Ep 92: Getting Things Done Course

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In this transformative episode of our ADHD Summer School series, I reveal the secret to getting things done when motivation is nowhere to be found—and why waiting for the "right mood" is keeping you stuck in endless procrastination cycles.

📌 Key Topics:

• The motivation myth: why it comes AFTER you start, not before
• Three major thought problems sabotaging your progress (and how to overcome them)
• How to welcome negative emotions and take them along for the ride
• The power of reframing: shifting from "I have to" to "I get to" and "I want to"
• Breaking the cycle of letting yourself down and rebuilding self-trust
• Body doubling strategies and accountability systems that actually work

🗣️ Featured Quote: "You can't wait for motivation. She's always late and you just have to start without her. Motivation comes after we get started—you have to get going and then you'll get motivated."

💡 Strategy Breakdown:

• Use the 10-minute rule to overcome resistance and build momentum
• Break projects down into the smallest possible next steps
• Apply the "when exactly" principle (70% completion rate vs. 40-50% for vague plans)
• Create "enough" boundaries to prevent endless work cycles
• Practice keeping small commitments to build the muscle of following through
• Shut down brain negotiation with pre-planned responses

🎯 Coming Up Next: More ADHD Summer School courses on Overcoming Overwhelm, Time Management, and building sustainable systems that work with your brain.

🔑 Key Takeaway: You don't need to earn fun or wait until everything's perfect to take action. Your ADHD brain isn't broken—it just needs tools that work WITH its wiring, not against it. Start small, celebrate everything, and build momentum one action at a time.

Connect with Mande: 

Free Get Things Done Workbook: http://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/workbook2025 

Learn more about private coaching with Mande: https://learntothrivewithadhd.com/services/ 

Free Resources: https://learntothrivewithadhd.com/freeresources/ 

Website: https://www.learntothrivewithadhd.com/ 

LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/learntothrivewithadhd 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/learntothrivewithadhd/ 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/learntothrivewithadhd/

#getthingsdone #adhd #motivation #procrastination #adhdsupport #adhdstrategies #adhdcommunity #productivity #executivefunction #adhdworkbook

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CLICK HERE for more resources. We're on this journey together!

Transcript

 Welcome. We are starting a new special series. This is the A DHD Summer School. Don't worry, it's not the kind you dread. You did nothing wrong. This is the kind that helps you build real life skills to make life with A DHD easier and more productive. These courses that will be released over the next month or so, were originally in my Learn to Thrive with a DHD group coaching program, but now I'm making it available to everyone right here on YouTube and the podcast.

So why now? Because summer is a great time to slow down, reset, and work on habits and systems that actually make a difference. These tools have helped my clients create lasting change, and now they're here for you. But don't just watch or listen. I want you to take action. You can download the free companion workbook at www dot.

Learn to thrive with adhd.com. Slash Workbook 2025. It's totally free and designed to help you apply what you learn here. Ready? Let's dive in.

Welcome to Get Things Done, how to do things when you don't feel like it. All right, so our agenda, part one, what's the problem and what to do. Part two, the good and the bad of feelings. Part three, how to take action. And Part four, doing what you Say You Will with these courses. I want you to take this. In the rhythm that works for you.

If you wanna do one part and then stop and and implement, great. If you wanna go through and do the whole thing and then implement, the important part is the implementation. I'm gonna give you a lot of tools. I'm gonna give you a lot of ideas. I'm gonna ask you a lot of questions, and what I want you to do from that is don't get overwhelmed.

Just try something. Just put something into action. You don't have to do it all. Okay? My name is Mandy John, I. Am a life coach for adults with A DHD. I love what I do. I'm a multiple business owner in true A DHD fashion. I have my coaching business and I also own a gym. I'm a mom of three. I married my high school sweetheart as of this recording 25 years ago.

And I love animals. I have rabbits. They're mini Rex and they're really fun. And then we have our house cats and dog and barn cats. And I love all kinds of animals though. I do have A-D-H-D-I was diagnosed hyperactive, A DHD, and I love to teach. So I hope that this format of learning works really well for you.

