Crushing Your ADD with Alan P. Brown
Hey Team!
This week I’m talking with Alan P. Brown, the creator of ADD Crusher and host of Crusher™TV. Alan is an ADHD and productivity coach who spent decades struggling with undiagnosed ADHD while working as an advertising executive in New York. His own "mess to success" story involves battling addiction and navigating a career where he felt like he was constantly floundering, only to turn it all around by developing his own "brain hacks."
In our conversation today, we dive into some of the practical strategies Alan developed to get his brain in gear, like the importance of identifying your "strong time" and then really protecting that time. We also discuss why long to-do lists can actually sabotaging your productivity, the power of talking to yourself to overcome the inertia of starting, and how to make peace with the "Outlaw Brain" that just wants you to stay on the couch.
This is definitely an episode that will help you
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/266
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
William Curb: I am so excited to have you here with us. I've known about you for years and we just got to meet at the last ADHD conference and decided that we should get together. We're going to talk a little bit about procrastination, but before we should, maybe you could just tell the audience a little bit about yourself and ADHD crusher and like all what you do.
Alan P Brown: Sure. Well, I first want to say that I stalked you at the conference because I've known you about you for a while and so there were actually three people I wanted to make sure I cornered and said, hey, and you were one of them.
So I'm so glad that I found you and that we ended up chatting and I'm so glad to be here. But yeah, so my quick background story is I was undiagnosed until I was 37. I was in the advertising business in New York for many, many years and the first six, seven years of that I was undiagnosed and floundered. It took me 10 years to get a four year degree before that. So I didn't start my career until I was 30. And here I am at the recent college grad. All my peers are 22 years old. I'm 30. So that was a little cookie. But the thing that that stuck me is when I finally got the diagnosis, I was excited, of course. I didn't feel stigmatized.
I was like, wow, this explains so much. I was a drug addict for five plus years in my 20s. Of course, I was self-medicating, that and booze. And so when I got the diagnosis, I'll never forget the day. I sort of literally ran out of my psychiatrist's office on the upper west side and I ran over to Broadway, went to the Barnes and Noble. I don't know if you remember, they had bookstores with buildings with books and I ran in there. And this was 97 and there were, believe it or not, there were a fair amount of ADHD books, even for adults on the shelf.
And I bought everyone a four or five, whatever there were, and I got them home and then I realized, oh, that's right. I can't really read very well. So they're probably still out in the studio out there, so we're collecting dust. But the point was that I came to, after some research, I came to realize that 30% of ADHD is, I don't know if the stats are still correct, but 30% of ADHD is have some dyslexia and the majority of the other 70% just have terrible reading comprehensions. So I thought, here are these books I got with 300 plus pages of no cartoons and no bullet points even, I would all do respect to those great books. And so that's what gave me the idea to create ADD Crusher, which is an online video audio program that's sort of interactive and it's got fun animations and all that. And I sort of coached through that.
I developed it many years after my diagnosis because I started, once I realized I had the ADHD and that there were some ways we could work with it, I just started to put together this like arsenal of what I call sort of brain hacks and other solutions that really helped me in my advertising career go from kind of a lowly exec at the age of 37. I got diagnosed to pretty quickly in a couple of years, got promoted a lot and made vice president and got, it was actually employee of the year. And so I thought, okay, if I can do this with these tools that I've gathered, let me try to share this. So that's how I ended up being the ADD Crusher guy. And I think that's enough of my story to bring us enough up to date.
William Curb: Yeah. And I'm hearing so many things where I'm like, oh yeah, like I've dyslexic as well. And that's like, it's a huge overlap with ADHD and something that's like often overlooked. And even if without dyslexia, ADHD can make it so hard to like just concentrate on reading long enough to get through, especially with just a dense text and stuff. I'm just like, my brain just stops. Yeah.
Alan P Brown: I'm sure you're like me. I'm not dyslexic. I have a little bit of the flipping things and stuff, but that's like for my whole life, it's like I read a paragraph and I go, what was that paragraph? And I have to go back and read it again. I'm sure, you know, that's just our brain is just not equipped for that.
William Curb: It makes it so frustrating to try and like learn about the condition when that's all you have.
