How procrastination gets in the way of wealth! (Featuring free workbook!)
Have you ever found yourself paralyzed by procrastination, knowing exactly what needs to be done but unable to do it? I’ve been there.
Hey, I'm Katie McManus, business strategist and money mindset coach, and this is my podcast "The Weeniecast!"
Pssssst! If after listening to this episode you want my help overcoming the challenges mentioned, here's the link to the free download - https://weeniecast.com/procrastination-worksheet
Now, back to the episode!
In this episode we're getting deep into the murky waters of ADHD and procrastination!
A common challenge for us ADHD business owners.
One pressing question I receive frequently is: "Katie, how do I prevent myself from procrastinating?"
The truth is, I don’t always succeed.
As a business owner with ADHD, I face the same battles as my clients.
In this episode, I highlight some of the major challenges ADHD entrepreneurs face, from the pressures of self-imposed perfectionism to the frustrating cycle of executive dysfunction.
By sharing my vulnerabilities and the shame that comes from missed deadlines and unmet expectations, I aim to reassure you that you're not alone in this struggle and to provide tips that have helped me along the way.
After listening, you’ll gain valuable insights into managing your energy and building a more ADHD-friendly business.
You'll learn the importance of quitting work at the right time, so you can maximize your dopamine supply.
We’ll also explore the challenges of hiring the right people and how to bounce back when you've hired wrong.
And most importantly, we'll discuss how to shake off the toxic belief that rest must be earned—a concept that goes hand-in-hand with creating a sustainable, successful business.
Listen in for strategies that can help you turn your procrastination from a crippling hurdle into a manageable part of your entrepreneurial journey.
Timestamped summary
00:00 Struggle of running a business with ADHD.
04:13 Reward motivates, small tweaks lead to success.
08:54 Organizing tasks by dopamine levels improves productivity.
12:24 Trust emotions in decision-making and avoid impulsive spending.
14:56 ADHD-friendly membership, support, rest, and understanding.
17:20 Community support for shared experiences and coaching.
Your next steps after listening
Download my free procrastination worksheet -
https://weeniecast.com/procrastination-worksheet
Realizing it's time to work with me? Book your free initial strategy call with me - weeniecast.com/strategycall
Get more support in your ADHD entrepreneur life by joining my hyperfocus community! - https://weeniecast.com/hyperfocus
Wanna get this content earlier, and totally unbleeped? Subscribe to the Apple Podcasts premium version of this show - https://weeniecast.com/winners
Want to just buy me a coffee in return for some helpful insight? Thank you! Here's where you can do that - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/katiethecoach
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Transcript
In this episode, I'm going to tell you about the support
Speaker:I wish I had to help me bypass some serious
Speaker:procrastination. Hi, I'm Katie McManus, business
Speaker:strategist and money mindset coach, and welcome to the
Speaker:Weeniecast. A question I get an
Speaker:annoying amount of times is how do I prevent myself from
Speaker:procrastinating? How do I get everything done on my to do list
Speaker:and on and on and on. And let me tell you, I don't.
Speaker:One of the challenges of being a coach who works with
Speaker:ADHD business owners is that I am also an ADHD
Speaker:business owner. And the challenges don't change when you know
Speaker:better. Just because I help other people figure out how to overcome their
Speaker:challenges with their ADHD in starting and growing their businesses
Speaker:doesn't mean I have it all figured out myself. For me and my
Speaker:business, far from it, knowing all the different
Speaker:strategies that can work for other people creates an immense amount of pressure on
Speaker:me to just be perfect at all this stuff
Speaker:because I teach on it after all, right, I should be perfect.
Speaker:I fail in managing my ADHD every single day in
Speaker:my business and I know the shame that goes along with it. I know the
Speaker:frustration and sometimes it's not a big deal, you know, sometimes I
Speaker:don't post to LinkedIn and okay, cool, I'll post
Speaker:tomorrow. Sometimes my newsletter. Oh, no, that's a bad
Speaker:example. I'm very bad at having a newsletter, so that's an ongoing problem.
