Challenges of ADHD: producing creative work consistently.

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Challenges of ADHD: producing creative work consistently.

What can make it hard for creatives with ADHD to produce work consistently over time? And what can help? Part one of a two-part blog.

For me the definition of creating on a consistent basis means to create something regularly. Many of us in creative fields need to be able to produce work on a regular basis in order to keep income flowing in. There are projects to complete, work to hand on to others where work involves more than one person, due dates for submission, deliveries to consider, publishing deadlines to meet.

You could say that producing work consistently is going to involve several different stages

  • Having initial ideas
  • Preparation and planning
  • Getting started
  • Carrying out the work, and continuing to work on it over time making adjustments as needed.
  • Getting it finished and out of the door.

I hear a lot from people with ADHD who tell me they are able to do something quite well for a while, then it lapses for one reason or another. It can be days, weeks, or months before they realise they have stopped, and even longer before they find a way to return to it.

Could it be due to novelty wearing off?

Could it be that the buzz that comes from achieving something at first, is no longer providing the juice of motivation needed to continue, as soon as it begins to become routine?

Could it be to do with getting easily thrown off course by external events like interruptions or distractions?

Could it be because self-directed transitions are hard for those of us with ADHD, so returning to something again once you have stopped presents problems?

There are many possible answers to this conundrum, as everyone has their own particular “brand” of ADHD. Yes, we are all different.

Years ago I used to believe that I could only paint when I felt like it. Then, on occasions when I did feel like it, I would not be organised enough in my materials to make a start. By not organised enough I mean, for example, that my paper would be stored in one place, my paints and brushes in another, and I didn’t have a dedicated clear workspace to work in, etc. This caused me no end of frustration, as I often could not find what I was looking for, and on many occasions I spent so long looking with no success, that I finally gave up in disgust. Painting accomplished – nil.

I also think on reflection that I may have been slightly affected by inflexible thinking, as I would get hyper-focused on finding the exact brush or paper that I had thought of using, whereas, looking back now I wonder, why didn’t I just use my creativity to improvise and do something else?

Hyperfocus is an interesting one for ADHD creatives, as it can either take the form of “helpful hyperfocus” which enables us to be immensely productive, or “hindering hyperfocus”, as in the example above. Sometimes we can experience a combination of both! I’ll have more to say about hyperfocus and creativity in a future blog.

In the end, once I realised that ADHD was an issue for me, I found a great piece of advice by Dr. Ned Hallowell. His recommendation is to only get as organised as you need to, to achieve what you want, without taking organisation too far and getting embroiled in perfectionism. Doing this has certainly helped take my own productivity in painting to a whole new level.

For now, here are three tips you can try, if producing work consistently is eluding you.

TIP one: To help take that first step towards creating, have everything you need set up in advance for yourself and to hand, so that it becomes really easy to begin. Preparation is one key to avoiding frustration and inertia.

TIP two: If getting prepared seems like a bit of a chore, try separating it out into a standalone activity, and then take a break and go away. Making yourself a drink or going for a walk can provide enough of a break for it to seem like a completely separate activity. Then when you return to begin your creative project, voila! There is your workspace and everything you need to get started immediately. Getting going feels much smoother and more effortless.

TIP three: Beware of thoughts telling you it has to be done in a certain way. You’re a creative after all; some of the best inventions and creations in the world have come from happy accidents or from people making it up as they go along. Keep that inner flexibility and creative muscle well-exercised.

Another thing to understand is that if we wait until our brains and bodies are in the state we believe is ideal for creating before we begin, like I used to, then we risk either at worst not achieving anything at all, or at best only a fraction of what we could be capable of.

So instead of the “Do I feel inspired to create today?” criteria, we need some other way of getting ourselves to create regularly – which is what I understand by consistency. Someone once said that our lives are defined by the questions we ask ourselves.

What might we be capable of if we changed the question above to, “What do I feel inspired to create today?” Feel the difference in those two questions. The first asks for a simple yes or no answer, while the second question opens up a whole world of possibilities.

What kind of questions are you asking yourself when you set out to create something? The first kind, or the second? And which will you be using next time?

In part two of this blog we will be examining ways to get unstuck if your creative projects grind to a halt.

Anna Schlapp B.A., AACC, ACC, is a certified coach with the ADD Coach Academy and the International Coach Federation. Specialising in ADHD and Creativity, Anna helps talented people like you find ways of being more creatively productive and productively creative.

Get in touch to schedule your complimentary coaching session with Coach Anna.

