Transcript: Episode 1

Sam: Hey everyone, today we wanted to talk about the importance of intentional laziness. So, Alyssa & I wanted to talk about this today because as ADHD coaches, we’ve both experienced many of our clients referring to themselves as lazy.

Aly: Yeah, and even if I think back to myself before I was diagnosed with ADHD and had an explanation, I thought I was lazy. And the days where I didn't get my to-dos done or I didn't feel like I accomplished anything it was, you know, “Ugh, I'm lazy” and that doesn't feel so good.

Sam: Yeah, agreed. And I know that for some of my clients they've said that their parents called them lazy when they were in school, or their teachers called them lazy, and that this is something that's really stuck with them... And it's interesting how much that seems to correlate with ADHD and people's experience of how people thought of them before, they knew that's what was going on, before they realized they had ADHD.

Aly: Yeah, and then it becomes their own narrative, right? And then they start calling themselves lazy. Yeah, every time I hear one of my clients call themselves lazy, I feel like this pain go through my body, it's like AH! Yeah, you're call yourself lazy and, you know, it makes me get really curious what's really going on underneath that and that's what we wanna talk to you guys about today.

Sam: uh, Alyssa,  I think there's some things you wanted to say before we start, if I'm not mistaken. 

Aly: Oh, yes, yes. I want to challenge every one of you this week to pay attention to how many times you call yourself lazy. And maybe, you know, while you listen to our podcast episode, you can start to think about where your laziness - quotations “laziness” -  shows up.

Sam: I love that challenge, thanks Alyssa.

So, for those of you who are wondering what is the point going be today, on this podcast... The too long, didn’t read, version of what we're going to say is that it's essential, especially when you have ADHD, to schedule time and space in your day and or week for laziness. Quote on quote “laziness” 

Aly: And you heard her correctly scheduled time for laziness.

Sam: Shocking! 

Aly: Yeah, what... Scheduling time to be lazy. 

Sam: What's that all about?

Sam: So when we were prepared to do this podcast, we talked about this topa lot before this recording. Imagine that..I looked at the definition of lazy, I just Googled it and the first thing that came up was “unwilling to work for use energy, showing lack of effort or care.There are some synonyms that came up as well which is idle, indolent, slothful and up work-shy, which for some reason I really love saying that word. It feels very old-timey

Aly: And to be honest, when I hear you say those words, I don't even know what any of them mean.I'd have to go look up with each one of those words meant. Except for work-shy. I kind of get that one, but, yeah.

Sam: Why would we wanna schedule time to be lazy, Alyssa? What's the point of that?

Aly: Well, so what we were talking about the other day was that we want to schedule time to be lazy, because our bodies are craving it. We live in a society where we're expected to be “on” 24-7. We're supposed to be productive, productive, productive. We're supposed to be doing, doing and our brains and our bodies need that time to just chill and to just process and to just be... And yeah, we're craving that we need that and that's why I think that we need to be lazy.

Sam: Um, and also I just want to say that unstructured time.. scheduling unstructured time which can make us appear to be lazy because of that lack of structure can help fulfill our need or craving as you say, for time and space, for rest and regenerative time and also it’s space for our creative process.

Aly: Yeah, you know that time when you jump in the shower, and you lose track of time and then you come up with a million awesome ideas-

Sam: Inspiration, just strikes.. For like half an hour in the shower.

Yeah, no exactly for 30 minutes in the shower, which is technically a long time in the shower. But it’s like, you know,  just that thinking time; that free unstructured time to just process and to use that creative brain of ours. So, could you imagine if we gave ourselves that 30-minute blocks just randomly in the day?

Sam: Yeah, that sounds amazing.

Aly: Yeah, I think that the key too is that we're alone -  sometimes, most of the time, we're alone in a shower.

Aly: So we really have that uninterrupted -  and I think that's the other... That unstructured time is the key part, but the other key part, it's unstructured cousin, is that uninterrupted time. The key is uninterrupted. We know that nobody's... Well, most of the time we know that nobody is going to interrupt us.

Sam: Yeah, so we're free to follow our own process, and lines of thought in those moments.

