Get Going with a Fresh Start
When I'm feeling lost one of the ideas that I often jump to is getting a fresh start or a reset — the idea is that I know things need to change and I want to be able to say, "this is the new me." It's the idea that I can disassociate from my past performance and create a new era for myself. That I've got a clean slate and that old me isn't going to be holding back the new me.
For a lot of people, we see this with their New Year's Resolutions — we also see a lot of advertising with things like New Year, New You. Although, the most popular time for a fresh start is your birthday. It's a lot more personalized then — maybe you're turning 30 and you decide that it's time for a change and that flipping of the digit feels significant.
While there really is nothing special about these dates, it doesn't matter, because they feel special. Starting your new exercise routine on a Monday or a Thursday won't make a big difference, but they do feel different.
And this can be a bit of a dangerous thing. It can allow us to procrastinate on starting and it can lead us to binge. Perhaps you're going to try and cut down how much you watch TV starting Monday... but since it's still the weekend you decide to binge as many series as you can before Monday rolls around. And oh, better finish this up Sunday night and you stay up extra late watching TV and now on Monday you feel like crap and have no energy... well I guess if I'm going to lie on the couch I might as well watch some TV since I'm not doing anything else. And then oh man... well I messed up starting on Monday and I don't want to start on a Tuesday... guess I'll just wait until next week.
But with ADHD we can also be on the impulsive side of things. This can lead us into trying to make these big changes without thinking them through. We might decide to try a new diet two days before Thanksgiving or we might decide to give up internet browsing without figuring out what we’re going to spend our new free time on.
A lot of that also stems from the fact that the changes we’re trying to make are too big. Along with our impulsiveness comes impatience - I want that beach body now. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t been in the gym in years, I’m going to start following Dwayne The Rock Johnson’s workout plan and just kill it - cue to two days later where we can’t summon the energy to get out of a chair.
The trick for us is finding that balance between impulsiveness and procrastination.
While we are typically looking for ways to create a clean slate we don't have to start with something new - there are tons of habits and routines that I've had over the years that have fallen to the wayside for one reason or another. A fresh start is a great way for us to reestablish some of the routines that we might benefit from again.
One of the habits that kind of fell by the wayside for me was nighttime eating - pre-pandemic I was fairly good about limiting my eating in the evenings. My goal was that after I put the kids in bed at 7, that I wouldn't have any more snacks for the night. The main reason for this is that I found that if I was eating sugary snacks before bed I'd find myself having blood-sugar spikes in the middle of the night that would wake me up. When I stopped eating those snacks I had fewer nighttime wake-ups.
This wasn't really about limiting what I could eat - but it does mean I have to be more mindful about eating enough before 7 so I'm not hungry after the kids are in bed. I don't need to stuff myself or anything, I just need to make sure that I'm eating enough fats and proteins that I'm not going to find myself roving for quick snacks to eat while winding down my day.
Since I already knew most of the mechanics for this habit, it was more about reminding myself what my intentions were. This meant that reestablishing this habit wasn't a big ask, it was just something where I needed to create just a little more of a push for myself to make it happen again.
So why bring up fresh starts now?
Well for a lot of people we're looking to start getting our life back to some sort of normalcy - and let me be clear here that I know that COVID isn't over, but it is starting to look like there are going to be some aspects of your life that you should be able to reclaim - and even if that isn't the case we can still work on defining what you want the next half of the year to look like.
Another thing I want people to keep in mind that I mentioned above is that there isn't any specific date that makes anyone fresh start better than any other. In fact, I'm sure there are a lot of people who are listening to this after the start of July and have missed the half-year mark - it just happens to be a convenient date to go from for when I'm releasing this episode. We could as easily go from your birthday to the start of the next month to the start of next week.
The important part here is that you pick your date that you're going to start on - because here's the thing with ADHD, we can easily procrastinate on things. This might lead us to argue that, hey why not just start today? Well, that might not be the best idea - are you ready? Do you have a plan put together? Jumping in too early on something can easily get us frustrated when we're not ready for the challenges that come our way.
Setting a date gives us a soft deadline.
However, as with all deadlines, it's going to need something more or we're just going to completely ignore it. When I say soft-deadline what I mean is that it's basically a rough draft. It gives us an idea of when we want things to happen, but they also won't be any consequences if we don't hit it. Deadlines are a great tool to get us motivated to finish up what we're working on, but they don't work if we know we can just blow them off. I know I've fallen into that trap many times, it's easy to believe that this time will be different.
There are a lot of ways that we can work on setting consequences and the level you want to go with is up to you. It can easily just start with some social pressure of telling someone what you're going to do to create some accountability. Or maybe it's a class you're signing up for and so there is an incentive of things starting regardless if you're ready. You could hire a coach or use an online service like Stickk that allows you to create a commitment and put money on the line if you don't follow through.
But let's be clear here that just having consequences isn't always enough for ADHD - I have paid the ADHD tax enough times to know that just having money on the line is not enough to make sure something happens.
There have been plenty of classes I signed up for and never showed up to.
There are bills I didn't get sent in on time that I got fined for.
