When Everything Feels Urgent and Overwhelming at Work, Especially If You Have ADHD | E89

Gino Cordone [00:00:12]:
Hello and welcome to episode 89 of Working towards our purpose. In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about what to do when everything feels urgent, especially with an ADHD brain. But. But before we get into that, we’re going to take a moment and just check in with ourselves, see where we’re at, see how we’re feeling today. Alrighty. Hopefully you got a moment to check in for me. Feeling pretty tired, sad. Yeah, it’s been a long two weeks.

Gino Cordone [00:00:54]:
My grandmother passed away last week and me and my family are going through the grieving process of that. She was 80 or, sorry, 98 years old, almost 99 years old. A month. Month away from that. And she was an amazing woman. I was really fortunate to have her as a grandmother and. And yeah, that was my last grandparent. So if you still have a grandparent, maybe check in on them and go play a game with them.

Gino Cordone [00:01:26]:
My grandma loves playing games. So, yeah, we’re trying to get back into working and all that, so might be a bit distracted today as we talk about focusing and when things feel urgent and stuff. But to get into the episode, I just finished this book, this one up here called the 5 Minute Focus Reset by Scott Allen, and it basically talks about how you can better focus with adhd. And it was really helpful for me. And as I’m learning more about adhd, it just gave me some language and framework to describe how I feel sometimes and also how my brain works. It gives me language to it and yeah, just to better be able to work with my brain instead of against it. And it’s been really helpful for me. So hopefully I can boil down the things that I took from it and hopefully that can be helpful for you.

Gino Cordone [00:02:36]:
So, yeah, I guess to start off with what ADHD feels like, at least for me, or what the biggest struggles are for me is focusing on something that’s like the big one and then also just finishing tasks. And I think there’s some things that we’ll get into in this episode that can help with both of those things. And before we get into that, and then at the end, I’ll also have this one technique that I’ve found from this book that can help you, like, stay on. On focus and also help you to finish tasks. So. So stay till the end for that. But before we get into all that, I do want to, like, talk about, like, the biggest myth, I think, with ADHD and productivity in general is that, you know, when, when you lose focus with something or, you know, it’s taking you longer to finish tasks or you have trouble finishing tasks. I think at least for me, the first thought that comes to mind is like, oh, you’re not working hard enough or you’re not disciplined enough to finish this task.

Gino Cordone [00:03:39]:
You got distracted and you need to try harder or you don’t have enough discipline. And I think that’s never the answer. Shaming yourself into not being good enough is never helpful. I do it all the time and it never helps. It usually just makes me more self critical and go down that spiral. So yeah, I think it’s a myth that you need to have more discipline. And I think something that I got out of this book and what makes a lot more sense to me is that when you’re losing focus, it’s not because you’re not working hard enough. And especially like when we talk about urgency, when you start to lose focus and you feel like there’s so many tasks that you need to do and you get overwhelmed by how am I going to get all this stuff done? It’s all important.

Gino Cordone [00:04:33]:
Having everything feel like it’s urgent goes right along with this. And I think that that’s not true. There’s not that many urgent things. And I think especially it’s so easy in corporate culture or in your work life or if you have a business or something. It’s always so easy to feel like everything is urgent. And I think that a way that we can instead shame ourselves for not working hard enough. What I’ve noticed is that when you feel that sense of urgency, it’s your nervous system not being regulated. You are sort of going down these spirals of catastrophizing and making everything feel like it’s urgent when it’s not.

Gino Cordone [00:05:25]:
And instead of applying more discipline to that, I think a better approach is to try to help regulate your nervous system, which basically just means calm yourself down. So I had a really good example of that the other day at my grandmother’s funeral. Me and my brother were doing the eulogy and you got to stand up there and read it in front of everybody. And public speaking is tough for most people. And I got nervous and it was really interesting because I’ve done eulogy before and I did one for my grandfather maybe 10 years ago and that was so much harder and I don’t remember it. I just kind of blacked it out. And I’ve been going through these, doing different open mics and all these examples of places where I need to regulate my nervous system. So anyways, I was sitting in this church.

Gino Cordone [00:06:21]:
We have to Go through the whole mass before we could do the eulogy. And I found myself getting worried and I’m like, oh, I’m going to mess it up. I’m going to trip or something, or hands start getting sweaty. And then I realized that I’m becoming worried and my nervous system is unregulated. And I simply just breathe, like, did a couple long breaths. Like, one thing, the easiest thing for me to do to regulate your nervous system is to just breathe. You breathe in a big breath, and then you breathe out longer than you breathe in. And just doing that three times can really help calm you down.

