Ever wonder why it always seems like you have said “yes” to more than you can effectively manage, when you have ADHD?
Impulsivity and people pleasing tendencies play a role, but our unique relationship with time that might be the biggest factor, making business success a lot more challenging.
We have trouble accurately estimating how much time, energy and effort our commitments actually take, especially when they are shiny and new.
A neurotypical person has a 12-16 week “time horizon” on average, while ours can feel a lot closer to 12-16 minutes at times.
The reason for this time distortion is that ADHD brains tend to perceive time in just two categories: Now and Not Now, whatever we are focused on at the moment, and everything else, from an hour from now to the rest of our lives.
Before I share specific strategies for “stretching” your time horizon, We will identify your specific overcommitment style—impulsivity, people-pleasing, perfectionism or FOMO.
Then, I’ll help you build a time horizon toolkit for more realistic planning and better decisions in general.
What you’ll get from this episode:
Remember, the key to managing your commitments with ADHD is not about squeezing more in, but about making space for what truly matters.
Ready to take fast action? 🧠✨
My team put together a free guide with the strategies in this episode, so you have a visual reminder to try them out. Grab your copy here.
The last two episodes of the year will be “mini-sodes” - short, actionable and intended to add a few more tools to your ADHD entrepreneur toolkit.
Be sure to subscribe or follow ADHD-ish so you don’t miss them.
© 2024 ADHD-ish Podcast. Intro music by Ishan Dincer / Melody Loops / All rights reserved. Outro music by Vladimir / Bobi Music / All rights reserved.
Quick reality check, our ADHD brains have 2 time zones, now and not now, that's pretty much it. So while neurotypical entrepreneurs may see time kind of like a road stretching out ahead of them, we are living in a constant present with a fuzzy someday, maybe floating in the distance. And here's the kicker, this isn't just about being quote, unquote bad at planning. It's about how our brains process future time commitments. When we say yes to something 3 months from now, our brain literally files it away as not real yet. And then suddenly, bam, everything becomes now all at once.
Let me give you a quick example, my client, Alex, runs a graphic design agency. A year ago, her January looked completely empty, not unusual for her industry. It was literally as she described it, a blank canvas of possibilities. So she said yes to launching a course, onboarding 3 clients, and was leading an organization. And if I remember correctly, she was also pitching me in the idea of launching a podcast of her own. Now spoiler alert, January wasn't actually empty. It was a lot more like a time bomb waiting to explode. But here's the exciting part, once you understand how your ADHD brain processes time, you can actually use that to your advantage.
Now stay with me. We're gonna break this down into 5 quick hit strategies that actually work for our unique brains. Are you ready? Okay. 1st, let's identify what your particular overcommitment style is. Now don't tell me you don't over commit okay? Because I know you do. Even if you may call it something else, like being multi passionate or saying yes to a lot of things, or I love being super busy. We all over commit and here's the thing, just like everyone's ADHD is a little bit different. Different solutions work for different reasons that we overcommit. So I'm gonna give you the quick fire round first.
Are you ready? Okay, the impulse innovator. You are the one who is yes, first, ask questions later entrepreneur. It's like the ready, fire, aim, or just the fire and then maybe ready, aim. You often act on impulse and you just wanna say yes to something just because it's new and exciting like, why not? Then you are the boredom bouncer. You will chase new projects like the proverbial squirrel chasing the ever present shiny objects. The moment the shiny wears off, you're boom onto the next thing.
Then there is the people pleasing pioneer. Your calendar is everyone else's wish list. You literally say yes to every request you get. Every podcast interview, every book contribution, every summit. You feel me right? So you say yes to other people and your calendar fills up before you even have a chance to think, what do I want? Some of you are perfectionistic powerhouses. You take on everything because no one else will do it right. And this is true even if you have a VA or even an entire team.
Or you could be the FOMO founder who treats every single opportunity like it's literally the last helicopter out of town in a crisis. You just can't afford to miss out. So are you the impulse innovator, the boredom bouncer, the people pleasing pioneer, the perfectionist powerhouse, or the FOMO founder? And if you have a hard time deciding which one you are, well, we're not even gonna go there. Got your type? Okay, great. Now let's talk about some solutions that will actually stick.
Okay, strategy number 1, this is one I like to call the reality bridge. So instead of vague future commitments, we create really concrete connections between now and not now, meaning when you're gonna actually have to do it. So here's how you do it, take any future commitment, I have several presentations that I've agreed to give for different groups, so I'll use this as an example. Then map backwards in 2 week chunks. This is one of the reasons why I'm always recommending the wall size annual dry erase calendars to my clients, and I talk about it on this podcast as well. Because being able to see your entire year at one time really starts to help you stretch your time horizon and be a little bit more oriented to where you actually are in time and space.