Speaker:I've actually, I'm gonna start outsourcing that to someone
Speaker:so we won't even touch upon the newsletter. Just don't pay attention to that part
Speaker:of this podcast. I know Neal's not going to edit this out, so,
Speaker:you know, I'll accidentally book an appointment at 02:00 in the afternoon
Speaker:and then I'll just be in waiting mode all morning and all through lunch
Speaker:and then right until 02:00 p.m. Until I have that meeting
Speaker:because I'm afraid that I'll miss it. And then the rest of the day I'll
Speaker:still be in executive dysfunction, not able to do anything because I'm disappointed
Speaker:in myself for not getting more done in the morning. So I know the shame
Speaker:that goes into running a business when you have
Speaker:ADHD. I know how hard it is to
Speaker:sit there in executive dysfunction, knowing all the things that you need to
Speaker:do that you want to do and not being able to get up and just
Speaker:do it. I understand the sinking feeling of
Speaker:shame when your well meaning neurotypical loved
Speaker:ones are like, well, just do it. Just, just start.
Speaker:And it'll be so simple when you start, as if it's easy.
Speaker:There are so many challenges that go into managing ADHD, and
Speaker:one of the big ones is we thrive in structure. Structured
Speaker:environments are perfect for us. So having a nine to five can actually be really
Speaker:healthy for us. But a lot of us do not thrive
Speaker:in the nine to five ness. Like the expectations in the nine to
Speaker:five don't fit us. And also often the activities that we're doing
Speaker:every single day in the nine to five don't reflect our gifts, so it
Speaker:tends to burn us out. So what do we do? We go off and we
Speaker:start businesses where we have to create the structure, and we
Speaker:suck at that. We're not good at creating structure for ourselves. And
Speaker:because we're working on our own and because we're responsible for creating
Speaker:the structure and it's not going well, we can sometimes
Speaker:spiral a little bit out of control. We can start punishing
Speaker:ourselves and overworking. And I do this all the time. And
Speaker:here's a few ways that I have been working on becoming better at this
Speaker:myself. Now,
Speaker:better is by no means perfect, but these are
Speaker:small things that I've been doing for myself that I do coach my clients
Speaker:to do. And members of the hyperfocus membership, which is the thing
Speaker:that brought this whole topic up, because the hyper focus membership has
Speaker:been on a enrollment pause for the last
Speaker:nine months. Do you know why? Because I've been
Speaker:procrastinating, writing the f landing page. It wasn't until about
Speaker:a month ago where I got a burst of dopamine
Speaker:and my executive dysfunction decided to off for a little bit, where I
Speaker:was able to sit down and actually write out this whole
Speaker:landing page in one sitting. And I want to talk about this because
Speaker:a oftentimes people think that like, the reward
Speaker:for doing something is enough for us to be
Speaker:motivated to start it, to work on it, right? So the
Speaker:reward for finishing a landing page is what you make money
Speaker:because people are able to go to the landing page, see what you're
Speaker:selling, click the buy button, and then all of a sudden their money
Speaker:becomes your money and you have a client that didn't necessarily work for
Speaker:me for nine whole months. And I'm convinced
Speaker:that making these small tweaks in my day to
Speaker:day are what finally got me to the point where I had the
Speaker:emotional, mental and dopamine bandwidth
Speaker:to actually sit down and do this. So the number one
Speaker:thing that I've been working on in the last handful of months
Speaker:is to quit work when I'm tired, not exhausted.
Speaker:As an adhder, I am so used to sitting
Speaker:down and doing a project all in one sitting. Every single research paper
Speaker:I did in school, I did the night before, I stayed up all
Speaker:night and I wrote the paper. And usually I didn't even go
Speaker:to sleep in the morning because I didn't want to miss the class because once
Speaker:I fell asleep, then I was dead to the world. Any sewing project I ever
Speaker:did in high school, because I was really big on making costumes for my friends
Speaker:and for myself, I would do in one sitting. I would literally just put on
Speaker:all of the Lord of the Rings movies and have them on the background as
Speaker:I made these elaborate costumes. And a lot of the things that
Speaker:I do in my business, I do in one sitting. I have to. It's just
Speaker:how my brain works. And when you do things in one sitting,
Speaker:the goal is get it done at any cost, because
Speaker:usually there is a deadline that you cannot miss. If you miss that
Speaker:deadline, then none of the work counts. If you're doing a costume for
Speaker:Halloween and it's the night before Halloween and you don't finish the costume, guess what?
