Slowing Down: Time Management

Hey team, this week we’re going to be talking about slowing down. One of the worst parts of ADHD is that we often feel like we have to do all of the things right now. That if we don’t jump from task to task to task, we’re just not going to get anything done. We live a life where we only have two modes, doing nothing and super speed. It’s exhausting, and we often find ourselves missing important things because we can’t keep up that pace.

In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about how we can work on slowing down and trying to find a more comfortable middle ground between those two modes.

When I’m talking about slowing down, there are a few key areas that we need to be thinking about because slowing down isn’t as straightforward as it might seem. This is because when we’re talking about slowing down, we’re not really talking about doing things slower - although it is kind of amusing to me to picture myself doing the dishes in slow motion.

What we’re talking about is primarily about doing less. This seems like it should be a simple fix, just do fewer things - but now we have to choose which things we’re doing because if we’re just taking our todo list and lopping off the bottom half, we’re going to find that, hey, maybe there was some important stuff in that half.

In fact, when we look at our to-do lists, we tend to see them as all important things - and that’s part of our problem here. Sure, there are going to be some gimmies that we can take off our lists fairly easily - things where we’re not entirely sure how they ended up on our lists in the first place. But for the most part, when we’re looking at our to-do lists, we’re seeing a never-ending list of tasks that just keeps growing.

How can we do less when we already feel like we’re behind? But if we want to break free of that feeling of being behind, the answer has to be doing fewer things. The issue is that we’re truly never going to be caught up on doing everything. I mean, that concept doesn’t even particularly make sense, especially from my ADHD perspective. If I ever got to a point where everything on my to-do list somehow got completed, well, I’d find new things that I wanted to do.

There are three areas that we are going to need to focus on when we’re talking about slowing down, time management, task management (memory), and activation energy.

Today we’re going to focus on the time management side of slowing down. And really, we started on this piece last week when we were talking about important but not urgent tasks.

Part of what’s going on here is that when we’re on the urgency train and jumping from deadline to deadline, we’re only focused on what’s in front of us right now, not what’s actually important to us. And I think this is a crucial distinction for us to make because it’s incredibly easy to feel like those urgent tasks are the most important things.

But again, this isn’t as simple as just taking your to-do list and truncating the bottom half. Part of the reason that we like to go fast and do all the things with ADHD is that when we do all the things, we don’t have to necessarily choose which things we’re doing; we’re just trying to do it all. And the key points to emphasize here are trying and not necessarily choosing because we all know that with that method, stuff is always falling through the cracks, and so we’re not getting all the stuff done, and what we’re not prioritizing is essentially what we’re choosing not to do.

Now I want to be clear here because this sounds a lot like the refrain we hear, “if we cared, we’d make time for it,” which I know is not the case. We’re legitimately trying to do all of the things; it’s just that we’re not good at judging what we’re actually capable of. We are trying to commit to doing these things in good faith, even if it’s beyond our ability to do. So I’m not saying that we’re purposely not prioritizing them; what I’m saying is that we’re bad at prioritizing.

Now our question here becomes, well how can I get better at prioritizing? Because this isn’t an obvious answer when we’ve spent so much time only prioritizing the things that are most urgent. For right now what we want to focus on here is looking at the tasks that are going to make everything else easier to do. And sometimes that second part happens in ways that aren’t always obvious - because let’s say you have something that’s hanging over you that’s taking up a lot of mental space. If you can find a way to either complete that task or off-load it, than having that off your plate is going to make everything else easier.

On that note we’re also going to want to focus on completing tasks that aren’t going to be adding additional work to our plates. Sometimes that’s going to be unavoidable, but when we’re trying to prioritize and help ourselves slow down, what we don’t want to be doing is adding new things to do.

And finally here we can focus on tasks that we’re going to feel good about having completed. Sure, doing the dishes isn’t always the most important thing for me to be doing, but having a clean kitchen makes me feel better and when I’m feeling better it makes it easier for me to focus on the other things I need to be getting done.

Our most important trick here is letting ourselves slow down enough to do this planning and figuring out those things that are our priorities.

But another reason that we tend to take on too much is that we can also feel a need to maintain momentum - this is highly based on our fear that if not now, when? or perhaps more accurately, if I don’t do this thing this instant, am I ever going to find the motivation to actually complete this project?

And I really understand this fear; there have been so many projects that I’ve started but been unable to follow up on because, after my initial burst of energy, I just didn’t have the motivation again.

This was a topic that I considered a lot when I was writing about energy management and having low-capacity days. When I get those days where everything is clicking I often try to squeeze more and more out of my day because I know that the following days I tend to be drained… but what if what’s really going on is that I’m overexerting myself and am in fact causing those burnout days from that overexertion. That is to say that if I didn’t try and squeeze out every last drop of my high cap days, if instead I allowed myself to have a more reasonable schedule then perhaps I wouldn’t have as many low capacity days.

Now I understand there are times when we need to push through and get more done, but I think our real issue is that we simply need to slow down. While I’m a big advocate for rest and recovery, I also think that we wouldn’t need nearly as much of it if we let ourselves go a bit slower.

And I know, how can I slow down when I’m already not getting enough done?

Well one of the advantages of slowing down is that we can use that to be more precise with our actions.

So this goes back to what we were talking about at the beginning because I’m not simply advocating for us to do less. When we’re doing less, we have to be more economical with what we’re doing. If I’m going to be choosing the things I spend my time on, I want to be sure that I’m doing the right things. And I’m not going to lie, this is kind of a scary proposition - part of the appeal of doing all the things is that I don’t have to figure out what’s most important, I can just hope it shakes out in my favor.

This is where last week’s episode about the important but not urgent comes in - and I also want to be clear here about what important means, because that’s something that I get caught up in. For a long time I subscribed to an idea that what’s something important is the value that that thing produces. But not only that, what was important was how other people valued it. This meant that it was incredibly easy for me to write off things that weren’t aligned with those outside values. But if something matters to you, regardless of what it is, that makes that thing important.

Doing things with friends is important. Pursuing your hobbies is important. Spending time relaxing is important.

It’s never going to be urgent that I spend the time to learn how to do pixel art and it’s not something I ever want to do commercially but I think it would be fun and it’s something that I want to do and that in it’s self makes it important. Just that I want to do it. That’s all it takes to make something important. And if it’s important than I need to make time for it.

And there in lies a quandry of this episode - how can we both do less and do more?

And I think that’s why the theme is slowing down - what we’re really doing is trying to refocus our efforts. Because all in all, we’re still going to have the same amount of time in the day, we’re still going to be using that same amount of time. The question is how are we using that time? And are we enjoying our use of that time?

What becomes apparent with this paradigm is that we need focus our efforts on scheduling fewer things for ourselves throughout the day. When we’re rushing for one thing to the next we’re not giving ourselves time for all of the other important things in our lives. We’re preventing ourselves from taking those breathers that we absolutely need and we’re forcing ourselves to always be rushing to the next thing because we didn’t give ourselves enough time for what we’re working on right now.

If I’m doing less, it becomes more important that I’m doing the right things. Fortunately, that is a lot easier when I’m going slower because I’m being less reactionary. I’m getting to choose what I want to work on and giving myself enough time to do it.