Most of my clients have more than one writing project they are working on. And by “more than one”, it’s not usually 2, either.

They might come to me because they need help “finishing this book” or “getting things published”. And part of the problem is managing the teaching and admin and what do you do when your kids are sick and all that…

But there are usually a lot of other writing projects, too. In various stages of completion.

Between the general pressure to publish more, the tendency of research to produce more interesting questions, and how difficult it is to say no when someone invites you to contribute to a volume they are editing, you can accumulate a lot more projects than you can reasonably work on at one time.

Why limit your active projects?

To summarize what I said in Do you have too many writing projects?, if you have too many active writing projects, you can’t give any of them enough time to make a satisfying amount of progress and the costs of frequent task switching further limit your progress.

You risk being so frustrated that you feel like you can’t do this at all.

You do not necessarily have to limit yourself to just one project. The drawbacks of task switching may be compensated by the benefits of using a different project as a form of rest.

However, it is not advisable to have more than 3 projects active at any given time. Many people find 2 to be demanding enough.

How do you choose which projects?

There are multiple ways to do this.

Your overall goal is to get more things published. A published article is definitely no longer on your to do list.

An interim goal will be to get things off your desk to someone else: a co-author, peer reviewers at a journal, etc.

One criterion for selecting a priority is “closest to done”. A variation on that is closest to ready to hand off to your co-author (even if only as a draft).

Anything that has received a Revise & Resubmit decision after peer review is, by definition, very close to done, in the sense of ‘published’.

I strongly recommend making this your top priority. Use the comments from the journal editor and reviewers to make a revision plan. Then keep this project moving so you can get it back to the journal, and hopefully published and off your desk.

Anything that you’ve submitted is by definition, inactive. It has become impossible to predict how long the review process will take. You don’t want to spend time and energy worrying about stuff you can’t control. It’s better to feel mildly annoyed when you get the decision because you have to reprioritize your active projects.

As I said in Do you have too many writing projects? to get the full benefit of switching between 2 or 3 projects, you want projects that need different kinds of work, so working on one is a rest from the other.

If you haven’t already used the free workbook to get more clarity on

• how much and what kind of work each project needs,
• how you feel about each project
• Whether other people are involved
• The consequences of finishing or delaying

You can do that now. It will help you see which projects might complement each other either cognitively or emotionally.

I am not recommending “finish one thing before you switch to another” except for those things that are very close to finished.

I’m also not saying you need to abandon some of your projects completely.

Your goal is to be able to devote enough time and cognitive resources to a limited number of projects to see real movement and feel like the time you spend is worthwhile.

How long is “for now”?

You get to decide on the timeframe during which you will focus on this limited set of projects.

It needs to be long enough that you will feel like you’ve made progress on it, even if it’s not finished. Perhaps you define that by a specific milestone like “drafted the middle section” or “clarified the argument and outlined a new structure”. But it can also just be “this is what’s getting my limited writing time this month” and you can see how far you get.

Sometimes the work you do on the project will not directly affect the draft document. Perhaps you need to read more before you can draft the next section. Or, you need to go back to your analysis and refine it. Setting a time limit for this kind of activity can prevent necessary background work turning into a way to avoid writing the thing.

I suggest starting with a month.

You might have one “closest to done” project and one “other“.

You can also consider what kind of time and capacity you have this month, given the other things going on. Then choose a project that needs work that is possible in that kind of time.

For example, in summer, or on sabbatical, you probably want to prioritize a project that needs deep intellectual engagement with fewer distractions.

In contrast, in the busiest part of your teaching year, you might prioritize something that requires a lot of relatively straightforward work that can be done effectively in smaller chunks of time even when tired.

At the end of the month, use the Monthly Review prompts I send to summarize what kinds of work you have done on the projects you prioritized, and how much time you spent on each of them.

Clearly articulate how each project has changed because of that work, either in the document or in your head. Clarity about what you are trying to accomplish *is* progress.

Then you can also look at your longer list and decide if these projects are still your priority for the next month, or if you want to change something.

Maybe the kind of time available is different. Maybe something else has become more urgent. Or maybe you just need a change to keep you interested.

Resist the temptation to question your decisions more frequently than this. Changing things too frequently will lead to feeling like you aren’t making enough progress on anything. It’s discouraging.

The one exception is if you receive a decision from a journal about an article that is currently under review. A decision means it’s back on your desk.

A Revise & Resubmit decision (especially if it’s “minor revisions”) is, by definition, your top priority. You need to do enough work on it immediately to determine how much time you need, and ask for an extension on the deadline if necessary. If it’s been rejected you can wait until your next Monthly Review to figure out where this fits in your priority list.

What about the things you are NOT doing (this month)?

Prioritizing a very limited number of projects means actively deciding that another group of projects will be inactive for a while. At least a month. Possibly longer.

The Monthly Review helps ensure that they don’t get forgotten completely. But you kind of do want to forget about them for this month at least. Open loops take up up cognitive resources you’d rather use for your priority projects.

Remember: You will write this. Just not today, this week, this month, this summer.

If you’ve been taking on commitments with the mindset of “How quickly could I do this?”, there will be some emotional adjustment.

You are not lazy.

You are shifting your focus from quantity to quality. You are creating the conditions in which you can do things well. You may even finish more things per year because you are able to do better work in the time you devote to each project.

If one or more of the projects you are not working on right now involves other people, you will need to renegotiate timelines with them. The reflection prompts in the workbook will have resulted in some notes about the importance of this relationship and this project.

You might also want to remind yourself of all the ways in which you and the other person agree, or are aligned in your values.

Don’t assume they will be upset. They may also be overwhelmed and actually welcome your suggestion to put this particular project off for a month or so. That will help them deal with other things, too.

If you agreed to write a chapter for an edited collection or special issue and it is not one of your top 3 priorities, you will need to drop out of that particular publication. That doesn’t mean you are never going to write this thing. It means that after serious reflection, writing this thing in the timeframe required for this particular book or special issue, is not a priority for you.

Trust that you will be able to publish it somewhere else when you do get around to writing it. Show your respect for the editor and other contributors by communicating clearly and not slowing the bigger project down.

Here is some suggested language you can use as a template in this instance:

“I have been reviewing my commitments and have realized that I really do not have the capacity to take on this project right now and do a good job.

I’d like to withdraw now while you still have time to find someone else.

Thank you for inviting me. The project really is interesting. I just don’t have the capacity to do it justice.”

If you cannot renegotiate, then recommit.

Prioritizing is an iterative process.

You made your decisions based on what you learned by reflecting on the prompts in the workbook.

Figuring out how to communicate about a particular project made you realize that there were some factors you did not consider.

You can consider those factors now.

Make it a priority and drop something else.

This is difficult.

Making these decisions, communicating with the people you need to communicate with, making reasonable plans for your writing projects, and feeling confident that you are doing enough is really difficult.

It is made even more difficult by last minute demands from your head of department, opportunities you hadn’t anticipated, and the ways in which your colleagues may spread their own lack of confidence and fear around.

Many academics struggle with this at all stages of career.

There is no magic that will make it possible to do everything you want to do right now.

Be kind to yourself.

You are not a bad person for having started all these things. It’s pretty normal for things to get out of hand. You are excited about your work. You took on those things for good reasons.

The people you have made the commitments with have also been in this situation at least once. They might not like it, but they understand.

Limiting how many projects you are working on enables you to focus better on what you are working on.

You will enjoy your writing more. You will probably get more done.

You are now being realistic about what you can do and adjusting your plans. That’s it.

You can do this, just not all at once.

Subscribe to my newsletter to get the FREE workbook: Finish More by Doing Less and get your projects moving again.

Related Posts:

Do you have too many writing projects?

Starting a new project

Optimizing Focus when your project brings up difficult emotions

What to do about a stalled book project

This post was based on the original June 2019 version sent to my newsletter, but it has now been completely rewritten and split into 2 separate posts. The other new post can be found here: Do you have too many writing projects?.

The post How to choose which project to work on appeared first on Jo VanEvery.

Most of my clients have more than one writing project they are working on. And by “more than one”, it’s not usually 2, either.

They might come to me because they need help “finishing this book” or “getting things published”. And part of the problem is managing the teaching and admin and what do you do when your kids are sick and all of that…

But there are usually a lot of other writing projects, too. In various stages of completion.

Between the general pressure to publish more, the tendency of research to produce more interesting questions, and how difficult it is to say no when someone invites you to contribute to a volume they are editing, you can accumulate a lot more projects than you can reasonably work on at one time.

Fragmenting your writing time.

The time you have available for writing is limited.

Dividing your time between multiple projects means that each of them is going to progress more slowly than if you’d given all of the time to one of them.

There is a real danger that the amount of progress you make on each one in any given time period is so small that you begin to wonder if you are doing anything productive at all.

It’s not just the total amount of time, either.

Many people complain, quite rightly, that it is particularly difficult to find the kind of time that allows you to really immerse yourself in a project so you can do the deep intellectual work it requires.

I talk a lot about making good use of smaller chunks of time. But I would never argue that you can do all the writing you need to do in just 15-minutes a day.

When you have long periods of time in which you can make writing a priority, do you really want to divide that time between 6 different projects?

You need to find the sweet spot where your projects move forward at a pace that feels satisfying.

Cognitive capacity is limited.

Your frustration about the kind of time available is a recognition that even when you have time you could devote to writing, you don’t always have the cognitive capacity necessary for the particular kind of work your project needs.

Each of the writing projects you have on the go are complex. All of them need deep intellectual work at some point.

• Reading.
• Thinking.
• Struggling to articulate what you really want to say as a result of all that thinking.

That part of the work can’t be rushed, either.

“Sleeping on it” is an actual cognitive process. Your brain needs time to process what you’ve put in there. That’s happening in the background, but there needs to be capacity for it.

This is also why overwork doesn’t work. Fatigue reduces your cognitive capacity and impairs cognitive function. But that’s a whole other thing.

Task switching is like an extra project.

The act of switching between tasks or projects has its own time and cognitive capacity requirements.

The more frequently you switch tasks, the more often you spend the first part of your writing session “getting back into the project”.

Yes, you can develop practices that make that a bit easier. But the feeling you crave of being in the project and just moving forward without having to consciously think about the next step is not available.

You can only hold so many details in your head at a time. All the extra energy and thinking you spend switching between projects, remembering where you are, and getting back into a project, and panicking about forgetting things, is energy and thinking that you are not devoting to your writing projects.

Second guessing your plans, worrying about being behind and not meeting deadlines, and beating yourself up for not being able to focus take even more cognitive resources away from the projects on your list.

Don’t forget that a certain amount of task switching is inevitable: between teaching and writing, or life stuff and writing, or whatever. Adding more switching between your writing projects compounds the problem.

If you spend a significant amount of your writing time engaged in task switching, it will feel like you need even more time. Time you are already struggling to find and dividing between too many projects.

