Hinesh Chauhan describes a productivity collapse over Thanksgiving caused by ADHD, stress, and illness. His usual fixes are three daily tasks, strict routines, and exercise. After 14 hours of sleep and rehydration, he bounced back and wants to hear what works for others.
Foreign it's almost midnight on, on one of the nights of Thanksgiving weekend where I've been struggling for the last four days to get any work done other than calls, meetings. I've gotten nothing done because my brain has just been blocked and it's frustrating as anything. And so ultimatum was whatever I didn't get done. Today's Sunday, Monday, the last day of our three day weekend. So I guess early Monday morning now was that I just won't sleep. Otherwise stress and anxiety related to not getting this done is just going to destroy me. And these are moments I've had throughout my life that are really frustrating. And I pull all nighters regularly over my life because it just things stack and stack and stack until it's just too much to bear and it's completely counterproductive. Where that mental constipation stacks up and I'm unable to perform. But then I get to a point where it's all or nothing. If I don't deliver, the consequences are just far too great. So then I'm able to start performing. So things just started going. So you know, try to get that. It's a challenge between getting that low hanging fruit versus jumping into that more complex task, the bigger piece, that's part of the mission because if you just keep attacking the low hanging fruit, that's all you'll ever accomplish. So that's always been a struggle too because like making your bed, it's those small wins. So sometimes that works, most of the time it doesn't and it just takes up time because if you look at the work you need to do in life in general as a giant jar, you put in those giant rocks first, you can fit in all the other stuff, but if you just put in the pebbles in the sand first, the big rocks will fit. So I try to attack three main priorities a day and then three administrative tasks a day. So that, that's just my structure. And when you have adhd, it's living by rules, strict rules, because when these rules fail you, or when you fail because you don't follow the rules, everything falls apart. And then the other aspect is it's not being medicated because ADHD is normally paired with another, I don't want to call it illness, but psychological challenge. For me that anxiety is such a big struggle and for me to be able to stay on top of it, what I've been doing in a very religious way is attacking the cortisol, the surgeries in my body with regular, regular fitness. And as fall hits, the days get shorter. Throw in some work, travel and overextending myself. And then a little cold, a little cold threw off my routine entirely. Entirely. Where my sleep was disruptive, disrupted rather, I wasn't able to. I was just foggy, thinking, needed more sleep, was unable to do a couple days of work. And this is where it all snowballed and everything fell apart. So today, Today, after sleeping 14, 14 hours last night, I don't know how much that was my body needing and how much it was my body or my brain hiding, but I think I really needed it and seemed to be insanely dehydrated without knowing it. I drank so much water and yesterday and today and I didn't have to wake up in the middle of the night to pee. But this, this has been tremendously frustrating. So really from Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, five days of the inability to do to anything, to do anything, I think I not even laundry, I wasn't able to tackle anything. It wasn't until I woke up this morning after those 14 hours of sleep and a lot of water that I was able to start tackling things to vacuum, to fix my dishwasher or clean it out, to start laundry, to do a bunch of things but not really get into the complicated work like my quote unquote day job work. So now it's quarter after midnight and I've just been able to shrink my inbox down into a single Paige. I don't think this hasn't happened in a really long time. So this, ladies and gentlemen, is my win for the moment and I wanted to share this and celebrate it because this is going to be the catalyst for the next however many hours before I sleep again because there is an insane amount of things that now need to get done that weren't done over the last near week. So to those who also have adhd, what strategies do you have? Because this, this has, has been my only strategies where you just get so bunged up that you need to just push through for the night and, and skip the shame and self criticism because I lived through that and that brought me to my knees with inflammation and illness. So getting out of those lower vibrational energies or em bringing it up to perseverance and even anger to push through and have that little pep talk with yourself in the mirror to overcome that hurdle. What do you guys do? What are your tricks to get through these moments to tackle that list? Because really this is what I need to do to basically earn a paycheck and, and not disappoint people who are relying on me for the work that I'm doing. There's other things that I'm behind on, personal administration, taxes, and all that fun stuff. So that's my overextended rant on my struggles as an ADHDer, an entrepreneur ADHD, where that entrepreneur superpower of being able to piece things together very much helps me in doing what I do and doing it very well. But then on the other hand, when it comes to my personal performance and any challenges I get, when I get tired, when I get stressed, when I get sick, and that whole equilibrium I require to be able to perform falls apart, then I cannot perform. So how do you overcome that? Share, please.