Aly: Yeah, exactly.

Sam: So, I just wanna talk a little bit about what happens when we don't acknowledge our need for that unstructured time. And when we don't recognize it as valid. So that happens, when that happens rather, we schedule our days to be maximally productive. So we'll just be going from one appointment to the next to the next, to the next, and without adequate breaks or transition time or anything like that. And I think this seems to be coming up more and more as a concern now, but I think there's this glorification of busy, right?

Aly: Oh, yeah. Absoultely.

Sam: I’m so exhausted. I've worked 12 hour days, for the last two weeks, etcetera. And people are impressed by that.

Aly: Yeah, it reminds me of that proud feeling. How many hours did you work today? I worked 12 and it's like, Oh yeah, well I work 13 and I didn't get to do anything that I want to do, I had to order take out, I didn't get to go to the gym, I didn't get to see any of my friends or my family, and it’s just like, Yeah... What?! why are we..

Sam: Wait, Alyssa, Have you had those conversations?

Aly: No… I have never had that conversation. Yeah, yeah, now it’s just like kind of just take a step back and be like, Why are we proud of this?

Sam: Mmm..Is this really a life worth living, right?

Aly: Yeah, yeah.

Sam: So when we do have days like that, or that is how we were generally operating -  in this busy busy busy mode. Then our need for unstructured time and laziness, quote on quote - doesn't get met. And what that means is that our brains are going to subconsciously search for ways to get that time to process and percolate in our creative, in our creative process and that means that we're not gonna have so much control over when our brains go into this mode if we are not consciously and intentionally finding a way to meet our need for that unstructured time.

Aly: Yeah, so, Sam what would that look like if our brains are searching for the unstructured time?

Sam: Well, the shower thing that you mentioned earlier... I hear, a lot of people with ADHD be like, “Oh, I space out in the shower. I don't even know what I do in there”or people wonder what I do in there for half an hour. And, you know, daydreaming, staring out the window, lost in thought.Or, we space out when someone's talking to us or during a lecture, whatever. Those are kind of all signs or signals to our conscious selves that our brain has a need and it's subconsciously finding or unconsciously even finding a way for that need to be met. And it will happen at times that are kind of inopportune... like I am in this lecture, and I'm meant to be learning about this very important mathematical concept and I am not engaged because my brain's like… Haha! I'm gonna get this need met somehow. And you don't have any... You're not the best me. Or you're not taking good care of me as my boss, and so I'm going to, like this part of my brain is just going to take over and make me space out for ten minutes or something, then we sort of come back to consciousness in the lecture and are like wait, what? I missed all this stuff. 

Aly: All this important stuff.

Sam: I have never done that in a mathematics lecture. I have done it in a statistics lecture many times.

Aly: Yeah, I think that we could all relate to that. Like, all of a sudden, you just realize that you're staring at the back of the person in front of you's head and you're like, Wait, okay, what did I just miss? It probably was really important. Or everybody around you is moving you’re like wait, what are they doing? They are in action, I should be an action. What is it, what's going on?

Sam: Yeah right, this is happened to me so many times where I’ll have been on a bus and I'll be just spacing out or whatever, and then everyone will get off the bus and I'm like wait! No one is supposed to be getting off this bus at this point but they've made an announcement about…

Aly: We are taking a break, everyone get snacks, use the bathrooms.

Sam: Right! 

Aly: You’re like where are we?!

Sam: Or ;This bus is on a detour or this bus as having a mechanical issue. We gotta go get on the other bus, and yeah, and then I come back to consciousness and I'm like, Oh missed something. 

Aly: Oops! yeah, so okay, this unstrucrtured time sounds boring. What can we do about that?

Sam: It does sound boring, doesn't it? I think that that's one of the reasons people with ADHD tend to, or often schedule ourselves, way too heavily. I know, for me, that's a big issue or has been a big issue in the past, before I recognized this valid need of mine. But basically if you intentionally plan to have unstructured time it doesn't mean that you don't... You're not engaged in something necessarily, it doesn't mean that you do nothing or thinking about that you're expected to think of nothing. But for example, unstructured time could mean going for a hike or something - doing something that you find really otherwise enjoyable to do with your body and while you're hiking, you might be really engaged in percolatin - sorry, I love that word! - you might be thinking about oh, tomorrow during the time I have scheduled to write, I'm now having all these ideas for my character or this other character or the way the story I'm writing could go.

