Getting Things Done With a Neurodivergent Brain

Back from a break, and what this episode is about

Danielle: Hello, hello, hello. This is Danielle and Shay with ND Hive and ND OutLoud. We took most of November and all of December off, and now it’s February and we’re getting back to it. I’m so excited to get back to this, because I kind of felt like part of me was missing when we weren’t doing all of these recordings with you.

Shay: I know, right? It was too long.

Danielle: It was too long, but we needed it. We had so many cool things happening. You guys will hear about that separately from this, but we’ve got a lot of really cool things happening and launching here over the next couple of months. So today we want to talk about success with ADHD and autism and other neurodivergence, let’s just use the whole entire bucket, and how we as experts in this field have success every day. And you don’t have to be an expert to find success. I want to say that first.

The Iron Man illustration: build the suit around your brain

Danielle: I’m going to use an illustration first. We all know Iron Man. I need a Tony Stark figure, guys. If anybody has a little Tony Stark or knows where I can find one, get me one. I want to talk about Iron Man specifically as an illustration, and then we’re going to fill in the blanks for you.

Iron Man, as Tony Stark, is really smart and a billionaire, but he’s also somebody whose life is falling apart without someone else to run it for him, Miss Pepper Potts. But when he becomes Iron Man and puts on this amazing suit, and adds Jarvis, a computer, a second brain for his ears and his eyes, he’s still ADHD. There is zero doubt in anybody’s head that even with all of that, he’s still ADHD. But when he does that, he literally becomes a superhero and saves the world.

Shay: Mhm.

Danielle: He saves that little town in Europe, and he does all kinds of really amazing things when he has the whole entire system and structure and protection around him. And that’s what we want to talk about: the things that we create around ourselves. There are a million options here, but we have things we create around ourselves that build that superhero structure. Some days we are superheroes. Some days we are complete and total ADHD disasters. And that’s fine. We understand that we have good, better, best days. You’ve heard me talk about good, better, best days, but today I want to talk about our ultimate best days. So Shay, what are three things that you use that make your best days happen?

Shay’s three daily anchors: a schedule that fits, a paper brain, and body basics

Shay: I think it’s a schedule that works for me. I get up and I work out every morning. That is routine, that is a thing I do every single day, and I do it because it helps me turn my brain on and get rid of that excess energy a lot of us carry. We may not be hyperactive, but there’s a lot of that feeling of “I got to do, I got to do, I got to do.” That’s one.

A second one is that I have my brain in my book, which is right here, and I create my system of tracking my day. I don’t mean the nitty-gritty all the time, just making sure I have all my appointments, so it’s at a glance. I look at it and I’m like, oh, today I have this meeting here, I have lunch here, and I have free time here.

And then the third thing, through the day, is making sure I get the things my body needs. I get hydration, I get food, and I get movement. Those are very important, and we don’t realize how important they are until we don’t have them for a day or two, and then we’re kind of obnoxious and ornery and irritable. A lot of us don’t realize we even need those, because we haven’t been taught that, or we haven’t figured out the signals.

Like, what’s the signal for me to know I need to eat something? Well, I get even more brain fog than I normally have. Or I start talking and I just don’t make sense. I do in my head, but coming out of my mouth it just doesn’t work. Or I just feel kind of icky for a minute and I need to walk away and then come back. It doesn’t matter what it is. If I’m cooking, talking to my kids, hanging out with grandkids, whatever it is, if I start feeling like that, I need to take a minute, step away, come back. It’s like your brain is a light switch. Turn off, turn on. Sometimes that’s how we need to work it. So those are the top three that I do every day, Danielle.

Danielle’s three: co-working, a handwritten capture system, and energy budgeting

Danielle: For me, my top three, and you guys have heard me talk about my top three, they’re changing right now. Shay and my friend Gina have been helping me change this up, because I need to modify things and create some different systems where the old ones have not worked for me.

Number one is always community. Body doubling and co-working is my number one for having success with everything that I do. If I don’t co-work, then I cannot find success in my day. End of story. And Shay knows this: if I don’t show up in co-working, “disaster” is putting it mildly.

