Quick disclaimer up top,
I'm not a doctor,
Medical school,
No thank you.
As such,
This advice is not of the medical nature.
This is fun way to body double your way through prioritizing.
Let's see if it works.
All right,
Welcome back to part three.
In part one,
We got the overwhelm out of our head and we externalized onto paper or whatever fun app we're using for our to-dos.
In part two,
We talked about how to initially interact with our big list of to-dos and ideas.
We identified the fires that needed to be dealt with and you've dealt with them.
I am assuming here,
I am assuming you dealt with them.
You currently have nothing that has to happen today on your to-do list that has a major consequence.
If you do,
Please pause this,
Go take a deep breath.
Take care of those fires.
Fires first,
Always.
And if you've handled that,
Then you have no items where something truly bad happens if you don't do it today.
We still have plenty of priorities to sift through,
But at least we've cleared out the fires.
All right,
If that's where you're at,
Then you're ready for the next steps.
Make sure you've got your notebook that has all of your to-dos on it,
And we're gonna go through it again,
Line by line.
And this is why we only do this once a week,
Because man,
This is homework,
And I don't know about you,
I don't like homework.
Study buddies here and we'll do this together.
And this is where I diverge from some people.
We're all in various phases of life.
Some of us are solopreneurs.
Some of us are stay at home parents.
Some of us are artists or work in corporations.
How you determine priorities is going to be unique to you.
So let's now go through the list again,
Using your own unique prioritization methodology.
Some people will say to create an Eisenhower matrix where you do the quadrants for importance and urgency.
And I'm not going to go into all the various ways that you can do this to complicate this talk.
Some people say to find out what has to be done in the next seven days or something bad happens.
Or some people say,
Do this for the next three days.
I like to be more free with this.
We have ADHD and to do's are often really sloggy.
My belief about any of these to do's is that if we're putting it on paper,
Then we said we wanted to do it.
It has been declared.
So at some point we're going to put a black Sharpie through it and we're going to do it at some point.
So now let's take another pass at this and ask yourself,
Is this to do something that I want to get done this week?
Let's pull the word need out of it.
Let's pull the word have to or should out of it.
And let's honor the fact that we know what has to get done or that we think would be ideal if we got it done this week.
We're not grabbing things from thin air.
We're taking the things that we've said we wanted to do.
We'll automatically know if something is going to be a fire this week.
So we'll already know to identify that as something to get done this week.
So what do you want to achieve this week?
Is there anything fun on that list?
Not everything in life has to be a need to do.
Adults with ADHD would do well for themselves if we included some like to do's in our ugly pile of need to do's.
So for this pass on your brain dump,
Go through and identify what you are intending to get to over the next week.
And as you go through each item,
Cross off anything that you've done already.
Those fires that you take care of.
Of,
I love a solid black marker,
Just eliminate it from existence.
And if you see something when you go line by line that it doesn't apply anymore,
You're like,
I'm not going to do that.
This doesn't make sense.
I don't know why I wrote that down.
Well,
Then take a marker to it,
Get rid of it.
And if something new pops up,
Write that down on that brain dump.
Remember,
This is not a one and done.
You are going to keep adding and subtracting to this.
This is why it's important to have one place,
One notebook to rule them all.
It's a bit of your scaffolding on how you manage your ADHD.
How many of us are used to like cobbling together multiple notebooks?
So where did I write these things down?
Is it over here?
Is it over there?
It can be,
This adds to the overwhelm.
One notebook,
Eliminates a bit of that overwhelm.
Okay,
What do you want to get done this week?
Press pause and go after that list,
And then I'll have some final words.
All right,
By now you have the items that you wanna get done this week.
You've got seven days.
Okay,
When are you gonna fit them in?
So many times the ADHD or makes the plan,
But then stops at the wind part.
We'll just,
We say things like,
Oh,
I'll just get it done sometime this week.
And then we never look at the list again.
And seven days goes by.
This is all homework and it's not fun to do.
And micro scheduling our hour by hour life only ever sounds good when we're building that spreadsheets because it looks so cool.
But if we've identified things that we want to make sure we get done this week,
Then those deserve to find a home somewhere in our calendar that we're aware of.
And this is where it might give some of us some stress,
Right?
I know it gives me stress and anxiety sometimes.
So let's stop here.
Let's make a best go at our week,
Make whatever plan it is that you make to get stuff done and do that.
You now have a little bit more clarity on the things you want to get done.
So let's see how it goes.
It's in the doing and in the effort that the insights are born.
And as always,
We're more likely to get things done when we operate as a team.
Accountability really helps.
Find your partner,
Join your community,
Make your intentions visible while you're perfecting your unique process.
I hope this helps and I'll look forward to chatting with you next time when we're going to talk about the week that you just had.
Make your best go of the week and then let's talk about it.
And I'll see you then.
