Welcome to another episode of all the things ADHD. Oh, good.
Awesome.
I didn't interrupt you this time.
I can also see you hold up your microphone. I'm like, well, and now I know it's coming. You think after how many times we've done it.
You're reading my body language now.
I'm one
of your co host, Lee Skallerup Bessette.
And I am one of your other co hosts, Amy hope, Morrison.
Hope.
Yeah, that's
my middle name. My mom. My sister's middle name is also hope, because my mom was hoping for two girls. Although my sister who is younger than me said she is called hope because my mom was hoping for a better one the second time. Yeah, yeah. And so my kid also has the middle name, hope. Because now that's gonna be our sort of family assigned female at birth, middle name. And they were just telling me they plan to get like a snake at some point. And they're gonna call it like, fettuccine hope noodle. And I was like, oh,
keep the middle thing.
Yeah, I don't know why I threw the hope in there. today. I'm like triple naming myself to make things more serious. Like when you think younger kids, right?
Cuz you're in trouble. You're in trouble? Yeah. Yeah, that's true. You always do. Like I can remember when any of my friends in high school would make the mistake of revealing their middle name. And then I was like, Oh, I have middle name and you if I'm mad.
Yeah, that's right. I like assign middle names to the pets when I yell at them to write and it's hope I assign the middle name hope to them like buddy hope farmer Jasper hope Farber. It's like now it's this this thing we do in my family. Everybody gets the middle name hope when they're in trouble. Like, I hope it's not that bad.
My my my mind hate it. Because I'll get super annoyed at them when I'm coaching them at swim team. And I'll pull out their full names. Because also they but also as they're called by both my kids are called by your short name. And that's how they prefer to be known. And most of their friends don't know, like the full version of their name like. So if I pull out the Unitas William, they're all like who? Like you're in trouble, dude.
Trouble? You like good Greek names. This is like problematic now. Oh, yeah. That's why you don't want to have like your mom. Be Your coach on stuff because like they know your full legal name. And they also know like your childhood baby nickname. Right? Yeah. Which you can also pull out something like oh my god.
Yeah. Oh, I get that all the time. I get that all the time with my daughter in particular. My son just sort of rolls his eyes. I don't know. He just he turned 12 though. And so now we're going like, he's about to start middle school next year. We're finishing up sixth grade, you know, so I'm sort of expecting the I gotta get the push back pretty soon.
Pretty soon. You're gonna be Prince Philip. And you're going to have to walk? Like two paces behind. Right? Yeah. Yeah, well, I
already do. I really do. And I mean, I
my son already doesn't. Well, you know, My son, the introvert that already doesn't want to go anywhere. So it's like, well, now he's old enough that we don't have to fourth like, are you gonna come grocery shopping? He looks at us like, do you not know me? Like, who do you think like this is? You know, and sometimes we trick him to go into the mall. And he's like, Okay, why are we? I'm like, dude, you grew. You need new clothes. I'm not guessing anymore. This is like, Okay, fine. I guess we get just shorts, but just shorts.
Moon. Yeah.
How are we strayed from the topic already? We're like one minute in. I don't even remember what we were supposed to be doing right now. What?
We were gonna talk about transitions today. Oh, yeah.
Let's transition. Let's train today's hope.
We're doing the classic ADHD thing which is not so much transitioning but careening.
Immediate. We're like a rabbit. You know, like rabbit evading prey is not that the rabbit is faster. It's that the rabbit changes direction in completely arbitrary and immediate ways. Right? Yeah. So that's either rabbit. Zoom.
