I was at a launch event for a book I co-authored on Thursday. Myself and my incredible business partner,
, wrote The Inclusion Journey as a travel guide for organisations trying to navigate the often confusing and sometimes scary landscape of diversity and inclusion. So where better to launch than at London’s Canal Museum, next to a canal boat?!It was such a great night, and my heart was so overjoyed speaking to so many people who want to make the world a better and fairer place, and hearing so much fantastic feedback about the book we poured our hearts into. It was magical.
During one of these heart-warming conversations, I casually mentioned that I’ve just written another book.
What?!
Creativity Is Your Self-Care came out on Friday, and is a collection of exercises to help you use creative techniques (writing, painting, drawing, photography, and so on, and on) to support your mental and emotional health. There are 52 exercises - one for every week of the year - to help you build a regular creative wellbeing practice.
One of the people I was speaking to said, “Oh my goodness, I don’t know how you do it all! It’s so impressive.”
And I thought, “no, it’s not impressive, it’s ADHD with a side of over-achiever complex, and I am exhausted!”
The truth is, yes, I do a lot of things, but mostly I feel like I’m doing few of them well and I spend a great deal of time feeling totally overwhelmed. And some of the time feeling like I need to hide under my duvet and do nothing because I’ve reached the point where I just can’t anymore. Because I’ve basically broken myself.
This is not sustainable.
Have you tried doing one thing at a time?
Here’s the thing with having ADHD - I’m never going to be able to do just one thing. I’ve heard a lot of business and self-help gurus telling everyone that you have to focus on one clear goal to make progress, and that’s great advice for neurotypicals, but it’s never going to work for people like me.
Focusing on one thing makes me bored, restless and irritable. It kills my motivation. I need to be able to switch tracks sometimes, I need novelty and variety. And this is the issue - so much productivity and “success” advice is designed for neurotypical people, and when neurodivergent people follow it and it inevitably doesn’t work, we (and everyone else) assume(s) we’re the problem.
We’re not the problem. The advice is the problem. The advice was not designed for us. I feel like every self-help writer or social media productivity influencer should have to have a disclaimer at the beginning of any guidance they share that states whether or not they’ve researched its efficacy for neurodivergent people. Just so we know up front whether it’s worth us bothering with.
So, ok, I’m never going to be able to stick to one thing at a time. But there’s no doubt that, right now, I’m doing too many things and trying to do them all at once because they all feel equally important in a THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN IMMEDIATELY OR THE WORLD WILL END kind of a way. Surely there has to be a way to do more than one thing but not everything? A way to have different projects on the go, amidst all the day-to-day of having human relationships, running a business, parenting children and just being alive, without needing to retreat under the covers like a physically, mentally and emotionally hollowed out shell?
Seeking balance
The trouble with spinning multiple plates is that you can’t watch them all with the kind of attention that you would ideally like to give something fragile that is wobbling wildly in the air.
I beat myself up constantly about not achieving enough with my business, not being a good or attentive enough mother, not giving as much thought and care to marketing my writing work, not doing enough writing. Then there’s the things I’m barely doing at all but that I would like to be and feel I should be - volunteering, exercising, eating healthily, yoga, therapy, sleeping…
I dream of what it would be like to be able to do just one thing at a time, and focus on doing it really, really well.
But there’s never enough time. Part of that issue is the menace of capitalism - bills have to be paid, obligations have to be met, life admin has to be done, and that doesn’t leave a lot of space to explore projects of passion, delight, exploration or wonder. If you want to find out “what if…?” then you have to do it on your own time. And the capitalist machine leaves very little of that to most of us.
The other problem, though, I know, is organisation. It’s actively making space for different elements of our lives, rather than running round like a headless chicken trying to fight the particular fire that’s in front of us right now. Another delightful quirk of ADHD is struggles with executive function, which make it very tricky to plan your day ahead of time and then stick to that plan without being derailed by an email or message or question, or suddenly remembering a bunch of admin tasks that should probably be done at some point.
Everything feels urgent, all the time. ADHD plays a part in that, but so does our modern world. There are so many demands on our attention, and everything is so insistent. It’s all trying to get us to take immediate action, to convince us that it is the most important thing and that it CANNOT WAIT. Maybe neurodivergent people are more sensitive to that kind of manipulation that neurotypical people, but all of us are struggling under the weight of this always-on, always immediate mentality. Carving out space, and ignoring everything else, feels like a rebellious act.
