When experts in productivity place all their chips on superhuman functioning, it can feel like there’s no success plan for neurodivergents to follow. The concepts of 4-hour workdays, 30-minute mornings, and hacking our schedules have become so commonplace to create a healthy lifestyle that something must be wrong if we’re not living out these practices.
We’re neurodivergent, not broken. Perhaps we’re superhumans who don’t need gimmicks to achieve productivity because we achieve it in a way most people don’t understand. Neurodivergents think, react, and plan differently. Remember, these “expert” recommendations are often based on an ideal rather than reality.
Neurodiversity is a very long and varied spectrum of conditions that make us think or behave outside the norm. Conditions like ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia, Anxiety, Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), and many others that may cause us to process information differently than others are all neurodivergence. It also causes us to relate to people, work, and relationships differently. We should end the masking and embrace our unique minds, living authentically in the way God created us.
Trends in Neurodivergence Diagnosis
There’s a wave of Americans only recently learning about their neurodivergence in their 40s and 50s. It is not surprising that we did not receive a diagnosis in our youth because we’re Generation X and society largely ignored us. If we struggled in school, the system labeled us “problematic,” if we excelled, they expected us to maintain that level. Many of us have recognized we spent our lives masking neurodiversity and are just now learning more about ourselves.
After our Millennial children started school, teachers noticed ADHD behaviors and shared this information with us. Suddenly, ADHD and Autism were on the tip of every child development expert’s tongue, and this rise in cases became astronomical. Many want to blame it on certain health practices, but what if being neurodivergent is just more common (and undiagnosed) than we thought? What if the uptick in diagnoses is because the ignored GenXers became helicopter parents who were more tuned in to our children?
In the 90s, teachers tuned into children’s behaviors and learning disabilities more than ever. Parents took this to heart and pursued evaluation, which led to diagnosis, which often led to treatment, if available. For the record, I prefer to refer to it as learning differences. Neurodivergents can learn and typically need an environment more conducive to their learning style than the typical classroom setting.
Late-Identified Neurodiverse Adults
Now that we have more information and more resources for support and therapy, we must consider how neurodivergents operate differently from neurotypicals. Neurotypicals are more likely to be successful with the 30-minute morning or the 4-hour day. They can get up at 5 a.m., follow a very structured morning routine, and fit more tasks into their day. Likely, they are also more successful at self-care, able to follow exercise or weight management routines, and get regular massages and haircuts. Healthy eating is also challenging to achieve because preparing meals can be overwhelming.
Neurodivergents need more flexibility and freedom in their daily activities. Some of us might sleep until 9 a.m., loll around for two hours, and then do 30-minute bursts of work or launch a half-day of intense focus on a project. We might struggle with checking items off our to-do list, and we loathe the idea of a salon appointment or exercising. Healthy eating is also challenging to achieve because preparing meals can be overwhelming.
As neurodivergents, we need more than the typical recommendations for managing our day, like block scheduling or getting up one hour earlier than usual. Practical, straightforward daily guidelines are more likely to produce better outcomes.
Here are five ways you can improve your daily outcomes and reduce frustration:
- Most importantly, understand your neurodivergence and how it affects you.
- Write down the top five or ten attributes that typically interfere with productivity. Now, identify the top three that cause you the most stress.
- What are your typical stress responses when you think about the stress from those top three? Headache, gut pain, anger, fight or flight?
- Create a plan to identify these responses early and the best option for handling them. Consider taking a brief walk outside, praying, reading a devotion, allowing yourself a predetermined amount of time to browse social media, or taking a few deep breaths.
- Create a sensory-friendly environment at home and work. Install lighting and noise-control measures. Reduce sensory overload to improve stress responses to other issues.
- Make a plan for how you will approach any activity you need to do, even the ones you are highly interested in. Do you prefer to dive right in and get lost in research and details? Great! Agree with yourself that you won’t get frustrated if you spend 4 hours on one task. Do you have a lot to do and need focus? Use a Pomodoro timer, dedicating 25 minutes at a time to the task with a 5-minute break between sessions. When the timer goes off for the break, have water and snacks nearby and fill that time with some self-care.
- Test out different mind-mapping methods and use one that resonates the most with you. Whether you use an app, a paper planner, or a plain notebook, keep track of your tasks and appointments in a manner that you are most likely to use consistently. Consistency builds habits.
- Operate according to your best schedule. If you’re naturally part of the 5 a.m. crowd, keep it up! If the motivation to clean the bathrooms comes at 11 p.m. after everyone else is in bed, do that. Is laundry overwhelming? Do one load at a time that gets fully processed (including put away) before you begin another one. If you genuinely would love to exercise but morning workouts will never happen, do it at 8 p.m. You get the idea. The point is to arrange your schedule so you can do various tasks when the time is right for you.
Whether you’ve known since childhood that you are different from others, or you’ve only recently learned that you are neurodivergent, permit yourself to be the way God made you. Give yourself grace and understanding. Give yourself the gift of planning to bring more peace to each day.
About the Author
Tonya Ludwig is a creative, using her God-given gifts for writing and entrepreneurship. Tonya actively supports literacy by facilitating community-based reading experiences for adults with developmental disabilities through Next Chapter Book Clubs. In addition to writing, Tonya operates her publishing company, Wilt & Wade Publishing, and spends time with her family.