How to Get Refocused After Your Vacation
Last week was all about getting there and this week we're focusing on what to do when you get back. Travel disrupts our routines and habits - and we should take those disruptions seriously. One thing that I've had to learn over and over again is that ADHD makes transitions hard - and coming back from a trip is a big transition.
The good news is that we can make those transitions easier if we plan ahead for them.
Our best first step is taking stock of what our routines and habits look like right now. What does our evening routine look like? How about our morning routine? Have you been keeping up any good habits?
If you've been following along since the first episode you'll remember the concept of creating a toolbox and that's exactly what you should be doing here. Writing down all your tools, tactics and routines so that when you get home you know where you left off. And the most important things to identify are keystone habits. Keystone habits are an idea from Charles Duhigg's book, The Power of Habit, he describes them as “small changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their lives.”
Let's take a look at an example.
I tend to go to bed early because my kids get up early but actually getting myself to go to bed early can be tough. Once the kids are in bed I have all this free time that I can finish up chores, watch TV or play computer games. If I'm not careful I can find myself staying up way to late - I'm sure most of you can relate. But what I have found to be the biggest key to making sure I'm following my night time routine is putting my phone down early. Of all my evening distractions that one always pulls me to do just a little bit more - just one more video, just one more article or just a little more scrolling. It keeps pulling back in and it kills my chances of getting to bed on time.
To combat this, I've built up the habit of putting my phone down for the night at 7 when I put my kids to bed. I don't really need my phone with me while I'm reading them stories - it's not like taking a quick text in the middle of If You Give A Mouse A Cookie is going to go over very well. So I started leaving my phone outside of the room. I've got a simple ritual for this, I got myself a nice charging station and when it's time to get the kids to bed I just plug it in and put in the charging cradle. That little act signals to my brain that I'm done with my phone for the night and it makes it a whole lot easier to not pick it back up. I'm not saying this is fool proof but giving yourself a shut down ritual for things like putting down your phone or ending you work day really helps drive the message to your brain that you are moving onto the next part of your day.
Another part of this is that I keep my charging station outside of my bedroom, this also helps because I have the phone downstairs and out of the way so I'm not really seeing it much once the kids are in bed. I like keeping my phone out of the bedroom because I know that I'm more likely to play with it before bed if it's right there, if I can see it I'm more like to trying and check something real quick and it never ends up being actually real quick and as an added bonus I don't have to worry that when I wake up I'm going to be scrolling for thirty minutes. If I want to check my phone I have to go downstairs. I've found that my mornings go so much better when I can focus on myself rather than on my phone.
All that to say, putting my phone into it's charging station is a keystone habit. It's just a little change of where and when I put my phone down for the night and it has made the rest of my evening (and morning) routine that much easier.
What we want to do now is start off by identifying your keystone habits. What makes your routine easier to do? When you've identified those things write them down and make sure they are the first things that you are picking back up once you get back from your trip.
For you it might be something like:
Making sure that you're taking your meds first thing in the morning
Doing a weekly meal prep
Planning out your day
Your keystone habits make everything else easier and making sure you know what they are makes it a lot easier to pick them back up once you get back from your trip.
Once you get to your destination you are going to want to try and keep up as many of your habits and routines as you can. Of course this is easier said than done. If we look at my example of putting my phone down for the evening, I know I'm going to have a lot of trouble keeping that up - especially on the trip I'm on now. I don't have the cue of putting my kids to bed. I don't even have another room to put my phone in at the hotel.
Not to mention the time zones, I can't put my phone down at 7 if I want to talk with my family who is three hours behind me. So this is a routine that I'm accepting isn't going to get done while I'm here. That's okay, I have other things I can work at keeping up.
Like planning my day. Since I'm at the CHADD conference and there are a lot of things that I'm interested in seeing I'm going to have to make sure I'm managing my time well. There are also a lot of people I plan on seeing while I'm here. I can't make time for everything, but I can at least make sure I'm making time for the stuff that matters the most. I like planning my days the night before because I usually can't count on myself to actually make planning happen before the rest of my morning sweeps me away.
As long as you are getting creative about things there are a lot of routines that you can tweak just a little bit to keep going while you are on your trip. If you are regular exerciser you might not have the same equipment as you would at your regular gym but you can probably still find something to get you sweating in the hotel gym - or just go up and down the hotel stairs a few times. If you want to keep eating healthy you might have to do a little bit of shopping once you get to your destination so you aren't always eating out, or maybe just get a grocery delivery service that'll bring your shopping to your hotel room when you get there.
