In Defense of Black and White Thinking

It’s springtime, the sun is out, and that means the start of house projects for my husband and me. We’ve been wanting to do some upgrades, and after advice from a professional, we now have a couple of directions to follow. 

One direction was getting new blinds. And in order to get new blinds, I needed to measure the length and width of all of our windows. Seems simple enough, right? 

Wrong. It was simple, but not easy. 

Now, I had the tape measure…I had the time…but I wasn’t doing it. 

I thought about it constantly. “Ooh, I could do it now before my next call!” or “Oh, I could definitely do it at lunch!” I was making lots of “plans” in my head, but they never amounted to any action. 

Here’s where the black-and-white thinking comes in. Was I actually putting the tape measure up to my window frames and recording the numbers I saw? No. Was I spending a lot of time toiling over the fact that I wasn’t doing it, and yet continuing to make plans in my head that never panned out? Yes, absolutely. 

In my own coaching (yep, coaches need their own coaches too!), I’ve come to recognize this pattern sooner and sooner. I don’t need to beat myself up or go deep into why it wasn’t happening; the simple fact was that it wasn’t happening. Period. No tape measure was being pulled, no windows measured. 

So what did I do? I asked for help. One morning, my mom came over for a walk, and I asked if she would help me measure for the blinds. 

The process was so much faster than if I had done it myself. Although now that I think about it, I don’t actually know BECAUSE I NEVER ACTUALLY DID IT MYSELF (haha). 

So here’s my simple black and white math:

Me + Thinking about it + Toiling over it + Time = 0 windows measured. 

Me + My mom’s help = 100% of windows measured. 

If you’re feeling stuck in the thinking-about-doing-things-but-not-actually-doing-them rut, you’re not alone, and it’s not your fault. That’s literally ADHD. The disorder makes it hard for us to turn intention (especially boring intentions) into action. Coaching has helped me become more self-aware, so I can recognize sooner when I’m not doing [X] thing and realize that’s my cue to ask for help. 

(Even writing this blog, I was delaying getting it done, so I asked Coach Kelly to sit with me to talk through my ideas and body double with me as I wrote it.) 

Cultivating black and white thinking in this particular way can help you see when the current path isn’t working and you need to try something different. A big part of managing ADHD is advocating for yourself and asking for help. No one gets through life alone. 

Not sure where to start with all this? Meet with any of the Center professionals to see if starting ADHD Coaching could help you spend less time toiling and more time taking action. We’re here for you, and you’re not alone.