As I've been going on my deadline-free journey since I started researching the idea on Friday, I've also been exploring a ton of other related thoughts and topics.
One of my most interesting thoughts is how much productivity advice is based on negative framing and negative/corrective motivation, which doesn't work very well for neurodivergent brains.
Some common productivity tips, for examples:
- Map out your time so you can work during your best hours. This assumes that work is the highest and best use of all of your best hours, essentially demotivating you from feeling good and in flow because you'll be forced to always use it for productive work activities and never for hobbies, fun, etc.
- Limit your to do list to 9 tasks for the day. This assumes that every day will have the same amount of energy. It limits your ability to pull tasks from future days if they're more motivating, while also forcing you to push tasks to future days if they're less motivating. It's basically deadlines on a day to day.
- Tune out distractions. If I don't have music or YouTube on, and I'm not checking messenger or email occasionally, it's impossible for me to get anything done. This shames neurodivergent humans for the multi-tasking we naturally use to perform at our best.
- Eat the frog. What could possibly be less motivating to get started than a task you want to do less than any other task, FIRST?!
- Pomodoros/frequent breaks. This is one of the worst things I've ever done for my productivity and my emotional well-being. Honestly. Yes, breaks are necessary. But forcing breaks at specific times does nothing but interrupt my flow. Breaks are a transition. I need to transition into having the break, and then transition BACK to my task after the break. Transitions require executive functioning. I have a limited amount of executive functioning each day, and when I use it to force breaks before I'm ready, I just end up with less ability to do what I want in the day AND the breaks don't really benefit, because I'm feeling stress and pressure to get back to what I was doing before my motivation is gone.
These are all things I've already stopped doing, frankly. I know when I usually feel at my best, but I don't force myself to match my work exactly to those times.
I don't limit my tasks. Especially now, I just have a running list of tasks and do however many I can/feel like.
I keep music or YouTube on while I'm working at all times.
I always try to do the MOST pleasurable task first!
And I don't force breaks. My body and my brain absolutely tell me when I need breaks. When I finish a task, and I have trouble moving on to the next one because I'm thirsty or hungry or my body feels stiff? I take a break.
What I'm learning as I take a really good look at productivity as a neurodivergent person is that for me, almost everything is opposite from what we are taught to do and it's no wonder I burned out multiple times.
Most productivity advice is about pre-determining your day ahead of time, following a set list of tasks within a defined structure, blocking out your time and scheduling your tasks, taking breaks at regular intervals, doing the hard things first and finishing with the easy stuff...
... and my brain requires autonomy, self-determination, flexibility, flow, novelty, interest, passion, stimulation and support.
It makes me wonder... The commonly repeated "fact" that ADHD people do better in a routine and a structure environment (even though they don't like it) may actually be due to the fact that ADHD people mask heavily, and utilize cortisol and adrenaline to accomplish tasks in these environments.
People like me treat themselves in punitive ways out of a belief that they're "bad" or "wrong" for not being able to do the tasks the way we're expected to, leading us to force these structures and motivate ourselves with them in negative ways.
Imagine if we just...
... did away with the structures.
If we just allowed ourselves to prioritize and document our tasks, but then choose which ones feel most motivating and supportive today.
If we embraced our need for novelty by working on fun projects every day.
If we set ourselves up with snacks and drinks and sit/stand desks so our biological needs can be met without breaks, and then we can use our breaks to truly rest our minds and have fun?!
That's what I'm playing with, and if this resonates with you, I hope you'll find a way to play with it too.
❤️ How to work with me
I've done over $600k in sales since January 2021 using social selling. I started with absolutely no audience whatsoever, and no freaking clue what I was doing to sell leveraged offers online. I was coming from an agency background, where we had 3-5 anchor clients at a time, and everything was sold based on relationships.
Frankly, I believed that building an audience and selling on social media was a completely different thing from the relationship-based sales I had been doing for all of those years. So I struggled, and I held myself back.
I also struggled with a lot of rejection sensitivity, fear of being perceived, and obsession over every relationship being "all or nothing" because of my different brain. So I figured, I couldn't do this, because every system I found required me to do things that activated all of these fears and issues.
But I was wrong.
Social selling is just relationship-based sales adapted for the internet.