Alan P Brown: You know, one of my favorite things that happens, I mean this jokingly favorite, but I'm reading an article, let's say, and I'm halfway through the article and then it refers to like Mr. Smith and Mr. Smith as though he was spoken of earlier. I'm like, wait a minute. Who's Mr. Smith? Was I supposed to know who Mr. Smith was? So I have to go back to the beginning of the article and go, where was the Mr. Smith, Mr. Oh, that's it. That's it. So yeah, welcome.
William Curb: Yeah. That or like to our world. They do the like abbreviation of something. It's like, oh, this is an LMF and I'm like, what is that? I don't what?
Alan P Brown: What? I have to go back. I have to.
William Curb: What was it that that's the yeah. And then you have to worry about if I go back, am I going to come back? There's a lot going on there. And yeah, it is amazing too. Like the having that career beforehand and then the shift into being like, oh, now I have this knowledge and I can apply ideas to like, I knew I had problems before, but they were so I didn't know how to do anything about them. So what are some of the things that you started to apply that, you know, really stuck and made that difference?
Alan P Brown: So the biggest things I started to do, and this is really even before I got the diagnosis, but one thing is that I just learned the power of protein and being an executive in New York and hustling from whether I was living in Jersey City or in Manhattan and hustling to the to the office in Manhattan. You know, you stop at the the kia, the coffee guy on the corner who sells croissants and donuts and coffee and that's it. There's no protein at all. So I was having the buttered croissant and then the coffee with cream and sugar every morning and I learned that that does not fuel anybody's brain, let alone an ADHD or brain. So I learned the power of protein and that really helped me.
I also learned one thing I realized early on was that with very precious focus time, right? We do get some of it, especially if we're eating right, exercise sleeping, which I won't bore anybody with, but man, folks, if we're not getting those three things right, everything gets harder. But I just came to realize that there are sometimes a day, at least some amount of time that I can focus pretty well and I identified that in my my mornings and I just labeled that my strong time. By the way, most human beings about 60 some percent, that's their strongest time. Everybody's different.
There are night owls, of course. But once I realized that, I started just making sure that my hardest stuff was in my mind. I worked that in my mental time. I tried to block off my strongest mental time, not set appointments, not set meetings in there to this day. It's blocked off my calendar, 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. across my whole week. I don't go to doctor's appointments.
I don't run errands in that time. So that was a big one. Another one was simply I have a very checkered past and I didn't have any study habits or any organizational habits, even at the age of 30, 37. And I just realized the power of lists and folders. I know that's not very sexy, but man, when I got into the advertising business, I was like, wow, who's that? Why is she carrying that pad of paper with those list of things and some of them are scratched off? Oh, I see.
I mean, it was it was that bad. But not to make light of that, what I did is I just fully embraced all the what I call brain scaffolding. I just, you know, I started keeping lists, you know, sloppy as they were. I started using folders. I started to compartmentalize and categorize things so that I wasn't holding it all up here. So I guess those are three things that really came to me fairly early, even before the diagnosis that really helped turn the start to turn the ship around.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, I could definitely see two with the lists and being like, we can't keep everything in our brain. It just it's not going to we're not going to get it when we need it. And so yeah, being able to keep lists, I remember one of my best to do the systems I've ever used was just a note like index cards with a list of what I had and I just have like one for each day of the week and I just flip through them. And it was like, yes, the least sexy to do the system that you can get, but I could keep it in my pocket and it worked. Yeah.
Alan P Brown: Yeah. And I love that you referred to the fact that, you know, we can't keep this stuff in our in our heads. It just won't it won't stay. And importantly, too, as you know, when it's when it's running around up in our heads, we can't really analyze it. We can't order it. We can't, you know, we can't review it.
We can't reflect on it because it's all a bunch of stuff darting around. But if we can get it onto a piece of paper and I love the fact that you they said that, you know, you start just using an index card. I just got a fair number of group coachy client group coaching clients who swear by having one index card for their two or three biggies every day. And they just write that and they stick that on their forehead. So to speak. Okay, this is the usually important things for my day. That's little stuff like that is huge.
William Curb: Yeah. Well, and I also love the idea with those that I can't put everything on there because that's also such a big temptation is like, oh, I'm going to do this brain dump. I'm going to have organized my entire life and I'm going to have this giant list of things and then it's like, oh, this has become overwhelming.
