This week, we’re diving into another listener question.
“Hi, William. I'm Emily, and I live in Chicago, Illinois. I'm a lifelong gardener and love growing flowers, veggies, houseplants, and more. As someone with ADHD, plant care is something I either hyperfixate on or procrastinate and ignore because of all the things that my plants need to thrive. For some reason, creating routines around plant care has been really challenging for me.”
Hey Emily, I love this question because there are always all these things that we want to do that we find so difficult to get into unless we’re falling into hyperfocus. And really, I think that this addresses a key piece of ADHD: getting started can be the hardest part, even on the things that we want to do. So, I’m going to expand this to talking about more than just gardening, although I’ll try and keep your specifics in mind as I go. There are these things that we love to do yet find ourselves unable to do consistently. For a lot of hobbies, that isn’t always too much of a problem, but with plant care… well, I think we’ve all had a plant or two that we’ve lost because we forgot to water it for a week or two.
Honestly, as I started answering this question, I figured that I’d be adding a couple of other questions into this episode, but as I got going, there were a lot of things that I was able to get into. From the different types of fun, to blocking fun out on our calendars to how we can work on lower the resistance to getting started.
So, while gardening might not be your thing, there is still a lot you can get out of this episode because we cover a lot of ground.
If you’d like to send me a question answer on the show feel free to head over to hackingyouradhd.com/contact and click the orange button
You’re right on the money with the idea of creating routines around your plant care, but of course, building routines is hard. I find that it is especially hard for me to build routines around things that I enjoy doing. Not because of the enjoyment part but more from the baggage I have around the idea of when I should be doing fun stuff and taking breaks. For me, I’m often more focused on work-related tasks when I’m planning, and the fun stuff simply comes in as fun little extra things I do in my day. But this is a terrible way to think about how we’re allocating our time (and it’s definitely something I’m still working on).
So, I’m here to remind you (and myself) that it is important to prioritize the things that bring joy to your life. That means it’s important to build these routines in a proactive way.
One of the reasons that this approach is so important is that if we look at how we spend our time throughout the day, we’re going to find that we, in fact, do have a lot of time where we are not being productive. Having cut my teeth on these topics in the productivity blog-sphere, my initial thoughts are about how I can reclaim that time into productive ventures. How I should be setting up more app blocks on my phone and trying to eke out even more work every hour.
This is not the answer.
What we’re really seeing here is our natural need to take breaks and insert fun throughout our day. I’m way less likely to find myself procrastinating if I know I have fun stuff planned later in the day. If I know I just have another solid four blocks of work for myself, however, well, my brain is going to find ways for me to take the breaks I need, and often, those breaks aren’t even all the refreshing because I’m still not really doing the things I want to do.
This means that the first thing we want to look at is when we want to put gardening into our schedule. We want to block off time that is protected, meaning that it isn’t something that we just easily schedule over. This is time that we deem important. Time that we’ve blocked out for something that we want to do. It’s easy to think we’ll just find time for the fun things, but I rarely ever find myself without a lot to do, so trying to find time for something that is going to take effort rarely happens.
I think it’s important to distinguish between type 1 and type 2 fun. Type 1 fun is things that are fun at the moment that we really enjoy—this would be something like playing a video game or enjoying a good meal. Type 2 fun is stuff that we enjoy in retrospect but may be hard or stressful at the moment—this might be more like hiking a difficult trail or learning a new skill.
With that in mind, there are also those who also have a classification of type 3 which is neither fun in the present nor the past. I don’t think we really need examples for this kind of “fun” because, really, what we’re talking about is just not fun. But I think having that last category helps when we think about this scale of fun in terms of a spectrum. Instead of just seeing something as type 1 or type 2, we can think about how there are things that will be enjoyable in the moment but not in retrospect. Things that are terrible at the time and take a while to recover from but are perhaps immensely gratifying as a story you share around the campfire a few years later.
With ADHD, we tend to gravitate towards a lot of type 1 activities because they bring that immediate dopamine to our systems. But that doesn’t always lead to long-term satisfaction, so it’s important that we make sure that we’re engaging with type 2 fun as well. But this doesn’t mean that we have to do things that we just don’t enjoy doing—we don’t want to stray into the territory of type 3 fun, which is no fun at all.
With gardening, I imagine that you experience both type 1 and type 2 fun, but it probably skews more towards type 2. This can make it hard to engage when there are plenty of type 1 activities that are easier to start right in front of you. With this in mind, I think one of the most important steps we can take is working on decreasing resistance to starting and increasing fun in the moment.
