Life with ADHD can get pretty hectic — especially if you’re like me and have the industrious, “driven by a motor,” always needing to do something, never able to relax variety. At the end of the day, I want to feel tired. I also want to feel like I’ve accomplished something.
While I have no trouble staying busy and working hard, that feeling of accomplishment is harder to come by. I can spend an entire day working, yet still feel like I got nothing done.
Sometimes this means I’ve mismanaged my work time. Tried to multitask too much. Other times, the problem is not the quality of my work but my memory of it.
I can’t celebrate what I can’t remember.
We ADHDers have plenty of justifiably disappointing work days. Frustrations derail us. We get lost down a rabbit hole working on a low-priority project. We slept poorly and can’t seem to find our way to the task at hand. Or maybe our officemate’s new perfume is a sensory nightmare. These are days to cut our losses and try again tomorrow.
But even on a really productive day, I can still end up feeling dissatisfied.
Some will offer platitudes along the lines of you are enough or you’re worth more than your productivity. That stuff sounds nice, but it often rings hollow here, like I’m being asked to believe in something I can’t see.
And I am.
By mid-afternoon, I might not remember what I did that morning. When I sit down to dinner, I often have little memory of what I did with my day.
Many ADHDers struggle with memory. It’s more than just forgetting where we put our phone or letting someone’s birthday slip our mind. A lot of things fail to make it into our brain’s long-term memory. We often struggle to retain even the most basic landscape of our days.
These memory gaps can baffle the neurotypicals around us — how could we not remember? — but they also skew our perspective. Anything I don’t remember, I also won’t factor into my overall feelings of accomplishment and self-worth.
As with everything: write it down.
I used to have a job that required weekly status reports detailing my activities. It’s been a long time since then, but at some point I realized those dreaded weekly reports gave me something I needed. They helped me remember.
Over the years, I’ve grown more detailed with my bullet journaling. I try to note everything I can: things done and experienced, but also my feelings and ideas about those things. At the end of each day, I want a rough outline. An artifact. A reminder of life lived.
This helps me in so many ways. On a day when I accomplish little, I forgive myself more readily given a reminder of the interruption that derailed my morning. After a hectic afternoon that’s made me forget everything that happened before it, I can look back and realize I got a lot accomplished before lunch. When someone asks me on Friday, “How’d your meeting go on Wednesday?” I won’t reach into my memory and find a complete blank. If I can’t trust my brain to develop this perspective on its own, at least I can trust my notes.
Forgetting is no excuse for self-criticism.
It’s easy to get down on ourselves. ADHDers can get so accustomed to failure, we assume it to be the case unless proven otherwise.
That’s not fair.
Faulty memory and time perception may try to erase the day’s modest accomplishments, but we still deserve credit for them. Real credit. It’s all well and good to learn self-compassion and know we are worthy regardless of what we have to show for ourselves. We also deserve to hold and appreciate what we have achieved. If we do have something to show for ourselves, we ought to be allowed to know about it.
Now I know: when I feel that vague dissatisfaction and lack of progress, I need to start taking more notes. Most of the time I have plenty to show for myself, or else a darn good reason why not. I just need a little help remembering what it is.
Do you feel you have a clear picture of your productivity? Your accomplishments? Do you struggle with feelings of ineffectiveness? How much of this do you think is rooted in reality vs. perspective?
Hey there! Are you enjoying The ADHD Homestead?
Here's the thing: I don't like ads. I don't want to sell your attention to an advertising service run by the world's biggest data mining company. I also value my integrity and my readers' trust above all, which means I accept very few sponsorships/partnerships.
So I'm asking for your support directly. For the cost of one cup of coffee, you can help keep this site unbiased and ad-free.
Below you will find two buttons. The first lets you join our crew of Patreon pals and pledge monthly support for my work. Patrons also have access to my Audioblogs podcast. The second takes you to a simple donation page to pledge one-time or recurring support for The ADHD Homestead, no frills, no strings. Do whichever feels best for you!
