Goal setting with ADHD? Entirely possible!

Hey, new listener, thanks so much for checking us out. And there's a good chance you have adhd, so I quickly wanted to ask you to please follow this podcast in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or whichever app you're listening to this on, don't leave it until later because you will forget. Thank you, Squirrel. In this episode, we're talking about goal setting, but in the ADHD friendly way. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And welcome to the Weeniecast. Squirrel. Full disclosure, we actually started recording this episode last week and then I completely lost Internet, so we're re recording because I forget what I say pretty much the moment it comes out of my mouth. We figured that it would just be easier to start this episode over than try to get me to refresh on, like, what actually was said, you know, just five days ago. And this is a great example of why goal setting is so hard for people with adhd. Because goal setting is essentially saying something that you want and putting it out into the world and then pursuing that thing. But the key here is that once you say it and you put it out there in the world, you have to remember that you said it and that you put it out in there in the world and you have to remember to actually continue working towards that goal for people with adhd. As you know, we don't remember everything that we say. We have some object permanence issues. If something is out of sight and isn't calling our attention to it constantly, then we can completely forget that it exists. Doesn't mean that we don't want it, it just means we've forgotten about it. This is why when you go to the grocery store, you end up buying more angel hair pasta, even though in your pantry you have 17 bags of it. Because you didn't see it, you didn't look for it, you didn't do the correct assessment for what you needed. When you went to the grocery store, it was out of sight. And because it's something that you tend to like, you're just like, cool, I'll get some more. And soon you can start your own store of angel hair pasta. Very limited selection, obviously, but you could absolutely make some money off of it. People with ADHD need to have a different approach to goal setting than neurotypicals. When we set big goals for ourselves, we have to continuously talk about it. We have to have some reminder out there in our space that will call attention to it constantly that this is what we want. And when I Work with my clients and we're identifying these massive goals that they have for themselves. We have to be careful about overwhelm because going after a massive goal can create so much pressure of all the things that need to be done to get there that you'll just stop in your tracks. So, for instance, one of my big goals that I have for my career is I actually want to have my own TV show. Live from New York at the Weenie Studios, the queen of ADHD business ownership, Katie McManus. I want to be able to travel the country and interview different business owners who are doing interesting things, who are having unique impacts on their communities, who just have great stories. And I want to interview them and I want to showcase them and I want to show the audience exactly how they're doing what they're doing so that all the business owners and want to be business owners in the audience can see how. There's so many ways to build a business. There's no one way that works for everyone. I want to demystify it all and I want to help people in the process. But of course that is a massive goal and I'm not expecting to reach that goal in like the next 10 years. Like it's something that I am going to be actively working towards throughout my life. But the other thing that I know about myself is that big goals like that feel overwhelming to me. And if we were to slap a label on it, it is a long game goal. Oftentimes when we're talking about goals, we think about long game and short game. I actually don't like that terminology because the short game indicates short term wins, right? Short sighted wins wins that help you now, but may not help you in the future. When I think of my long game and the goals that I want to reach, you know, decades from now, what I do for myself and what I do with my clients is we come up with a now game. We come up with actions you, you can take each and every day right now that will get you the results that you need in the next year or so that will create the foundation for you to reach your long term goals. We're not going for short term wins that aren't going to lead to your long term goals. So for instance, a couple episodes ago, I broke down exactly what it takes for you to build a business that has digital products, digital courses, group programs, so on and so forth. And if you want to go listen to that, it is episode 88. You have to start with one on one clients. Now the best part about starting with one on one clients is that your one on one clients are always going to be your fastest path to cash. It fulfills your short term or now goals. But in working with those one on one clients, you're learning what each and every one of them struggles with. That's similar and that helps you decide what your group program is going to be. And as you're rolling out your group program program, you are iterating it, you're iterating your marketing for it, changing little bits, having it go better, having it go worse, recorrecting back to the way you were