Hello. Guess what? I dunno if you know this. What are the top three things that you really need so that your plans work with your uniquely wired brain?
Well, I have to tell you, one of the things that happens with a uniquely wired brain, especially with an ADHD brain, is that some of us are time blind.
#1 Structure
But some people with an ADHD brain do not like structure. No, I don’t want structure. You can’t put me in a box.
But honestly, number one, it needs simple structure. It can’t be too complicated because what we really need is this idea of the, I can’t even think of the word. Hello. Welcome to my executive function and the fact that I was time blind and a little late for my own Facebook live. What’s the word? Scaffolding. That’s the word I’m looking for.
So we need this scaffolding. We need enough structure that it’s simple that it keeps us within the confines of what we’re doing. So simple structure.
The first thing that you need to have is a plan that works with your uniquely wired brain so it can’t be too structured. It can’t be too complicated. It can’t take more time to manage the plan. Because again, we have more time blindness than it can to create the plan.
Simple, simple, simple.
It needs to have enough of the scaffolding and the railings that keep us moving in the direction we wanna be going so that we don’t end up squirrel. What was that over there?
This is a really nice, pretty shiny object and I wanna take care of it right now. No, no. And maybe you can squirrel because you do have a lot of brilliant ideas, but we wanna keep it within broad structure, simple structure and scaffolding to keep you moving forward.
So number one thing that your plan needs to help you work effectively with a uniquely wired brain is just, one might even say just the minimum amount of structure that you personally need to keep going forward. So that’s number one.
#2 Flexibility
Number 2 is that you need to have flexibility so you can have creativity because we do wanna have enough room to go, oh, but this idea is still within the constraints. Last year, perfect example, last year I decided around November to create something called Canaanukkah. And Hanukkah was really early last year. So I decided to have an eight day, eight day celebration with learning and prizes, because who doesn’t want prizes for Canaanukkah? And the reason I could say yes to it was it’s inside of my goals. It leads into where I’m headed and it still gave me enough creativity to create this thing and give it a try.
We’re doing it again this year, but right now we’re focusing on planning. And having this structure. So it needs to have flexibility, it needs to have enough flexibility for your creativity because especially for our NEURODIVERSE folks, we need to have the ability to bring creativity, play, and fun as part of one of those main motivators that keeps us moving forward.
And if you don’t have freedom, if you don’t feel that experience of freedom within your structure, you won’t play. If it feels too confined, you will break the structure down. Be like, you can’t put me in this box. So it needs to have just the right amount of structure that keeps you moving forward and just the right amount of flexibility for creativity and play and novelty so that you can have a new idea and go, hmm, I like this idea. Does it fit inside of my big strokes of structure? Can I play and move forward? And that’s a good way to help you figure it out.
#3 Keep Things Visible
Then, so one is structure. We need this scaffolding. Number two. It’s so weird to do this backwards cuz I’m dyslexic. And anyway, number two is the flexibility so that you can have creativity. And last but not least is your structures need to be visible. They need to be visibly appealing. Even for those of us who aren’t visual processors, we need to have our structure in a place, in a way so that we don’t forget it. We don’t forget to check it.
We don’t whether it’s printed, whether it’s on your desktop, whether you have a reminder. One of the things about plans is plans are not just the actual planning process, but the plan is the scaffolding itself. And so because we are time blind in the last couple weeks, I think I have learned, I am also food blind. I think I made this one up myself, but I don’t think about eating until somebody is eating in front of me. I don’t think about stopping to get food because I get lost in my hyperfocus and I get lost in my work and I start my day with my coffee and then I coffee myself until I stop doing something. Or somebody eats in front of me and then I wanna eat what they’re eating.
I always wanna eat what my husband’s eating because I’m food blind.
I think that is also true about the structures and the support that we need. If we don’t get present to something until it’s reminded. I have a little text reminder that says, Hey, don’t forget to sign up for your health savings account. And I went in to send my project manager a note about something else and there was the reminder, don’t forget to send that for your HSA, and I was like, oh honey, we need to talk about health savings accounts.