Alan P Brown: What's the research colleague of mine shared this with me a long time ago. The more things we tried to do or we list as to do's in the course for a day, the fewer will the fewer will actually accomplish or move forward. And so that's where they get the rule of thumb that, you know, don't identify more than three biggies per day. And once you've identified seven, the odds of you working on any one of them goes down to 11 percent. And once you've identified 10 or 11, the percentage goes down to likelihood, goes down to 0 percent, et cetera. I don't remember what the exact numbers are, but for that reason, I really, for the last few years, and I've always, you know, most for the last 15 or so years, I've just, I tried to identify three biggies to work on it and give them a day yet that doesn't include the miscellaneous stuff.
And I got to go get on a phone with the bank or whatever. But I really found that even starting with three biggies, I wasn't finishing or wasn't working out three biggies. So I'm really down now to one or two biggies. So those are the ones and I have a planner where you have a space for your biggies. And so here's one biggie for whatever that January 15th, one biggie. I've got two on January 12th. I got two on January 2nd. I could go back. I think that's a great thing that everybody should consider. And by the way, don't worry that you're only listing two. And we're just talking about bays, like big, big or important thing.
Because if you bang the two out, you can go and get go back to the well and get some more if you want. But if you list five, you're just frustrating yourself.
William Curb: Yeah, especially when you're not accounting for like, because we like say biggies and then they're all equal, even though one is, you know, like spending two hours doing something and another is like, well, this is really important to that I make this phone call that, you know, like I have to do it. But it's only going to take five minutes. There is some emotional weight to both of those that are as different. And but there is still the, yeah, we need to give things different priorities.
Alan P Brown: Well, you know, and you sort of alluded to this a little bit when you talk about, you know, not listing everything. And I think another thing that that happens is, well, I don't think I know. Another thing that happens when we list a lot of things, our brain wants to, you know, check things off, right? Our brain wants to, if I got a big to do this, I want to knock things off, right? But if I'm trying to knock things off, I'm not going to go and try and knock off the big one. I'm going to go, you know, pick up the low hanging fruit. Well, let me just go do this. Let me just make that phone call.
Let me just go do so and so or let me rearrange my spice rack, et cetera. And you end up at the end of the day having accomplished, let's say, finished six little things, but you're too big. You're still sitting up there and they're the ones that get carried over to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. So beware the long to do this at a long list of that perfect day where you're going to get everything done because you'll get, you'll be more likely to just get a bunch of little stuff done.
William Curb: We're not thinking about what we're optimizing for by having that big list, which is crossing off the most items, which is not when really are what we want to be optimizing for is crossing off the most important items. Yeah.
Alan P Brown: Yeah. That's what I call the curse of trying to catch up. Oh, I got to catch up. I'm going to catch up on my emails. Well, what is catching up on my emails look like? That means I'm going to go in there and just start deleting stuff and responding to the little ones because I'm going to avoid the big, heavy one, the tricky one that requires 15 minutes of me writing. I'm not going to deal with that because I'm trying to catch up.
William Curb: So beware catching up. I really love this concept too. Like, yeah, we are optimizing for the wrong things by just the language we're using here. Yes.
Alan P Brown: Important thing, the language. Great point. The language we use.
William Curb: Yeah. And it goes into a lot of like your stuff with like mindsets and like how like shifting how you're thinking about things really makes a difference in what you're able to do.
Alan P Brown: Yeah. Well, I love that you're mentioning mindset shifts because I, you know, I love the topic. But yeah, I mean, there's a great mindset shift, you know, get out of the catching up game. Shift from, you know, trying to catch up. I got to catch up. I got to catch up to, you know, what I got to do today in addition to the things that have to happen, right?
I have to make the doctor appointment or I have to go there. Okay, I get that. But get into a mindset of let me just try to bang out one biggie, maybe, maybe two, just work on those. And you don't have to bang them out either.
You just have to work on and move them forward. That's a happier mindset to be in, right? Because if you can make progress on two of the things you've been avoiding for the last three weeks, that feels a lot better than banging out all the little miscellaneous stuff and having those two biggies still dangling there, you know.
William Curb: We want to be able to see like some sort of progress, but it also means that like we have to appreciate that that progress is happening and like being like watching for like, okay, I'm going to do this and then the next thing comes. Yeah, it's too easy to be want to see the end product and it's like you got to watch the steps. You can't just leap to the top.
