Unlock Your Unique Productivity: Embrace Your Neurodivergent Productivity Style

​Hi and welcome to this episode of the Overgiver’s Anonymous podcast. My name is Angela Mondor and I’m also known as the Geeky Girl. Today I want to talk about productivity. Do you feel like you’re not productive or you’ll never be productive if you’re in that boat and you’ve had these thoughts about yourself hang tight?

Because I got some cool stuff to talk about. And. Thank you. In having this conversation about productivity, we all have an idea of what productivity should feel like. We also have an idea of what productivity should look like. Some of that comes from the way that we’ve been raised, or the schooling that we’ve had, or, you know, the ideas that we’ve made up until today.

So you do have the ability to change this. This is just one other story that you can use to mold your existence, okay? So let’s talk about the story about how you feel about your productivity because it’s very, very common for us as neurodivergent people to feel like we’re unproductive and it’s possible that you’ve been told that you’re a procrastinator or that you leave things to the last minute or you know, you don’t use your time very well, whatever the case may be.

I’m going to challenge all of your thoughts and help you to think about this a little differently. Because you have your very own productivity personality. If we didn’t have one more thing, right? But when you can understand this and understand how your brain works and how your productivity works things get really clear and there’s some really good things that, that can happen in your life and in your business when you can give this a thorough look through. So let’s give this some thought right now. When we have this concept of, you know thinking about ourselves as not being productive, it can be difficult to be productive because you’re already telling yourself the story of I’m not productive.

I’m lazy. I’m you know, procrastinator or whatever, whatever the story is that you’re telling yourself, you’re already making your So I’m going to way over and over again. So it’s time to change the record. It’s time to put some different thoughts or different spins on what it is that you’re thinking about.

So comparing yourself to other people is a surefire way to fail because you, first of all, you don’t understand everything that person’s going through. You don’t understand all of their own misgivings or maybe even some of their own skills that you don’t have. All those kinds of things. Comparing is Definitely going to cause you some problems.

So let’s not compare your productivity to mine. Let’s not compare it to anybody else’s. I’m going to share with you some stuff that I do or some ideas that have worked for me. No, that just because it works for you now, doesn’t mean to say it’s going to work for you forever, which is always a fun part about being neurodivergent is that we get used to things and things change.

It’s such a joy. Let me tell you. When I’m thinking about my productivity, if I start to feel I’m not as productive as I want to be, or I’m not getting the things done that I want to get done, I start to look and say, Okay, what’s happening with me? What’s happening in my world? What’s, what’s going on? going on.

And, you know, even recording this video today, I was having some stall times about recording and I had created the content I wanted to talk to you about. I had written out all the things I prepared the way I normally prepare. But my husband is home and I like to spend time with him and he’s in the house.

Had he been outside working in the garage, because he’s great at working on cars. If he was out doing that, I’d feel less, but now I kind of want to spend time with him. So it’s hard to like get these things done. Okay. So when those things happen to me, I don’t now go to, I used to, but I don’t now go to, Oh, I should, I should, I should.

So stop shooting on yourself to begin with. And think about what’s the overall purpose of what’s happening. Now I could have said, okay, you know what? I don’t feel like doing this today, and it’s not due today. I don’t need it right now. I could choose to either do it on a Saturday or a Sunday, or I could choose to do it on a Monday.

I could pick another day, basically, is what I’m saying. And I could move these tasks to them, knowing full well that when you move tasks, it means other things are going to get shuffled. But I could do that. If I truly was unable to bring the energy for you, then I would have to do that because I don’t want to bring you a really low energy, not great product.

I don’t want you to have to sit and listen to me roll on about something if I’m not excited about it. So if I couldn’t bring the energy, I’d have to move it. There’s just no question in my mind about the end product for you. So when you’re thinking about what’s happening to you, maybe you’re thinking, oh, I’m not productive or I’m not you know, I’m not being very efficient, but maybe there’s some external forces happening.

Like my husband being home is an external force. Maybe you have somebody that’s sick in the family. Maybe you have a family pet that’s ill. Maybe you are overwhelmed and you have too much on your plate. There’s a lot of reasons why we feel like we’re not, what, Where there’s a lot of reasons that cause us not to be productive.

So let’s talk about your productivity style. And remember, this can change, okay? We are going to link you a productivity style quiz so you can go through it and figure out what kind of productivity style you have. Just answer some fun questions. But essentially, I want to break this down into a few different ones.