Shay: We start checking on you, because there’s something missing if Danielle’s not there.

Danielle: And I need it. Number two, I have to have a planning system. Right now, I will tell you, I’m trying out new planning systems, so it’s not settled yet, because my previous one is not working. But I have to have a system to write things down. If I don’t have a capture system, everything is lost, because I can’t process things unless I write them down. Typing them into a note on my computer or my phone is not good enough for me at all. I have to physically handwrite. I have to engage with information for it to become information I need and can use. Again, end of story. So: co-working, writing things down, having a capture system.

And number three is taking care of my energy. For me, that’s very different, because I cannot work out. Working out does not work for me. I have MS, and movement is an enemy for me at this stage in my MS. It causes amazing fatigue, and muscle fatigue creates muscle pain and nerve pain. So I can’t rely on movement. I have to know what my energy is every day, but I still have to have a system for getting all of that nervous energy out. So what do I do? I journal. For me, again, it’s handwriting something, just getting every thought out of my head.

It is not as good as working out, I will tell you. I miss being able to walk when I’m overwhelmed and my brain is going a million miles an hour. I miss that. But I had to find something else that worked for me right now, because I can’t physically do the other thing. Now that it’s starting to get nice out and we’re getting past winter here in the deep south, thank God, we’ve had a horrible winter down here, I’m going to be able to go out in my wheelchair and at least go around my neighborhood. Because we as humans need fresh air. We need sunlight. We need water, we need food and sustenance. And I can do that even just in my wheelchair, which is awesome. I have been missing that these last couple of months.

For me it’s really about evaluating where my energy is every day. What can I do? Because I can still have a best day on a high pain day if I use the tools I need to use.

Shay: And I think it also goes with: are you really paying attention to you? Or are you trying to take what everybody else is telling you that you should do, and doing that instead of listening to your own self? When she mentioned the co-working I was like, oh yeah, I use that too. If I’m not in co-working, I don’t get stuff done. I just don’t, because I’m bouncing around. As soon as your eyes land on something you’re like, oh yeah, I forgot to do that, let me put that away, oh, that needs to go somewhere else, and you start bouncing around. Now, that works for me on my Saturdays, because I already know that’s how I’m going to be, but that doesn’t work day to day.

Creating a process for you depends on what your physical needs are, your emotional needs, your mental health, what you’re dealing with that day. Because we’re talking right now about best days. Do we have best days every day? I get maybe one of those a month. Maybe.

Danielle: Yeah. And if you throw any type of chronic illness on it, it’s a crapshoot each day.

Shay: Danielle deals with MS. I deal with chronic headaches and migraines. There are a lot of things you don’t see outwardly that we’re dealing with internally. So we have to evaluate what’s internal along with what’s going on outside of us. That’s really one of the things I had to learn to do: look at myself internally each day to figure out where I am.

Reframing bad days: the good, better, best framework

Danielle: Now, let’s talk about good days. I want to reframe this: no day is a bad day. Unless you’re in the hospital in the ICU. Even if I’m in the ER with a bad pain flare, that is still not a bad day for me. I had to reframe that mindset, that there are very, very few bad days, because I was living in that negativity of my ADHD, my autism, my pain always creating bad days, and I could never have success, and I was always bad. Everything was always bad. When I reframed to “I have good, better, best,” my bad days are if I end up in the ICU. Has that happened before? Yes, absolutely, and those are bad days. We can all admit that, and that’s okay.

But good days. What do good days look like for you? Your lowest energy, your highest chaos. What tools work for you on those days?

Shay: Are you asking me directly?

Danielle: Yeah.

