Module 2 Framework - Part 1: simplicity what a calendar is -... Wed, 4/27 9:26AM 4:43 SUMMARY KEYWORDS calendar, brain, awareness, system, module, mental, external, put, adhd, vague, overwhelmed, golden rules, remember, scribble, track, separate, executive functioning, sift, autopilot, disposal SPEAKERS Patricia Sung Patricia Sung 00:00 Hey there, welcome back to how to keep a calendar for ADHD brains. We're in module two. I'm Patricia Sung. And oh, come on, there we go. Alright, so what are we discussing we are in module two right here. Today we're talking about the golden rules and what a calendar is and isn't. And then we'll be talking about the tools that we have at our disposal. So go ahead and turn off any distractions that you're in here with me. And let's look at our golden rules. There's three things that we want to keep in mind when we're talking about our calendar. Patricia Sung 00:28 First, we want to keep it simple. Our brains easily get overwhelmed when things get complicated, or we're not quite sure where to start. We also easily can head down tangents when things get distracting. So we really want to simplify, like constraint. Patricia Sung 00:42 And what are we looking at keeping things simple. We'll get more into that in a second. Patricia Sung 00:49 Next, we want to follow the three step process. Every time that you remember to do it, our goal is take it like an autopilot kind of point where we do these things. We've done this so many times that our brain just kind of knows this is what we do, it takes away the decision fatigue, it takes away the effort that makes it really easy for us to keep up with. Because we've developed that like like, we have to put in that hard work to get to that point. But once we do, we are eliminating that mental energy that we need to take to keep up with these things. And that's our goal. 

Patricia Sung 01:21 So as we want to follow that same three step process over and over and over again, as much as we can, I know, within reason, but that way we can alleviate that mental load. And then the other golden rule is when not if you get off track, happ again, we're looking at progress over perfection. Even if you do this 10% of the time, this is more than the 0% you were doing before, and we're doing better than we were before. So it's not about being perfect. Patricia Sung 01:49 So what a calendar is, simply put, it's a place to keep track of events that happen at a certain time. This is an extension of our brain, we're basically creating an external Executive Function System, ADHD brains don't have the best executive functioning, like we're not so good with planning and organizing time awareness. And what we're doing is taking that like off our mental load and putting it into a calendar and having that serve that function for us. Patricia Sung 02:19 So what a calendar is not it is not vague, we want to make sure that we're super specific, when we put everything into our calendar, we are placing things here purposefully, not like leaving them behind. Like that's one of the things with ADHD is we leave things behind, like we set our keys down, and then we don't remember where they went, right? We scribble that appointment on a piece of posted posted on paper, and then it gets on our desk somewhere, right? We want to be putting things here on purpose. And we're doing it like with intention, because when we just like leave things places, that's where they get lost in the shuffle. So our calendar is not vague, it's very specific. And we want to put everything in one place so that when we go to use this, you know file folder, if you will of our brain, this external executive functioning system, it has everything we need in one spot. A calendar is also not your to do list, we want a separate system for keeping track of our to dues. Patricia Sung 03:11 We also want to keep a separate system for our brain dumps. I know that when my calendar starts accumulating to do list items, and I'm like, Well, I can forget to do this and I write it on my calendar, that's a sign that like a Oh, something's wrong. I'm too anxious, I'm too overwhelmed. This something is broken in the system, because I'm not following the system. I'm using my calendar, that external system for things it's not meant to do. And that's telling me hey, something's wrong. So we want to have a separate system. For those things, our calendar should only be things that are happening at a specific time, that keeps our calendar from getting overwhelming, and then we avoid it or it has so much stuff in there. We can't sift through what's actually important for the day. Patricia Sung 03:58 So your activity for today is more ahead here. Your activity for today is building awareness, I 

So your activity for today is more ahead here. Your activity for today is building awareness, I want you to think just for like literally one two minutes, brainstorm a few things that you have not been writing on your calendar that you should be. And also if you are writing things on your calendar that you should not be putting on there like things that don't belong in that home. Low awareness, run through that quickly so that you can start to be aware of okay, these are the things I need to find a different system for and these are the things that really do belong in this home right here. And then of course, make a little mental note of when you can watch the next video and I will see you in the second part of module two