Thanks to @AnokheeTara@ohai.social for the inspiration for some of the sections in this post – and for the inspiration in sharing this regularly!

What went well?

I've been continuing down the ADHD rabbit hole, which has shifted my perspective such that I see my daily structure – my habits, my journal, scheduling my day – as fundamental needs rather than nice to haves. To that end, I scheduled my days every day this week, and that helped me build so much traction on various projects.

I also spent a bunch of time organizing and writing down all of the things I want to be doing – fun projects, hobbies, etc. Getting it all out of my head and into a document from which I can randomly grab tasks on any given day helps so much. Otherwise, I forget about them, and if I don't make the decision in the morning to do something, the likelihood of it happening is painfully low.

I also wrote a bunch this week. I published a post about how to accomplish the important things that somehow keep slipping. I dusted off a decade-old idea for a novel and started re-visiting the outline for it.

What didn't go so well?

I got really frustrated and irritated at work in the first half of the week, mainly from ambiguous and shifting expectations. I also found myself not wanting to deal with and process those feelings. I just wanted to stew in them.

I also had a couple of nights of bad sleep. Thursday night, I woke up at 1am and couldn't get back to sleep, so I had a total of about 3 hours of sleep. Friday night, Zoe, my husky pup, had diarrhea, so I was up every 2 hours taking her out. Saturday night was a lot better, though I got to sleep about an hour and a half later than usual and still woke up at my normal time.

What did I learn this week?

I'm learning that structure and planning are essential needs for me. My sense of well-being depends on it. I'm also learning that I need to have clear expectations at work, and I need to ask for that or find healthier ways to cope with shifting expectations in situations where it's necessary.

I'm also learning that I still react to many things in my life, usually by just getting grumpy and shutting down and avoiding, when instead I could be responding. That requires being more mindful of a given situation, of my feelings, and choosing to respond instead of reacting.

What am I curious about?

I continue to be very curious about ADHD and how the coping strategies of others will work for me. I'm excited and hopeful that by giving myself enough variation and a list of things to choose from, I can keep myself engaged and thus feeling pretty well.

What's bringing me joy?

Making progress on my various projects! I did some work on my RV home automation/remote control project, in which I'm building the ability for us to adjust climate controls and even start/stop our generator remotely. This is really important to us, because sometimes we leave the dogs at home, and if we forget to turn on the A/C – or if there's a power outage – it can get incredibly hot. The remote control allows us to get notified if the power goes out, and start the generator + A/C from where ever we are.

What are my intentions for next week?

Next week, I would like to be more mindful of how I react vs. respond to situations in my life, and work on nudging myself towards responding. I will also continue planning my days, because that's really working out well for me. I'm bumping my daily word count goal to 400 words per day. We'll see how that goes. Experimentation without judgment!

#Reflection #SelfCare #PersonalGrowth #AmWriting #Mindfulness

That led to going down an ADHD rabbit hole, buying a book called Driven to Distraction, and almost finishing it in the span of a couple of days. This coming from the guy who has been reading two other books for the last 3 months and is nowhere close to finishing them. Fixation much?

I hate to self-diagnose, but a lot of the ADHD experience resonates with me. And it's not just casual forgetfulness and procrastination, it's a deep inability to follow through on things, an inability to start things even though I want to do them. The need for a structure in order to get anything done. Episodes of hyperfixation where I go really deep on something, lose sleep over it, forget to eat and drink and shower. Hell, even on a regular basis, I forget to shower unless it's in my task list.

That being said, I also feel like my experience is manageable enough without medication and with the proper structure and systems in place. Whether or not I have it, the mental model of ADHD helps me recognize and understand some of my behaviour, and how to cope and manage it better. I don't feel like a professional diagnosis would change anything.

What happened this week?

Engaging with the ADHD rabbit hole gave me a huge energy spike. For the last couple of months, I've been trying to figure out how to feel that energy spike. How to get that energy back. I've been in an energy trough for so long. What's interesting is that my eating, sleeping, and exercise habits didn't change at all. The only thing that changed is that my brain was engaged on a new topic. How do I sustain that engagement? Can I sustain it? Is it even sustainable? Or do I have to accept the rotating highs and lows as that’s just how my brain works?

What went well?

I found it really helped me to check-in on a daily basis with a variety of people to help keep me focused and accountable. I checked in and shared my daily intentions with my best friend and my step-daughter, who I thought would also benefit from a daily check-in.

I also started doing daily writing check-ins on the Mindly.Social Discord server. I set a specific daily writing goal: 250 words or sit for an hour, whichever happens first. And having multiple projects to choose from – this blog, my travel blog, and a possible fiction project – helps me make sure I write, even if I'm not feeling into one of those projects.

