Overcoming Distractions

There’s a clear connection between our ability to think and how we plan and when we have ADHD, it helps to understand that connection.

Because many with adult ADHD have challenges thinking effectively when we need it, planning can suffer. But fear not, we have some answers in this episode of overcoming distractions.

Back on the podcast is Jeff Copper from DIG Coaching.

Jeff and Dave discussed the concept of ADHD and thinking and why times arise when we cannot think clearly or think methodically. Because of this, it affects our ability to plan whether in the workplace or at home.

Jeff says that when we have ADHD we need to have a collection of mine tools that help us through these processes. Those need to help remove discomfort when it comes to thinking and planning.

Jeff also discusses why we need to externalize thinking when we are an adult with ADHD.

Dave and Jeff also discussed the importance of mind, body, sleep and eating habits as they are part of the core to thriving with adult ADHD.

Jeff also walks us through some of the core practices adults with ADHD can implement in their daily lives to make thinking clear and as a result planning easier and more productive.

Find ADHD and Attention Coach Jeff Copper at his website. www.digcoaching.com

Overcoming Distractions focuses a lot of attention and resources on helping busy professionals like you thrive in the workplace with adult ADHD. This week we have a general discussion about how to navigate the workplace and thrive, grow and feel less stressed.

Dave has a discussion with Jess Meredith, founder of Differing Minds based in the UK. Differing Minds consults with organizations of all types to give them a better understanding diversity and give leadership the tools to help their workforce.

Jess and Dave talk about some of the basic reasons why some of us adults with ADHD have challenges navigating the workplace and how those spill into our home and personal life. We have challenges with our workload, systems, routines creating effective to do lists as well as scheduling projects and tasks appropriately. That tax is our executive functions, and it can make us tired at the end of the day.

Jess talks about some of the common challenges that many adults with ADHD have in the workplace in how to begin the process of advocating for yourself without disclosing your ADHD.

Jess says that advocating for yourself requires us to understand our ADHD, work with a coach or mentor as well as doing your own research to understand ADHD better. She said it is also very helpful to document and journal our challenges with ADHD as well as strategies that work in our favor.

Dave and Jess talk about the must haves for thriving in the workplace. She says understanding your sensory profile and sensory processing can help you understand your needs. For many with ADHD movement helps us manage our ADHD. Working for a short period of time and then getting up and walking around for a minute.

She also says that noise-cancelling headphones can be a tremendous help in maintaining focus and minimizing distractions.

And finding an accountability buddy that can help you stay on track can be very beneficial to thriving in the workplace.

Learn more about Differing Minds here: https://www.differingminds.co.uk/

Understanding the overall concept of emotional intelligence and how it affects our lives with ADHD is critically important when it comes to navigating professional and personal life and thriving with adult ADHD.

This week on Overcoming Distractions, Dave has a discussion with Dr David Sitt, the author of ADHD Refocused-Bringing Clarity to the Chaos.

Dr Sitt first discusses his book and explains why the word “clarity” is in the subtitle. It is one of the keywords that drives how we thrive with adult ADHD. He explains that for many of us with ADHD, we wake up with the lights off and we must regain clarity on a regular basis.

Dr Sitt defines emotional intelligence and how it relates to adults with ADHD.

He discusses self-awareness, and self-management, including how to regulate, problem-solving, social awareness, relationship management, and dealing with conflict.

Dr Sitt And Dave discuss how “reading the room” is incredibly important, specifically in the workplace.

Dr. Sitt also discusses how many adults with ADHD have a low frustration tolerance and talks about how rejection is part of emotional intelligence.

Dr. Sitt discusses many steps to get started on the process of evaluating your emotional intelligence. He says self-awareness is a great first step and a great way to achieve that is through mindfulness and meditation.

He also talks about the power of journaling about your social world and how that can improve your emotional intelligence.

He offers many other powerful tips to get started on the process of improving emotional intelligence.

Learn more about Dr. Sitt and grab his book on his website.

https://drsitt.com/

This episode is Part 2 of how ADHD is showing up in our lives.

This week we discuss how ADHD shows up in the workplace, our jobs and our careers. Dave is joined again by Dr. Fiona Peters a leading expert in neurodiversity from the UK. Dr. Fiona is back for round 2 with an awesome and engaging discussion.

Are you a busy professional with ADHD that is looking for coaching or mentorship? Contact Dave here. Www.overcomingdistractions.com

First Dave and Fiona discussed the love and loathe list that you were asked to work on the previous episode. They discuss how making the love and the loathe list can help us navigate both our personal lives and our career.

Dr. Fiona talks about in the workplace many of us have challenges with executing tasks and projects as well as time. Some of us go as far as to loathe these parts of our job.

She talks about how we have a conflict sometimes between good versus bad as well as the skills that are required to work in our career.

She also discusses how rejection sensitivity disorder and impostor syndrome can be hard to dislodge when we are in a career that we may not be enjoying. She discusses how when we have these situations we get into resentment and emotional dysregulation.

Dr Fiona Talks about how we can bring some calm into the workplace by working through box breathing, always pause when asked to do certain things that require us to think and even tell people that you will get back to them without making a decision on the fly.

Dave and Fiona discuss how we need to have an inventory of our capacity and as we have discussed before how to test the word no in the workplace. Without of course being reprimanded or fired.

So you are an adult with ADHD. Or maybe you do not have an official ADHD diagnosis but suspect you may have ADHD.

While there are many signs of ADHD such as distractions, lack of focus, difficulty with routines and systems and time management, there are also signs of ADHD that we may not initially recognize.

In this episode of Overcoming Distractions, Dave discusses some of the ways ADHD shows up in our personal lives with Dr Fiona Peters, a UK-based leading expert in neurodiversity.

