There we go. Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the all the things ADHD podcast. Oh, the thing. Oh, I like that one. I'm one of your co hosts, Lee Skallerup Bessette.
And on your other co host, Amy Morrison.
Um, so it is here in the States and encase post Thanksgiving in a lot of places. This is the last week of the semester. Universities, it's actually kind of weird that I might I'm teaching my last class tonight. And I'm like, it's not even December yet. But that is just the nature of teaching a course on a Tuesday. And buying Yeah, so we're sort of as, as every semester, we are all stumbling towards the finish line. But unlike every
line, yeah, boiling over the finish line, failing to cross the finish line,
accidentally making a hard left at the finish line,
starting a different parallel line.
Now we're like the infinite parallel lines. And so that's that in normal times, um, it's the struggle is real for many of you, academics and for students at this time of the year. And again, maybe for a lot of us, even if you're not in academia, because end of the year, maybe not end of fiscal year, but end of the year, and the bus, we've talked about the last few weeks, the holidays, and the parties and the expectations and the changes in schedules. And, and and, and this is all in normal times, but we're not as much as many people and the government in society would like us to believe. Not in normal times. No. We are still in COVID times. Yes. And this if the struggle was real before, then it is really, really, really real.
Struggle. 21 is struggling here.
Yeah, the struggle is struggle, you're Yes.
Here's the thing that occurred to me this morning, as I stare down the barrel of my like, pile of grading, some of which I meant to have done some time. I mean, it wasn't urgent and but now I'm like, I had such dreams at the beginning of the semester. And it occurs to me that I have such dreams. At the beginning of every semester, you know, where my hair is going to be brushed, and my teeth are going to be brushed. And I'm going to be chipper and well prepared. And I will have extra copies of the handouts all the time, then there will be weekly announcements with like, Easter eggs have fun hidden in them. And I will you know, engage in active moments of self care in the classroom with my students. And I do up until about like, week eight, right. And then even though every year I'm trying my best to make it's like I'm in charge of these classes, right there, my classes, I'm designing them. So I'm like, it's not like I'm overloading myself with things to do every year. I'm trying to calibrate like, what does a reasonable load for me so that I can get this done? And, and I think I've saved myself a lot of trouble there because I used to burn out by week three, right? And now I don't. But even when the progress I think for me, yeah, right is perfectly appropriate. There's still a way in which I struggle to finish things with the kind of intentionality and follow through that I began them with, right, or with the goals and dreams that I had. And I think that's probably endemic to people with ADHD, like, obviously, the way our brains work, we're a lot more excited about starting things, usually starting them at the wrong time. And we will fixate on things that, you know, maybe it's the right time to fix on them. Maybe it's not, but the process of generating things and building things and experimenting with things is going to be very exciting. But like finishing your work cited list is not exciting, or oh my god like back in the day list, finding the postal code for the application, your mailing away and then like trying to get stamps, I'm like, a kid like so. Like, there are a lot of ways structurally that the end of things is harder for neurodivergent people. And I'd like to think about all the multiple ways that this that we can work with this because what struck me the idea that struck me was that close only counts in horseshoes, and hand grenades, right and so much of adult life and even kid life is not about the 95% that you got done. But if you cannot get a sports ball if you cannot get the sports ball over the scoring device, it doesn't matter that you try on with the running I don't know I don't know sports but yeah, I mean like, like an almost goal is not a goal. Like it doesn't. Yeah, exact No. It doesn't matter how many hours you put in training, it doesn't matter, like, you know that you got all the grass stains out of your uniform, like it doesn't matter that like 99% of the game you were ahead, right? It's like what the final score is. And so many of us struggle to finish things, semesters, like semester is going to finish whether I get my grading done or not. Yeah, exactly. You know, I, the deadline will pass whether I find the postal code in the proper postage or not. There are a lot of things that it's external deadlines, and we might be inclined to blame the external deadlines. But there is a way I think in which our brains just really substantially lose interest and the tiny little things that need to be done to complete things. And that also, we might just be tired from the intensity that we brought to doing the beginning, the middle and most of the end of things. So I don't know if you have any experience or this resonates with you, at all, Lee, in what ways have you heard horseshoes and hand grenades and otherwise? And you're like, gosh,
the work cited is my nightmare. Blink just and I never get it right. Never get it right. Because it's that like, it's not just the finishing, but the eye for detail that I just do not in because like, a it's because I don't care enough. I'm just like, I don't like I just No. Great. And
I read all the things. What do people want from me? Yeah,
exactly. There's a footnote, like, if you can find it, Google it. That's what I did exactly. Like I put a link I'm sorry, that it became before the period and not after it. You know, like, it's things like that, like I understand. So like, as intellectually, I understand the importance of citations, I enjoy citations, I like being able to get go out and find things. But like, the minutiae of like MLA versus Chicago versus APA versus like, and here's where you put the parentheses. And here's how you enumerated and here is how you last name, first name, oh, it has to be all caps. And then there's like the house style that they have. It's like, we started you Chicago, that we matched up with APA in our own way. You know, it's so it's just like all of those details that you kind of have to hold in your head all at once, where it's just like, you have the author, you have the title, you have the journal in the year, like, it's all there,
you know, sound like me. And dear listeners, I hope you can hear that Lee is getting agitated. Lee is visibly upset in my zoom window. So I asked her a fairly neutral question about finishing things. And this turned into not how he has difficulty finishing things. But the MLA sucks, and editors suck, and people are focused on the wrong things, you'll know that this is a reaction that we tend to the I mean, you're not wrong about any of that. But I would say maybe part of the reason that we all have difficulty finishing things is we've had such bad experience finishing things. And it feels like the finishing parts of things are exactly the sorts of things that we're not good at, especially the 11th hour, which is checking for details. And so we may have a tendency collectively, to blame the things that we need to do for our inability to do them. And it's probably in large part, justified. And now we also, you and I are card carrying digital humanists, and they will take away our license to practice if we do not feel plugged zotero.org from our good friends at George Mason.
And you don't use it. You use every app on Earth. We know
this is another thing I'm finishing this is another thing I've got it finishing is that I use it but I have not 100% integrated it into my workflow.
Oh my god. Right. And you never will. Right? You're gonna be exactly 97% on Zotero.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I
set it up, I
have everything ready. I, I used it for one project, because I had to like, it was an edited volume that I did. And they wanted a full bibliography of everything that has been ever been published on this one author that I was doing. And so like I gathered it all up, I put it in Zotero and then like spat out the bibliography for and then never used it again.
Oh my god, I use it all the time. Because like you, I have formatting rage. Because it feels like you know, you want to write a paper like and this you know, you can apply this to any task that you you do in your professional or personal life is the part of it, you're going to be really, really, really good at it. But it feels like you don't get credit for any of it. Unless you do the one bit that you're not good at right? Like you can, you know, be the parent to like is the most fun parent in the world. And you take your kids on all these like physical activities and you like to bake cookies with them and like they tell you all of their problems, but you're really bad at signing permission slips and now the Children's Aid is coming for your kids and you're like, really? That's why I failed, right? And so like you and I will be writing papers or Doing research and stuff. Like I read all the things and like, look, I synthesize it with beautiful prose with original ideas, and it's highly readable. You're all smiling. And you're like, we can't accept this because you're obviously don't care about any of this. Because you're, you know, you're using MLA five, instead of MLA, or whatever we're at. You're like, really? Yeah, I got the gist. I'm always about like, I got the gist. But finishing things is not about the gist, right? Finishing things is about getting everything done in a timely way over a longer period of time than we tend to want to pay attention to it using details that are not details of our choosing. And often rules that are not of our choosing, like I'm always late, I'll get 95% of the way to, well, here's the thing in Ontario, now we have a QR code that you can download, that will have your vaccine status on it. So you're not showing your health information to people, you just have this QR code and they scan it and it's like this person. Exactly. Okay, great. So I did all this work. And then my sister did a bunch of work into my husband did a bunch of work. And we all found these links. And we went through and I got all my documents together. And I typed in all the stuff and it got through the point, I was like, You have never been vaccinated. I'm like, Oh, really, because this is Ontario government website. And I have in my hands, my government of Ontario issued proof of vaccination, right? And I was like, fuck it. And I walked away. And I haven't gone back since. So I put in probably an hour and a half of work. And then it was the very last green did me in and I quit, right. But now who is bearing the consequence of that meet?