Because if it’s not visibly present, visibly accessible, somewhere where you see it and it’s appealing. So that it’s bright. One of the reasons we made the planner with lots of bright colors and bright pages is so that you see it.
Because otherwise if it gets lost, you won’t use it as a structure. So these are the three things that we need. And did I mention that I have created the Neurodiversity Planning System I have for my uniquely wired brain, for your uniquely wired brain. And it has all of the things that we’ve talked about. It has enough structure, it has simplicity, it has room for flexibility and creativity.
I don’t think I can share screen, but I would love to show you inside what it looks like. I have broken it down for the printable version in section, so you don’t have to go looking through a 50 something page planner. Instead you can go, oh, I just wanna look at the big picture right now and start with my annual view.
Or, I just want some weekly pages or daily pages and I just want a to-do list or a habit tracker. All of these things are included. And if you would like to find out more, it’s in the description above. Because another thing that I think is super, I’m gonna add this one as a fourth.
The reason we have designed a live event. Planning day is a live event where you can join in because some of us really need help to harness our focus, harness our attention to be able to move through. One of the things that we really need, and one of the best tools for this is body doubling, aka working in groups together.
Enter planning day. Planning day here we come. Organizing on our way, getting our day moving and flying, improv, singing. Anyway, so the idea is you may not, if you’re watching this and you’re thinking, Hmm, yes, I’ll get to planning someday, well, if you don’t have it in a schedule, in a structure, invest yourself in the time. You might not actually give yourself the best tool to set yourself up for success.
How Planning Day Works
For 2023, join us Planning day is next week, Wednesday, the 16th of November. We have planning at 9:00 AM Pacific on the 16th, and it’s also at 4:00 PM which would be the morning of the 17th for my Australians and New Zealand folks. And it’s at a good enough time that I don’t think you have to get up at crack of dawn that would be tough. Nine o’clock is as early as I like to start.
Anyway, we have planning day and what that provides you is the structure, enough structure, enough accountability to show up and be there with people so that you can focus on creating your plan for 2023. So you can get the broad strokes in the big picture and take the time.
We are actually gonna go through and take the time to narrow it down. We are gonna start with the big picture and create our vision all the way out in the future to where we really wanna go. Dream big and create those big rocks. Write a book. I have that one on my list. What are those things that are your big goals?
And then we’re gonna brain dump all the different ways to get there. Step two. Then we’re going to highlight and choose the ones that we think will really work. And then we’re gonna put them in some structure and break it down into a timeline, into smarter goals so that you have specific, measurable, actionable, risky, risky. So you stretch and time-bound.
Seven essence based, who am I going to be while I do ’em? And relevant for the lifestyle and the life and all the things that you wanna have. So we’re gonna have that. We’re gonna break ’em down. We’re gonna do all of this on planning day. So, but by the end of the work time, again, we’re doing it twice.
You can come to one or you can come to both. It’s the same thing both morning and evening. We’re gonna go through that whole neurodiversity planning framework so that by the end of the day, you have your annual goals and you have your quarterly goals, and you have a really good idea of what you need to do. So when you sit down at your desk, you know what to focus on. So you have the things that are going to move your business forward so that you’ve got focus so that you know what to put your attention on. And so you know how to move your business forward into the realm of, I was gonna say possibilities, which yes, I love possibilities, but what I really wanted to say was profitability, possibilities.
So join me for the neurodiverse planning day. Get the system. It’s a whole system. It’s not just a planner. We have the planning framework we’re going to use on planning day, which you can listen to and do whenever you want. You could do it quarterly. Go through it whenever you want to assess your planning.
That’s up number six. And then, and then, and then, right, we’re going to move forward. So come join us.
Quick Recap
Three things that you need for a neurodiverse brain just to wrap it up. One, you need a simple structure that has enough structure to keep you moving where you want to go. Two, enough flexibility for creativity and play to keep our adhd mind a motivated mind for our neurodiversity. We need to have that motivator involved. And three, it needs to be visibly aware or you need to have stimulating reminders to keep it present so you don’t forget about it altogether to keep you moving forward. And the bonus was to do your planning with a group of people. Join us live for planning day and you will have 30-50 some odd planning buddies with you so that we get the day moving forward.
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