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“I want to give up.”

I’m writing this after one of the most stressful 2am work sessions of my life.

Maybe it’s an ADHD thing, but boring admin work really makes me feel like I’m dying.

It’s not just me though.

I hear this from a lot of ADHD creators and entrepreneurs.

We beat ourselves up because we can’t do things that come easily to everyone else:

• Stick to a consistent content calendar

• Make 1 video every day (did it for a few days but stopped)

• Building a system to be successful in business (procrastinating admin 🤮)

Here’s how I think about it…

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Why I want to give up

Usually this is what goes on in my head:

“This person gets more views than me, which means my content sucks, which means I’m not good enough, which means I shouldn’t even try.”

Or

“I know I can do 1 week’s worth of work in 1 day, but I feel so overwhelmed and drained right now. I just need to be more disciplined instead of procrastinating, why am I so useless?”

At the root of it is me basing my self worth on external factors, then beating myself up when I don’t achieve my ambitious goals.

So I started embracing my laziness

I used to think:

• I need to do the BEST every single day to succeed

• It’s time to LOCK IN and get everything done

But here’s what happens when I’m my own boss:

• Okay, I’ll play board games for just 1 round (1-2 hours gone)

• I’ll make the best plan, let me research this (research is boring then I lose motivation and don’t actually take action)

• I just need to force myself to do this (I try and then it drains my soul so much that I can’t make progress on anything for 2 weeks)

But when I look back at what led to the MOST progress for my business, it wasn’t really what I thought it was (staying consistent).

It was a combination of 2 things.

1. Planning for my energy highs and lows

You ever feel super creatively fulfilled?

Like you have an inspiring chat with someone,

And now every action you need to take for your business is so easy.

I plan my life like I have that motivated energy every second of the day.

When I inevitably under-perform (because some days I’ll feel more tired than usual),

I feel terrible and that makes me even more unmotivated.

There are 2 ways to “fix” this:

1. Engineer my environment so I feel inspired and motivated more often

2. Plan for lower energy times so I don’t constantly disappoint myself

I implemented a mix of both:

• Morning and nighttime routines include reading, meditation, chatting with someone inspiring

• I have only 1 item on my to do list every day (the most impactful thing that’ll help me make progress)

And no, I’m not consistent with it. I don’t meditate every day.

But what’s important is that I always try to get back to it when I remember.

That’s what true consistency is - you don’t give up.

2. Having others keep me accountable

Before I went viral and started my own business,

I’d have coworking sessions with my friends.

Seeing them work hard made me want to work hard too.

It was during one of those sessions where I did the dreadful admin work of scheduling my social media posts - and one of those posts got over 1 million views and kickstarted my business.

It’s the same right now -

I joined a 30 day writing challenge WhatsApp group.

Every day, I have these excuses:

• I’m too tired to write

• I have nothing to write about today

• It takes too much time, I’m too busy

But when I see 5-10 messages of other people reporting “day 6 / 30 done!” it motivates me to also do the same.

The peer pressure is real 😅 

It’s why the community aspect of my life tracking course was so effective and actually got people to complete the course.

Once you know and accept this part about yourself (based on your observations of how you work),

You can start building systems to accommodate for it, rather than continue trying to change yourself.

Til next week,

Jennifer