Why Your Brain Hates Steady-State Work
One of the things I struggle with as an ADHD woman is focusing on one thing long enough to actually make a dent.
I’ve heard it a hundred times. Pick one thing. Stay consistent. Go deep. That’s how you win.
I am not that woman.
I’m the ten-things woman. The jack of all trades. The one who opens a new SaaS tool at 11pm just to see what it does.
This is a very ADHD problem. We love novelty. We love urgency. The shiny new program. The deadline that finally makes everything click into focus. (Tax day, anyone? April 15th is basically a starting pistol for my brain.)
So it’s a little funny that most of what I do professionally is build systems. I create the infrastructure that keeps the gears turning, for companies, for individuals, for operations that need to run whether anyone is paying attention or not.
Not exactly novel work. Not exactly urgent.
By every measure, I should be bored to tears. Every system is essentially the same. Businesses sell widgets or services. People are just trying to get through life more happy than not. The nuances change. The bones don’t.
And yet I love it.
Here’s what I figured out: the systems aren’t for my work brain. They’re for everything else.
When the operations are handled, when there’s a structure holding the important stuff up, my brain gets to roam. I’m not white-knuckling my attention toward the thing I’m supposed to be doing. The thing is just running. And I get to be chaotic everywhere else.
The most recent example: my husband and I now have a standing finances conversation every Sunday morning after breakfast. Nothing formal. Just a check-in. But now when something comes up with our budget, neither of us is carrying it alone. The worry gets shared. The decision gets made. And it stops living rent-free in my head all week.
That’s what a system actually is. Not a cage. A container.
Build enough containers and you can be as chaotic, creative, and novelty-hungry as you want.
Systems don’t cage the ADHD brain. They’re what set it free.
Things I’m loving this week ♥️
Monarch Money I’ve tried every budgeting app. Monarch is the one that actually stuck. It connects all your accounts in one place, lets you and a partner see everything together, and makes the money talk feel less like a confrontation and more like a check-in. If you’ve been avoiding your finances because looking feels worse than not looking, this is the app that changes that. https://www.monarch.com/
Life on Hard Mode by Brad Kelley
I have a guest post live on Brad’s Substack this week. It’s about getting my ADHD diagnosis at 46, and what it felt like to finally have language for something I’d been navigating my whole life. Brad writes for neurodivergent readers figuring out how to operate in a world not built for their brains. If that’s you, his newsletter is worth your time.
https://lifeonhardmode.substack.com/p/f355d181-4682-4c45-9bbf-f1c699875249
Quote of the week
“Freedom is not the absence of structure. It is the presence of it.” — unknown
I have found this to be true in almost all aspects of my life.
Structure is the scaffolding that holds everything in place.
Productivity Tip of the week
A routine isn’t about discipline. It’s about removing the decision. The less you have to decide before 10am, the more brain you have left for everything else.
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