And you're not necessarily, your brain's gonna be under too much pressure, when you sit down tomorrow to write, to come up with these ideas, but when you're hiking and doing something enjoyable then your brain is under less pressure, so, you're more able to engage in that creative process.

Aly: So what I kind of picture is.. the unstructured time is less stimulating. So let's say we put our phones away, we put our laptops away and we focus on a single task. So in the shower, we're washing our hair and our bodies. Hiking, we are walking the path. Maybe there's gonna be some birds, and some nature, but it's not like… We choose to take that in or not. We choose to take in the birds or the tree that we see or we could focus on the dirt if we want to, as we're walking forward. It's almost like we have a choice. But when we're sitting in front of the TV or we are sitting in front of the computer, we have our phones binging at us, it's very stimulating, we have things coming from all sides. And yeah, kind of what's ring true to me is like the choice piece. And I know we hadn't talked about that, so I'm kind of curious what you think.

Sam: She’s giving me a look right now I'm like, Oh yeah, we didn’t talk about that... Yeah, I think it's part of the intentional time. And by intentional I don't mean... Oh, I'm deciding to do this but my intention for this time is this... And I think that's really key. So, yeah, I think what you said is... Oh, that unstructured time sounds not as stimulating. So with a hike... you could say that it's not as stimulating. I mean,  there's not... If you don't have your phone out, you're not necessarily taking in or having to deal with a lot of communication from other people. You are in that present moment looking around, making sure we don’t trip. Basically... So, yeah, your brain could be in the mode of “okay, let's just make sure you don't trip”. Or your brain could be in the mode of, if you choose, “I am going to just be really present in this moment and-

Aly:YES!

Sam: -look around at the birds and - the - bees... and trees and whatever and whatever is happening in whatever environment that you're hiking in... 

Sam: Yeah, so it's less stimulating and therefore you're more able to remain fully present.

And, sorry - just one other thing is you can be present, but you don't have to be totally, like, you're not thinking about anything else. Being present doesn't necessarily mean that you're not thinking about something else, but it's whatever you're doing in that moment, whatever activity is not so stimulating that you're unable to think about where you're going next in your novel that you're writing.

Aly: Yeah, I'm like, you guys can't see me but I'm doing a little happy dance if I could, I would just get up and dance…

Sam: You're not doing a happy dance. 

Aly: want to jump up and down around this room but it would mess up all the audio and everything up. But I'm doing one in my head.

Aly: The thing is I think that you just hit the nail on the head, it's being present in the moment, being present. Yes, you could be thinking of other things but it's being there where you are, rather than having technology.... My boyfriend, I joke about this sometimes. We wanna do a video about this where it's like, could you imagine it’s like you have... Let's say you have this person sitting in a room and then all of a sudden they have someone come knock on or tap their shoulder and is like, “Hey do you wanna come over tomorrow, what are your plans tomorrow?”... And then you have someone ring the doorbell, while that person is asking you if you wanna do plans because they're saying, “Oh hey, you've missed a deadline”. And then at the same time, you have someone, same time you have someone knocking on your window saying, like... “Aha check out this cool meme that I found” and it’s just like someone spraying a picture across your window.

Sam: This is a great comedy sketch. I love it! And also it makes me wonder, has someone else done it? 'cause if not, that's I hope... Well, I hope you do it either way. 

Aly: Did I just give a secret, cool thing away to everybody who's listening?... If you guys hear this, and you wanna create it, please do. I would love to see it. That wouldn't happen in the real world yet we allow our phones and our devices to be constantly interrupting us and poking at us, and tapping on our windows and ringing our doorbell.

I think I just took us down a rabbit hole.

Sam: Yeah,this is definitely not on our outline. But yeah, it’s totally okay. I love that anyway.