Alan P Brown: Yeah, that's another reason why we got to celebrate the little victories. Hey, I didn't finish that tricky email, but I wrote the first three paragraphs, which are pretty tricky. And I'm going to finish it up later, but that's way, that's a way bigger victory than having avoided it. Avoiding working on that email and going and ticking off, you know, deleting five emails or responding to seven easier emails. Give yourself credit for whatever work you do.
William Curb: Yeah, I've been fine for myself that trying to figure out the step that I need to start on is really important where I'm like, oh, I don't even know where to start here. So I'm just going to start, you know, like this email, I don't know how to reply. So I'm just going to start writing what into like a second document, like what am I even going to try and be saying here? And then once I start doing that, it's like, oh, everything starts to fall into place once I understand where I'm going.
Alan P Brown: I love that you're saying this. To me, this is like one of my favorite procrastination hacks. So much my favorite that I kind of do it three, four times a day. Most of what I do for a living, maybe like you too, is I just do, I do a lot of writing, whether it's difficult emails or presentation or whatever. I'm writing most of the hardest thing I do. And so, and I try to do that only in my mentally strongest time in the morning.
But even in my mentally strongest time, I'll sit down and I'll be like, oh man, I got a number. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this. I promised them I would have a presentation on some. So where the heck do I start, et cetera. And the little trick is just as you just described, I'll be even more nuts and bolts. I mean, I go, Alan, all you got to do is start, start tiny and start tiny anywhere. So I just had this little thing where I just go, okay, well, can you open the laptop, Alan?
And I talked to myself too, by the way, I talked myself out loud. Can you open the laptop? All right, open the laptop.
Open the laptop. Okay, seriously, can you go to the document where you want to begin writing or where you want to pick up? All right, go to the document. Now, still I haven't really done anything, but I've begun. And then, okay, Alan, can you just go to that part of the document where that writing needs to happen or where you've already started?
And Alan, just read the first paragraph of what you already read. And I've got a sticky here. I hope you appreciate this. And this is the second part of that little procrastination hack. I just remind myself, Alan, if you just open the laptop, go to the document, read the first paragraph or wherever you left off, I always end up in the groove. I always end up in some kind of groove. I would sap in this morning where I'd say, oh, man, I got to finish this thing because I got to send it over to Attitude Magazine today. And Alan, just open it up, just go, and sure enough, and it may not happen to everybody all the time, but when you're in there for 10 minutes and there's research behind the 10 minute thing, it you start to get some, okay, now I see this has to go over here. This is what's a mistake, blah, blah, blah. So I'm just echoing what you just said about just starting tiny.
William Curb: It's still hard. I do the same thing too with like talking to get myself to get things like trying to be like, oh, I need to get off the couch or something, you know, and I'd be like, oh, well, can can't stand up. Well, can I move my foot? Okay, can put my feet on the floor. Okay, I can lean forward. Okay, then like that's got me going.
Alan P Brown: Yeah, there's another part of this too, which is, you know, even that just, just the, okay, can I move my leg off the couch? There's some discomfort. You have to engage in some discomfort. I think, you know, we all want easy solutions. We, and there are ways to make things easier.
What we're talking about here is making starting easier and then getting something done easier. But I think also if we accept that there's going to be some level of discomfort, some displeasure that we're going to have to face, and usually it's relatively small, that can become its own little game where you go, oh, I see, I really don't want to do this because so-and-so. And you might even feel it like in your gut, like, oh, I really don't want to have it. But if you can just become aware of that discomfort, that little weirdness that happens, that resistance as Steve Pressman, the author of The War of Art, I knew you'd know that book. You know, that's resistance.
It's just this little thing that's trying to give you, I call it the outlaw brain, is trying to give you an excuse not to do the thing that you don't want to do or that's difficult to do. And if you can pay attention to that discomfort and go, all right, I see you discomfort and you ain't that big, you ain't that tough. So let me go, let me go see, see if when I drag my leg off the couch or I open my laptop, see if anybody punches me in the face. And nine times out of ten, you will not get punched in the face, believe it or not.
William Curb: Yeah. And it's funny too, would you just also like, or like something like doing the dishes or I'm like, I don't know how to do that. And I like, put on music and I'm doing something. And then like before, I'm like, oh, I've just, this took no time at all.