It absolutely CAN be done while minimizing the risk of activating RSD, minimizing the feelings of perception, reduce the all or nothing feelings, and more. It can be done in neurodivergent-friendly ways.
And I've documented everything I did to get to my first 1k followers and my first $100k in sales on social media in my new Social Selling course, located inside Solo School.
This 38-minute video (with captions, downloadable PDF, and adjustable speed) contains every step I took to achieve this result. People have told me it contains more actionable information than courses they've paid $5k for.
But, because it's in Solo School and I have monthly payment options available for Solo School, you can get it for $297/mo right now. Just one sale per month of a lower-end service package or a handful of products can get you 100% ROI on this, and everything else afterward is pure gravy.
If Solo School had existed to teach me this when I started, and I had been paying for it this entire time, I would have a 48X ROI on that investment.
💯 Days Without Deadlines
It's day 5 without deadlines. I had started that article on Friday of last week, and I finished it - surprise - without a deadline.
I took much of the weekend off, of course, but I noticed something super interesting. I actually felt like working more.
I didn't have specific next tasks I had to tackle. I could work on whatever I wanted. So I actually had to actively resist the urge to do work on Saturday, Sunday, Monday... I wanted to do things.
Now, I resisted these urges for a few reasons.
One, I had family stuff going on several of those days and that's more important.
Two, I had promised myself I'd only work two days per week to help myself heal from burnout and prep for a fun fall.
And three, I've spent years convincing myself NOT to do what I feel like doing because it's not what I'm supposed to be doing.
Suppressing my passion, my interests, my motivation and desire and trying to redirect it to the things I'm "supposed" to be doing, when I'm "supposed" to be doing them.
I saw a meme this week and it summed it up perfectly. I can't find it now (lol) so I'll paraphrase, but basically, it said that:
Neurodivergent people are so used to the things they find joyful and fun and exciting being seen as bad or wrong by other people that they literally start suppressing their joy because it's a sign that whatever they're about to do will result in rejection or problems.
I do the same thing with tasks.
I suppress my joy and excitement and passion because it's a sign that what I'm doing isn't what I'm SUPPOSED to be doing.
So this week's job:
Embrace the joy.
Do what makes me happy. Follow what excites me. Incite passion. BE WEIRDLY IN LOVE WITH MY WORK. I can't promise it'll check everything off my todo list, but I can promise it'll be a lot more fun.
💪 Business adaptation of the week
No deadlines! That's it, that is the main thing I'm doing. I've eliminated them completely. Oddly enough, as soon as I eliminated them, I wanted to work on the things I've been putting off the most that actually had deadlines. F*cking weird, but I'll take it!
🎁 My favourite things this week
YARN FRIENDS - ATTENTION!
I have found a new app. It's called Row Counter. It is, as the name would suggest, a row counter for knitting and crochet. But it also stores your patterns for you. Now, I organize my craft patterns in Notion (you can grab my template free here.) But to be able to open the pattern in a fiber-arts specific app, add notes where needed, and count my rows all in one place?!? That's some next level stuff.
It is free, though it has a 12.99 CAD/year subscription for premium that is absolutely worth it because it unlocks one amazing feature:
A row counter for your smartwatch.
Yes, that's correct. If you get premium you can highlight parts of the pattern, you can sync patterns and row counts across devices, each project can have it's OWN row count (so you can have multiple works in progress), AND you can add the row counter to your Wear OS device. I now have a row counter on my wrist and I could not be more thrilled!!!
It's available for Android, iOS, and PC, so you can upload patterns from your computer to the software. As any yarn crafter knows, the Etsy app doesn't allow you to download purchased files which is the most annoying feature in the history of features, so this helps immensely!
📚 What I'm reading
Currently reading Slow Productivity by Cal Newport. It's... Honestly I'm having difficulty finding time to read it because I keep getting pulled into other things that are more fun, like this boho cardigan pattern I'm crocheting for myself! But I'm rededicating myself to my 10 pages per day, even if it's the last thing I do at night, so hopefully I'll be able to make progress in it because it genuinely does seem like it's worth reading.
Often I find books about productivity written by people with more privileges than I have (for example, people who aren't primary caregivers for children or family members) just make me angry. But this... It's actually thought provoking. I'll provide more insights as I go.
Want to follow my reading? Check me out on StoryGraph, the minority-owned GoodReads competitor I love!