Yep. Yeah. So like the dis this way? Let's dash. That's right. So if this was your idea, so explain a little bit why we wanted to talk a little bit about well, no, we need to transition right like and again, there's there's weekend Corinne and then all of a sudden, you're less like, No, I can't I've hit a wall. And now I'm not sure how to start this anymore. We just another sort of classic ADHD
is,
well, we've been talking for the last couple of episodes about rest right and about like shifting out of one mode basically, which is not rest mode and into rest mode, but there is a transition. Right? The transition where you cease to operate in one state, and then something happens and then you operate in a different state, right like so the transition you were talking about Leo's bedtime routine, right? The transition from awake time to asleep time has a number of rituals associated with it, it takes a certain amount of time. The transition, we talked about in our pandemic episodes last year, from work time to not work time for me involves changing outfits, right? So, yep, great. So I'm trying to mark those transitions with, with like a physical action that involves changing my clothes, but also that, like, I can look at my own body and see that I'm wearing different clothing. And so I know, like that the change between the two states happens to be a transition a transition is I have to go into my room and make the decision to change my clothes, right. And like so many ADHD people, sometimes I find myself still when I'm in the evening portion, which is the trackpants portion of my day, still wearing my work clothes, because I could not muster up the spoons to engage the transition Act, which is simply take off this pair of pants, and put a different pair of pants on, right. So I know a lot of ADHD people struggle with those really simple transitions, you know, I don't want to be wearing the tight pants with the belt on. But I also somehow can't muster the will to just take them off. Right? So like, those are the little transitions. And I think there are like bigger transitions to like the transition from, you know, I've been working for X number of weeks in a row. But now I'm going to book a long weekend and be in vacation mode, right? And so many of us have difficulty shifting out of like work brain and into vacation brain, we'll be checking our emails on the beach, or, or what have you. We're like, just completely unable to unclench about that. And then there were even bigger transitions, right? Like the transitions that we've had to all go through over the past 1314 months from like, not a pandemic, to a pandemic, to relaxing of restrictions to tightening of restrictions to Oh, no, it's a second wave, oh, now we're going back to work, but in a different way than before. There's a lot of transitions there. And a lot of us get really lost in that we could handle state a, and we can handle state B. It's like how do we get between those states, though? So I was hoping we could talk about that a little bit. Yeah,
definitely. And I think that there's, I think I said this where we're not quite post pandemic, yet. We're kind of in the we're in the that in between space, right, where it's not quite and, and again, depending on where you live, it's a different space where we're a little bit, somehow, miraculously, a little bit further ahead than y'all are in Canada down here. I know, I know, I never I look, I'm as shocked as you are right. And I, you know, I worried like my, you know, my parents finally got their first vaccine, but then it's like, no, we're waiting till June to get our second When are you getting yours? I'm like, exactly three weeks after, like, to the minute. And, and and I mean, I have friends with with kids who, you know, they don't even know if they're going to get to do anything again this summer. Right? It's been, it's also been weird to sort of see the different stages, whereas in Canada, you all went or a lot of it. But actually almost everyone went back to school. Yeah. Right. And now there's a lockdown. And people have gone back home, but like, we never went back to school.
Right.
Right. Like, we did not go back to school up until like, very, very recently. Yeah, um, and so that's been a little bit of a different transition. But we haven't gone back to school. But we've been allowed to do all the extracurriculars. And so my kids have been able to swim and my kids have been able to do ballet with social distancing, and masking and all of that kind of stuff. Whereas, you know, I have a really like, one of my best friends and former teammates, his kid he coaches to, and his kids coach, they haven't been able to get back in the water.
Oh, yeah. Like they have not been allowed
to get back in the water. And I'm just like, like, I don't like Korean kills everything but but it's just been so it's about transitions. But but more about, and I think this is part of the transitions is that it is especially hard when you see other people.
Right? Why do we write things? Yeah. Right. That seems less like a transition between states and more like, you know, because I went to Catholic school for many years. I'm like, is this purgatory? Or is this Limbo? Yeah, right. Like, are we being there go punished. Interim way that we will eventually cease being punished for but like, the whole idea is like you're in purgatory, because like, you're not ready for it yet. Right? Like you have some penance to do. So. Yeah, Limbo is like you're not going anywhere. So like I asked you here's like the thought experiment. So your kids were off at the same time that Mikey was off like last March, right? Yeah. They leave for the break. They don't come back. Would you prefer your situation which is like your kids did not go back for essentially a whole year, or would you prefer my position which was my kid went back in September, to in person school until December, but then was off for six weeks after Christmas. But then was back for three weeks after the lockdown again, but now is home again. So I've done a lot of transitions here like I would say, in general, the more days that that my kid is at school, like out of my house is better for me and always but the constant transitioning back and forth I'm finding incredibly wearing and fraying of everybody's Yeah, resilience in my house. What do you think? Oh,
yeah, no, I prefer what we're doing. And I'm even noticing that the transition is really hard. We're both my kids were like, We want to go back, right, two days a week, four days a week doesn't matter. We want to go back we want to get out of the house basically. Right. Like, even though they had been made was just like we we want to get back into some form of in person schooling. I said, you know, and I'm, again, it's it was we beta calculus, both my husband and I are low risk, and we don't have any elderly. You know, our parents live in Canada. So we're not worried about infecting you know, people who are high risk and in that, so we said, Yeah, you know, we'll you can go back to school. But they've gone back to school, and even my son, and because some people can still choose to be virtual, and they know that they could choose to be virtual. So some days, my son is still just like, Can I just be virtual today? I like no, set your court back to school.