doing it before. And once you have that dialed in, then you're launching a digital course on something very specific and eventually all of that builds up to your long game goals. There's that question, you know, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. But also, let's not eat elephants. They're endangered and they're really sweet and they're very smart. We're not eating elephants. But if you were to eat elephants, bite by. One of my other favorite movies when I was like a child, when I was a toddler was Cinderella. And you know, that's that like the opening salvo where she's waking up and she's stretching and there are birds all around her and she starts singing. A dream is a wish your heart makes. You know that was a fairy tale. You're not going to sit around dreaming and wishing for something to happen and then have some magic like fairy godmother show up and wave their wand and have everything happen the way you want. We have to set goals, but a goal without a plan is a weak ass. Dream slash wish that your heart makes. It's never going to happen. So when you're thinking about goal setting, here's what I want you to do. Ooh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to find out. But first. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. The hyperfocus community is the inner sanctum of the weeniecast. It's a club that's designed just for you, where you'll learn how to leverage your ADHD to grow your business. In the hyperfocus community, we are realistic about the challenges that face ADHD business owners. And we don't believe in one size fits all solutions. We believe in creating strategies that fit you. On day one of signing up, you'll experience that deep sigh of relief that comes from walking into a room full of people like you who you do not need to mask your quirks in front of in order to fit in because they get you in the membership every single month. You'll get two group calls. One is an ADHD group coaching call and the other is a networking call with fellow ADHD business owners. We will also have coworking sessions designed for the ADHD mind. Monday Get Organized Sprint calls to keep you out of overwhelm. Access to weekly Brave BizLab calls where I will give you practical advice to grow your business. We'll also have the occasional expert training which are absolutely ADHD vetted and of course, community support by folks like you. And those who pay for the year up front get a surprise bonus visit weenicast.com hyperfocused and stop procrastinating the things that will grow your business. That's weeniecast.com hyperfocus or click the link in the episode description so when you're thinking about goal setting, here's what I want you to do. I want you to really figure out what that big dream is. What's that big dream? And that big goal that gets you excited, that kind of scares you, but it's the thing that you know you're destined to do. What is that? Because if we're not excited for our goals, we're never gonna go after them. Like I'm personally not excited to ever run a marathon, so I'm probably not going to put that on my goal sheet. And from that big goal, we have to reverse engineer it into what needs to happen the year before that and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that. And we need to reverse engineer it until we get back to where we are exactly now in this moment. And whatever it is that you have to do in that year, that is your now game. Those are the things that you have to focus on in the here and now to be able to reach that greater goal down the line. This sounds easy. Let me tell you, I can do this for all my clients. I can't do it for myself. I need help to do this for myself. And I do this for a living. So as I say this, you're gonna sit down with your little journal and you're gonna write it out. And you're like, I have no idea what I'm doing. Join the club. There's a reason why there are lots of business coaches out there. Another struggle ADHDers run into when they set goals for themselves is this complete all or nothing approach. So if you have a fitness goal, say you want to get into a certain shape by a Certain time, you'll set up a workout regime that has you working out every single day for like an hour and a half a day. And you have to do it perfectly and you have to have a perfect diet and you have to sleep and blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You're never going to stick to it. But as an adhder, once you fail at one little itty bitty part of that plan, the whole thing is ruined. So we need to very consciously have a balanced approach to the actions we're assigning ourselves to reach our now goals and our long goals. We need to set ourselves up for success and we have to be realistic about what we can accomplish in a day. Tell me if this sounds familiar. You have a to do list, and then you go through your to do list and you're like, cool, I'm going to get 17 of these things done today. And then you get overwhelmed and then you start spiraling. And then you sit in your office for about an hour in executive dysfunction, kind of messing around on LinkedIn because you know you have to do that one thing to get started, but it feels like such a big task that you can't really wrap your brain around where to start. And then it's lunchtime and you figure, okay, well, I need to eat. So you go and you have lunch and then maybe your dog is like begging you to take them out. You're like, okay, I should probably go for a walk. That'll be good