3-7 A Quick Review on Building Habits - TMM Module 3 Mon, 3/21 9:16PM 9:44 SUMMARY KEYWORDS habit, laundry, adhd, talks, book, load, laundry room, hang, laundry basket, hamper, module, basket, husband, moving, attractive, dryer, video, day, soapbox, experiment SPEAKERS Patricia Sung Patricia Sung 00:00 Hey there successful mama. Welcome back to module three. And I want to address one question that I get a lot is, How am I going to stick with this? Patricia Sung 00:09 Well, we talked about in module one about Cotton Bowl talking head. Okay, there we go about in module one about when we're stuck. What do we do? This is like the opposite problem is it? We're working on something we just kind of like peter out sometimes. And we don't feel like doing it that day, or we're tired or like, there's a million reasons of why we don't stick with a routine. It's too overwhelming. We too, bit off more than we can chew. But there's a lot, right. And we're trying to address as many of those as we can in this course. Patricia Sung 00:43 But I want you to understand that the way that we approach our habit building is rooted in science, we're not just like willy nilly doing stuff. Here we are, we have a plan. And we're doing it with purpose, okay. The whole idea of consistency is great for neurotypical people. But for us, it's crap. It doesn't matter that you do something every single day. Yes, for other people, that makes a great difference. For us. That's not the most important thing. Our brain doesn't absorb habits as quickly, like, you know, they always say like, oh, 21 days to start a habit, it's not actually 21 days, it's longer than that for most people. And for ADHD, it is much longer than that. Patricia Sung 01:27 So the like, the thought that you can do something for a short amount of time, and it's ingrained in you forever is not true for us. Like, it's not necessary, you don't have to do it every 

ingrained in you forever is not true for us. Like, it's not necessary, you don't have to do it every day. Sure, we would like to do it every day, that's our goal is to create that easier way of doing things. But it's not a requirement in order to be successful. The small changes that we're making are going to add up. Little by little, it's like, we're, we're moving up, moving up moving up, and it feels like a long time, it feels like we're not going anywhere. We're gonna talk about that in a second. Patricia Sung 02:03 But it does make a difference. Okay. And remember, we are experimenting with our solutions, we aren't going to know the right answer until we try something and find what works. And what doesn't work and not do that, again, be something different. There's always going to be an experiment. piece to this. Not just in finding like what works for us right now. But even, you know, as our kids change, and we need to adjust things, we're going to have to, you know, experiment with the adjustments and be like, Okay, does that work? Well, maybe I need to move these this around over here and move that over here. And you know, yeah, sure, be great if our kids just same all the time. And then we could just pick something and never have to worry about again. But we'd also probably get bored with it. So lucky for us, our kids are always changing things and making them more interesting. So don't focus on consistency, focus on your persistence. Patricia Sung 02:53 You messed up today. It was a rough day. It's okay. We try again tomorrow. The main thing is that we keep trying, we keep moving forward, we keep doing the little things that get us where we want to be. We keep going. And that's I think one of the gifts of ADHD is that we are quite persistent. Because we have dealt with so many struggles, and we've had to overcome so much we do have a value of persistence, even when we don't see it. A lot of times we just credit, whoops, sorry, medicine timer, you know, me lots timers. And even when we don't give ourselves credit for things, we are more persistent than your average bear. And our ability to keep going when things are hard. is pretty remarkable. So I won't get on that soapbox too much here. Patricia Sung 03:44 Okay, so I'm moving along. One of my favorite books is atomic habits by James clear, I'm going to link in your, in your class here, a YouTube video of him. Shooting is about eight minutes long. And he gives a pretty good summary. It's like the shortest, quickest, easiest summary I could find in the book. It's not the whole book, obviously. But it gives you a good idea of the principles that we're looking at, in building our habits in this short video. His book is not aimed at people with ADHD, but I find it very ADHD friendly. Minus this section, he talks about habit tracking, I don't find those to be helpful for ADHD. I won't get on my soapbox about habit trackers and sticker charts, just know that you can just pretend that part didn't happen. But the rest of the video I really liked. Um, oh, and I also talked about this book in Episode 52, the podcast if you want to learn more about it. Patricia Sung 04:41 