So there are those people, there’s, Basically, I want to talk about four. There’s tons, there’s tons of different ways that we can see this. We’re going to break this down into four. So the efficiency seeker, the creative visionary, the systematic planner, and the big picture thinker. And you might think, but I do all those things, or maybe one’s more than another when you first hear the words.

And that could be very true. I know when I look at this, I think, well, sometimes I’m not, and sometimes I could do that too. And sometimes in that way, But I know that there’s some ebbs and flows in my energy and how I see what’s going on. So it’s important to understand that part too. How do you adapt as you move forward?

So an efficiency seeker, you might wonder what’s all this about? Efficiency seeker is somebody who is trying to streamline their tasks. They’re trying to avoid distractions. They really want to just get her done. They just want to like hyper focus on what’s going on. A creative visionary is more somebody who is trying to harness creativity and find new ways and be time effective, you know, but they’re, but they’re finding new ways to do it.

Systematic planners, of course, love workflows and maintaining the organization. And they like to do structured things. Big picture thinkers are people who are constantly thinking about those long term goals. Not all of us are really good at that. And then breaking down complex projects are really easy for them.

Now I can say I do a lot of those things off and on, and some of them I do well off and on, and some of them I do not so well off and on depending on where I’m at and what’s happening in my world. So when we’re thinking about what we are doing, it’s important to understand not just what do you need to get done, but how are you feeling, what’s happening in your brain right now, how is that emotion, you know, there’s a lot of things that impact how we get our work done.

Some of us need that time crunch. And be sure to put really strong deadlines on your time crunches if you’re that person. If you like to be, like, the last second before it’s due, make sure you’re putting some serious time crunches on those so that you’re not coming in late to those. Some, for some people it works to say, for example On a time factor.

So let’s say you need to be at an appointment at one o’clock instead of saying, I need to be at one o’clock. You say, I need to be there at one 45. So you can do the same thing for your business stuff. Oh, I need to have that done by Monday. Fantastic. I need to change the due date that needs to be done by Friday.

When you do that, you. Some people can see that and go, Oh, there’s an urgency. I need to get done by Friday. Other people are like, yeah, I know that really doesn’t have to get done until Monday and it doesn’t help. So understanding who you are and how you work within those time frames or in the frames of how you put your, your work is really important.

You need to be able to figure out who you are, how you interact with all of the things that you have going on so that you can create a world that works best for you. I mean, after all, that’s why we started our own businesses. We didn’t want to be told what to do. We wanted to be able to work for ourselves.

We wanted to work on the things that brought us joy. Sometimes we have to work on things that just need to get done. There are things in my business right now that I have other team members working on that I wish I could work on, but I know that I have other things that I have to do, like create this video.

They can’t create this video for you. Only I can do this one. So I need to be able to make sure that I’m focused on the tool, or focused on the tasks that are most important that I have to get done and not offload things that obviously I can’t, you know, have anybody else do.

I also don’t want to stop the production of everything else going on inside the business because I would rather do something else. That’s not helpful either. So you want to create a plan for your, the way that you personally work in terms of your productivity. Okay.

So let’s talk about this for a second. Okay. If you are somebody who is an efficiency seeker, you want to find the quickest and easiest way to do things. You might really like processes and SOPs and knowing that you can go to this document. And if you follow this thing, exactly, you’re going to get it done fast.

Maybe it’s you know, giving yourself a hoorah because you found a shortcut to get something done. Now, some people, need to have reward systems. Those reward systems could literally be the dopamine from a checkmark. It could be I’m, after I get done today, if I do X amount of things or X amount of hours worth of work, then I’m going to take myself out for dinner tonight.

Or some people like to buy themselves things. There’s many different ways. None of those things typically work for me. Surprise! But one thing that does work for me is that if I’m like, Oh, if I get these things done, then I get to do this thing, even though I’m still working, I seem to leave the the more fun items or the things that I get to do in a relaxed manner to the last part of the day.

I like to get the hard, the stuff that I don’t want to get, not that I don’t want to do it, because there’s stuff I don’t, it’s not that I don’t want to do it, it’s just harder things to do. I do those earlier in the day and then I can have a relaxing time as I finish off the other tasks. So for me, it’s like, oh, I get these really fun tasks I get to do next, but I got to finish these things first in order to get to those.

