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094: ADHD organisation tips with Sharon Collon
3.7k Plays9 months ago
In this episode, Mia interviews Sharon Collon, an award-winning ADHD coach, who shares insights into the strengths and challenges of the ADHD brain and how individuals and families dealing with ADHD can get organised in a way that works for them.
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Transcript
Introduction to Life Admin Life Hacks
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony. I'm Darnoora Roberts, an operations manager who's increasingly fascinated by the complexities of the human brain and how that impacts our everyday life. I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who's thankful ADHD is losing its stigma as we recognise the superpowers of the ADHD brain.
00:00:32
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks.
ADHD Strengths and Challenges with Sharon Collin
00:00:35
Speaker
In this episode, we interview Sharon Collin, an ADHD coach who reveals the strength and challenges of the ADHD brain, practical organizational strategies for families whose members have ADHD, and techniques for adults with ADHD to focus and get their life admin done.
00:00:54
Speaker
Sharon Collin is an award-winning qualified ADHD coach and owner of the Functional Family, which specializes in providing support and strategies for people with ADHD and those that support them. Sharon lives with her husband and three boys,
00:01:08
Speaker
all who have severe ADHD. She claims that her home runs at such an intensity it needs to be filmed for a documentary series. I would watch that show, Sharon! The daily stress burnt her out and it had a negative impact on Sharon's health. At a complete loss of how she was supposed to have a functional family,
00:01:25
Speaker
She began researching ADHD to try and learn more about ways to work with the ADH brain and create a more joyful streamlined home. What followed was a series of spectacular failures, weird experiments, and then formal studying ADHD. Through it all, the Collin family found a way to make their life with ADHD work for them.
00:01:45
Speaker
Now, Sharon helps others do the same, whether it be through adult ADHD coaching, parent mentoring, the low-cost membership, the six-week program, or the ADHD Families podcast.
Understanding ADHD in Household Management
00:01:57
Speaker
She provides a safe place for people with ADHD to learn about their brain and create strategies that work for them. Sharon, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me. I'm a bit of a fan of this podcast, so I'm really excited to be here. Well, we know our audience have a million questions about ADHD. They either have ADHD themselves or they have family members with ADHD. So we were so thrilled to bump into you.
00:02:24
Speaker
and invite you with your expertise and importantly your practical knowledge of how to make a household work when you or family members have ADHD. And what I want to do is start off by asking about the ADHD brain. What are the characteristics of the ADHD brain? So ADHD in essence is a neurological difference.
00:02:47
Speaker
and it is largely genetic, so it's passed down from the parents or through the family line. Essentially what it is, is a little bit of executive function challenges. So executive functions are things that our prefrontal cortex and our brain does, and people with ADHD sometimes have impaired executive functions. So executive functions are things like focus,
00:03:10
Speaker
memory, short-term memory recall, task prioritization, time awareness, emotional regulation. Those are the things that can be impaired. So people often think of ADHD as just a focus issue. It's a trouble in school, but it's so much bigger than that. It actually affects every corner of their life.
00:03:28
Speaker
One of the things that I love to do is to be able to help people learn about their strengths and what makes the ADHD brain amazing because it is truly incredible. I live with four incredible ADHD brains and all my favorite people in the world have ADHD. I love watching how their brain works. I'm constantly fascinated by it. Like they have the best ideas. They are great, great creative people. Usually they have
00:03:56
Speaker
They think outside the box, like it's stuff that I could only dream about, the way that their brain processes information. So there's positives, there's definite positives as well. And we've got to help people with ADHD learn how to use their brain. It's kind of a little bit like Spider-Man, it's an allergy that I use a lot.
ADHD as a Superpower
00:04:13
Speaker
So he gets the webbing skill, like he gets that thing, but at the start, he just keeps webbing himself. It's really intense for him and he doesn't know how to use his gift.
00:04:22
Speaker
So he goes away to a factory and he practices and practices and practices. And then he learns to harness his ability. And that's kind of how I see the ADHD brain. Some people just need a little bit of help learning how to use their gift. Yeah, beautiful. There are superpowers associated with it. So it's worth understanding how to harness those superpowers. So, you know, in terms of your own journey, were you, was your husband aware that he had ADHD when you were
00:04:51
Speaker
together? Or does it come about when kids got diagnosed? Because that's often how adults find out that they have ADHD. It's because they
00:04:59
Speaker
their kids get a diagnosis and they're like, hmm, maybe this is what's going on for me too. How did it play out in your household? I think that scenario that you just spoke about is really common, especially in women. So their kids will get diagnosed and then they start thinking, oh, some of those questions really apply to me. And women, the reason that it's a little bit different in women is it often presents quite differently in women. So it looks a lot like anxiety.
