I am not particularly good at slowing down. I’m actually very good at doing.
My ADHD brain likes movement, novelty, and possibility. And once I establish a routine, that routine tends to take on a life of its own. The newsletter is written. The podcast gets recorded. The clients get seen. Eventually, the things I normally do can start feeling like things I have to do.
Those aren’t necessarily the same thing.
Everything can’t be a MUST
This is an ongoing challenge for me, and it’s something I see frequently with other neurodivergent people. We can struggle not only with remembering and completing tasks, but with assigning the appropriate weight to them.
The kid’s school party sign-up, the laundry, the unanswered email, the work deadline, the doctor’s appointment, the groceries, and the thing we promised somebody three weeks ago can all show up in our brains demanding attention. Some really are urgent. Others just feel urgent because they’re unfinished, expected, or part of our routine.
I have a ridiculously mundane example from my own life.
Garbage pickup at my house is Wednesday morning, so Tuesday night I take the garbage out. Except sometimes I forget. Then at 11:30 p.m., when I’m already in bed, I remember.
Cue the internal dialogue:
I really should get up. But I’m already in bed. But the garbage needs to go out. But I’m exhausted. But then I’ll have twice as much garbage next week—the bin might overflow . . .
The amount of time I can spend negotiating with myself, and the stress I feel about it, is completely disproportionate to the actual stakes.
Because you know what happens if I don’t take my garbage out one week?
Almost certainly nothing. Maybe it gets a little smelly, but I’m not sticking my nose in there, so what does it matter?
The garbage sits there until next Wednesday.
My brain, however, has categorized Take garbage out Tuesday night as something that happens. Not doing it registers as a problem to solve rather than an entirely reasonable choice based on my capacity that particular Tuesday.
Obviously, not everything in life is as simple as garbage night. There are responsibilities we really can’t postpone. But that’s exactly why prioritization matters.
If everything gets treated like a MUST, we’re using the same finite resources on things that matter enormously and things that really don’t.
Lately, I’ve been taking a harder look at my own MUSTs.
For quite a while, I’ve been writing personal essays here every other week, with a new podcast episode on the alternate weeks. Each podcast also means short video clips, descriptions, and thumbnails. For more than three years, I’ve hosted a two-hour monthly meeting with some of my most trusted professional colleagues in the neurodiversity field. Somewhere in the midst of all of that, I wrote my first book and launched a new publishing company focused on illuminating neurodiversity.
Then there are the businesses behind all of it. I manage a team, oversee the finances, make strategic decisions, troubleshoot problems, and handle the countless behind-the-scenes details that keep things running.
Oh, and I also provide consultations and ongoing coaching every week to clients who need help in their relationships. Let’s not forget that part!
And I’m a single mom to two neurodivergent college kids who aren’t quite out of the nest yet. They’re increasingly independent, but, as anyone with young adult kids knows, almost launched and fully launched are not the same thing.
I’m not listing all of this to impress you, but to impress upon you how easily things pile up. Once these things became part of my routine, none of them felt particularly optional to my brain, even as my overwhelm continued to grow.
Classic ADHD.
Go and go and go until burnout forces an exhausted collapse or life forces a slow down.
I wish I could say I recognized what was happening and proactively made some brilliant strategic decisions. I didn’t. Some things outside of my work life have demanded more of my attention recently, forcing me to look more closely at what I’ve been calling a MUST.
And right now, the real MUSTs are pretty clear: my health, my family, meeting my financial obligations, and taking care of the clients who rely on me.
Some other things matter very much to me. But mattering doesn’t automatically make them mandatory.
So, I’m slowing my pace down.
I’ll probably publish these essays about once a month for a while.
The YOUR Neurodiverse Relationship podcast is also winding down for a break, although we still have a few episodes coming—including a conversation I’m VERY excited to share with you with Dr. Tony Attwood. Yes, that Tony Attwood. 😊
I’m also hoping to release a new and improved version of my holiday survival guide for couples this year. Ironically, prioritizing our MUSTs is something I talk about in that webinar every year. Whether I actually finish the new version will depend on how much of a pause I need.
And I’m trying to be okay with that.
Because slowing down doesn’t work particularly well if I immediately fill the space with something else. (My ADHD brain has approximately 37 suggestions.)
Maybe that’s the bigger lesson in all of this. Sometimes capacity changes before our expectations of ourselves do. We keep doing things because we’ve always done them, because they’re expected, or simply because we’d prefer to get them done.
But when everything is a MUST, nothing really is.
So I’m giving myself permission to let some things happen less often, let others wait, and let a few things not happen at all for a while.
You’ll still hear from me. I have a full library of thoughts, experiences, and ideas queued up in my mind that I want to write about, teach, and share. There will just be a little more space between getting them out of my mind and onto the page.
And on the occasional Tuesday night, the garbage may just have to wait until next week.
Maybe it’s worth taking a look at your own MUST list, too. What genuinely has to happen right now—and what have you labeled a MUST simply because it’s what you normally do, what someone expects, or what you’d prefer to get done?
What would actually happen if you did it less often, postponed it, asked someone else to handle it, or simply didn’t do it this time?
You might discover that something you’ve been carrying is heavier than the consequences of putting it down.