And I enjoyed the process because I was just kind of like dancing along doing it. And the brain was just giving me this resistance because it wants to just be lazy and do nothing. I mean, I don't like the word lazy, but it wants, it wants me to, you know. It wants you to be at rest. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Alan P Brown: And I tell you, you and I have been talking about procrastination and there's just a whole bunch of great science from the research in the last 10 years or so on, on procrastination and why we do it as one guy at UCLA, Hirsch Field, I think, is his name. One of the things that we all need to recognize is that procrastination is in our DNA. I mean, when two, 300,000 years, I mean, we've got the same brain, it has not evolved. Some of the frontal cortex has evolved in the last 200, even 20,000 years.
But it's all with regard to social stuff because we are much more social and connected and all that. But otherwise, As the rest of our brain is the same as it was and that brain is still wired to really do only one thing above all, which is to find food, relieve the pain of hunger by finding food. Now, of course, there's mating and finding shelter. Other than that, if we're not needing to do that, our brain tells us, lay low, buddy, my cat is right over here in his little pup tent and he is sleeping, right?
18, 19 hours a day or whatever because his brain, that part of his brain, which is the same, basically the same as our reptilian brain is saying, stay at rest, dude, because you may have to go on the hunt later on. And so it stands to reason that when we see something uncomfortable or we don't absolutely have to do something now, like when we get the bell, right? When we get the 11th hour thing going, then we go, okay, I'm in action now, but if we don't have that, our brain wants us to stay at rest, avoid discomfort, et cetera. And the other thing that another piece of research that came out talks about, and I was reminded of this when you talked about the dishes, right? So another thing that procrastination is, in addition to being already in our DNA, is what they refer to as mood regulation. So the thought of doing the dishes is, man, I don't want to, it's like it puts me in a bad mood. I mean, I got to go out, I got to get under the truck to drain the oil or I got to, whatever it is, it's on, it sours my mood.
But think about this. I can relieve that possible sour mood by going, I will do it tomorrow. Boom! Now I don't have, I'll do the dishes after later, I'll do them first thing tomorrow. Boom!
I now don't have that negative mood thing happening with me. So that's another big one. So I invite folks to think about that. You used a great example of the dishes when it comes to laundry, just so many other things that they're not difficult. We know how to do them, but it's just like, it makes me sad to have to do that. I'm exaggerating.
William Curb: And it's one of those things where it feels that in retrospect, you know, when I'm like, I haven't done the dishes, I said, I'll do it tomorrow. And then like, I'll see that giant pile and I'm like, I can't believe I did that to myself again. How did I let this happen again? I know what not lewing the dishes leads to.
Alan P Brown: Well, you're getting, you set me up real good. We need to look, folks. I just want to say, we have not discussed this conversation in advance at all, but you just keep serving up another great opportunity for me to just share a little bit of the research about this. So you just did the classic, the next day I'm like, I can't believe I screwed my, I can't, why didn't I do this last night? And I know you're familiar with the concept and most of our viewers will be too, but it's called temporal discounting, where, you know, temporal refers to time. Discounting refers to something that is the further out in time something is the less the more we discount it or the more we, the less we value it. So the 33 year old saving for a read time is I got plenty of time versus the 54 year old.
Uh-oh. Just like, oh, the prize is not due for three weeks or oh, I can do the dishes tomorrow. And then when the time comes, it's like, oh crap, why didn't I, why didn't I mail in that check?
Why didn't I go online and complete that form, et cetera? And the cool thing about the research around this is two things. One, and this is Hertzfield, I think, who found this by doing brain imaging around procrastination. And what he found was that when we put something off into the future, that is, of course, our present self handing it off to our future self. It's like, I'm not going to do this now.
Future self, you're going to worry about it. And when we do that, he says, it is though we are handing it off to a stranger. And you think about it, handing something off to myself two weeks from now, I am relieved of it, right? I get to improve my mood and I don't have to think about it now because it will happen in the future. And the other cool thing from the research is that the more we think about, the more present self thinks about how pissed off future self is going to be, the more likely present self will act on behalf of future self. So if we even just take a moment to go, I am going to be really pissed off when that times comes and I am doing it the night before or when I have to pay that fine or whatever that is. When you just do that, you increase the odds that you can get to work on it and start to ... So again, thanks for setting me up for that with that. Yeah.