That’s not motivating.

You must reduce the number of active projects.

Note the word “active”.

It will be helpful in the short term to declare a moratorium on accepting new projects.

However, you don’t have to give up on anything on your list completely.

You need to set some things aside for now to free up time and cognitive capacity for the one(s) you will be working on.

You have to make some difficult decisions and you may need to engage in some tricky negotiations about deadlines.

You cannot do your best work with too many things on the active list. You need to make a more realistic plan.

I propose you think like a (successful) circus juggler and limit how many things you are trying to pay attention to at once.

This reduces the amount of energy and cognitive capacity you devote to switching, so you can focus more effectively.

You don’t have to go down to one.

I’m not expecting you to become a different person.

If you know you work most effectively if you can do One Thing At A Time, consider this post permission to organize yourself so you are actually only working on one thing at a time. This section will probably help you figure out how to combine ONE writing project, with the necessary non-writing projects you also need to keep going.

For the rest of you, focusing on only one project at a time can also have drawbacks. Sometimes a change is exactly what you need to help you optimize your focus.

Given the time and cognitive capacity available to you for writing (which varies over the year), you need to limit how many projects you can switch between.

The general consensus is that 3 is the maximum. A lot of my clients tell me that they struggle even with 2.

I want you to think carefully about the specific projects you are combining. Ideally they require different kinds of work.

For example, if one of your projects is at a stage that benefits from time to ruminate and allow your brain to process things in the background, you want tasks you can do while that happens. Another project that is further advanced, and needs you to implement decisions already made, line edit or copy edit a fairly complete draft, or some of the more tedious tasks required before submission would pair well. Especially if you find it hard to focus on those tasks for long periods.

This is also helpful if you are trying to keep that thinky project going when you don’t have a lot of time.

Feeding your brain with things to ruminate on before spending most of your day in meetings or teaching, can make the one morning you can protect for writing more satisfying.

The same thing applies if your main project is emotionally demanding. Allowing yourself to switch to a more straightforward project when you’ve reached your emotional capacity has several benefits. It means you are less likely to avoid the emotionally difficult project. Not exceeding your emotional capacity also reduces the recovery time necessary. And another project is getting attention, so you aren’t falling behind on everything.

The trick is to ensure that the type of work required is sufficiently different that switching counts as a rest from the other project.

For example, the intellectual heavy lifting of one project may be creative rest from the tedium of formatting tables and checking references.

This is also why you need to strictly limit yourself to only 2 or 3 projects. If you have more than 2 or 3 projects in rotation, the restful element of switching will be counteracted by the effort required to keep track of what’s going on.

The benefits of being able to switch to something else when stuck compensate for some of that. You are spending a higher proportion of your writing time moving projects forward and less of it staring at a screen pulling your hair out.

Free resources to help with all of this!

This is difficult.

I’ve created a free workbook to help you make these decisions. You’ll start by making a list of everything currently in progress. (Ideas that you haven’t started working on yet don’t count.)

Then I encourage you to consider a range of factors, including:

• How much and what kind of work each project needs
• How you feel about each project
• Whether other people are involved
• The consequences of finishing or delaying

I’ve written another post helping you choose once you’ve done that reflecting, and what to do about the stuff you are putting on the back burner for now.

You will occasionally panic that you’ve dropped one of the balls you were supposed to be juggling and it’s rolled under the sofa. Keep breathing.

• Panic is not the best state to write in.
• Panicking about a project that isn’t the one you are trying to focus on right now is even less helpful.

The Monthly Review email I send at the end of every month will help prevent the panic.

I remind you to review what you’ve accomplished and adjust your plans for the month ahead. I share specific prompts that focus on your writing, and include a nudge to check whether your priorities have changed.

Subscribe to the newsletter to get the FREE workbook, Finish More by Doing Less, and the Monthly Review emails.

Related Posts:

Overcommitted? Declaring a moratorium

What to do about a stalled book project

Optimizing Focus: 3 elements to consider

Juggling 101: Elements of a good plan

Communication vs Validation: why are you publishing?

You need a writing practice

The power of 15 minutes a day

This post was rewritten and updated from an earlier 2019 version that was sent to my newsletter and included in the October 2021 Optimizing Focus Spotlight. It was then split into 2 new posts and republished in May/June 2026, the 2nd can be found here: How to choose which project to work on.

The post Do you have too many writing projects? appeared first on Jo VanEvery.

Many years ago he came to terms with his workaholism and took serious steps to change his behaviour for the sake of his health. I know he still looked like someone who worked too hard. But those of us who have known him a long time know how much he had changed.

Yes, he got up at 4:30 am to write. But he also went to bed very early. And once shared a photo of the couch in his office on which he took a 90 minute nap each day at mid-day.

He also came very close to dying of COVID and complications of that disease, something he spoke about occasionally.

And yet we were all surprised to see that on 1 June 2026, he had left us. I do not know how. It doesn’t really matter. He is gone.

He has left behind a considerable legacy.

Raul was a very intense person. He worked hard. He frequently had 2 or 3 research projects on the go. He wrote and published many things. I’m sure his scholarly colleagues will write about that work.

He was also a committed teacher, especially of research methodologies and research practices. Raul’s commitment to teaching and supporting other researchers extended well beyond his job and is how I met him and what we shared.

Even as a graduate student, Raul was sharing techniques and practices on his blog for the benefit of others. He was active on Twitter, which is where I met him; I don’t know how long ago. Back when Twitter was somewhere worth spending time. Close to 20 years ago because I think we met up when I visited Vancouver with my family in 2007.

The more memorable visit was in 2010, I think, when I was in Vancouver for work and stayed a few extra days to hang out with him. He recommended a very nice boutique hotel downtown, around the corner from a button shop. I don’t think he knew about the button shop or how excited I’d be about it.

He showed his Vancouver. It’s a beautiful city. And it was his home. He had recently started using a co-working space, a new thing back then, and was excited to show me all the features. We walked. We went for beer. It was a fabulous day.

He spoke to me once about how hard it was to leave there even though Mexico was also his home. He has had an amazing career at CIDE and FLACSO. He has been able to spend quality time with his parents as they age. It was particularly valuable to him to be able to travel with his mother, with whom he shared intellectual interests as well.

Recently he had spoken of how hard caring work is. I cannot imagine how hard it is for his mother to lose him, her youngest son. My heart goes out to her, his dad, his brothers, and niblings. The tiny glimpses of you that he shared gave us a glimpse into how important you all were to him.

Most of our relationship happened online. We both moved from Twitter to Bluesky. We had in common a desire to help scholars do their best work. Raul’s blog is a treasure trove of practical advice about writing, time management, reading, note taking, publishing, and so much else.

He shared what he knew generously. I sincerely hope he made plans for the preservation of that blog or that someone will take that in hand.

As a scholar from the Global South, Raul was frequently frustrated by how often his work would not be cited, despite having very clearly influenced the scholarship of others. This is a very common problem.

The one thing I encourage all scholars to do in his memory, is to read and engage with scholars from the Global South and engage with their findings and their thinking in your own work. Cite them!

Cite them because they have influenced your thinking and your research. Cite them even when you are told that it is more important to cite “more influential” people.

Teach their work, too. Make sure future generations know that important work is being done by scholars in the Global South.

You cannot do either of those things if you do not read their work. Seek it out. Read journals that are published in other countries (and other languages). Follow them on social media. Go to their talks at conferences.

Allow yourself to learn from them.

Raul was an amazing scholar and an amazing man. He is not the only one. He will be greatly missed by so many. I’m so glad he left so much behind for people to continue to know him and benefit from his knowledge for years to come.

More of Raul’s work and life

Raul’s Bluesky profile

Raul’s website & blog

The post In memoriam: Raul Pacheco-Vega appeared first on Jo VanEvery.

Jo VanEvery
Hello, Christine, welcome. It’s really nice to see you. And I thought I would start by just saying that you and I met many, many years ago on this great internet thing in a group. We were both in this group that was called The Creative Haven, which was really about like decluttering and organising your space. Jennifer Hoffman, who ran it, had a thing called Office Spa Day, which was really good. And yeah, and that was like a long time ago, because I looked up when I was preparing for this, and Jen started doing her current thing, which is called The Americans of Conscience Checklist, in 2016 which is 10 years ago, so…

Christine W
Wow. That’s perspective.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. So, like, we must have… That… We must have met, like, 15 years… I mean, the other thing is, I moved across an ocean since then as well. I’ll be in England this time for 10 years this May, so…

Christine W
Has it been that long?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Christine W
I remember you moving. That also doesn’t seem that long.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, it’ll be 10 years ago in May. And yeah, so it was a while ago, and one of the things I’ve realised over time is that the way Jen, like, the things I learned from her, which were mainly, like, we were mainly talking about… I mean, my desk is neat. It has been neat ever since. Like, whatever it was she did, it worked, in a kind of long term way, because I used to be a kind of, like, geomorphological waves of clutter on my desk, as was my father. And…

Jo VanEvery
But the things I learned from her were super influential on how I do the things I do now, which aren’t focused on that at all. They’re focused on helping people find time for writing. And, I mean, that’s mainly it, and the, like, things associated with that. So it’s like more around time, than around space. But you know, the Meeting With Your Writing, which I’m now in my 14th year of running, was directly based on the model for the Office Spa Day, but sort of modified. And the Planning Classes I run, which I’ve been doing, I don’t know how long, not quite that long, but almost also started out modelled on planning things she did, and… And she was out like she sort of said “I was diagnosed in adulthood with ADHD”, and like, we weren’t really talking about it as these are techniques that work for neurodivergent people. It was just, like, that’s a fact about her, or whatever. But I figured the things that I learned from her and then fed into this. I then had clients who did have ADHD diagnoses saying, “You know that your model is super ADHD friendly? And you should be more open about that in your marketing”. And I’m like, “Okay.” – and, and what I’ve realised since then is like, I have people who have ADHD, I have people who are dyspraxic, dyslexic, autistic, and all of whom have academic careers. So anybody listening, who is thinking about that, it’s like, yes, it’s possible. It’s not easy, but [it is possible.] Right?

Christine W
Mm. Right.

Jo VanEvery
And, and just these ways of working that I kind of, that kind of grew out of what we did together seemed to be really helpful. So the thing that I felt was most influential, I think, was probably the idea of self compassion and the idea of experimenting with things, I suppose, was maybe… but I could probably come up with a longer list. But anyway, yeah, so there was just like, it just felt really important.

Jo VanEvery
And the other thing that happened was she did build a community, and you and I are still in touch, and also in touch with other people we met there, and some of them I’ve even, I mean, one of our colleagues who lives in Spain, I’ve, I’ve been to stay with her on holiday, and…

Christine W
Oh, cool.