Yeah. Because now you can't go to the things that you need to do.
Yeah, I have to bring like this piece of this PDF that has like my name and age and everything on it. And so just getting a QR code, I have to keep that like where I can find like a real pain. But I'm not going back and finishing this other thing, because it was so frustrating. Oh, yeah. First time I started. Yeah. So that's another thing. I didn't finish we
Yeah. Oh, no, I totally get that. And there's, you know, the number of things that I have again, in Oh, wow. Sorry. Um, where were we? Not for me? No,
it would be funny. This everybody is probably coming back right now, after a weird, awkward job where we had to cut out a bunch of stuff where we had some technical issues. And now we're back without cameras, which is weird to try to talk to each other like this. And I was going to say, you know, it'd be funny, we, if we just released the podcast, right from here the end, then we would have not finished the podcast. You see, it would have been a meta podcast, about not finishing things.
Well, I mean, think about it. Look, remember how long it took to even release the
podcast? Oh, god. Yeah. We were 97% of the way there.
Yeah, exactly. Um, but no, seriously, what were we just talking? And this is the other thing, right. This is the other problem with ADHD is that it just something will distract you. And literally the thing you were doing will leave your mind. And like, if it's not something like don't try to do a work cited, you will literally forget and be like, Why do I have all these tabs open? Oh, well.
It's better. Nine browser tabs open on my phone right now. 79. So what you're saying we if I may permit myself a joke, and I always promote myself a joke. Is that another thing that we sometimes have problems finishing our sentences? Yes.
Yeah, definitely. I used to say, right when we do a really long episode. I know the point where I have to cut the episode is when I go incoherent, because I have too many ideas. And we've just shifted direction. And I'm skipping, and I like alright, I'm skipping right there. So I'm going to cut that part out and end the episode.
Yeah, that's where like the record gets flipped, right? Where it's like, Guess it and it's like,
oh, for young listeners, the you're there these things that used to be called record players. And they didn't necessarily stop automatically. And so it went round and round around in a circle and it got closer to the label in the middle. And when it would hit the label. If it didn't stop automatically, it would just bump it. But the needle transmitted the sound. So you'd have this like staticky clicking noise that would run through.
I think the kids call it vinyl. Vinyl. Yes. I'm sorry. Yeah. And the current turntable is Yeah, turns a turntable. We had like records of record players, because we're really old. We're not even finishing our topic. Okay, let's get focused. Finishing things, though. Finishing things tends to involve like not just small details of stuff like, you know, find the postal code or get the MLA format, but it is also a sort of gathering together of all the component bits, usually right. So I always think I'm so clever, I leave the last class meeting of term for all of my courses is a sort of overview of the semester. And I'm like, Oh, great. I don't have to teach new material on that day. But I have to overview this semester. I don't remember, if I put shoes on today or not, I don't remember what happened in week one. I mean, which is another reason that I actually introduced those overview days, because I want to make space, because I think many people just less like finish your course in the sense of like, you know, having a look back at the learning objectives and asking themselves if they've met them or like sitting down and sort of thinking reflectively about it, like, in my different personnel, like, have I achieved my goals in this course, they just sort of stop, right, which is my experience of most of life is they don't finish things I stop, right, I wind up being like, that person who's moving out and they have like six months notice that they're going to be moving. And still somehow on the day of the move, they're stuffing things in the garbage bags. And yeah, and just dragging them down the street to their new place. Like it's not dignified, it doesn't reflect your intentions or your earlier preparations. And it's like, certainly not the best way to do things. But you're like, I just got to get through this ending bit. And I think also like finishing things is a transition. And I know we did a whole episode maybe two on on transitions, how hard it is to switch tasks, we wind up stuck in the driveway reading our phones, instead of getting out of the car and coming into the house or, you know, the the transition between dry and wet involved in showering is kryptonite for almost all of us may be finishing things another kind of transition that we struggle with, I mean, the amount of things we that I have gotten to 98% Complete. And then not finished, is to my everlasting shame and horror, just astonishing numbers of things that are almost done, but might as well not even have been started for all the good they're doing in the world.
Which which is so like that, and this is the thing that is strange to me, is that I have to finish every single one of my sewing projects, right? And I hate finishing them, right? Because the finishing is the effing hems, right, where it's just like, I gotta like, fuzzy but yeah, it's the fuzzy it's a little fuzzy details that like, I don't, again, I don't care about but at the same time do right. Like it's like I I can't just leave a raw edge, or else I throw it in the laundry once and it's going to be a pile of thread like this is like, you know, um, and I've actually discovered some of the some of the things like I've tricked myself, right? We're on one of them. I'm like doing the ham of those wrap dress that I really like to make is it's so heavy by the end of it because it's got the bodice and the ties and this whole skirt. And so now I'm like, I'm going to hem it's because the length is fine. I know how long it is. I don't you know it, I don't care it whether it's like a little bit above or below where it usually sits. So now I put the skirt together. But before I attach it to the bodice I do the hat.
Oh, yeah, I did that with my knitting too. I like to sew the pieces together. As soon as I have pieces that way. I'm not faced with like six hours of sewing when I shouldn't be done.
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And like, and but it's just weird because because, you know, I'm part of sewing groups on Facebook, because of course, they're sewing groups on Facebook. And you know, they do sewing challenges. And one of the sewing challenges is at one point was like, pick up an unfinished sewing project and finish it and I'm like, who can do that? Yeah, like, I don't know what it is like, because Because again, there's all this finishing stuff that I can't do. But for whatever reason, I have to finish a fucking sewing project. And part of that I think is hyperfocus to right where I'm gonna be like sweating and hungry. And like hangry and exhausted and I can barely see straight anymore, but god damn it. I'm going to finish this fucking ham on this goddamn dress that I've been working all day on.
So your your mule Licious. There is helping you.
Yes. Right.
Yes. So So that's, that's good. I mean, maybe sometimes I think we've discussed this before, sometimes it leads you to producing a garment that is not as carefully sewn as you might have sewn it because you really wanted to finish it. Right. So like, that's the other balances between, like maintaining, like a high degree of quality, like, say throughout a sewing project or throughout a semester of teaching, but still ending, strong. Yay. And I think some of us fail to finish things, not just because of the trivial details right at the end, like we've mentioned, but sometimes we hit a point when we're substantially done. But you know, somebody will give you a bit of feedback on a piece of writing and say like, oh, yeah, but so and so just wrote an article about that. I don't think you have to have this whole section. I think you could take this section out but make a new transition. And somehow that Stuck bit, you're like, I don't know how to do that. And then you just don't finish it. Like the number of people, we, if I had $1, I would be very rich, or the number of people who said to me, Oh, my God, your book, it's almost done. And it is, but I can't finish it. Because of the small problems all over the place that are somehow insurmountable to me, like I had the energy and the wit, you know, to produce, like 200 and some pages of pretty good draft. But it's not done like, again, like a 200 page book draft. That's not submission ready, might as well open just a Netflix binge for three years, right. For all that it counts doesn't count for anything. Nobody's reading it the scholarships out in the world. But I can't finish a does not help to say, but you're so close.