William Curb: One of the fun things I do with that too is I flip it where I find something on my calendar and it's nicely lists out what needs to happen and what building I'm going to, all the things that I need to know and I'm like, great, this is perfect. Thanks, past me. You have made this a seamless trip to the doctor's office because I know everything I need to know to go to this appointment.
Alan P Brown: So you're saying that you're sort of celebrating the victory of having done the good works and so that reinforces the likelihood that you will do it again because you're actually celebrating the good behavior.
William Curb: Yeah. And it's nice because it's like, oh, I'm acknowledging that yeah, that was something that would have been so easy for me to not do, but doing it made my life easier. I want to pass it on to future me.
Alan P Brown: I'm going to bet that you're familiar with BJ Fogg, the Fogg behavior model. He's at Stanford and you wrote a great book called Tiny Habits, not to be confused with the atomic habits James Clear, but he talks about how when you do the right thing, let's say that you go and you work out to something that you really didn't want to do, but when you go and you do it and then you celebrate having done it in any way, even with it's something as small as a smile or a little air high five to yourself or just a little, you know, patting yourself on the back, he says that that reinforces the neural network that helps you do it again. So you just described that perfectly.
When you are enjoying the benefits of what you did in the past, how you did it in advance with forethought about your future self and now you're enjoying, I get, you reminded me of when I go when I travel because I'm fastidious about travel. I don't mess around. I do not mess around.
The bags are at the front door two nights before, whatever. I don't want to annoy anybody by, you know, because I didn't used to be this way. But when I get to the airport and I've got an hour before we even board and I'm cool sitting at the gate for I'm like, thank you. Thank you for doing that stuff because I don't have time for that crap in my life. So that's really cool that you do that.
William Curb: I love this like being fastidious about travel because it's like, oh, I know if I don't do this, everything's going to fall apart. It is not something that the future me is going to be able to deal with if the path me doesn't take care of it. Yes.
Alan P Brown: This is a little thing that I call knowing what will go wrong. All right. Because you know what will go wrong, right? And I know what will go wrong unless I take some preventative action.
So that's another great thing to just know is to be aware of what will go wrong. This is how I help people with being late. I think the biggest reason people are being are late, especially if they're chronically late is because they don't think they're going to be late. Like when we're preparing for a trip, we don't think that we're going to be running to our gate with our bags and sweating and oh my God, I can't believe we don't think about that. We think everything can be fine.
I got a time I'll pack in the morning. But if we can be more aware of what will go wrong, I call it WGW, what will go wrong? We are less likely to have that BS happening in our lives. Yeah.
William Curb: I mean, I was thinking about this same thought too when you were talking about the strong hours in the morning is that I know throughout my day, stuff is going to come up like regardless of what's going on. There'll be things and if I don't do my important work in the morning when I want to get it done, something's going to come up and I'm going to have to do that instead.
Alan P Brown: I try to operate that way. But we also know that our brothers and sisters out there, we may sort of know it, but we don't pay attention to it enough. We just go, oh, you know, everything's going to be fine or let me just do this for a little while and then I'll da da da da da. And I think a big part of that is of course just that avoidance. We want to avoid discomfort. He's doing these hard things in advance and preparing and etc.
What is your take on that? What do you... how do you help your folks with being more proactive, if you will, or better being in touch with what will go wrong? What's likely to go wrong?
William Curb: I think it is literally talking to them about this idea that if we're trying to plan anything and we plan it in the best state possible and we're like, oh, this is optimum, then go into like, well, how often does that optimal state happen? And then they're like, well, never. Like, you know, like talking to my kids like going out the doors, like how often does it actually take you 30 seconds to get out the door? And I'm like, do you know where your shoes are? Do you know? And so like in the morning, getting ready, it's like, okay, do you have your shoes?
Do you have your backpack? And even doing all that, it's, you know, they're going to be things that are happened. And so being like, okay, well, let's try and look at this at if it's not optimal, how much time should we have?
Alan P Brown: You know, I think that is a, I think that's a mindset shift too, is just shifting into more of that. Being aware, thinking about asking the questions, right? That's a great question too. Well, what does it, what does suboptimal getting out the door look like?
Let's be honest about that. What does worst case scenario not getting out the door on time look like? And what's the, what's that perfect getting out the door on time look like? And is it true?