limbo. I hate it. I hate it. This is one of the things that I think maybe some of our listeners will be struggling with, too, is that everything is happening all at once, and then never, and that, you know, we're you know, preparing to go back to campus, except that we're not right. Or will you know, you should get yourself ready to make this transition. But we don't know when it's going to happen. It could be one week, or it could be in three months. Like we don't know. And yeah, I wonder how many of us fall into the transition and get stuck. Right? Or if this is like maybe particularly triggering, like, I know, the autistic part of me, like as if I can separate it from the rest of it. Like it's a sort of thought experiment here. The autistic part of me really does not deal well with uncertainty. Right? Like, what are we gonna do with it? What is the plant what is happening, I need to get myself ready for it. And but also the ADHD side of me finds it very hard to shift from one anything to a different anything that that pivot moment that take off the uncomfortable pair of pants and put on the comfortable pair of pants. I will just not do because the thought of the activity required to make that transition somehow is more burdensome than wearing like tight pants with a belt. Why? Why are we like this? Lee? Why is it so hard to transition?
all admit to something and I think a lot of people I've seen this before with people with ADHD is that my biggest like day to day challenge is going to take a shower. Oh, I just like, I always know, I feel better after the shower. I don't mind being in the shower, I end up spending entirely too much time in the shower, because that's impossible to transition out. You know? Yeah, but but there's just some block about it, where it's just like, oh, but then I'm gonna, and my hair is gonna be wet. And I'm gonna wait we're gonna have to dry off and then I just cut my hair the way I liked it, and then it's gonna be puffy again, and, and like, it's gonna take forever to dry. And I got it like, so there's, there's a whole routine associated with the shower, which makes a lot of sense, right? But it's just it looks arduous to me, right before I get into it, where it's just like, there are so many steps like I've got to test get undressed, and then test the shower and then get in and then then wash my hair and there's a lot of hair and then I gotta I gotta you know and
be itchy when I come out. So I have Yeah, good lotion. If I'm using the good lotion. I should get out my eczema creams. Like it's like really funny. This is like very classic ADHD is like, I will sit here and stew for 45 minutes, because I really don't think I can spare the 20 minutes. It's going to take me to shower, right? Yeah,
yeah, exactly. Exactly.
showering.
Yeah. Is it I'm just like, well, I'm really gross. And part of part of it is if I get into the shower immediately after my husband and like take away just the one step of having to turn it on. Makes it easy. No, I'm serious. I'll be like, okay, just leave the shower on. Let me know when you're done. And then I'll get in, right where it's just like one less thing. And then like one little external trigger where it's like, Okay, it's time to get in the shower. It's like Alright, good. Okay, let's, and it's just it's the weirdest thing. But uh, but other like I and some people, it's like that for eating. Right? Where it's just like,
No, I can't.
Yeah, well, and I hate cooking to write that process that goes with cooking. Where I'm just, you know, I will. I will. You know, I'm masters. I say it microwaving things. Because I would much rather just toss something in the Microwave for three minutes, then I would like assemble even stuff that my husband has pre prepared and all I have to do is put it together. Oh, Lord. Yeah.
