Dopamine To-Do Lists

Sam. Hello and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. I help ADHD business owners make more money in less time with fewer distractions by showing you exactly how you can pick a profitable niche, create an offer that people actually want to buy, and learn to market and sell it in a way that doesn't make you want to vomit. So, anyway, and I also have adhd. So today we're talking about how do you plan to do lists based on your dopamine levels? Because if you're new to the world of adhd, maybe you just got a diagnosis or you're like me who got diagnosed as a kid, but then, like, was never taught anything about it and really didn't notice anything until, like, any of the symptoms, really, until you started working for yourself. And it's like, oh, my God, this is hard. Anyway, I've been on a journey since I started my business, since I started really figuring out how I do the things that I do in a way that makes me feel good about it, that I feel productive, that, you know, it's just generative, that makes me feel excited for what I'm doing and not like, I'm always behind. One of the things that I found myself constantly following, falling into the pit of despair on is my to do lists. And how this would generally work is I would write up a to do list when I had all this energy. I would. And these are those high energy days where you're inspired and you feel super creative. Those are high dopamine days. Okay, so those are the days when you have a lot of dopamine in your system. And if you're not familiar with what that means for people with adhd, we don't have consistent dopamine levels. Okay. So dopamine is the chemical in your body that actually gets your brain to say, oh, we know that we have to do the thing. Let's get up and do the thing, right? So if you don't have enough dopamine, you can be in your head being like, I know I have to do it. I have to do the thing. I want to do the thing. It's there. I have to go and do this thing on the to do list. And if there's not enough dopamine in your head, then there's just no way you're going to get up and do it. So I would make. Oh, God, I would make these to do lists for high dopamine, Katie. And I'm like, oh, all excited. And I'M like, this is. I organized my life, and, you know, now I'm going to go and do my life and all the things. And the next day when I got to do the work, typically it was a low dopamine day, because usually a high dopamine day is not followed by another high dopamine day. Usually use up a lot of dopamine in that first day, and then you spend the next couple of days, like, kind of building it back up. This is not helpful, because on that second day, what. What typically happens is you're looking at this list that you made when you had a lot of dopamine, you had a lot of energy, and you're thinking, okay, yeah, I know. Like, this is a really great idea. I have to do everything on this list. And you just don't do it. You don't do it. You're so tired, you don't have the energy. Your executive dysfunction is acting up, and you start feeling like a failure. Like, all day, you're like, I know what I have to do. Why can't I do it? And it's literally because you just don't have enough dopamine in your system. Now, how this kind of snowballs is typically when you have a high dopamine day where you come up with all the things that you need to do, and then you have a low dopamine day where you don't follow through on all the things that you assigned yourself to do the next day. When you look back at that list, everything on that list is associated with failure because you failed to do all the things. Okay, that's. It was your fault. You failed. You know, like, none of this stuff is fun anymore, because even if you do it in your mind, you've already fallen behind on it. Even though you're the one setting the expectations and the deadlines, you've fallen behind on it. So, like, who cares if it gets done because, you know it's already behind? You know, it's like handing in an assignment late for a class that, like, if you hand in late, there's no credit, which is such an awful system. And I wonder if maybe that's where we get it from. Like those kind of punitive deadline systems that schools kind of, like, you know, beat into us from an early age. Hated those. Anyways, there's, like, nothing worse than, like. Like procrastinating on a paper and then missing the deadline and then having to write the paper for a D because you're handing in late. It's the worst. Anyway, you can't tell that I did that once. No, never. Anyway, so that's a choice. That is an option. It's an option that a lot of us go by by default because it's the neurotypical way of organizing our tasks, right? So to typically when we learn how to organize our work and how to like how we're going to tackle stuff, we learn it from neurotypicals, we learn it from the people who've organized the world. And you know, that's nice for them. Really, really happy that that works for them. Does not work for us. It just does not. There's a better way, however. So something that I, I have started doing that makes a massive difference when I'm trying to organize my