William Curb: You know? Cause a lot of times we're just like, oh yeah, I just need to do this and this. I'm like, okay, but what do you have to really do? And it's like, oh, I have to do this and this. And I have to find my keys when they're not where they're supposed to be. And it's like, okay, that's going to take way longer than you think.
Alan P Brown: I have to walk to the car and then I don't know. And then when I get to the building, I have to find a parking space and then I have to walk to the building. It's, I mean, just, we never think about that stuff.
William Curb: I love the example of finding a parking space because that is like, we're like, okay, the GPS says it's going to take 15 minutes to get there. I need to leave at 2.45 so I can get to my appointment at three. And it's like, that's not going to work at all. No.
Alan P Brown: And then there's waiting for the elevator. It just goes on and on.
William Curb: Yeah. And it's, I'm like, yeah, there's trying to really get people to think about the fact that there is so much that they're not accounting for even when they think they're accounting for everything. Yeah.
Alan P Brown: Yeah. And so I guess you could say that sometimes, you know, just having a mindset of what will go wrong is still not quite enough. You still need an additional buffer because you can't think of everything. Yeah.
William Curb: I'm being like, okay, well, if I get there early, what am I going to do? It's like, well, there's things I can find myself to do. It's not going to be that hard to entertain myself, especially now with the smart gadgets on that. So I'm thinking about this like also in terms of we've been talking a lot about like just de-pathologizing a lot of these ideas, you know, making it a little bit more. This is just how I operate. And I'm going to give myself permission to operate this way. I feel like that is something that when I've like been looking at the ADHD pressure, that's like one of those mindsets of like, yeah, we're going to be okay with who we are and trying to not fix ourselves, but work around with who we are and push that kind of ideas for, you know, like we don't have to finish everything we start. Yeah.
Alan P Brown: You know what? You remind me of sort of my favorite example of that of acceptance is something that I call embracing your pace. And as somebody who has basically been writing for a living more or less since I was 30 years old, since I got into the marketing advertising business where you're writing, you're writing emails, you're writing reports, you're writing presentations, you're summarizing research and writing the executive summaries. Yeah. Yeah. So it's always, it's always been the toughest thing I do as I mentioned. And now of course, for the last 15 or so years, I've been doing this, which is writing all the time.
And I've always for, I don't know, until only about 20 years ago or so, I would be writing and I would just be so frustrated with how slowly I was writing. And I can just see myself at the Starbucks and Brooklyn just sitting there with my ear, my ear plugs in and trying to get a, well, why am I so slow at this writing thing? I'm here at 11 o'clock and everybody else is home sleeping or they're leaving the office at five, but I'm here at eight. I'm here on Saturdays, et cetera. And I realized all of that grumbling, complaining about why I'm such a slow writer, never made me any faster. And what I came to realize is, as you, I'm just stealing your words here. This is how I work.
I take longer to do certain things than the average Joe or Jane might take. And my grumbling about it isn't going to change it. What I can do is I can stop burning energy on that lamenting, right? Why I suck at, but, and just go, this is how I work. I need more time. So I'm up at seven and I'm, ideally I'm sitting in my little special strong time seat up in the attic overlooking the harbor and downtown here in San Diego.
And that's my real focus place. And I'm taking my time and I'm not beating myself up. I took four hours the other day, I think, to just write one post or something. I forget what it was, but it was something that should have been pretty easy and it took me four.
I think it was composing an email, but that is what it is. And I, and I work a little bit every day of the week. And that's the price that I pay for the way my brain works. Now I go out and I have a lot of fun.
And when I have fun, I try to have dangerous, real crazy fun to make for it. But the beautiful thing is that I don't waste any energy on beating myself up on how slow I am. I just go, Alan, this is the pace at which you work, embrace it, go with it. And you'll just need to carve out a little bit more time than you think you should. And that's my shtick on that.
William Curb: And I think it's also the idea that, you know, we've talked a lot about, like, for, I'm sure a lot of people listen to like, oh, how do you do that all the time? I'm like, I don't. I mess up all the time. I'll be like, yeah, this is a great place to get to. But then I just, you know, I have times where I'm like, oh, yeah, I just fell apart this week and got nothing done.
