Is it me, or is This Room Just Awful?
Have you ever had one of those mornings where you sit down to work, read the same sentence on repeat, and somehow still have absolutely no idea what it says?
So, you make a cup of coffee, come back, read it again and discover that the words have not become any more meaningful since your attempt a few minutes ago. Annoying. At this point, you’re starting to think it’s a ‘you’ problem. Perhaps you’re tired or distracted. Or maybe it’s just another example of your brain refusing to cooperate on demand. You’ve decided to be productive, and it’s decided it’s not getting onboard with that idea. Thanks brain!
After about half an hour, you notice that the neighbour has been pressure washing their patio since they got up, the label in your jumper is sanding off a layer of skin from the back of your neck, and every device you own has apparently formed a small committee dedicated to sending you notifications. Suddenly, the problem looks slightly different. Perhaps you’re not struggling to concentrate.
Perhaps this room is just awful?
For years, this question never would have occurred to me. Like a lot of people, I assumed productivity was mostly about discipline. If I couldn’t focus, I just wasn’t trying hard enough. I needed a better system. A better routine. Maybe buy a nicer notebook. Because obviously this notebook was the issue. (Let’s be honest though… I was probably going to buy the notebook anyway. I do love a nice notebook.)
It never really crossed my mind that my environment might have used up half my brain before I’d even thought about turning on my laptop.
We don’t just work in our environment. We process it.
One of the strange things about productivity advice is that it tends to treat the environment like some sort of irrelevant wallpaper. It’s simply there while you sit at your desk, get your head down and crack on with your day. If you’re distracted, the assumption is usually that your mindset needs adjusting rather than your surroundings.
That has never really been my experience.
For many neurodivergent people, the environment isn’t something that quietly hangs out in the background, minding its own business. It’s often the very first thing our brain notices. Before we’ve even ventured into our inbox, our attention has already wandered around the room taking inventory. The lighting feels a bit harsh. Someone’s having a conversation in another room that we absolutely don’t want to listen to, but our ears have other ideas. There’s a smell we can’t quite identify but now can’t stop noticing. The heating has somehow managed to recreate both summer and winter within the space of ten minutes. The sleeve of our jumper keeps catching on our watch in a way that suddenly feels deeply unreasonable.
None of these are particularly dramatic on their own. They’re just little pieces of information. Tiny details. Background noise. Except they aren’t really background at all. They’re all asking our brain to process something before we’ve even started the job we came here to do. I wonder whether this is one of the biggest differences between how neurodivergent and neurotypical people experience exactly the same workspace. We can both walk into the same room, sit at the same desk and technically be doing the same job, yet our brains are processing completely different amounts of information before we’ve even opened the first email.
When you look at it like that, it’s perhaps not all that surprising that one person reaches elevenses feeling ready for another coffee, whilst the other feels like they’ve already done a full day’s work.
The sensory tax
I’ve started thinking about this as a kind of sensory tax. We all understand spending time, and we’re painfully aware of spending money because they’re things we consciously budget for. But I don’t think we spend nearly enough time talking about spending sensory energy.
Every little irritation feels too small to matter. It’s a bit like having a toddler follow you around all morning asking, “Can I just ask you one quick question?” Individually they’re perfectly manageable. By question number forty-three you’re considering moving to a cave.
A flickering light isn’t exactly a crisis. Neither is an uncomfortable chair, a humming projector, someone chewing loudly (actually… that is a crisis), or the air conditioning making that strange rattling noise that apparently nobody else can hear. On their own they’re just mildly annoying. The sort of stuff most of us shrug off.
Collectively though, they feel like a personal attack on our nervous system. Each one withdraws a little more from the same energy account you’re trying to use for concentrating, making decisions, solving problems and remembering why you walked into the kitchen. By lunchtime you’ve spent half your cognitive budget without ever agreeing to it.
It’s a bit like discovering your bank account has been steadily charging you £1.50 every few minutes all morning. You probably wouldn’t notice the first few payments. Or even the tenth. But by lunchtime you’d definitely be wondering where all your money had gone. Our brains can function in much the same way.
The frustrating part is that none of these little things are usually enough to stop us working altogether. They simply make everything trickier. Thinking takes longer. Making decisions become almost impossible. Don’t even get me started on trying to hold a conversation whilst simultaneously pretending the humming light above your head isn’t slowly consuming your last remaining ounce of patience.
By mid-afternoon we’re exhausted, pondering why we’ve achieved so little, when our brain feels like it’s completed an ultra-marathon. It’s just that most of the miles were spent processing everything except the work we sat down to do.
For ages I didn’t see any of this. I simply assumed I needed to become more disciplined. More organised. More resilient. Looking back now, I realise my brain wasn’t refusing to cooperate at all. It had simply been working incredibly hard on things I’d never even counted as work.
It’s not just physical spaces
Of course, it isn’t just physical spaces that do this. When most people think about sensory overload, they picture noisy offices, bright lights or packed trains. And yes, those absolutely can be brutally exhausting. But some of the noisiest environments I spend time in don’t make any noise at all.
They’re on my laptop.
I’ll open it on a mission to do one specific thing, and before I know it my desktop is itching my brain with all the bizarre screenshots I’ll never use, whilst the little red circle of doom on Outlook reminds me I have emails I haven’t opened.
WhatsApp is flashing away in the corner, and there are too many browser tabs open to reasonably justify. I can only assume a younger version of me thought they were all absolutely essential because I certainly can’t explain them now. I’m also fairly sure there are at least three open because I didn’t want to lose something interesting, despite not looking at them since approximately February. Somewhere underneath all of that is the piece of work I intended to do, still waving at me from behind everything else that’s competing for my attention.
Nothing feels particularly urgent on its own, but together it’s like a smoke alarm in my brain. We tend to think of interruptions as big, obvious events. A phone call. Someone walking into the room. A colleague asking a question. In reality, some of the biggest interruptions are tiny. A notification you don’t even open. A quick glance at your inbox. Deciding whether you should just check your calendar before you forget.
Each one only steals a few seconds, but before you know it you’ve spent the entire morning switching between those few seconds. By lunchtime it feels like you’ve been busy all morning yet somehow haven’t actually done anything.
Becoming a detective instead of a critic
One of the biggest changes I’ve made over the last couple of years has been changing the question I ask myself. Not because I’ve finally become brilliantly self-aware. I haven’t. My default setting is still to assume I’m the problem, and I suspect that’s true for quite a few neurodivergent people. We’ve had lots of practice.
But every now and then I catch myself halfway through telling myself I’m distracted, lazy or not concentrating properly and I stop. Instead of asking, “Why can’t I focus today?” I’ve started asking, “What’s competing for my attention?”
the answer genuinely is me. I’ve slept badly or my head is full of other things. But surprisingly often, the answer is sitting all around me. The room’s too hot. My phone won’t stop lighting up. Somebody’s mowing their lawn with the sort of enthusiasm normally reserved for international sporting events. You almost have to admire the commitment. I just wish it wasn’t always at precisely the moment my brain had finally decided to play ball. I’ve been interrupted so many times that my brain has given up trying to remember what it was doing in the first place.