What a good day actually requires (and what can wait)

Shay: For me, on a good day, those are the days where I’ll be dealing with pain from a migraine. I don’t want the light, so where you see the light coming in my window right now, I’ll usually close the blinds and it’s kind of dark in my office. I make sure I’m getting enough fluids. A good day is a day where you just get through the things that are of high necessity, the things that are on fire that you have to deal with. Not the things you could set aside for the next day. Like, do you have to fold your laundry? No. Leave that for a better day. Do you have to sweep the floor? Okay, maybe if there’s a mess on the floor, but if it’s just a few crumbs, do it the next day. There is nothing you need to stress over and put your health at risk for so it can feel like a better or best day. So on a good day, I deal with what is of high importance. But you also have to define what is important, because some of us think certain things are important that really aren’t.

Danielle: I think the big thing is you have to know what your limits are, what you can and can’t do. Even a good day, I find success in. Okay, I’m in the ER, I haven’t slept all night because I’ve been in the ER all night. What can I still accomplish? What are the necessities? Keep people fed, including me. People fed, fuzzballs, littles, whatever you have in your household, keep them all fed. And for me, that means we’re eating air fryer food.

Shay: What’s wrong with that?

Danielle: There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s eating on a good day for me. Keep myself hydrated. How am I doing that? I may not make myself fancy coffees that day. I might order a smoothie and have it delivered to my house. Great. And then, what are the things I have to do so I don’t lose customers, because I own my own business? What was the deliverable that had to happen today, so that I’m still making money and not losing my business?

You will notice there’s no shower in there. There’s no other self-care other than feeding and watering myself. There is no folding laundry or cleaning my house or doing dishes, none of that on a good day, because those things can wait. We just have to realize those things can wait, and if we don’t finish them that day, we’re not a failure. I am still not letting things fall apart. I’m not falling apart. My business is not falling apart. End of story.

Shay: Right. And remember that you’re still being successful even if you’re allowing something to move to the next day, as long as it’s covering what Danielle just said. What is necessary to make sure your children are fed, your animals are fed. Maybe that means your significant other or you gets delivery. It does not have to be something you slave over so that the problem gets worse. On the days we used to call bad days, those are now good days, because guess what? You just achieved the success of getting through that day, taking care of what you needed to take care of, and by the end of the day you go to bed and get the rest you need.

Danielle: And the things that work on my best days still work on my good days. I still have to write things down. I have to, otherwise I’m going to lose them. And I’m definitely going to lose them on a good day. If I would lose them on my best day, I’m going to lose them on a good day. On those good days, I still have to use my regular resources. It may not be an all-day co-working session, I don’t have the energy for that. But when I have to do the things that have to get done, I’m going to hop in for 15 minutes, 5 minutes, even 2 minutes, to get that one thing done that I’ve got to do.

Community is the difference between struggling alone and succeeding

Shay: And you’re using your community. Your good days may be more reliant on your community to help you get through. Whereas on your best days, you’re giving back to the community, because you now have more energy to do so. There are a lot of variables. Like I said, we really have to pay attention to ourselves and start gauging where we are, and start recognizing what the best, better, and good days are, so we can have processes and systems in place that work for you, your business, your home, and anything else you’re involved in. Understanding that we have to have a way to support ourselves. We don’t do well when we are isolated by ourselves.

Danielle: The ADHDers who struggle the most, who don’t have successful businesses if they’re entrepreneurs, or who jump from job to job because they keep losing jobs, are the ones who don’t have a community and don’t rely on their community when they need it.

Shay: Amen to that. I honestly would not be where I’m at in my business, and working with you, if I hadn’t started using those tools and systems. The co-working, the check-ins, the daily… not daily affirmations, I hate saying that because that’s not the truth of it, but telling yourself the truth daily.

Danielle: I’m a good person.

Shay: I’m capable. I’m going to be able to do this. I am doing this. And then having others be able to say, yeah, you are. Yeah, you got that done. Way to go. And it doesn’t mean you need to sit there and shower each other with all the gooey stuff. Sorry, that’s the only way I know how to describe it. That’s what it feels like to me when it’s not sincere.

Danielle: Absolutely. So, use your tools, or find your tools. And if you don’t know how to create tools, if you don’t know what works for you, come join us at ND Hive and try the community out. Come find out how to have good, better, best days, because best days are possible, and even good days are possible, even at your worst. I promise. Have a great day, everybody.