The Best ADHD-Hack for Perfectionists and Overthinkers: Do a Shitty Job

 Welcome to the Outsmart, A DHD podcast. I'm your host, Jamie Catino, board certified occupational therapist. Two-time Ted Speaker, A DHD coach, A DHD, advocate and Reality Show, contestant. Now let's talk about A DH. D.

Hello, gorgeous humans. Welcome back to my show. I'm super excited to talk with you today about something that I have been using that has been honestly life changing in my life. If you are a perfectionist or an overthinker, you are gonna really like today's episode, and I'm gonna take a wild guess that because you listened to this show and you've been listening for a while that you.

Probably are a perfectionist and an overthinker. It seems to be the type of people that I attract. It's definitely the type of clients that I attract. It's definitely the type of people that show up in my dms and in my circles and whatnot. I think I just have a vibe and other people find that vibe and if they're attracted to it, I find out that most of the time that person is a perfectionist and or overthinker, and I think that they go hand in hand.

The thing that I wanna talk about today is the idea of what if you just did a shitty job? Now, I touched on this a little bit last week when I was talking about, oh fuck, my memory's so bad. I was talking about things to help with executive functioning in the workplace. I think do. Let me look up.

I can't even remember what the fuck my last podcast episode was about. Isn't that hilarious? I don't have a DHD. I'm only quirky. I'm only, pretending to have a DHD. Oh yeah. So last week's episode was about how to increase the executive functioning at work and how to get shit done. So I touched on this last time.

What if you just did a shitty job? Now I wanna dive into this a little bit more. It's a simple concept that has been absolutely life-changing in my life, and I'm gonna tell you exactly why and why it stems back to how the A DHD brain works and why this works so fucking well for our A DHD brain. First of all.

This idea of what if you just did a shitty job helps with your executive functioning. Now, if you don't know what executive functioning is, that's okay, because guess what? I talk really fast and I can explain it pretty quickly. Executive functioning is something that your frontal lobe. Controls and executive functioning is your ability to plan, prioritize, start a task, finish a task, switch tasks.

Everything that you need to do in your daily life as an adult requires executive functioning. And with A DHD, you have an underdeveloped frontal lobe, which means that. That makes anything requiring executive functioning harder to do. So anything that requires any of those skills. Planning, prioritizing, organizing, starting a task, finishing a task, switching tasks.

It all requires executive functioning. So anything that requires those requires executive functioning. Now, the idea of what if you did just did a shitty job helps with executive functioning because it gets over the. Huge planning process that goes into a beautifully curated project, task X, y, Z. I'm gonna give tangible examples so that this makes complete sense to you, but the reason that this works so well is because it helps with executive functioning and cuts down the process a little bit.

Okay? As a ADHDers, a lot of times we will put off doing something because we have this beautiful plan in our head of what that thing is going to look like by the end of it. Whether it is a task at work, whether it is an outfit that you're going to wear to a wedding, whatever it is. We have this idea of what.

We want that thing to look like in the perfect world and in our brain, if we do that thing perfectly, if we execute it perfectly, there won't be anybody to reject us. There won't be anybody to say, oh, you did a shitty job. You can forego all those crappy feelings that come with, rejection sensitive dysphoria and just all the feelings of.

What you feel when you're incredibly hard on yourself, and I know that you're very hard on yourself. I don't think there's probably gonna be very many people that listen to this podcast that are really hard on themselves. Honestly, it's just the type of, just the type of people that I attract. The idea of what if I just do a shitty job?

It changes the end game of whatever beautiful picture you have in your head of the end goal of that thing. An example of this, I just started getting my ass back to the gym. I am finally feeling good enough to where I am, okay to leave the house, get to the gym, do a workout, and. Still function for the rest of my day and what I need to get done.

It has taken so long to get to this point. So many changes had to happen in my life. So much burnout, recovery, so much honestly. Work, working through trauma, it's taken a lot to get here for my body to feel safe enough to get to that point anyway, I say that because at the gym, once upon a time, I used to be a personal trainer.

I worked in the fitness world and I had this idea ingrained in my head from working in the fitness world where if your legs are not shaking, if you don't feel like death, if you don't hate every second, you're exercising. You're not working hard enough. It has taken years of deconstructing to even start to get past that idea, getting into the gym.

I had to go in with a completely different mindset to even get myself through the door. Before the idea was, and by the end of the workout, I'm gonna feel like this, and in three months from now I'm going to look like this. When I implemented, what if I just did a shitty job? What that meant was. I just went to machines that I wanted to work out at and I did three sets of, my goal was originally 10 10 repetitions.

I would get to seven or eight, and I'm like, you know what? That felt like enough and I was done. What if you just did a shitty job?

That idea got me through the fucking doors to be able to get into the gym, which allowed me to do a workout and. Continue with the rest of my day, whereas for a very long time I felt like I could not step through the doors unless I was willing to put myself through a mentally and physically, oftentimes emotionally exhausting experience.

Another place that this has helped in my life is recording this podcast. I. I had a vision for this podcast that I would have it be a video recording. Every single episode would go onto YouTube. It would have beautiful SEO captions show notes, all of that stuff. And I would create little clips out of it and use it in my social media for my marketing across all of the different channels.

Instead, I have accepted that to me. For me, doing a shitty job means getting to my computer, pressing record, taking few or no notes prior to pressing record saying what's on my mind. Putting that transcript into good old chat, GPT, where it populates some show notes based off of A GBT. I did create for it, but that's what it turned into.

You won't see my face because guess what? I don't feel like doing my fucking hair and makeup and putting out a presentation of myself that requires me to be so conscious of how I look as I am saying the things that are passionate to me. I just wanna be able to fucking say those things, get them into your ears, change your life, and move on to the next thing in the day.

