Welcome back to The Driven Woman Entrepreneur podcast! I’m your host, Diann Wingert, and today we're diving into a topic that's crucial for many of us: managing boredom as an entrepreneur with ADHD. While ADHD fuels creativity and innovation, it also means a low threshold for mundane tasks, making boredom a significant challenge. 

In this solo episode, I'll break down the neurological factors behind ADHD-related boredom, delve into its connection with dopamine dysregulation and underarousal, and share actionable strategies to navigate these obstacles. You may have all the creativity, high energy and innovative ideas on the planet, but if you haven’t learned how to master the mundane,  your business is at risk. 

From embracing structured flexibility to leveraging hyperfocus and creating stimulating work environments, I'll provide you with practical insights and client case studies to help you maintain productivity and safeguard your business. 

🚀Listen for these boredom busters:

1. **Structured Flexibility:** How blending spontaneity with a dash of routine can be your secret weapon.

2. **Hyperfocus Hacks:** Turn this potential nemesis into your biggest ally with targeted sprints.

3. **Smart Delegation:** How to pinpoint your strengths and offload the mundane tasks.

4. **Diverse Project Engagement:** Keep your entrepreneurial journey exciting without spreading yourself too thin.

5. **Mindful Work Environment:** Create a stimulating yet uncluttered space to enhance creativity and productivity.

Mentioned in the episode:

Meditation & Mindfulness for the Busy Brain with Jude Star 

🤩 Fun Fact from the Episode:

Hear how my client Sophie, a jewelry artisan turned her chaotic studio into an organized and productive work environment. The transformation not only boosted Sophie's productivity, creativity and helped her streamline all areas of her business. 

Seriously, who knew cleaning up could feel so good?

Word of mouth is still the very best way to get a podcast into the ears of the people who most want to hear it, so if this episode helped you recognize how boredom may be holding you back, I bet you know someone else who’s dealing with this too.  Be a pal and share the episode.  Here’s a link to make it easy: https://kite.link/managing-boredom-the-adhd-entrepreneurs-nemesis

If you are struggling with the highs and lows of entrepreneurship, especially getting through times of boredom without going completely off course,  book a free consultation here. Let’s talk about how I can help.

Well, hey there, and welcome back to the Driven Woman Entrepreneur podcast. You know, in the realm of entrepreneurship where unpredictability is the norm and challenges are ever present, individuals with ADHD find themselves in a rather unique position. I mean, ADHD may be the wellspring of creativity, high energy, and innovative thinking, but it also carries with it a notorious downfall. I'm talking about boredom. The ADHD brain has a low threshold for boredom and a low tolerance for boredom, for the monotonous, the tedious, the mundane, even the routine. So we are often seeking constant stimulation, which poses a significant risk for entrepreneurs because we all have to navigate periods of routine amidst the excitement.

Okay, so let's start by understanding the basics of the ADHD boredom connection shall we? ADHD is characterized by symptoms like impulsivity, inattentiveness, and hyperactivity, and it affects millions of individuals worldwide. More are being added to the ADHD family every day. Among its challenges, and one that I think is quite pronounced for many of us is difficulty tolerating boredom. But why? Well, it comes down to 3 separate interrelated things. One, neurological factors. Research suggests that individuals with ADHD have differences in their brain structure and function, particularly in the areas related to attention and reward processing.

So these neurological variations contribute to a decreased ability to maintain function on mundane tasks and an increased craving for novelty and stimulation. Makes sense, right? Then there's dopamine dysregulation, we hear a lot about this one. Now dopamine is often called the pleasure neurotransmitter because it plays a crucial role in motivation, reward, and sustaining attention. So those of us with ADHD typically have dysregulated dopamine systems, which leads us to have difficulty experiencing pleasure from the routine and an enhanced sensitivity to boredom. Then there is the underarousal hypothesis. Now according to the underarousal hypothesis, those of us with ADHD have chronically low levels of arousal, which leads to a constant craving for external stimulation to reach an optimal state of alertness so we can pay attention.

Now this perpetual state of restlessness will drive individuals with ADHD to seek out the novel, to seek out something new, something stimulating, and we will have difficulty experiencing boredom. If you have ever found yourself literally falling asleep in a morning meeting when you are otherwise well rested, you know exactly what this feels like. Okay, so here's the paradox. So many individuals with ADHD become entrepreneurs, but there's a paradox because the entrepreneurial journey is so often romanticized as a thrilling adventure filled with innovation and excitement but the reality is far more nuanced than that. I mean, yes, it's true, entrepreneurship can be a lot of highs, but there's a lot of periods that are equally important where it's mundane, repetitive, and absolutely devoid of anything resembling immediate gratification.