Yeah, I know. It really doesn't. No, no, it really does not. Because, you know, it doesn't, it really doesn't feel that way. It's like, and again, the kind of sewing is a metaphor, where it's like, it looks like a garment. Right? Like everything's put together, it looks like a garment, you're like Hurray. And then you look at the instructions. And you're like, why are there five more pages? Yeah, right. Why are there five more pages? And then it's like, well, now you have to finish all the scenes. And now you've got to do this. And now you're in and you're just like, Oh, I just want to be, but it's a dress. Why can't it just be done? It looks like the thing that I want it to look like.
And it's not fair for the amount of work I've put in I should have finished by now. But I'm
not. Right, exactly. That's exactly.
You, like run out of steam. But sometimes you just run out of coping skills, right? Like, yep. Like, I know, I get frustrated. When I play the piano. Sometimes the guy will work and work and work and work and work to get like a complicated passage done. And then it turns out the passage, like three bars down from it is just as hard. But the work that I did on the first one does not translate to the second one, and I have to do it again. I'm like, It's too much. I can't Yeah, I can't do it. Or somehow you just it feels impossible to get that last step up the hill to reach the summit. Like you'll find this when you're running to like you didn't see this. Sometimes if you watch road races, people will get within like 20 feet of the finish line and collapse. And somebody has to drag them across, right like, and I think it's very paradoxical and upsetting to many of us that we can see that we are that person that's 20 feet from the finish line. But it feels like our shoes are made of cement. And we your legs have turned to jello. And we just can't and the most unproductive thing is for people to say, but you're so close. You can get this done in half an hour. That doesn't help me that just makes me feel so ashamed. Yeah, right. That I really did. It literally
will not take a half an hour. No. Like this is this is this is the the ADHD paradox. All of that stuff that takes normal people hours and hours and hours. We finished that in a flash. Yeah. Right. Or doesn't feel like time has passed. Right. Like, like, how do you write so much so quickly? And you know, like, I
don't know, just happen. Yeah, I don't know. It just happens.
But that thing at the end, that takes everybody else 20 minutes, a half an hour. It takes us forever. It literally because it's just our I saw a tweet. I retweeted it, where it's just like, we cannot choose what our brains pay attention to in a lot of cases. And if it's not interesting, and it's not novel. Yep. And you know, and that's all of these things very often that you have to do to get something finished.
It was interesting, urgent, novel. And there's one more. Yeah, because I read that guy. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, but, but I mean it but it's so you got to like, you spend so much time trying to trick your brain. Yeah, into doing the thing. Mm hmm. Right. Where it's like, do one and I do this when I grade I do this when I have to make slide decks. Oh, my God, do I ever hate making slide decks? Yeah, no. And I know that it's only going to take me in at the end. I'm always like, Oh, that only took me 20 minutes. They were right. But like, it took me two hours to get up to that 20 minutes of like, if you do a slide, then you can, when you get one slide done, you can go and check Twitter, you can get one slide done. And then you can go check the sportscars. So you can watch you know, yeah, watch more here in the background while you're doing your slides, like you just like you're having this negotiation with yourself that is so essential to the process. But like, it just takes so much time.
You're just like, I think that's great, though. I think that's great. Like, like, I've seen some strategies online, you know, Sodor for ADHD motivation. And sometimes you have to give yourself a reward before you start, right. It's like, I'm going to you know, play the piano for five minutes. And then I'm going to grade one paper and then I'm going to check Twitter for five minutes and then I'm going to grade one paper like and did you have to give yourself all kinds of rewards and you might say to yourself, like, Oh, I like A normal person could get this task done in 20 minutes, which is what they keep telling me, Oh, you just 20 more minutes, just like half an hour left to do this. But I have to use a bunch of strategies sometimes. And so to you that might make that so called 20 minute tasks stretch into two hours. But the thing is, Lee, if we didn't use those strategies that let us get it done in two hours, it would never have never get done. Right. So that that 20 minutes is not a timeframe. Like that applies to us. Right. And I do think that sometimes I just don't finish things. Because when people tell me how easy and how fast it will be to do them. I know it's gonna take me longer. And I'm somehow waiting to start it until my brain changes so that I can do it without in
the 20 minutes. And it seems
20 minutes, right? Yeah. But like it is, ultimately you think I would know this, because I'm 48 that, that every time I've tried that the task has just never been completed. But if I, if I take a 20 minute task, and I load it up with the kind of like whipped cream and sprinkles of reward such that it will the task becomes palatable to me and it takes two hours, then it got done. But I'm always thinking like, I'm such a loser. This should only have taken me 20 minutes, right. And that's the cognitive fallacy is that somehow, with the right strategy, you can get it done the same way that neurotypical people do. But maybe it's just with the right strategy, you're going to get it done full stop, because maybe it wasn't going to get finished at all.
And I think that there's there's something about the maybe it's just the way we do ADHD, but I think that there is something about ADHD generally, as well as that we do tend to overshare um, and so what ends up happening is that a lot of the process that remains hidden, we make very visible. Yes, that's true. Right. And, and so, you know, I think like, it's sometimes it is mysterious, like, how do you write so much? I don't know, I just do. Um, you know, and we could turn to them. It's like, how do you do it? We're excited. So
they use the Tarot Lee, that's what they do? Well, the Yeah, yeah. They get the 3% level. Are you suggesting Lee that maybe the people that tell you it takes 20 minutes to do I mean, it's 20 minutes of actually doing the task, and they're just not counting all of the coping strategies that they stick in there.
Either they're not counting it, maybe they don't have to do it. But like, they have to spend coping strategies to do the other things like, actually start writing. Because I know that writing is, you know, I mean, I love writing, I have always loved writing, I've always been very good at writing as everyone jokes, I have all the words. All the words in two languages now, maybe not the best words in the second language, but still pretty solid group words, adequate number of words, an adequate number of words. But, but again, it's it's I know that that is a very rare skill, right to be able to sit down and write the way I do. Right. Yeah. And I also know that my process now I can describe it is extraordinarily ADHD. Right? And so like, normal writing advice doesn't work for me, like, I don't have to sit down every day, and do at least an hour of writing, right? They say make sure you're writing every day. And I'm just like, and again, it was there's that shame that it's like, I'm such a good, a bad I bet I bet you I could be such a better writer. If I just wrote the way all of these people say I should write. Yeah. And then
write less than you ultimately.
