Late-diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive type). I work with college/university students, creative folks, and life-long learners of any age. We hold a space of compassionate curiosity where you can uncover your deep strengths and tell a new story of yourself defined by your best moments, not your inner critic.
It’s Okay to be Inconsistent
Greetings my friend!
A topic that comes up frequently with my coaching clients is how to stick to routines, and what to do when we’ve fallen off track with using a tool (planner, to-do app, alarms, etc) — especially if that tool was working well for us in the past. There’s often a lot of self-judgement for this lapse.
Why can’t we just stick with the system that was working?? Why does it seem to get stale?
In this month’s newsletter, I want to offer an alternative to the usual emphasis on habit trackers and consistency. I want to suggest that it’s okay to be inconsistent. Does this sound scary? It goes against the received wisdom of productivity experts. We’re supposed to set up habits that we follow every day, and then stack habits upon those habits. We feel societal pressure to make our habits into unbroken chains of gold stars. We’re taught in childhood that this is how our value is assessed.
But that’s not how our ADHD brains work. We need the dopamine that comes from novelty, our attention shifts according to what interests us, and we struggle with the planning and prioritization required to stick to a strict regimen.
We can allow for an alternative to consistency.
I invite you to listen to this episode of the Hacking Your ADHD podcast in which host William Curb talks with Kristen Carder about The Value of Inconsistency. Together they explore how ADHD is incompatible with being perfectly consistent, and why we should aim instead for persistent.
Plus, here’s the episode Using Our Tools in which William discusses dropping and picking up our tools again. (Here’s a link to listen because the audio seems to be missing from the podcast episode page.)
As I build my own toolbox, I look for systems and tools that aren’t all-or-nothing, so that if I use them a little bit, it’s better than not using them at all. I try to approach system building as a process and a practice, rather than as a fixed destination. I expect my systems to evolve as I evolve. As my life goes through natural and metaphorical seasons, I can keep track of what worked (and didn’t) so I can revisit my toolbox when the season comes around again.
Thinking about your own past successes, are there any tools or strategies you previously used that you could bring forward and adapt to this new season of your life? What are you doing right now that you could refresh with new insight?
Until next time!
Warmly,
Randy
Randy Henderson ADHD Coach
Late-diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive type). I work with college/university students, creative folks, and life-long learners of any age. We hold a space of compassionate curiosity where you can uncover your deep strengths and tell a new story of yourself defined by your best moments, not your inner critic.
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