I would love any feedback on ways that I could help you better.

So what is the problem and what to do? Part one. So we have three major thought problems. When you're struggling to get things done, these thought problems are gonna come in, in some form, and what that looks like is it'll take too long, it'll be too hard. Or it might be, I don't know how to do it.

And it might not sound exactly like this, but it's gonna be somewhere in this realm, right? So waiting for motivation. Motivation is the desire to make change coupled, with the necessary energy to take persistent action. So that doesn't happen very often. Not very often do we have the desire and also the necessary energy.

to take action so. The truth is we can't wait for motivation. Motivation comes after we get started. You have to get going and then you'll get motivated. All right? So we're going to learn ways to get you started to get going so that you can feel that motivation. And this is just An Instagram post that I did a long time ago, you can't wait for motivation.

She's always late and you just have to start without her. Procrastination, putting off a task either by doing nothing. Or by doing something else. And that's something else might be something useful.

It might be scrolling on the phone. It might be, watching Netflix. But sometimes the sneaky procrastination is something that you, that is important but is maybe not important that you do right then. And the reason I put this cat sitting in a cat box is because when I was going through coaching certification.

When I had set aside time to study, I would go and do things like clean the cat box. Now, could I have cleaned the cat box after I studied? Absolutely. Did it need to be done right then? No. I was just avoiding getting started on studying too much information.

So overwhelmed by the amount of steps is a too much information problem. I put this game board because whenever I'm playing a game with people and they start reading the instructions, I'm out. I hear about the first two I then I. I'm done. And that is something that hasn't seemed to change.

I've come a long way with coaching and with putting together tools and making changes, but that one sticks. I'd love to know in the community if anybody else struggles with game instructions or long instructions. What you can do is. You know, what is the next small step? Maybe with the instruction example, it would be okay, just gimme the first one and then let's kind of look at the situation on the game board or whatever.

And then gimme the next one and then like feed them to me like one at a time really slowly. Or if it's a big project, what is the next littlest thing that you need to do? And how are you capturing your instructions? I know my husband has somebody that works for him that has a hard time with instructions, and what he did is he just got him a little notepad and so he could pull out the notepad out of his pockets whenever he was given instructions and he could just write the instructions down and he had 'em there, and that was just a good way to capture those instructions.

What is that for you? What do you need to do? Okay. We struggle to see the end result as people with A DHD. What we don't realize sometimes is neurotypical. People can see the future a little bit better than we can see the future. And so problems with working memory can make it difficult to visualize the past as well and retrieve past accomplishments.

Now I'm sure you can think of some examples where that's true. Where you can do something well and then you can just dismiss it or forget about it. And then we also have a hard time visualizing the end result, which makes it hard to get started on things because we're not really seeing where this is gonna end up.

You know, we're not seeing the benefit of doing this thing as well as somebody else. So not knowing the goal and your why. So if we don't know where we're going, we can't get there. And we need to set meaningful goals that inspire action. And that's your why, right? I've heard coaches do this kind of exercise where you set a goal and they're like, well, why do you want that?

And you say, you know, tell them why. Why do you want that? And you tell them why. Well, why do you want that? And you just keep going down that process and that's really helpful to get to your biggest why. A good example might be, I wanna get healthy. Why do you wanna get healthy? Well, 'cause I wanna be able to keep up with my kids.

Why do you wanna keep up with your kids so I can spend more time with them? Well, why do you wanna spend more time with them? 'cause I wanna be connected to them. And you can see, you can see how that can just keep going. A problem can be ignoring your plan. Did you know that you have about a 40 to 50% chance of doing tasks on your to-do list, but it goes up to 70% if you give them a specific day and time.

That's crazy, right? When I'm working with my clients one-on-one, I'm always saying, when exactly are you gonna do that? I want a day. I want a time, and the reason I ask them to get specific like that is because it does it greatly increase the chance of them doing that. So maybe a problem is you're not sure how to prioritize.