Yeah, it's I shower at night now. Like, and this is some of the ways that we deal with transition, right is like figure out what the main part of the barrier is. And like in the morning, I just like don't want to do anything in the morning, I'm usually starving, and I'm unmedicated. And I'm cranky, and like, My legs are sore from whatever it is that I did. And it's like all I can do to get up, eat breakfast, take my pills, and then I have to like, go for a walk or something to wake up and I'm like, not going to work a shower. And there is too much logistics and also like the thought of having to get all the way naked and then all the way wet and cold is just like
and then all the way dressed again. And then all the way through.
Yeah, yeah. So like when I have my shower now is when I like have to change out of my tracksuit anyways to put pajamas on. So there was going to be Nick. I mean, like I know that's true in the morning, too, but I don't have anything else to do before bed. Right? Except have this shower. And I do like the way I feel after my shower. And I have like this, this like from lush, sleepy lotion and shower cream, whatever that I put on the roof. And I'm like, it's just turns in this really really nice relaxing I guess I'm like Leo with my like long evening shower. Like, it becomes a very pleasant sensory experience that is part of the transition of going to bed for me. So I'm not like sticking it like, like sometimes I go go for a run at four in the afternoon. And I will come back and it will be like legitimately crunchy, yeah, like gross. Like you can like rub your hand on my face and salt will come off like I'm just gross. But I will not have a shower then. Because I'd have to take off my running clothes, and then have a shower and put different clothes on. But then after that, I'm going to take those clothes off. And it feels like too many transitions, right. So it will be gross until some period after supper. And then have my before bed shower. Because for some reason, if I add one more transition into my day, I can't handle it. Yeah. Yeah. So like, I wonder if that has to do with, like our tendency. I think you're more prone to this than me to like, multitask. I'm putting the air bunnies around. Yeah. multitask. Because like, for me, multitasking is just like doing many transitions at the same time. And I want to die.
Yeah, no for like, and this is part of trying to trick me myself into getting into the shower. And this is a typical ADHD trick like I will, I will reward myself which is just like, I'm not just going to take a shower. I'm also going to listen to a
podcast. Oh, yeah. Right.
Like, I will listen to, oh, I've got my podcast that I like. And today I'm going to listen to this podcast while I'm in the shower, so it doesn't feel like because that's the other thing that it kind of feels like to me. It feels like and I know it's not and this is weird. It just feels like wasted time. It's boring.
Yeah, it's there you go. It's boring. And even if I'm sitting there like playing like, I get, like you said, I could be sitting there for 20 minutes playing 2048 or Candy Crush or whatever, where it's like, I could be showering. But to me, it's just like, Yeah, but I'm doing something here. You're just showering is not doing anything.
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, I have started to listening not to podcast in the shower. Like, I just have difficulty picking out the speech. But I will listen to like my favorite music that's not appropriate to listen to while I'm working because it's too distracting while I'm working. And I have this like little Bose mini speaker that's also fully waterproof. And I just put it on the shelf in the shower. And then somehow that becomes like an activity that is less boring. But I do listen to podcasts. Like I queue up my podcast for other boring transition things like for when I want to get dressed in my game, I will wake up and I will have my special emergency meal replacement shake before I get out of bed. So that have the energy to get out of bed. But then it's like, I just want to sit down and read the New York Times on my phone for an hour because I'm too bored. Yeah, but if I turn on like the CBC Radio morning show on my phone and put my phone in my pocket now. I can manage to like make the bed and like brush my teeth and wash my face and do all those things that would just be too boring. transition between the sleepy time and get to work time. So like sometimes I have to have like, I guess that's like knitting in a meeting. Right? I have to listen to a podcast while I'm brushing my teeth or I'm not gonna brush my teeth. I'm just not it's too boring. And you know what? That's so funny because
like, I miss radio, right? Like it's just it's not like I used to wake up in the morning and you'd put on morning radio. Right? Yeah. And I know some people can't stand it but we would listen to the morning circus, the local morning circus, right? So we would listen to anybody who grew up in Montreal, like this is gonna you're gonna be like, oh my god. Yes. Whatever radio station Terry and Ted were at like, and they moved around a lot. And of course, there's only a certain number of English language stations in Montreal. You know, that's what we would listen to. And it was a mix of music and, you know, news and talk. And even when we moved down to Southern California, they had a great morning show there on the rock alternative station that we used that I used to always listen to driving to work in the morning. And while I was getting ready, but after we had the kids, you know, they, they didn't want like any of that. And so there was something about, there's something so important about that transition in the morning that it was like, my mom would come in and wake us up and turn on the stereo. This is also like growing up in the 80s and 90s. There's the massive wall unit stereo in the living room, and it would get flicked on. Yeah. And like, not turned out super loud, but turned out loud enough that it was like you're not falling back asleep. And you would sort of you know bleary eyed go through with that sort of soundtrack in the background almost, you know, like what you're describing, right?