So to kind of bring us back onto the path. When we were talking about this before... I sorry, before this recording, I realized that when I think about laziness, and that is such a vague non-specific term and I really see it as an umbrella term for certain behaviors that have any number of explanations. And have more very often, little or nothing to do with someone's willingness to work or use energy and they don't pertain, those behaviors don't pertain to that person's lack of care about making effort in those contexts, either.

Aly: Oh, absolutely, and what I was saying last time, we spoke before too, is that to me, underneath that umbrella is depression or anxiety - how there’s fight-flight, or freeze. Laziness could be looked at, is in the freeze one... the freeze part of anxiety where it’s, okay, you know what -  I physically cannot do anything right now, because I'm so stuck.

Or let's say executive functions for ADHD: If you don't understand your executive function and the role that it plays, it could be seen as lazy because you don't know how to activate yourself, you don't know how to organize yourself, you don't know how to break tasks down into manageable pieces.

So we get stuck. And that could all be seen as lazy.

Sam: Right. And, maybe you already said this, I apologise if so. But that overwhelm of “where do I start?” 

Aly: Yeah, yeah.

Sam: So I'm gonna just freeze. Or keep doing the thing that sort of feels “easiest” or it's almost like this sense of inertia.

Aly: Yeah, and I think this is a really awesome part to plug this in, but next time we are going to be talking about the role of emotion and ADHD, and as a little part of that we're going to be talking about how to backwards plan.

Sam: How to figure out where to start.

Aly: Exactly.

Sam: So Alyssa...I have a question for you

Aly: Alright.I feel nervous... Okay, what's the question?

Sam: What do you think the real purpose of others calling us lazy or even us calling ourselves lazy? 

Aly: Maybe sometimes people are calling us lazy because it's like a form of manipulation. It could be they are trying to get someone to do something and it's like, “Oh you're so lazy, you're not gonna do it.”And then it's kind of like a way to get them to do it. 

Sam: Reverse psychology or something?

Aly: Yeah, yeah, but especially with people who have ADHD. If someone says to me that I'm lazy, I'm just gonna be like... Well, I don't think we could swear on here, so I'm not going to, but you can imagine what I would say... I wouldn't do it because they've just tried to manipulate me to do it.

Sam: Interesting... wait, so if they called you lazy you'd be less likely to do the thing that they want you to do?

Aly: Yeah, I wouldn't try and prove them wrong. I would just be like the... Yeah, okay, screw you. 

Sam: That's getting the opposite reaction of what we were just saying that you think their purpose is... So maybe for some people, if someone said... Oh, you're lazy, I know you're not gonna do this thing, they might be like, Oh, I am going to now prove that I can do the thing. Whereas someone else might think “well, you already think this thing about me so whatever, I'm not gonna do the thing. Or you’re  just being negative and manipulative. 

Sam: Well, that's interesting, Alyssa, that you say that you wouldn't do the thing if someone called you lazy. What do you think the purpose is of calling ourselves lazy?

Aly: Before I answer that. This kind of reminding me of learned helplessness. Like where... do you know? Do you know that term?

Sam: Yes, I do.

Aly: For people who have not heard of it. It's basically when we feel like we've heard so many times that we can't do something and even when we do try, we don't succeed, so then we stop trying, because we cannot succeed, anyway. When we do try.

Sam: We think why bother trying if I can never succeed, right?

Aly: Exactly. Did that make sense?

Sam: Yeah, I think so, yeah. So it's kind of about this self-fulfilling prophecy, and narrative around failure that pertains to speaking in absolutes. So “always” and “never”. I'm never... Or they always do better than me, I'm always like this, I'm never like this. That kind of thing.

Aly: Yeah, exactly, yeah. It's like I've never been able to do it so why would I be able to do it now. We just need to be able to shift that. So yeah, you've never been able to do it before, but it's because you haven't been doing it the way that suits your brain. And what's unique to you and what works for you. If you have always been trying to write with your left hand when you're a righty. Well, guess what, it might not work out. But if you grab the pen with your right hand and start writing with your right hand, you might have more success.

