? You know, because we're so bad about self-promotion here, Cam. Gosh, could you dial it down a little bit with the self-promotion the first time you've ever self-promoted? Yes, no. Please, by all means, because it's a wonderful resource. Yeah, so... I wrote a book on accountability with a colleague of ours, Casey Moore, and it's called Curious Accountability. It's for coaches, but if you're a manager, if you're a manager at work or...

Again, it's this sort of if you want to have a way to rethink accountability in more positive terms to take a look at it. And in the program notes, what we'll do is I'll give you a code to get a great deal on it. But it's out there. And again, it's a resource. The reason why I say this, you know, is because this whole notion around accountability is something that I've been thinking about for 10 years, for 15 years.

We are a resource here. Shelly and I, in a sense, people come to us for accountability and they have all these notions of what accountability is and isn't. And so we just want to let you know that we're a resource and we want to share that with you. So in the program notes, we'll go ahead and put a link and also a code that you can get a pretty good discount. And I just got to talk to Casey and convince her of that.

So I got to do that. The classic ADHD ready fire aim moment. Classic. Oh, yes. Note to Casey. Nah, she'll go with it. She'll go with it for sure. All right. I think we're good. I think this was good and this was awesome. All right. Well, until next week, I'm Shelly. And I'm Cam. And this was Translating ADHD. Thanks for listening. Thank you.