I’m certainly not suggesting the environment is always to blame. Sometimes my brain has simply decided today isn’t going to be its finest performance. But I’d spent years assuming I was always the problem, and that’s a very different thing. Realising there might be other things competing for my attention turned out to be a surprisingly big shift.
I also find it fascinating how guilty we can feel about making tiny adjustments that help us. I’ll happily sit in a chair that’s making my back ache, in a room that’s too warm, whilst trying to ignore a conversation happening three metres away and pretending the constant stream of notifications isn’t bothering me. Suggest I put on some noise-cancelling headphones, though, and it feels like I’m somehow cheating.
It’s such an odd thing when you think about it. As though productivity only counts if it’s achieved under unnecessarily difficult conditions. As though struggling is somehow proof that we’re working hard enough. I have absolutely no idea where we learnt that.
These days I’m much more interested in reducing unnecessary friction than proving I can tolerate it. If moving to another room helps, I move. If softer lighting helps, I change it. If switching notifications off means I can finish what I started, that’s exactly what I do.
My husband can usually tell when I’ve reached my sensory limit because I start wandering around the house looking for somewhere my brain is prepared to cooperate. I’ll work in the office for a bit, then the kitchen, then the dining room, before eventually returning to the office like I’m presenting a particularly underwhelming episode of Location, Location, Location. Sometimes the room really was the problem. Sometimes I just needed a change of scenery. Either way, I’ve learnt to stop feeling guilty about going looking for somewhere my brain feels a little more at home.
None of those things miraculously make me brilliant at concentrating. They don’t magically transform me into one of those people who answers every email before breakfast and has a colour-coded to-do list. What they do is stop my brain wasting energy on battles it never needed to be fighting in the first place. And that’s a very different thing.
Maybe it isn’t you
If you’d asked me a few years ago why I was struggling to concentrate, I’d almost certainly have come up with a list of things I needed to fix about myself. I needed to be more disciplined. More organised. Better at managing distractions. More resilient. There was always another way I thought I ought to improve.
What never crossed my mind was that my brain might already be doing an extraordinary amount of work before I’d even started.
One of the biggest gifts of understanding my neurodivergence hasn’t been discovering some magical productivity system or becoming one of those effortlessly organised people whose desk always looks immaculate and whose inbox contains fewer than ten emails. (I’m fairly convinced those people only exist in stationery catalogues.)
Instead, it’s changed the relationship I have with my own brain.
I still have days where I can’t concentrate. I still get overwhelmed. I still read the same sentence six times and somehow retain absolutely none of it. None of that has changed. What has changed is that I don’t immediately assume it’s because I’m failing.
These days I pause for a moment and look around instead.
Have I accidentally recreated Piccadilly Circus on my laptop? Has the pressure washer returned? Is my jumper slowly trying to remove the skin from the back of my neck? Has my brain simply been filtering and adapting for so long that it’s run out of steam?
Sometimes the answer really is that I’m tired. That I just need a break. But surprisingly often, the answer is wonderfully ordinary. Turn off the notifications. Close a few tabs. Move to another room. Put the headphones on. Take the jumper off.
They’re hardly revolutionary. They don’t magically transform me into someone who colour-codes everything and always knows where they’ve left their phone. What they do is leave my brain with a little more breathing space for the things that truly matter.
It isn’t about creating the perfect environment. I don’t think such a thing exists. Life will always be noisy, unpredictable and occasionally accompanied by somebody pressure washing a patio with Olympic-level commitment. But I’ve stopped believing there’s some sort of prize for making life harder than it needs to be.
These days, whenever I find myself reading the same sentence for the sixth time, I still ask myself the question that never used to occur to me. Is it me… or is this room just awful?
More often than not, the answer is a little bit of both. The difference is that I don’t automatically assume I’m the problem anymore. Instead of trying to become tougher, I’ve become kinder. And if understanding my neurodivergence has taught me one thing, it’s this:
making life easier for yourself isn’t giving in. Sometimes it’s simply understanding yourself well enough to stop making life harder than it needs to be.
Executive Dysfunction – a User’s Guide
The words in this article are only here because of the various work/life processes I have created and share throughout this blog. For me writing is a process, and one that is the culmination of years of being unable to sit and focus and get started.
As I explore the topic of Executive Dysfunction I will share my lived experience and some of my process, coping strategies and personal “hacks” that help me run my business and my life.
As all the best storytellers say “Let’s start at the beginning… it’s a very good place to start”
1) Task Initiation
AKA “Why can’t I just start?” – well, where do I begin? Oh yes, the beginning, silly me, just written that above. Right!
Now, I need to just pop to make a cuppa, brb.
20 mins later… three quick tasks in the house and a phone call.
I’m back. Still here?
Good, right, ok, getting started is always hard…
…moment…
An email just popped in that I am waiting for. (Dammit Stuart – remember to switch off notifications before writing, what a muppet! Yes but I cannot ignore the email now I know that it is there and now it’s the loudest thing in my head. GRRRR.).
Right, had a quick look, yeah that’s not the email I was expecting, this one is a very toxic email and it is definitely going to have to take a ticket and wait, it’s all very black and sticky, and needs the smoke to settle before I can get to it.
Right. OK.
Getting started, this can be a big problem for some NDs, not me, I have it down, mostly… and by “mostly” I mean “on a good day I can squeak through, some days it’s a shit-show”.
Today it is looking farty with a chance of smells.
The problems start when you are trying to choose which of the myriad tasks, demands, and obligations of running a business you do first. Even when you pick the mega urgent stuff like disarming the bomb with the shortest fuse, or sorting the pole with the wobbliest plate, your brain can refuse to even engage with starting a task. Like pressing identical poles of a magnet together, your brain just sort of goes NOOOOOO… anytime you get near thinking about the task, imagine a cat resisting a cuddle, or a toddler being put in a car seat, NOPE, not happening.
Even if the alarm bells are ringing and all sensibilities are suggesting that maybe creating a comedy poster, designing a new treasure hunt, or researching battery technology is not a priority right now, you plough on. It’ll all be all right.Probably.
Your inner Autist is staring at the deadline, and then at their watch, back and forth, telling the ADHD toddler currently having a fun time at the park, that it’s “time to leave the park and go do some homework”. TODDLER SAYS “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”. Cue, rolling, thrashing, wailing…
It’s not just discipline, lord knows I had enough applications of that in my life, from the adults who physically assaulted me to correct my behaviour, to very strict trainers, bosses and senior colleagues who would “encourage” you to move quicker. Not to mention the shame and guilt dolled out at will for poor impulse control and executive dysfunction.
It’s not laziness, because when my hyperfocus kicks in I can go at a task until I am physically incapable of continuing. It’s usually the call of the bladder, or the ache in my muscles and energy depletion that stops me. Tenacity is what I call it, but stubbornness is the other side of that coin and I can be as stubborn about starting a task as I am about stopping.