So you take the future commitment, then you map backwards, it's like reverse engineering, in 2 week chunks, and then assign specific tasks to prepare to each chunk. Now here's the key, you gotta schedule those tasks in your now zone. So if you wait until then, you'll be too late. Then you'll have to crunch, then you'll have to do it all at the last minute. And while you may have been able to get away with that in college, I did. I literally would sit down to write a 20 page term paper starting at 9 PM the night before. That's not so fun anymore.
And, the exposure is greater when I try to do something like these days. So I love to use the reality bridge so that those future commitments no longer feel vague. They feel real because they're in my calendar in chunks. So here's an example, Sarah, who's a course creator, uses this reality bridge to transform her process whenever she does a launch. So instead of her typical ADHD, I'll figure it out later you know? I love how many of my clients say, how hard could it be? I'll figure it out later. And I'm like, oh, it could be so hard and you really don't wanna do that. But that was me for so many years.
So and now Sarah maps out her launch going backwards. We pick a day, and then we go backwards and then it doesn't end up feeling like a house fire. It ends up feeling like an actual plan. And there's still plenty of room for the unexpected, for illness, for, you know, people not being available to do their part so it's not really rigid. I like to think of it as the sweet spot between structure and flexibility. Okay, you ready for strategy number 2? Okay, let's go. This one, let's call the energy account method. Now if you despise any kind of bookkeeping or accounting, you're probably gonna wanna call this something else or your brain is just gonna go, hell no. So we're not talking about time management when we use the energy account method. We're talking about energy management.
And if you've been listening to this podcast for a minute, you know that I've said I used to talk about time management. Then I started talking a lot more about energy management when more and more people started bringing up the topic of burnout. And now I talk about a combination of energy management and obligation management. So in this form of imaginary accounting, energy accounting, you're gonna start with a 100 energy points per day. So let's say you do client calls. I do client calls, you may do client calls. So each client call, let's say, is 30 points. Because while you love your clients, I know I love mine, and you're really good at serving them, it is still emotional labor, and it will still drain your battery.
It can charge your battery and drain your battery at the same time, and that's how most of us experience client calls. So let's say each client call you have scheduled is 30 points. And if yours are maybe 30 minutes or 20 minutes instead of an hour or longer, maybe it's 15 or 20 points. Obviously, you can adjust this to what makes sense for your circumstances. Then if you have any deep work scheduled that day, Like, let's say you're writing a book, or you're crafting out your next course, or you're revising an existing program or product or service, that's deep work. That is the kind of time you need to turn off your phone, close all your other tabs, put your dog in another room to take a nap, and don't answer the door no matter what.
That's gonna be more like a 40 pointer, because you can get a lot done, but it's deep work, which means it uses more energy. Team meetings, you know, unless you're orienting or onboarding new team members, those should be like 15, 20 points. Let's say 20 just to make it round numbers. So here's the thing, if you start your day with a 100 energy points, when you're out of points, you're done. Period. No negotiating. No adding. Most of us go through our day like we are a hungry person at a buffet. We just keep adding, adding, adding, adding. And needless to say, we're exhausted, we're overwhelmed, we're overworked.
We're not making enough money, considering how many hours we're putting into our business, and we're wondering what we're doing wrong. Well, we're exceeding our energy expenditure. So come up with your own system for what are the things that you do regularly. What is the energy expenditure for each of those things? Assign a number, and then you're gonna get much better at not over committing, or taking on too many meetings, scheduling too many deep work sessions, or even booking too many client calls on the same day. Because when you're out of energy, you're done. Even if you're able and willing to push yourself through it, you're not benefiting anyone, and you're definitely dragging yourself down.
Okay, ready for strategy number 3? This one's called the decision filter. This is actually one of my favorites because I'm one of those people who loves to say yes to just about everything. And then it's kind of a fuck around and find out because later I'm going, oh, why did I do this to myself?' So I need these strategies myself and these are the very same strategies that I teach my 1 on 1 clients because they help most people I know. And again, I like to have a tool bag with lots of different strategies because nothing works for absolutely everybody. And so it's nice to be able to give people a few different options.
So when you're trying out the decision filter, this is a rapid fire, kind of like speed dating yourself. Ask yourself these questions really quick, like bam, bam, bam. Like, 3 questions in 10 seconds, because you want to have your unconscious mind answer the question. You do not want to overthink these. You ready, here are your 3 quick questions. Will this matter in 6 months? Does it align with my top priorities? And do I have the energy points for this? If you get 2 out of 3 no's, that is an automatic hard pass. Do not try to renegotiate. Pass and go. I call bless and release.