for me too. And then you come back and you're like, kind of tired. So you find something easy on the list and you do that one little easy thing. You're like, well, that wasn't enough. And then you probably go and answer some emails and then it's like, time to start making dinner and thinking about the next food that you're having. On days where I'm in executive SP dysfunction, all I can think about is my next meal. And then the day is over. You know, like, you might try to push yourself to do some work in the evening, but really what you're doing is you're just sitting in your office stressing out, not really getting anything done. And then the next day you look at your list and it's like 16 and a half things that you didn't do yesterday. How does that feel? I know, I know. For me, it feels so painful and it feels like I failed and it feels like nothing I do is ever enough. When I talk about being realistic about what you can do, you're never letting yourself assign 17 things for you to do in a day. You assign three. Three realistic tasks that you can get done in a day that will help you reach your now goals. Because, I mean, three is way better than one little measly task, right, that you barely got around to and you felt really sh. Tty while you were doing. You know, once you finish the three that you've assigned yourself, you're going to have this whole flood of dopamine. You're going to feel like you've won the day, and you're far more likely to be like, oh, cool. What else can I get done on this list? Oh, let me just check this one off and this one off. When you limit how much you assign to yourself every single day, you actually get so much more done because you create this positive momentum that keeps you going in your business and in your life. You also avoid burnout because you're not constantly feeling like, oh, my God, I'm behind, I'm behind, I'm behind. And stressing out about what you're gonna have to do next. I mean, unless you have anxiety, then you're stressing out about everything, in which case, like, join the club. Side note, I feel like if anyone didn't know that I had anxiety, they'd know it based on the elephant comment, where, like, I said that, and then I got stressed out that people might think I was encouraging them to eat elephants. And I'm like, no, don't do it. It's like, of course people aren't going to eat elephants. Why did I worry about that? The common trait I notice amongst ADHD people who are also entrepreneurs is they have this internal optimism. You know, there is this unshakable belief that things are going to work out right? And. And part of it is that, like, we have adhd, so we're really comfortable with risk. You know, we're pretty impulsive, and things tend to work out for us. So, like, why shouldn't it work out for us in our business? And then we set these massive goals, and we're like, oh, yeah, I can do that. And something you want to be careful of is to not mistake a hope for a guarantee. I can't tell you how often I do this and my clients do this, and we have to kind of, like, bring ourselves back to reality, where we map out, like, how much business we want to do in a year and how many clients we want to serve and how much money we want to make, and then we start operating as if that is guaranteed just because you want it doesn't mean it's going to happen. This is where a lot of manifestation practices miss the mark. Sure, you can sit in your room writing in your journal about all the things you want, but that isn't going to do shit if you're not also going out there and taking action towards making it happen for yourself. And remember this other key point as a business owner, as you're building your business, yes, you're going to have to be the first person to do most of the stuff. But as you're building it also be building systems that can continue doing this stuff for you in the future. For instance, one of the things that I'm having all of my clients in my build your own business group programs and in my one on one build right now is a four month social media content book. So they're literally creating four months worth of content that they will be able to repurpose every four months and the next four months and the next four months and the next four months until they need to refresh it or update it or swap some things out so that they can take the pressure off of themselves from promoting their business every single day so they can focus on delivering to clients, to creating new programs, to making more money. Always think about how you can make this task easier for future you. And that my friends is goal setting for the ADHD business owner. I refuse to eat octopus because they are so smart. There's a beautiful like documentary movie on I think Netflix called My Octopus Teacher. I I started it and I was like wow, this is going to be boring af. But oh my God I was crying by the end. It was such a good. It was such a, like a moving beautiful story. If you eat octopus, maybe question if you want to eat octopus. Not going to tell you what to do but just throwing it out there. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. Squirrel. If you're enjoying this episode, would you do me a small favor? Will you please leave me a review? Don't worry, it's super easy to do and it only takes a few minutes. You can leave your comments in Apple Podcasts, castbox, Spotify and Podchaser. Just go to weenicast.com reviews and scroll till you find the chosen app. That's weeniecast.com reviews.