From the mundane administrative tasks, financial planning, entrepreneurs have to grapple with periods of monotony amidst our pursuit of groundbreaking ideas, unless you have the resources to take these things off your plate from the jump, and very few of us do. So for individuals with ADHD, this juxtaposition poses a significant challenge. I mean, the very essence of entrepreneurship is embracing risk, pursuing innovation, navigating uncertainty, and this resonates with the impulsive adventurous nature that most of us have, especially if you are the combined type ADHD, which I and many other entrepreneurs are.

But the reality of the day to day demands of the operations and running a business, not starting a business or scaling a business, but actually running it requires discipline, focus, and perseverance. And these are qualities that often elude those of us with ADHD on the regular, but especially when we're feeling bored. I remember when I was first starting out, one of my mentors told me this, Diann, you have everything you need to be a successful entrepreneur, but one thing. You must learn how to tolerate the monotony of success.

Now they didn't say boredom, so I didn't quite understand and frankly, I'm supposed to tolerate the monotony of success. What the hell, that sounded like a terrible idea. I also had no idea what they meant at the time, but I sure do now. And let me tell you, this is one of the things that I need to help nearly all of my coaching clients with so that they don't feel like burning their business down or follow through on it. So stay with me for a few minutes, we're gonna get into some strategies for managing boredom for entrepreneurs and small business owners, and I will add some case stories, from some of my clients okay.

So listen, I know boredom can seem like an insurmountable obstacle, and I often say that we treat boredom like a life threatening condition. And I'm not just going for the joke, like, I mean, sometimes it feels really painful. But we can put proactive measures in place to help mitigate the impact of boredom and allow us to experience sustainable success. So here are some of my favorite practical strategies that are tailored to the unique needs of entrepreneurs with ADHD. Number one, embracing what I call structured flexibility. Now I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but entrepreneurs thrive on creativity and spontaneity, but they actually need structure and routine, they just don't want it.

So the idea is to strike a balance between flexibility and organization, and we do this by establishing daily schedules, setting clear goals, breaking down tasks into manageable chunks. I know you're probably hating me already, but we can't get away from this stuff because guess what, it works. A structured approach provides a sense of stability and direction, and let's face it, we need that with the ups and downs of entrepreneurial life. The goal is to hit the sweet spot between the right amount of structure and the right amount of flexibility for each individual. I wanna tell you about my client, Eve, a graphic designer who was really struggling big time with time management, energy management, obligation management. She tended to work late into the night, and this was starting to cause problems with her wife and kids.

Now she'd still get up early to get the kids off on the school bus and to see her wife off to work, but then she often went back to bed because she was freaking exhausted. Over time, this meant she was regularly short changing herself on sleep, drinking way too much coffee to compensate, and having too many arguments with the wife and kids about why she couldn't participate in family events that were in the afternoons and evenings. So it was a must, not to mention that, Eve happens to be diagnosed with ADHD and on stimulant medication from her doctor who started to pay attention to her rising blood pressure and started asking questions about what her caffeine intake was.

Well, the jig was up, Eve had to admit she was drinking quite a bit of coffee to compensate for not getting enough sleep, yada yada yada, and she was referred to me. So we created a structured but flexible routine, starting her day with a not too strict morning ritual. She really didn't like the name morning ritual, but we made it easy and kind of fun, a little bit of movement, a little bit of meditation. Then we allocated time blocks over the course of the week for client work, marketing, and admin tasks. It didn't catch on immediately, and there was a lot of resistance, but she knew she had to make these changes and she did have the support of her wife, kids, doctor, and me.

So the routine did eventually help Eve create boundaries between work and the rest of life, reducing her stress and improving her productivity. And over time, I'm really happy to report she was able to start finishing her work in time to start participating in family activities in the evening, which led to getting more sleep, a reduction in coffee consumption, and she was able to avoid going on blood pressure meds, which made Eve, her family, me, and her doctor all very happy.

Okay, next strategy, leveraging hyperfocus for high impact tasks. Now there's a lot of controversy about hyperfocus. Some people say it's a superpower, other people say it's a nemesis. I think it could be either, it depends. Like, hyperfocus is very common to people with ADHD, and it can be powerful and it can be leveraged, but only when you can direct your brain towards high impact tasks. The kind of tasks that significantly move your game piece, drive your business forward, and allow you to allocate dedicated time to immerse yourself in these very specific activities.

My client, Eric, the founder of a tech startup, was able to use his hyperfocus to develop really innovative features in their company that set them apart from their competitors and allowed them to move ahead much more quickly than they would have. We scheduled uninterrupted time blocks where even his wife and team was not allowed to reach him. And over time, Eric basically trained his brain to go into hyperfocus on demand. This made it possible to create really significant progress in relatively brief periods. I mean, I think the by the time we finished working together, his sprints were only 60 minutes and they were only 90 minutes in the beginning. So when you create hyperfocus on demand and you eliminate all interruptions and distractions and you go into them with very specific expectations and focus, you get a lot out of that time. Anybody who says I do my best work under pressure should try this for sure.

