Hello Brains!
Let's talk about failure.
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Growing up, a lot of those of us with ADHD
heard a lot about how much potential we have
and how, you know, how we're failing to meet it
and when we failed to reach our potential
when we fail to do the thing we thought we were supposed to be able to do
we would try harder
and when that didn't work, we felt like we ourselves were failures
and a lot of the time it was blaming ourselves
or blaming our efforts
and I just want to put a bit of a different perspective on it.
What I used to do when I felt like I was failing
was try harder, do more.
Now I take a bit of a different approach
because now I understand that failure is kind of a systemic thing.
It's rarely just about lack of effort.
It's really not because I'm a bad person
or I'm not trying hard enough for the most part
It's usually a systemic issue.
Sometimes I'm running into these invisible barriers
because I do have ADHD and I do live in a world that's not exactly built for people with ADHD
You can see my video on ADHD-friendly here
Sometimes I need a little extra support,
I need accomodations, I need body doubling, I need whatever to help me be successful at the thing
but sometimes no matter how much support I get, or I give myself,
I'm still finding myself failing at something
So, I agreed to write a book.
And I was really lucky in that I didn't have to write a book proposal.
I was able to sell it directly to a publisher
and skip the part where I have to, like, figure out exactly what the layout's gonna look like
and, you know, write a chapter, and, like,
I got to skip a lot of the work that normally would be done before somebody starts writing a book.
But, I was still given the same amount of time to write a book
which was a year.
Knowing I only had a year to write this book, I was like: Ok
So what I'll do is give myself 2 weeks to write the first chapter
because I figure that'll take a little longer
and then after that, every time I went to write a chapter
I gave myself a week.
And I planned out my whole year like this, right.
And it was like, a pretty reasonable schedule, I thought.
Like, cool, I did it.
Like, I figured out how to get this into a year
and as long as I can stick to the schedule,
as long as I can stay on track
then I'll have a book written in a year.
Well, I went to start writing this book
but I got into it and I realised:
Oh, I need to figure out actually what the book is gonna look like and what's the structure gonna be
and figure out a lot of logistical things and then
by the time I started writing chapter 1,
I realised I couldn't actually finish that in the 2 weeks
so I gave myself an extra week to write that first chapter
It's a little failure, it's fine, we'll get back on track
I wrote that first chapter and then I got notes on it
and I realised I didn't like my first chapter.
I wanted to rewrite it so,
I thought about it more, and I rewrote it
and then I rewrote it again and
at this point I'm about 6 weeks in and I was only supposed to take 2 weeks to write the first chapter
So I'm immediately starting this process off feeling like an absolute failure.
And just time after time, every time I went to write this book, to do a portion of my book
I was failing to hit the deadlines that I'd set for myself.
And I felt scared
because I'm like: I'm really failing at this
like, I got to try harder, you know,
let me give up my nights and weekends
let me work harder, faster, or whatever, I didn't know
but I felt like I need to be putting more effort into this because I'm failing.
Then I did the math.
One morning when I was supposed to sit down and write
I was so discouraged and just absolutely in tears
that I looked at
the breakdown of, now that I understood what the structure of the chapters and everything were going to be,
I looked at how that was actually, realistically fit in my schedule,
and I know that I'm the kind of person who overwrites
and so, if I need a 4.000-word chapter at the end of the week,
I need to write like 12.000 words, like braindump like 12.000 words
And then I looked it up, I decided to look it up
how many words does a professional author write [laughs] in a day?
And the answer is not 12.000.
It was anywhere from 2.500 to like 3.500 max per day
and I was expecting myself to braindump out 12.000 words in one day
And I'm just like...
That might be the problem
My markers for success were not realistic.
I was failing, not because I wasn't trying hard enough,
and so effort was not the issue
the actual issue was that what I was asking of myself was unrealistic.
The markers of success that I'd set for myself were so, so, unattainable that it was not gonna happen.
And so,
I decided to change my markers for success
and this was scary, this was a problem
because if I gave myself this realistic schedule,
I wouldn't even have the first draft finished.
I would start the first draft that week,
but I would have to finish the first draft next week
and then do the second draft the next week
so really, realistically,
I needed 2 weeks to write a chapter
and that wasn't going to be easy, but at least it was doable.
Looking back through my life, pretty much every time I felt like an absolute, utter failure
it was because of what I expected from myself was unrealistic.
Either it was because it was something that no human was truly capable doing,
or because it was something that I saw my neurotypical friends or my neurotypical mom doing
that was not something that I could do.
One thing that helps me be successful with my goals
is
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The last call we had, she helped me figure out that I was ready to change things up a bit.
I realised I'd actually been so consistent, I was starting to get bored.
Which is kinda cool because it means I'm feeling confident in movements that used to be hard for me.