00:05:23
Speaker
women. And they're quite good at masking usually, they miss that early diagnosis, which is a real shame. When we think of ADHD, like stereotypically, we would think of the hyperactive little boy presentation. And that right there is what my husband is. He couldn't be more stereotypical than like if you try. He is still to this day and bear in mind that I'm an ADHD coach and work with people with ADHD every day, the most extreme presentation I've ever come across.
00:05:49
Speaker
That is the one thing that I adore about him and that attracted me to him in the first place. I call him a cyclone. He's my resident cyclone. He just breezes in, causes carnage, excites everyone, and then breezes out. That is exciting, but also a little bit problematic on my nervous system. When you speak to him and you talk about what it was like growing up like that and what it was like going through school, his childhood is full of trauma from that.
Family Journey with ADHD Diagnoses
00:06:19
Speaker
and being misunderstood, being labelled the naughty kid, being excluded from the classroom. Luckily, he had a beautiful family that supported him, but he really felt the brunt of the stigma. This is early 90s stigma of ADHD. He got diagnosed early because the hyperactive presentations get diagnosed early.
00:06:39
Speaker
And when we went on to have our first beautiful boy, and I'm looking at my first beautiful boy, and he's a carbon copy of my husband. And I was like, Oh my goodness. Okay. I cannot have my gorgeous little boy go through the same trauma that my husband did. So that's what started the journey of learning everything about ADHD. And in that time.
00:07:00
Speaker
We went on to have two other gorgeous little boys that have ADHD also and ODD. We've got some Tourette's and sensory processing disorders and other letters in there as well. We had so much information about how to help the child. We really were throwing everything at it. I mean, we spent close to $30,000 on my first child, just to give you an idea of, and there's no NDIS funding. There's really no support there. And we were just thinking, oh gosh, our home life sucks. Like it really sucks.
00:07:27
Speaker
So we're doing everything, going to all these appointments, supporting our beautiful kids, but home life was war, right? And my nervous system could not hack it. We had to work out a way to make our family life work for us. It wasn't what I watched was important for the other people, but what was important for our family, it didn't have to look Instagram worthy, it just had to feel good to be in it.
00:07:50
Speaker
and discover systems that could work with the ADHD brain. Because I, in the early days, was very much trying to maneuver them into what I thought it had to look like based on how I was raised. But there's nuance to it. We have to work with them. We have to be able to integrate systems without dampening their beautiful spirits and dampening their self-esteem, which we know is a huge issue for people with ADHD. For Sharon, there's two things I wanted to pick up on there.
00:08:20
Speaker
So one, you mentioned sort of with boys that hyperactivity dimension seems to present more often. How does it look like for girls and women?
Types of ADHD and Gender Differences
00:08:28
Speaker
Yes. So it's not always, you know, and I want people to know that any recommendation I make about ADHD here is a generalization. ADHD presents
00:08:37
Speaker
differently in every individual. I've never met two people with ADHD that are exactly the same. And we know that ADHD doesn't come to the party alone. It likes to bring friends, right? So there's often comorbidities that go along in my family. The ODD definitely has
00:08:53
Speaker
That's oppositional defiance disorder. It definitely has its hand up there. So everyone is unique. Now, generally, it's the hyperactive boys that we think of in terms of the stereotype, but they can be girls with hyperactive presentation as well. There's three types of ADHD recognized in Australia.
00:09:10
Speaker
there is hyperactive, inattentive and combined. Now, most people are the combined presentation and that's hyperactive and inattentive, which is what all my family are, but they definitely lean more on the hyperactive scale of things. So how it presents in girls can be a little bit trickier because girls are usually just because of the maturity level and how quickly girls mature. They're a little bit more socially aware of what's going on around them. Not always.
00:09:39
Speaker
They do a thing called masking, where they're aware of their peers a lot more and they keep it all in.
00:09:47
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So they might be having a very hyperactive brain. Their brain is going 100 miles an hour, but they're looking like they're keeping it together, right? So they're trying to look like their peers and essentially fit in. And those are the kids, and this is the saddest part, that go undiagnosed because they're quiet about it. And they miss the early intervention. And so we've got a tidal wave in Australia of women getting diagnosed at 30s and 40s.
00:10:17
Speaker
sometimes even fifties, right? And so they are now thinking, you know, there's a grief process that goes along there. They missed all the early intervention. They didn't understand what their brain is. And people can be against labels. Like, I don't want to give my child a label, but I am very pro labels because it has been my experience as an ADHD coach.
