I’m not going to go too much into depth on this one. I know I’ve written about this a lot in the past. But one thing that has come up in my coaching a bunch lately is the idea of how to prioritize self care. To define that, let’s consider sleep, exercise, mindfulness, down time, social interaction, or whatever else you need to keep your machine well oiled and ready to keep grinding.
For the sake of clarity and brevity, I’ll use exercise as the template for self care. Plus, it is probably the most important of those listed for me, personally. Yet, it is never the number one thing on my priority list… objectively. I can make it be number one. But it’s not there on its own. Yet, there is no way to make up a missed day of exercise. I didn’t get my blog post done yesterday and no small children died. I can always get that done another day or even, God forbid, skip a week. But I seem to effectively moved that task to today. But I did get my 42 minutes in on the spin bike yesterday. And, I’m going to work out again today. Because that is a thing that I just can’t make up for.
I had a coach in high school who was also a math teacher. And he had a catch phrase, “Five times ten is greater than one times 50.” He was mostly referring to muscle memory and developing good habits. But I’ve found the lesson broadly applicable to my ADHD life, specifically in regards to self care. I get more out of meditating for five minutes five times a week than I would only doing it once for 25 minutes. I get more out of practicing the drums for 20 minutes five times a week than I would if I even tried to practice for one hour and 40 minutes once a week. And, I feel better today because I worked out yesterday. So consider how you prioritize your self care.
Standard Disclaimer: In an effort to foil my own perfectionist tendencies, I do not edit my posts much… if at all. Please excuse and typos, mistakes, grammatical errors, or awkward phrasing. I focus on getting my content down. In my humble opinion, an imperfect post posted is infinitely better than a perfect post that goes unfinished.