Gino Cordone [00:06:59]:
And it’s so interesting because this fight or flight response is like your body’s protection system. It’s like you think you’re in danger, so your body’s like amping itself up and you’re getting adrenaline and all the stuff that makes you freak out and want to fight or flight mode. But if you just try to breathe through it. I watched myself get worked up, calm myself down, get worked up, calm myself down, get worked up, calm myself down throughout the whole mass. And I found it interesting. I was just observing it and being like, wow, this is cool. I have ways to get myself to calm down now. And I say all that to describe, like, this is that same.

Gino Cordone [00:07:44]:
It’s the same principle as, like, thinking things are urgent and being worried that you’re not going to get things done. It’s like you’re becoming worried, you’re working yourself up. And I don’t say that in like a it’s your fault way. So I’m not. Hopefully that doesn’t come off like that because it’s natural to worry about things and to be worried about things. But we can do something about it. We can calm ourselves down. We can have different techniques to calm ourselves down.

Gino Cordone [00:08:12]:
Something as simple as a breath, trying to get yourself out of your head and into the present moment. Another thing, feeling the ground, feeling the bench that you’re sitting on, the chair that you’re sitting on, smelling things, essential oil, candle, all those sorts of things can help bring you back into your body, into the present moment, and out of that fight or flight, unregulated nervous system response. So for me, I’ve kind of realized while reading this ADHD book that that’s what that sense of urgency is, and you can do something about it. And I know that people are going to make you feel like they’re going to tell you that things are urgent, Especially if you’re in a corporate setting. Everybody’s going to Tell you things you should worry about and you got to get this done and blah, blah, blah. But. It’s interesting to feel control over that and I think it’s helpful to feel like there’s control over that. So.

Gino Cordone [00:09:12]:
Yeah. So how do we eliminate that feeling of urgency you try to get out of your head? Because usually the urgency is like a spiraling in your head and once you are able to kind of reduce some of that panic, then that sense of urgency will also go away. So, yeah, where do you go from there? I guess so. I think that’s the major thing that I kind of took from this book and my experiences in the past week is that self regulating, self calming, like making yourself feel safe and not in fight or flight mode is a productivity hack, I guess, for lack of a better term, because once you’re calm, you can make better decisions. And so for the rest of the episode, we’ll go through these things that I’ve learned from this book and some of the language and framework that I’ve learned. And then at the end of it, we’ll talk about one tool that I’ve been using that has been helpful for me to stay more focused. So, yeah, so once you get calm, once you calm your nervous system down, one of the biggest things for adhd, like I mentioned, is not being able to focus on tasks. And in this book they use the term focus drift.

Gino Cordone [00:10:34]:
And so this is like, I don’t know if you’ve ever sat down to do something. Maybe you’re writing a blog post or something or anything. You sit down to do that. But then you think, oh, I have to pay my bills today. So then you log onto your banking app and then you’re like, oh, well, I have to track how much I’m spending in my spreadsheet, so I got to open up that. And then you think about like, oh, well, I should pay my business credit card too, because that’s also due. And then you open up your business tracking spreadsheet and before you know it, there’s like 15 tabs open and you’re doing something completely different than what you sat down to do. And this is focus drift.

Gino Cordone [00:11:09]:
This is feeling like other things need your attention, but you actually sat down to do this one thing. So this is very common in adhd. That specific focus drift is something I’ve done before. But in this book, the five Minute reset, one of the biggest concepts from it is how do we interrupt these spirals, how do we get out of these drifts and notice that we’re Drifting and try to bring our attention back to focusing on what we should be focusing on or what we want to be focusing on. And so a lot of what I talked about with, like, regulating your nervous system is sort of a way to find. To find focus again, to go for a walk, like to go and move your body, to go do something that resets your mind and try to getting out of that spiral that you’re stuck in. And it is really hard. It’s really hard to not just pick up your phone and scroll through Instagram.

Gino Cordone [00:12:19]:
I mean, that’s the easiest thing to sort of distract yourself from what you’re doing. But if we can go do something small and try to, like, get some awareness, and then once we do have some awareness that we’re drifting our focus, the thing to do to try to restart your focus, because that’s something too, to realize that you can restart your focus, you can start at any time and you can come back into it. But something that they wrote about in this book was trying to find a re entry point. And I think that was really helpful for me because I think sometimes I feel like it’s too far gone. I’ve lost focus. I’m an hour into scrolling or to doing something that doesn’t. It’s a distraction. I feel like, well, today’s gone, maybe tomorrow.

Gino Cordone [00:13:13]:
It’s easy to just write it off or to feel like you can’t come back in. But if you can find a re entry point, you can get back into, kind of snap out of the unfocus and try to do what it is that you set out to do. And something that’s helpful that I read was finding the simplest reentry point. Maybe you lost focus because the task that you’re working on is a really big task, and it’s easier for your brain to get distracted and to go play your guitar or scroll on your phone. So the technique that I picked up in this book was to find the simplest thing that you can do so your brain can’t say no. So for me yesterday, an example is I was trying to work on something and I couldn’t get started. So I thought about one really simple thing. I had to make a phone call to the bank, and I called the bank.