What if you have a to-do list, but you aren't sure what you should prioritize over everything else. Again, I always hear this from clients. I don't know what should go first. One thing I would like to kind of give as advice in that area. Don't get upset with yourself. If you choose to prioritize something and then realize something else was actually a priority, it's okay.

You're learning you have to exercise the muscle of prioritization, and that's an executive function skill, right? that might be a skill that you're weak in, but you have to actually go ahead and do it to learn. And then you're gonna know the next time, all right, well last time I put this before that and found out that it didn't work that way.

Or that wasn't the best way to, to do it. And that's okay. Don't beat yourself up. You're just learning. So another problem is distractions that interrupt how you remember what you were doing before you were interrupted. So that's something to figure out for yourself, right?

A lot of clients will end their workday and make a note to themselves where they left off and where they wanna go, if they're writing something, same thing. So what does that look like for you?

Are you finishing one task before starting another? That can really drain our energy. To jump from one thing to another, to another. You can think in your home. If you're going from one room to another, you're gonna be exhausted by the end of the day. And yeah, that can be a problem.

I put an article here that I will have to link. A study found that participants that had their phone in another room outperformed compared to participants with their phone in their pocket or their bag.

And that's really interesting, right? It wasn't even right next to them. It's in their pocket or their bag. And what they did is they gave them these cognitive tasks to do and. The people that didn't have their phones in the same room just did a lot better. And this is a really interesting study that you can read.

So that's back to that interruptions, right? Keep your phone away from you when you're doing important things.

All right, so that was part one. So ways you can take action. I am big on action. So if you've taken the, become a brain boss, you know, action is aligned in the model. The model is what life is. This is how, this is how we do everything right? So get working in the workbook.

notice the problems that are causing, difficulty getting started.

Just become aware of them. Keep an, I did that list and that's in the workbook. All right. The good and the bad of feelings part two. So this is so important. You don't have to earn fun. These things that you're doing can be fun, So make the things that, that you're doing fun. You don't have to wait until you've gotten everything done to have fun, or you'll always be waiting to deserve it,

can you do an audiobook? Can you do a podcast? You really like some really fun music? Can you turn it into a game somehow? Can you race the timer against yourself?

we're gonna use feelings as fuel. What feelings can you use to get started and follow through? How would you need to feel to make it happen? so creating useful feelings. Here's some examples of useful feelings. Capable, enthusiastic, willing, competent, confident, and happy and willing is a really good one because although these other ones are like really up here kind of feelings, willing is like really neutral.

It's just like. Okay, there's this task. I need to do it. I wanna feel willing how, what would I need to think in order to feel willing? Right? So speaking of what I was just going through there, that's the model, circumstance, thought, feeling, actions and results. circumstance is something everyone would agree on, a thought.

Is something you're thinking about that circumstance. It's one thought you're thinking when we're running a model, you might be thinking lots of things about the circumstance, but we're just gonna pick one. And then how is that thought making you feel? And then what actions are you taking or what actions are you not taking?

And then what results are you getting? Okay. That is the model. Discomfort. Learning to get comfortable with discomfort is the key to everything you want. And the reason I have a bus here is 'cause I always tell my clients this kind of little story. I think I first heard this concept from, oh, she's the one that wrote Girl wash her face.

I can't remember her name off the top of my head. But she talked about putting uncomfortable feelings in the back of the car and I put a bus. ' cause sometimes I feel like we have so many uncomfortable feelings that we need a bus to keep them all. So you might be feeling anxiety about doing a task.

You might be feeling dread, you might be feeling a lot of negative emotions about this. They just get to go sit in the back of the bus. They don't get to touch the steering wheel.

They don't get to push the pedal. They don't get to change the radio. They don't get to say anything about where you're going, but they just sit in the back of the bus and you take them with you and you go ahead and get started on this thing anyway. Okay. You can get started even though you're feeling uncomfortable.