Sam: Sorry, total ADHD moment. But did you know that, I guess towards more maybe before World War II, in the US that they really in schools, tried to force kids who are naturally left-handed to write with their right hands.

Aly: I actually did know that which is just so sad. 

Sam: I know that my stepmother’s mother had great difficulty writing. Her handwriting was not great because she spent her whole life writing with her right hand, when she was left handed. She learned that way in school and then just kept going. 

Aly: Wow, did she ever switch?

Sam: No, she never switched. Interesting. Anyway…

Aly: But that's what it feels like, right? Before I was diagnosed with ADHD, I felt like I was trying to write with my left hand when I should have been writing with my right...when it was best for me to be writing with my right hand... Yeah, then once I was diagnosed and I started to learn about it, I was like, Oh wait a second. No, I've been trying to do things this way for so long and it doesn't work for me. How can I do it differently?

Sam: I think what's key here is a mindset of experimentation. 

Aly: Love that. 

Sam: This is also off script. Sorry, Alyssa.  But the speaking in absolutes mindset is... I get where that comes from. One way to take the pressure off is to figure out, “Okay, what does actually work for me?” Is to think “Okay, this is gonna be an experiment”. 

Aly: Yep

Sam: Which means behind the vast majority of successful experiments are many, many, many, many, many failed experiments. And any lab scientists will tell you that. 

Aly: Yeah! What's the hypothesis, what's your theory? Let's test it out. And come back, look at it, and see what went wrong, what worked.

Sam: Yeah, what did we learn about ourselves and our brains from this exercise?

Aly: Yeah, yeah and Sam touched on it for a second before but I really wanna highlight it. Take a look at when you're saying Never and Always. Because maybe those are clues as to what you could shift.

Sam: Yeah, we can change things for ourselves and take that pressure off and change that story that we have about ourselves by shifting that language to something that is less absolutest and less extreme. 

Aly: Yeah, and give yourself a chance. If you're saying: I always start a routine and it never works out… Did that make sense?!

*Laughter*

Aly: I don’t think it did. Oh gosh…

Sam: It made sense! I think I even had a client say this recently… “Why am I always like this? I am so tired of always starting a routine and it never sticking.”

Aly: Yes, so you've decided that you are always going to fail at a routine by saying that.

Sam: And also it means that we have this very particular idea of what success looks like, and success means that something will work forever.

Aly: OOOO.

Sam: A successful routine means something we can do for the rest of our lives it will keep having the same response to it... it will keep doing the same thing. When in fact a successful routine could work for a month and then your needs shift or your situation shifts and then your routine can adapt. 

Aly: Yeah, I have a... For lack of a better word, I am going to say concept that I use with my clients and it’s “Okay, we're building you a routine and we're trying to find something that works, but this is not going to be something that you keep forever as part of building the routine and the structure we are also adapting something into that, that's going to say, “hey I need to look back at this and see if it's working for me or not, because I am going to need to adapt some things at some point. As our teacher called it - Sam and I had a teacher at ADDCA - she would say resarkalize... We need to re-sparkalize every so often. So when we take into account that we need to re-sparkalize, we're actually setting ourselves up for success.

Sam: Yeah, setting the expectation that that's part of this process. I mean, it just made me think that when kids are growing up, we don't expect them to have routines that work indefinitely. We expect that as they grow and change and their situations shift and their brains develop and their bodies develop that their routines will need to be adapted as well. And somehow we have this idea that when we're adults, that we stop growing, and changing, our situation stop shifting because we're no longer under 18, and therefore, if we are really successful adults, and then we'll just have a routine that never changes. Which, frankly, sounds really boring... No, thank you.

Aly: Yeah, you said a lot of things in there that went *bloop* *bloop* for me. The expectations piece and I forgot the other one because I was laughing at myself, but yeah....

What are you expecting of yourself? Is it realistic? That's a really big deal.

Sam:  Right. And who do you wanna be? Do you want to be somebody who is static in the same place and whose needs and situation never changes 

Aly: Right. Which is is so boring

Sam: Right?

Aly: So boring.