Jo VanEvery
You know? Like, so, you know, even 10-15 years later, however long it’s been, there’s like it was this community that kind of lasted. And one of the things I’ve been noticing about Meeting With Your Writing, which, you know, is mostly silent co-working – people are writing for an intro and an exit, but mostly people are just writing, but that has built a kind of community, and I’m noticing connections being made between people that have been coming to those things for a while. And and I’m really proud of that, like, I’m really glad that people are… Things that I’m doing are helping other people find the support they need, which is so fantastic.

Jo VanEvery
But anyway, you even then we’re doing some coaching, and coaching around ADHD and all that kind of thing. And so I just thought I’d invite you, and you and I could have a chat about some of those things and how that feeds into helping people with ADHD and maybe other forms of neurodivergence, with getting the stuff done that they want to get done. Which might be a better way to phrase it than “planning” which people have, you know, because we all love that word planning. [/sarcastic]

Christine W
Yeah, that word “planning”. [Laughter].

Jo VanEvery
And you and I both help people get done the things they want to get done.

Christine W
Yeah, because we understand, right? Because we’re… Yeah, we’re not immune to the struggles.

Jo VanEvery
Could you do a little introduction of who you are and what you do? And then we can get into more conversation.

Christine W
So okay, my name is Christine Weddle. I have a master’s degree in counselling as a background, I worked in counselling for eight years, and a large detour into totally unrelated things because I got I burned out, and I came back as a coach, because it’s so life giving. Yeah, it’s the it’s the current and the moving forward with your life, and more. It more includes teaching, which I loved, in counselling, when I could do that, the psycho Ed groups I used to do were so fun, the big blackboard, and I would get up there and write the things… That was, yeah, so so much joy. And it’s like, oh, look, this thing called coaching, yeah, in 2005. I’ve had my business a very long time, and it’s, it’s struggled as a part time business because of all the marketing. And so what it is that I do, I love to work with women who have ADHD, or who relate to ADHD, the symptoms of ADHD, which includes so many things. And what it is that I really want for those women are to have more… even to believe that they can have more ease and more joy in their days with ADHD when they have the right kind of tools, strategies and support, including you mentioned self compassion, I was also the two words that I remember from Jenn Hoffman that were, that stayed with me forever are compassion, self compassion, and you call it experimenting. I love the word curiosity. Because it’s the curiosity that we have that leads to the experiments.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah.

Christine W
They’re the more practical piece of it, the more action oriented. And also the word tiny, the word tiny, I think that you use that one or baby steps. So the… I’ve mostly worked with people individually. I began way a long time ago with people in person, because there wasn’t this thing that we used and met with people I had called it my floating office in the library or coffee houses, and delightfully helped those people in those ways. Sometimes went into people’s homes to help with decluttering or organising and offering some ideas about what might work. And I, more recently, I’ve been I’m strictly online right now, and I do individual coaching, and I will probably continue to do that. I love doing small groups, and I’m on the edge of developing a community. I would love to have something like you have for women with ADHD, and I haven’t developed that yet, but I as you describe that that is something that I so believe that we all need right now so much is this sense of not being alone and having a community where we feel like there are other people who understand and are working towards the same kinds of goals. And so those communities make such a difference to not, to not be alone, but to do that in community is even more powerful.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Christine W
So I love that you’ve done that for so many years, and that you see those women, you know, feeling like they’re at home, that they belong, that they’re they are comfortable being there. That just… That…. Wow, do we need that in our world right now. So that kind of space. I have also played around with doing some workshops. I just did a workshop in December. Not sure if I’ll do that again, because that was a little challenging, but it was, it was well received about, you know, the crazy holidays. And so I’m really, I’m really receptive to actually, in the process of doing some market discovery with what it is that women with ADHD are, are looking for, or want, what would be the most helpful? What kinds of services, what kinds of you know, things do they need? What kind of communities, what kind of groups? So I’m I’m really looking at that, and I’m excited about what I will find out.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, that’s cool. I’ve recently started doing a bit of small group coaching as well. I started with, you know, because my people are academics, I started with book, book writers, and that’s going really well. It’s been fun. Yeah. And I will say about that not feeling alone, like, so these so I do these Planning Classes, and I do them quarterly. And one time, a client that had been a coaching client, I encouraged her to come to one of the Planning Classes as well. And afterwards, she emailed me, and that was, like, one of the things she got out of, it wasn’t even just like, it was just, “Oh my goodness. It was so nice not to be alone with these struggles”, you know? And like, not even just necessarily the ADHD, because, like, not everybody in my groups, you know, they’re not all like… I’m not like… You’re focused on people whose brains work in this particular way, and I’m focused on people who have this particular kind of job and are struggling to manage all the things they need to do. And many of them also turn out to be neurodivergent in one type or another. But you know, they’re also just struggling with, you know, like, objectively unreasonable demands from their employers in terms of how much work. They’ve also got children. I mean, that particular woman, there was one time… It was like… So I do them [the Planning Classes] just before the quarter starts. So for the for the quarter starting in January. We do the class in December before Christmas. And I remember her saying, one year, this was a couple of years ago, and her kids were both under five at the time, and she said, “I don’t know how to plan when there’s so much uncertainty about how much time I’m going to have, because in my household, we had eight respiratory viruses in the last term!”

Christine W
Oh!

Jo VanEvery
…between her two kids. And then I think at one point, her husband was down.

Christine W
Oh, wow.

Jo VanEvery
Just in the second week, somebody was sick enough not to be able to go to nursery, or work or something. And that actually culminated after the class in which she told me that over the Christmas holidays she ended up in the hospital with one with the littlest one.

Christine W
Oh.

Jo VanEvery
You know?

Christine W
That becomes your life more than the other, [the] rest of your life is supposed to be.

Jo VanEvery
Exactly. But even without that coming… That’s kind of extreme, but even without that, it’s just like, oh yeah… You know? And so many of the people that I work with are dealing with, you know, their kids, you know, or teen kids, whatever, with mental health problems, with, you know all of that kind of stuff, or they’re dealing with divorces, or they’re dealing with their parents are sick or dying, or they’re, you know, like all of, all of the, all of the [things]… And then, you know, and then there’s everything else.

Christine W
Don’t even go there, Jo. [Laughter.]

Jo VanEvery
We’re not going to talk about that, but there is a lot of everything else, right now.

Christine W
Oh, gosh, there is indeed.

Jo VanEvery
And, and also, I think one of the things though, for the people with ADHD, is that several of the people that are in my community were diagnosed in adulthood…

Christine W
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…and often, kind of because, like, their kids got diagnosed, and then the psychologist was like, you do know, these things run in families, and do want to do this, you know? And all of a sudden, and these are people with successful careers, and then all of a sudden they’re like, “Oh”, like, “Okay, that makes a lot of sense”. But I think it adds a layer, because…

Christine W
Yes it does.

Jo VanEvery
I’m sometimes saying to the people, you know, they’re just like, you know, it’s like, well, you’ve built up these habits and these habits of self- of how, of judging yourself based on 20, 30, 40, years of other people having said these very mean things to you.

Christine W
Yes.

Jo VanEvery
So the self compassion part is, like, super important and super difficult.

Christine W
So, super difficult because it just, it doesn’t even sound right, or it’s like, that’s, it’s… unbelievable, is the word I’m looking for. Feels unbelievable because of all the contrary evidence, you know, in what has been spoken to you, or what the way you’ve come to believe you are.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Christine W
…Because it’s so repeated, you know, repeated, repeated, reuse it, yeah, yeah. “This is easy. Why can’t you just do that? Why…? Why is your room a mess? Why…?” I mean, I just, all the, like, yeah, “What is wrong with you? What…?” – it just… All the, all the icky things that have been said to us, or, yeah, “What are you stupid?” I mean, just, like, all the icky things that can be said to us.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. So, so one of the things about the word ‘planning’ is because I just think that however I learned about it from Jen and others, I feel like, for me, planning is a practice that I do regularly in order to pay attention to what I need and want to do, how much time I have available to do it, and to set priorities, and decide, you know, what to do. Or like maybe even… And it doesn’t have to look any particular way, but it just feels like something that helps me feel less overwhelmed with All The Things I could be doing. It helps, because sometimes I do have these really brilliant ideas, or they seem like brilliant ideas at, you know, I think the the, the the term sometimes used is ‘impulsivity’. But you know, just like you get this flash of inspiration and you’re like “What am I supposed to do now?”

Christine W
Well it’s like ‘impulsivity’ or is it, like, creativity? But that’s definitely a piece of it.

Jo VanEvery
We could call it all kinds of things, yeah. But sometimes, if we just kind of lean into that, like that energy is fantastic, you can get a lot done, except then you’re just like, “Oh, but then what about all these other things?” And, you know, whatever. And so the way that I’ve balanced that for myself is with planning and with being able to be like, “Okay, I really want to do this. But what does that [look like]…?” You know? It gives me a moment to pause and be like, “Well, what will that mean for everything else? And is it still important enough that these other things can go on the back burner?” Or like…

Christine W
Yeah. So that’s really… Let’s… Can we stop there?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, absolutely.

Christine W
Because that is so key, and that’s one of the things, when I was writing ideas and things that I thought were relevant, is this idea of a lot of people may have created that plan, but how are they following it? If they’re following it. I mean, are they even follow Do they even know where the plan is? You know, is it? Is it somewhere that it’s like, “Oops, yeah, I made that plan. But it’s so underneath those things, or, or it’s behind this other, you know, sub menu of…” wherever they’ve, you know, housed it, is it? Is it something that they even are referring to, and then, if they are referring to it, and that wonderful burst of inspiration, right? Whether impulsivity, creativity, whatever you want to call that, that lovely idea that’s so tempting to follow. How do you pause? Because that’s, like, being able to pause is… Many people don’t even have the awareness that they could pause, right? They’re just like, there they are, and the rest of the world has gone away. And then if you’re able to pause, how do you then look at the planner to say, to make that kind of assessment? Because this thing is generally, probably so much more fun than whatever is on the schedule. And so, that you named that so clearly, that you know the process that you go through. There are several pieces in there that are that are so key and important in in planning. So I’m, I’m grateful that you, you know those steps. The importance of being aware of those steps. Not only do you have a plan, do you even know where the plan is? How often do you refer to the plan, and then how do you go about pausing? Do you know how to pause? What is involved in pausing? What does that mean? And how can you, you know, creatively, be on the path that is the best for you, whether it’s following that, or whether it’s going back to the plan?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, and, and, I mean, I don’t want listeners to think that I’m just some sort of magical person who is just pretending to have…

Christine W
Yeah you’ve been doing this since a long time ago.

Jo VanEvery
…because I’ve learned that, like I said, like, you know, Christine and I met, like, 15 years ago, and I used to be the kind of person whose desk was completely covered in papers. They weren’t even piles, right? And I used to tidy my desk when I was an academic. I used to tidy my desk at the end of every semester. And that was back when email was still kind of new, and we still had paper memos, and I would sometimes find stuff at the bottom of that thing, and I’m like, “Oh, I never got around to doing that. But hey, it’s too late now!”