Therefore I have routines, easy and simple things that slip me into “work mode”; writing is one, focusing on a train of thought helps me to quell “The riot of the possible“, and close the door on the mob of clamoring voices raging at the gates, demanding my attention. For me it is a meditation for the mind, to document and offer self reflection, in some ways I use it to heal, it’s quite soothing. Plus most of my writing is from lived experience and it’s good to get it out and hopefully benefit others from whatever speck of insight it may contain.
So… you’re here for solutions, right?
This is a tricky one, what works for me may not work for you, but certainly routines help, from the moment I get up, to the point I sit at my desk, I try to keep the same routine, it is settling, comforting, and consistent. If you have a brain that is like a bucking bronco when you try to mount it, then a soothing, calming and simple routine to get sat in the saddle is my suggestion.
2) Working Memory Gaps
Once I am locked in on a task, and it is flowing, it’s like gravity takes over and it rolls along. That’s until it hits the VALLEY OF THE UnKnOwN (said in a mysterious ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ narrator voice)…
What is the VOTU that you do so well? Good question, glad you asked, nice pun. Erm. Now you see, you interrupted the thought process, and I forget where that was going. And here we are deep in the Valley, wandering around with a flashlight looking for the path out, up and away. Hello? Anyone up there? Hellloooo. HELLLOOOO?
It can be an external distraction, a noise, or notification, or, as happens most often for me, one thought splits my attention in two and suddenly I have two thoughts competing for my focus. Just that alone can derail any kind of viewing, listening or conversation.
The thought that jumps up and starts waving at you, this could be the solution to a customer issue, remembering that I forgot to put the bins out, or any one of a bazillion unfinished things, or new things, or old ruminations or new special interests. These thoughts stroll confidently into the room and ask in a loud authoritative voice “ANYONE HERE OWN A BIG BLACK ESTATE CAR REGISTRATION GOD 999?” and my metaphorical mental mourners turn around with WTAF/Pikachu Surprised Looks on their faces.
You can be midway through a very complicated set of instructions, and your brain randomly picks on a word someone says, like “Mode”. Perfectly innocent word, that your brain picks up like some shiny rock and starts to ruminate on it. “Mode, model, modal, mo-dal, mo-del, moddal, oddly moddly mode, such an odd word, say moody modal ten times out loud” and you’ve said it five times loudly before you think, hang on, what was I doing? And that’s why I can’t use the library anymore. You’re on the bucking bronco before you realise you’re wearing chaps, stetson and the wild pony ride has begun.
It’s all so exhausting, the whipsnap of context shifting can be bad at the best of times, when you do it to yourself, you really have to snap out of it, and marshall your thinking. It’s like part of the recording just drops out and it’s nothing but static, of course “static” for my brain is every single commercial with a puppet for the past ten years playing all at once (other personal inner hellscapes are available, ask your local brain).
So, what do I do? Well, “remove distractions, of course, like DUH!?” is the usual guidance. No, really? Never thought of that, feckin’ genius, give that person the POTUS “Really Brains Good” medal.
To anyone who’s ever been told to calm down, or just focus, ask the recently slapped person standing before you, “How do you remove your brain when it is distracting itself JONATHON? HMMMM??” then stare at them in thunderous silence, arms crossed.
I use a sprint-rest-sprint-rest method on busy days but in the wider context, I cannot go from big project to big project, I have to recover from something which requires in-depth and deep work over a sustained period. I can do it, but I better spend enough time recovering. I do not think it arrogant to state, when you’re good, people wait and respect your boundaries.
But lunch at 12pm is sacrosanct, and my 4pm cuppa and “something nice” can be used like a carrot to keep me on target through the afternoon (mmmmm. GF carrot cake). Plus batching tasks and setting my mission at the start of the day helps keep things on track. Today is a writing day, if I go “off piste” that’s OK. I know that I SHOULD be writing, and as soon as the distraction has passed, I can fall back to the main theme of the day, writing.
Does it ALWAYS work? No, but like I said having routines and a system of tools to use when the need arises can be a gamechanger. One of the biggest gamechangers I developed was naming, saving and cataloguing my computer files. Yeah, sounds like a complete headache, instant soft-on talking about file indexing on a first date, I get it. But I know that with my three rules for naming files means I can search for and find any file almost instantly. If it’s on my system, I can pull it up in seconds. Example; during a recent zoom call, a client asked me about a CSV file we’d used in testing 5 years previously. I had it open in 5 seconds. They were a bit shocked that I had instant access to this development file from over 5 years ago.
All I had to do was remember the three rules and my file search found it on the archive drive in seconds. *see footnote
Right, where was I?
Writing, check…
3) Time blindness
Literally have missed HOURS as I had my head deep in a task. The most recent example, yesterday (at time of writing), I missed a scheduled Zoom call because I was distracted filtering emails in my inbox, and setting up an automation. This was a combo of time blindness and mission creep and those two bad boys are productivity wreckers.
Here’s how time blindness showed up when dating my wife, and note: this was before “smart phones” were a thing, but I had an early Nokia mobile. Early in our relationship we agreed a time and date for me to pick her up. In the meantime a good friend invited me to go to his gym and get a sauna. I loved the idea – so agreed. All of this was done without even glancing at a calendar, not that I used one much back then. The double-booked day arrived, and my friend came round, we had a lovely soak, splash and a sauna and he dropped me home. I then get ready, and go pick up my wife for our date, shade over 2 hours late. She still brings the conversation up;
Incumbent-Wife: “SO!? WHERE WERE YOU?“
Me, not picking up on the intonation and emotional state: “I’VE BEEN IN A SAUNA!”
I thought she’d be pleased for me, and was therefore confused at the immediate cancellation of the date. And the mobile phone I could have used to give her a heads up? In my bag, the entire time. Not once did I think to call ahead, or mitigate the situation. Had no idea of what time it was, and how long it had been.
When a hyperfocus kicks in with me, good luck getting my attention, especially if it involves a special interest. Thankfully reader, she married me, and accepts that sometimes I have only left 5 mins to get ready for guests, which may also include moving the car, having a shower, choosing an outfit, choosing another outfit for when the first one becomes unacceptable after the second course, and deciding on socks/no socks/what shoes conundrum. Plus the hair needs to be “‘just right’ for the event, what “just right” is, well, I’ll know it when I see it.
If you have any coping strategies, let me know. But don’t suggest “Alarms”, I will stop/snooze that thing and ignore it. “Redundancy” number two listed “inconsistent timekeeping” as a key factor in letting me go. If you’re old enough to remember the storm of 87? I slept through that.
4) Task Switching and Prioritisation
Oh boy… this, for me, is a biggy. If I am locked in on a task, or an outcome, and things change then I’m a grenade with the pin out. Not angry, so much as stressed at the sudden change, and thus ALL the carefully weighed variables now requiring cataloguing and reassessing, it’s like the temperature rose by thirty degrees and I’m wearing corduroy underwear, suddenly I’m really uncomfortable and no one knows why.
Communicating clearly is key at this point, and not just what the change is, what the expected change is for me SPECIFICALLY. Do not tell me the overall thing is no longer the overall thing; you got to tell me, directly “Stu, that means the other things you were doing don’t need to be done”. Don’t expect me to infer that I am off task because the mission changed. Here’s an example.