 

 

Procrastination : How ADHD Traits Can Derail Productivity for Creative Entrepreneurs

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Procrastination Isn’t Always Intentional: How ADHD Traits Can Derail Productivity For Creative Entrepreneurs.  Part One of a Two Part Blog

Procrastination most likely affects us all at one time or another. My recent search of Amazon yielded over 3000 results for books on the subject. Someone must be reading them! This behaviour of putting things off until a future unspecified time, commonly known as ”procrastination”, probably doesn’t occur on a daily, hourly, or even minute by minute basis for most of us, and it can be particularly poignant for those of us with ADD/ADHD when it does.

Procrastination can be perceived as intentional, i.e. you are aware of putting something off, and unintentional, i.e. it just happens because of the interplay between other factors.

So, what is it about ADD/ADHD that makes the creative entrepreneurs among us with this condition so exceptionally good at procrastinating? Beneath the surface, things are not always what they may seem…

There are quite a few factors that come into play. Here are just a couple.

Working memory:  

Imagine a brain that’s as full of creative ideas as a pan of popcorn with no lid on. Ideas are continually popping into existence, but because the pan has no lid on many of them are escaping.

Then see yourself trying to catch hold of those ideas before they can slip off, because they are great ideas! One minute there you are holding in your mind a fantastic concept for how your whole business could be run more efficiently, and the next minute it has skittered off down a side alley never to be seen again! Have that happen several times a day for years and years of your life and how would you be feeling? How can you start something brilliant that you cannot reliably get a hold of a lot of the time? Devastating!

Or imagine your brain is like a computer that intermittently keeps losing its internet connection. You try going to a website to look something up, you know the information is there, but you cannot reliably access it when you need it. How frustrating is that!

Even if you can recall or keep hold of your ideas, this next trait makes it hard to work on them;

An aversion towards routine:

Suppose you have an inexplicable dread of doing the same things in the same way every day. What would it be like to hate routine? How many things would get put off as a result? ADDers often have a dislike of routine and can even have an aversion to the very word “routine”. Maybe it’s something to do with the need for novelty and stimulation and the fact that things that become boring are painful to the person with ADHD; repeating the same things over and over can literally feel excruciating.

Many of my clients are highly talented in their creative field, yet the thought of e.g. sending regular emails out to their list of potential buyers fills them with inertia. For the creative entrepreneur this can be problematic in that in any business there are a number of routine responsibilities, such as keeping on top of finances, or regular marketing activities, which help the business run smoothly.

If left uncompleted, things begin to pile up, adding psychic stress to the already complex mix of other ADD/ADHD traits. Things like paying bills or submitting tax returns can carry an unpleasant financial penalty if they are not done. The uneasy feeling of potential punishments hanging in the air means the ADD/ ADHD brain is that much more likely to succumb to overwhelm, and grind to a full stop. Procrastination reigns.

The brain saves energy when habits or routines are repeated and they become automatic. The person acquiring these habits will find they are able to complete them faster and easier as time goes on. Yet ADDers often find these tasks so gruelling that they never repeat them the same way for long enough for this to happen. Something usually comes along to knock them off trajectory, something more interesting, and I don’t think to date I have met a person with ADD/ADHD who didn’t have many interests and enthusiasms, past and present.

So, what’s the solution? :  Well, for a start, it can be helpful simply to understand that if something more interesting presents itself at a time that needs to be devoted to something perceived as boring, then the interesting thing will be the one that gets the attention.

Knowing that many routine tasks can get put off by default, can be a guide to where you can direct your energies in building strategies to address these tendencies. For some tips see my blog on How to Tackle the Boring Stuff here

For some this can mean finding ways to capture ideas quickly before they disappear into the Abyss of Forgotten Memories, while for others it might mean strategies to make the Boring become more Interesting.                                                                     

However it occurs, the reality is that putting things off can have dire effects on productivity, and for creative entrepreneurs, every minute counts. Delaying action for whatever reason, is liable to short-circuit your profit margins and your self-esteem if left unchecked.

In Part 2 I’ll be putting some more ADD/ADHD traits under the spotlight and considering how they also can contribute to the complex phenomenon we know as Procrastination.

Anna Schlapp B.A., AACC, ACC, is a certified coach with the ADD Coach Academy and the International Coach Federation. Specialising in ADHD and Creativity, Anna helps talented people like you find ways of being more creatively productive and productively creative.

Get in touch to schedule your complimentary coaching session with Coach Anna.