So yeah, would I rather not lose the money, absolutely, but that on its own doesn't guarantee that I'm getting it done. I mean maybe if it was a ridiculous amount of money, but I still wouldn't just bet on me remembering. To really make sure I'd put some other things in place so that I'm not relying on my completely unreliable memory. I know it sounds obvious, but the number of times I've thought, well hey, I'm going to remember this time is... well I don't actually remember how often it happens, but way more than I'd like. This really just illustrates the point more that we can't just rely on our motivation to remember something. Stuff happens and I get focused on that and the thing that I thought I'd never forget slips out of my brain and whoops now I'm way past the window where I could return those items.
So while a financial incentive can help create motivation it isn't the only thing we're going to need.
To go along with those consequences what we want to have as well is a plan that is going to help us keep on track.
I mentioned New Year's Resolutions earlier - looking at the follow through on New Year's resolutions one thing that's abundantly clear is that a lot of people don't get very far on them. For some people, that's a sign that we should give up on making goals - but I think when we're talking about New Year's Resolutions is that most people aren't really thinking them through.
One thing that's become absolutely clear to me is that most people don't have a good sense of how to approach goal setting. And it's no wonder. I mean I never had a class on how to set effective goals or how to plan out a project. Those are things I guess I was just sort of expected to pick up... or learn on my own. Except when it's something that you don't know you need to learn you never make the time for it.
Recently while I was clearing out some books from years ago I found an old goals list from more than a decade ago.
It was interesting to see the list, but there were a number of things that really stuck out to me.
First, there were just too many things on the list. While there are always going to be countless things I want to work on and new things I want to do, there is also only so much time in a year. With time blindness we're fairly poor at estimating what we can accomplish in a single day - when we apply this idea to a year we tend to be off by a huge factor.
And to make it worse it wasn't prioritized in any way - in my head, I thought I'd just do all of these things at once.
Let's stop here for a second because this is important - even more so in the context of a fresh start - if we want to create meaningful change in our life, we need to prioritize and really nail those things that are going to make the biggest differences. Trying to completely reinvent yourself with a fresh start is a recipe for disaster. I know it's hard to make one change at a time but trying to change multiple things at a time just makes it exponentially harder. As we recently heard from Eric Tivers in the last episode, we can do hard things, but we don't have to do them in the hardest way possible.
Okay, back to my ill-fated 2010 goals list.
Now, I could forgive all that if I had one more thing included with those goals, and that's a plan.
This list of goals was just a wish list. I had no idea how I was going to do these things, they were just ideas I had while writing out this piece of paper. To be fair, that is an okay place to start - in fact, it's a lot easier if you have an idea of the destination that you want to reach. But imagine you're planning a trip and you go, I'm going to drive to New York City on Friday. And that's the extent of my plan - no looking at google maps, just going to jump in my car and go. I live in Washington State. I mean I'm sure that if I drove East enough that I'd probably find my way there eventually. I mean it wouldn't be straight there but with some circling, I got get there. Probably.
But I'd be doing this task in one of the hardest ways possible. I mean I could literally just look up some directions... and hey do you think that maybe someone else has had a goal like yours before? That maybe you could at least find some directions that might help you with your goals? I mean, that's probably one of the reasons that you listen to this podcast.
Journey before Destination.
I'm not going to be able to scratch the surface of helping everyone map out their goals here, but the idea here is that you don't have to come up with these ideas from scratch. Of course, we're going to have to modify these ideas with the fact that we have ADHD in mind. We need to make sure that we're putting reminders in place so that we're keeping these goals top of mind.
I talked about accountability earlier - having someone that you can check in with is a great way to stay on track. Having visual reminders is great to - write up your plan and stick it on your fridge - make it the background for your phone. Anything that will help remind you that, hey, this is important.
But our most important aspect of planning is going to be flexibility.
It's easy for us to fall into all-or-nothing when it comes to planning. I'm going to go to the gym every day of the week or I'm not going to go at all kinds of things.
Saying it out loud makes it sounds a lot more ridiculous. We know that just doing a little bit is still better than doing nothing and yet this thought pattern exists. What this means for us is that we need to build a lot more flexibility into our plans. That can start with lowering some of the barriers to success - instead of hitting the gym every day maybe make it a goal to go at least twice a week.
Another way we can build in flexibility is by having set times that we're going to check in on our plans. No matter how we plan we are going to end up missing certain things and need to make changes. By scheduling a time to go over our plans and make these changes we're better able to adapt when things do hit the fan. Initially, you may want to schedule a time a week or two in to see what changes need to happen and then beyond that having a monthly check-in on your planning can be incredibly useful.
Finally, I just want to again remind everyone that while we are thinking about a fresh start, we aren't trying to completely change ourselves overnight. All we need to do is to make small changes that we can sustainably keep up. While it might feel like we aren't getting anywhere at first, all we have to do is look back and see how far we've already come.
This Episode’s Top Tips
Fresh starts can help us let go of our past performance and embrace our new self.
We can effectively create motivation with financial incentives, but often that isn't enough for us to follow through on some of the things that we really do want to do. We also need to create reminders and a plan on how we want to accomplish our goals.
Don't try and do all the new things at once - pace yourself and create a plan on what you want to do first. Try and focus on doing the things that by doing them will make everything else easier.
We need to be flexible with our plans because we are going to hit speed bumps - while we can't plan for everything we can work on ways to help us get back up when we get knocked down.
