Chainsaws.

Why I always say yes to things I have the ability to do, without considering if I have the time, energy, or motivation.

Do you ever feel like maybe, just maybe, you’re trying to do too much?

My go-to solution for that is usually to… add some more things to my todo list. The rest of the list just got boring again so I need something new to “spice things up.”

Sometimes I refer to this as juggling chainsaws. I start by juggling a few chainsaws—which is pretty exciting! But eventually, even juggling a few chainsaws can start to feel boring. So maybe I add a fourth chainsaw just to amp it up a bit. And then a fifth. Why not a sixth. Isn’t seven chainsaws trapezing past each other through the air exciting?

But when juggling 7 chainsaws becomes your baseline, it often feels like all you can do is add more chainsaws.

…or let them all come crashing down.

One of my favorite exercises for annual reviews (and quarterly, monthly, weekly reviews too) is something called “Start, Stop, Continue.” The basic premise is to evaluate all the things that you’re doing on a regular basis and what new things you want to do and ask yourself 3 questions:

1. What should I start doing?

2. What should I stop doing?

3. What should I continue doing?

Whether you’re focused on just your personal life, family life, a business or whatever—the goal is to identify what positive changes you can make: things you can start doing to improve things, finding things to let go of, and identifying things that are working well that you should continue.

As ADHDers, our tendency is to have a big list of things we want to start doing and nothing we feel like we should stop doing.

I really try to treat it like a math problem, I’m only allowed to add something new (like a new project, business idea, etc) if I’m also taking something away.

When I was writing my book, Extra Focus, I found that I was juggling way too many chainsaws and I wasn’t making enough progress on my book. I had to make a decision to stop doing some things so that I could start putting time into my book.

It was a hard decision! I had a side business and a podcast I was doing at the time, both of which were seeing growth and success. It was hard to decide to stop doing something that was doing well, so that I could say start to focusing on finishing the book.

But it was so worth it.

With the new time I found available, I was able to finish the book and I look back at that as being one of the best decisions I could’ve made at the time.

A couple weeks ago, I talked about Quiet Quitting Social Media which was a major chainsaw in my life that took up sooo much time. Deleting social media apps from my phone has opened up a ton of time in my life! I can actually say start to some important things I’ve been wanting to tackle for awhile.

I mentioned it briefly last week, but one thing I’ve been putting some of that time to lately is an app I’ve been wanting to build for years. An app to help me be a better friend. (You can join the waitlist at wavepal.app.)

What’s something you can stop in your life to free up time, energy, and motivation before you try to start that next thing?

Stay curious,
Jesse J. Anderson

P.S. I just wanted to mention again that I’ll be at the NeuroDiversion conference in Austin next month! I’m going to speaking on a panel and there’s going to be a bunch of other awesome talks and hanging out with fellow ADHDers. Hope to see you there!