Those kinds of things. Find what works for you and look for those pieces that’ll work well for you, and especially when you’re talking about efficiencies. If you’re trying to get things done fast maybe the reward system could work for you on that. If you’re a creative visionary and you want to see you know, how you can creatively change things, maybe maybe you’re the kind of person who likes to say, Oh, maybe there’s a new app out there that can help me, or maybe there’s this new you know, automation that can help me.

I mean, there’s a time and a place for these things, and sometimes they can cause you more problems and cause you to waste some time. Or. Lose time, however you want to say it. I know that sometimes I think, Oh, geez, I need to go hit AppSumo. Cause maybe they’ve got something that I need over there. And after a few times I go, okay, stop.

This is not where you need to be spending your time right now. Go back to what you need to do. Or maybe I’m writing an automation. I, I, this is going to be a quick automation and I go start writing automation. I go, that’s not, not going to actually save me a lot of time every month or every week, because here’s the deal.

If you could write an automation and it takes you. A longish time to create, but it’s going to also serve you multiple times. Then you can get your time back. Right. But if you’re just building it for one and done, like this is the one time I’m ever going to use it and it’s taking you longer to build it than it is just to do the work to the work, but it’s possible that that’s the way that your brain needs to work in order to get the work done.

But make sure that you understand how much time you have to get these things done and how much time you think the tasks need to take as well. So If you’re a planner and you like to be systemized and you like to say, here’s how I want to get it done, then time trip, typical time blocking could be helpful to you, or you’re saying during this time of day, I work on these kinds of things during this time of day, I work on these kinds of things like that could be valuable to you in terms of being systematic on how you get things done.

Some people are less systematic and they need to flow. So like that creative visionary, for example, might be more like, Every day I just need to see how I feel and then I’ll see what I can put into my calendar based on my energy level. That’s not wrong either. So there’s no right way to get this done.

It’s about finding out what works best for you. If you are creative and the typical you know, time blocking doesn’t work for you, there’s some other cool time blocking out there. If you want some more information leave me a comment. Send me an email geekygirl. ca. I’m happy to share that with you. But there’s some other ways that you can use those things to be creative still, but find some structure in your day.

If you’re a big picture thinker and you want to make sure that you’re working towards those big picture goals every day you know, making sure that your workflow is there and maintaining the organization, then having those, having the building blocks in front of you to know that what you’re doing is working towards the larger goals can be helpful as you’re working through your day to say, Oh, this piece actually belongs to this greater piece over here making sure that you’re Always being mindful of what your brain needs in order to stay productive or to stay energized through the process.

Because if somebody says, I need you to go over here and you know, put this widget in this hole, you might say, well, what, why, why would I do that? A big picture thinker wants to know why, what’s the purpose of putting the widget in the hole? And then, so, you’d have to understand that putting the widget in the hole allowed for the spot to be filled so that when the wheel turned over top of it, it didn’t get stuck in the hole because the wheel’s trying to get over there.

Something like that. So regardless of what you need to be productive, what do you need to stay energized through the day? Also thinking about what time of day you work. It’s possible that maybe in, you know, like the early morning you’re more systematic, but by the evening time you’re way more creative.

So thinking about Why or how your brain works and then using these things to now adjust your world so that you can be productive. There is nothing better than getting to the end of the day and saying, I’m tired because I worked hard, but I got things done. And that typically comes from knowing what can be done during the day.

I’ve moved all my appointments for clients in the mid, in the morning, but I need to get that stuff done in the morning so that I could have that relaxed, slow time in the afternoon to get other things done. If I was, had meetings in the afternoon, my brain was constantly thinking big picture and it was, Oh, I got a call.

I got a call coming. I got a call calling me. And then I wasn’t able to actually be that you know, efficiency seeking. ability to like just sit down and get some work done because I’d always be thinking big picture, I’m worried about the things coming. So I had to flip flop the day. Think about yourself and how you work, what works for you and what doesn’t.

Try some stuff out, have some fun, play with it. And then, you know, revisit it. Maybe you choose something and you’re like, nah, that doesn’t really work for me. And you can totally change it up. That’s entirely up to you. It’s your business. It’s your time. I hope you have a fantastic day. I hope you take the quiz.

Let us know what you think. And we’ll be in touch, but I hope you have an amazing week. And I look forward to talking to you next time. Thank you.