00:10:35
Speaker
that if we don't give a label, people give themselves a label. They call themselves lazy. They call themselves lots of things that are a lot worse than ADHD. And so I think that once we know about it, we can start advocating for them. We can start implementing systems to help them and we can let them know how their amazing brain works and teach them tools on what to do about it. Great. Well, we're going to get into that stuff shortly.
00:11:01
Speaker
But the other thing I wanted to circle back on was, you said it was war in your household. So what does that look like? What does it look like when it is feeling dysfunctional and it was a home that you're like, this is not a great place to be right now.
Managing Household with ADHD Challenges
00:11:15
Speaker
What would that look like for you? It usually looks like me hiding underneath the kitchen cabinets.
00:11:21
Speaker
walls getting smashed in like, you know, and kids getting injured. And you know, we've got a very high intensity house, right? And the emotional regulation piece, and the low frustration tolerance and low stress resilience of ADHD has a huge impact.
00:11:37
Speaker
It's not to be underestimated. So you've got stressful situations. Raising kids is stressful anyway. Raising kids with ADHD is a whole other level, right? So we've got people that can't emotionally regulate. So everything is big. There's
00:11:54
Speaker
There's some sometimes physical aggression. These are traumatic things for parents to go through with little support, you know, like we've created support because there was none back in the day, you know, when we were going through this and, you know, and judgment from other people as well, like that kid needs a bit of discipline and, you know, not that didn't happen in my day and all that sort of stuff really to unregulated child. And then you've got parents who perhaps have ADHD themselves. They can't regulate and they're trying to help their child regulate. It makes for a
00:12:24
Speaker
really intense environment. So you couple like low frustration tolerance, like an elastic band that could break at any moment with poor emotional regulation and stress resilience. It can be explosive. So a lot of the time I just didn't, I recognized that what the kids were putting out and what even Anthony was putting out, I didn't have the skills to handle. I didn't have the skills. So I was just so dysregulated myself. I was crying a lot.
00:12:54
Speaker
I didn't know what the hell to do. I didn't have confidence in my parenting approach to be able to know what to do. Now, I don't want anyone listening to this podcast to think that there isn't still moments like that, okay? There is moments like that in my household. That's why it needs to be on a documentary. But we need people to understand that that still definitely happens, but the difference is now.
00:13:17
Speaker
that I've got so many tools in my tool belt to throw at it. So I go, OK, what's happening? And instead of going, they should be able to do this. Why can't they do this? I'm thinking, OK, what is going on here? What I wonder, what's going on for them? How can I help support them through this? Sure, sure. So Sharon, when families first come to you, where do you start? They've come to you with wanting a more streamlined home, more harmony,
00:13:46
Speaker
some logistics that work, some strategies that work, some routines and schedules, where do you actually start? The first thing really is to get a really good background on that family because there is a lot of information about ADHD in terms of routines and structures and things like that. But it doesn't actually mean anything if it doesn't work for that individual family.
00:14:12
Speaker
And so we really need to look at that family, like what their goals are. And I hate the word goals for ADHD, but I just don't know what else to call it. Sometimes we refer it to it as fuzzy goals. What their values are, what they actually want from their family life. And look at the intrinsic motivation piece, the why for ADHD.
00:14:33
Speaker
has to be there, has to be strong. The Y has to be strong. So the neurotypical brain is based on importance. So we can go, this is really important. We've got to do this one first. The ADHD brain is based on interest and novelty.
00:14:49
Speaker
So they're two different processing systems. So we have to look at what intrinsically motivates that person, that child, that family. Their why has to be strong. It has to be interesting. And when that fails, we have to introduce a bit of novelty, right? To get their brain to open and engage in that process.
ADHD and Life Admin Strategies
00:15:11
Speaker
And that is tricky. That is really, really tricky. And when you talk about goals, are you talking about goals like,
00:15:19
Speaker
We just want to be able to get out the door in the morning without everyone losing their minds.
00:15:23
Speaker
or we wanna have a calm weekend where there's some downtime and I get to chill. What do you mean by goals? So most families, their goal is to have a happy life with their beautiful kids, right? And they would have perhaps a lot of conflict going on. So there's, it feels like I call it points of friction. So say if you use the morning example that you mentioned there,
00:15:51
Speaker
that to get out the door in the morning, there's a whole sequence of things that we have to do. The problem is all of them are a bit monotonous, right? They're day in, day out jobs. And what happens when there's a bit of boredom for the ADHD brain? Boom, it shuts, right? It feels like you're walking through mud because it's not interesting or novel.