Alright. Next step, delegating and collaborating with others. Now I believe this is an absolute must for all entrepreneurs with ADHD, but especially for those who have a low boredom threshold and a low boredom tolerance. So to make the most of delegating and collaborating, you need to get really clear on what your strengths actually are and what your weaknesses actually are, combined with radical self acceptance so you don't feel bad, guilty, or ashamed of any of it. So you can delegate tasks that are mundane or boring or just outside your zone of genius to somebody else

By collaborating with team members, freelancers, or external partners, you can streamline your operations and free up time for the stuff that actually energizes you. Focusing on high impact tasks that play to your strengths allow you to maximize both productivity and creativity. That is a win win. However, there's a caveat when it comes to delegation and collaboration. Because you've probably noticed, there is an abundance of other entrepreneurs who are regularly seeking to collab because, let's face it, 2 heads are better than 1. Working with someone else could at least, ostensibly, cut the workload in half, and having a collaboration partner helps with the accountability. No brainers right? And all of this sounds great, but and it's a big but, so listen up.

We have to be discerning and discriminating about who we collaborate with. We have to make sure that we vet our accountability partners and the people we collaborate with, or there's a very good chance that you will be steered off course by someone who is simply unable to get things done unless they have an accountability partner. So the ideal accountability partner is someone who can get things done on their own, but gets them done faster and with a lot more enjoyment when they partner up. They're not, like, using you to get their stuff done, which will most certainly slow you down. Now it's not selfish to say no when you know that's the case. Just gotta be honest with yourself. Enough said, alright.

Next strategy, engaging in diverse projects. Now a lot of people come to me saying I have 3 or 4 or 5 businesses, and I don't wanna give any of them up, so please don't tell me to. This is not a good fit to work with me because I have worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs over the last many years. And I will tell you with very, very few exceptions, people who are trying to run multiple businesses as a solopreneur are not able to leverage and succeed with any of them. So because we don't like boredom, some of us will start another business and another business and another business and another business. And this may be true if you think of yourself as a multipassionate, a multipotential. And I'm not here to judge anybody, I'm just saying that I don't find that to be particularly helpful.

We need to be able to learn how to deal with boredom in a way that doesn't mean starting yet another business that we neglect because there isn't enough of us to go around. But you can diversify your portfolio of projects and ventures within your existing business. In fact, I think we need to. We can pursue endeavors that align with our passions and interests and create a variety of challenges and experiences for ourselves so that we don't get bored and wanna burn the business down. That might be launching a new product, program, or service. It might be exploring a different market segment.

It might be engaging in community outreach. Some of my clients even decide to create a pro bono offer. They're not even looking to get paid for because it's stimulating and exciting as long as they keep it within their current bandwidth. So these are just a few ways to embrace diversity and keep your entrepreneurial journey fresh and stimulating. In fact, I think most of us probably need to launch a new product, program, service at least every other year. You might need it more often, everybody's different.

Alright, next step. And I don't hear enough people talk about this, but I've done this with a number of clients and it's always a lot of fun when I do. And that is this, create a stimulating and organized work environment. Both stimulating and organized, not either or and believe it or not, you can do both. A stimulating and organized work environment can help you maintain your interest while reducing distractions. I love helping my clients personalize their workspace with a handful of items that inspire them, but also also help them wanna keep it, organized so that it doesn't become full of clutter, which means potential distractions. If you keep adding interest items, you're gonna have clutter.

So I think the ideal number is 5 to 7, and you can put them in rotation. If you're like me and many other people with ADHD and you have problems with memory, being forgetful, if you put 5 to 7 items in your work environment that, you know, make you feel good, could be, you know, pictures of family, could be a piece of art, it's entirely up to you. When you rotate these on a regular basis, it keeps it fresh. I often feel like, oh, old friend, when I take out something that I haven't seen for 4 to 6 months, it's amazing what I can forget. But it's one of the ways that I like to help people keep things fresh.

And it was reminding me of one of my clients named Sophie, who, what would she call herself? I think she refers to herself as a jewelry artisan. She makes handmade jewelry that are, like, exceptional, one of a kind statement pieces so her workspace was a mess. It was so cluttered, she could never find anything. She was losing things, breaking things, you know, having to reorder things because it was just a mess. And a lot of creative people say, you know, they can't create in a clean space. But what we did with Sophie is reorganized her, and it was a small studio, but we reorganized the studio so that there were designated areas for different activities that were part of her business. An area for designing, an area for the crafting, an area for the packaging and shipping.

So all within a small space, she wasn't doing all the different things on one space right? There were different spaces. And that really helped her move from one activity to the next and also batch a bunch of things in one of the activities. So there was less clutter, less confusion, less chaos, less distraction. She was also able to add inspirational artwork and play background music to keep the environment stimulating. Her taste in music was not mine, but, hey, you do you. The changes that were made not only helped to enhance her focus, but made her more creative and helped in other areas like getting her invoices out and paid on time.

