Hey there, it's Erica here. Today I'm going to chat a little bit about how you can handle those moments of To Do List overwhelm when you have ADHD. And the first thing I have to say to you guys is if you're listening to this, and you have had this experience, or you're having it now, you know, the kind of thing where you feel like there are so many things on my to do list that I don't even know where to start, just know that you are not alone. This is a really common experience for people with ADHD. And I think it's the source of why so many people are actually under appreciated, for the amount of stress that they're managing with their ADHD brain, because it's not just the fact that you have this Ferrari brain that's moving so fast and taking so much in at the moment. But frequently, people with ADHD have these lives where they feel as if they never ever get through what they feel like they need to do each day. And it just cascades over and over. I think for example of many of the people who have come to coaching in this situation, just recently, I had a new client come to me and explain that he had this persistent sense of close to panic and overwhelm. And he finally sat down and wrote out all the things that he felt he needed to do. And there were 47 different projects. And when he looked at that list, compared to the fact that he really, really wanted to take this upcoming vacation with his wife that was planned, he didn't even know where to start. So related to that, I'm going to share with you a handful of tips that have worked with me or with some of my clients on figuring out where to start when you're facing that kind of situation. The first one is, find a time to sit down and do a little planning. But when you do it, first, ask yourself, is there anything that if it is not handled in the next three hours, it is going to cause me a very big problem, though, for example, if it's the last day to put your taxes in the mail to get it postmarked in time, and you have the envelope just sitting there on the counter, but you've managed to not mail it yet. Go mail that, and then come back to doing the planning. And so if you can sit down to do some planning, with the sense that there is nothing within the next three hours that has to get handled, because it would create a big problem, it can give you a little bit of perspective, so that you can actually go through the planning process and reduce a little bit of that sense of panic.The next tip might seem obvious, but it's so critical. And it's to have a to do list. And ideally, to have one to do list. One place where you keep track in a written form on paper actually works for a lot of people with ADHD but on your computer too. And you can list everything that comes up for you as something you feel that you need to do. And it's often really helpful for people to just start the brain dump, to do it quickly to feel like you might not have to get everything but just start getting it out. I also find it can be really helpful for people who have this experience. And I think a lot of ADHD ears, including me habit that you keep, oh, I keep forgetting that I have to do that. And it's really important. Oh, I forgot about that. To do two things. First of all, have the to do list be out there so that you can always keep adding to it. Because the likelihood that you're going to think of everything and the moment that you sit down to update, it probably not going to happen. And the other thing is, it can be really helpful to have a permanent or permanent for a couple months list of your main projects and of your main priorities that you can scan when you're sitting down to kind of note everything you have to do. And that might trigger your memory on something you know. So for example, I mean, I have on mine, my extended family, and it will remind me, oh my gosh, I have two birthdays coming up, I need to think about what I'm going to do for that. And I might not have thought of that otherwise, but it makes it a lot easier. If I have something I can scan. Another tip that I think is a really critical one is practising this experience of being able to notice how urgent things are and how important they are. And this is sometimes not that obvious. So don't worry if it's kind of unclear or ask for help. But you know, what I mean by this is look at your list and say to yourself, Okay, which of these things really needs to get done in the next three days, the next three weeks, maybe the next three hours, like we started with? Maybe you haven't yet done the taxes and they're due in a month, and you really need to do them in the next three weeks. Right? So you can start to kind of assign how urgent things are. And then you can also look at things and, and realise okay, it seems as if everything's really important, but really, what are the critical things? What are those things that if I don't handle them, it's going to cause a lot of problems or what are the things that I've decided are really really important to me right now and I might not be making time for and I really want to make time for it.So once you can start noting that essentially things kind of fall into four categories, right? You've got the stuff that is not at all urgent, and it's really not important. Maybe this is like rewatching, a television series that is fun to watch. You don't really need to do those things, you can drop them. The other thing is, you've got the urgent stuff that's really important. So that's what you're going to do first. But the challenging stuff is what I call the good news. And the bad news are the important but not urgent stuff. And this is where almost everyone I know, and especially ADHD, or has run into a lot of challenges. Because these things like sitting down to do your unpleasant to do taxes that are due in a month, is very hard to motivate yourself to do. I mean, we're so much more likely to do what's urgent, what's in our face, what's sort of sparkling right now or what someone happens to call and ask us if we want to do and that bias towards doing things that are urgent, even if they're not important, over the things that are these good news, the important but not urgent, is really critical. And that habit, if you can move just a bit more towards doing the things that are important. And finding a way to do them, is the kind of thing that really can reduce stress overall, in a long term web.So the biggest tip with dealing with your good news is to actually schedule a time when you're going to do it. So that you're at least helping yourself to not forget about it. and schedule a time. That's the amount of time you need to do it. Because often those things that are important, like taxes, take a while it's the kind of work that's often what we call deep work. And so it really requires knowing that you're going to work on that. Now, it's a totally other thing. I'll talk about it in other moments about how to actually do what you plan to do at that moment. But if you can get into this habit sorting urgent from important and start scheduling the things that are important and not urgent, and noting that the do nows are the things that are urgent and important, you'll start to be able to make some sense of that list that can feel really overwhelming.And my last tip is that when you do know, what is important, put it in your face, you know, we tend to get distracted by things that come up that are in our face that someone tells us about or that you know occur to us in the moment. But you have to find a way to put what's important in your face all the time. So that keeps being what you notice. So I have like a love affair with post. It's not everyone does, right. But how it looks for me is I have a post it in front of me that I can't help looking at because it's on my computer screen. And it lists two things that are really important to do to remember. And so I'm always seeing them and it kind of helps to compete in my brain with the things it just keeps sort of dinging or ringing or a text came in. It's a way of keeping it present to you, and especially making it visual can help tremendously for folks with ADHD.So it's a lot of stuff. But I hope some of these strategies might help you to manage this to do list overwhelm that honestly, almost every person I know with ADHD has faced at some moment or another. So here's my speedy recap. Tip number one, do a reality check to calm yourself down. Ask yourself, is there anything I have to do in the next three hours? Tip number two habit to do list and ideally just one central to do list and maybe alongside a list of projects and priorities that you can scan so that when you add stuff to the to do list, you're reminded about what's important. Tip number three, start practising noticing whether things are important or urgent and organise them into categories according to how urgent they are and how important they are. And then the last one is put it in your face. Once you figure out what those issues are, what those important but not urgent things are or what those important and urgent things are. You can write them down and put them in your face so that you're helping to make sure that you're keep paying attention to them and that you don't get overly distracted by what happens to come up. Okay, this is me signing off until next time, good luck, everyone.