Kristen Carter

This episode is sponsored by Quince.

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listening to a bite size episode of the I have ADHD podcast.

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This little episode is one of my

favorite clips from the podcast.

It's perfect if you're not in the

mood for a full hour long listen

because let's be real, some of us ADHDers just don't have the patience for all of that. But if you are a die hard

listener, think of this as your mid week pick me up.

It's Thursday y'. All. Friday is right around the corner. If you love this clip, check out

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So we're talking about the path of least resistance today. And one thing that I've noticed in our community and I get to talk to people with ADHD every day. So whether that's in focused, which is my coaching membership, or on Instagram or just like back and forth emails or the podcast, I get to talk to ADHDers every day. And the thing that I notice is that we often prevent ourselves from accomplishing a task because we're convinced there's a right way to do the task. We think there's a right way to do it. And that right way, quote unquote, feels enormous. It feels difficult, it feels overwhelming. It's like an Everest that we have to summit and we don't have the time, the energy, the executive function or the dopamine for that, right? So instead of doing a little bit, instead of doing it badly, instead of doing it in a scrappy way, instead of, instead of just kind of like doing 10%, we don't do it at all. We don't do it at all. So many of us were conditioned, whether by family or school or society to believe, listen, there's a right way and there's a wrong way to do things right. So like the messages of anything worth doing is worth doing right. Which I don't agree with, I don't agree with it all, but those are the types of messages that we often receive. And what's what, what happens is that sets us up to be deeply perfectionistic, black and white thinking, an all or nothing mindset that really does not serve us because you know who has two uninterrupted hours to finish the project I don't like, you probably don't either, right? And when the only acceptable version of the task is the two hour, fully optimized, perfectly executed version, then the task just never gets done. One example that I can think of that's happened to me, a bajillion times, and that I hear from Focus members constantly is like with email, have you ever had to like, respond to an email or send an email? It's just one email. It's not that hard and it's not even that emotionally, emotionally loaded. It's just a normal email. But it takes you like days to send. Not because you don't have time, not because you don't know what to say, but because your brain tells you, okay, there's a right way to do this. You need to sit down at your computer, you need to be really focused. You need to craft a thoughtful response. You need to check your calendar. You need to sound professional, but also warm. You need to make sure that like, you have the right number of exclamation points. Have you ever, like, gone through an email and been like, too many exclamation points? I need to, like, not sound too happy, but also not sound too mean. So where do I strategically place my exclamation points to make sure I'm coming off with like the perfect vibe? Oh my gosh. So it we make it like this, there's a right way to do it, and then we don't do it for days or maybe even wink weeks. And then Magically, in like 45 seconds, you voice to text a two sentence reply on your phone in the school pickup line and duh, done. It's just completely done. And you say to yourself, okay, why did that take me so long? Why do I have to make everything so hard? Why? Why is everything I do turned into like the hardest possible version of itself? Okay, and that if you are resonating with this, that's what we're talking about today. The tendency of our brains to think in this black or white, all or nothing, right or wrong way, and then to make everything more difficult than it actually needs to be. Okay, so what I want to introduce to you is obviously not a new concept and you've heard of it, I'm sure, many, many times, but it's the path of least resistance. And why? For ADHD brains, it's not the lazy path. It's actually the only path that gets us moving. The phrase path of least resistance comes from physics. And you know, I am not a science girly, but energy flows in the direction where there is the least resistance. We all know that that's pretty obvious. And in ADHD language, that simply means that the version of the task that requires the least activation, the least energy, it uses the least executive function, it hurts the least, and it gets you into motion. The Fastest. That's what the path of least resistance for us adhders is. Not the fantasy version, not the neurotypical version, not the A version, not the perfectionism version, but the version that you can actually do. Even just a half assed version of it. Okay? And this is where we can get into some of the like conditioning that we've brought, been brought up with because so many of the, so many of us label this as laziness, as not enough, as like doing it wrong. But I want to offer to you, can we throw all of that in the trash can and flush it down the toilet and understand that actually this is intelligent and compassionate self accommodation. This is working with your brain instead of constantly trying to force your brain to perform in ways that it really just does not want to perform. Well, can I do it perfectly sometimes? Yes. Can I do it perfectly all the time? No. And that's the problem is that sometimes we can show up with energy, with motivation, with purpose and just get the job done really quickly. And then what happens is we hold ourselves to that standard every single day. And that's an issue because we are not the same every single day. Your girl is tired today. She's hungover. I'm actually like getting close to burnout. So, so what are we doing today? We, we've got day two hair, we've got a big baggy T shirt, We've got the path of least resistance in the form of sweatpants underneath this table, right? It's not perfectionistic. We're not, I'm, I'm not like glammed up in the way that I would normally want to be. But I still showed up, right? Like I'm still here. I'm here in sweatpants, but I am still here. It is so helpful to identify for yourself in a compassionate way what is the path of least resistance for me here today? For me it was sweatpants and a baggy T shirt, right, with the eagle on it. Because obviously that for me was like, okay, what can I do for you to get you out the door? What do you need? And I was like, I don't want to put on hard pants. Please don't make me put on hard pants. Like, okay, we're going to wear soft, we're going to wear our vuorie wide leg softest pants that we own. You can do your job in sweatpants, it's totally fine. But when we make it too hard for ourselves, when we say no, there's only one right way when we say I have to look business casual. Every, whatever the case may be, then that sets us up to just stop and not do the thing. So instead of doing it partially, instead of giving ourselves partial credit, we don't do it at all. So if the path of least resistance