Gino Cordone [00:14:14]:
It took five minutes. I thought I had a fee, but it wasn’t a fee. And after I did that one little task, I felt like I had some momentum on my side. And once I finished that, I was then able to do something else. And then I was able to do the task that I wanted to do that day. So finding these little simple re entry points into focus and even to think about it in that way has been helpful for me. Another thing that is difficult with ADHD is finishing projects and finishing tasks. And one thing that this book gave language to was open loops and having things always be opened.

Gino Cordone [00:14:59]:
And I sort of resonated with this because if I don’t finish a project, I’ll always be thinking about it and always be using mental energy to process it, I guess. And so that makes it really hard to relax. And even if I’m finished working for the day, it’s hard to feel like you’re done for the day or feel like you can ever just actually relax. It’s hard to put stuff down. But in this book they talked about how can you close loops? And there’s a couple different things that made sense to me. And if you’re working on something that isn’t finished, when you’re done working on it, to just simply get a sticky note, whether it’s digital or analog, just to write down where you left off, where you’re at, and then what the next step is to get back into the project. And by doing that, you can sort of close the book on that project and put it on the shelf, and then when you come back to it, you know you’re not going to be lost. And I think I sort of subconsciously do that all the time where I feel like I have to remember everything instead of like writing things down.

Gino Cordone [00:16:15]:
And I know that’s really simple concept, but yeah, with adhd, if you’re struggling with it, it’s like so easy to not do that. And I think that that’s something that I picked up from reading was sort of like parking your tasks. That’s what they called it, parking the tasks that you’re working on so you don’t have to continue to carry it with you. And this is helpful too, even if it’s not the end of the day. But you’re switching tasks to help you to just focus on one thing. Because I think that’s the biggest thing that people with ADHD struggle with is having too many brain tabs opened at once and there’s too many things you’re thinking about. And closing these loops and finishing projects and stuff can really help you to drop all of the other things and to focus on the one thing that you’re doing right now. So that’s been kind of helpful for me.

Gino Cordone [00:17:08]:
I’ve really tried to think about just doing the one thing that I’m on. I’m Notorious for keeping 20 tabs open on my computer because I’m like, well, I don’t want to forget to do that. So I’ll keep that there and I’ll keep this here. And then when you look at takes your attention away. You’re on one tab, but you see the little thing and you’re like, oh, that’s right. I gotta buy tickets for that event at some point, not right now. And it takes a little bit of thought power to do that. And by just clearing everything and only having the tabs, that.

Gino Cordone [00:17:41]:
That’s such a new thing for me that I’ve started, then it’s been really nice because it’s a lot less. It’s a lot easier to not get distracted by not having so many tabs open. So just little things like that and finishing your projects. The last thing that I want to talk about too is like, I’ve always noticed this to myself, like when you finish a project, you don’t. When I finish a project, I don’t notice that I get any sense of fulfillment from it. Usually I get really excited at the beginning of a task, but it’s really hard to feel much of anything when I’m finishing a task because I’m normally already onto the next thing. So kind of tracking what I’m doing with tasks. I think sometimes it can be hard to realize that you even finished a task.

Gino Cordone [00:18:36]:
I don’t know if you can resonate with that or if you’ve experienced that, but I’ll finish a task and I’ll still feel like it’s not done for some reason. I’ll finish a big task and I’m like, well, it’s not really done because it’s not perfect. So I’ll just keep thinking about it even though it’s done and I don’t get the feel good feeling of finishing it. So that’s really annoying. But if I can close the loops and be like, okay, this task is done when this happens, and almost sort of tell yourself that the task is done, okay, I’m done. Done working on this. Have a checklist and cross it off, those sorts of things. Visual indications I think are helpful to realize that you finished a task because I do know that for people that struggle with adhd, it is hard because you don’t get that same sense of dopamine hit when you finish tasks.

Gino Cordone [00:19:31]:
And it’s so much easier to start a bunch of tasks because that feels good, but to finishing them into doing the tedious stuff. To finish them is more difficult. So those are some of the things that I picked up in on that book. And then the one thing that I’ve started incorporating from this book is called the Focus Dashboard. And it’s basically just a piece of paper, like a very simple one thing sheet of paper. And you can customize it to what works for you. And here’s mine. It’s on a whiteboard right now because I’m still testing it and still figuring out what works for me and what I need.