Yeah, well, that's a little bit like, using emotional contagion for good, right. It's like, I need some Pepe, people who've already been awake for four hours to make it seem like this is the time for us to be chipper to be making jokes and finding weird stories off the news wire and reading for comic effect and then playing a really loud pop song and then fart noises and then a call in contest like, Yeah, because it's like so active that you can pick up that mood from them, like so often emotional contagious. contagion does a sin, right? Like we were talking about before about picking up people's moods and like taking them on when they're not actually your mood and then freaking out, right? So sometimes it's good if you can activate that to get your energy levels up to participate in your day. before you're ready. That's a good transitions trait. I never liked those. I find that that radio is just too frenetic. Right, it's too loud.
This is a shock to me in no way shape, or form. I was like, This is Amy's nightmare.
Yeah, I'm listening to CBC which does like 17 minute interviews with the guy examining the budget. Right? Yeah. Okay. I'll listen to that.
I'll listen. Yeah, I'm
not HD.
I'm not the NPR person. Right. Like you weren't the CBC radio or NPR was like, like this an NPR in the morning. And I'm like, that puts me right back to sleep. I'm just like, there is too much of this radio, NPR voice going on. Where?
Yeah, the NPR voice. It's like very, very quiet. Yeah. ASMR. And we're all gonna wake up to that. I'm like, lights gonna jump to me like it's people talking. And that's enough for him. Yeah. So Friday, we record this podcast on Fridays. And Friday is like kind of a trash fire for transitions for me. And I usually spend Friday in some great state of agitation, and be ready to not feel sorry for me at all. Because like, normally, I would have my office hours virtual office hours with my graduate students from 10 until I love it, and I'm on camera for that. So we'd have to be dressed by that point. And I like to have my coffee by them. But like, that means I have to leave the house in pretty short order after I get up to make sure that I have enough time to like, get to Starbucks and come back and like have makeup on. And so I'm all mad about how already my whole morning is transition. And then we have a cleaning service that comes every week. It's like Mali made now and they come on, I'm using the air bunnies again, Friday frame, but we never quite know when. So we also have to tidy the house before they get here so that they can vacuum the floors. They need to be able to see them. And I also don't like I need to be able to see them tidying because it's Yeah, it's boring. So part of my ritual on Fridays, then for all of these transitions that I have to do is I listen to our podcast, Lee because we release it on Friday. I'm like, Oh, I want to listen to but I can't just listen to the podcast because it's too boring to just sit down and listen to the radio. So I put it on in my headphones, and I tidy my house. And I brush my teeth and I go to Starbucks and get my coffee and usually get all of that done. And then I run out of podcast and the that has saved my Friday mornings is having our own podcasts to listen to, because I really want to do it. Right. I don't want to do any of the other things. I'm like I really want to hear like how we sound this week. And like in a workout. I'm going to like write down things we have to remember and all that stuff that I really want to do that. So now that's associated with all those tasks that I'm big mad about, like I have to clean my house because the cleaning ladies are coming but I have other things I want to do. And I resent that I don't get to do them right now. Yeah, because the people who are cleaning my house for me, are inconveniencing me. Right I hear I hear it when I say it, but I'm so bad. But it's but
that's but that's the thought process right? And that's what we will who like don't understand and it's good to narrate it because people who are neurotypical just don't understand what that process is. Right? Like it's just like, and I get it too right it's just they just want to say just do it like Why can't you just do this thing? And it's like no, it really just can like the somehow I can just get up and put yourself in the shower just like I did. I just did there's there's a process that goes on in my head that is like no You know, it is there's too much I don't have enough spoons for a shower.