is helpful, why don't we do it?

Why do we sit for three days and not send the email when There is a 45 second voice note version available to us? And the answer, I promise you, I truly believe the answer is perfectionism. You've heard me say this before, but Russell Ramsey wrote a book called Rethinking Adult adhd. And it is just so gosh darn good. It's a book for clinicians, so it's very academic. It's not really accessible, I would say, to the typical ADHDer, because it's actually written for neurotypical professionals. But in that book, which I love, Russ Ramsey says that perfectionism is the number one cognitive distortion in adults with adhd. So he did a bunch of research out of the University of Pennsylvania with his colleague, and I forget the colleague's name, please forgive me, and they did all this research on adults with ADHD and they found that perfectionism is the number one cognitive distortion. And that's what, like, resisting the path of least resistance looks like. It looks like perfectionism. We tell ourselves, if I'm going to do it, I have to do it, right? Hello? If I'm going to do it, I have to do it the right way. And the right way usually means the neurotypical way, the perfectionistic way, the most thorough way, the most optimized way, the most complete way, the most beautiful or like, put together way, which is also almost always the hardest way. It's. It's the most overwhelming way and it's the way that makes us feel like, I just, I can't do it. I don't have it in me. It's too much of an effort. I want you to think of like a steam train.

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I think about this a lot, like our momentum. It takes so long to get going, right? It's like the steam train, like warming up its engine and you can, I'm doing the motions here if you're watching and it's kind of embarrassing, so forgive me, but it's like the start of the steam train down the track. And we know because we've seen movies, right? We know, like I've never ridden a steam train, but I have seen movies and I've read the book the Little Engine that Could. So I know, I know that it takes a little while for that steam train to get going, right? And then once we have some momentum, it's really not as hard. But what often blocks us is making it so difficult to get started. In trying to do it right, we just don't do it at all because we're like, eh, I don't have the energy, I don't have the time. I'm not able to accomplish it the way it quote unquote should be accomplished. So I'm just not going to do it. And that is a real tragedy because if you can get 70% of it done, it could change your whole life. I mean, even, even if you can get 50% of whatever it is that you're looking at, if you could just say, what does it look like to get 50% done that can change your life, that little bit of progress. But 0% done keeps you stuck in shame. It keeps you stuck on the couch, it keeps you stuck doom scrolling. It keeps you stuck feeling like, I knew I'd never do this. I knew I was someone that couldn't get it done or I knew I was a failure. It's just like proving all of the things that you, all of the things that you wish you didn't believe about yourself, but you do. Proving all of those true because we, we tell ourselves, if I'm going to do it, I have to do it.

Right.

Okay. So perfectionism is huge. And black and white thinking also plays into that. And so many of us ADHDers or neurodivergent people really struggle with black and white thinking there's a right way to do it and there's a wrong way to do it. So if I only do it 50%, that's not right. Right. And that, that shows up all over the place for us. This all or nothing thinking, if I can't cook a full meal, I just won't eat. If I can't do a full workout, if I can't give it a whole hour, I'll just skip it. If I can't clean the whole house or the whole kitchen or whatever, I'll just leave it. I won't even start. I'm not even going to give it any time at all. If I can't answer every email, then I'll just avoid my inbox altogether. Like, I don't have time to do all of it, so I'm just not going to do it at all. We need to start seeing this for what it is. This is not like, like morally superior or high standards. This is actually a cognitive distortion, in my opinion, that's keeping us immobilized.