Right. Yeah, but maybe they're better words. I don't know. There's a lot of them. I don't know what the quality is. There's just like, Tom, you, you know. Um, but, but then, you know, sort of thinking though, is like, well, I don't need all those other strategies, right? I don't, I don't need them. Because I'm able to do these things. And so people will have these other strategies. I also know that like, you know, they come to me for writing advice. And I'm like, counting the wrong person to ask, um, because somehow I am a bleeder. And be I just don't, you know, at a certain point as well. I'm lucky enough as a writer that I work with really great editors. And so I can, I can submit something that's 95% Complete. Hmm. And I have good editors who will help me get it past that last 5% Now, mind you, this isn't academic writing. In a lot of cases, it's more public writing. But nonetheless, I've I've really learned to trust my editors. I only work with people usually that I know. Or someone I know knows and who can vouch for them. I have that, you know, I have that luxury now, to be able to do that. Um, but But yeah, so I mean, it's just It's, it's a different, it's just a different process. But I think that we all, you know, it's like if I started walking around, and I tried to keep this in mind and again, I taught writing for a lot of years if I was to start walking around going like, why can't you just write an 800 word blog post? Why can't you just like, churn out a webinar like
this, like this comes back lead to like what we were talking about on our episode on neurodivergent hangovers, which is like part of that is not your arrogance of thinking everyone should be able to do what you do, because your way is the best, but thinking that that what you're doing requires no skill that anyone can do it. Yeah, right. Which means that you also don't credit yourself enough for the energy draining that that that that task produces. And I think like finishing is just the flip side of that is that the things that are hard for us, we see us hugely effortful, but effortful in ways that other people don't seem to find them effortful. And so we expend a lot of energy, like feeling ashamed and trying to push ourselves to do things the quote unquote, normal way to finish them with the result that often they don't get finished. But but with your writing, you kind of acknowledge and have come to terms of the way that you write, which for you is highly functional. And the 5%, which is the finishing bit you have outsourced, right you have you have a team, right, basically, like you are working in a system that supports you being excellent at the part that you're excellent. Like, let's say, you know, something like the Chronicle or any of these things, sort of publications where where you could sort of publish op eds, or hot takes or whatever, like don't need more people that are good at referencing. They need people with ideas who can produce copy quickly, right? Yeah, so Exactly. Why do you have to be good at everything and like, so I think that's a really great, a great strategy, because it lets you enjoy the parts that you're good at doing and ensures that things get finished, because you're not the one that's in charge of finishing them. Right. Exactly. Except that about yourself. And I think that's great. I mean, some, let's think about, like some of the more mundane, daily tasks, like I know, you and I have spoken about your hatred of laundry, which you hate, like, almost as much as you hate making slide decks and almost as much as I hate email, right? And, and so like where you came to is like, it'll get washed. But then the clean stuff is just staying in the hamper. Right? Yeah. Because you're just not gonna finish that particular task. And you've decided that finishing it, you've just moved, like the finish line closer to where you fell down on your face, right. And you're like, oh, that's the finish line now. And that's a great strategy, I tend to do things where like, I will get a bunch of tools out and do a bunch of like, whatever on the house, like I will like repaint the front porch, or I'll like sand down a wall that's had some work done to it. And then I will get through all of that. And then I will not put anything away after and then all my like stuff is on the floor in the middle of the dining room for two weeks, like until my husband loses his mind and yells at me. And he's like, it would have been so easy for me to put it away. Except it wasn't easy for me to put it away. So like, one of the things there's like, I could either be like, I'm going to do this part of the job. And can you help me clean up after or Thomas said, you know, like, maybe the reason you can't put anything away after is that you only stop painting, for example, when your joints are so bad that your hand has moved into a claw shape that you have to bang on the porch to unclog your hands like nobody stops sooner than that, like leave yourself enough time and energy to put your tools away. Right? Because that's like, I bet you a lot of us fail at that thing too. Like we can, you know, make extravagant meal, but it's not ready till 8pm You know, because we just like forgot one thing and had to go out or like we'll do all this something, set everything up and then not take it down after or, you know, like another thing that I love to do is buy everybody's Christmas presents really early. But then and they'll be in my house hidden and the trees up December 1 And nothing goes under the tree till December the 24th. Because that's somehow not managed to wrap them even though I have the ball. So it looks disorganized, even though I'm not right. So,
so I have to tell this best story. I just because it just reminded me and maybe maybe my grandmother had ADHD but she would my grandmother loved her. She would always do the Christmas shopping very early as well. Right? Like, it'd be October and she'd be like, Okay, we got to go to the mall to get your Christmas presents. And I'm like, what? She's like a winter clothes, right? We have to go anywhere. All right. And she would and she would buy things and then you know also the Sears catalog. Canadians you'll know this the Sears catalog, you know, circling it on the toys, and then in the clothes and all of that. That's right. And then she would she would buy things and again as we got older, they were less surprises because she would take a shopping and she would ask us a minute and she would hide them even though we all knew what they were she wouldn't hide them all over her house, and then forget where she hid them. Oh my god. And it was like, I can clearly remember one Christmas sitting in the living room, and opening all the presidents and being like, really happy but knowing there were presidents missing. Right? And not wanting to sound like an ungrateful little shit, right? Yeah, but but also like, I remember going and shopping for this thing with you. Right? Like, and, and so, like, awkwardly being like, hey, Nanny, um, do you remember when we went shopping and there's this thing? And then she like, again like she tailspins? I greatly don't need to wonder where I probably got my ADHD from telling this story. But she would tailspin and cry be like, I've ruined Christmas. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, ruin anything. Or the present was like,
in my house, we call that I have done something clever with it. Right? Yes. Like, where are the third pair of scissors? You know, I know I have them. I would not have lost them. They're my special scissors. They in fact, have my name on them because they were on my house steals my scissors all the time. And I'll be like, where did you put them? And I'm like, I had done something clever with them. Yes. Yep. Which I have now forgotten. Yeah, that's a problem, too.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I do that all the time as well. And it you know, and speaking of that, 95% of like getting things cleaned, and it dries, you know, my husband lives with three of us who are like this. And we get that we get when we when we clean, we get 95% of the way there. And then we're like, yes, good enough. And my husband's like, it is not clean. Unless it's 100% clean. And we're like, that just drives him crazy. Because we're all just we all sort of have that. And I don't even know if it's our inability to finish or if it's just like our indifference towards it or like an inattention
indifference and inattention probably a lot. Yeah. With that
and and also just sort of like it's good enough right now.
Yeah, that's a that's another kind of not finishing that. Right. Which is it was good enough for me. I'm happy with it. But somebody else says it's not finished so far as I'm concerned. Like, yeah, cross it off the checklist. The task is done. Right guy? Yep. You know, I did clean all of the windows. Are they still streaky? Yes. But did I make an effort to clean them? Yes, I did. Good enough for like, what have you right and somebody else's like, no, that's not actually finished yet. Right. So yeah, well,
yeah. Like this sewing right. We're all I'll take these shortcuts where I'm just like, man, it's good enough. And like, I'm like, no one sees the inside of the garment. Right? Except me.
Right. And so like, this isn't done yet. Yeah. But
But and then I see the pictures. And again, going back to that Thanksgiving thing where they'd like, you know, if I would show it to certain types of psoas, they would look at the inside of my garment and like recoil in horror.
What have you done? You monster? Yeah,
I'm like, I just used a lot of zigzag stitch. And they're like, make sure you press all your seams open. And then you use like, Hong Kong finishes and all that. And I'm like, It's time for that shit.
Ironing anything? Yeah.
Yeah. Although, although I have to say when I did start pressing, I was like, Oh, this isn't it does make it a lot easier. Well, um, but, but again, like that there? Is there is that different standards that some people will have where it's just kind of like, No, I'm done the garment. When I put it on. It looks good. Right? If I were to take it off and examine the inside, is this like, look like a professionally made store? bought, like tailored outfit? No. Do I care? Not particularly? Because like the only one who's wearing?