Sam: So, I guess going back to what I wanted to say before, before I got ridiculously distracted somehow. I love these distractions though. They're not even really distractions, they add to the

conversation, they're just not quite where I expected to go.

Sam: So people who have ADHD... We're often highly creative and innovative. We’re big picture, big ideas people. And we need to give ourselves time and space to have this creative process percolating in the background. That means a low pressure and low-stimulation environment. And I guess this goes back to the fear of boredom with unstructured time and that's gonna look different for everyone. Unstructured Time does not necessarily mean - often not equate to boring. I think that with a lot of people who have ADHD, if you think about what's the most fun you have had?” What are the really fun times you've had with your friends? You didn't necessarily know exactly what you were gonna do.

Aly: I love that, yeah. And when I think of adventure, adventure is a really big word for me and Sam... And when I think of the word adventure, it's exactly that! It's like I have an idea of where I'm going, I'm not sure where I'm going, but it's gonna be so much fun, I'm gonna learn a bunch of new things and I even just feel so excited, just saying this, I wanna go on an adventure. 

Sam: Yeah.

Aly: And while you were just speaking before, if I could share something that a couple of my clients and I talk about. So we want to do that thing that we think is going to be boring, which is it's actually a hobby of ours, we actually love doing this thing but to activate and to get into it, we have some decisions to make, and making those decisions are hard and it's like scary is not the word, but it's just like, we don't wanna put ourselves in that situation.

So a solution that we came up with was “how can we give ourselves the dopamine that we need so that we could activate... So that could be eating a piece of chocolate to get that little dopamine. Or maybe it's listening to your favorite podcast or your favorite YouTube or something like that. And that will give you enough dopamine so that you can activate and make the decision and then fall into that hobby and get the dopamine you need from the hobby to keep going.

Sam: Totally, I love that. I think that kind of thing comes with understanding your ADHD brain. If you think, Okay I'm not activating because I probably have really low dopamine... how can I get a little boost of dopamine that will just give me that, literally, that boost to get over the hump. Get me engaged into the thing I love doing.

Aly: Yeah, and like you said, that would be impossible if she didn't have an awareness or we didn't have an awareness to... Okay, what's really going on for me right now, and how can I help myself? And it's really occurring to me right now that we are way over our time that we want for the length of this podcast. So is there anything else that we wanted to say?

Sam: Okay, what I want to emphasize is how important it is for us and our ability to be productive and engaged when we want to be, to ensure that we have enough time to rest, regenerate and play. Because these are all needs of ours. You might think... Oh, that sounds boring or that sounds indulgent, too indulgent. That's not really a need that's a superfluous want, but actually it's a need. And we said earlier, if we don't recognize that need as valid then that need is gonna find some other way to be met, and it's not gonna be within our control, and the secret is not the secret. It is a secret, I don't know. But really a way to get that control over that is to recognize the validity of those needs and schedule time to do those things, with intention.

Aly: And while you were talking I lost track of this word, but how fun was that word that Sam just

said? ……..

Aly: Anyways, search some surplu-fluity blabla in your life. That's a really fun word to say, once you can figure out how to say it.

Sam:  It is, it really is a fun word.

Okay, was there anything else you want to add, Alyssa?

Aly: No, no, I think you summarized it really, really well. I think that this was a really fun first episode. And I hope you guys you know, like, do all the things on the Itunes, Apple store thing.. 

Sam: Uh, I think it’s All Things ADHD. 

Aly: Yes, yes, All Things ADHD on the Apple Store. I'm not even really sure where they're supposed to like, but maybe we can plug that in.

Sam: Subscribe to All Things ADHD on Apple Podcast.

Aly: That's the word.

Sam: Also please make sure that you tune in next time because we're gonna talk about how to

figure out where to start on those in big projects and goals that you have. Those far off dreams that you couldn't possibly actually reach, but you can and we're gonna talk to you about exactly how you can do that.

Aly: I'm so into this right now, so I'm very, very excited to talk about it, and share everything that I've been learning.

Sam: Me, too. Thanks, Alyssa and thanks everyone else for listening.

Aly:  Have a great week, everyone!