Curing the Hopelessly Distracted Entrepreneur

Curing the Hopelessly Distracted Entrepreneur
I’ve had ADHD all of my life and with that also comes the soul of an entrepreneur. For some reason, ADHD and an entrepreneur spirit walk hand in hand. But most of the time, the ADHD traits such as being impulsive and inattentive wreck my ability as an entrepreneur to get the work done and put money in my wallet.
Here’s how I used my ADHD as a strength and used it to /propel/ my entrepreneurial talents instead of cripple them.
(And you might be or might not be ADHD, but let’s just say you struggle with being distracted and go from there.)

Automate Your Life as Best as You Can
When it comes to the digital part of my life, as a blogger and writer, I would caught up in the detritus of the internet, the stuff that just didn’t bleeping matter.
What time should I post?
How many email subscribers do I have now?
Did I actually post today?
When are my bills due?

Because when you are trying to create content and deliverables, your ADHD, your distracted nature, will hijack that to answer those questions. You will spend /hours/ checking and rechecking and you will waste your time instead of writing, painting, coaching or speaking.
I use Zapier to regulate all of those pesky micro-tasks. Zapier is the bond between different software — from ConvertKit to Twitter, Podia to Gumroad, Evernote and Google.
When I get a new subscriber — I get a text.
When someone purchases one of my products — I get a text, and it adds it to a Google spreadsheet so I can keep track.

When I favorite something in Pocket, it ships it to Evernote into a certain notebook so I always can find my research.
Once I set up the automation that kept me from checking every little thing, and having it all report into one place, I noticed I had hours available to me in the month

I also use Buffer to auto-post everything for me so I’m not wasting my time — it’s the Insta-pot of applications. I can simply schedule when to post something instead of constantly clicking and clicking and sharing and posting.

Clearing Your Own Digital Clutter
I use a program called Hazel to organize my desktop. It is my housekeeper for everything on my Mac. I simply give it rules to follow and it runs automatically in the background.
I know that if I haven’t opened a document in 6 months, I’m probably not going to open it again, but I don’t want those documents cluttering up my desktop much less my computer.
So now those documents get moved into one folder — and then after 2 years, I simply upload the document to Dropbox automatically and then it is deleted from my computer.

Delegate Out. Right Now.
As someone who works a job-job, 40 hours a week where I have to show up along with working 10–15 hours a week on my side hustle (The ADHD Nerd) I don’t get a lot of time to waste. This is the number one reason I don’t have a game console (I’d never leave the couch. A game console is my version of electronic heroin.)
I need to buy back some time so I can have a bit more of a balanced life, seeing friends, reading, commiserating as one does. Here are my two big investments:
Hire an Editor.
When I’m publishing something people will buy, eventually I have to go back and edit the dang thing. Which I hate. Because I’m a narcissist most days, I love every single word I put down on the page.
I’m the worst editor when it comes to my writing.
I have friend who /loves/ to edit. She is like Elektra, but with a red pen. She slashes my work — moves paragraphs up and down and surgically improves my writing ten-fold. The minute she is done I send her the money and we both smile.
If you buy groceries with the money you make from writing, hire (and worship) your editor.
Housecleaner. Done.
This sounds inane to some, but I have someone clean my house at least once a month. My housekeeper does my laundry, tidies and puts everything where it should be. My distracted mind does not let attend to that stuff very well and I somehow function better when everything is orderly and clean; I just hate to do it myself.
The time is worth the cost undoubtedly.
And if it feels weird that you’re paying someone to clean your house, just remember that you most likely pay people to brew coffee for you and cook you food. Let that stigma go.
Keep Going.
Maybe you look at getting food delivered to your house a couple of times a week. Maybe you’re done with lawn care and would love to give that job to some responsible teenagers.
Find what else you can delegate out if it buys you back hours. Because if you can put that towards your craft, your side hustle or main hustle, you are getting a bit more ahead.
Manage Your Energy Better
One of the keys I found to my writing habit was that I had to write between 8:00 AM and 2:00 PM. Once 2:00 PM hit, my fingers atrophied. I couldn’t write anymore and now I was in the land of diminishing returns. Why? Because my brain just doesn’t have it anymore after 2:00 PM to write; my brain shifts into a reading mode, a need to read and intake information. It’s done trying to come up with stuff.
Also, since being on a strict keto diet, I’ve noticed that my energy levels when I would eat carbs would plummet. When I’m writing, carbs are literally off the table and in the trash. Nuts and water are my main diet while I’m getting stuff done.
I also keep working on one project. Cal Newport in his book Deep Work reminds us that task-switching is what’s killing us all. When we move from task to task and then return, we are losing energy and focus and it could take up to 20 minutes to get back int that flow state we all desire.
I use an app called Forest on my phone when I want to stop the nervous tic of grabbing it all the time. I simply set a time I’d like to not use my phone anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours and it “plants a tree.” When the time is up, my tree is planted and I’ve created a “focused forest” and I’ve had a nice break from my phone.

The Ten Minute ROI
When I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, when I’m not feeling up to snuff that day, I set a timer for 10 minutes and I work on a task in my business that takes 10 minutes:
Writing down 4 blog ideas.
Coming up with 3 people to connect with about their podcast.
Drawing up one outline for a blog post that’s been on my mind.
Reviewing all my saved articles, looking for inspiration.
I stay on that /one task/ for 10 minutes and soon I find a little inspiration, a small win, and then the motivation shows up. My ROI on that ten minutes is huge and it’s a valuable exercise.

f You Skimmed This
Destroy any time-sucks in your life.
Remove obstacles that get you in the way of your creative work.
Work 10 minutes towards what you want. Find a small victory. Keep going.