With the new insight about structure, I worked on building a habit stacking plan.

What didn't go so well?

Given my fixation on the ADHD rabbit hole, it was incredibly hard to get focused on work. The only time I managed to get any real work done was when there was serious external pressure – something broke and I needed to urgently fix it, or I felt like someone at work was waiting for something specific to be done. Deadlines for the win, I guess?

Daily physical activity eluded me. I totally forgot to do any kind of finance management on the weekend, and even forgot to get some bills paid. Thankfully I did remember eventually – at 2:30am Sunday night :D

What did I learn?

I learned how important and necessary structure is to my sense of well-being. On top of that, I learned that having a trusted friend or group of people to keep me accountable contributes greatly to that structure. Using tools like body doubling, coaching, and accountibilibuddies, are necessary to my success and consistency.

How can I improve next week?

I need to manage my expectations, and realize that I can't change everything all at once. With that in mind, I need to focus on building one consistent habit for at least the next couple of weeks, before I can consider adding another one.

That habit is writing. Every day, after I finish writing in my journal, I'll write at least 300 words or sit for an hour.

Next week, I also want to finish building a habit stacking plan for myself, and making adjustments to my journal to add more structure to my planning.

#ADHD #Mindfulness #SelfCare #Journaling #PersonalGrowth #Neurodivergent #AmWriting #Writing #WritingCommunity #Habits

I feel the same way about writing for my travel blog: like everything I write has to have a clear purpose and be useful or helpful in some way. If I'm not providing clear value in the form of tips or suggestions or advice, then who cares? Who cares about my travels?

The flip side of the “who cares” feeling is really this: what makes me so important that others would want to read about me? It feels kind of arrogant and conceited to write about myself, as if I'm important enough to warrant the interest of others.

Over the last week or two, I've really realized and have been thinking about how I also struggle with making subjective decisions that have no clear upside or downside. Decisions like: what do I write about? What do I say? Should I work on my travel blog, or my personal blog, or a fiction project? Which of my many fiction ideas should I flesh out? What do I do with my leisure time? Oftentimes I wind up just sitting on my phone, or even just doing literally nothing, avoiding making a decision about how to spend my time.

I'd love to hear from anyone that experiences this too and what they do to manage it. It's a challenge, but I'm working on it intentionally.

Despite all of that, here's what I've done today: I've forced myself to make a decision on what to write – clearly, I'm here writing this. I've also decided to push through that discomfort of “who cares?” and write a monthly reflection post. My hope is that, by sharing how I journal at a monthly level, I'll inspire others to live more intentionally and in alignment with their values.

So, what happened in January?

Prior to January, I had been feeling incredibly low on energy and motivation. I felt burned out. It was a challenge to get a couple of focused, productive hours at work, let alone time on personal projects. I felt like I was just floating through the days, having a hard time caring about anything.

Over the holidays, I took 10 days off from work, disconnected from my digital devices, and spent some time alone. It was lovely. So lovely that I decided to make that a part of my weekly routine: disconnecting from digital devices, and finding solitude in nature.

The focus of January, then, was largely rebuilding a foundation of self-care. This looked like:

• Meditating for 15 minutes and setting intentions in my journal every morning
• Using a Mood Meter to measure my mood in my journal every morning
• Spending 15-30 minutes on a randomly selected physical activity every day
• Every Sunday, disconnecting and giving myself space to recharge
• Working on a consistent bed time and sleep schedule

What went well?

By the end of January, the change was remarkable: while I wasn't feeling more physically energetic, there was a substantial improvement in my general sense of well-being and mood.

On top of the self-care habits above, we also moved to San Bernardino, California after spending three months in Las Vegas. As the move day approached, I found myself feeling invigorated. Despite move day being exhausting, I feel much better after moving. My focus at work has substantially improved. I feel like I have more mental energy. I feel more motivated to spend time on creative pursuits.

What didn't go so well?

I kept my intentions for the month pretty simple and focused, so there's not a lot that didn't go well.

I wasn't physically active every single day. I'm okay with that. I was mindful of my energy levels and, thus, my expectations of myself. I also tried to be honest with myself: am I being lazy, or do I really not have the energy today? I feel like I was pretty fair.

Some days, I would go for a long walk with the dogs. Some days, I would do some high intensity cardio in the house. Other days, I did nothing. And that's okay.

What did I learn?

In January, I started reading about hyper-fixation and realized it describes me incredibly well. I go through phases where I fixate on learning something new. It consumes my thoughts: I have trouble sleeping, all of my self-care habits disappear, I stop taking care of myself, I forget to shower. It's incredibly difficult to control.

