Productivity and AuDHD
Productivity
Productivity is one of the hottest topics in management. The pandemic has introduced the factors employers had previously refused to even consider (such as WFH), with apparently significant effects on productivity - although we still cannot agree the precise nature of those effects!
Meanwhile, the British government recently revealed that general labour productivity has been stagnant for over a decade.
Accordingly, everyone is an expert on productivity these days, dispensing largely the same wisdoms on managing your time; managing your emails; the art of planning; the skills of decision-making, prioritisation and delegation.
AuDHD
What no one tells you, my dear AuDHD brothers & sisters, is that most of these conventional “personal productivity techniques” - i.e., the techniques intended to increase productivity of an individual - are, at best, useless for people like you and me.
People that live with one foot in the well-ordered and organised world of Autism, and the other foot in the chaos and excitement of ADHD.
At worst, these techniques accelerate our arrival at the station “Autistic Burnout”, as we grow incrementally overwhelmed by “decision fatigue“ making a series of small and largely unnecessary decisions on the daily basis, while stressing out over every little detail that could go wrong - and, therefore, has (at least, in our imagination) done just that.
So, what are we to do?
Managing Self.
We must learn to manage ourselves.
Not managing time.
Not managing our energy.
Not managing our workload.
We must learn to manage ourselves.
How do we do that?
And what does it mean: managing yourself?
The Art of Managing Yourself
Self-Management is a vitally important skill. Your life may literally depend on it.
But what do we actually mean when talking about self-management?
Managing yourself is a complex mix of art & science, which includes a number of distinct constituent skills:
Managing your time…
Managing your focus…
Managing your emotions…
Managing your energy…
Each of these constituent skills can, in turn, be broken down further.
For instance, to manage your energy effectively, you must have mastered the following skills:
managing your sleep,
managing your physical activity,
managing your food & fluid intake,
managing your social schedule,
managing your recreational activities, and so on…
Learning to manage yourself.
It's the skill we all need - yet so few of us have.
We need help learning to manage ourselves.
One of the best ways of learning for practical life-skills like this is structured, systematic, explicit training; just like the social skills training.
Why bother?
Things that don't come naturally to the AuDHD person can be learnt; we have established that.
Unfortunately, the learning doesn't come easily. Naturally, the question arises: why should we bother? Is it worth the time & effort?
Those that have mastered the art of self-management with my help are in a unanimous agreement: they would do it again,
“You must understand: this is not simply about productivity, performance, PDP, etc.
I realised that my self-esteem has improved. I'm happier. I am much more accepting of limitations I have to live with.
It's like I'm not ashamed of who I am anymore.“
In other words,
When you learn how to manage yourself, you will find that you have mastered much more than secrets of productivity and improved performance.
Your overall life satisfaction, self-acceptance and self-esteem will improve, too.
You will take your first step on the road to authentic living.
Let this idea keep you going forward, as a homing beacon - or a lighthouse.
We'll continue discussing these specific issues presented by AuDHD in the next post.
You can comment below to choose what should I write next about: managing time or managing energy?
Until next time.