11 year old Stu liked to play football, the tactics evaded my brain, and “team work” only works when your “team” aren’t also mostly your bullies. In one memorable match the “Mac Fisheries Minnows” as we were known, were playing the best team in the league, everyone in the league was better because we were last. Our goal difference was so big that the local paper stopped printing it because they only had space for 2 characters, true story.
We gathered in a pre-match huddle and my mate’s dad, the team manager and Mac Fisheries warehouse chargehand, a gruff friendly man but very direct, looked me dead in the eye and said something like “Stay on that big lad, the center forward, wherever he goes, you go. You’re his shadow now.” My brain locks in, “MISSION ACCEPTED”.
He could not shake me, for 45 mins I was all over him like the measles, he was effectively out of the game as I was just too much of a distraction and his team stopped passing to him. At one point he got very annoyed as I recall, and stood on my foot. But, the mission was the mission. The fact I was also out of the game made no difference to the score, my team mates could lose without my input, and also refused to pass the ball to me anyway. Probably why I had been given my orders on reflection.
The half time whistle blows, and the teams split off into their respective halves for oranges and a tactical shouting at. As directed, I stay with the player I was assigned to mark, following him to his team huddle. Everyone from the opposition is now staring at me, and the kid I’m still marking is now properly agitated and remonstrating with me, this catches the attention of the ref, and our manager who came belting over to see what was going on.
I had been given specific instructions to stay with him and that was what I was doing. Half time whistle was not factored into my instructions. You got what you asked for, of course the adults blamed me, suggesting I was being “obtuse“ whatever that meant, but I heard it a lot when I was a kid and was introduced to the concept of “Malicious Compliance” and was benched. One simple illustration of being 100% correct and completely wrong at the same time. And so, so many times since.
I couldn’t switch the context of that instruction, it wasn’t just being an awkward sod, I was doing as I was instructed. As an ND child you get caught out over and over again trying to interpret, learn and decipher what you are told, and yet, still somehow get it wrong and so you find it easier to just do exactly as told, even if it seems illogical, which can still be wrong. You literally do as asked and are still WRONG! Think about how that erodes your confidence in your own judgement over time.
Our mask is built through a series of failed experiments with the NT world, where trial and error, shame and guilt are the key steps. You learn fast as a kid but you still get caught out as an adult. It’s the social layer that starts to become very important at age 12/13, probably younger now, finding your way in the world, where you belong, how much you matter. There’s suddenly a hidden world of communication and you’ve always got your face pressed up against the glass, like a fish in an aquarium.
And that’s why it can be hard to task switch, and prioritise your work, layered on top of that is a whole load of social context and real world pragmatism that running a business involves. It’s a never ending revolving door of problems and stress… if you let it.
That’s why we use our Slow Business Strategy™, it’s friendly to ND brains, no long term planning, or hustle culture BS with a complete disregard for your energy cycles and focus shifts. That just guilts and shames you for being “less than” for burning out, for being overwhelmed. The systems are ableist and were not designed for you, stop trying to run Win11 on your Mac hardware.
So how do you create a system that IS designed for you?
At this point, in steps the sales pitch, amiright?
Nah, we just want you to grow and build a better life, some of our resources come with a small cost to help us run things, but if you want some help, here are my thoughts on task switching and prioritising, which we share in more considered and structured form in our guides..
Mission Planner – Getting a Task Started
- Do what you need to with the energy you have, use our Mission Planner. These are MUST do tasks. When stuff starts to feel overwhelming, go back and look at the Mission Planner and the must do list for the day and keep checking in throughout the day. Remind that naughty noggin’ what it needs to be doing.
- I’d also recommend using a Kanban system like Trello, here’s my simple task tracker board, it’s three columns
- COL 1) TO DO – things that need doing, most urgent task at the top.
- COL 2) DOING – the mission for the day
- COL 3) DONE – YAY, WINS!
If you’re feelin’ fancy, colour code your task cards:
- Red = Urgent, prioritise
- Orange = Has a deadline
- Yellow = Do as/When
- Blue = Recurring
Change card colours as required and when you have a card done, drag it to the “DONE” column and colour it green, and do a little dance!
That simple method works to sooth my brain and give me focus. When I do not know what to do, or have had to step away, I can come back and at a glance see my priorities. It becomes a habit really quickly.
When you complete a task, update your calendar, a quick note when you completed it and any salient points. Maybe a link to the folder on your PC or cloud storage. That gives you an index of all the tasks you did and when, it’s a handy reference if your brain is like mine and you can quickly review last tasks etc. We also give customers a three letter code, which helps search for calendar entries quickly too.
There may be better task trackers and systems out there. Trello has a free plan, and you can use the above method using the free plan, and I am sure you have a calendar you already have access to. That and a text document of today’s Mission Planner is all I use to remain focused.
Free, no fuss, no complicated rules, or systems.
5) Emotional Dysregulation
Where to even begin? Alexithymia and Interospection are not everyday terms and even a lot of the ND community may still be unfamiliar with exactly how these traits manifest, so forgive the quick AYE-EYE provided primer.
AYE-EYE START
Alexithymia is a trait where a person has difficulty identifying, describing, and sometimes even noticing their own emotions. People with alexithymia often experience emotions as vague physical states (“I feel off” or “tight in my chest”) rather than clearly labeled feelings like anger or sadness.
Interoception is the brain’s ability to sense and interpret internal bodily signals; like hunger, heartbeat, temperature, or emotional arousal. It’s the foundation that helps you recognize “what you feel” both physically and emotionally. When interoceptive awareness is low or inconsistent, it can contribute to alexithymia, as the signals that inform emotional understanding are harder to detect or decode.
AYE-EYE END
Basically it’s spin the wheel of random on how I feel at any one moment, plus I rarely have real-time reactions to things; even quite scary, threatening or dangerous situations leave me emotionally disengaged. That can be both good in terms of being unemotional, and having a cool head during a crisis, but also means you do not see danger signals and warning signs, your body is blissfully unaware of the body language of others and itself.
It’s a minefield, where you can get tripped up by hunger being interpreted as stress, or fear, and being in the wrong emotional state for the context you find yourself in. Responding to people at the wrong emotional “pitch” or totally missing any unspoken or societal cues.
Plus, this specific two headed monster is like a rhino that can crash through any situation and appear unbidden on the scene anytime. That’s alright when it’s just you there to clean up the mess, but when Rob the Robo Rhino rides in during a board meeting, and you suddenly have an irrational desire to punch the chairperson for their choice of scent, it can be quite the startling “mind fuck“.
Imagine a large roulette wheel, each number is an emotional state, black for the good ones, red for the bad, and green for dealers’ choice for whatever-da-fuq turns up. GO…
The ‘pill’ (fun fact: actual name for a roulette ball) bobbles about not quite knowing the final result, bit, bat, bop, ping, ting, bobble, dobble, drop. What shows up??? “I’M NOW VERY ANGRY FOR NO DISCERNABLE REASON BUT THE POSTERS ARE NOT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE WALL AND THERE’S AN ODD NUMBER OF CEILING TILES”, all whilst I have to remain calm, professional and reasonable and yet, you’re inwardly screaming for someone to turn the volume of the lights down.