thoughts. Really want to get a lot of stuff done, but also have to account for these high and low dopamine days is I actually make two lists, okay? I make a list of all the things that I know will require high dopamine day. Because when a high dopamine day hits, you don't want to use any of that, like judge any of that mojo to try to figure out what you should be working on. You kind of just want to be able to like eyeball list, be like that. That's what I'm excited for today. Let me dive into that and just roll with it. Okay. On a high dopamine day, if you can bypass the decision making, you're going to get that much more done. On a low dopamine day, however, there's another list of stuff, right? Because you're not going to be able to tackle the high dopamine stuff. If you have to do anything that's creative, if you have to do any like, like major analytical, you know, high level stuff like that's really, really hard on a high do. On a low dopamine day, those are generally high dopamine tasks. So on low dopamine days, you want to give yourself a list of activities that once you do them, you can feel super accomplished. And I will be honest here. Hello Citizen Kane. Welcome. I will be honest here. I'm personally having a low dopamine day right now. And one of the things that I do when I'm having a low dopamine day is I go live because I know a gives me energy. Like I love being live and I love talking to you guys and I love like putting on my little show here just and improving it. Like that gives me life. Also it checks a box for me. So in my like daily to do calendar, my, my habit Tracker Go live is a daily thing. It's something that I'm trying to be much more conscious of doing more and more often, partially because I love it and partially because it's just such a great way for me to remind my world that I exist. Right? And for anyone who's, like, just getting to know me in the social media worlds, for them to kind of see how I operate, you know, like, I don't do this scripted. I. I don't even have any notes for this. Like, this is. I wrote up the post and went live and that was pretty much it. And if you're watching this on Instagram, you don't see the post yet. It's over. On another thing, I'll. I'll post it when I. When I share this and upload it anyway. But going live is one of the things on my low dopamine list. Now, that might not be a low dopamine thing for you on your list. It could be anything from going and commenting on like 10 people's posts. It could be reposting something to social media that you posted maybe two months ago. It could be responding to emails. The goal with low dopamine days is you want to give yourself stuff to do in the early part of the day. That's an easy win. Like a super fucking easy win. Okay? That is the best thing you can do for yourself because when you have a little list of things that you need to do and you cross one off, you get a little drip of dopamine, and then you cross another thing off, you get another little drip of dopamine. So I don't care if on that low dopamine list, like you have, brush your teeth, walk your dog, eat breakfast, you know, sign into LinkedIn, check, check what's going on in the world. You know, as you cross those things off, you're going to get another and another and another drip of dopamine, and that will snowball into letting you do more high dopamine tasks later in the day. You know, most of the time. Most of the time, with some exceptions. Sometimes you have a low dopamine day and it stays low dopamine day and you give yourself like. So for me, whenever I have a super low dopamine day and I'm tired, like last night in Sleep well, the wind was just horrendously loud. It's just unreasonably loud. And the last few days, I've been really, like, chugging along on big creative projects. I've been giving it my all, just pouring my soul into a bunch of stuff. So today's the low dopamine day. On low dopamine days, what I typically like have on my list is comment on a bunch of people's posts on social media. Thankfully. Thankfully, Sunday night, Katie Pre wrote all of my content for the week. So part of what I have to do today is just post the things that I already wrote. Okay, so that's magic. So something to think about when you have those high dopamine days, it might be batching content so that you can have it in the bank for when you know you're going to have a low dopamine day. Just. Just a suggestion. You know, the other thing that I love to do when I have a low dopamine day is do things that are actually really fun for me. So for instance, I'm doing a challenge or it's not really a challenge. It's my gift, my holiday gift to my world. It's called the 10 Days to Stop Being a Weenie and get to six figures in 12 months. It's a play on the song the 12 Days of Christmas. Like it's a stretch though, and it's not. It doesn't rhyme, it's not musical. I'm not gonna sing it. But every single day for 12 days, I'm gonna be sending emails to the people who signed up for it, training them on a thing that will help them get to six figures in the next 12 months. So the full year of 2024, they're going to know exactly all the areas that they're going to have