Gino Cordone [00:20:09]:
But it’s basically just this one sheet of paper to help you stay focused on what you’re trying to do today. And also checking in with yourself, seeing where you’re at, writing stuff down so you don’t have to remember it. And so I’ll just walk through what mine looks like. And so on the top I have this mood tracker, and on the left hand side I have like, not focused. And on the right hand side I have super focused. So in the morning I’ve been waking up and just trying to like put down on that chart between those two points, like where I’m feeling, is it in the middle or is it, do I feel focused today or less focused? And with that, I can sort of help, like pick which tasks I should be working on. Cause if I’m not really focused, like doing a really hard task, like recording a podcast might not be possible. So that’s why I had to skip the episode last week, because I wasn’t able to do it, which is okay.

Gino Cordone [00:21:07]:
So yeah, there’s the mood tracker. And then right down on the second list under that, I have what’s the one thing that I want to do today? And this has been really helpful because it reminds me of that book that I read. The one thing. Picking one thing to work on and doing that one thing, that’s just been such a helpful concept for me. And I had an episode a while back on it. But picking the one thing that will help to get you to your goal and focusing on that because there’s so many distractions and there’s so many different things you can be doing, but trying to identify the one task that’s the most important, that’s also aligned with how you’re feeling today, it’s been really helpful for me. And what this basically does, this Focus Dashboard is it kind of like sets up my day and it tells me like, okay, if I do this one task today, then I had a successful day. And it doesn’t mean I can only do that task.

Gino Cordone [00:22:08]:
But if I Get that one task done, then I’m good. Because there’s been so many days where I’ve gotten a lot done, but at the end of the day, I just didn’t feel accomplished. I didn’t feel like I got stuff done. And it was mainly because I wasn’t looking at what I was doing. And if in the morning I can set myself up and be like, okay, today will be successful, if I do this one thing, then I do that one thing. And I’m like, okay, I did good today. I can still do more if I want, but I still am making steps forward. So for today, for example, my one thing is record this episode.

Gino Cordone [00:22:43]:
If I record this episode, at the minimum, it’s a great day. And I can get to the end of the day and be like, well, I did my one task. Maybe I wanted to do more, but that’s okay. I at least made some progress forward. And I think that that’s really helpful to track that and to see how you are getting things done. Because sometimes, like I said, you just don’t realize that you’re doing things. You don’t realize that you’re getting stuff done. So, okay, back to this focus dashboard.

Gino Cordone [00:23:10]:
On the third level here, I have micro tasks, which is just like, things that need to get done, but they don’t need to get done right now. They’re not the most important thing, but they’re just some things, some bigger things, some smaller things, just kind of like all the tasks that come to mind. So what this does is it helps me not have to remember it in my head so I can write it down. But then it also helps me, like, if I’m trying to find a re entry point, you know, I’m distracted. I’m trying to find a focused reentry point. I can tell you an easy task and be like, okay, I gotta make this phone call. I’ll go do that now. And then maybe I can get started back on my one thing task.

Gino Cordone [00:23:44]:
And then it also helps me cross stuff off. So when I cross stuff off, that makes me feel good about getting things done and carrying that momentum. And then I have another line here for in progress projects, like bigger projects or things again, so I don’t have to remember them. And then lastly, I have a section for finished. So here I’m literally writing down, like, all the things that I finished today. And something that’s been helpful is, like, I usually read in the morning, and sometimes I don’t see that as like a good thing or like, it’s just Become normal. So now I’ll write and finish like I read today. So even if I did, like, nothing, well, I read.

Gino Cordone [00:24:29]:
And that’s just really helpful, I think, to recognize that I’m doing things because so much of this feeling bad for not doing enough work is just not realizing that you’re doing things for me. So that’s been really helpful for me to sort of have this. And I’m doing it on a whiteboard now because I’m still adjusting it. Another thing that they recommended in the book was, you know, things that you shouldn’t do. So if you, you know, get caught playing your guitar all the time as a distraction, like, say, do not play your guitar, like, you can have a section on here of things not to do. For me, I didn’t. Didn’t feel like I wanted to do that, but. But, yeah, just sort of making this tracker and it’s just sort of like a status, not a status that sounds bad.

Gino Cordone [00:25:18]:
Sort of like a tracking my own, like, progress and mood and just trying, you know, trying to stay focused on my day. I think that’s the biggest thing is just trying to stay focused on my day so that each day I’m accomplishing something that moves me towards my goal. And, yeah, hopefully that makes sense. Hopefully. Hopefully you got something from this episode. Did feel a little all over the place, but, you know, hopefully if you. If you felt any of these things, things, if you struggle with focus, you can always send me an email on workingtowardsapurpose.com if you have any comments or questions or feedback, I’d love to hear from you. And then also I have a guide in the link of everything that I put out there for softening your inner critic.

Gino Cordone [00:26:10]:
If you’d like to download that, you can find the link. And yeah, be good to yourself today, and I’ll see you on a podcast real soon. Take care.