Speaker:You don't have a costume to wear on Halloween. I mean, certain professors in
Speaker:university, if you do not finish the paper by the time it's
Speaker:due, you do not get to submit it late. So when we
Speaker:grow up that way, when we learn that we have to get things done at
Speaker:any cost, what we train ourselves to do is work through exhaustion.
Speaker:And that's all well and good when it's about a paper
Speaker:or, you know, something silly, because usually you have some time to
Speaker:recuperate afterwards. But in a business, you don't have that.
Speaker:In a business, if you work yourself past exhaustion on a
Speaker:project, that means the next day or two,
Speaker:you're going to be useless. You're going to have a really hard
Speaker:time doing any of the daily
Speaker:tasks in your business because your dopamine is going to be completely
Speaker:flatlined. And it's really hard to train yourself out of
Speaker:this because the signal normally to stop working is you finish
Speaker:the thing or you're so exhausted you cannot put
Speaker:another two words together. Or like that time in high school when I was
Speaker:making a Disney princess costume, I accidentally
Speaker:sewed through one of my fingers on the sewing machine and I had to go
Speaker:to the emergency room. That's another sign that you need to be done. Not one
Speaker:I recommend. Is that too gruesome?
Speaker:When we quit, when we're tired, when we're just starting to slow
Speaker:down a bit, when our brains are just getting a little bit murky and things
Speaker:start taking a little longer. What we're basically doing
Speaker:is keeping a reserve of dopamine that we can utilize the next
Speaker:day. It feels like you're being lazy when you do this.
Speaker:It feels like you are being totally self
Speaker:indulgent because you've had a whole lifetime of
Speaker:programming of people calling you lazy for not starting the
Speaker:thing already. And then by the time you start doing it, well,
Speaker:you know you have to finish it. You did this to yourself. You
Speaker:procrastinated. So now you have to get it done and you have to stay up
Speaker:late and you have to punish yourself. One of the hardest lessons I've had to
Speaker:learn in the six plus years that I've run my business is that,
Speaker:yes, I set the deadlines for things in my business, but
Speaker:also those deadlines get to be flexible. And
Speaker:me missing a self imposed deadline does
Speaker:not mean that I'm a terrible person. It doesn't mean that I'm unprofessional.
Speaker:It doesn't mean that this business isn't going to work. It means that I'm a
Speaker:human, and I'm a human with ADHD. And sometimes that's just
Speaker:how we work. I did another episode a while back about how
Speaker:I use my own procrastination as a self care method to
Speaker:reduce stress. If you want to go and listen to this episode, it's episode
Speaker:77, and I break down exactly how I take different tasks,
Speaker:like high dopamine required tasks and low dopamine required
Speaker:tasks. And I always have them organized in lists so that when
Speaker:I'm having a high dopamine day, I can say, okay, awesome, I'm ready to get
Speaker:some shit done. And I look at the list of high dopamine stuff that I
Speaker:need to do, and I get to pick and choose, and I don't have to
Speaker:do any of the mental work of planning what needs to be done.
Speaker:Likewise, on days where I'm just not feeling it, I have no energy.
Speaker:My dopamine's in the gutter. I'm able to look at those low
Speaker:dopamine items and say, okay, cool, here's some really
Speaker:easily accessible things that I can absolutely get done today.