In a society that seems to value busyness over productivity, and that celebrates output over meaning, approaching our lives in a slower, more thought-out but more meaningful way is an act of resistance. Scheduling our time intentionally, prioritising balance and fulfilment, is radical, and vital.
Some things I’ve tried
Here are some methods I’ve used to try to reduce the overload.
The ideas board
I have about 300 new ideas a day, and at least three or four of them feel meaningful and worthy of being taken forward. So you can see how easy it is to get carried away doing a LOT of things, particularly when you throw in the ADHD impulse to do everything RIGHT NOW.
Cue the ideas board. Actually a large piece of paper (not a board), with “Big Ideas” written at the top. When I have a new idea that is shouting “pick me, pick me!” in my brain, I write it on a post-it note and stick it on the big paper. The act of writing down the idea calms my brain, as it feels like the thought has, to some extent, been actioned. I reassure myself that this is something that’s in progress - it’s on the board, ok?! - but that it’s not a top priority right now. We can come back to it when we have time and space.
This also gives me time to reflect on whether it’s actually an idea I’m invested in. If I look at the board again a month later and the idea is still calling to me, it’s probably something I really do want to work on. If, after a few weeks, it feels irrelevant, it was never going to sustain my interest or attention in the first place!
The mission
For me, it helps to have an overarching goal to focus on. Maybe not one goal, but a core two or three. What do I want my life to look like? What is my ultimate aim for my business, my writing, my parenting?
It’s something I review regularly, but I write myself little mission statements, or sentences about what I want to achieve. It’s a big part of my new year ritual, the statement for how I want my life to be in the coming year.
Keeping focused on that big goal helps me to cut out the things that I don’t really need to be doing. It helps me to say that uncomfortable little word that neurodivergent people have particular trouble with - no. If it doesn’t serve my overall mission, then it’s easier to let it go.
The schedule
As mentioned, if my time isn’t carefully scheduled, then I’ll feel I have to respond to every email and message and task immediately. And then I get caught in a distraction loop from which there is no escape, meaning I never make progress on any of the things I actually care about and I remain busy with empty tasks forever.
I’ve taken to scheduling my week carefully every Monday. I look through everything that needs doing, and think what is actually urgent, what I really want to work on, and what can wait. I’m working hard at making myself delegate where possible - it’s not something that comes naturally to me! I’m also realising that if something spends long enough on the “it can wait” list, it probably isn’t going to happen at all and that’s probably ok. We can just stop writing that one on the lists.
I have to be careful with myself - I have a habit of thinking I can do about eight things in a single day. I am working hard to recognise that, in one day, I can achieve one, maybe two things if they’re not huge ones. Then there will be a bit of time around the edges to fill with all the little admin bits. I try to make sure that I have put time in to do the things that really matter - the things that will make a big impact for the business, the things I’m really passionate about, the things where someone will die or our house will be repossessed if I don’t do them. Then I make myself reminders for the things that do have a deadline but that don’t have to be done RIGHT NOW, so as to quiet that panicky little voice and reassure it that the task is in hand - we’ll get to it, we’re safe to leave it for now.
I treat the time I have scheduled in as if it were a meeting I’d booked with someone. It’s non-negotiable, and it can’t be moved unless something much more important crops up. If possible, I get out of the house and/or away from my work computer to do big tasks that need focus. I turn off notifications on my laptop and phone so that I’m not distracted by emails and messages. A few days ago I left my home office and went down to my kitchen with some big pieces of paper and coloured pens to work on a marketing strategy in a different environment that didn’t make me feel like I should be doing something else. A clear schedule, and space to follow it away from competing demands, is the only way to move forward instead of spinning in circles chasing your tail!
Creative exercise
If balance is something you feel in need of, I have a creative exercise to help you explore it. You’ll find all the instructions and details of the materials you need below.
And don’t forget that, if you enjoy using creative techniques as a therapeutic tool, you can find 52 of them in my new book, Creativity Is Your Self-Care!
What you need:
Paper
Pencil
Pen
Optional: Highlighters, coloured pens
Exercise:
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