Yeah, it's one of those things like, it looks great on standard definition. But HDTV is like, Oh, you need to have better sets now. Right? But if nobody's gonna give it that level of scrutiny. Yeah, it's like an another kind of failure to finish. And some of it has to do with like, some poor ADHD planning. I don't mean in the regular sense, like, I watch my kid, do this. And the reason it resonates with me is not because it's so unusual, but because I'm like, Oh, God, I was that kid. Like, I will say to them, take all the things and weapons on the packets and take all the things on the main floor that belong to you, and put them in your room where they go, right like, because they'll be like a pair of socks over here. And then like, you know, two books have Monga over there. And then a pencil like, whatever, it might just gather all the things that belong to you bring them upstairs, and then they'll go and they'll only have brought half and I'll be like, No, all of them. And they'll be like, Well, my hands were full. And I was like, well, then I got this basket. Here's a basket. Why don't you put the things in the basket? They'll be like, it's too much work to put things in the basket. Yeah. Well, just happy to like pick one, right? Because you said that you couldn't bring all the things upstairs because your arms were full and you don't want to make a second trip because it's too much work. But I said you could just use this basket that's right here but you're like No, it was too much work to use the basket. So that's what like so no matter what, like it winds up being not done. Like I'm sure we've done that where I'm like, I could, you know, put this thing inside this other thing and then carry it but I'm like that feels like too much work before actually Start moving. So I'm just gonna half acid and hope that it works. And then when it doesn't, I'm like, well, obviously this task is impossible. Yeah. Instead of just like taking three minutes at the start to organize it such like, why not figure out what drill bit I need. And then that way, I won't have to bring the entire box of drill bits up and leave them on the dining room floor for two weeks ago. I'm like, No, I want to start right now. I'm just going to grab everything, throw it on the floor. So I can start right now, instead of spending like two minutes planning out like my exit strategy from right.
But here's the thing. A lot can happen to us in those two minutes. That's true, we're suddenly we have completely forgotten what it is that we were just doing. And then it never gets done either. Right?
So you're saying you're saying it's adaptive, that we just throw ourselves into something? Yeah, he was asleep, because otherwise we won't throw ourselves into it at all. Oh, god, that's truly
Right. Like if I have to sit there, like, and, like, if I bring everything and dump it on the floor, then it's all there. If I have to make a second trip, I don't know what's going to happen between where I was and where I'm going, am I going to get thirsty? Am I going to think about the bathroom? Am I going to see the dog and start snuggling with it is? Am I going to look at my phone and then all bets are off. Like there's just too many things. This is so happen.
This is so true. This is like about going with your impulse. Right? Like we're trying to grab the attention when we have it. We got a new vacuum last week at a Black Friday sale, which yes, we have in Canada. So now we have like our first ever Dyson stick back which we should have bought years ago because I know right? It still is a difference. Yeah, how disgusting my house was actually I should have, I have two people living with me who are not good at getting all the food in their mouth and pets. And so we got this thing and you open it up. And it's like sustainable cardboard or whatever, which means there's no glue or staples or anything. But it's just it's like origami cardboard and 40 minutes to get the vacuum out of the box, right like to where the charger was because you have to charge it before you use it. And I was like, I give up like this too much. I just want to vacuum something, right? I just spent like 600 Canadian dollars on a vacuum cleaner. I want the instant gratification. And they like what I had produced in my house was like 10 million bits of cardboard that were all over the place. And I was like, Well, I guess I could plug this vacuum in now. And while it's charging, I'm gonna like what? Flatten all this cardboard so that it will go through the recycling. This is not what instant gratification looks like. We I didn't want to do any of that I wanted the vacuum to be out of the box and already charged. Like within three minutes. Yeah, right?
You get like an Apple product, because that's exactly Apple knows, right? You open your Apple product. It's beautifully packaged, it's easy to get out and it's charged. It works. And all your other apple devices,
it's got the pull tab. So you don't even have to go find a butter knife to try a device out of the cardboard. Right. I'm like this is too much barriers, this opportunity cost is too high. Yeah, so sometimes I will abandon like a yard work project don't like I need a trowel. And I don't know I did something clever with it, right. And so even though I have like the, the trimmer and the lopper and two different kinds of rakes and a bag of potting soil, I can't find this one too. I give up. And I'm not even putting everything away. Because I just like, my attention is gone. And it's gonna cost me so many spoons, I'm gonna need to take two days off work if I'm trying to muster the energy to put things away and I didn't even get to do the part of it that I was excited about doing. Yeah. It's hopelessly we're hopeless.
No, we're not hopeless. We have our house that my husband enjoys playing because he's started traveling again. And so that means that a lot of time we're the 388 years in the House are left to our own devices. And come home. And the game is Why is this here?
Oh, geez. Yeah,
why does this year? That's why it's here. Yeah. It's just like, because that's where it got put down and it lives there now.
Oh, yeah, I had it in my hand. But then somebody like shouted for me. So I put it down. And then I forgot. That's where was I found like a full cup of coffee. On my bookshelf. In my office here. Like in my it's my decorating sounds fairly austere. It's hard to lose objects here. But I had, for some reason, which I never do, put the cup of coffee down on a shelf. So it was amidst the books. And I think I found it a month later. Like because I just didn't see it. And it was such an unusual place for that object to be I was like, how did I forget I made this cup of coffee like little I've lost it for a month.
And again, this is why I burned my mouth so many times on stuff because either I wait too long or I just don't want to forget about it. So I might as well drink it or eat right.
Yeah, you know, this is like, I think one of our strategies we have to have the like is is working with our own brains like we like to start stuff but when we want to start it we want to start it right now. Right without like a huge burden like which I think is one of the reasons that I'm so much more productive as a researcher if not as a publisher, because I don't actually have to go to the library for anything now, right? If I want to do like a deep dive on, you know, Japan's institutional history of both promoting and then banning methamphetamine use in the Second World War period, like, I can have that whim. And within two clicks, I can have downloaded seven peer reviewed articles. And by lunchtime, I can have read them all and written a blog post, right. But like, if I had to leave the house to find that information, it would never get done. It's not like it would get done later. Because I only wanted to do it right now. Right. And so like, one of the reasons I love podcasting, and blogging and tweeting is that when, you know, the mood takes me, I can start and finish it right away. Right. And the barriers to participation, for me, are very low. Like we were talking a couple episodes ago about like you, and I like to do webinars and stuff like without any prep, because like, that's fine, I can do that right now. It's exciting. And it has a beginning and an end, that comes in fairly short order. This may be why I'm struggling with like academic book writing is because that's a much longer. Yeah, process. Right. And, and even with yard work, we're or even opening my vacuum cleaner, right? Because it just took too long, and I got bored. And I left a bunch of cardboard around for way longer than I should have. But one of the reasons I bought that vacuum, was because my cat, if you see my Instagram, and my Twitter is known to law about lavishly on my carpet, when I play piano, which means it's completely filthy with cat hair all the time. And it's very visible. And I would like to just back pass the vacuum, as we would say, and Franco English, give a pass with a vacuum. But our vacuum or other vacuum weighs like 20 pounds, and it's in the basement, and you don't want to go all the way down to the basement. Yeah, oh, yeah. And so the consequence was that I never vacuumed my office, it would only get done once a week when our cleaning service came. But now that we have this, like cordless stick vac that weighs like six pounds and lives on the main floor, I do it a lot more often. Right? So I bought it for that reason, because I wanted to make it easier for me to both start and finish a task, right? And probably we need to do that more in the areas of our lives where we struggle to finish things. So like I'm trying to take Tom's advice seriously, like, don't do the task to the point of exhaustion such that you can't clean up after yourself, right? Maybe do the task to 70% exhaustion and then clean up and be fully like, oh, that never occurred to me. Right? Quit before the point of failure, right? He's like, Yeah, you just you're not looking at the full set of tasks, you have just like oh, stuff like that, or reducing the barriers to entry, like using Zotero, for example, or getting a vacuum that does not need to be plugged in or live in the basement or wait 20 pounds like things, we can make it easier. And I do often tell my students like, yeah, start your paper as soon as you can. And like when you get stick stuck, like go and start doing some formatting on the document. So you don't have to do all of it at the end. And it's just like a mindless activity you can do while your wheels are spinning about something else, like presents a strategy that I have often used for that detail work that I don't want to do, right. But I still struggle like I this is not like a podcast where like, well guess what, Lee? I've solved everything. And you're like, well, guess what, Amy? I also have a set of perfectly good solutions. Because I don't know, there are it's still a real struggle for me to finish things with grace and dignity and the energy or vibe that I was wishing to manifest when I started the thing. I just don't know.