Christine W
Right. “I’m not doing that one!”

Jo VanEvery
I guess… “Oh, well, nobody died.” I… My life… So that was kind of my system, and, and it’s taken me a really long time to get to a different kind of place, both with how tidy my desk is, and also with the planning. And it’s been with, you know, curiosity, and trying different things and using planners that other people have designed, and then modifying them to work better for me, and having… I was telling Christine earlier, I have an assistant now, and we meet regularly and talk about what’s kind of on the agenda and make sure, like between the two of us, that none of the big projects fall off, and and also, I’ve got somebody to talk to to make a decision about. And not everybody has that much control. I’m self employed, right? I have a certain amount of control over what I can do, but I do know where the plan is. It’s right next to me, hanging… I have, like, a little kind of, I’ve strung a piece of string from one corner of the room to the bookshelf next to me, and I have printed out my February plan and stuck on it with these little, tiny clothes pegs, which has my priorities for the month, and then a kind of tentative breakdown of which projects I’m going to work on in each week. And it’s taken me a long time to get to… I mean, when I made my February plan this year, I was looking at my January plan and I was ticking off, “Did I do these things?” And I was like, Oh, my goodness. I think this is probably the first time ever where every priority I set for January actually got done.

Christine W
Wow.

Jo VanEvery
So not usually the case, like, usually, “Oh, this one didn’t get done. Is that still a priority for this month?” That kind of thing. But I just feel like that, one of the reasons people say, “Oh, I have ADHD, planning doesn’t work for me”, which a lot of people have said, right?

Christine W
Not the typical way of planning, for sure, doesn’t [work].

Jo VanEvery
But I think, I think it’s like, “What do you mean by planning?” So that’s why I say, like, for me, planning is really a practice, and I am not at all… And I learned from somebody else. I think it was Tara Swiger. She had this great way of putting it. She’s like, “The purpose of a plan is to inspire action.”

Christine W
Ooh.

Jo VanEvery
That’s so awesome, isn’t it? So it’s like…

Christine W
I have not heard that. I mean, that would be the best definition to guide us because, yes, because of our nervous system, you know the interest, novelty, challenge or urgency, and it and it’s it like calls us forth. And when we don’t have, as someone with ADHD, we don’t have those things, it’s like planning. It’s like… [Negative noise.] – There’s not any, there’s not any energy, there’s not necessarily any urgency, because you just like, Do The Thing… You just do the thing, and there’s no plan, and it’s all over the place, but you just keep doing the things… And you’re… Yeah, it’s…

Christine W
So it’s about inspiring action.

Christine W
“Inspiring action.”

Jo VanEvery
But the other thing is, if that’s the purpose of your plan, it’s actually neither here nor there, if you do everything you actually planned – as long as *making* the plan got you going in the direction you want to go. And then, and then, when you have one of those inspirational moments, or whatever, you have, you have the opportunity to be like: “Is that still the direction I want to be going in?” “Is, is this new thing taking me in that direction?” “Do I…?” – you know, like, you have a kind of model. But it’s really just about, like, you’re trying to generate forward movement, and it, you know, the goal of being a good planner, doesn’t, you know, like, there’s no award for, like, making a plan that you’ve done. Like, I mean, I’m really pleased. There is a kind of intrinsic reward that sometimes you make a plan and you get to the end of the month and you’re like, “Shit, I did everything on my plan!” – like, it feels really good. But I never, like… I don’t have a kind of negative feeling when I don’t. Like, I just sort of, am, like, “Oh, well, I must have over-estimated, or something came up, or…” you know? Like, because that’s the other thing, you know, like I said about when we were talking about the ‘feeling like everybody’s facing this’, you know? Like, the more things you’ve got going on in your life, the more stuff you can’t plan for. Like, there’s always stuff you can’t plan for; your kids get sick; you get sick. You know? That there’s some kind of, you know, fascist uprising in your town, like, you know what I mean? Like…

Christine W
Just a small thing like that! [Laughter.]

Jo VanEvery
Like, you still have to cook dinner and all the rest of it, but, you know, it’s okay if things go off the rails, when stuff happens, right? And, and feeling bad that you didn’t plan well enough for it, I don’t think helps. Like, that’s where the the self compassion part comes in…

Christine W
Yes, a lot.

Christine W
…a lot. I think that… You know? But then I guess the other thing, yeah, so then I guess the other thing is, I don’t really, I don’t really have… I find it harder to set milestones of where I’m going to be. I just am, like, on a direction. And I sometimes think… You know, so you were talking about… Repeat those four things again, because that’s really important. Everybody needs to hear those. The urgency… [etc.]

Christine W
I.N.C.U. Interest. Novelty. Challenge ([the] right size challenge).

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Christine W
And urgency. Or deadlines, you know, urgency, otherwise known as deadlines,

Jo VanEvery
Well, urgency, yeah. Or, or just… Yeah, “Somebody’s bleeding, so I’m going to do that…”

Christine W
Right, yeah, urgency, emergency.

Jo VanEvery
Well, this is why, apparently, a lot of emergency room doctors or medical professionals have ADHD because, like, that’s a good…

Christine W
They’re good, yeah, it’s a good fit.

Jo VanEvery
It’s a good fit, right? Like, but yeah. Like, so the interest, and I think the interest part is one of the reasons why so many of my academic clients are turning it – because the episode that I released in November, I was talking to Lee Skallerup Bessette about a book she co edited. There was a collection of kind of stories from academics and staff in higher education who have who are neurodivergent, one type or another, or have mental health challenges. There were a few people in it that were bipolar or, you know, ADHD, talking about, you know, their careers in higher education and how… And [for] some of those, it was really good, and [for] some of them it didn’t work out. And they… But one of the things is that it, as a career, academia seems to promise the ability to really have a lot of your time focused on stuff you’re really interested in, right? Like, you get to deep dive into this area that you’re really interested in. You get to, you know, engage with people in a classroom about this stuff, you know, like you’re talking to people all day about stuff that you’re really excited about, all that kind of thing. And that’s, that’s the sort of attraction. There are also some other problems with it. But I think that thing about interest being important is, is one of the reasons that we see all that. But, but, yeah. So, talk a bit about right size challenge.

Christine W
Oh yeah. I mean, because that’s… It’s interesting, [because] that one I’ve seen added more recently. [It] used to just be the interest, novelty, urgency, and then more recently, I’ve seen the challenge being added. And somebody, wisely, and one of the things I read, talked about ‘right size’. And it’s like, yeah. You can’t… Because otherwise, that’s… Challenge on one side, or another, is not going to work. So [if] you have a challenge that’s too big, that seems too much, that seems too great, it could be too easily overwhelming. I mean, there’s, you know… Yeah. It might be something you can break down and work with. And it’s possible to use those kinds of strategies of breaking down and finding the tiny steps in that. But it’s… So there’s that side. Is it…? Is it too big? But on the other side: is it challenging [enough]? It has to be challenging enough, which is why those with interest and challenge, like a lot of the admin stuff for ADHD, is so hard, the practical life details, eating, scheduling stuff, bank stuff, you know, all… It’s like, you know, unless we have an interest in some of those things, we just were like, “Ugh!” It’s just, it’s like, it’s like, pulling teeth. And so… It’s [that] the challenge is either not interesting enough, or it’s [that] the challenge is too… It’s like, we need to make the challenge bigger, or more interesting a challenge. So, yeah, there’s, it’s like, not enough versus too much on the challenge. But especially, you know, it’s very connected to the interest piece, which is why in some ways it’s an optional one, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no… And it’s… But I think that’s also something really important for academics, you know, because they’re both interested, but also they, they, they are doing challenging things in a lot of their work, and then some of the things they really struggle with are the stuff that feels boring and pointless and… Right? Like some of the bureaucratic stuff, it’s just… And then it’s just really hard.

Christine W
The ‘ish’ stuff, yeah, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And it’s hard to do. Though, I think some kinds of those little boring things, you can do the strategy that combines it with urgency too. Like, you can create urgency as a kind of challenge. So like, I know people like, I know parents that do a thing where they set a timer and say to their kids, “how many kids-“, “How many, how many of these toys can you get put away before the timer goes off?” Right? And I think you can, you can do that kind of thing for lots of grown up tasks.

Christine W
It works for adults too. Also to contain time, you know, to know what time it is, instead of, like, you know, ‘Now’, ‘Not Now’, kind of time, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. But like, for some of those, like, really boring things, you can do it as a sort of, “How many of these can I tick off in the next 15 minutes?”

Christine W
Oh, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…sort of, and then that creates a challenge, right? Which makes it kind of exciting and gets you motivated.

Christine W
Yes, I time, yeah, time, challenges can really help. And using timers, I recommend visual timers, if at all possible. I used to… I remember, and this was so helpful back when we didn’t pay our bills online, or most of our bills online that you took that you had all the bills, and you had the chequebook, and you wrote them out, check by check. And I remember I would take my bills, and my chequebook, go to a coffee house, get the yummy coffee and a treat, and then sit with my bills and that that was like, “Ahhh”. I created this lovely kind of way. It made it more enjoyable. So you can add, you know, that can be a piece. Can it be more enjoyable somehow? Can you make it a little bit, you know, have a little more ease or delight to it? It’s like, “Yeah, I got my sugar, and I got my caffeine. Some dopamine too, though, in there.” So, you know, there’s that.

Jo VanEvery
I left, I left the house!

Christine W
Yeah, well, that too, yeah, it’s like, change of environment, which can also, you know, we need to keep fresh in our spaces and our minds and our… Yeah, to help ourselves, you know, just get up and move. All those little things.

Jo VanEvery
That’s and that’s the other thing. And the other reason why I think of planning as a practice I have to do all the time is because those things change. I was just talking to a client this morning who has ADHD, and she usually works at home. She’s working on a PhD, and she was saying, “I’ve just realised that for some reason, I can’t focus at home right now. But I went into the campus, I went into the university and worked in the office, and that worked really well”. And she’s like, you know, “I’m in.” It’s like an, and it’s, you know… Because it’s for PhD students, it’s kind of an open plan space. So she’s like, “But because if I’m working there, other people can see my screen, so I sort of feel like I need to be on my game.” She’s like, “Not that anybody actually looks at what I’m doing, or would say anything.”