Next up, technology and how to use it to your advantage. You know, I wish when I was first diagnosed with ADHD that there were even half the apps and tools that there are now to help us manage our productivity. Project managers, task organizers, reminder apps, like whiteboards, they could be old school, new school, hybrid. Even if you don't have any clerical help, there are so many options to help you stay organized with technology. So I wanna tell you about my client, Emily, who is a fitness trainer and a health coach. I guess she would call herself a personal trainer. Personal trainer and health coach, has ADHD, definitely struggled with the admin side of the business, would sometimes double book clients, and that's really awkward. I've done that a couple times when I was a therapist, really cringey.

The bookkeeping was a mess, she was late in sending out her quarterly tax estimates. So she agreed that she had enough revenue, repeatable income profit to hire a part time virtual assistant so she could offload these tasks. This allowed her to focus more on what she actually loved doing, which was training her clients and creating content for her YouTube channel and her TikTok account. So by delegating the administrative work, Emily was able to spend time on her client base, which increased as a result and increased her revenue at the same time. Kind of a no brainer right? A lot of people are really reluctant to hire help though. And I you know what, I was too. Somehow this idea of stubborn self sufficiency really runs deep in a lot of entrepreneurs with ADHD.

Alright, I got two more, wtay with me. Cultivating mindfulness and self awareness. And I know I've talked about this a lot, including in my recent interview with fellow therapist, coach, meditation teacher, and adult with ADHD, Jude Star. So I'm gonna link to that episode in the show notes rather than repeat in case you've already heard that episode. But you do not have to become a full blown Buddhist like me to benefit from mindfulness practices, I'm not kidding. A few minutes of meditation, a few minutes of deep breathing, journaling to help you cultivate self awareness and regulate your emotions, life changing.

Now what does this have to do with boredom? When boredom strikes, not if, when. Hit the pause button, acknowledge your thoughts and feelings without judgment. That's all mindfulness is people. Be open, be curious, and don't judge yourself. That's all mindfulness is so by acknowledging, you know, I'm kind of bored right now. Practicing radical self acceptance and self compassion, you can respond to that boredom in a much healthier way. Maybe you just need a 10 minute break or go put on some music and have a little dance party. Maybe you need to go walk the dog and get out and get some vitamin d and some fresh air. But ignoring your boredom is definitely gonna make you go underground with it, and that's when we get into trouble with scrolling excessively on social media or just zoning out on stuff that just waste our time and causes more stress because now we're further behind.

Alright, enough said. Alright, last but not least, seek professional support if you need it. Don't hesitate to seek support from a mental health professional, from an ADHD coach, from a support group that specializes in ADHD, or an entrepreneurial support group. There is therapy, there is medication, there is coaching. There are so many invaluable tools and insights for managing our ADHD traits and navigating the challenges of entrepreneurship. You do not have to white knuckle this and do this on your own, but it's not gonna come to you. You have to seek it out. So make the decision to surround yourself with a supportive network that gets you. I like to say, surround yourself with people that are like minded and like brained. People that really understand your unique strengths and the challenges that you have.

Now if you appreciate my no BS direct approach combined with humor and decades of experience as a licensed therapist, a business strategist and coach, and a fellow entrepreneur with ADHD, then maybe it's time to book a free consult to see if we're a fit. There is a link to do that in the show notes. Okay. In conclusion, in the fast paced world of entrepreneurship, every decision carries weight. Every decision matters and it seems like the world is speeding up faster and faster every day. People like us with ADHD, who are self employed and entrepreneurial, have a unique blend of strengths and vulnerabilities. Now a lot of people wanna talk about how ADHD is entrepreneur's superpower.

They wanna talk about the novelty and the innovation, but we're doing ourselves a disservice if we don't also talk about the challenges of boredom. So by understanding the underlying mechanisms of ADHD related boredom and how they're a little bit different than how neurotypical people experience it and implementing one or more of these targeted stress targeted strategies that I've gone over today. Maybe you can help harness your potential for creativity, resilience, and visionary thinking with a little less challenge on the boredom front.

Now if you have learned anything new from this episode or it was simply a good reminder of something that you kind of knew, but you haven't yet strategized in your business, please do that and be sure to share it with someone that you often hear complaining about tedious, mundane, routine, boring tasks in their business, even if they don't have ADHD. And one last thing, be sure to subscribe or follow the Driven Woman Entrepreneur podcast on your favorite pod player so that you won't miss out on any of the upcoming episodes in the entrepreneurs with ADHD series. Next week, we're gonna tackle decision making beyond impulsivity and overthinking with my good friend, Cathy Rashidian, I hope to see you then.