Emotions, negative emotions. Notice how negative emotion shows up in your body. If you're feeling anxiety, do you feel like a buzzing in your chest? Do you feel like a tingling in your face? Like, what does that feel like? If you're feeling shame, if you're feeling anger, how does that show up in your body?

Notice how these are sensations that you've had in your body before. You've felt anxiety before. You've felt anger, before you felt, tense. You've felt lots of different things. You've felt them before and be willing to have them again. Once you're willing to have them again, you release the resistance to them.

I'm feeling anxiety used to be a big one for me, so I'll use that example a lot, but I'm feeling anxiety. I've felt it before. I'm willing to feel it again. It's okay that anxiety's here, right? Expect negative emotions to show up. Don't be upset when they show up. Don't be upset when sadness shows up.

You just expect it. Oh, I knew you'd show up at some point here you are, right? Don't make it a problem. So welcome them and take them with you. And this makes me think I was getting coached and she's like, have you ever heard. Of this poem from Rumi called The Guest House she told me the concept of it.

And after our call, after our session, I went and looked it up. And this artwork is done by this person who Ann and like, I guess is how you would say her name. I put the link here. I wanted to give her full credit for this. So guest house. This being human is a guest house every day, A new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all, even if they are a crowd of sorrows. Who violently sweep your house, empty it of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be

clearing you out of some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice. Meet them at the door, laughing and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from Beyond, and that's from Rumi. So yeah, I just thought that was really a good example of letting any emotion come.

Just welcoming it because when we resist against it, that's when we start to have a problem reframing the things that you're trying to get done, the things that you have to do, right? Reframe them. for example, I have to do the laundry. Why do I get to do the laundry? I get to do the laundry because we have clothes.

We live in a country where we have an abundance of clothes. There are other places and maybe people in our country as well, where maybe they only have one set of clothes, maybe that's all they've got. So I get to do laundry 'cause we have an abundance. I get to do laundry because I have a washer and dryer.

I want to do laundry because I want. My family to have clean clothes. I wanna have clean clothes. I want to do laundry 'cause I don't wanna have to go and buy new clothes every time.

Empowered versus disempowered. This, I want you to really take this in because this is the difference between being able to make change in your life and not. Are you empowered in this situation? Are you the one in charge? Are you disempowered? Are you the victim? Empowered people understand that they're responsible, and from that place they can make change.

Disempowered. People think that. Things are happening to them that they have no power to do anything about it. So when you're thinking about, getting things done, how can you be more empowered and less disempowered?

I wanna talk about resting versus lazy. This comes up a lot with a DHD where people will call themselves lazy sometimes other people are perceiving them as lazy. So what's the difference? Resting is what you do after you've gotten work done. Okay? That's rest. Lazy is what you do when you're avoiding the work.

There's the difference. Give yourself credit for the work that you have done. Sometimes that happens a lot with us. All right? We're like, I'm not getting anything done today. I've done nothing. I would challenge you to sit down and write down everything you've done that day.

You're gonna find that there's actually a lot that you've done that you just are dismissing. So part two, very good. You made it so ways to take action, decide how you would need to feel to get going. Start noticing how negative emotion really feels.

Try the reframing exercise with the things you're finding it difficult to do. The reframing is I have to, I get to, I want to, and you will find that in your workbook to work that out.

How to take action Part three, break it down. Break your goal down into the smallest next steps. Are they small enough to reduce your resistance to getting started? What do you do if you don't know the steps? Okay, what if you don't know the steps? Ask people, get help, or just decide to start somewhere. So here's a tool, the 10 minute rule.

What's the amount of time that you can give something that it doesn't make you feel dread or gets you past the barrier to getting started?

You can take five minutes to just do some research. Then once I have taken that five minutes to do some research, and you can set a timer once that time's up, okay, do I feel like I wanna keep going? It's likely that after that five minutes of me getting going, motivation has shown up and I can keep going.

If that's not the case, you can stop, do something else, and then maybe later in the day, try again. How much time can I give that task? Go back to it. Moving forward consistently. A good way to increase your consistency for taking action is to ask yourself the following question in the areas of my goals, how can I make today just a bit better than yesterday?