to work on if they go through this little like 12 day course, and it starts on December 12th, I'm having so much fun creating content for it because it's silly. On low dopamine days, the sillier the better. Like the more kind of besides the point playful, the more you're gonna get out of it. Right? And you know, I think a lot of us hold back that playful side, especially when we're starting our businesses if we're in professional services because we worry that it's not going to come across as professional. Let me tell you something. People don't scour the interwebs for the most bland version of, of a person who could help them solve a particular problem. It's not how it works, okay? People show up on social media to socialize, get the word, with other human beings, to build genuine connections, to build real friendships, to feel, to feel connected, to feel that, that almost intimacy with these other people, right? And if that person Just so happens to provide a service that the viewer, the, the follower needs. Guess what? That's a beautiful excuse to take that relationship further. Right. Your ideal clients are out there and if you show your fun side, it's not going to scare them away. It's actually going to bring them closer. If they're your ideal clients, if they're a good fit for you, the more you do this, the more you're going to scare away clients who are not going to be great for you to work with. So it's, it's honestly one of the best things you can do for your business. Yeah. So on low dopamine days, you really want to prioritize those like easy tasks, things that you can just like get done, cross off the list, feel good about it. You want to have as much fun as possible. You also want to get out like on a low dopamine day. One of the things that can really help you up your dopamine is just going for a walk, taking, taking your dog, if you have a dog, or just getting out of the house and going and seeing something. You don't even have to get out of the car. Like if you just want to drive to a place that you've never been before, just go on a 20 minute drive. You know, getting out of the house, seeing something, changing your perspective div on the world, even if you're not getting out of your car, is a really helpful thing to do to like spur creativity, just get you out of the stale energy that we typically create when we're having a low dopamine day. There's also a practice that if you haven't heard of it, I'm about to share it with you. Weird walks. And it's not that you're walking around like that's not it. On a weird walk, you're basically walking until you see something weird. Okay, these are great in cities because there's so much weird shit in cities. But like, if you want to go and give yourself a boost of dopamine, go and do a weird walk. Walk until you see something weird. It's interesting because it actually gets. It's a mindfulness practice, you know, in its essence because you're walking and you're not looking at your phone because you are just scanning the world, you become super hyper aware of all these random things. And there could be buildings that you walk past every single day that you never notice what color they were. Right. Like that's a really weird shade of orange. Does that count as weird? No, that doesn't qualify as weird, but I'm going to keep looking. You become really hyper aware of everything that's in your vicinity and you get tuned into it in a way that we don't typically do when we're walking by, you know, just on our way from point A to point B. So weird way or weird walk is a great way to give yourself a little dopamine hit. But I mean, at, you know, to set yourself up for success, the best thing you can do for those high dopamine days and those low dopamine days is to have separate to do lists. You know, you have to figure out for you what is the thing that is really easy for you to do on a low dopamine day and what are the things that are a bigger energetic lift that you're going to need more energy for. Your need more creativity, you're going to need, you know, just more judge, more mojo for. Gosh, I'm about to be greeted by my dog. Just heard her coming up the stairs. Anyway, I hope this has been super helpful. If you have any questions, if you're really struggling with like high dopamine, low dopamine, I invite you to come and check out the Weenie Cast. It's my podcast. It's for ADHD business owners to short, sweet, to the point. It's everywhere that podcast can be found. Okay, so YouTube or iTunes, Spotify, all the rest. I don't know the rest. My. My producer puts them everywhere. And also if you want to join the 12 day challenge, the 12 days of stopping Weenie, where I'm going to be laying out the 12 things that you need to do to hit six figures in 2024, then I want you to go. I'm going to upload it actually into my link in for Instagram. But if you're watching this on Instagram, it's. I'm sorry, on LinkedIn, it's my latest post. I have the link in there and I'll also be putting in my link tree. So. But I cannot wait to see you all tomorrow. Hopefully I have more dopamine and until then, have an amazing day everyone. And thanks for watching Citizen jk. Bye.