Moral Inventory: Leverage your strengths for maximum efficiency:
Do you ever picture yourself as a headless chicken, spending exponential energy running 15 thousand different directions trying to cover all your bases but accomplishing little and none of the tasks at the quality you’re aiming for? Maybe you know you need to down size that to-do list, but you have no idea how to decide which ones to keep and which ones to let go of. Never fear, tips for leveraging strengths for maximum efficiency are here.
6 tips on leveraging strengths for maximum efficiency:
List it out: Make a comprehensive list of your typical responsibilities over the period of a week. You can use items listed on your daily planner and or create a log over the period of a week consisting of responsibilities you take on each day over the course of that week.
Categorize it: Come up with a symbol or number you can easily associate with the following: tasks you do well, tasks you do adequately, and tasks you frequently mess up on. Put the appropriate symbol by each task on your comprehensive list and separate them out into three separate groups.
Strengths: Keep all tasks you do well on your current and ongoing list.
Frequent mess ups: For the tasks you usually find yourself messing up and having to do again or wasting a bunch of time with no success on, consider delegating these to other family members, young teenagers looking to earn a few bucks, or to trained professionals. Think about the time, the lighter emotional load, and the extra energy this would allow you that could possibly be used toward one or your strengths where it could earn back the money you’re paying others and then some! Wouldn’t it be worth it?
The adequate group: Once you decide what to do with each task on the list of frequent mess ups, given your predicted left over time, emotional load, and energy, decide which of these tasks to delegate or keep.
Bask in the relief: Once you make your plans for each task, notice any shift in your mind, body, and spirit as a result of lighting your load and leveraging your skills to their maximum benefit. Stay in that mind set as long as needed.
To wrap up, it's easy for us as ADHDers to get into the habit of saying “yes” to everything, wanting to do it all, and going for the gold. After all, we are often described as a world class race car with really weak brakes. However, reviewing all your “yes”es through the lens of your unique skills can help you get the most bang for your buck by pressing the pedals that take you the longest distance with the least amount of fuel.