And it's somehow like becomes 50 times harder when someone says like, you are literally sitting six feet away from the showerhead. Like, why aren't you like, it's just you could just get up and do it right now. And as soon as they say that, somehow
it get turned into 1000 pound stone in your I do
know. Yeah, I do think you might think it's easy, right? You might think I'm only six feet away from the shower. And I am and you might think it would take me like one second to walk over there. And it would. Right, but it's still impossible. And now I hate myself. Yeah. Even though you because they're not unreasonable, right? If they're not being unreasonable and saying like, there's not a hard thing to do, but it's hard for me because I don't like going from dry to wet. And then I don't like going from wet to dry. Yeah, right. I don't like going from pajamas to street clothes. And I don't like going from street clothes to running clothes like this is the main impediment to my running often is had this very complicated set of running Brock's that like are multi hook difficult to get on, I can't run in my regular bra, I have to put this like running bra on. And sometimes for like a three kilometer speed run that I have to do, which will take me 18 minutes of running takes me 45 minutes to put my running clothes on. And that's sometimes why I skip my run. It's not because I don't have time to do the run, but I don't have time to do the elaborate transition retrievals
if you want if you want elaborate transition rituals, I do. I mean, it's it those are huge impediments for me to go swimming. Right, because I have to wedge myself in a speedo. And, you know, get there the caps got to go on, I got to get by on the goggles, I've got to go on and got to get all the equipment ready. And I mean, you don't have to use equipment, but like i kickboard, no, you know, that sort of thing. But then there's afterwards and you're all smell like chlorine again, then your hair is really wet. And I mean, you're gonna take I should take a shower, but then I'm like, then the bathing suit is like soaked. Like there's a there's the bathing suit that's wet when you come out of the water with chlorine. And then there's the bathing suit that's wet when you get out of the shower. And you're like
you have to walk across the deck and you're not in the pool yet, but you're already frozen.
Yeah, yeah. Or, or 1000 degrees depending on like the condition and then you're just like, this water coal today. Is the water hot. And you're like, well, I need I say to my swimmers, everyone turns like Goldilocks, it's too hot. It's too cold. You know, and you generally Did you like it and you're never happy with it. You jump in and it's like soup, and you're like it's gonna suck to swim in this. Then you jump in and it's freezing. You're like,
Oh, you know, we just sound like the biggest whiners though you're like to get in the pool. And I'm like my cleaning ladies are observing me like, but it's the transition.
Yeah, no, it really is. Like, if I could just, if you could just, if I could just snap my fingers and have my suit and cap and goggles on and be in the water. I'd be like, yep, all right, let's swim. What? Put Like that those those steps between are just like
yeah, now it's just become this hugely cognitive burden to do list in your head of like, you know, so like some of the things that I do to try to make that a bit easier. Like we're talking about like listening to music in the shower, or like me putting our podcasts on I save it for like, these days, I need to get moving. like some of the other things that that we do. Like I've developed a habit now. Every night I like kind of go through the whole house and pick up off my, like assorted detritus, like coffee cups, or like, Where did I leave my good pen? Or like, is my computer charger? Like, where did I put that? Because it makes the transition to work in the morning easier? Yeah, right? If I get that stuff sorted out at night, and like there's a lot of writing advice books like this, too. They're always like what they call it's like park on the downhill slope. Yeah, right. Which makes more sense. If you like drive a standard transmission car, it sort of says like, you're less likely to stall out, if you're already pointed downhill and the car is gonna be rolling, right? So like, there are some ways in which we can plan for transitions in in ways where we sort of recognize that we're not good enough at driving this car that we can park on an uphill slope, and that it's a bit dodgy whether we're going to start if we're on a busy street or it's a bit dodgy if we're going to start even on the flat part. So we need to find the downhill slope. So for me, that means like, anything that's going to that I'm going to have to deal with before I start work in the morning, I should probably deal with at night, right? When I don't really feel a burden of productivity. It's not like I'm trying to answer 10 emails, but I should bring my dishes downstairs. That's why the dishes are still here, right because I had to answer 10 emails but tomorrow I'm not going to answer any emails if the dishes are still there because it's gonna drive me crazy. Right. So that's like one of the things I do or like we have a pool membership and we keep the bathing suits the towels, the goggles in a bag in the front closet. So we don't ever have to assemble that stuff. Yeah, it's in the bag. You're already because otherwise I'd spend 45 minutes like trying to motivate myself to put things in the bag so that we could go to the pool for probably half an hour. Like, that's not a great use of my time. So I get it like, do you have any tricks? Any other tricks about making your transitions, fooling yourself into getting through them a
little better? No. I, my kids do I haven't for my kids. And so like a lot of what you're describing, like my son will put on clean clothes after he takes a shower at night. And while we're watching. And those are the clothes he will take them out, put them on the chair and say these are the clothes I'm going to wear tomorrow. Right? Not that he spends a lot of time deciding what he's going to wear. He just does like grab t shirt from t shirt drawer grabs wet pad raise my pant drawer, you know, maybe they match but probably they don't, but it doesn't have to do
in the morning because he did that night. Yeah.