00:16:11
Speaker
And there can be friction points, and then you add in a time pressure, because we have to get out the door by eight o'clock, right? And that's pressure also overwhelms the ADHD brain. So these beautiful parents are doing their best to sequence these events. And perhaps they're bringing a bit of rushing energy as well, like, come on, we've got to get a door, we've got to get a stack of this.
00:16:34
Speaker
And all of that just goes, and the person with ADHD just can't cope and they either, they go into fight or flight and they either go into fight or flight or they freeze, right? They just completely shut down. So it's about working out ways to get those lots of little tasks stacked that we can keep the person with ADHD engaged. We can intrinsically motivate them to do it without making too many demands. So.
00:17:00
Speaker
It's that, no, there's so much to this. I'm just being careful about what I say. But, you know, when we make demands, like, you know, can you go and put your shoes on? Most people with ADHD have a level of that oppositional component. We want to push back without even thinking about it too much. So you're better off phrasing something like that as in, can you tell me what you have to do next?
00:17:22
Speaker
It's not a demand, it's asking them to go to the part of their brain that thinks about what they have to do next, and they're making a decision about what that is. So there's lots of little tricks that we can do to support these beautiful families, but knowing that things that make it really challenging for people with ADHD are pressure, overwhelm, the sense that they're not doing very well, negative feedback, and boredom.
00:17:47
Speaker
They're like really clear, well-known things that make it harder. But on the flip side, we know things that make it easy for them, our novelty, interest, praise, the sense that they're doing well or it's easy, and the sense that they're liked. Those are the things that we've got in our tool belt to see if we can make it easier for them, for those things.
00:18:09
Speaker
Well, that's an interesting place to sort of start talking about life admin and the ADHD brain because life admin can be very tedious. It's not exactly the most stimulating thing. So if we switch gears for a moment and talk about adults who have ADHD.
00:18:27
Speaker
And, you know, the word that you just mentioned there around feeling overwhelmed, that is probably the key word we hear from people about when they're trying to tackle life admin and be more organized. It's so overwhelming for me. So for adults, where do you start when you're coaching them when they're
00:18:47
Speaker
What are the kinds of goals that you often hear from your adult clients? That's a really great question. And I wanted to preface it by saying that adults is my favorite because, well, also our kids learn by watching us.
00:19:02
Speaker
right? They learn systems and structure and things by watching their parents. They definitely don't love doing what we say. So they learn by watching. So it's really great to be able to model some of these skills of life admin, because that's how kids learn them. So something as simple as Oh, and I also wanted to say
00:19:20
Speaker
that people with ADHD are highly, highly, usually very highly intelligent. Okay. So this is not a level. This is not about IQ. There is a 30% maturity delay when it comes to ADHD. So we've got to allow for that. So they're often presenting a little bit younger until the age of 25 when it levels up.
00:19:39
Speaker
But things that they come to me with for life admin is really life skill stuff, life management. They can nail the things that they're interested in. In fact, most of them are gifted in the things that they're interested in. They've got hyper focus, they can like say their work or something like that that they love doing. They are incredible. But what they struggle with is the life management.
00:20:02
Speaker
So things like paying bills on time, laundry systems, meal planning, managing their finances, being able to like calendar and allowing time between things and not over scheduling. Those are the things that can really grind their gears and suck all their energy. Okay, let's get super practical. What do you suggest for people when it comes to bills? I literally got an email this week from someone saying,
00:20:29
Speaker
My ADHD brain, can you suggest an app for Bill Reminders? You know, and I was like, OK, well, there are probably a bunch of strategies. You are the expert, Sharon. Tell us, what does it what do you do when it comes to bills, giving them paid on time? Well, I love the system and it really does depend on the individual and what their motivation is. But I love the system of handling it once. OK, so.
00:20:53
Speaker
We have a tendency to go, okay, I've opened that. I'll deal with that later. Right. But I would say to people, I'd prefer you to only, when you open it straight away, that's when you handle it right then. Okay. So we don't, we, the later that we anticipate, we're often anticipating that future me is going to have more time or future me is going to come back to that. Future me is going to be way more on top of that. There's no future me. Yes.
