Guilt and the Challenge of Assessing Urgency and Importance

Pete’s in the hot seat this week as Nikki walks through a listener question of the motivational variety. For reference, here it is:

“When we have a plan of quadrant two tasks, important but not urgent, it is impossible to focus on those at all if there are ANY quadrant one tasks... urgent and important... unresolved. What’s interesting is that you might think, sure ... do those. They’re urgent and important. But the problem is that maybe you’ve done your part on them. You’re waiting for an email response... you are time-blocked from doing anything about it because a store isn’t open... something like that. It’s unresolved, AND you can’t do anything about it, AND you can’t focus on anything else that is on your list that would move other projects forward as a result.”

There’s an emotional yo-yo at work here, and you can bet there is a healthy dose of limiting beliefs. But there is also a very real connection between this attachment and the ADHD brain. Nikki walks Pete through an exercise that aims to make this relationship a bit softer.

Links & Notes

• Dig into the podcast Shownotes Database

• (00:00) - Welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast
• (01:39) - Support the Show: Become a Patron at Patreon.com/theadhdpodcast
• (03:05) - Sponsor: TextExpander
• (06:51) - The Planning Motivation Game is Afoot