Christine W
Oh! Like, it provides a kind of a kind of accountability, sort of, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? That if she’s, if she’s there, and working, that she probably has to have actual work up on the screen, and all that kind of stuff. But she also, like, while we were talking, realised that, you know, sometimes she works really well at home, right? And that’ll work really well for a while, and then all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, it just stops working. And…

Christine W
Yes, yes, it needs to be… It’s like, we really do need to reboot, refresh our minds and our bodies. But I mean, both, either way, sometimes it can be just we need to move our body, but yeah, when it becomes too… It’s like, we need it to be a little bit new, a little bit novel, to help us stay engaged. It’s like, “Okay, it’s time for a new…” It’s like, “Oh, yeah!” And then it’s like… It wakes our brains up so that we can work well.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. And also, I think that’s the same with like, are you working on your computer? Are you working on paper? And sometimes having to go back and forth between those things, like for writing, or working with your data, or whatever it is that academics might be doing. And I think one of the difficult things about some of the required things is depending where you live, like certainly in Britain, I think almost all the universities now require all the work to be submitted electronically, and require you to mark it like in the electronic thing, because it goes through the plagiarism checker thing, and it does… Right? And so…

Christine W
Oh, gosh.

Jo VanEvery
I know. So it used to be like, you know, 30 years ago, when I was still an academic, it’s like, you had this stack of paper and then, you know, but now, it’s kind of, you know? I mean, I did have one client in Canada who, when she was diagnosed, she has some very severe migraines.

Christine W
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And so she got accommodations for that. And one of the accommodations was that somebody would print out all the essays for her to mark, and she could mark them on paper. But she had that as an accommodation.

Christine W
Wow. That’s wonderful that she was able to get that.

Jo VanEvery
She… It was wonderful she was able to get that. And I mean, the kind of migraine she has is very severe.

Christine W
Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry to hear that.

Jo VanEvery
You know? Like it was, yeah, so, yeah, it was just… But I think what… There’s a lot of places where it feels like people have fewer choices about some of those things, and about changing and making it new, and making it, you know, that kind of thing that it… That can be really limiting, I think.

Christine W
Yeah, it… Yes, yeah, and, and, you know, there’s privilege that goes along with this. Or depending on where you live, if there’s, you know, four feet of snow, you’re probably not likely to go somewhere, that you may be contained in your house for a minute, or whatever it is… That you rely on somebody else to transport you, or… I mean, all the kinds of things that might come into play, sometimes even just changing the direction of where you work, you know? So it, we know, when we come back to as far as just moving the space, it can be something as simple as, “Okay, okay. What about looking at these cool things over here? What if I change it so that I’m facing up?” I mean, it really, it can be, it’s our brain is just looking for just a little refreshment. You know, it can be not a whole meal change, but just a little snack change in the way that can refresh us.

Jo VanEvery
Right. So maybe those kind of, like… Also taking, like… [It’s] really the value of taking little mini breaks, getting up and doing something else, right? So, like, putting on a three minute pop song and dancing around your office like a goon.

Christine W
Especially good one. Especially good one. The more goon the better.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah, right? Or just, you know, getting up and stretching, or… I use a sit / stand desk now, like I have a- where, my thing is sitting. It can move up here [gestures], and I can just stand up. So I do, I do that.

Christine W
How much…? I’m curious, how often do you change?

Jo VanEvery
I don’t, I don’t know. It varies. It’s kind of, you know, sometimes I’m sitting in the chair and I’m like, “Oh, I feel a little bit uncomfortable.” Like, “Well, I could stand up.” And then when I’m standing, like, standing is tiring. It took a long time to get used to working standing up, because you’re using different muscles in your legs, and you have to… You know? But, but yeah. And some days I’m more tired than others, so then sometimes I’m standing and it’s like, “Oh no, I’m tired now. I need to sit down.” So sometimes I go up and down a lot, and sometimes not. I know other people that have started doing that because of, say, back pain issues, and whatever, where they actually set a timer for kind of 45 minutes just to keep…

Christine W
Oh, and they alternate…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. And they alternate.

Christine W
Yeah. I was just curious, what…? If it was… How…? So, thank you for offering both of those possibilities.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. So, yeah, it’s just, you know, I do a bit of both. But yeah, so I think… So… So: urgent- urgency, novelty, challenge, and-

Christine W
Is there anything else hmm? Just novelty, challenge… Interest. Novelty. Challenge. Urgency.

Jo VanEvery
Interest. Novelty. Challenge. Urgency. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So, urgency is the one I think a lot of people, that I know, kind of, I think a lot of people over rely on.

Christine W
Rely on, yes.

Jo VanEvery
For, like, for the… So they… So, like, some people end up with like, “Oh, well, I’ll commit to these things, because then I have a deadline. I can’t write until I have a deadline.” Blah, blah, blah. And one of the issues with that is, it’s hard for really big things.

Christine W
To, to sustain it, right.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like, it’s hard… Like, like having a deadline for producing a book.

Christine W
Oh shit. [Laughter.]

Jo VanEvery
I’ll mention… But one of the sorts of things that my people do, doesn’t actually create a lot of urgency.

Christine W
Correct, correct, correct.

Jo VanEvery
You know? It’s a bit like the right size challenge. I think you need the right size, you need the right size deadline, right?

Christine W
Ma’am, yes, yeah. That’s… No, that’s good. That’s, yeah, that’s a, it’s a great, humorous example, yeah, like, you know, got to get it done. It’s like, there’s almost zero, especially with a brain that’s working with, you know, Now and Not Now, time, that, that’s like, that’s not now… And so nothing’s gonna happen. It’s just like… Yeah, you know. And back to the “What are the tiny steps? What are the tiny steps? What about the introduction? What about…?” I mean, really, any way into it. I mean, that… Yeah. How to get started is a whole, whole big, whole nother topic. Yeah, how to get started…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, but also that, like, you can’t rely on urgency for things that are too big.

Jo VanEvery
No, correct.

Jo VanEvery
Because you can’t write a book a week before the deadline. You might be able to write a conference paper on the plane on the way to the conference.

Christine W
Oh, gosh, yeah, right, but yeah, a book, not many people have done that, really. Maybe a booklet.

Jo VanEvery
You can’t write a book, and, or, or a PhD dissertation or whatever. But even some of the things that we think of as shorter in academia, like journal articles, I mean, it’s still 10,000 words of pretty serious, right? It.. Like, so then, so, then what ends up, what ends up, so you get in a kind of spiral of of all the negative self talk,

Christine W
Ooh, yeah. And also an amped up nervous system. It you have a nervous system that doesn’t ever feel like it can relax because it’s constantly under deadline. I mean, it’s… Yeah, it’s really meant to be… Urgency is not meant to be 24/7, because that that’s going to burn out our nervous systems. And, and, you know, and a lot can get done. You can get a lot done, a lot done, a lot done. You got adrenaline, you’re going, you’re going, you’re going, but inevitably, mind, body or spirits, going to call a stop, and you’re going to end up seriously ill, burned out, or somehow not able to continue in that way. So yeah, it is not meant to be an… Urgency is not meant to be a 24/7 ‘only rely on me’, ideally interest novelty or right size challenge to use those more, and the urgency more for smaller chunks of it during the day. You know, setting a timer for this little chunk, this little chunk. I’m going to work on this thing for a half hour. I’m going to do those kinds of things. It’s much more effective to use that kind of urgency for.

Jo VanEvery
Right. Other stuff… So the bounded using bounded time helps make a slightly longer period into now, I think that’s how that works. So like, the way that the Office Spa Day or Meeting With Your Writing, or any of that kind of thing works is like, “Okay, we have 90 minutes, (or we have two hours), so it’s long enough to get something done, without it being so urgent that you’re all hyped up on adrenaline. But it also has an end point that is close enough to not put it into the Not Now space.”

Christine W
Yes. Yes, and…

Jo VanEvery
Is that how that works?

Christine W
Yes, yes. And, and also, because that, that period of time is different for different people. Some people want to have, like, a three hour block. Some people want to have half hour block and reset the timer, or maybe do a quick stretch break and set it for another half hour. Whatever. It’s really important to play around with what kinds of blocks of time work well for you, right?

Jo VanEvery
And that might be different for different things. And like we said before, it might be one thing, one time and one thing and another. One of the things I’ve thought about is this, you know that a lot of people like, really, like, there’s the too much intensity where you’re gonna do yourself harm because you’ve got too much cortisol, adrenaline stuff going on, but there is a level of intensity that just feels really good for working, right? And it like, it feels good, and that gives it enough of, I don’t know, that, I don’t know if it’s interest, urgency, something, like, some combination of those things, to make it motivating, to work that way, and that it can be like that for like, thinking tasks, like, you know, whatever. And so one of the things that I… But I think there definitely is a ‘too much’. It’s not where all the other people have told you it is, but it’s too much for yourself. That’s going to lead to the burnout, right? And there’s also a ‘too little’, right? Like we’re not trying to smooth everything out, and make it all, you know, like, that might work for other people, but it probably doesn’t work for your ADHD brain, like, you need the sort of spikes of intensity. So, like, there’s a thing somehow about managing that. Like, I need some intense focus on things. I need to, you know, there’s certain things that work really well if I have that intense [focus], so, like, I need to protect some time and space for that, but also recognise that you’re going to need, you can’t work like that all the time. Like, [you] can’t do 40 hours a week like that, certainly, and that you need to also, like, you need to recover. But also probably, you know, if you know you’re going to have one of those periods, you need to make sure the stuff that comes before it is not draining too much of your energy, so that you actually have the capacity. Am I making sense here?

Christine W
Oh, yeah, you’re making tonnes of sense. And actually, as I’m thinking of a couple of different things. Yes, I agree with you that, that we, we need those little sparks of intensity, and deep thinking, and really being into it, and that isn’t sustainable. I completely agree with you. It reminds me of a post. I follow a guy named Tyler Mitchell on LinkedIn who writes about ADHD late diagnosed, and he’s a brilliant writer, and image maker, and his posts have helped me so much. But he had a, one that was recent, that he talked about in very, you know, what you’re describing, that he had been… Well, actually a little bit different. He had been sitting. He had this thing to do. He sat down. Got everything ready. He was ready to go. Couldn’t do it for the life of it, just like his brain would not cooperate, would not cooperate, it just, he just sat there. He, you know, gave it some time, and he was not able to engage with it. And he… So this will be, [it’ll] work in a couple different ways, so bear with me. So he has learned to… He had a whole bunch of sticky notes of all the tiny little things that need to be taken care of that maybe would take five or 10 minutes. And he thought, “Well, I’m not making any progress here. Let me just, you know, look at my life, put it into a list, eventually. And he took his list and, just like, picked two or three things that he could do in 15 or 20 minutes, and it got, it created some momentum for him, because it, there was a sense of accomplishment, and brain… It’s kind of like [Cheering noise]. It got the brain going, and started up, that, you know, that was kind of cranky about the [other] thing, and then he was more able to do the thing, you know, to do what he wanted to work on. And I bring that up, because that can be used for initiating, but it can also be used for when we’ve worked so long, and so intently to – a break, could be a real break, like stepping away doing some stretches, but it can also be like shifting, that our brain does not have to work that darn hard, and just take care of, like, “Okay, let me just take care of this bill”, or, “Let me just do that little…” – you know, little things that feel like they’re, they’re very small steps and can be done in five or 10 minutes. It’s… It provides a break, because it’s a very different kind of thinking.