00:21:18
Speaker
The trick is that future me is real, just as time poor and busy as now me. So I would really love people to just handle it once, OK? Beautiful. Don't open it unless you can handle it once. Yeah, we call those two minutes two easy tasks. If it takes less than two minutes to do, just do it then. So if you get the bill,
00:21:37
Speaker
You just pay it then. Or you can, you can future date it. You can future date the payment so it doesn't have to hit your bank account today, but just deal with it as soon as it gets on your radar. Better yet, don't handle it all. Put it on direct debit. Yeah, beautiful. Automate. You don't need to occupy brain space with those kinds of things. Let's get things on direct debit. When you can't do that, let's get reminders in your calendar. More reminders, the better. We've got to work out what is going to make things easier for that individual.
00:22:06
Speaker
Yeah, fabulous. Okay, you mentioned laundry systems. This is another thing that I, you know what, I am one of those unusual people that really quite likes doing laundry. I love getting all the hampers done and knowing that all the clothes are processed and we have like full capacity wardrobes. That's so satisfying to me. And I have friends who are like, it is chaos. And I have literally gone to a friend's house and helped them do their laundry because it's stacked miles high. What are your suggestions around this?
00:22:35
Speaker
Okay, so one thing that actually causes people, it's looking at where the system's falling over. And it is, in a sense, like a cycle task. So it's something that we have to keep doing, unfortunately. It's a bit like groceries. You go, oh, that's done. We have this perception that it's done, but it's not done.
00:22:55
Speaker
Yeah. So it's a cycle task. So it can be really tricky for people with ADHD because there's not a lot of novelty in there. It's not very interesting unless it's for you because you seem to be watching your body language as you're talking about it. Yeah. Everything else I'm not a fan of, but laundry. I don't know where, where, why. It's weird.
00:23:12
Speaker
Maybe it's the smell of the detergent. I don't know. So it's looking where it's falling over in that process. So outlining what the procedure is and looking at where that falls over. Now for a lot of people, and this is a generalization, but a lot of people, they're quite good at getting the stuff in the machine and getting the stuff out of the machine and either putting in the dryer or hanging it out. Where it tends to fall over is the bit where you've got to actually sort it and put it away. That's the boring bit.
00:23:38
Speaker
Right. That's it. And that's why I've gone to friends houses and all the dry, clean laundry is just in piles in hampers. And it's like, this is the final step. Okay. Let's, how do we get up, execute on that? So there's a couple of things that the couple of steps that, and people can take what they need for this one. Like there's, there's a few little hacks here. So the first one I would say is.
00:24:01
Speaker
assign a washing day to the family members, right? Because when you have a washing day, so there's five members of our household, everyone has a washing day, the next day is sheets, the six days sheets, and the final day is towels, right? So we have a washing day. What that means is that on Monday, it's only my clothes, right? So when they are dry, it all just goes back into my room because we have now eliminated sorting.
00:24:26
Speaker
Okay, so why are we spending hours sorting all the different socks?
00:24:31
Speaker
for all the different kids and all my boys have clothes that are similar sizes and that is hours of work. Why would I do that to myself? I don't know. So that has some preparation steps in that. We've got to make sure that we have enough uniforms for the whole week. We've got to make sure that we have enough undies for the whole week. So eliminating sorting is an easy hack that we can do because that basket of dry clothes goes back into the child's room and it's all theirs.
00:25:00
Speaker
So does each child, does each member of your family have their own hamper? Yep. So you're just taking one hamper to the laundry, doing it and then putting it back. Okay. And I don't mean to brag here, but I get my boys to do their own. Because... Ten points, Sharon. Well, it's taken a long time to get it there, okay? How old are your kids? I think it's important for people to know what kids are capable of at different ages. So how old are your boys? 14, 10 and 8, right? Beautiful. And they're all doing their own laundry.
00:25:27
Speaker
I don't want to do that. I don't want to do it. And plus I've let go of it all being perfect. Okay. What's more important to me is that there's effort and trying. And when you take out the sorting component, it's really handy. Now for other clients, there's another little trick that is helpful. The folding clothes can be a bit of a friction point. It's a point that stalls the whole cycle.
00:25:50
Speaker
So for some clients, they have given up folding things, right? So socks just get thrown in the drawer, undies gets thrown in another drawer, pyjamas get thrown in a drawer, everything else goes on hangers. Now, when you get stuff out of the washing machine, you put the wet thing on the hanger and it goes on the clothesline or a clothes horse on the hanger.
00:26:09
Speaker
That way, when you go to put it away, you're just going hangers straight into that person's cupboard. And so we're now eliminating folding as well, because that can be a time suck that is boring. The other thing that I wanted to mention is we can introduce novelty to laundry. So put on a podcast in your ear, put something funny on, put your favourite music on, have a packet of Maltesers, whatever makes you happy, right? We can introduce
00:26:35
Speaker
novelty to these boring tasks in a really simple way. They're great suggestions. There is definitely no folding going on in my house. There's certainly no ironing. So yeah, I totally support those ideas. Tell me about meal planning because that's another area that is tricky for people.