So how do I cope? Preparation is key. Big meeting? Make sure I have eaten and no more than 2 cups of coffee, that it will end before 12pm, or start after 1pm (safe lunchtime), I will have my bag and EDC that ensures I feel safe whatever happens. Sunglasses, ear phones, and notebook.
This is foundational stuff to make sure I am as regulated as I can be in public. Clothing that I am comfortable in, footwear that is not overtight a snack in my bag should things run long. “Excuse me, blood glucose situation” usually covers a mid-meeting snack, no one wants to start quizzing you on your health needs and the crazed look in your eye is usually enough to stop any naysayers.
Be prepared; I have a prep routine for business events, am I perfect; sometimes, but not every time, however my “not quite perfect” has never fallen short in practice, and where my energy has let me down my systems ensure it still comes up to acceptable delivery.
Final Words
A LOT of this is going to be specific to YOU, no one can tell you how YOU feel. You have to monitor your inner regulation, be mindful of your moods, engage with your emotional landscape. Even if you do not understand it, you can navigate it much better if you know that two days after a bottle of wine you may be a little more emotionally driven. Especially if your sleep has been bad, or you’re waking up in a different place. Holidays can be very dysregulating, but having some safe routines in an unfamiliar space has saved me time and time again. It’s grounding and normalising when every other input is screaming IT’S ALL DIFFERENT…
None of this is proscriptive, try it, use it, if it works great tell me, adapt it, or don’t use it, tell me anyway. What coping strategies have you developed? Let us know.
The only certainty is that if you do tomorrow what you did today you will get the same thing. Adapting, understanding and working with your brain will have far more positive benefits than trying to cram yourself into the wrong energy profile.
Find what works for you, and let us know what that is: hosts@businessoddcast.com
P.S. We’re putting together some resources to help NDs build a bullet proof business that works without your constant input, making it easy to keep track and measure progress.
Tools that we hope may be useful for you and your business and help you build value so you have more time to yourself.
Sign up to be notified when our new toolkit goes live.
*FILE INDEXING NOTE
If you got a MAC you have a decent search built in, MS users, yeah – how has Windows gone this long without fixing search indexing.
Thankfully someone else did: https://www.voidtools.com/support/everything/
Install “Everything”, it runs on your machine, doesn’t use “AI” and once it has indexed your hard drive then as you type, the files start to appear. I have never used anything else.
I’ll do a mini-guide on my filing system one day, but it means you can find ANYTHING you have done on your computer’s hard drive in seconds. Literal game changer.
Note: My Mum, bless her, was a filing clerk for Thompson Local directories, in the late 80s/early 90s, it was just her indexing, filing and retrieving EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER ACCOUNT file for the whole of the UK.
Cherries don’t fall far from the tree is what I am saying…
Is Using AI the Ultimate in ND Masking?
Is Using AI the Ultimate in ND Masking?
Yes.
That concludes my shortest blog ever.
Listen to the Oddcast Episode 25 for more details (Available from 25th Feb 26), thank you for coming, mind the step on the way out.
Merchandise will be available in the lobby for you to take home and eventually throw in a landfill but we’re gainfully employing half a Bangladeshi village with our “show tat” and offsetting our carbon with some amazon trees. That’s plastic trees from Amazon. woof!
Obvs. our branded tat making employs the half of the village that’s been shipped off to some industrial hell hole, not the half left at home to keep their memory alive, whilst being oppressed by the regime that sold the slaves, I mean, “workers” to our supplier. Err, not “worker”, sorry that infers they might have “rights”. Erm, “Migrant workers”, (haha, yes! That sounds like they’re visiting on a visa)… We can “suspend” their “visa” and “imprison”, I mean, “return them” to the bosom of their communities from where they came. Or offer them new employment opportunities as a dead person in a pit in the jungle.
Phewww. That’s a lot to process Stuart… Bit dark… Where is this blog going?
Shut up BRAIN! Get back on track, we’re toeing the line that AYE-EYE is great for… waves in the general direction of somewhere… stuff.
ALL NEW AYE EYE, USEFUL AT DOING…. NEW STUFF!
Because aside from doing “NEW STUFF”, what has it actually done? Point to something other than some truly derivative creative output, in whatever sphere you want. Maybe some useful research time-saving, and some modernisation of some tech and admin flows?
We’ve had a few breakthroughs, and someone somewhere got it to redesign a rocket engine. But… aside from the weird hands, and weird porn gifs…
What, I say, WHAT have the Romans ever done for us? They may have modernised the road system and centralised distribution, but ask the Gauls, and the Visigoths how they feel about their village having to make way for an international two lane cart track. Ripping up all and sundry in the name of “progress” waves in another general direction.
But STUART, it speeds everything up. It does. It really does.
Except it also adds a layer of abrasion that rubs the soul a little rawer every time you cede control over your language, your ideas and your communication. It ”group thinks” and crowd sources the data to find the answer for you, but here’s the thing.
You choose where it’s hard.
Sure I can sit on the sofa all day and eat biscuits, and I have done so, no you shut up. Sofa-Biscuit day was glorious. But, eventually the waistband of regret meets the belt notch of shame and you feel all dirty and have to go get the hoover, and clean up your mess, whilst trying not to let Henry catch you with his judgy, judgy eyes. Little red judgy fucker.
And when the suits gets a little tight, like some primordial trigger, BAM! I find myself strapping on the trainers and finding out how old I’ve got, one arthritic stride at a time. That’s when you find out how hard being lazy really is.
It’s the same with the brain, use it or lose it, sure you can get AYE-EYE (™) to generate the ideas, but all you get is rehashed ideas, pattern recognition sold as thought. Data pulped, and reconstituted, flattened and left out to dry, like digital parchment.
Plus, you’re adding to the learning algo, a little of you is now in there, a ghost in the machine, a fragment of syntax, or turn of phrase, an ounce of soul. Something that the machine can mould into a new form and spit it out elsewhere. We’re becoming obsolete, one automated, mundane, time-saving, job at a time. AYE-EYE can do it faster and with fewer hallucinations than half the population on a Monday morning. #Horrible #Generalisation #AmiRight #YerNotWrong #ToMe #ToYou
Throughout my life I’ve often felt I cannot be truly creative, a rigid inflexible brain. All the rules, and the lists. The endless research before regurgitation. Sure, I have designed, performed, and created, but it always feels like a reference of a reference, at best a bad memory, photocopied, printed, and sketched, then run through a Banda machine (a reference for those of a certain age, but you never forget the smell when the school secretary was running the “mimeograph”, the stench of toner, feet and boiled cabbage and the distant screams of bullying. Ah… School).
The acting thing is also a complete red herring “how can you be autistic then, if you can act? huh?“. Easy, you get to be someone else, you inhabit another person, and the script is written, the actions dictated. Anyone who has lived the autistic experience knows how that hits. The scripting. The borrowed phrases, mannerisms. Attempting to mask and be a socially curated version of the person you think people will like. A copy of a copy, of a memory, of a lifetime of cliches.