Christine W
And I… But the other thing is, I find, like, if I have a meeting that goes to almost five o’clock, I can’t just, like, I find it hard to just turn the computer off right after, like, I end up going and doing just a little bit of futzing around with email or some little but, like, those kind of little things, right? Like, I’m not going to get into another whole big project at that point, but I need some kind of a wind down activity, right?

Jo VanEvery
Oh, me too, and all and all kinds of things. But yes to that.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like, it’s a kind of… Yeah, you’ve got all that… [Gestures towards head.] You’re just like, ‘sparky, sparky, sparky’. And it’s like, “Okay, I need to slow it down. I can’t just bring it to a halt.” And I think it’s, you know, we’re thinking about how… And that might be a way to do some of those little things that you find hard. Right, right? Like, the bill paying, or like, whatever, but like some of those really dull maintenance tasks that we all have to do, but that aren’t that interesting in and of themselves, sometimes can work really well if we plan to do them as that kind of like warm up or wind down, right? Like, my, my partner, who I swear to God, has ADHD, like, but he has just developed, over his lifetime, some really good coping strategies. But he, he’s recently been like, “Oh, I’ve been finding it works really well to just do…”, like, because when he’s working at home, you know, like, while the kettle is boiling and I’m making coffee, I will just do some of the washing up the dishes. Like, he’ll just wash some dishes while he’s waiting for the kettle to boil, right? Because he’s standing there anyway, and it would be boring just watching the kettle boil, right? So he’s like, “Oh, look, there’s… I’ll just do some dishes, like, while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil”, or, “while I’m waiting for the coffee to become coffee after you pour hot water on it” Right? Like, it takes two or three minutes before it’s [ready].

Christine W
Oh, I, yeah, the about the dishes, because, man, I go back and forth with them. I actually, I had left some dishes for probably a couple days, and it was like, getting to be… It’s like, it’s kind of gross now. So and I, I did the timer thing, but I did it while… No, I didn’t do the [timer thing]. I have done that too. I listen… I found a podcast that I wanted to listen to, which turned out to be fabulous, and I listened to the podcast while I was doing those dishes. I do not know why this has never occurred to me before. I’ve always just tortured myself, stood at the sink. [thinking] “I’ve gotta do these dishes”. And it’s like… It… No… Like, no wonder I keep leaving dishes in the sink! But the podcast was, like, such a fix, because I could focus on the podcast while I just did the mundane thing. It’s like…

Jo VanEvery
Did doing the dishes make it easier for you to focus on the podcast?

Jo VanEvery
Maybe so! Because I… Yeah. I don’t know. But it works so well together. I just discovered you would think that as long as I’ve known about this, you know, we keep learning about ourselves and what works. And I’m just was amazed it took me this long to find how well that worked.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. Well, but also I think, like, for some people, just like focusing, just like and not doing anything…

Christine W
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like, how many…? How many women, diagnosed or otherwise, say they can’t just watch TV and do nothing with their hands, right? And they, they knit or crochet or something,

Christine W
Right. People do something. Right

Jo VanEvery
Right? And it’s just, like, you know? It’s like, it’s like, a you know? It’s just, you know? My partner calls it ‘productive fidgeting’. Knitting is productive fidgeting.

Christine W
I love that word: productive fidget. That’s wonderful.

Jo VanEvery
But you know, it’s sort of like, you know, it’s like… And I remember having a conversation with my daughter when she was sort of 18, or something. We would be driving to, at that time, it was like a six hour drive to visit my parents, and so as soon as she could drive, we would share the driving.

Christine W
Nice.

Jo VanEvery
But it involves the 401, outside of Toronto. I don’t know if you know that highway, but it’s got like, about 12 lanes. Like, seriously, it is the…

Christine W
Oh my gosh. That’s as bad as Dallas, or worse? Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
No, it’s bad. It’s it’s probably worse. Like, there’s sort of six main lanes, and then there’s like, three or four collector lanes, so, like, but the exits off the main ones are, like, every three of the other ones, you know, so there’s kind of anyway, and that’s in each direction, right? Like, it’s, it’s really madness. But for me, if I’m driving in, like, a situation where I really need to focus, I absolutely have to turn the radio off and tell people not to talk to me, so that I can just focus on it. And one of the things she said was, she says, I know this doesn’t work for you, mom, but I actually can focus better if I have the radio on.

Christine W
Interesting.

Jo VanEvery
And I saw somebody shared, like, a little meme or something. A little while ago, there was a similar thing where it’s like, “Yeah, I need the radio on to occupy the toddler in my brain, so that I can actually do the thing I need to do.” Right?

Christine W
That’s good, yeah, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But I think…

Christine W
We’re different, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
There’s similarly a thing with, you know, some people find it hard to focus on, like, to really listen. Like, so some people will use podcasts, or the TV, or music as background noise to occupy the toddler in their brain so they can focus and do other things, right?

Christine W
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But I think there’s also the alternate thing, where, when you really want to be paying attention to that auditory input, that that’s too much focus in one place, right, and that you need, like, the doing the dishes while you do it, or, you know, going for a run, or knitting or whatever, actually makes it easier to focus. And [for] different people, that combination works differently. So, somebody I follow on Bluesky today was talking about finding the perfect music to help her get writing, and then saying, you know, and so she was so excited because she got some writing done, but then she was like, “I don’t understand all you people that can write with no music”. And I can’t write with music. My partner has music on all the time in the background, right, to distract the toddler, so that he can focus.

Christine W
Yeah, I’m more… I align with you on this one, yeah, in both situations – the driving and the writing, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. But I think that brings us back to that thing about curiosity, and experimenting with things…

Christine W
And compassion.

Jo VanEvery
And self compassion. But also learning self trust. This is where I’m getting, is like, sometimes, and sometimes, this is because of all of our past experiences, and all the terrible things people have said to us, and trying to avoid that, and the kind of rejection sensitivity stuff. And I get that, and it’s important. But there is a thing where sometimes, especially with those big things, right, like writing a book or whatever, that you just kind of have to trust that if you do things in a certain way, that you will end up where you want to go, like, even though you can’t get there quickly, right? That you’re on the road, and that you check in every once in a while to make sure you’re still on the road, and that the bridge hasn’t blown out, or something, ahead of you, but that you, kind of, just need to trust that you’re going to get there, once you’re on the road.

Christine W
Yeah, yes. I think this is not only self trust, but I think it goes back to what you mentioned earlier in here was this idea of noticing progress. That I think one of the reasons that we don’t trust, that, trust ourselves in those ways about this longer term thing, is because we’re not noticing, or paying attention at all to what we’ve already done. We’re focusing so hard on what we haven’t yet done, that it’s as if the the progress is underground. It’s like minus, instead of being above ground, it’s like a mine. It’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve just, I’ve gotta be here. I’ve just still got this, and this, and this.” And it’s like, it’s like, you’re… There’s no acknowledgement, and it’s hard to have self trust, almost, because it’s like, it’s almost like it doesn’t exist. I mean, I’m, I know that’s it’s not, it’s a little bit too strong, but it’s so important to find ways to really look at the progress, and note it, even before you work. To go… It’s like, “Look where I got this little last piece of chunk done”, or, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or, you know, note where it is on the timeline, or whatever you’ve developed, the structure for it, the plan, before you move into engaging with the rest of it, focusing on what’s not been done yet.

Jo VanEvery
And that is one of the things I’ve definitely kept from how Jen ran the Planning Classes in the Office Spa Day, in the things I do. So we start every Meeting With Your Writing [by], I just, I have a timer, and, like you say, visual timer, so I have sand timers.

Christine W
Oh, cool, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But I basically give people a minute to just write a big list of, like, “What have you been doing in the last week?” Right? And not even necessarily “What you’ve been writing”, but just like, “What’s been going on?” Like, “What have you been working on?” “What projects have you worked on?” It doesn’t even have to be done. “What projects have you worked on?” “What other kinds of things did you do?” “What’s been going on?”

Christine W
Yeah. Where’s your energy going?

Jo VanEvery
And then I get people to look at the list, and I tell them, I say, “Allow yourself to be pleased.”

Christine W
Ooh, that’s a beautiful sentence.

Jo VanEvery
Allow yourself to be pleased. And then, and then, I know that for some people, they’re going to find that hard, and partly because there’s something they wish they had done that they didn’t.

Christine W
Exactly, that.

Jo VanEvery
And so I also just often will say: “And and if there is something that you’re kind of frustrated about not being on your list, take a look at what’s there and acknowledge that there’s good reasons you didn’t get around to that.” Like, right? Like, none of us have been lying on the chaise longue eating Bon Bons, right? Like, that’s not why we didn’t get it.

Christine W
Exactly.

Jo VanEvery
Right. So we start there. And with the Planning Classes, similarly, I’m like, “Okay, before we plan next quarter, just look back at the last quarter and make some notes”, and I have some more specific prompts, because we’re looking at three months. And because [in] my planning classes, we can’t focus on everything they need to do. And so, you know, people come to me because, because they want to find more time for writing. They want to get more writing done. So I focus on the writing. And… But, I ask them questions, ike, you know, “What kinds of time did you find for writing?” Like, “Did you find only little short bits? Or did you have, like, a writing retreat at any time?” Or, “Did you do some of these, like, two hours a week things?” or whatever. Like: “What kinds of time? And how often did you find that time?” And then, “What projects did you work on? And where did they get [to]?” And then I get people to share one thing that they notice about all of that looking back, and it’s really common for at least one person in the group to say, “I’d completely forgotten that I submitted that piece back in two months ago.”

Christine W
Wow.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like… Or, you know, like, if… Right? It’s just like, the noticing…

Christine W
Yes.

Jo VanEvery
…because sometimes our perception of how much we’re doing, and how much we are, are actually doing, right? And I think a lot of that, it’s not so much to do with the ADHD. It’s to do with how our memories work.

Christine W
Yes.

Jo VanEvery
And I read a really, I’ve read a couple of really interesting things, one of which suggests that we can… So one of the things is that by noticing properly, what we’ve actually accomplished at the end of a session (because I do that too), at the end, I’m like, “Okay, what did you accomplish?” Right? Which I definitely also got from Jen, which is why I remember this thing that she’s… Because we were tidying desks. And I remember her always saying: “If part of your intention was to deal with that stack of paper on your desk, and sometimes there’s still going to be a stack, and, but a stack of paper is actually a bunch of individual things. And so every individual thing that you put away out of that stack, counts, even if there’s still some of the stack left there.” Right? And I think that, that translates almost exactly to like grading papers.

Christine W
Oh gosh.

Jo VanEvery
It’s like, it’s going to take a long time to grade all the papers for your class, and it’s not going to be done yet. But after every session, you can be like, “I got through this many.”