Alan P Brown: Thank you for saying that. I love to remind my clients and my audience that, you know, I'm fighting the fight every day. Every day I fight the fight. Imperfect. I just, I just like to think that I have, I've been working at it longer. I think about it more than most people do, as I'm sure you do as, you know, as an influencer in this, in this world. You and I are still battling the same triggers, the same procrastinating brain, the same outlaw brain. And we have lots of weeks where things just go down to tubes, but we just get back on the pony and we put it back together. And hopefully we can operate at a fairly decent level on a fairly regular basis and get more stuff done than the average Georgeian.
William Curb: Last night I had this like board game night and we had like finished a little bit early and we're like, oh, should we do one more game or probably like take an hour and I'm like, that's probably not the right decision with how late it is already.
But we really don't want to go. And so we ended up playing the game and it was fun. But I'm like, yeah, I'm a little bit more tired today than I would optimally be. But, you know, that's kind of like, you know, there's, you win some and then some just, you know, I did the fun and now pay for a little bit today, but it'll be okay.
Alan P Brown: Yeah. And at least it was intentional too. And you probably knew you were going to pay a little bit. So you know what, I'm willing to cash in that chip on this.
William Curb: Yeah. I can, you know, just have some extra coffee today. It'll be great. I was wondering if there were any other thoughts you wanted to leave the audience with.
Alan P Brown: Here's the thing I'm going to share. And you already said it earlier because you used the word lazy and you said it's not a great word to use. And I just want to, and I hope this doesn't sound like patronising people or whatever. And I know you've heard, but lazy is such an awful sticker for us and we really don't deserve it. You know, Oprah Winfrey talks about procrastinating. She really does. And she tends to, she's been interviewed on this and she tends to procrastinate on things that involve a little bit of confrontation like having to say no to somebody.
That's a classic for us too. And so, you know, everybody procrastinates. We are more prone to it because of the way our brains are wired. So just be aware of that.
I wouldn't say embrace that like embracing your pace, but just be good with that. I'll leave you with one more thought. And this is courtesy of Jeff Copper, coach that so many of your viewers probably know of.
And I heard this from him when I interviewed him years and years ago. And this is a little procrastination hack. It's just ask what's hard. When there's something that you're not doing, you're not moving toward, you're, you keep getting moved and you're just pausing. Ask what is hard about it? Why am I avoiding it? Oh, it's because I'm not able to schedule enough time to be able to work on it, you know, because I need a lot of time where it could be, well, I have to ask so and so to help me with this. Or I have to first go and do this online thing. It can also be like for me, it can just be something, well, it's, that's right, it's technology.
I suck at technology. That's why I'm avoiding this thing. So if there's one little thing I can leave folks with to maybe try in your brain, always ask, what is hard about this thing? Why am I avoiding it? Get hip to it, get aware of it. And the moment you ask what's hard, you're going to start to get some answers. And once you have some of the answers, the, the barrier to action starts to actually fade a little bit.
William Curb: Yeah, I think that's such an important question to ask. If people want to hear more from you, where should they go?
Alan P Brown: Go to adcrusher.com. This is where I have these award-winning tools, videos and audios. But also there are a few really goodies there that there's an e-book called Five Things You're Doing Every Day That Make Your ADHD Worse. And trust me, we're all doing them all. And a few other kind of neat freebies that you can grab. I'm sure you'll find them useful. I'm all about simple, practical, easy to take action on solutions. So I hope you'll go check it out and visit. And if you are so inclined, I said you'll see an email address on there and click it and say howdy if you want to be. I always respond to every email I get.
William Curb: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm sure people got a ton out of this episode.
Alan P Brown: Thanks for having me. I so appreciate it.
This Episode's Top Tips
Limit your daily to-do list to a maximum of three "biggies" and often preferably just one or two. Alan reminds us that research suggests that once you list more than seven items, the likelihood of doing any of them drops significantly, because a long list encourages you to pick the easiest low-hanging fruit and avoid the important work.
When you can't get started on a task like writing, trying talking to yourself out loud to break the inertia with micro-steps. Ask yourself, "Can I open the laptop?" then "Can I find the document?" then "Can I read the first paragraph?" This process can help us engage our brain enough to build some momentum and get into a groove.
Embrace your pace and stop wasting energy lamenting that you work slower than others. Sure it sucks, but by accepting that things might take you longer, you can factor that extra time into your schedule, and still get things done. Refuse to beat yourself up about it, shame doesn't make you work faster.