Katie McManus, a business strategist and money mindset coach, explains why standard time management doesn't work for ADHD business owners. She argues for adaptable systems and longer focus periods instead of rigid productivity frameworks.
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Today someone asked me how they should manage their time as an ADHD business owner. Let me tell you, this is one of those topics that drives me so insane because there's so much advice out there that doesn't help ADHD people at all. And being able to manage your time effectively when you're a business owner is one of the most important things that you can learn to do, because there are so many hats that you're having to wear to make this business be successful. So how do you figure out how you should manage your time best so you can get everything done that needs to get done? Well, I'll tell you. And hi. I help ADHD business owners make more money in less time with fewer distractions. I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach. And before I get into this, you gotta listen to me, okay? I'm gonna give you some tips. I'm gonna tell you things that do not work in general for people with adhd. But, you know, you. I don't know you. You're a stranger on the interwebs. I'm just making a video at my phone, okay? You know you better than anyone else, okay? You get to try stuff and see if it's working. And if it's not working, full permission to drop it. Okay? You are not broken. If a time management tool or. Or strategy does not work for you, okay? You are not trying to change yourself to fit into other systems anymore. No, no, no, no. We're ditching that, okay? You are finding systems that you can either adapt to yourself or you can evolve them to work for you. Okay? That's what we're doing here. So what I share is helpful. I'm so happy. And if what I share does not help you at all, full permission to throw this video in the garbage, metaphorically. So the first thing that you need to do is you need to drop methods like the Pomodoro method. And if you're not sure what the Pomodoro method is, it's that system where you give yourself like a half hour to do something and you set an alarm, and then when that alarm goes off, you do like a five minute break, and then you do another half hour. And here's why this does not work for people with adhd. Okay? So when we are setting ourselves to a task, okay, it takes us a long time to get into focus, hyper focus, okay? And if we anticipate an interruption at any point in this space of time, we actually will struggle to even get into hyper Focus on this task. So instead of you being able to do this thing where everyone else seems to get a ton of work done in a half hour, you're going to sit there and completely freaked out and stressed out that you're not focusing. And oh, my God, I'm going to be interrupted in 28 minutes and oh, my God, what is this again? In 27 minutes and 26 minutes. And it's just going to stress you out even more and you're not going to get anything done, so drop it. What you're going to do instead is you are going to give yourself several hour blocks for yourself to get something done, okay? The first half hour or so, you're going to get nothing done, okay? You're going to be messing around online, you're going to be picking music, you're going to be getting up and going to the kitchen to get a drink and maybe a snack. And then you have to pee because you just drank all your water. And then you have to go and get more water and all the stuff. And then you're going to get to work, and then you're going to get a good two to three hours of work done, okay? Before you need to move on to your next thing. And if you can schedule this block of time after you have any scheduled meetings, that's even better. Because when we have a scheduled meeting that is in the afternoon and we're trying to get stuff, stuff done leading up to that meeting, all we can think about is that meeting, oh, my God, I don't want to miss the meeting and am I going to be late for the meeting and blah, blah, blah, Right? So try to do this after you've met with everyone. Deal. And for the love of God, we are going to drop that whole practice of just chipping away at a project every single day, Right? Setting aside an hour or 30 minutes to chip away at a big project just does not work for us. We need the big block of time. We can sit down, we can do it in one sitting, but we cannot do the neurotypical thing and just do it little by little, okay? That's just not how our brains work. And the thing you want to remember here is that every time you have to shift gears from one thing to the other, you actually need a lot more transition time than people with neurotypical brains, okay? It's just how our brains work. It takes us a while to get into it, but because we have hyper focus, when we do get into it, we get into it, right? It takes us a little bit like a little. We need a little ceremony in between. Okay. Okay. So if you can limit the different kinds of things that you're doing throughout the day, that is going to be a big game changer for how you manage your time and how much you can get done every single day. This video is getting a little long, so I'm going to leave this here. Okay. There's a lot more advice I could give. If you have any questions, please pop them in the comments. And if you found this video helpful, then please like and follow. And I will be making more videos like this, offering more advice on how you can better manage your time with adhd.