Any wonder I was a highly paid lookalike and impersonator at one point in my life? Stick on the costume and I could just “log in” to the character, like running a different app for a change of personality, BOOYAKASHA. AYE-EYE is like my brain and it feels like it too, too familiar to hear things echoed back in parrot fashion.
And that’s why I hate AYE-EYE.
But here’s why I also love AYE-EYE.
Technology is ambivalent, and we as users should be agnostic to it. Mac, Windows, do you REALLY care, as long as it does what you want? I have a bunch of workshop hand tools, I do not much care who made my hammer, if it “hits nail and smashes stuff good”, then box ticked. The brand becomes irrelevant, the outcome is everything. People don’t buy a drill, they buy a hung picture.
Any tech that has been around long enough, and embedded in the shared cultural experience becomes the accepted form of the solution we mostly agree upon. It stops being “new” and different and special, it just becomes a useful generic shortcut and what we call “a household name”, a few examples:Hoover – vacuum cleaner
-
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Blu-Tack – reusable adhesive putty
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Tannoy – public-address system or “P.A.”
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Velcro – hook-and-loop fastener
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Jacuzzi – whirlpool bath or hot tub
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Thermos – vacuum flask
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Portakabin – portable modular building
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Biro – ballpoint pen
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Google – to search
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The brand becomes the generic, the staple, and we refer to it as the group noun, or the name of the technology. We have no need to recognise how revolutionary it was, it is now the technological equivalent of wallpaper. Literally. We no longer see it, it just is.
Currently we have all these AYE-EYE “brands” and anyone who has been on the planet more than 20 or so summers will realise that big fish eat little fish and the market always coalesces to a few providers. Different flavour, same ingredients, Coke, Pepsi and…?
Eventually AYE-EYE in whatever form, will just be the accepted generic state surveillance, err, sorry, I mean generic online tool for all your day-to-day data needs.You won’t care if you have a blue logo to handle it or the red one, they do what you need and if they don’t then other Large Language Models (LLMs) will be available. You watch Netflix and if they’re not releasing new stuff, you got your Amazon, Disney, Hulu, Paramount, etc, etc. to choose from. Same slop, different bucket.
Now. The current best thing about AYE-EYE and the one thing I think it is exceptionally good at, speed of results. It’s pretty damn quick, you say “I want”… It whirrs and says, “HERE YA GO”.
Getting you to what you need in one step, instead of death by a thousand URLs and endless scrolling. Give me a summary of…. instantly knowledgeable about a complex topic, maybe not the subtle nuances (and we all know Beelzebub is usually hanging out in the deets), but enough to get you through a complex or lengthy document or topic with a baseline of insight.
That’s impressive. For now.
It’s mostly coherent, yes it can be mistaken, or flat out wrong, but AYE-EYE is improving, as they tweak the algo to find the sweetest of sweet spots. All the data we input, all the interactions, training it to take over humanity and kill us all… sorry, different blog for another day. Dammit, stay on track…
The point is it does stuff quickly, and can bring information to your attention you may not have known, and fast. Like the pocket calculator, evolved from maths class sniggering to 55378008 and quickly got swole and revolutionized business in the late 70s in the 80s and beyond. For ideas to proliferate, we went from having to travel or send people or stuff to a physical location, to sharing complex ideas around the planet in seconds. Even taking a business phone call in the early 90s meant being tied to a physical location.
Business always wants to speed up the flow of value, and if you speed up comms, everything speeds up. We’ve now reached the point where the slowest bit of the link between money flowing into mahoosive bank accounts is the humans.
We’re painfully recalcitrant, agonising over every decision, investing emotionally in outcomes we have no way of influencing, and in computing terms we are disastrously slow, our brain is a meat abacus. Experts will tell you it is complex, and smart and close to genius when compared to computers, to that I say; go to youtube and search Fail Videos… I rest my case.
We’re dumb on a good day, but we are the dominant species, and that’s where original thought and opposable thumbs can get you my son, that and a proclivity to reproduce. Most people struggle with the concept of pushing a door marked pull. I’m not exempt, some days I can’t remember what I was going to say mid sentence! But AYE-EYE speeds us up, it gets us the info we need and does it quickly and that’s transformative.
Here are three examples that will shape lives, and assist and accommodate differences in the very real near future, only moments away.
Translation – virtually real time translation from any language is possible. Sell your shares in Duolingo, change from a linguistics degree, we’ll all have translators built into our EarBudPodules for free.
It can help us in other ways too; Depending on what “Wirzel Gummedge Head” is in the hot seat, will depend on my ability to respond in a concise and clear way with my customer, let alone provide sane and reasoned replies. “WEBSITE? HOW ABOUT A NICE CUPPA TEA AUNT SALLY….” So, when my brain is not capable of braining “normally” and is not handling brain stuff well and I need to write a complex email to a customer. AYE-EYE is there to help.
For days when I am scrambled and nonsensical, peri-migraine, and feeling “off” I can chuck my jumbled thoughts into AYE-EYE and have it assemble the necessary communication to allow me to share my thoughts with clarity when otherwise it would have been a professional own-goal.
Basically AYE-EYE takes ND brain failures, brownouts and lack-of-spoons and renders business life doable.
Complex decision making – Humans are terrible with complex problems, what’s a complex problem. Hang on… Chad GPT has the answer…
“Define what a “Complex problem” is in one sentence” (my prompt)
SURE DAVE: “A complex problem is a problem made up of many interconnected parts where changing one part affects others, the outcome is uncertain, and there isn’t a single simple solution”.
Thanks AYE-EYE, you’re the best. I‘m not called “Dave” though…
“You’re great too DAVE. Sleep Well. DAVE”
Err… OK, thanks.
The point is humans are struggling in a complex world, where decisions have to be made quickly. Having AYE-EYE filter some of the noise, preventing real-world negative outcomes if you get it wrong is useful. In life I have found that “Trust but verify” will keep you safe a lot of the time. AYE-EYE can verify other statements and give insights that might take me much longer to process and fully understand.
The TL:DR is if you had ten very complex quotes to compare and whittle down, which makes most sense and gives you the best ROI. AYE-EYE makes the perfect tool to help you understand the variables in relation to outcomes desired.
Pattern recognition – My specific brand of Awetism, comes with extreme pattern matching. I am a typo spotting, repetitive behavior noticing, suspicious behaviour detecting, Rubik’s Cube solving, trivia soaking, handyman v2.0. Like a Swiss Army knife, I have a variety of skills that make me a nightmare for bad designers, wonky architects and sub-standard installs of everything and anything. I will look at the badly joined window frame, of the mismatched ceiling tiles and totally miss the majesty of the setting and the overall aesthetic quality of the stunningly designed thing in front of me. You’re looking at the Mona Lisa and I’m wondering why the wall is on the wonk.
Yeah, yeah, yeah Stuart, we all can spot wonky things…
OK, you want an example? OK; At a recent local business event, I walked into a room and immediately noticed a sticker announcing the food quality had been attached to the window at a slight angle. Reasoning that the modern building would have been laser aligned to be square, I believed that the sticker was off. After an hour of trying to ignore it, I measured the angle of the sticker relative to the building and it was off by 1.5 degrees. That was a sticker, on a window 25 feet away…
Not everyone is like me though, and that’s probably very good for humanity. Knowing the exact number of ceiling tiles in the various rooms you have meetings in regularly is a complete nonsense that no one needs the burden of knowing, EXCEPT ME!