Patricia Sung 04:41 And the other book that I found really helpful in understanding habits is called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. And that really digs into like, how our brains work and why our brains do things and like how we create habits. It's just a little bit drier than James Book like James, there's a lot more like I'm an easy read the power habit I found to be a little more took on more mental effort to get through, but it was really good stuff. It was just my ADHD brain wished it was a little more concise. I'll put that. Okay, here are the four stages he talks about in the video of James clear. And it relates the Four Laws of making habits that he discusses in his book. So he talks about in the video, that you notice something, you want it, you do it, and then you like it. And that repeated pattern is what helps you create habits that stick. Patricia Sung 05:43 This links back to his Four Laws that he talks about in the book, which is make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. It's going to give you an example, for my laundry habit. I hate laundry. I never had to do laundry ever again. I'd be alright. But it is my job in our family. So, um, yeah. I've tried to outsource this to my husband, and he travels a lot. And unfortunately, still my job, hopefully one day, okay. So if I relate my laundry habit to the Four Laws, the way that I work is that I do laundry every day. And I do whatever one needs attention. Except for the kids stuff I do on specific days because they just you know, are sweaty and get stuff dirty, like their stuff needs to be attended to quicker the stuff than my husband I where we have divided into three different piles in the laundry sorter, and what I do is, when I get dressed, I look in the laundry basket. And I'm like, does it need to be dealt with like there's three loads, do any of these three loads need to be dealt with. Patricia Sung 06:52 And my role is pretty much like if it's halfway full or more, I will do the load. On those days ready to load I then immediately take the basket like I and velcro the hamper, take it to the laundry room and put it in from the laundry room door. So that when I come out the like either like this is getting undressed like pajamas. And I like for the next morning, or I'm getting ready it with me so that like when I'm done with our school routine, I throw that in whenever there's like a break in there. Patricia Sung 07:25 That basket being in front of the door of the laundry room. It's like right off the kitchen. It's like it is obvious I see it there, it will get done. Then I take that laundry hamper and I hang it on the stairs in a very annoying way my husband's not like my system. But I see that basket. I'm like, Oh right, I need to switch that laundry to the dryer or I need to hang up that laundry. But we need to get that laundry in the dryer like that laundry basket hanging isn't hanging in a place that is obvious to me that it does not belong there. And I will then like notice it. I make it attractive, truly by not annoying my husband, he's very particular about how his clothes are and he's very grumpy when they are not taking care of my soul attractive reason here is that he is not any of this because I don't really care. 

Patricia Sung 08:09 Like I won't get on tirade about that like in America, me, whatever. I'll buy the, you know, whatever shirt and hang it up and call today. And that is how I make it attractive. In terms of making it easy. I do the small loads. So I do laundry when it's halfway point or more. The small loads makes it easier for me because it's not as much stuff to put away that's the part that I struggle with. Like actually putting in the laundry is not that hard. For me. It's the like folding it and putting it back. That's the part that's hard. So breaking it down into pieces helps. Patricia Sung 08:43 So if I think about like on the days where I do the laundry load where everything has to hang dry. That is what I do that day as I wash it and I hang it up the next day is the one where it now needs to go either get folded or taken back to the closet to hang up. And that day my job is only to put the stuff back so I broke it into two pieces. So it's not as overwhelming like some people will do I do this whole load start to finish in the day. Which if it's like a dryer load sometimes I can get that done soon as I can. But I find that the smaller load it makes it less of a job it's less stuff to do and it gets done faster and doesn't feel as overwhelming to me. And how do I make it satisfying it's like when I look at those hampers and I don't have any laundry to do. I do like the empty ish basket celebration of like, I am all caught up on my laundry and that makes me really happy on the days where I don't have to do laundry because I don't like doing it. Patricia Sung 09:37 Okay, let's see here. All right, I'm gonna pause here so this video doesn't get too long. And I'll be right bak