I have been working with this. I. For myself a lot, for especially the past, two weeks. And I don't think I went into it with this lesson, but there's, I like to split my tasks into what I call buckets. And I'll just go ahead and explain it really quickly. My buckets are pretty much business, personal health is like one bucket.

Personal health. Relationships, and that could be my family, my friends, you know, whatever. And then there's one more. I have four buckets. I can't think of the other one off the top of my head, but how am I moving forward in those, in those areas? What's one little thing I can do to move forward in those areas?

If you have a hard time getting started, that's a really easy thing to do because even if it's the end of the day and you're gonna go to bed, what's one way I can move forward in the relationships area? Maybe it's just telling a family member that I love them. Maybe it's giving somebody a hug.

Maybe it's sending a text to a friend. What is enough? I love this. Work can never end. There's a lot of areas in our life that you could always find something to do. You can always find the next thing, like we live in such abundance as far as things to do and things that we think maybe we need to do.

It can make you feel exhausted and overwhelmed if you don't decide what is enough so that you have a finishing point in your day. So I'll tell a little story really quickly. I mentioned in the beginning I own two businesses and one of them was a gym. And at one point in time. I was the only person running the office.

My husband's a wrestling coach, so that makes about three months to the year I. Now that we, now we've hired somebody. But at that time, for a couple years, I made about three months of the year where I was just running the gym by myself.

I would go in the back and so I would go in the back gate and I just feel like just a weight on me. And I love this gym. I love this business. I love that we have this, this business as a service for our community. there's just so many fun things about it, but I would just feel this weight every time I'd walk in and I'd get, I'd walk in the back door and I'm like, what is wrong with me?

Why do I always feel this way every time I show up? I don't, I don't understand. I know I like the business. I know I like the people. there's no reason I should feel this way. Well, what was happening is there was a never ending list of tasks. There was always paperwork I could be doing. There was always something needing to be done.

As soon as we'd think we'd have everything done, a machine would break or something would come up, right? So I was just feeling overwhelmed. I was just feeling like I could never catch up. there was no end. And so what I did was create a list of the things that needed to be done in a day.

And once those things were done. I was done. I did enough. And then after that, if I wanted to do more, great. But I set a limit for myself. And when I was done with my list, that felt good. So what are your top three priorities? What are the three things you need to get done that day to win the day?

And don't make them too complex. Keep it really simple. All right, so that's a another tool. These are all kind of separate tools. I want you to look at all these tools and just pick something and try it, all right? Winning the day, similar to the three top priorities, what do you need to get done to win the day?

Gamify this for yourself and don't make it a long list. Body doubling. So this is a picture here from Focusmate and I really like Focusmate for body doubling. I've shared this with a lot of my clients. A lot of them really like it. A really great way to get things done when you're having a hard time is body doubling.

You can do this with a friend, a family member, or there's services like Focusmate that you can do this with, I'll explain how Focusmate works. You go to focusmate.com. You sign up for an account and there are people all over the world, as far as I know, that are there and ready to work with you whatever time of day.

And I believe at the time of this recording anyway, they just added a new 70 minute session. But there's a 25 minute session, a 50 minute session, and a 70 minute session. And doing the sessions in the timing that way allows you for breaks in between.

You just schedule a session, somebody will join you, or you can join someone else on the calendar view. You show up at that time and you let them know. What you're gonna be working on. You say hello, hi. I am gonna be working on, we'll go back to the podcast script example, be working on my podcast script.

What are you gonna be working on? And they'll tell you what they're working on and you say, okay, I'm gonna mute my microphone and leave my camera on. Or you can choose whatever you wanna do. And then they say, great. you guys get to work. And at the end of the session, you come back and you say, Hey, how'd you do?

they'll let you know how they did and you let them know how you did, and then you're done. I really like it because I'm not gonna walk away. You can, say in the chat, 'cause there's a chat option. You can say bio break, if you need to go to the restroom or whatever.