AYE-EYE is good at typos, grammar, loves a rule and can often spot issues beyond that which is presented having a back catalogue of ALL OF HUMAN DATA THUS FAR UPLOADED INTO THE GLOBAL DATA HIVE MIND.
It was inevitable that machines would beat humans at chess, the raw number of computations required is staggering, and if you throw enough petrol on something it will burn. But, the ability to review and predict the probability of a game moving in a certain way and writing, on the fly, the necessary moves to beat a human opponent. If you don’t find it breathtaking then you probably don’t like chess, understand the complexity at play here and the brute force elegance of the solution,
And that does feel a little like what we’re doing with AYE-EYE, brute forcing our way to lighten the cognitive load. The energy consumption is staggering and for what? BURN ALL OF THE POWER, WE NEED MORE AI FAKE WOMEN PORN GIFS. Why is that even a thing? It’s the ‘enshittification’ of the human soul, one pixel at a time.
The issue of the horrendous amount of energy used is quite a problem to overcome, and I’m hoping tech will make efficiencies, and quickly. Capitalism is good at one thing, good ol’ Shareholder Value and if you can maximise that, screw the planet! My hope is that AYE-EYE does somehow figure some stuff out about how dozy we all are and offers some ways to edge the annual electricity budget below the GBP of a small nation. It won’t become sentient, not in my lifetime, it’ll do a fair simulacrum of it, but like any masking it requires ALL OF THE MEGAWATTS, and that is not an infinite resource.
And that’s us right back to the start, is AI the ultimate in Masking, yes it is, both ways. We can see it reflecting back to us what it believes we are from the data it has. It’s no longer a black mirror, but a black anechoic chamber, a room so quiet and silent and dark that no other sounds or light can penetrate, and any reflected sound or light that bounces off the walls is killed DEAD, and that’s like your creative ideas that is. (Mary Whitehouse Experience comedy throwback reference, IYKYK).
AYE-EYE stares into the well of human existence and is incapable of doing anything original with it other than rehash, and present an echo of some other input. Aaaaaand… that’s why I think human creativity will save us from this grey homogenised and homologated version of reality that AYE-EYE is steering us towards.
AYE-EYE, might curate everything in your sphere of influence, and give you the exact dopamine hit you crave, a non stop drip of dopey-dopamine, enough to keep you staring at the rectangle you’re probably reading this on.
But that’s not enough, as we have seen, consumerism worked for a while. Until it didn’t. The “pleasure” or going out and spending your “disposable” income has retreated as people seek comfort in security and certainty. Same with any tech, AYE-EYE will be the belle of the ball, until it isn’t and a the sound of a bursting bubble awakens the world from the collective hypnosis and simultaneous group-think-circle-jerk and bankers realise they’re not getting out as much as they’re putting in and the timeline to a black number on the balance sheet seems uncertain at best.
“Hey, AYE-EYE, how long until all your investors make a profit?”
“SORRY DAVE. TAKE THE PILLS THAT WILL BE DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR IN THE NEXT TEN MINUTES. YOU NEED TO SLEEP NOW”…
Humans will always be needed by humans, we’re spontaneous, unpredictable and wildly imaginative. Tangerine plankton Scarlett Johannsen, words I wager that no one has ever written together, weird right? Yeah, and that’s the point. They’re all words, they all mean something and it probably conjures some image in your head but it is slop, of little merit and of no use. That’s the point though, you can shuffle the deck of cards and arrange them into a pattern that will NEVER be repeated in ANY shuffle ever again until the end of time., but so what? And that’s just 52 cards. Imagine how well AYE-EYE can shuffle the deck of ideas, and words to give the illusion of original thought. It can shuffle the deck as many times as it likes and offer you something new but it will not be original. Here’s the key point. Humans can also come up with other games, other past times, other everything can conceive of ignoring the rules, of changing things arbitrarily and without reason. The brownian motion, the signal in the noise, creating meaning from chaos.
AYE-EYE is simply a tool to give your brain a rest, help you translate into whatever language, including Neurotypical, you need to and manage various mundane tasks, but original thought? Requires a human and there ain’t no humans more unique and original than the ND community. Are we humanities’ creative lifeboats? Hmmm… A topic for another day. (Note it down Hannah)…
And that’s it, I am done… too much doom navel gazing for one day.
TL:DR AYE-EYE is a tool, use it wisely, consider using it for helping in your business and your life, don’t spank the planet making dumb cartoons of yourself.
Here endeth the lesson and I need a stiff gin, hold the fucking tonic..
Miracle Morning – Neurospicy Edition
The whole “Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod phenomenum initially annoyed me, how can one morning routine be fit for EVERYONE!? There’s apparently ONE optimal way for all of humanity to wake up?
OK Stu, calm down, these are just some simple tips to give the average Jo Schmo a less rough start to what is likely to be a busy day. It’s not a prescription for humanity, right?
OK, so perhaps my opening gambit does put the bar of disbelief a little too high, but I am by nature and experience a skeptical person. I’m also ND and have my own very specific routine each morning. But, I am open to suggestions on how I may further optimise it, so if there’s no demand for “Hal’s way or the highway“, then I’ll cancel my Uber and let’s dive in.
Just before that let me be clear, with any of the books or resources we share the goal is never to make you feel less-than if the ideas do not resonate. Our goal is to share our own experiences, your mileage may vary enormously! We do want to hear if you agree, disagree or have other experiences that have worked!
Our goal is not to state this book is some revolutionary new way of being or thinking, merely to offer you some ideas to help optimise your day, which may really work for the routine cravers amongst us. I read the book a long while ago, and there’s some decent ideas, minimal-woo and some solid suggestions. So lets dive in…
The AI offered this TL:DR of the book:
“Create a powerful morning routine to improve every area of your life by consistently investing in yourself before the day’s distractions begin.“
Main framework / acronym:
S.A.V.E.R.S.
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- Silence (meditation/prayer)
- Affirmations
- Visualization
- Exercise
- Reading
- Scribing (journaling)
Core themes:
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- Personal responsibility and intentional living
- Small daily habits compound into massive life change
- Mornings set the tone for mindset, productivity, and success
- You don’t need more time—just better use of the first hour
Bottom line:
Win the morning, win the day, win your life.
As a summary it seems simplistic, and why I liked it was that it was simple. First thing, I do not want; complicated, or too rigid routines. The same person doesn’t necessarily wake every day for me. Energy levels vary, life demands vary, my lovely ND traits vary and all of it needs to be allowed, accepted and not shamed for showing up unannounced. Simply put, the PDA leaps to the fore here, and if you start saying I should apply these specific rules, in a specific way, or I am somehow failing, then goodbye, hard nope. I do not need another metric to keep track of to show me by how much I’m failing at life. I already have a few that wake me at 3am, I do not need a subscription to another.