And, and, you know, we're, he's he's very big on routine, right? And so like, if you break that routine that is just like it, he can handle it. But like, once you've set up the routine, like he doesn't even need, it's been so much that he doesn't even need the alarms on his phone anymore. Because he just like knows what the order is of things to do in the morning. And what time around were in there that he does it now. The mornings that he happens to sleep in, which he's been doing lately, because he's grown three inches in two months. Then it gets totally thrown off. Right? Like it he's he's like his, he's based on a wakeup time between six and 630, which he just does automatically. If he sleeps into seven or 730 then it's all it's all off because he's used to having lying in a watch any may whatever anyway, was released overnight, and I'm going to watch that for the first half hour quietly in the morning before anyone else in the house is you know, moving or his sister's you know, she's still in a room. And then I and he's he's also taught himself how to fry eggs or do Yeah, no, I know his and so he makes himself Friday because every morning for breakfast. So that's part of the routine. Like what time is it? Okay, that okay, the enemy is over. Now it's time to make my eggs. Right and so goes in and makes his eggs and all right now the eggs are done. Um, now it is time to sort of organize the you know, my lunch in my bag. And okay, that's done. All right, now it's time to walk the dog. And so we're gonna go, you know, walk the dog, and then I'll have about 15 minutes and I have to leave for school or go upstairs to the right.
But if he's like, half an hour behind everything, he's not able to shift the transition. Yeah, it's a class time.
Yeah. And, and swim team. It's sort of like I yell down half an hour before we leave. And then I throw a swimsuit at them. And he changes into that. And this one bag is right at the door. And the equipment bag is you know, in the closet. You know, so they just have to go in the closet equipment bag is there a swim bag is there and then we leave and so there's, there's there's a lot of that the bags are all by the door that you know, at the door is chaos, but it's got everything it needs. My daughter, she's sort of also she plans her outfits the night before, what's the weather gonna be like tomorrow? Okay, let's let's plan it out. What are we? What's on the schedule? And she'll go over it with me, right? She's like, don't forget IPT tomorrow or don't forget, I've got this thing tomorrow and you know, sort of plans that out. But like, you know, for, for me, it's just, I'm so focused in on making sure like I can, it's not that I don't trust them. And I do and they will mostly get it right. But it's still this sort of mom instinct in the back of my mind that I have to make sure that like, are these things happening? Okay, good. All right, good. All right. Are we happening? You know,
yeah, I feel like I can manage other people's transitions better than I can manage my own because they're not for them. Like it's for me. Yeah, right. Well, and so like, You're, you're suggesting some ways of dealing with like transitions that are a matter of routine, right? So Rutan Ising, making habitual, certain kinds of, of transitions. And then we sort of learned the best way that we need to do them, like with music in the shower, or like podcasts on our walk, or like, making it a walk that I take with my husband, and he's much more timely than me. So I won't let him down. So I'll do it. Like, there are those kinds of transitions.
For me, especially people. Yeah. So for me, now that I'm thinking about it, how I manage my transitions is that I have to make it the shortest amount of time possible.
Does that mean it's a race? Well, yeah, right. I did some artificial panic in there. Right.