Speaker:And what this does is it gives me the ability to use my own
Speaker:procrastination to get things done that I need to get done anyway. So
Speaker:I've been quitting when I'm tired since the beginning of this
Speaker:year in 2024 and I'm convinced that
Speaker:by doing that, I have been storing up dopamine throughout the week so
Speaker:that I don't get to that point of exhaustion where I need a whole day
Speaker:to recover and where I randomly do get those
Speaker:really high dopamine spurts. And that's how I finally
Speaker:finished this damn landing page. The other aspect to this is,
Speaker:oh, what am I going to say next? Well, you'll have to keep listening to
Speaker:find out. But first, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel, squirrel.
Speaker:The other aspect to this is knowing when to ask for help
Speaker:and who to ask for help from. One of the most challenging bits
Speaker:about this project in particular is that I had actually hired
Speaker:someone to do it for me. I hired someone
Speaker:who had one really strong recommendation from someone that
Speaker:I know and trust. She has a really massive following on
Speaker:social media, and the work this person did for her was
Speaker:just very successful. And so when I
Speaker:approached this man to write my landing page for me and to design it and
Speaker:do all that stuff, you know, he was like, yep, absolutely.
Speaker:He went and did it, and he wrote a landing page for a completely different
Speaker:program. It's like he didn't understand any of the
Speaker:notes that I was giving him about what the hyper focus was, membership was, and
Speaker:there were just a lot of problems with it. There are a lot of really
Speaker:basic mistakes that anyone who's done any
Speaker:studies in copywriting would know not to make. And
Speaker:when I tried to work with this individual and give him feedback
Speaker:and just say, hey, you know, like, here's my feedback on the
Speaker:copy that you wrote here and how it's laid out and this and that and
Speaker:the other thing. He didn't even understand the basic copywriting terms that
Speaker:I was using. This kicked off me feeling like a complete
Speaker:failure. You know, I coach on this stuff, and I hired the wrong
Speaker:person. You know, I didn't vet him well enough. And
Speaker:also, I felt like I'd kind of gotten scammed, which basically
Speaker:I had been, because he was selling a service that he was not
Speaker:qualified to provide. So of course, this
Speaker:is for the landing page for hyperfocus. So, of course it created all this
Speaker:icky energy around the idea of working on it myself.
Speaker:And I name this not to badmouth anyone. I'm not going to name who this
Speaker:is because I want you to know that you're going to hire the wrong people.
Speaker:There are a lot of unscrupulous individuals out there who are
Speaker:going to gladly take your money to help you do a thing that they
Speaker:have no ability to help you do. And that's just how the
Speaker:world works, unfortunately. And when this happens,
Speaker:you have a couple choices. You can absolutely label yourself as
Speaker:a failure and make it all doom and gloom and
Speaker:a foretelling that you're going to fail at this business, or you can take it
Speaker:as a lesson. Now obviously, I highly recommend
Speaker:taking it as a lesson, but if you do, you can't take it
Speaker:as a lesson right away. You have to let the emotions kind of process. You
Speaker:don't let those emotions process out of you. It's gonna create this,
Speaker:like, negativity suck around this project and you're never gonna be able to get it
Speaker:done. There's also a trust element. If you hired someone to do
Speaker:something and they completely failed at it for you and you're out the
Speaker:money and you know they're no longer helping you. And
Speaker:obviously you either have a choice of doing it yourself and you haven't done it
Speaker:before or hiring someone else when, oh my God, what if I make
Speaker:the wrong decision again? You have to kind of rebuild trust in other
Speaker:people, and more importantly, you have to rebuild trust
Speaker:with yourself to know make good decisions. And here's the lesson that
Speaker:I think most ADHD business owners need to learn is that
Speaker:throwing money at a problem is not a for sure way
Speaker:to fix the problem.
Speaker:So it's absolutely ironic that in
Speaker:relaunching the hyperfocus membership, I ran into
Speaker:pretty much every ADHD obstacle in the
Speaker:book in getting the landing page up and running
Speaker:on the landing page, which, if you want to go check it out, it's weenie
Speaker:cast.com forward slash hyperfocused. And we
Speaker:also have that listed in the show notes. You'll notice that I actually call myself
Speaker:out on it. One of the big reasons I launched hyperfocus the
Speaker:membership is because I wanted there to be an accessible
Speaker:low ticket offer where folks who maybe aren't ready to work
Speaker:with me or can't afford to work with me yet can
Speaker:still get coaching, can still get support. But I also
Speaker:created it because we all need a place for accountability.