Yeah, well, I think that there's there's some there's some of that RSD that gets in there too. Right? Yeah. Right. Like there's something about finishing a task like, so. We're talking about kind of like this feedback loop, right, where you have these negative associations with the formatting because you never get it right. And so now you don't want to do it. Right. Yeah. And so like, I see it in my own kids. And I mean, even myself, and I'm like, I'm having a tantrum. You know, like, the rational brain is like, you're having a tantrum. And then the ADHD part is like, Yeah, I'm having a fucking tantrum. Right? You're gonna like it. But, but I think that there's, you know, like, I see it in the in the kids, where it's just like, why am I even gonna bother doing this if it's not even going to be good enough? Right, right. Like, was it was it what's the point? What are what are what do I even like? You know, it just, Nothing drives me crazier. And again, this has nothing to do with ADHD and I think just me but like, nothing drives me crazier than doing something and then watching someone redo it, because you didn't do it the way they wanted you to do it. Good. I hate that. I just like, you know, and I mean, again, I that's I try. Like, I see my daughter's room and I'm like, Oh, my gosh, I was totally like this. But then all I want to do is walk into a room and said, Does that really go there? belongs. I can remember my mom doing that to me and me going like yes, that is exactly where it fucking belongs because it's my room and Do I want a ream of loose leaf paper on my dresser? Yep. And I was like, Okay, I'm like, maybe put it on the books know what I'm like, Alright, I gotta just let it go. Because you remember having this exact same argument with your parents. But so there's almost like, again, I'm kind of like that I got it took me a while to get there, but I kind of got that way with my writing, where, you know, it's that idea of good enough, but at the same time, like, you know, like, just again, it's that immediate gratification, where it's just like, fucking, I'm just gonna press publish or fuck it, I'm just gonna press send. And it's gonna be like it and it'll be what No, it is what it is, you know? I don't know where I was going with this point, like, good? Well, I think like, I think a little bit
of what you're describing there about, like, your reaction to your mom, trying to help you organize your room is less about sort of rejection sensitivity and a little bit more about, again, the digging in of the heels and the rejection of authority. Right? It's it's a kind of, like, my dysfunctional habits are scary to me. And I don't know how to change them. But when you come in here and tell me what to do, I am defending my dysfunctional habits, because I'm so scared that I won't be able to change them. Right. Yeah. Which is like, again, that thing about quitting when you hit a sort of trivial obstacle because you've already built the story in your head, that this is going to reveal you to be the imposter. You know, on all bad character person that you fear yourself to be so it's best not to put yourself out there. So sometimes we double down on our own things that don't work because we so legitimately cannot imagine a scenario in which anything works that doesn't involve us becoming a different person. That we then turn that into like something that we love about our so that we we tell people as an essential part, like no, I live like, you know, a slob, it's important to me that my my room is covered in loose leaf paper that all blew off my dresser because I turn the fan on because it was too hot, because I couldn't get the window to open the window because it is blocked by seven laundry baskets, right? Like, that's just who I am. I love it like that. I thrive in the chaos even when you don't, right. But it's hard to ask for help when you don't even know what help would look like and you're not sure it would help. You know, so people keep saying to me, like I can help you finish your book. But like, they just look at it. They're like, Oh, it's almost done. You can just finish it like, but I can't. And it hurts me so much, that these people who love me are like, oh, like there's really nothing left here to do. And it just makes me feel so small. And it makes me feel that I'm disappointing them in a new and specific way. Yeah, when I can't do it the way that they're telling me, it needs to get done. And I don't want to do it at all. Right. So like, there's that kind of sensitivity. And this, this idea that sometimes we feel that we are, especially if we built these patterns for a long time, right? Because it's, you know, I've been in the academy, like as a student Professor since 1992. And I have never written as much as I want to, to the point of completion, I've never popular here, ideas are so great. And your talks are so great. And you're a genius and everything you've ever loved. And like everything you write is so good. Like, why don't you do more like I wish I fucking could, but I can't finish things, right? Yeah. And I've become like, sort of so helpless and hopeless. About that, I don't even want to talk about it with anybody, because I really don't know, that is possible to do differently because I in 20, some years never managed, right. So the longer that we fail at these things like making phone calls, or like writing appointments down in our calendar, or like unpacking the vacuum cleaner, and then recycling the cardboard or putting the dishes away, after you eat. Like it can be big stuff. And it could be small stuff. But we get trapped in a loop where we think that the only way we can ever behave on us, we have a personality and brain transplant. And so sometimes we lash out at people who are trying to help us finish things, and that doesn't help us it.
Yeah, well, it's like we had this, who were talking about this, I think off podcast, and I don't remember how we were gonna work it in. But maybe this isn't where it's helped me but not like that. Right? Yeah, this is this is this is the argument. So my daughter has always been very independent, very independent, since she could insist that she does it herself. She was going to do it herself. Right? Um, you know, but I know, you know, as soon as she could articulate and sort of emphasize that she was doing this herself. She was going to do it herself. And she's, and she's, you know, made it explicitly clear that we are not to even offer help that if she wants help, she will explicitly ask for help. Right? But then I had to make the rule where I'm like and you have to tell exactly what kind of help you are expecting from us, right? I need help with my essay, right? Well, this it, uh, no, no, like that. Not like that. And, you know, and like it. So in the immovable force that is my daughter, and the momentum that is my husband, they, they clash a lot over this. Because she wants help, and he wants to help her. And they literally have no idea how to talk to each other, in order to attain some sort of productive working relationship and collaborate. Then I have to referee the damn thing. Um, but like, but it but it's, I mean, part of it is ADHD, part of it is teenager, who probably doesn't even know and can't really articulate these things. But but it's, it's this, again, is that sort of I need help. Right? I want help. But I literally don't know and cannot articulate
what that help would look like. Yeah. And if you can't even imagine, what type of help would help, it's difficult to accept it. Right? It's difficult to imagine that there, there could be effective help, if you don't know. So, okay, I think maybe I do have a strategy for something that's coming to me as we're talking. And that is, like one of the things that we have trouble finishing, we broke into like a smaller number, like a much larger number of smaller tasks that each have discrete beginnings and endings, right. So I can buy Christmas presents like, but for me, like getting, like finishing presence was like from purchase to under the tree. But those are actually different steps, right. And if buying the presence is not the problem, for me, but getting them wrapped is then maybe I need to think a little bit more carefully about what is it about that particular step that I need, either removing a barrier, that would make it easier for me to begin to do it, and then figuring out what it would take for me to end because I'll tell you right now, the reason I don't wrap them is we don't have space to do the wrapping,
I was about to say, you got me on the
floor. And that hurts, we do it on the floor, and it hurts my back, right. And we have a big bucket like I bought a bunch of years ago, one of these like storage containers as the right size for wrapping paper. And that's great, except there's really nowhere on the main floor to put it because it doesn't fit under any of the furniture. So then it's like, kind of in the guest room. And if you want to use it, there's not enough room in the guest room on the floor to wrap. So you'd have to bring the whole giant basket downstairs and then find a room that you could do it in on the main floor on the floor that the rest of your family wouldn't be at. And that's just way too much for me to start like that's, that's probably why I don't do it. So I would need to think this not presence. That's the problem. It's like, it's too hard for me to start wrapping because there's no space for it. And it's physically awkward to carry that big box. And then it's physically painful to try to wrap on the floor. And also the carpet makes like the stuff tear. So like maybe it's not
that the animals get into it to that. Yeah,
or like people are thinking on the door and stuff or like it's there's not enough space, like maybe like, instead of thinking about like write a book or, you know, finish this article or get through this semester, I need to break things down into much smaller beginnings and endings so that I can plan for each of them like thinking about trying to get to the end of the semester is different than getting through each individual class. And the way that I want to write or finishing a book is different from starting a book, it needs different strategies and maybe different work practices. I don't know maybe when we think about finishing things like this, I do tend to like it's true that the world will give you a consequence. Like horseshoes. And like hand grenades, that's for close counts. But in all other things like if you make it to within 20 feet of the finish line at the race, you are still listed as did not complete as surely as you would have if you fell down 20 feet from the starting line of the race, right. And that's tremendously frustrating. But for our process, we could make the process have a much bigger number of starting lines and finish lines and then develop strategies that might be appropriate to each of those component tasks. So we will be less likely to get the 95% of the way there which results in a zero.
