How to ADHD has really been on the money lately with incredible work tips that have really sung to me.

Taking on too much work. 

Ah YES! Over committing is a huge challenge for my life for a number of reasons.  Living a life in line with your values seemed a bit like the title of a pop psych book from the 90s (and personal baggage for another time). However stepping back for a minute and looking at what life values I need to prioritise was really great. Instead of fitting in one more request for other people, I really need to hit pause and take time out for myself, and the things on the top of my value list that I’m ignoring.  Things like personal health and relationships.

One way that I’m looking at that at the moment is by monitoring my emotional health using the Daylio app.  It also tracks potentially related stuff like healthy eating, exercise and personal timeouts.  Because the best way to get an over committed data junkie to take time out is with the lure of more data.

The other thing is Trello.  I talk about this a lot.  I have a personal Kanban for projects that I need to achieve and hard and soft deadlines for that.  For other work requests I’m building in two times a day of 30 minutes where I clear &/or prioritise those requests. Of course I can’t ignore everyone (as much as that sounds like heaven) but it does mean that I can block out times to focus and on what task knowing that the alerts will get dealt with in their own space.

Monotasking

That’s a great segue into the other great vlog –  Monotasking.  It’s a great reminder about the illusion that multitasking is somehow good.  I’ve known for a long time that my brand autistic neurotype deals with interruptions by crashing my brains hard drive.  It’s no secret that changing my focus requires a good 5-10 seconds to shelve what I was doing and making the turn.  Even then it takes a bunch of effort to do.  But split focus is also a pain for other neurotypes.  

Monotasking is a great way to do lots well.  Blocking out slabs of time to get things done.  It’s also good to block in slabs of time to do social or answer people’s questions.  It’s an idea I want to try out more and see how it goes.

Here are the two quick YouTube eps that I’m talking about.  Love to hear the ways you are hacking your work for your brain.