One of the questions that I frequently get is how people can actually apply what they're learning - in this podcast and from all the other things we learn. I know this is a particularly pernicious problem for ADHD because often we see things that we think would really make a difference in our lives, and yet we can't seem to get ourselves to apply these ideas.

Today we're going to exploring how we can start working on getting a better understanding of what we're learning, why we might want to start limiting what we're consuming and how to solidify those learnings into our lives.

I imagine that a lot of you have heard of the famous razor before, which states that: plurality should not be posited without necessity. Now I'm sure that's perfectly clear for most of you, but for my benefit I'm going to do a bit of unpacking on that phrase, cause plurality should not be posited without necessity seems a bit dense to me.

One of the most important aspects of planning is knowing where you've been and this typically comes from some kind of review process. The reason for the review is so that we can plan an accurate course based on where we are now. But that review is also a lot easier said than done. I've sat down for many a review sessions and realized that I don't have a great way to look back. I'll skim through my calendar and wonder what exactly happened over the last few weeks or months and kind of shrug and go... stuff?

And what that means is that we want to look at how we measure our success - so today we're going to be talking about how we set our goals, how we can work on measuring their outcomes and also questioning what actually makes a good measurement.

Sequencing is something I’ve come to realize is a big deal with ADHD. The order in which we do things has a big impact on our overall productivity, but more than that, some of our other issues with ADHD make the sequence in which we do things much more important

Exploring the idea of capacity, how we sometimes go above and beyond, and how we can work on build some slack into our systems.

The first thing we've got to understand is that when we ask, when should I quit? We're also asking, when should I persevere? And they often serve as the same answer - I should quit when it doesn't make sense to keep going. I keep going when it doesn't make sense to quit. Unfortunately is really easy to get those messages mixed up and with ADHD we've all got a trail of unfinished projects and ideas that are weighing us down every time we need to make this decision again.

We all know that one of the biggest hurdles from ADHD is starting, but paradoxically one of our other hurdles is stopping. Sometimes it feels like we're better off if we just power through until we're done, but if we really want to get the most out of our work days, we need to have some breaks.

In part one I talked about some of the ways resistance keeps us from starting, how comparing ourselves to others slows us down, and what we crave and what we need to grow don't always match.

Here we'll be continuing to explore the idea of resistance. We'll be looking at ways we can work on overcoming resistance by planning, setting our intentions, and even calling in a little help.

No matter the game teams are going to be playing on both offense and defense, but what I often saw was that teams that had an offensive mindset often were able to take advantage and play better. What I mean by playing offensively is that you are setting the terms of engagement. Instead of reacting to what the other team is doing, you are making them react to you.

We've got a lot going on so planning is more important than ever - I mean going to the grocery store takes a lot more fore thought than it used to. But planning also seems harder than ever before as well, so today we're going to be looking at what to do when plans go awry and how to adjust our long-term planning. 

I hope everyone listening is staying home and staying safe. I know that everyone is going through a hard time right now and ADHD isn't making it any easier. So today we're going to be talking about what we can do to try and regain some of that control you may feel you have lost in your life. We'll be talking about staying in contact with friends, setting up routines and using accountability. We'll also be talking about ways to get in a little more self-care.

A few weeks ago I got a ping on my phone reminding me to take our trash bins out to the curb for pick up the next morning. As I was wheeling the bin out, I thought about how funny it was that I rarely miss a trash day, but that's only because I have reminders in my phone and calendar.

As we jump into planning 2020 there are a number of things that we want to keep in mind.

Before we get started on planning out how amazing our 2020 is going to be, it is important to look back and remember everything that we accomplished in 2019. An entire year is a long time to try and remember so we’re going to use some tools to help jog our memories before we really jump into reflecting on how the year went.

If you're struggling to figure out your priorities, you're not alone. Picking out the tasks that are going to make the biggest difference is a hard thing to do and something that we're kind of just expected to understand - yet often there's no clear reason why doing task A is better than doing task B.

We all picture different things when we think about the holidays. Some people think about family and food, others think about putting up all those sparking lights and some people think about the shopping - but one thing we all probably think about is all the things we have to do.

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.

Having a clear understanding of our goals allows us to implement better strategies and tactics. If we don't have a clear understanding of why implementing a certain strategy is important we're not really going to stick with it. Adherence is one of the most important factors when it comes to planning. It doesn't matter what you plan to do if you don't follow through with those plans.