Christine W
Yes, yes, yeah. It’s like, breaking stuff down from what we accomplished, rather than breaking it down… Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
My thing is: “This is where my focus is going to be, and I’m just going to keep working on it for this much time, and then I’m going to notice how far I got”, because otherwise, afterwards, all you have as a memory is “I worked on that for 90 minutes and I didn’t finish”, and that just feels [bad]. Right?

Christine W
I think it’s so common, the way that we are, the usual before we learned any of these strategies, that’s where, what the common thing is, I worked… Why did I? “I worked on this for three hours and I didn’t get anything done.” Or, I mean, yeah, it’s almost like “I don’t have anything to show for it”. It’s like, when you actually did a whole bunch.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, and you do have things to show for it, even though, like, yeah. Like, it’s still… Right? Or, you know, or… But then also, some of the stuff we do, like email, people get very upset about “There’s always email in my inbox”. It’s like, “Yeah, there’s always dirty laundry in your laundry hamper too”. Right? That’s not because there’s something wrong with you. It’s because of the nature of laundry, right? You do your laundry…

Christine W
And dishes, and life, and papers…

Jo VanEvery
And dishes, everything, right? Like you’ve just done the dishes, and then you had a glass of water, and now there’s a glass sitting on the counter. Or, you know, like… You know… You did laundry today. You got the laundry hampers empty. Absolutely. You did it all. You put it, you even put it away. Yay, go you! Then, of course, you take your clothes off before you go to bed, and you throw at least your underpants in the laundry hamper. You’re gonna wear the shirt again. You have thrown your underwear in the laundry hamper. And it’s just a thing that is… Like, it’s that there’s different kinds of [things]… Like, some things are projects, right, where you’re like, you know, when you’ve written the book, and you’ve sent it to your publisher, you’ve written the book, and it’s done, right? And you get to decide whether you ever write another book again. But, like, email? Sorry. Like, there’s… It… The whole thing is not…. The goal is not to get through it all. The goal is to just… Well… So I made that… If we’re making the analogy with laundry, the thing with laundry is not that your your laundry hamper never needs to be empty. The goal is that nobody has to go commando because there’s no clean underwear. So… [Laughter].

Christine W
That’s a great… I love that.

Jo VanEvery
Right?

Christine W
Like, it’s so many things, yeah, I love that. That’s great.

Jo VanEvery
You know? So it’s like, yeah, like, whatever it is that you’ve not… You know, it’s one thing, if there’s a shirt you really want to wear, and it’s not clean, and so you can wear something else, and you’re a little bit sad, but it’s not [a big deal]… Right? And some of your emails [are] like that too, right? It’s like: “I wish I’d got back to them earlier…” or whatever, but not a big deal. And then there’s some things in there where it’s like, your underwear, and you really need to have clean underwear. So… [Laughter.]

Christine W
Yeah, it’s… It’s this idea of ‘good enough’. I love that so much. The idea of ‘good enough’, rather than, you know, says, What’s that? There’s a word, like, for that… Sat…?

Jo VanEvery
Oh! The Satisficers versus maximizers, right? I am, like, your number one fan satisficer, like, with shopping, with everything, and I think trying to maximise all the time. I mean, that’s… If that’s your tendency, if you’re a maximizer and you always want the best thing, and you end up… right? That’s, that’s a hard thing. I I find that, but that’s like, that’s going in a whole nother direction. But I think that’s, that’s one of the things like you say, is noticing. But I also, like… What’s your thought on habits? Because I’ve had people say as well that ADHD makes it really hard to develop habits.

Christine W
It does. [Laughter.] Yeah, it’s almost like a bad word, right? I mean, you know, so to speak, in quotes. It… Habits, yeah, well, yeah. So it throws me back immediately to the I.N.C.U, interest, novelty, challenge, urgency. So, habits. We… So as ADHD people, if we have zero structure, we you know, we flounder. If we have too much structure, we feel straight jacketed. We feel like we can’t breathe. We feel claustrophobic. There’s a happy medium for, for each of us, and that requires some kind of scaffolding. And habits are very much a part of that kind of scaffolding. And I think one of the things that people may not realise they probably do have habits that they’re not aware of, whether they’re positive habits, or negative habits, you know, that they do, you know? Habits to scroll when they, you know, are looking for a break, habits of reaching for the candy. You know, those are some bad ones, but that they, you know, do things the same way every every time they wake up, or they do the same things every time before they go to bed, or all those kinds of little habits. And, and they can be so, they can be so useful for somebody with ADHD, so that there’s more of life that becomes automated, but the more compli- complicated it is, or too perfect: the less likely it’s going to happen. And so to to match that kind of you know, ‘good enough, you know, not too much, not, not enough, but, but simple things can be really helpful as part of that scaffolding.

Christine W
And the other thing about habits is, you do the habit, it’s been successful. It’s working. And then often what happens is, after a period of time, it gets stale. It gets stale in some ways, depending on what the habit is. Or, it’s just like, “I don’t want to do that anymore”. There’s some resistance to it. And so it needs to be fresh and modified, changed a little. It’s… I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s just… I think the thing that really I’m struck by this with ADHD in our conversation is, you know, self compassion, curiosity, and the ability to, to let it be okay to change things to the degree that you can, that are not working, to be willing to tweak things, to allow support in as a way of, you know, perhaps making a change to… But that it’s a, it’s… I mean, I think sometimes everything is changing so quickly that we want to, like, just like, ‘make it all right’. We make the perfect plan, or the perfect schedule, and then we just want to hang on to it. And it’s… And it’s like, [it] becomes too rigid, and to be willing to allow there to be some structure with, you know, being okay, to be flexible about making it a little different on this day. But yeah… “I’m going to pick it up and to not be afraid”. It’s like, “Well, I didn’t do it for two days. Screw it. I’m going to throw it away.” It’s like, no, you go, like… You know, for me with my walking, I do it on most days, but not on every day. So I skip too many days. It’s… It becomes harder to go back. So I really, I know myself to go back because I love it. It feeds me, it nourishes me, makes me feel better. So that was long winded. I don’t even know if I answered your question, but those are my thoughts.

Jo VanEvery
No, but what you’re saying is that, 1) that habits, maybe habits, is a little bit like planning in that we need to loosen up a little bit by what we mean by it, yes, and also 2) that it’s always hard, like, for everybody to build new habits, but that they do provide, like, a certain kind of structure. And like, the thing about habit is when, when something becomes a habit, it’s kind of subconscious. So you’re saying, like, a lot of times, people will have habits, they just don’t know. You don’t notice them anymore, because it’s just like, “This is, this is how I get up in the morning and these kind of things happen”, right?

Christine W
It just becomes a part of you.

Jo VanEvery
It just becomes a part of you, and you only notice it when there’s something that sort of disrupts that.

Christine W
Right. Right.

Jo VanEvery
But you’re not… Yeah… But like, trying to establish, like, to set something into your subconscious is really hard, right? Like, when you have to think about it all the time, it’s like, “Oh, then I have to…” Then there’s all kinds of stuff around memory, and all kinds of other things, and then that’s one more thing, and it just becomes a bit overwhelming. But also, doing the same thing at the same time every day feels like antithetical to the interest and novelty thing.

Christine W
Yeah, often, yes, depending on what it is, yes.

Jo VanEvery
It just is like, like, “But that’s boring. Like, why would I want to do that?” And so I guess really the question is, like, how much of this is useful? So many of us have established a habit of brushing our teeth at certain times a day, right? Because, like, it’s good to do that. Or, you know, doing some sort of exercise, like going for a walk or whatever. But yeah, I think, I think that’s, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of part of it.

Christine W
And also support. The last thing about habits is to get to support yourself with the habit. You know, “What it is that I need? What kind of support do I need? What can I…? How can I give that to myself? Are there ways…? Can I set it up so that it’s easier, or more fun, more interesting? And to allow friends, or co-worker people to support you, and doing that, you know, whether you need a little cheering on, or remind you, or whatever there might be, you know, other ways can help support you.

Jo VanEvery
So one thing that happened with me was like, during all the pandemic lockdown stuff, we still had dogs then, which had to be walked a couple times a day. But I just developed this real anxiety about being out because they were big dogs, you know. And I just… So it ended up that my partner did almost all the dog walking. And also, like, we would just, we have a big back garden, and not everybody around us does. So I was like, I won’t take them to the park. I’ll leave that for the people that really need the park, and I’ll just run [them] around the back, you know, like, so we did, like, we would just play games in the back garden with the dogs instead. But what happened was, I ended up just getting out of the habit of leaving the house, and going for a walk, and so for, you know, for many years. So, like, it wasn’t until, like, probably two years ago, like, or three years, you know, it’s like 2023, or something, when I’m like, “Wait a second”, like, “I often go, like, three whole days without ever leaving the house at all, and, like, I’m not walking, I’m not doing any of that, and I really need to change that”. And so, I mean, one of the difficulties is, then, when you’re unfit, I live in an area called the Peak District, and it’s called that for a reason. So the town I live in, like, pretty much all the directions from my house are steep.

Christine W
Oh, Gosh.

Jo VanEvery
So there’s one direction I can go. It’s not flat, but it’s not steep, but the hill is more gentle. So I identified, “Okay, I can do this and go”, but I recognise that getting started to like, go and just walk up the road and back, felt really weird, and like I wasn’t taking the dogs and I was doing… Right? So to get started, I asked my partner to come with me.

Christine W
Oh, excellent!

Jo VanEvery
Right?

Christine W
What beautiful support.

Jo VanEvery
So I’m like, I just, sort of, said, like, “This is what I want to do. I don’t get enough exercise. I would like to start walking. I don’t know how fast I can go. I don’t know how [far]…” Right? “But this is what I want. Can I…? I want to do it at this time of day. Can you come with me so that I, you know, to make it easier for me to do?” And he agreed to do that. And we did that for a while, and then once I got started, I didn’t need him to come with me anymore.

Christine W
I love this so much.

Jo VanEvery
And then I could do… And but of course, I started doing that, I think probably in the spring or the summer. It was in the summer, so, you know, and I live fairly far north, so it was light until, you know, 10 o’clock at night.

Christine W
Wow.

Jo VanEvery
But of course, once you get into the winter, it is not.

Christine W
Ooh, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
It’s… The sun doesn’t even… I mean, it’s only just now still kind of light. It’s dusk light, like it’s after sunset, technically, at five o’clock, like it’s going to be another two or three weeks before the sun doesn’t set till after five o’clock.

Christine W
Gosh.

Jo VanEvery
Like, very, because we’re very far north, right? Like, England’s really far north.

Christine W
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But that means, in the winter, walking, going for a walk after work feels like that’s, you know…

Christine W
Oh, yeah, another obstacle.

