Embracing spikey progress

Sometimes it's ok to step away from your desk to wander the canal and look at swan boats.

Progress isn’t linear. And for an ADHDer, progress can be spikey. You can spend weeks checking off one thing after another from your to-do list. And then you ebb down, and chip away but don’t quite complete anything. Reflecting on the past few months, I’ve seen that spikey pattern play out pretty clearly for me.

Going into the summer, I could tell I was headed for a season of chipping away. I recognized that many of the anchors I relied on to structure my time were gone: The kids weren’t in school, our family was travelling for several weeks, and some of my clients paused for the summer. I shared in a previous post how I intended to embrace this season, rather than fight against it.

My summer was very… summer. I had planned to hold tightly to some focused work time, but it turned out that I could sometimes opt to go with the flow - like cutting my workday short during a work-cation so we could spend more time exploring - and still get done what I needed to. And I even had space to take on opportunities like a quick turnaround TV interview! (Airing soon!) Of course, not everything I planned got done. For example, I didn’t spend as much time writing as I’d hoped so I have a few drafts, but nothing polished.

The return to school in September signaled a shift out of summer mode and getting reacquainted with my routines. It felt great to go back to my coworking space twice a week, it made sense to have more desktime and get some new projects underway. And as expected, my clients are back to their regularly scheduled sessions. I’ve even onboarded some new clients who were looking for added structure from coaching.

Being intentional about changing my expectations for summer - and then not holding too tightly to the intentions I set - made for one of the best summers I can remember. I rode out that ebb in my spikey pattern and got to enjoy the season and mostly avoid the negative self-talk about being less productive or disciplined. And then I was truly (nerdily) excited to get back into comfortable patterns and ramp up to doing several new projects this fall. 

Does this spikey pattern sound familiar to you? What do you do to embrace it, or avoid holding too tightly to expectations that might not fit for the phase that you’re in?