As we discussed earlier, ADHD can make starting anything more difficult, even the things we want to do. This is especially true when we’re thinking about something that is going to take a bit to get into.
This reminds me that we should talk a little bit about the three parts of a task here because I think that also plays into how well we’re able to engage with what we’re doing. Often, when we think about a task, we’re only thinking about the doing part, but in reality, a task is made up of the set-up, the doing, and the clean-up. The set-up is whatever it is that we need to do to get ready for what we’re doing. Then we do the task, and importantly, we have a step where we have our clean up. Now, I want to be clear that clean-up isn’t just about cleaning; it’s about setting ourselves up so that the next time we want to do this task or something in this space, we’re ready to do that thing. So that the setup next time doesn’t involve cleaning up the mess we left from last time.
This is important to consider when we think about task initiation because if we don’t think about what we need to do to get set up, it can make starting up even harder when we realize that we still need to do a few things before we can even get going, and now we’ve killed our momentum to get started. On the backend, we should make sure that we’re building in clean-up time so that we’re not making the start-up even harder for next time.
But back to our task initiation bit, if we know that getting started is going to be hard for us, then we can try and figure out ways to make getting started easier. We can put our gardening stuff in a place that is easier for us to get to. We can plan on just doing a little bit and seeing if that will get us fired up to do more. Whatever it takes to get you over that initial hurdle of starting.
With that initial hurdle, we can also consider what would make things more enjoyable. This is going to sound strange, but I’ve really gotten back into listening to music while I do chores, which has been surprisingly helpful. I say it’s strange just because, typically, when doing chores, I’d focus more on listening to a podcast or an audiobook. So I just find it funny that switching up the kind of audio I’ve been listening to has really helped.
Another thing that can make an activity like this more enjoyable is doing it with someone else, either in person or virtually. While I’ve been working on this script I’ve been body doubling online, which has been great for keeping on track. But there is no reason that you can’t use that same tool for following through with the fun things in life. Really, this is an excellent use for these tools. Remember, we’re putting this stuff on the calendar because it’s important, and that means we can use tools like body doubling because, again, this stuff is, in fact, important.
Now, before we wrap up, one place I also think is worth exploring here is that hyperfocus that you talked about, which can be great when we really need to work on something, but it isn’t something that we always wanted to be engaged in. We can also have some resistance to starting tasks if we have the fear of engaging in hyperfocus at inopportune times. I know I have to be considerate about the types of tasks I’m engaging in when I know I have 10 minutes to kill before I have to go pick up my kids—definitely don’t want to fall into hyperfocus and be late on that.
This is another place where accountability works great—text your friend, “Hey, I’m going to be doing a little bit of gardening for 30 minutes. I’ll text you when I’m done. Call me if you don’t hear from me.” Or again, body doubling with someone online usually means there is going to be a cutoff point.
We also want to be setting up our own systems to help us out as well. Timers are a great option here as long as they get your attention. It also might be good to have something that will alert you when you have 5-10 minutes to go so you can start cleaning up and then have another go off when it’s time to be done.
While working on this, I also asked my wife if she had any ADHD tips specifically for gardening and plant care, so we’ll finish up with a few of those.
First on the list is to try and focus on plants that are hard to kill. Succulents can be a great option here with their low water needs. Similarly, we had a peace lily that lived for years despite our inconsistent watering—sure, it would wilt and look completely dead, but that was really just our reminder to water it, and it would perk right back up.
Additionally, there are self-watering pots that can help relieve some of the stress of daily watering.
Way back when I had an episode where I recommended the Tody app for keeping track of household chores, this can be a great place to have general reminders about plant care and reminders for the bigger, more seasonal things. While we use the Tody app, there are also plenty of other great apps that you can use that help with reminders about what needs to happen in your garden.
Talking about seasons, one thing to watch out for is impulse buying plants from big retail chains like Home Depot or Lowes. They tend to roll out their plants based on a national calendar rather than what is in season locally, so make sure to check what is in season in your area before buying.
Finally, remember to put on sunscreen before going out because nothing throws off your gardening plans like a bad sunburn.
All right, I hope this helps!
This Episode’s Top Tips
Block off dedicated time for gardening in your calendar to ensure it's prioritized and protected. Our brains are going to make time for us to take time off regardless, so be proactive and choose how you want to spend that time.
To balance enjoyment and satisfaction, differentiate between Type 1 (immediate fun) and Type 2 (retrospective fun) activities.
You can break down tasks into three parts: setup, doing, and clean-up to reduce resistance and ensure a smoother start (and finish).