I've never been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD but I would be far from surprised if I am in fact a little neurospicy. That hasn't stopped me from pursuing my goals, but it has, at times, created some hurdles towards my path to achieve them.
Image: Me with some of my ice cream people. They all run ice cream shops across the country. We got to meet for dinner after attending Will Guidara’s Welcome Conference. The tickets for this one-day event sell out in less than five minutes. I’m not kidding.
I remember when I was in high school, sitting down to complete assigned schoolwork during the winter and summer breaks was a chore. I have a couple of memories of my sisters on two different occasions banishing me to a room to complete my assignments until they were done. It was so hard. Every 10 minutes I'd want to get up and get a snack or come and chat with them about some unrelated thing. With every interruption, they'd send me back to the room to finish.
On another occasion much later in life where I was procrastinating to complete a project for work, my eldest sister wisely commented that if I really wanted to do it, no matter how hard, I would. I'd find the motivation to focus and complete it. She was right. I could complete something hard if I was excited by the task.
Image: Will Guidara addressing us at the start of the Welcome Conference.
I'm sharing this because there are some things in my life that I am currently dragging my feet to complete. Depending on the day, it could be cooking, running, opening and processing postal mail, refining our front of house training materials at Sugar Hill Creamery, coordinating playdates, writing this email (!). And then there are things that seem daunting but that I can turn everything off to complete–writing the business plan for Sugar Hill Creamery in 2016 over a weekend, launching our ice cream subscription service at the start of COVID, organizing the first Sugar Hill New Mom's Group (SHMOMS) from my hospital bed a couple of hours after I delivered Nico.
I come back to what my sister said…if I'm excited about something, no matter how unwieldy the task, I get it done…with pleasure.
Just this past Friday, I was working on 10KSB homework, which is a new business idea that I'm excited to explore over the semester and I was up until 2am working on it. My excitement got me through a seemingly tedious task.
Image: Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman of Ogilvy UK, at the Welcome Conference on how to solve for unknowns in an organization
I have to tap into the feeling of excitement when I'm feeling particularly sluggish about doing something that needs my attention. Sometimes that means I have to connect with the excitement that I will feel once I've completed the task to guide me through the pain of doing it. For example, when I had just started back with running, I'd have to anchor myself to the feeling of completing the race to get me through the pain of running it. Today, I have about two hours of a kid-free home to concentrate on this email and finish my 10KSB homework. I'd love to use the quiet time for something else, but I'm anchoring myself to the feeling of knowing that when my kids come back, all my assignments for the day will be complete and I will be able to enjoy the rest of the evening without the weight of having to finish anything else except their bedtime.
Sometimes, the tasks that we are very capable of completing feel hard because our spirit just doesn't want to take the steps to finish them. Maybe there are things on your to do list that you've been dragging your feet to finish because they feel difficult or boring. Anchor yourself to the excitement you'll feel when it's done and hopefully, that will get you through.
Petrushka
Your Local Ice Cream Lady & Life/Business Coach
My dear child, you were in my head this morning! Thank you for this post. I'm on it now!