But my brain doesn't like to keep doing things it finds boring,
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This is the longest I've ever stuck to any fitness program
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So i, I don't know, I just think it's really important for a community to recognize that sometimes
when we're feeling like we're failing, sometimes it's because it's not a good fit
sometimes it's because we don't have the support we need,
sometimes it's because it's not actually doable, no matter how much support, no matter how good the fit
like, it's not... doable.
And so one of the best things we can do for ourselves is adjust the markers of success.
And I did not want to do this, right.
Because, I'm like: "Well, but I was gonna be so proud of myself", like being done early,
I wanted to be done by Christmas, the books not due 'till January 31th
like, I really wanted to.
Well that's nice, but, me refusing to acknowledge that this actually takes me longer than I've given myself
All that would do is make me feel like I was continuing to fail throughout the entire writing process.
And guess what: I still would have turned that book in late.
By acknowledging early that what I had planned to do was not gonna be doable for me
I was able to adjust it and the last time I sat down to write,
I actually enjoyed it.
Because I got to feel successful.
I got to hit that deadline.
And that gave me the encouragement and the motivation
that I needed to be willing to show up again the next day.
For those of us who do have issues with emotional regulation
I think making sure that we're not setting ourselves up for failure
is really important.
Or setting ourselves up for disappointment or discouragement
by setting goals for ourselves that
aren't within our control,
are too challenging,
are really better suited to other people.
I mean we put so much emphasis on what we're doing to reach our goals
that we don't put as much thought into: what are those goals though?
Like, do those goals make sense for us?
Are they achievable for us?
Are they too easy? Which incidentally can make things harder to do
for those which ADHD because like, "I'm bored".
Or are they too challenging, in which case we get discouraged.
We want to aim for moderately challenging.
We want to be in the...
in education they call it the proximal zone of development,
we want to be at that point where it's exciting and engaging and hard,
but not so hard that we can't do it.
Not so hard that we give up.
So, a good way to figure out if your goals are too hard is:
"How often are you succeeding at them?"
If every week you're missing your deadlines,
there's something wrong there.
Either it's not a good fit, you're not getting the support you need,
or the goals and your markers for success are unrealistic.
And it's important to remember that, even if somebody else is hitting those goals,
that doesn't mean that you can.
Because they might be working with a different operating system,
you know, their brain works differently,
they're in a different field.
I think that sweet spot is, like, "Oh, we got time".
"It's, I don't need to..." Like, then it's probably not challenging enough
and if we're, like, constantly failing, constantly discouraged,
constantly not hitting those goals,
then they're too ambitious. Those goals are too ambitious
or outside our control, right?
Like, it might be a perfectly reasonable goal
but, like, they're goals about somebody else's behaviour
or, like, you know, it's, it's something,
if something is too far outside your control,
that can be really, a really good way to set yourself up for failure too.
I got really frustrated once because I had a friend who's neurotypical
and I was dating this guy at the time,
and I was like: "I keep failing at everything that I'm doing".
And he's like: "Yeah, everybody fails at stuff".
And I was like: "No, not my friend", like my, this neurotypical friend
I was like "My neurotypical friend never fails at anything", like,
everything he sets out to do, he does.
And my boyfriend looks at me and says:
"How many things is he trying to do?"
And I realised:
Not nearly as many as I was trying to do.
So that's another thing to recognize too:
Sometimes when we're failing at things it's because we're trying to do too many things at the same time.
It's almost like, a bunch of people trying to fit through a doorway all at the same time
it's not gonna go well, right? Like, one at a time.
One project at a time.
One task at a time. Monotasking.
And often we try to do it as a way of catching up,
as a way of making up for falling behind.
But if we try and do everything at the same time, OR we constantly switch our goals,
we're not gonna really make a whole lot of progress
compared to if we just pick one or two or three and focus on those.
So yeah, moral of the story: If you feel like you're failing,
there are a lot of reasons for that that don't involve "I'm a horrible human"
and, like, "I suck at everything" and like, "Who let me do this? I'm terrible".
There are a lot of reasons for that failure and they're systemic.
It's: "what is the goal that you're setting?",
"What kind of support do you have?",
"How many things are you trying to do at the same time?",
"How interested in it are you? Like, really?"
If we're interest-based learners, we're interest-based doers.
If it's something that really, really, really bores you,
all the effort in the world is not, is probably not going to help you toward that goal
because it's just not how our brains work,
and so finding ways to get ourselves interested in it,
or switching to something that is a better fit,
is a better option than continuing to essentially try to nail jell-o to the wall
which is essentially what we're doing
when we're trying to do something that, like, does not interest us, at all.
Remember, like, a lot of times people will make us feel like we're failing,
when we're actually doing pretty well.
Because their markers for success might be different than ours.
That's my 2 cents. I will get off my soapbox now.
Thank you to my Brain Advocates and all my Patreon Brains
for giving me a soapbox [laughs].
I hope this was helpful.
I needed to hear it come out of my mouth.
I needed to be reminded of it.
Again, if you want to try out CoPilot, I put the link in the description below.
Like, Subscribe, Click all the things
and I will see you next video.
Bye Brains!
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