Neurodiversity · Curiosity & Self-Awareness
When My Brain Declines the Request
Shame is a terrible productivity system. A personal reflection on task initiation, patient support, and experimenting with tools that work with your wiring.
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3 Tools for Working With How I’m Wired. 01 When my brain declines the request. 02 Check the whole glass. 03 Write your personal operating guide. We aren’t waiting for motivation. We’re creating access. From Book 5: Grounded in How I’m Wired. Lynn Cirillo — Musings of a Recovering Executive.
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Tool 01: When My Brain Declines the Request. For the task you know you need to do.
1. Find where the task actually stops. Opening it? Starting? Finishing? Submitting?
2. Shrink the starting line. Not “Write the report.” Try “Open the document.”
3. Borrow structure. A timer. A calendar block. Someone working nearby.
4. Create urgency without creating disaster. Smaller deadlines first. Activation, not panic.
5. Leave your future self a restart point. “Next: call vendor.”
6. Separate responsibility from shame. Take responsibility. Repair. Then design.
Punishing yourself is not the same thing as solving the problem.
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Tool 02: Check the Whole Glass. For the days the input gets to be too much.
1. Map your inputs. Sound. Light. Touch. Crowds. For several days, just notice.
2. Notice what you chose. Music you picked lands differently than noise you didn’t.
3. Learn your early warning signs. Jaw tension. Irritability. Losing words.
4. Ask what’s already in the glass. Sleep. Stress. Workload. The last drop gets blamed.
5. Regulate before you’re overwhelmed. Don’t wait for a crisis to use a tool you know helps.
6. Plan your exit and recovery. Planning isn’t pessimism. It’s resource management.
Maybe support doesn’t need to be the ambulance. Maybe it can be the guardrail.
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Tool 03: Write Your Personal Operating Guide. Gather what you’ve learned into something you can use.
1. How I focus. My attention increases when… decreases when…
2. How I process. I need more time when… The language I can use is…
3. What I need. What I manage myself. Where I may need support.
4. What I’m keeping. The adaptations, systems and strengths that serve you.
5. What I’m releasing. Old rules: “Hide it.” “Try harder.” “Normal is the goal.”
6. What I’m still learning. Leave space. Literally. You aren’t finished.
Not everything you developed was damage. Lynn Cirillo — Musings of a Recovering Executive.
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My brain gives me information. I decide what to do with it. Book 5: Grounded in How I’m Wired. Lynn Cirillo. MusingsOfaRecoveringExecutive.com.
"Thank you for your submission. Your request has been reviewed. We regret to inform you that your proposed task does not meet our current criteria for engagement.
Sincerely,
Management"
That's my brain, responding to a task I know I need to do.
If you know, you know.
It's ADHD Awareness Month, so here's a confession. I have had a math class sitting on my schedule for about a year. A year. I can do math. My brain conducted a relevance assessment. The results were not favorable.
Many of us reach for shame. Now the task is still unfinished, except we've added emotional distress. Very efficient.
I haven't navigated it alone. My incredibly patient school mentor, Andrew Luciano, has tried encouragement, accountability, reminders, reframing, and what I can only assume by now is Motivation Strategy Number 848.
When one approach didn't work, he never decided I didn't care. He never confused difficulty with incapability. He just said:
Okay, that didn't work. What might?
One creates shame. The other creates experimentation.
The best people don't carry you across the finish line. They keep helping you find the way you can get there yourself.
Shame is a terrible productivity system. So I use tools instead. Three from Grounded in How I'm Wired are in the carousel:
→ When my brain declines the request
→ Check the whole glass
→ Write your personal operating guide
None of this hands my brain veto power over everything it finds boring. Sometimes the answer is still: Lynn, do the damn math.
My brain gives me information. I decide what to do with it.
Which one would you try first?
#adhdawarenessmonth #adhd #executivefunction #neurodiversity #musingsofarecoveringexecutive
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Personal reflections by Lynn Cirillo. About this writing.