I wanted to talk about a little trick I use to help me get going in the mornings. I tend to wake up quite early but then struggle to accomplish things. It’s not helpful to get up early if all I’m going to do is sit at my desk and stare at social media without really processing anything I’m looking at.
Before I start, I thought it might be useful to share a brilliant YouTube video that goes into what executive dysfunction is.
Another brilliant resource on the same subject:
https://musingsofanaspie.com/2014/01/07/executive-function-primer-part-1/
I doubt this will work for everyone. We’re all different. But I thought it might be nice to share a trick I’ve found to work with and around bad executive dysfunction days.
For me, if I can get myself through a few tasks early on, I find it helps me through the rest of the morning. Before I go to bed, I work through a bullet list of things I want to accomplish first thing the next morning. When I wake up, the first thing I do is once again go through that list.
So, for example, this morning, my process was to think through:
- walking the dog
- cleaning the kitchen and emptying the dishwasher
- have breakfast
- write for ten minutes without doing anything else on my computer
Once I’ve completed a list, I occasionally go through the rest of my to-do list. But more often than not, I’m either already moving on to other tasks, or I’m having a bad day, and that’s the end of it. The truth is that just because I have tricks that work, it doesn’t mean they always do.
Some days are just bad executive dysfunction days. I’ve learned to be kind to myself on those days. Pushing doesn’t accomplish anything. Not really. It tends to wind up with me having to redo things because I haven’t done them right the first time.
It’s all about picking my battles.
And sometimes realizing that you have to retreat.
And by retreating, I mean taking a nap.
Author Dahlia Donovan 