I know that I like to leave the camera on because I know there's a possibility that that person can see me. And if I'm walking away or leaving the frame, then I don't wanna distract them in that way or for them to wonder like, where did they go? Are they coming back? So it's really helpful for focus.

I really like it. So when exactly, we talked about that before, right? I said when I'm working with clients, something really effective that I do is ask them specifically when they're going to do something. When we have a specific day and time, we are so much more likely to do things. We talked about how it increases to 70% likelihood that you're gonna do that.

When is your productive time of day plan to get things done? When you have the energy to do so? Are you more active in the morning? Do you feel rundown in the afternoon work with your energy levels for success? So what is that for you? Rewards, give yourself rewards for when you get things done. Make sure that they are pretty immediate.

Our brains really like immediate rewards. It could be your favorite coffee, a piece of chocolate or some Netflix time. Those are just some ideas It might be going for a walk. That would be a really nice reward. So ways to take action, break down some projects that you've been avoiding, try out body doubling for a task or a project, decide your rewards.

All right. Let's go on to part four, doing what you say You will. If I could just do what I said I would do, when I said I would do it, I would have no problems. Who is this quote from? It's from me. I always tell my clients about this. I remember exactly where I was standing and I was just frustrated and upset, and I'm like, if I could just do what I said I was gonna do when I said I was gonna do it, I wouldn't have any problems.

And I bet you're resonating with that right now. Right? And so this is a lesson to talk about reasons we don't and ways that we can, All right. Keeping commitments to others. Why do we do that? It's easy to do, right? We respect them and their time. We don't want them to be upset with us.

We don't wanna let them down, and we wanna be dependable. Those are the reasons we keep commitments to others. Keeping commitments to ourselves is harder, isn't it? We aren't respecting ourselves that that's what's going on.

We aren't respecting ourselves and our time. We are used to being upset with ourselves. We don't mind being upset with ourselves, right? It doesn't feel good, but we're willing to do it. We have developed a habit of letting ourselves down. Now, this is something I heard within the past two years that letting ourselves down becomes a habit, and I really thought about that and I'm like, oh, we can get in the habit of letting ourselves down, which the good news is then we can also get in the habit of keeping commitments to ourselves, right?

We don't believe that we are dependable. why is that a problem? The problem is we chip away at our relationship with ourselves. We damage our self-esteem and our faith in ourselves when we don't keep commitments to ourselves, so what I wanna say here is you matter.

Each time we write commitments to ourselves, we reinforce the fact that we don't really matter. This is a dangerous game because when we really want something, we will have to continually. Show ourselves. So when we break commitments with ourselves, we reinforce the fact that we don't matter. That's a lie. We matter. We matter more than anyone else. If you can't be good with you, you definitely can't be good with anybody else in your life the way that you would want to be, the way that you are capable of being. Right. So let's practice being good to ourselves what we can do.

Practice keeping small commitments and Build the of and trust. Use others to help you. Keep your personal commitments. That's where body doubling might come in. That's where telling other people what you wanna do. Shut down negotiation with your brain.

Accountability. Tell someone what you intend to do. Join an accountability group. Use body doubling. Have a coach like me. Healthy accountability, right? We don't want the negative accountability. Start with something small. Start with something small and easy, and work your way up. Keep a commitment.

And then once you've kept that commitment, keep keeping that commitment and just add another thing. Don't negotiate with your brain. here's why. Our brain's priorities are to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and keep you safe. Tracking. Notice when you are keeping commitments to yourself and keep track of that.

All right? So pick something that you wanna start doing and track it. Celebrate. You're building the skill of keeping commitments to yourself. Give yourself credit each time that you do and celebrate. This might be high fiving yourself. This might be telling somebody in your life like what you did, and celebrate every day and celebrate the little things.

Okay? Ways to take action, make small commitments, practice keeping them track your progress and celebrate. All right. Congratulations. You just completed. Get things Done, how to do things when you don't feel like it. Very good job completing this now. I want you to take action, All right. I'll see you in the next one.