Yeah, well yeah, no, I do that all the time. Right for a lot of different things right again, like thinking about even grading, right like our strategies are to break it down into small tasks right I will read one and then go on Twitter. I will grade one and then go So like we've broken it down into these very small tasks are like we did that and that's our negotiated we call it negotiating but that's small tasks, right? I will do five and then get some chocolate. I will do you know
I mean, it's self accommodation is what it is. Right?
Yeah. And, and, and again, it's sort of I do that, even with larger writing projects, right? Where it's like, okay, well, I, you know, I haven't written a book, I've proposed a couple of books. And so maybe I'm just as bad as you are where I've just not even starting the frickin book insofar as I propose it, and then it's like no little write itself someday. Um, but, but I sort of think about it, and it's like, oh, 60,000 words. That's a lot. I'm like, Okay, well, how many chapters do you think it needs to be? So is this many chapters, and then how many sub sub categories and each of these chapters is going to be? Well, there's probably about three subcategories in each chapter. Alright, well take the 60,000 words, and there's an introduction and conclusion. None divided it up. Oh, look at that each section is only 1500 words, you can write 1500 words, it's like, yeah, I write 1500 words all the time. Okay. Well, then, is the book seem that daunting anymore? No, actually, it doesn't. I'll just like write it in these little 1500, word blog post type kinds of things. And that's actually how I wrote my dissertation. Whoa, like, not in not in that way. Because, of course, it was 2001. And I wasn't really blogging, but. But like, it was based on the kind of work I did in research. Each section almost was novel, because it was like, now I have a new book that I'm going to look at, and see how the author was anthologized. Oh, and look, here's a whole new set of letters that I get to read because it's the section on this particular author, or translator. Um, so like, so. That's, I mean, if there's one piece of writing advice I can give people that works for me, but I think could be transferable is again, breaking up that writing project into manageable chunks, like what amount of words do you feel comfortable being able to write in? We'll divide it up by that and saying, Can you can you say 500 words about this particular topic? Yes. All right. Well, that seems so bad.
Like and there's there's other things there too, like as working with a coach for a long time with Rebecca Schumann. And what she helped me learn how to do was like there's different tasks. It's not just like write this because writing also involves like, reading your primary text and taking notes, and then doing secondary research. And then correlating the notes from your secondary research. And then like, you know, drafting writing is different from editing writing is different from sort of structural, editing. And then she was like, different, you need to take different strategies for each of these tasks, you need to like measure your productivity differently for each of these tasks. And then you can start to finish them because otherwise, like a book, even if you break it into 1500, word chunks, all the 1500 word chunks seem to be connected to all the other 1500 word chunks, and you have to do like, you have to read every book ever written. And take the most extravagant notes ever taken, you have to incorporate the highest number of quotations anyone has ever used. So no matter what you're working on, it doesn't feel like it's finished. Until the entire thing is done. And that's, I think, where I get a bit balled up with every section of like, I'm just gonna write this little thing in front of me. But this little thing in front of me seems to depend on 700 Other things haven't been started and completed. And then I'm just like, juggling knives, right? And they're all Yeah, raining down on my head. But like, I know, this has been useful strategy for me in other ways. Like, like us. Sometimes I struggle with laundry, and I would have like all my to do list laundry. But now I have like, if I have to do more than one load, and then it would be like laundry laundry laundry. Yeah, but now it's like, put it in the washing machine, put it in the dryer. Yeah, fold it and put it away. Now there's four checkmarks for each load of laundry and that little dopamine boost I get from checking, you know, I just moved something from the washer to the dryer and I get a checkmark for that motivates me to do it in a way where like, I know I don't get to click the checkbox for laundry until it has been washed, dried, folded and put away makes it feel impossible. Weirdly, I just love checking off the tiny boxes. Oh, yeah,
no, I have. I have like a checklist on my I have a physical one that I write stuff down. That's like sort of urgent and I got Oh, I can't I have to remember to do that. So I like write it down. And then I cross it off when it's done. And then I have a more like long term one, like writing projects on my computer. Like, I'm surrounded by yellow post it notes, right, like we we've talked about this before, as well. But I think that, you know, that you were talking about, like all the different tasks that don't tell you about to break it down. Now is actually one of the things that, you know, it's a joke among soloists, where everybody's like, and I probably went into this naively, too, it's like, I'm just gonna, so I'm like, No, you got to assemble the pattern. You got to cut the pattern. And then you have to cut the fabric. And oh, yeah, you also have to So here's, here's my dirty little secret. They're always like wash your fabric before you cut it. I never washed my fabric. Because there's just one more step.
Right? Right, the unfun step before you do the step that results in something that looks like a garment.
Yeah, exactly. And and then And then you have to like frickin get your machine ready, like, which is a whole other nightmare. And then you have to like, I basically bought like, three machines, just so I could rotate and not have to deal with that problem. But like, what if,
what if we, cuz I know you buy fabric and patterns at different times, right? Like, what if every time you bought fabric and you brought it home, you washed it before you wanted to do anything with it, then you'd be like I am adding to my fabric stockpile, I have purchased a new fabric, I have washed the fabric and folded it and put it in my stockpile. Like if you turn that into a completely different task that might have its own rewards. And then it makes it easier to start the thing that you want to do without skipping a step that's going to make sure your garment doesn't like shrink weird at the seams.
Yeah, that would make sense in the same way that it would make sense for me to use them.
Yeah, like I mean, like don't don't, I wouldn't say to you like, well, we just add, you know, when you're like, I want to make a garment, you should add a checkmark item, like wash the fabric, because I don't think you're ever going to do that. Because I wouldn't know either. But like, what if everything is? It's what if every time you bought fabric, you just washed it on spec.
Here's another one that I think might work better. Okay, just for me in terms of the strategy is, when I'm assembling the pattern, right, it's all printed out. And then I have to sit there and assemble it, which I know, you know, again, easiest puzzle, I kind of like it. And I do it downstairs where the washer dryer, actually. So you could do both those things at the same time. Exactly. Right. And so then when the pattern was ready, the fabric was ready to. I love that.