Knowing that, I put together what I call my Fixation Coping Plan. Basically, it's a plan to help me cope with my fixation episodes, both during the episode and for recovering afterward.

I also learned, as I started working on writing more consistently, that I struggle with making subjective decisions.

How can I improve next month?

Taking what I've learned, in February I want to work on being more decisive. Writing this post is a great example of that, and I need to continue being intentional about that every day.

What are my intentions for February?

After spending all of January building a foundation of self-care, I feel like I'm ready to build on that and take better care of my surroundings and relationships.

That means:

• Managing my finances and budgeting more actively
• Being more intentional with my relationships – with my wife, with my family, with my friends
• Keeping the RV in good shape and staying on top of chores and maintenance

In addition, I feel a need for a creative outlet, like I have this pent up energy that needs to be put into something. It's not a physical energy, it's more emotional or mental. I need to focus my efforts on something: writing, music, game dev, one of my many various interests.

I've decided I'm going to focus on writing. For this blog, for my travel blog, and on a fiction project. Whatever feels right on any given day.

Well, that wound up being a bit longer than I thought it would, but there it is: my monthly reflection and intention setting.

Do you journal regularly? Do you experience the challenges with subjective decisions that I do? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Hit me up on Mastodon @nomadave@mindly.social!

#Mindfulness #SelfCare #Journaling #PersonalGrowth

Are you satisfied with how your time was spent? Did you spend time on things that are important to you? Or did you spend it reacting to the priorities of others, losing your own priorities in the process?

We say spend time so often that you might have missed how many times I said it in the first paragraph. I said it four times – once in each sentence. It's interesting that we use the word spend to describe how our time is used. When you think about it, it's a pretty accurate word. We spend time. Once it's spent, it's gone. We can't get that time back.

We also talk about making time. We make time for our hobbies. We make time for our families and friends. But that's a misnomer – we're not actually making time. That time is going to be spent regardless of what we do. By making time, we're just choosing differently how to spend it.

If you're satisfied with how you're spending your time, that's amazing! I'm really happy for you. It's such a great feeling, isn't it?

If you're not satisfied, keep reading. I have an idea I would like to share, and I hope you find it useful.

How our time is spent falls on a spectrum. On one end of the spectrum is what I call reactivity. At this extreme, you feel like you have no control over your time. You're just reacting – to other people, to your own random thoughts and ideas and flights of fancy, to the dings from your phone and other devices.

On the other end of the spectrum is what I call intentionality. At this extreme, you feel like you have full control over your time. You dictate, hour by hour, minute by minute, how your time is spent. You give your time to others and your devices on your own terms.

The intentionality extreme is highly unlikely, but I know that I feel like I'm living my best life when I'm living closer to the intentionality side of the spectrum.

If you feel like you're far on the reactivity side, and the idea of being more intentional sounds intriguing, what can we do to nudge ourselves in the right direction?

Change one small thing: give yourself the time and space for reflection.

Life without reflection is like putting on makeup without a mirror, like driving in an unfamiliar city without a map. Sure, you can do it. And maybe, eventually, you'll find your way. But it's not optimal.

If you want to live your life with intention, doing the things you want to do, reflection is one of the most important self-care activities. It doesn't have to be a huge, daunting thing. Here's how you can get started:

Choose a day of the week. I like Sundays, because for me, Sundays are often relaxed and chill and feel like the true end of the week. It's a good opportunity for me to reflect on the week that just passed.

Next, ask yourself the following questions. If you like to write, pull out a pen and paper, or your favourite note-taking app. If not, do it in your head. Whatever feels most comfortable for you.

- What went well last week?

- What didn't go so well last week?

- What could I do to improve next week?

In asking yourself these questions, I also want you to consider the feelings they bring you. Allow yourself to be proud of what went well, and don't be too hard on yourself for what didn't go well. Approach these questions with curiosity and without judgment.

These questions will give you the opportunity to consider removing or minimizing the things that aren't going well, and to consider doubling down on the things that are going well.

The amazing thing about reflection is that it's incredibly flexible. You can choose to reflect at any cadence that feels good to you: daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Try it weekly for a couple of weeks and see how it feels. If it feels like too much, try it monthly. Set a reminder in your calendar every month so you don't forget.

If it feels like not enough, try it daily. The important thing is that you reflect regularly, at whatever interval feels right.

I hope you enjoyed this post. I really appreciate the time you've spent reading this, and I would love to hear from you! Have you tried reflection? How did it work out for you? Hit me up @nomadave@mindly.social on Mastodon. I love talking about this stuff and I'm curious to hear about your experience!

#Mindfulness #PersonalGrowth #PersonalDevelopment #Reflection

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