Time Management and Routines for ADHD Families
00:26:52
Speaker
in terms of making sure that they are not frazzled at five o'clock every day trying to decide what's for dinner, that they're not wasting money on food that they buy and then it dies in the back of the fridge. There's a lot of steps to putting at least three meals a day and snacks in front of people in your household.
00:27:09
Speaker
What do you like to suggest for people here? Mule planning can be really, really tricky because a lot of people with ADHD also have sensory sensitivities. When you think about it, when you have a packet of blueberries, each blueberry tastes slightly different, right? You might get a soggy one, you might get a tart one, but you know what always tastes the same? Chicken nuggets, right?
00:27:32
Speaker
That's a little probably disturbing, but yes. So there's a lot of, you know, people are cooking different meals for different kids and, you know, it's it's absolutely overwhelming. And so I can understand that a lot of families get stuck. Right. Because this feels like a really, really big job.
00:27:51
Speaker
And it requires a lot of executive function and planning for this. So this can be a really tricky process for a lot of families. If I was to give a few tips is to work out at least seven meals that everybody will eat. Let's just start with dinners. Okay. Snack, breakfasts and lunches tend to go okay. It's these dinner things that we're not thinking about until five o'clock at night. And we're too, we've now got tired kids in witching hour where everyone's losing it. There's like a mutiny in my house going on.
00:28:21
Speaker
And, you know, we're trying to make decisions and use executive function about what's happening from that point. It's too late. It's hard. It's too hard. Everyone's already elevated. So if we have seven go twos.
00:28:31
Speaker
And I usually like to theme it. So a day that I have a bit more time, like a weekend, I like to wildcard it, right? I call it wildcard. They're my days where I see a recipe in a magazine or on a website and I go, oh my gosh, I've got to cook that that day. Or something that's a little bit more luxurious in time, you know, or something that I can get the kids to do. Like, you know, they're quite good at barbecuing and things like that, that has a bit of novelty. I will do those things on those days.
00:28:57
Speaker
But when I'm in the trenches on the weekdays, I'm doing things that are simple, that everyone eats, and we've worked out what that is. And that's a bit of experimenting going down there. That is super fast. Now, I do all the shopping and I save that in my Woolworths list or I've got like a, you know, a carried-over list for online shopping. And please know that I will not, if you ever see me in a grocery shop with my three boys, there is something that has gone seriously wrong.
00:29:22
Speaker
Okay. I've watched my husband throw a bag of potatoes across Woolworth, right? I'm not doing it. I'm not doing it unless there's an emergency. It's not where anyone shines and I end up spending $300 more than I should have because everyone's putting things in the trolley. So I'm a very big advocate of online shopping if you can, but saving your list there means that
00:29:41
Speaker
it's taken a couple of hours task because you've got to park the car, you've got to get the trolley, you've got to get all the things, you've got to go through register, you've got to get it upstairs and you've got to unpack it away. You've reduced it down by saving your list and just taking over the things from your weekly menu to a half an hour task. And it doesn't really matter what days of the week you have your seven meals, you can shake it up based on what you feel like, but you always know that you've got those things in there. And I really like the idea of having
00:30:08
Speaker
emergency meals for the days that don't go well. So the days that people are unregulated, the days that we've had an appointment go over, the days where I'm not feeling great or there's sickness in the household, we have always on hand emergency meals, three emergency meals.
00:30:23
Speaker
So it might be like that we have bacon and eggs one night, might be that we have jacket potatoes or something that I can just really throw in there. And also having a freezer. So when you cook something that can be frozen, always cooking double. So something like spaghetti bolognese, we know we can freeze that really well. So the days that if someone's sick or, you know, you all catch COVID, you know, you've got a backup for the days that don't go to plan.
00:30:50
Speaker
And some of that is really about using executive functions that people with ADHD struggle with. That's a lot of forward planning in that. And that is the benefit of having a coach that's going, okay, how can we get this next step happen? How can we make this easier for you? What can we do to make this ignition? Because it is about ignition and momentum here. What can we do to keep that going? How can we check back in on this system, refresh, reset these cycle tasks?
00:31:20
Speaker
Great suggestions there, Sharon. And how do you feel about things like meal kits and some of the other shortcuts that you can take? Does that come into play as well for people who are just looking for ways to ease the friction or introduce the novelty? Because there's also that novelty factor, the interest factor.
