How to Flex Your Thinking to Activate Doing

I ran across a perfect example of flexible thinking: How to Clean Your Bathroom in 10 Minutes, 30 Minutes, or An Hour in the Washington Post.

Just the headline sums it up: “cleaning the bathroom” can have different meanings, depending on the situation.
What do you have time and energy to do? What does the occasion call for? What level of clean are you going for? What is the most important objective, that tells you where to start? What if you begin running out of time - can you adjust your plan on the fly?

How do you know when you are “done”- doing anything? When you have met your goal for that particular situation.
Without a situation-specific goal, there’s either over-working, or failure. With it, success is within your means!

What does success require? That you take time to consider what the situation is, and decide on an objective based on the needs and reality of the situation.

But what about that bathroom? It sounds like lowering my standards! If you have standards you are not meeting, your standards are not really yours. You wouldn’t be able to tolerate that icky bathroom for one minute! Maybe your standards are an “ideal,” as in fantasy, or you are seeing someone else’s standards in your head?

Let’s get real: ideals can just be obstacles for people with ADHD. An ideal can be an example of a fixed mindset. If you’re not doing something because of an ideal you hold about how it has to be done, your ideal is getting in your way.

You’re welcome!

ADHD Life Support is the blog of
Susan McGinnis, CALC of ADHD Impact Coaching LLC
Coaching adults with ADHD www.adhdimpactcoaching.com