You've got a lot of options for keeping your good routines going. And by keeping them up it makes your transition back home a lot easier because you aren't trying to pick up any pieces, you're just staying on track the whole time.
Once you are back and you've got your list of routines and habits its time to put them back into practice. If you've been able to maintain most them that great, if not don't fret you can still get back on track.
What I like to utilize here is a habit tracker. Habit trackers are simply just a method of tracking whether you did something or not - everyday you just check off whether you did the thing or not. They are great at giving you a visual representation of the progress you are making (or not making) on a habit. However, habits trackers do have some downsides - the biggest one for me being the idea of streaks - as in, "look I've been keeping up this habit for 21 days, look at me go!" While this sounds great, I've often found that if I happen to break my streak it can completely destroy the system.
My worst example of this came when I didn't even actually break my streak - I was using the language learning app Duolingo and had a great streak going, I believe I had about 60 days in a row logged for practicing Spanish - but then Duolingo had a server side error that erased my streak and loss of progress just felt completely debilitating. Duolingo fixed the error in a day or two but the damage to my motivation was already done. And logically I knew that it didn't make any sense, but I couldn't get myself to keep going after that. And the point here is that sometimes your streaks are going to be broken because of something beyond your control, which mean you don't want your motivation to be solely seeing that streak number climbing higher and higher.
So why am I recommending a system that encourages streaks? Well you can hack the system. While listening to the College Info Geek podcast, co-host Martin Boehme, mentioned the system that he uses for tracking his habits, which is to only track two weeks at a time. With this kind of system you can't build up incredibly high streaks that you know you are never going to break - and missing a few days won't be nearly as demotivating since you are just starting over every two weeks. I've created a two week tracking document you can use.
Another method to make habit trackers more useful is to change how you are looking at your goals. Instead of going for streaks just have a running tally of how many times you did your habit. So I could create the goal of meditating 25 times total. If I meditated 3-4 times a week I'd hit that goal in about 4 weeks. Streaks put too much pressure on perfection and that in turn can reduce our motivation in the long run.
Just a reminder with habit tracking - don't try to do too much at once. Since we're just trying to track things that we were already doing I've got a few slots here, but let's try and remember that we're not trying to start new habits right now and when you do start a new habit you only want to be starting one habit at a time.
Now that we've got our tracker it's important to put the habits that we want to track on there. We want to start off with our keystone habits - if we can get those back down solidly we're in for a much better return to reality. Along with our keystones we also want to be making sure that we're talking care of ourselves - pick a couple self-care habits that you want to include. That might be getting to bed on time, packing a healthy lunch for work, or making time to walk your dog - self-care is one of those things that's easy to put off but you know what, I'm going to let you in on a secret here, those are all keystone habits as well. When you are taking care of yourself, everything else is easier.
Finally the last thing we want to be making sure we're doing is planning our day and checking that plan. In the ADHD reWired Coaching and Accountability groups Eric Tiver's has an exercise called the 20x5x5 - and in it you spend up to 20 minutes planning and then check that plan 5 times a day for 5 days in a row. While it might not sound that hard, it is really easy to forget to check your plan through out the day - but going over your plan is so important. I compare it to going to the grocery store and leaving your shopping list at home. You wrote everything down so you've got a good idea what you need but when you get home you see everything you forgot and everything you bought that you didn't need. If you're not checking your plan your going to get off track and end up buying gummy worms when what you needed was a roast chicken.
We're naturally off track when we're getting back from a trip - planning our days let's us set our intentions. So make time for planning - write down when are you going to be doing all those things on your habit tracker - remember you're not just going to find time, you need to make time. Schedule when are you going to be checking your schedule and also when are you going to be doing the next day's planning. And don't forget to set reminders for these things as well. We all know that when an ADHD brain gets in the flow of things everything else is easier to forget. And remember you'd don't have to follow you're plan to a T - you can move things around and add things. Stuff is always going to come up, but when you are planning ahead of time you make sure you're making time for the things that matter most.
This Episode’s Top Tips
Identify your routines and habits before your trip so that when you get back you know where to pick things back up. Make sure you are paying special attention to your
While you are traveling try and keep up as many of your habits and routines. If you need to, you can make small tweaks to them to make them easier while you are away.
Make sure you are planning your days and regularly checking that plan once you get back. You can use a habit tracker to make sure you are follow through with all of your intentions.