Right.

And I didn't mention, like, morally superior. I do think that there's a moral layer to this that we carry. Like, the easy way is cheating. Right. Taking the easy path is cheating. That somehow it's just like, not good enough. It doesn't count. We should be able to do it the quote unquote, normal way. And I want to say normal for who? Like what? What do you mean by normal? And, and I know that, like, we're not actually thinking through it, but when our brain serves us up that thought, we need to really question it. Normal for who? Normal for a brain that has a completely different relationship to dopamine, to activation, to working memory, to overwhelm. Right. You're not failing at the normal way. The normal way is failing you. It is. And there's a cost to refusing the path of least resistance, to saying, no, I can't half ass it. I have to do all of it. I have to give it my all. I have to do it perfectly. Because we don't get to build that little bit of momentum that then helps that steam engine just keep going a little bit faster and a little bit faster and get a little bit of progress. Just a tiny bit of progress. I remember, I really, really, really struggled with this. I remember, like in my teens and early twenties especially, was this very black and white, all or nothing. If I can't do it full on, then I'm not even gonna bother to

do it at all.

And it prevented me from making a lot of progress in my life. It truly did. But in one of like the small ways was just with my health and with being able to move my body. So I had a very high standard for what it meant to move my body, to be healthy, to work out. And it would be like, I need to give it a full hour. I need to have the right outfit, the weather needs to be perfect. I need to be able to do all of this in order to, to even have it count. And now I'm able to say, let's just go for a walk around the block. Like let, let's just start there. If that's all we do, at least we're moving our body a teeny tiny bit. That's better than doing nothing at all, right? But I didn't allow myself to get even a tiny bit of momentum, even a tiny bit of dopamine from the completion, even a tiny bit of like feeling of accomplishment. And instead I lived in chronic procrastination because the goal was perfect perfection. And I really didn't have the capacity to achieve perfection. And so I procrastinated even doing it at all, because I knew that I wasn't able to do this herculean effort of the perfect workout. And so I told myself, I don't follow. I don't take action on my own goals. I don't do what I say I'm going to do. I just, I had all of this negative self talk, but it was really wrapped up in me just not being willing to, to do a little bit. I eroded my own self trust. And I wonder if that is the case for you too. I wonder if you're just kind of stuck in a shame cycle, if you're just kind of stuck in this shame spiral because you're just not willing to do a little bit, right? To set the timer for five minutes, I'm going to move my body for five minutes if I want to keep going after that. Once again, the steam train that engine has gotten, you know, first of all, like out the door maybe, or like down to the basement or just like moving a little bit, is it possible for me to keep going? And in those moments, that is a beautiful thing to say. Okay, I've already gotten started. Do I want to continue? Do I want to continue? Do I, Do I want to keep going? Once you allow yourself kind of to take that path of least resistance of like, okay, I'm just going to do five minutes and you get yourself moving. Then you can check in and say, do we want to keep going here? And I just. I love that. I just. I really want us to understand that we don't have to always make it so hard. Life is so hard, and it ebbs and flows. So sometimes there are easy seasons, and sometimes things just come pretty naturally to us. And then we think on our hard days. Why is it so hard? What is wrong with me? What am I doing wrong? You're not doing anything wrong. You're just ebbing and flowing like every other adhder on the planet. So what do we do when we're in that ebb? Like I am now? I'm so tired. I'm in an ebb, y'. All. I'm just like, oh, my gosh, I can't even keep my eyes open. I'm really struggling to think and perform and do my job. I am in an ebb. What am I gonna do? Okay? Because the hard way. The hard way doesn't always work. The hard way actually becomes the never finished way. And if I'm telling myself that the hard way is the only way, well, maybe that's why I'm struggling to finish. Maybe that's why I'm struggling to finish. Because I'm saying there's only one way to do it. You have to do it this way. And if you're not willing to do it this way, then don't even bother. Don't even bother. Thanks for listening to this bite size episode of the I have ADHD podcast.

If you enjoyed this clip, you'll find a link to the full episode in the show notes. And don't forget to visit I have

ADHD for tons of adult ADHD support.

All right, my friends, I had a

great time with you today, and I

cannot wait to talk to you again next week. Bye. Bye.

Sean Duffy

I'm U.S. transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. We all seem to be in a rush these days, but when you're behind the wheel, please do not speed. So follow the speed limit. A few minutes saved by going faster is never worth the risk. Paid for by NHTSA.