While there may be days where we are late for work, have a rough morning and the occasional lost car keys, Dr Fiona discusses some other aspects of adult ADHD for us to pay attention to.

Some of those include tension in the household, an imbalanced relationship between partners as well as getting in the last word in discussions and arguments.

Of course we may have challenges paying our bills and cleaning the house and Dr Fiona discusses some of these as well.

This is part one of a two-part discussion about how ADHD shows up in our lives.

Learn more about the work of Dr Fiona Peters here: https://www.drfionapeters.co.uk/

Many adults with ADHD struggle to find a calendar system that works for work and home life. And when you’re running a household with children, sometimes your calendar system can get more complex.

You not only have appointments, meetings and other commitments but every household has chores and other to-do lists. Having them in one place where everyone can see it and use it, is a must-have.

Dave introduces listeners to the Skylight Calendar.

On the podcast today is Anubhav Sarkar, product manager for Skylight Calendar. He walks us through all the Skylight Calendar’s features and how this can be a game changer for individuals with ADHD.

Anubhav discusses how Skylight realized this could be tremendously helpful for people with ADHD. Including the ability to have the skylight calendar in a visible location, how we can manage multiple schedules and to-do lists and help the entire family build good habits and routines.

He also discusses the following features that are ADHD-friendly.

• The Skylight Calendar is similar to a digital photo frame but can be placed on a counter or mounted to the wall.
• He discusses the basic features, including color coding as well as syncing schedules.
• One powerful feature is the chore chart which can be used by kids, families as well as adults with ADHD managing work to-do lists.
• And Anubhav goes through how the mobile app helps everyone have their schedules and to-do lists with them at all times.

If you want to learn more about the Skylight Calendar, you can find out more on their website: skylightcal.com

Use the code DISTRACTIONS for a special offer for Overcoming Distractions podcast listeners.

Did you set goals at the beginning of the year or did you create any New Year’s resolutions?

Have you gotten off track on your New Year’s goals or completely forgotten what you set out to do this year? Many people set goals at the beginning of a new year but oftentimes, we struggle to stay on track.

Back on Overcoming Distractions is Sarah Reiff-Hekking, Ph.D. founder of True Focus Coaching.

Sarah and Dave first discuss whether the new year is really the best time to set goals. Hint, maybe not.

Sarah suggests reframing goals and calling them either a target or a vision and even the label ghost targets and visions to better resonate with yourself.

Sarah says it’s important to find what works when it comes to reminding yourself of your goals. That can include vision boards, all types of visual reminders and regular reminders to keep you on track.

Sarah also reinforces something she has talked about before on the podcast which is making sure your personal goals come before your career goals.

Sarah gives advice for ways you can continue to keep steering toward your targets and goals. She also says it is important to create authentic goals and those that are intrinsic.

Goals should be about you not what other people think you should be doing. You should also make sure that this is a meaningful goal or something you are just chasing.

And Sarah suggests making sure you go through goal setting and ways to stay on track in a nonjudgmental way.

You can learn more about Sarah and the workshops that true focus coaching puts on by going to Sarah’s website. www.TrueFocusCoaching.com

Conventional wisdom would have adults with ADHD believing that we need to follow a certain path to manage and thrive with adult ADHD. But as you may have uncovered by now, following conventional wisdom and accepted and unquestioned principles, is often not the best path to thriving with adult ADHD.

Jeff Copper from DIG Coaching is back to discuss the concept of conventional wisdom and ADHD and how we can challenge certain thinking.

Jeff talks about the book “Breaking the Rules” which can describe the theme of this discussion on the podcast. Oftentimes adults with ADHD need to break the rules and one great example is understanding that we cannot always fix our weaknesses. Accepting this concept can provide an opportunity for growth in our ADHD journey.

Jeff and Dave talked about the importance of placing ourselves in roles that are a great fit. one example is choosing a career or a job that allows us to utilize our strengths.

Jeff also indicates that the more clarity we have in our lives and in our daily habits, the more motivation we can experience.

Managing our ADHD can be challenging at certain times in our lives but Jeff and Dave caution everyone to not fall into what Jeff calls a sea of strategies. We must stop drowning in the latest greatest strategy or technique to manage our adult ADHD.

Do you want to learn more about challenging conventional wisdom and ADHD? This is a great discussion with Jeff and Dave.

Find Jeff and Attention Talk Radio on his website. www.digcoaching.com

Adults with ADHD seem to have a love/hate relationship regarding scheduling and using calendars. Are you one of these people?

Sure, it sounds like a simple concept but for many of us with adult ADHD, we tend to struggle to engage more effectively with schedules and calendars.

Back on Overcoming Distractions is Eric Tivers of ADHD reWired.

Eric and Dave discussed the following and a lot more.

• Why a schedule and using a calendar can be challenging for adults with ADHD.
• Understanding that without a workable type of schedule, getting through the week and getting “stuff” done can also be challenging.
• Eric discusses how scheduling, distractions, prioritization and time management are all connected and the calendar can help us.
• Eric also discusses time tracking which he feels is one of the most important ways to understand how long tasks and projects take us.
• Dave and Eric discuss time blocking but making sure that we are using that concept effectively.

And Eric gives tips for getting started and getting more comfortable using a calendar to manage our work and personal lives. Those include understanding this is going to be a process, you’ll need to try different methods, making sure you relax and be patient, the importance of engaging with your calendar and understanding in many cases, there is a setup and a cleanup which you’ll hear his thoughts on the podcast.

Find ADHD reWired here and all Eric’s offerings including group sessions and the popular podcast. https://www.adhdrewired.com/

Do you want to work with Dave one-on-one? Go to https://calendly.com/davidgreenwood1/15min