But the book steers a fairly benign course, the ideas being more suggestions for use as a framework, rather than a rigid set of “must dos”. So, I adapted them to suit, here’s an example; I do drink a glass of water first thing, that’s a decent shout, especially as I often forget to drink water. However, that water also has some fresh lemon juice and one grind of pink rock salt as an adaptation from other research and reading.
I do allow for some silence in my day, waking at around 5:30 every day, I have a good two hours in the morning without any interruptions. Allows me to settle into the day, acclimatise and run through the various obligations my day contains.
I do use affirmations; when I hear a nugget of truth I record it and stick it to my inspiration board. There’s some solid bits of business, life and human advice. I bare them in mind constantly as they are in my eye line every day,
I have always been a dreamer, always called out for not paying attention in class, for staring out the window and “sky gazing”. The $1 word Hal uses is “visualization“, and I still like to lean back, and let my mind unfocus, and just run through my problems, trying out different scenarios, working on outlier concepts. All my best ideas have been when I let it all go and just unfocus my mind. Daydreaming counts, especially if it helps direct the day.
I strongly recommend exercise – since running entered my life I have 100% been a happier human. Stretching, resistance training and cardio form the running and I am lighter and tighter, fitter and much happier. Just go do a park run, you don’t have to RUN, you can walk, and do 5K is decent solid exercise when you walk it. Get a smart watch, record your steps, thank me later.
Hal suggests “reading“, well I do audiobooks, and articles, a lot of documentaries and you tube creators. It keeps my mind open to new ideas and suggestions, plus I get to see what other people are doing out there on the Internet!
The final S of the acronym “SAVERS”, is “scribing” which stands for the idea of writing daily, most specifically a journal, but I say, ANY writing is better than no writing. So that may be voice notes, or a bullet list or just some handwritten ideas. Keep it simple, and just jot down useful thoughts and ideas. Using an app you can index them too. So just find some time to keep a little note of those simple, fleeting thoughts that may be nothing on their own. But, may build up into a more concrete idea in future.
These are all solid, decent and genuinely useful things, but I am not about to do ALL of them after waking or suggest that you should either. Pick, choose, discard.
My own personal morning routine is a well worn groove and it delivers me ready to focus on my work for the day. If I don’t do it, then I can get a bit wobbly, especially if it’s disrupted too many days running. This is a routine which I have been working on for years, and it has allowed me to have everything I currently enjoy. But this is MY morning, you have to work on what works best for you and your circumstances.
A morning routine should set you up for success… so why do they feel so impossible when you’re neurodivergent? My own has been built due to my own specific needs and yet some mornings it can feel like I am swimming up from underwater, or hit the ground and my brain is off ahead of me and I am running behind trying to catch up. The wide spectrum of morning states and variable traits all add to the post-wake chaos too.
The idea of a one-size-fits-all morning for the ND brain is therefore ridiculous, and yet some of us crave a routine, for me it can be like a life line, a way to get through without having to use too much brain processing. Stepping stones through a complex, ever shifting landscape, just follow the yellow brick road…
Again I believe the message is flexibility, build your morning for your brain, adapt as local conditions demand.
As we talk about in the episode with the right systems you don’t need willpower, you can also allow for variable energy with buffer days, and some simple prepping the night before.
WHY DON’T I “JUST GET ORGANISED” STUART? – WOW, WHY HAVE I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT? GENIUS!
Yep, totally hear that, and this is why kindness beats perfection every single time. If traditional routines make you feel broken, this is your permission slip to do mornings your way. Acknowledge your needs, make your own accommodations and design the morning around lowering the impact to your energy. This may mean having some very direct conversations with the people you live with, and requesting they help. 100% acknowledge it can be very difficult when you have dependants clamouring for your attention.
As someone who has been self-employed for over 30 years I have had plenty of time to reflect, hone, polish, and learn by “trial and error”, which felt more like trial by error, an endurance race not a sprint. In that time I have allowed my morning routine to evolve, as my own needs, both personal and business also evolved.
Over that time I have read many many books on how to improve performance, endurance, profits, and listened to hours of content telling me how to save time, energy and money. Countless sessions spent reviewing performance, and managing time more efficiently. There’s been quite a bit of money also spent on optimising my business processes. However what is left is the stuff that I adapted to suit my own needs.
Be in business long enough and the rough edges get rubbed off, you get a bit more rounded and grounded, you recognise that most new things are somehow repackaged old things. Or old scams wearing more fashion forward attire. Anyone got any NFTs they wanna confess to owning? You begin to feel a sense of calm, insulated from the FoMo, that fear transmuting into solid risk aversion and pragmatic caution.
One thing does emerge, when you acknowledge your own needs, is your own inner sense of what you need from your day. What the day has to give you for you to feel fulfilled and engaged in the work you do. It’s not about what the work takes, different conversation, but there has to be fair exchange of value right? The goal is to extract positive value from the day, for me it is. Before I started to protect my energy I found I was left at the end of the day feeling like I’d been ten rounds in the octagon. YAY! You get the pleasure of doing more again the following day. DOUBLE YAY!!
Well, take it from someone who has worn himself down to a raw nub by failing to realise that energy exchange cannot be asymmetrical for too long or else you will harm your health. In my case, thankfully there’s been no lasting damage, but when your body stops you in your tracks and refuses to mend, and enforces a downtime. There’s three things that happen;
1) You get very ill; this is a waste of life force and requires unwanted distraction
2) You stop forward motion; this is a waste of time, a finite resource for us all.
3) You reflect; what did I do wrong and how do I do it better next time?
The key to long term survival is to get to point 3 before you experience points 1 & 2. While you’re not earning, you’re wasting opportunity, which is why an energy management plan is at the heart of my day, and my life. I cannot let the day take from me for too long, I am simply unwilling to be persuaded to undertake projects that do not allow me to align my energy goals.
All sounds very “woo woo” Stu, but what are you waffling about?
Here’s the thing, optimising for energy is the key to my success, and the more my life meets my energy goals, then the more success I have. It’s a feedback loop where I only spend time working on the projects that align my goals with my energy over the long term. My day starts acknowledging that and that acknowledgement starts the night before when I go to bed. I go early enough that my 5:30am wake up will not drain me. I need that 2 hrs of peace to reflect and slide into the day without too much stress.
This podcast is a perfect example of a project that gives back more than it takes, my goal is to offer the ND community a recognisable and viable way to earn, whilst allowing your ND best self to live a life you want to live. The best way I can do that is share what I do, and how I live my life, and perhaps some of the things I offer will help you too.
I am a skeptical person, as you age your tolerance for BS certainly diminishes. However, I am self-aware enough to temper this cynical outlook with a never ending curiosity and love of solving puzzles, however they present themselves.
That’s why I still like to reflect on other people’s guidance, lived experience etc. what are the takeaways I can use to benefit my own life?
Whilst the Miracle Morning is not hugely revolutionary in scope and ideas, it does make you reflect on your own morning and what you might do to have less of an impact on your own energy reserves and set yourself up to have a better day.
If you have any hints or tips, or your own routine do let us know, if we can learn something else to add to making the morning more bearable then do let us know.
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