00:31:40
Speaker
A lot of families really like them. It becomes a bit more tricky when we've got some sensory issues that can make it food intolerances and things like that. But for a lot of families, it's great. Other families, they find that it goes OK, but that novelty wears off and then they start wasting the meals. So it is a bit personal in terms of their experiences and how their family operates and that.
00:32:06
Speaker
It's always great to involve the kids a little bit, if we can, like in a safe way. There's there's elements of things that we can get them to do. I sometimes think as parents, we're a little bit burnt out and we're just like just going through the motions, getting things done as quickly as possible. But these are all really good life skills that we can help involve them in. And, you know, at some point they might be able to take some pressure off us. Yeah. I guess one of the other things I wanted to explore was this idea of sort of managing your time and triaging your time.
00:32:37
Speaker
know, part of life admin is looking at all of the things that need to happen in the week, whether it's just for yourself as an individual with your social commitments and doing exercise and looking at your schedule. And then if you have a family, you know, there's so much logistics of getting people to the right place and dealing with kids' extracurricular activities and social lives. So how do you support people to
00:33:00
Speaker
to create a routine or manage their schedule in a way that's sustainable. I think one really easy step that we can talk about is that communication piece. So we are all busy, you know, like family life, every family is, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of balls in the air.
00:33:21
Speaker
And we get stuck in the doing without actually communicating. And I think sometimes the primary caregiver, which is predominantly who I work with, get stuck doing a lot more only because we haven't been able to communicate or ask for help where it's needed to just because life, like life's happening. We're just being reactive rather than doing that planning piece. Now, planning is a tricky thing for people with ADHD. And so we really love to encourage people to take
00:33:50
Speaker
some time on a Saturday or a Sunday to look at the week. Now this is an executive function, right? This is a habit that we're going to build. So we stack it onto like a family dinner or something like that. I love putting the family meeting and I've got a resource for people on this as well, which I'll get you to include in the show notes. I've got a resource that talks about how we structure our family meeting and then one for people to create their own family meeting agenda.
00:34:17
Speaker
This isn't really about what my family does. It doesn't have to look exactly the same. It's what feels good for their family. But what it does is it encourages, firstly, we open the ADHD brain. We get it on board. So everyone talks about something like they say, thank you to something for what someone else in the family has done.
00:34:36
Speaker
So the reason that we do that is because when the ADHD brain has a negativity bias, when we look for the negative, oh, we'll find it, right? If we open the floor for things that we could improve on, oh yeah, everyone will come up with a list, right? No one's been replacing the toilet on the toilet roll holder. We'll go through that negativity. But if we ask for something to say, thank you,
00:34:57
Speaker
for other family members, we'll find that too. If you look for the positive, we'll find it. So we start off by saying thank you, there's a little bit of gratitude opening the ADHD brain, and then we set about planning our week a little bit. And so this is the opportunity for us to go, okay, we've got soccer practice. How are we going to get there? Who's going to pick so-and-so up?
00:35:16
Speaker
Do we have the clothes that we need for that? We've got this happening on Saturday and Sunday. What are we going to do here? Do we need a birthday card for that? And that is executive function of forward planning. And we're modeling it for our kids, but we're doing it as a family to take some of the pressure off whoever is doing the most of that and all that invisible load that the primary caregiver often carries. We want to be communicating some of that and seeing if we can offload about what bits can we delegate? What bits can we get someone to help with?
00:35:44
Speaker
I love it's an easy, easy way of taking some of that pressure off. Yeah, I mean, that's great advice for everybody in terms of sharing the load, sharing that mental load and looking for ways to reduce it overall. But also understanding that other people can pick up different parts of the decision making and the planning and the anticipating and then the execution of whatever, whatever task it is. I love that. Thank you. And I guess to finish off, I wanted to talk about some of the
00:36:14
Speaker
you know, the challenges with ADHD in terms of distractions and focus. And when you do need to sit down and do tasks like compare your superannuation options or switch electricity providers, you know, sometimes a cup of tea and a bit of a playlist in the background can get you there. But what are the strategies that people with ADHD can use to help them focus?
00:36:38
Speaker
Okay, so when you're doing something like that, which is a truly horrendous task. I mean, I'm neurotypical and I still don't want to, like, I don't want to do that. So, you know, for a person with ADHD, that can feel truly very hard, but there's a few things that we could do. And these are just experiments. We just see how they're going. There's no good or bad or right or wrong with any ADHD strategy. It's just an experiment how it works for that individual uniquely.