Right. So it used to be like, when I was driving to work. I would, I needed to get, I needed to get the few secret parking spots that were available. And so like the alarm would go off at 630. And it was basically like roll out of bed, go to the bathroom, get dressed, grab my coffee, get in the car and go. Right, right. Like it was just like that. And again, it's the minimizing the amount of steps right and it's like what are the least number steps I need to take, and then I can get them done in 20 minutes, I'm gonna get in the car and I get that parking spot.
Right. Yeah. So you also know there that, that you've taken away your capacity for discretion first thing in the morning, right? Like, yeah, time to read this one more article newspaper? No, you don't, because you know that it's like, basically flying top speed by the seat of your pants. Yeah, and it's an open question. Yeah, whether you're gonna get a parking spot or not.
Yeah, and, and I know, but I also know that it's like, well, I'm gonna get to work at like, 730 in the frickin morning, nobody's gonna be in there. And I'll have time to kind of, you know, I'll bring a you know, there'll be something eat, I can admit there's a coffee machine, I can make myself another coffee while I'm there. I can, you know, and then sort of transition into the day that way and say, like, look at my to do list and all of that. So one of the ways that I've kind of artificially done that at home, is I try honestly to schedule my first meeting of the day as early as possible. Right? Right. Like, it's no one likes having your 9am meeting. But I'm like, if we can schedule a 9am meeting, I would much rather have a 9am. And it's like, my, my daughter's has had doctor's appointment, and I scheduled for eight o'clock. So we scheduled for eight o'clock, I'm gonna get up and get dressed. I'm gonna grab my coffee, and we're gonna go to the schedule, and my day is gonna start. Yeah, today, I didn't have my first meeting until 10. And then it's just like, I barely managed to get dressed on time for the meeting.
Right? So when you give yourself too much wiggle room, basically, you wiggle yourself into Limbo, where you get nothing done. Yeah. And I think that's a pretty common coping strategy, too. I mean, that's the way like many ADHD students say like, I do my best work at the last minute. And it's like, well, you do your only work last minute, because you need to use your own adrenaline levels in order to be able to function at all. And so like, what you've done is you've taken all the decision points, like out of the the Get ready part, you're like, I'm going to get up, and it's going to be like, step, step, step, step step, then they all need to happen in sequence right away, or I'm not gonna make it to the thing. And then once you've made it to the thing, like I love that, that the routine that you describe when you get to work at 730 is the routine that I have before I start work in the morning. Yeah. Right. But you know, yourself enough to No, no, actually, if I start like that, I'm not gonna get anywhere, right, I need to get somewhere first, and do this thing. And that's like, a great way, I think, to manage those transitions that, you know, you're gonna have difficulty with instead of just telling yourself to get better at doing it the right way.
Yeah, well, and I made that I actually made that observation. This is less about transitions. And more just about working generally, is I made that observation yesterday on Twitter, it's like I'm grading right now. And I just have to like plan, the grading is going to take a long time. And I need to just plan for that. And be okay with it that I'm going to get through two or three papers and be so bored. That I have to take a 10 to 15 minute Twitter slash browsing patterns, slash, whatever it is break, and then like, you know, and then go back to it once I'm bored on Twitter, because I was just there 10 minutes ago, and literally, nothing has changed.
Are you ever like on Twitter? And then you're like, No, I'm done with this. And then you like, like, go back to your home screen. And then the first thing you do is like, click on Twitter again. Yeah, even though you'd like just left it. Yeah. Sometimes I'll be like, in Twitter, in my browser on my computer, and I'll be bored with Twitter. And then I'll go up to the address bar, and I will type in Twitter. Like, yeah, it's this is not productive.
Well, I hope that you are finding a way to be a little bit more productive, then Amy and I are pain in this one. So we will join back up with this conversation on next week's episode of the podcast, all the things ADHD. But in the meantime, feel free to email us at all the things adhd@gmail.com or find us on Twitter. I am ready writing. Amy is did you think? Please keep listening. I would ask people to rate the podcast on whatever podcast but we all have ADHD. So obviously, you're going to forget which is fine. So thank you again, so much for listening, and we will see you hear you listen, be in your ears. I don't know what am I supposed to say at the end of podcasts. We'll be here next week, same time, same place, and we'll continue having this conversation. Until then. Stay focused and take care