The shitty way that you do things means shitty to the perfected, overly analyzed picture that you've put in your mind of what that thing is going to look like. When you are done with it, it does not mean that it is inherently shitty. I hope that you're not listening to this podcast thinking, oh my gosh.

You're right, Jamie. This is shitty. If you do think that, then go listen to someone else's podcast. Shitty just means that it is not the perfect picture that you had planned to begin with. I used this thinking when I got dressed. Today I am down to one fucking skin colored bra because my cute new puppy chewed my other one, so my skin color bra was not in my bedroom.

And. I couldn't find it. So instead of worrying about it, I realized I'm not leaving the house today. What if I just don't wear a fucking bra today? So I put on a shirt and I didn't put on a bra. Do I normally get dressed in that way? No. But guess what? I still took a shower that day. I still took a shower today.

I still got dressed. I just didn't get dressed in the way that I typically would, or the way that maybe society tells you that you need to do every day. I did a webinar yesterday for A DDA, which is Attention Deficit Disorder Association, and I talked about it I think on the last podcast where I had this idea where I'm gonna create all of these beautiful slides and then finally just said, fuck it, and decided I'm not going to do that.

And guess what? It went just fine. It looked nothing like what I thought it was going to when I agreed to. Do the free webinar. It didn't look like that at all. Actually, in my head. I planned on not only having beautiful slides to present, but to also have my freebie done so that people can do an email opt-in, and they can get an on demand webinar of the thing that I'm gonna create a webinar on.

But I said, you know what? What if I just do a shitty job? I created a little landing page to be able to collect emails and said, Hey, you'll get the webinar by Monday. I'll have to record it sometime tomorrow. But I didn't feel like getting it done prior to then. And guess what? I didn't. Now do most people create freebies where they say, oh, thanks for your email.

I'll get that to you later. No, but guess what? It works. People are still opting in and giving me their email. I will give them the webinar later. And when it comes to actually creating that webinar, I was gonna put so much pressure on myself to create a PDF guide of everything that's in the webinar so that people that are more visual learners can learn from it that way.

And then I realized, what if I just do a shitty job? I'm gonna be uploading it to YouTube. I am, it's already gonna have auto or populate the captions. I can just tell them to pause it and take some notes. They can accommodate themselves. I don't have to do everything. To me, that is my version of doing a shitty job.

A few days ago was. My partner and i's seven year anniversary together. I did not realize until I got off of a call, looked at the date and saw that it was June 9th, and I thought, oh my gosh, I need to think of something really special to get him to celebrate, quite a long time together, and we've been through a lot this year and we got through it.

I need to do something monumental. I thought about not even mentioning that it's our anniversary until I ordered something off of Amazon or I planned something for us because with everything going on we're both suck at dates. So I, since he didn't say anything to me, I knew that he had forgotten about it as well.

But instead, I just went downstairs and said, happy anniversary. We did it. We've been together for seven years. I'm so happy that I'm with you. That was my shitty version of celebrating our anniversary versus what I had in my head of what would be, what would the best partner possible do to celebrate an anniversary?

This thinking is gonna help you with the task initiation of executive functioning. It's also gonna help you with the task completion of executive functioning because now you have changed what that end goal is, which means a lot less work is gonna go into the task or the project itself. You can apply this to every single part of your life.

Whether it be cleaning your house or your apartment, or wherever you live, whether it be your work tasks, whether it be in your relationship or your business, there is always a way to do a shitty job and by doing a shitty job. The job will actually be done. The task will actually be done, and you will find that over time it really did not matter that you did a shitty job.

The only thing that mattered is that you got it done, and over time you will stop putting so much fucking pressure on yourself. I hope that you go out and you do a very shitty job this week. I want to hear how it goes. If you take this advice. If you take this advice, please send me an email or leave a review on the podcast.

I wanna hear how this. Has changed your life, and if you ever wanna email me, that email is team@outsmartaadhd.co. You can reach out to me anytime and it will be me that responds to you. Now if you would like some help on how to do a shitty job in your life because everything is overwhelming and not a motherfucking thing is getting done, go to the show notes where you can sign up for a free call with me, a free 30 minutes where we can talk about what's going on in your life and I can help you to sort through it and.

Support with your executive functioning so that you can do a shitty job and get your things done too. Because guess what, perfectionist, I know that you have a beautiful picture in your head of what it needs to look like by the end of it, but wouldn't it be cool if there was a picture at all versus nothing?

Because all you did was overthought and perfected this idea in your head and never actually executed it. I hope you do a shitty job, my friend, and I'm looking forward to meeting everyone that signs up for a call with me. Now can you do me a giant favor? Will you please rate and review this podcast? This podcast is a way to get free information out to those who otherwise wouldn't be able to have, wouldn't be able to afford resources.

I'm very passionate about creating accessibility. Not everybody can afford coaching, and this podcast is a way that I can help the world and help amazing A DHD humans that are struggling, that wouldn't be able to afford help. Otherwise, please do me a giant favor the algorithm or whatever the fucking.

Algorithm Gods will favor podcasts that have more reviews. Please do me a giant favor and do a shitty job doing that. Just put a five star review and you don't have to write a damn thing. I'll write my friends. I hope to talk to you next week. Bye now.

 Are you a high achieving woman with a DHD looking for a coach or maybe an event coordinator looking for a wildly captivating speaker? Perfect. Go to outsmart adhd.co. That's out. Smart adh adhd.co to get in touch. And before I forget, would you mind taking a minute to share this podcast with someone you love?

It would mean the world to me. Thanks, my friend. Until next time.