00:37:01
Speaker
But I know that a lot of the time that people with ADHD are super sensitive, they've got sensitive nervous systems, their environment plays a role in that. So if you're trying to do that in the place that you always do, you're trying to do a difficult task in the place that you're always doing difficult tasks, it's very easy to get distracted with something else and go on to Facebook and lose your day there, right?
00:37:23
Speaker
So sometimes changing environments can help. So going to a coffee shop to do that, or going out into a park to do that very specific task, like review your superannuation, can switch your brain into another gear, right? And allow you to get that task done, removing yourself from that location where you usually do those things. Same with work. You know, if you've got a task that you've got to do, like a performance review or something, go somewhere else, get out of there.
00:37:53
Speaker
Even better if it's outside, since really that's wonderful. But there's another thing that is an underutilized tool for ADHD, and that is body doubling. We know that when you do a task with someone else, it opens your brain because it's got a novelty component.
00:38:10
Speaker
And it allows you to get a task done to access that task. So there's a whole websites where you can body double with other people doing similar things. So you say what you're going to do. This is something that we introduced last year. So we have the hour of power weekly workroom where people can jump on a Zoom call once a week and do their life admin with me. And it's part of the art of adulting membership. We have multiple sessions during the week. So you can sit down and body double.
00:38:39
Speaker
And members can initiate their own and say, I'm going to be sitting down and doing it this time. Join me so that you do have that accountability. And there's that, you know, it's amazing. Even I do it. And I can't believe how much more productive I am just sitting there knowing that there's a screen full of people and we're all leaving her away at the same time. It's incredibly effective. That is wonderful to hear. And, you know, it is an easy strategy that you can do it. And in a certain, you know, it allows us to really get through some of those more boring
00:39:09
Speaker
tasks that we perhaps are putting off, if we've got a joint feeling that we're all working together for it. And also that novelty component of having all those people on the screen. So underutilized resource. So I'm really glad that you guys are doing that too. It's exciting. Okay, so Sharon, I guess any final words for people who either have ADHD themselves or they have family members with ADHD and they want to move forward?
00:39:34
Speaker
and have a more streamlined approach, what message would you want them to take away from this today? I really want to let them know that I know how hard it is. I work with people with ADHD every day. I know how hard they are trying, right? They are doing incredible things with their awesome brain. But if there is something or a few things that perhaps is causing friction for them,
00:40:01
Speaker
to encourage them to have a look at it from a CEO perspective, like an auditor, a little bit of an auditing, life auditing, because we don't want them to get their energy sucked by the daily friction, right? If there's something that is not working, let's make a plan to see if we can make that easier for them. There's often a few little things to do, and sometimes you might need support to find it, but there's often little things, little tweaks that we can make to make that point of friction a little bit easier for them.
00:40:30
Speaker
And learning about how your brain works uniquely can really empower you to do that. Because if I know anything about the ADHD brain is that it's an ideas factory, right? They have the best ideas. They are great at problem solving and they might just need to dedicate
00:40:47
Speaker
some time or to think about what problems they need to solve and they might need a little bit of help with the momentum of solving those problems. But it's so great and there's so much power in knowing where your friction points are and what we can do to make those things easier. Because life is supposed to be joyful, not all the time, but we want to look at things from that perspective to see what can we do to make this easier. We don't want to have stressed out existences and we don't want to keep banging our heads against the same brick wall.
00:41:17
Speaker
So know that there is so much support out there for you now to discover how your brain works and then what we can do to make those points of friction a little bit easier and then celebrate things that you're already doing so well and trying so hard for. Excellent, Sharon. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your expertise with us today. The work you're doing is truly life changing for individuals and families in helping them
00:41:42
Speaker
embrace that optimism and embrace the joy and move out of that frustration. And also it's sort of, you know, the negative self-talk that happens when you start doubting your either your abilities as a parent or your characteristic in your personality.
00:41:57
Speaker
and moving beyond that and embracing people's superpowers with their ADH brain. So thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute joy to be here today. So you mentioned some resources. Where can our listeners find you if they want to hear more or tap into some of your awesome material?
00:42:14
Speaker
Oh yes, so you can check me out at thefunctionalfamily.com. There's everything there, there's a blog, there's a podcast, ADHD families, and lots of resources. I've got the family meeting resource, I've got a predictable problems resource there that helps you problem solve some of those friction points. I'll give that all to you for the show notes so people can go in and access those. You can always follow me on socials as well, and lots and lots of free tools as well for these beautiful families. Incredible. Thank you, Sharon.
00:42:44
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.