If I’m not instantly good at it, no thank you & other ADHD shenanigans. <5 min. read
What are you avoiding because you are afraid you won’t be instantly good at it or because making it perfect will take SO long?
Jake the dog says, “Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something.” I think we could all learn from Jake. This article was inspired by my first email newsletter after almost 3 years in business. It finally happened!
Why did it take so long? Because I was scared to release something new and be bad at it.
I was procrastinating the task with the hope that a magical formula for a perfect first newsletter would drop into my brain. Spoiler alert- that didn’t happen.
What did happen? 'Create a Newsletter’ was on my list for months. Literal months. When something lives on my list for that long, I don’t judge myself, instead I get curious. Often asking questions like, “what is standing between me and doing this thing?”. This time, the answer was fear of something new. Once I had that information, I knew it was game on. Naming it gave me permission to take messy action & here we are.
When you have ADHD, taking the time to get good at something new can feel dang near impossible.
There are likely a couple of reasons for this:
Time does not make sense in our brain. You’ve probably heard that we experience time as either NOW or Not Now. So if we aren’t good at it immediately then we might assume we never will be because Not Now feels like 1000 years away.
Self- Monitoring is an executive functioning skill that is hard for many of us. This means we struggle to naturally keep track of our progress making it hard to maintain momentum.
Many of us experience all or nothing thinking that can often lead to perfectionism. If it’s not perfect, it doesn’t count. Or something like that.
If some or all of these feel true for you, great! Now you have one more piece of validation that you aren’t alone AND that things can be different.
A couple of things you might be able to implement today:
1. Begin the task with the intention of creating a 1st draft. Revisions can come as needed once the draft is complete.
2. Think of how you can create a visual representation of your progress. This might be tracking minutes practiced, identifying checkpoints, coloring a habit tracker, or one of those giant fundraiser thermometers. I like for these to be physical and not in an app but you do you!
3. Consider what it would feel like for the thing to be started or what would it feel like for it to be DONE.
4. And finally, name how the outcome will be different if the thing is perfect vs. if it’s “just” really good.
Despite what you may be hoping, I don’t have a magic fix for every challenge we experience thanks to our adventure brains but what I can offer is hope and tools that will move you closer to your goals & long-term sustainable change.
Keep on Keepin’ on, friends! The Journey Continues.