The quicker you can answer those questions and just make it a non negotiable rule for yourself, that if it's 2 out of 3 is no, then it is a hard no. Hell no, move on. Don't try to say, well, I think I could make it work because then we're really kind of missing the whole point of these exercises. Now I wanna help you get practical with some tools that you can actually literally implement today. Would you like that? I mean, most of us love the quick hits as well as the big wins. So let's talk about your quick start toolkit because there's nothing better for an entrepreneur with an ADHD brain, like just about instant gratification.
So now we have the not now list. Remember I mentioned earlier that our ADHD brains tend to divide time into now and not now, and that not now list can literally mean everything from 5 minutes from now to the rest of your life. It gets very crowded in there. So when you intentionally, as a quick start tool, create your not now list, you are literally creating a digital parking lot for future ideas. I've used this and had many variations of it. I might call it an idea parking lot. I might call it, blog fodder when I was writing blogs and I had all these great ideas, but I didn't know when I was gonna use them. Put them in a digital parking lot.
So many of us feel like if I don't act on this idea right now, like it's gonna burn a hole in our brain, we're afraid that we're gonna forget it and it would have been the best idea we've ever had. It's like, that's irrational, but many of us are quite fond of thinking it. So if you can't do it right now, and most of the time you shouldn't, put it in the parking lot. I recommend opening up that file, that digital parking lot and most of my clients and as well as I have, like, a folder on their desktop. You call it whatever you want. I recommend having a recurring task on your calendar. If you get lots of ideas, like do it once a week.
If you don't have that many ideas or doesn't feel like you have that many, do it once a month. But set a regular recurring reminder to open up the file and take a look at what's in it. And if you combine that with like, you know, a ruthless maximum capacity for that folder. So every time you open it, you take another fresh look at what's in it and you're only allowed to have a maximum number of items, then you're constantly weeding ideas out. My ideas used to be so precious to me. I used to literally fall madly in love with every idea I had. And then, as they started adding up, they started accumulating. I started having so many ideas.
I would actually feel oppressed and harassed by all my brilliant ideas because there were just too many of them, and I simply didn't have the time to give them all my love and attention. Well, of course, that was all self generated suffering. So now, if I have something I can't do right now, I stick it in the idea parking lot. I review them once a week and I'm only allowing myself to have 7 in there. I've played with different numbers. I've had 50 ahead of time, which was crazy. I've had as low as 3 to 5 that didn't feel like enough, my sweet spot is 7. You'll figure out what your sweet spot is K. Ready for your next quick start tool, future self Fridays right?
If you've ever heard anyone say, well, what would your future self do? What would you tell your future self? What would your future self tell you? It's kind of along those lines. And all that is involved is a 5, 10, maybe 15 minute tops weekly check-in with yourself. It's best if it's scheduled as a recurring event on your calendar, at a time when you'll actually do it. And if you adhere to that commitment, it just becomes habit, and then you don't even feel like resisting it. And during that check-in for your future self and I like Fridays, you could do it Mondays, you could do it Sundays, you can do whatever the hell you want. It's your life and business. I just like Fridays because I like using this as a transition ritual to end and wrap up my work week.
Here's what you do. You're reviewing your commitments for the coming month. You do your quick energy requirement rating, and then you delegate or delete anything that is gonna take you above and beyond your energetic budget. Period. Alright, next step, the permission protocol. I like intentional constraint. I didn't used to like it, I used to perceive any kind of restraint as oppressing me and limiting me and squeezing me into a box. And now I realize, well, as long as I'm thinking that I'm actually getting nothing much done. So now, I create a success minimum. What is the least I need to do to keep things running? And then kind of ratchet up accordingly. An example that I often give when I'm working with clients is, does it make sense to study to get a 97% outcome on a pass fail test right?
So if you're doing more than you need to do to keep things running, you're eating up your energy. So anything that is above and beyond what is necessary, is optional. And yes, I really mean optional. So the permission protocol is, what is my success minimum? Meaning, what is the least amount I need to do to fulfill this requirement? Anything beyond that is optional and optional needs to go and I give myself permission to let it go. This is another bless and release. So let's wrap up with these 3 things you can do in the next hour before we move on. You're going to pick your top over commitment style, and yes, some of you will have all of them. You're going to choose one strategy from what I've shared to match it, and you're going to schedule your 1st future self Friday.
well. Your future self, your:So before you go, I want you to drop into the show notes to get a template from me and an energy account tracker. These are the exact tools that I help some of my clients with, to avoid over committing, so that they can really start enjoying the businesses they've created. This is Diann Wingert and I'm reminding you that sometimes the most entrepreneurial thing you can possibly do, is to say no to an idea or an opportunity. That's a wrap.