I love that I made notes taking for myself easier because I discovered that one of the reasons I was not reading the academic books that I had all over the place was because I wanted to be taking notes while I was reading them. And it seemed futile to read them if I couldn't take notes. Because with my memory, I would forget. And I was like oh, the solution to that is put a pencil everywhere that there's a book that pencils on all my tables like I don't like butter. But like this was a life hack that I you know, even have a pencil I'm looking behind me, I have a pencil on the music stand on my piano, because they also need a pencil. When I'm playing piano, I'm gonna like work out all the fingering for something and then immediately forget it. But I'm not when I'm working out the fingering, I'm not going to be like stand up and go get a pencil even if the pencil is five feet away. Like I just know that about myself. Yeah, I know. Exactly. Right. So the solution was like not become a different person who like has the wherewithal to say, you know, you should pause here, stand up and get a pencil and then come and resume the activity that on the way to get the pencil you forgot you were doing which tasks right? Yeah, now I just know, put pencils everywhere. Right. And that works out that works for me. So I'm meeting the goal that I had for myself, not by changing my behavior, but by changing my environment. And that yeah, helps me do those things.
Yeah. And I and I think that that like same same here is like there's post it notes literally everywhere. Yeah. Right. Like I just I need to have posted notes literally everywhere so that when I need to write something down to remind myself to do something, I have a post it note of it. And the note app on my phone does not work because the Notes app on my phone close it.
Yeah. Oh my god, talk to my husband about that. I don't use the Notes app on my phone. Because I find it so enraging to try to type on my phone when I'm thinking fast. I would much rather scribble it on a piece of paper Exactly, exactly who I am. Yeah.
Well, we didn't grow up with it, right? Like we kids can type faster on their phones than they can on keyboards, but like,
but that's because they don't know how to type like don't, yeah, they can't type on either device as fast as you can type on a keyboard because like my students are like, I'm just much better at typing on my phone. I'm like, but they're just as good as typing on the phone as I am. It's just I am ridiculously fast on a proper keyboard like that's you have to be careful. You're comparing it. But anyhow, we should probably think about finishing.
Oh, yeah, that's another thing we're really bad at finishing is our podcast.
Yeah, we are living it. Like people don't have to guess like I think Amy and Lee are just pretending that they're not good at this stuff. No, clearly anyone who was listened to any of our three part episodes that were meant to be one part
that we're bad at finishing things. Well, it's part of it is that we just again, it's it's the Oh, and another thing I have one more thing. Oh, and yeah. And and Yeah. And, but, but I think that, you know, one of the big takeaways is that I want listeners to have is that we all struggle with these things. Right. And, you know, we we need to develop strategies for ourselves, unapologetically. Mm hmm. Right. And that's hard. Not saying it's easy, but that you know, it can be it can be different. Yeah, like it can't you don't have to be different, but you can change the circumstances, enough so that the situation itself is different and more productive. Right? Um, and that's okay. Right? That's, that's, that's okay. Whatever, pencils everywhere,
you know, whatever gets you from start to finish, right, and it doesn't have to end it will never involve you transforming who you are some person, that's not possible. If that would work. If that strategy worked, we all would not need this podcast, right? Because we would have figured this out decades ago, right, like me. And I, I think we could say we've been trying to transform ourselves into neurotypical people, for all of our lives about yours right now. And it hasn't worked. So maybe like, it's not gonna work. So maybe like, you need to have four items on your checklist for each load of laundry that you do. Maybe you need to have posted all over the house or pencils everywhere. Maybe you need someone to tell you when it looks like you're starting to get tired. So you quit the task with enough energy left to put your things away. Maybe you need an external editor to say, Yeah, you're done with that. And I'm taking it from you.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I want to I want to go back to that marathon analogy that you use the ones that are like, they can see the finish line and they just collapse.
Yeah.
Almost always. Somebody comes in helps them and, and helps them over the finish line. Cuz I always cry when I see those videos. I know Me too. I'm getting choked up right now. Even just thinking about it. So heartwarming. Yeah. It's so funny. I mean, even at the Olympics, you see it? Yeah, we're like somebody hits the hurdle, or they cramp up or just like, you know, on the biggest possible stage that they've worked their entire lives. Yeah, to get to. And there is always someone. Right, who comes and helps them get across that finish line. Yeah. And I think that that's something that, you know, I know that that it's hard. And we talked about it, because sometimes we don't even need to know the help that we need. All right, and can articulate it, but that, you know, there are people as much as we feel shame around all of these things, and the shortcomings. You know, there are people who are there, right, who can help and who want to help. Just don't say, Oh, this is so easy. That's like, please don't say that this Don't say that's though this ZZ part. Don't say that. I'm the same way you wouldn't tell the person who is currently falling apart at the end of the marathon. This is the easy part.
20 feet left to go. Because like, if they could do it, they would already be there. Right? Yeah. And I think probably, like, as sad as this is to contemplate it. I think probably all of us have been that person within 20 feet of the finish line, with bloody knees and Delirious smacking away the help that's being offered to us, right? Yep, the end result being that we actually do not finish, right, because we didn't think we should have needed the help and we refuse the help because we wanted a different outcome. But what we wind up with is is no outcome. Right? And it's really hard when you're in that sort of, in extremest position of like in the marathon case like this physical exhaustion and probably mental confusion, of owing from lack of energy. It's really hard to accept help. There but sometimes you you need to and hopefully we can learn some lessons about how to get ourselves that final 20 feet without falling over. But I'm gonna be honest with you, Lee, I'm not all the way there yet. Like when I get my books finished, maybe we can do a podcast but like for now I still finishing things is something I I struggle with. And that's my Christmas gift to listeners is not I've got this figured out for you. But like, Yeah, I'm there too. I can't get it.
No, I mean, look, I've got three book projects. You know, that that are, that are great ideas. They're fantastic ideas. I think they're just absolutely phenomenal ideas. Publishers think they're phenomenal ideas if they're listening. I have not forgotten about them. I just I know. Maybe our next one is getting started.
Maybe our next one is like apologies to all the editors who have given us contracts that have received no books. I'm sorry, was I'm sorry. We saw these books. I've not got finished yet. I'm so close. Everyone says I'm so close. Luckily we're screwing up finishing this podcast.
I'm just I'm just trying to be better. I'm just trying to be better. Just see what we did there. Yeah, see that? See, so it's not abrupt, it is prolonged, but equally awkward. So, as always, thank you for listening. I am ready writing on Twitter.
I am at Digi Wanke on Twitter. Not finishing things.
And but and I have to say we've gotten like three or four completely unsolicited shout outs and thank yous on the Twitter's and and like in a very short period of time, and we really appreciate it a lot. You can also email us at all the things adhd@gmail.com And when I say email us, I mean email me, but it does get passed along to Amy.
I do. I'm sorry, I have to interject again and say I love all of our listeners who send us emails and I know that they have problems finishing stuff too because dear listeners I love you so much but none of you has ever written us a short email not a one, not a one. And like we love it so much because that's how we write emails but the emails come to us and they're like seven screens of text and it's like a fire hose amazing and I love it and this is in no way a critique but I'm like oh my gosh, these people for sure have ADHD because like game recognizes game so
when you all your eyes for it I'm sorry. Really long. But
don't apologize believe me? Whatever listener you are who wrote to us you are not the only one who sent us a very long email and we love them so no shame no no shade. No game recognizes game. Oh, yeah, keep those 2000 words screeds coming
we we do we really love them. But But yeah, so we will see you next time. And yeah, we will see you next time. And you know, the nice thing about the podcast is that both ends and doesn't end right the paradox of that where we just, you know, we end one but then it's just gonna keep going so you know, we don't have problems with that. Bye everybody. Take care everyone.
