In today’s edition, we ask the question — should we really be trying to improve our focus?
Sitting down at my laptop to work on a task I’m not 100% into is a gargantuan task.
A cat walks past the window. I stop to look at it. It crouches under the bushes. Oooh, I wonder if another cat is gunning for it. Another cat arrives, they start to hiss at each other. This is going to be a fight. I turn my chair away from my desk and stare intensely out at the tension between the two felines.
A Kestrel flies across the woods on the other side of the house. I watch it hover in the air. How does it do that?
I turn back to my laptop, and Google “how do Kestrels hover?”.
I know how they do it but now realise I’ve not started the work I meant to start twenty minutes ago.
Micro stress enters my body. A little low grade anxiety tweaks at my stomach. I panic about not doing what I set out to do.
This is common for me.
But it doesn’t always happen.
Sometimes I jump into work effortlessly. If the work I have to do that day is something I love to do.
So, the question is — could we make everyday like this?
Where we could work on whatever we felt like without any worry about the outcome.
Answering that starts with pondering the fallacy that we can control the outcome of our actions.
Nassim Taleb explains that the world is much more complex, and random, than any human can understand. This is partly why rationalists, while sounding smart, often end up looking stupid in the long run.
To deal with that randomness, we attach stories to life.
Stories are much easier for our brains to understand. But stories aren’t an exact representation of what happened. They’re distorted by our own minds. Often to meet an internal narrative that fits our emotional needs.
This leads to massive errors of judgement.
Great stories are beautiful. But they’re not designed to help us make solid rational decisions.
In technical jargon, this is called stochastic.
Stochastic is something completely random. The world is stochastic. Not predictable.
With ADHD, we’re very poor decision makers.
We tend to sit on decisions forever. When we finally make the decision we beat ourselves up for making the wrong decision. This leads to procrastination, inertia and then depression.
The solution is to make lots of small bets.
Even to work on lots of things all at the same time. So long as we commit to moving each project along at all times. That means you could be writing an ebook in the morning and recording a video course in the afternoon.
By working on two or more projects at the same time you’re increasing your odds that one of them will work for you. The ebook might fail but the course could succeed.
The point is you don’t know what’s going to work before you do it. So if you focus on just one thing your chances of success are greatly reduced.
This is music to the ears of most people with ADHD. You get to work on whatever your brain is telling you to, because the objective is to release lots of little projects out to the world because you can’t predict what will work.
Amazingly, this increases your chances of success.
Who knew? Something we do naturally could increase our chances of success.
Working on just one project for any length of time forces me into a deep pit of procrastination while I dream about the other things I could be working on.
Instead, I opt for very short bursts of work — spread across multiple projects.
Writing the words on this page happened over a very short burst of extreme concentration where I was able to write 1000 or 2000 words in 15 to 20 minutes.
I’ve learned to use these bursts of energy to get as much work done as possible.
40 hour work weeks. 9 to 5. These are all archaic working practices lingering from the industrial system.
ADHD doesn’t fit into that industrial box.
Building a portfolio of small bets is your way to break free from that.
That’s how Drug Free ADHD came to life. It was a small bet I once made that paid off. Same with my new venture, Parents Unheard. It’s currently a small bet. It may or may not pay off. But the only way to find out is to make the bet. Take the steps forward.
No amount of thinking or storytelling is going to help. The only antidote is action.
And if action is something you’re struggling to take, I can help you there.
My client Amy said: “Without this method, I would have quit chasing quick fixes. Instead I’ve built lasting tools and a new perspective.”
And Kevin said: “I’ve been through PTSD therapy, counselling, CBT — nothing worked like this. I’m not anxious, or depressed, or stressed. I feel free.”
To book a chat with me to discuss how you’d like your life to change and your relationship with ADHD to improve, click the link below to book a call:
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