Speaker:We all need a place to go and say, oh God, guys, this
Speaker:is what's going on for me. I think I'm really it up and have everyone
Speaker:pipe up and say, no, you're not just it up. I go through
Speaker:that too. It's normal. We also need a place to go and ask for
Speaker:good referrals. I like, literally, I would not have been
Speaker:able to launch this landing page if it weren't for my team.
Speaker:And my team is incredibly ADHD. Sensitive.
Speaker:They know not to nag me about stuff because they know nagging is actually
Speaker:going to be a surefire way to prevent me from doing it even longer. Because
Speaker:when you get nagged about something creates more bad energy and
Speaker:beliefs around it. It makes you feel like you've already failed at it and it
Speaker:robs you of all the dopamine that you'll get from finishing it. This membership is
Speaker:designed to help you find people like that who understand how
Speaker:your brain works and how you can be best supported in all the
Speaker:ways that you need to be supported in your business. One of the things that
Speaker:I'm really excited to be rolling out in the early summer is to
Speaker:have guest trainers. One of the things that I'm vetting for
Speaker:when I pick these guest trainers is do they have ADHD
Speaker:friendly methodologies? I'm never going to bring someone into this
Speaker:community who's going to say, well, just do it. Just power through in
Speaker:a very neurotypical, condescending kind of way that doesn't belong
Speaker:here because that's not what's going to be useful to us. It's
Speaker:also a place where we can be reminded time and time
Speaker:again that we do not need to earn
Speaker:rest. How many times have you sat down at the dinner table with your
Speaker:spouse, your partner, with your family family and been asked,
Speaker:oh, how was your day? And you list off a gazillion things that you
Speaker:did in a way that, like subconsciously you're trying to get
Speaker:their approval. Wow, you did a lot. You deserve to be sitting
Speaker:down and having dinner and you deserve to watch some tv later, and you
Speaker:deserve to put on soft pants and just kick back on your
Speaker:couch. You earned this by working
Speaker:hard. The more I coach other ADHD business owners
Speaker:and the more I get in touch with myself and how
Speaker:I work and how I sabotage myself, the more I realize the
Speaker:biggest problem ADHD business owners have.
Speaker:Because we're ambitious, because we're hard workers, because we have this
Speaker:vision of this bigger life that we want to have, and because I carry
Speaker:a whole buttload of shame and beliefs that I'm
Speaker:lazy, that I don't work hard enough, that there's something deficient about
Speaker:me. The more I see this in myself and in my clients, the more I
Speaker:realize the biggest hurdle we need to overcome is
Speaker:learning that we do not need to earn rest. When we
Speaker:prioritize rest and recharging our brains and
Speaker:recuperating our bodies. When we prioritize that first,
Speaker:everything else becomes more successful. If you want to hear more about
Speaker:this, then go and check out episode 81, where I talk all about my favorite
Speaker:topic, which is sleep. But genuinely, if you want
Speaker:to be successful at running your business, if you want to make buckets of
Speaker:money, if you want to help thousands of people out there in the world,
Speaker:first you need to help yourself. And if you'd like a community
Speaker:around you, to support you and to remind you
Speaker:that you're normal, I mean, as normal as we get, and that
Speaker:your struggles are not unique, and to remind you that you
Speaker:deserve to actually enjoy this whole
Speaker:journey and you want some coaching from me, then I
Speaker:invite you to check out the hyper focused membership. It's designed for
Speaker:people like you and me, and I really wish I had it nine months
Speaker:ago.
Speaker:I'm gonna look that up. Hold on.
Speaker:Do turtles
Speaker:eat mosquitoes?
Speaker:Squirrel, squirrel. Squirrel, squirrel.
