My mid-week post… post dated as my post for last week, which got away from me ended up being longer than expected. So I’m going to try to make this one more concise. We’ll see… I may expand on this more later.
The core idea is that in life we have certain moments/ideas/happening/etc. that need to be triggers for action. Often as ADHDers, when something goes wrong we go into triage mode and deal with the immediate ramifications but don’t account for the lack of planning, organization, time, attention, or whatever we needed to spend to avoid having the same thing happen again. Thus, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
I’m going to give you one example from my professional life to chew on. And I may expand in a future post on how this has helped me run a more efficient business. (And, this concept came up this week with a client who runs a business that is not too dissimilar to mine.)
When I book a new client, like I did today, (Yay!) that automatically triggers…
? I send a welcome packet to that client with 5 standard documents, one of which is personalized. Now there is a certain percentage of people who ghost me at this point for whatever reason. So I wait until I get billing info which triggers a new set of tasks automatically.
? Put client in my google address book under “clients,” (Check list while I’m in there.)
? Put client in my master schedule so I don’t promise a spot that’s not open
? Put client on my google calendar so I don’t double book
? Make a folder for the new client with a name label
These steps are annoying and tedious, ADHD kryptonite, if you will. But over the years I’ve just convinced myself that sucking it up for the few minutes it takes to do them is FAR better than the anxiety I experience when I need that information to be accurate and it isn’t. I don’t know why I’m capable of taking that long view, or why I can suck up that tedium, or how I got to this place. But it’s a good place to be. And it makes me beliece you can get here too. Yes, I have to spend the time and bandwidth to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. But the lower stress level is WAY worth it to me.