Jo VanEvery
It’s dark by like, three or four. So, but I work for myself. So I’m… So the, that first autumn, I’m like, “Oh, I need to switch and go at lunchtime”. And now I realise I actually really like going at lunchtime. It’s like a nice break. I now take a proper break at lunchtime. I go for a walk, I have lunch, I sometimes even read a little bit of my book, and then go back to work, and I’m refreshed. And and having that exercise in the middle of the day is really helpful. But getting started, like you said, like, it was, it made me think of it, because you were like, “Well, if you want to start a new habit, like, what would support you? Like, do you have a friend? Do you have…?” Right? And just saying, like, “Can you come…?” Right? And you might not need that support for the whole time.

Christine W
Right, correct.

Jo VanEvery
But… Right? And I’ve certainly had people that come to Meeting With Your Writing, and then they stopped coming, and they’ve messaged me and said, “This has been really useful, but now that I’ve established the habit, I don’t think I need that. And if I don’t come to that, I can shift the time that I do it, to something that works better for me. I can do it on my own.” I’ve got other people that have been coming for like, 15 years and, well, I haven’t been doing it for quite 15 years. But you know what I mean? There’s people that have been coming for years, and years, and years, because they’re like, “This helps me keep the time, and I still need the help. And I’m good.” Right? “I’m just going to keep coming.” But for other people, they need it as a sort of like, “This is going to help me to get started, to get started, and then once I’m in the habit, I’m going to be able to maintain this on my own.” And then sometimes people think that, and they go away, and then they’re back, and they’re like, “I thought I can maintain on my own, and I can’t. So I’m back now, and I’m not leaving.”

Christine W
Yeah, I’m one of those. I have a business coach that I, that does, he calls them ‘work retreats’. They’re basically just co working, and they’re on predictable days in the morning. And I do so much better. And I’ve been showing up for those. And it provides structure. There’s, yeah, it’s, it works so beautifully.

Jo VanEvery
Well, and the body doubling, right? Like, that’s a good thing for a lot of people, just being somewhere and having somebody else, even if they’re not doing the same thing you’re doing, just having somebody else working, you know? And I think a lot of people have found they can do that with their kids, like, if they sit and do something, and their kids sitting and doing their homework next to them, they don’t have to be working together. They just… If they’re both working at the same time that it helps…

Christine W
Both parties, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You know? So I think there’s like, there’s that, but even for other people, it might be like, “You don’t need it all the time, but you need it to get started”, or you need… You know? And like you say, like being open to the idea that things might change, and that there’s no – not only one, no one right way, that’s going to work for everybody, but also that whatever works for you isn’t going to work for you all the time, and it’s okay. That’s not because you picked the wrong thing, and it’s not because there’s something wrong with you, or that you’re incapable of doing this. It’s just…

Christine W
Exactly that, yes.

Jo VanEvery
That, you know, and I think especially for ADHD, part of it is that you’re wired for novelty, and therefore sometimes when you’ve been doing it the same way for a long time, it becomes boring, and so you need to change it up, right? And that means… You know, so I really like doing the same walk every day, but I know other people who, in order to keep going for a walk every day, need to go somewhere different every day, right? Like they need the, yeah, they need the novelty, and the interest, and all that kind of thing, and… But then I find interesting things in my everyday walk.

Christine W
Oh through the walk, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You know, so before we moved here, when we were still living in Ontario, and we had that farm, and we had, like, 18 acres of woods on our property, when we first met, right? And so I used to take the dogs for a walk through the woods, and I went in the same route every day, all year, but I ended up like, observing so much about, like, did you know that the colour of the sky changes at different times of year? Like, even if it’s blue sky, like blue sky when it’s minus 20 Celsius is a very different blue, than blue sky when it’s like…

Christine W
You were the one who told me that about the winter sunsets and how much more vibrant they, how much more vibrant they are.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, like, the sky was, like, a different blue. But also, I started to be able to, like, identify like the leaves [in] spring, when leaves are first coming out, they’re a different colour than when they’re fully mature on the trees. So like, and like, and you’d start to notice that different kinds of trees start to leaf out at different times. And, and just because, like, you’re walking, and it’s not because you were necessarily really looking for it. You’re just going for a walk every day on the same route, and you’re seeing all the same things, but all of a sudden, because you’ve been looking at the same thing every day, you start to notice these really little differences. Like, it’s just really…

Christine W
I do that. I do do that on my walks also, and I love that part about walking in nature, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, you just see different things.

Jo VanEvery
But yeah, okay, we’ve talked for bloody ages. I have no idea if any of this is useful to anybody.

Christine W
I noticed, yeah, but it’s hard to stop.

Jo VanEvery
But, I think that there are some really key things that I’m just going to try and recap.

Jo VanEvery
So one is that if you have ADHD in particular, then you need to think about interest, novelty, challenge, but right size challenge, and urgency, and you need to not over rely on urgency, or trying to pretend that having a deadline three months out is going to create urgency, because it’s not.

Christine W
Perfect.

Jo VanEvery
So there’s that, and so thinking about those things is a really helpful way to think about how to get started, or how to how to plan things, or how to organise things. So that’s a really useful thing.

Jo VanEvery
And then the other really important thing is noticing what you’re accomplishing, and, and actually putting some, a little bit of effort into countering all the negative things you’ve heard about how you do stuff. Right? And not necessarily believing all that, right? And sort of looking for evidence that you do get stuff done, and whatever.

Jo VanEvery
And then I think the other thing is, and then that thing that I was saying about planning being about a way to notice, and be flexible. Right? That it’s a way to help you make decisions about what to work on, and also and to reduce your anxiety that you’re forgetting about something important. But also to give you an opportunity to adjust your plans according to stuff not going the way that you expected. And so, you know, you can’t control everything, but you can… Planning is a way to kind of control how you respond to whatever the heck is going on.

Jo VanEvery
And right now, as we’re recording this, there is a lot of uncertainty, and disruption for a lot of people, right, in their workplaces, and, you know, publicly in the towns they live in. And, and then, [that’s] just on top of the normal, sort of, stuff you can’t predict, like the weather, or people getting ill, or, you know, whatever goes on in your house. So, you know, it’s just a way to be able to, to not, yeah, to accept that that’s happening. But planning isn’t a way to kind of make all that go away. It’s a way to, it’s a ,it’s like a structure to help you figure out what you’re going to do when that happens.

Christine W
Yes, yes. I would like to add – especially [to] that last little bit – it’s… Planning is something that is meant to support you in what it is that you want to do. It’s not meant to be some bugaboo, some [bad], thing that…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. Go to jail.

Christine W
“You gotta just plan. Why aren’t you planning?” It’s, I know, it’s meant to be supportive so that you can get done the things that you want to get done.

Jo VanEvery
Because we all have things we want to get done, and being – feeling overwhelmed, and behind, and anxious all the time isn’t good for any of us.

Christine W
Oh gosh, yeah. Just comp[ensating] then just makes it all worse,

Jo VanEvery
It makes it all worse. And yeah, there’s enough going on. We don’t have to be mean to ourselves.

Christine W
Ideally. Yes.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So it was really great to talk to you. Christine, I will put the information about your website and… Where can people…? So you have a website for… Your company’s called Light Spirit Coaching, right?

Christine W
Light Spirit Coaching is my the name of my website and the name of my business, and I am on LinkedIn. That’s probably my favourite one, but I’m also, because I’ve been on it for so long, despite meta, I do have a Facebook and on my Facebook page, I’m Light Spirit Coaching.

Jo VanEvery
Okay.

Christine W
And the same on Instagram, Light Spirit Coaching. And so, if you’re on more than one of those, pick your favourite, because for the most part, they’re all the same. I post the same things. Just depends on which platform you like the best.

Jo VanEvery
Okay, okay, that that’s good. So we will put all that in the show notes.

Christine W
Wonderful.

Jo VanEvery
So that if anybody wants to hear more from you, they can hear more from you. You do coaching for women with ADHD, and you’re doing individuals and groups. You’re in the… You do it online, but you’re in the Central Time Zone, so wherever my listeners are, some of them are. They’re all over the place, you know. But if you want to talk to Christine, you need to live somewhere that’s compatible with Central Time Zone, and…

Christine W
Or go follow me on social media.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, but you can follow her on social media, because that’s…

Christine W
Email me, whatever. Any way to reach me.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, and, yeah, and then I’m also going to share, because I just really, really want to say, like, I don’t think Jennifer’s going to listen to this, but Jennifer Hoffman was hugely influential on how I’ve managed to do this, and I wouldn’t be doing the things I’m doing in the way that I’m doing without her. And that’s also how I met Christine and some other amazing women that I am still in touch with. And I’m so grateful to her. But also, although she doesn’t do the thing that she did when we all met, so you cannot, you cannot have her assistance in going from somebody with a messy desk to somebody with a clean desk. She – She stopped doing that in order to do something even more kind of amazing, which is she created a thing called the Americans of Conscience checklist. And she has a whole team of volunteers, and they send out an email regularly with small political actions you can take easily. So if anybody listening is in the United States, or associated with the United States, and would like a way into doing some small political actions on a regular basis, I will also put the information about the Americans of Conscience checklist in the show notes, so that you can check that out, and see if it aligns with your values, and what you would like to do. But it is one of those things that I think the same, right, like, all that stuff about self compassion and taking really small steps is, is what she’s put into that. And so if you’re feeling like “I’d like to be doing more, but I have no idea where to start, and everything seems too big and overwhelming”, that might be one little place that you could start. And then once you get started, then you can decide whether you want to do more than that. But you know, so that I’m going to, I’m going to do that too, but it was great to talk to Christine. It was great to see you and…

Christine W
Oh my gosh. What a lovely conversation.

Jo VanEvery
And yeah, and we’ll keep in touch. We see each other on LinkedIn and things. So…

Christine W
Love that.

Jo VanEvery
That’ll be really good. Okay.

Christine W
Thanks so much. Jo.

Jo VanEvery
Thank you for listening.

[End of Transcript.]

Related Posts & Links:

Christine Weddle’s Light Spirit Coaching website

Beyond accountability: co-working as support

Do you struggle with planning?

Untangling your thoughts as you write

Pulling a thread from your tangled mess

Of Many Minds: An interview with Lee Skallerup Bessette

The post Interest, Novelty, Challenge, Urgency with Christine Weddle appeared first on Jo VanEvery.

[End of interview.]

Related Posts & Links

Emily’s website: FramingDevices.com

Emily’s newsletter (with free download!) Framing Devices Newsletter sign-up

Emily’s course: The Architecture of a Draft

How to Fast Draft Your Memoir by Rachael Herron

Ink In Your Veins Podcast by Rachael Herron

Is it perfectionism? Or impatience?

Untangling your thoughts as you write

Pulling a thread from your tangled mess

Motivation and accomplishment in your writing practice

Also mentioned:

• Stylish Academic Writing by Helen Sword
• The Book Proposal Book by Laura Portwood Stacer

The post Writing is a process of decision making with Emily Doucet appeared first on Jo VanEvery.