How to finish a project when your ADHD has already moved on.

I might be the president of the 95% club. I mean, it's a job no one asked for but someone has to do it, right? If you don't know, the 95% club is the special group of people who do a task/project/renovation/whatever to 95% completion then move on to the next. No project is ever finished but its functional and just needs paint touch-up or drywall repair. I know I'm not the only member of this club but I have come up with a few different tricks to finishing a project before moving on to the next.

This is a picture of my beautiful bathroom, which you guessed it, is 95% complete. I just crossed the line of "it's fully functional" and O.M.G. my brain moved on so quickly. The shower, toilet, and sink all work. The mirror is even installed and you can 100% use the bathroom....but it's definitely not 100% done....so here are a couple strategies that I use to finish that last 5% so I can move on.

Tip One:

Put down the credit card

Do not, I repeat, DO NOT under and circumstance purchase anything for your next project. I don't know about you but I do not have the will power to no immediately jump into to my next project the second I come home with supplies.

My brain is already noodling on my next project. I know exactly what I'm going to do next but I'm not allowing myself to purchase anything for it just yet. I know myself and I know the second I buy something I'm going to start working in that and never finish the bathroom, then I'll get distracted again and not finish that project either.... it's truly never ending if you're not mindful about it. Here are some tricks I use to hand in my Presidential resignation from the 95% club.

Tip One.One:

Start planning your next project

This kind of goes with the first one but for me the most fun part of a project is the planning and idea formation. Especially the Pinterest hunting. I know a lot of people think Pinterest is old news but I still love me some good Pinterest scrolling. Since I have already figured out the finishing details of the bathroom and finishing the project is not just about doing the tasks my brain doesn't have anything to chew on. My brain works best when it's chewing on a project in the background.

Fun Fact: Most people think the H in ADHD just means you are physically hyper, like you can't sit still. But for a lot of people, mostly girls and women the H means that the brain is hyperactive. Once I figured that out my life made a lot more sense!

So for me, since my brain never stops going, it's helpful to have a project to chew on while I'm doing a mundane task. While I'm working on a task my brain can take my saved Pinterest ideas and formulate exactly what I'm going to do next. But, going back to Tip One, it's very very important that you don't buy anything just yet. These ideas live in your brain until you are 100% done with your current task.

Tip Two:

Do the most fun part next

Look at your list of tasks to be completed and pick the most fun thing to do next. I know at this point in a project there isn't always a super fun thing left to do but pick the thing that feels the most fun and do that.

For me it was figuring out what to do behind the mirror. I wanted an accent but I wasn't sure what and the bathroom was feeling very unfinished with ugly wood wall. So I took a day to search pinterest, got some wallpaper samples and when I didn't like any of that I went to the tile store for some idea shopping. Thankfully Floor and Decor had gotten in some new tile since I started this project and I found the perfect tile for the accent wall. Tile shopping and finding the perfect tile gave me the dopamine hit I needed to head home and get some work done. Seeing the tile sample in the bathroom made me excited to have the bathroom not only functional but beautiful too. And to be the most beautiful it can be, it needs to be finished...

Tip Three:

Trick your Dopamine.

Dopamine is the reward center of your brain and ADHD makes your brain uptake dopamine too fast, so we need a lot of small but consistent dopamine spikes to keep us interested in a project. By this point in a project your brain has used up its entire store of dopamine and starts hunting for more, aka starting a new project. One way to give your brain the dopamine it needs to finish is to start checking tasks off the list. And by tasks I means the most minuscule things.

I want you to get pen and paper and make a physical list of all the tasks you need to do in order for your project to be complete. But it's important you make the list in a very specific way. When making your list, I want you to break down every task into its smallest part and put each part as a different item on the list.

For me, it looks like this:

Instead of "finish tile" being one task, I break it down into tiny micro components.

• Apply tile to wall

• Grout wall tile

• Grout Countertop tile

• Caulk edges

This offers small quick wins and every time you check a task off your list you brain gets the dopamine hit it needs to work on another task. If you have the tasks on your list in their larger components "finish tile" finish drywall repair" "paint," you can go days without the reward of checking something off and your motivation starts to wain very quickly.

Tip Three Point One:

Make it a big deal

Maybe it's because I'm an Elder Millennial but I think its important to physically write the list down on paper (if you're anything like me I know you have 8 million notebooks and 20 million pens laying around). Writing it down makes it live in a different part of my brain which is helpful. But to go one step further, making a big list and posting it on the wall is so much more rewarding. Make crossing something off the list ceremonious to really queue that dopamine.

Tip Four:

Squash the decision fatigue

Sometimes your brain has a hard time figuring out what thing on your list to do next, especially if you've just followed step three and now your to-do list is three miles long. One easy way to combat the overwhelm is to pick a spot, start there and just finish whatever thing you run into next.

This is what it looks like for me: I'm going to start in the back corner of the shower ceiling and work my way to the door. So finishing drywall repair on the shower ceiling, then installing the fan then fixing the drywall by the lights and painting that,next that wall leads me to the left wall so that needs dry wall repair then hooks hung and so on and so forth.

When you pick one physical location in the room and move in a methodical way through the rest of the space the work of selecting your next tast is eliminated. Your brain doesn't need to come up with which task so work on next and it therefore freed up to actually do the task.

A few tips on how to make this work efficiently:

• Work top to bottom. you don't want to finish the floor then paint the ceiling and drip paint on the freshly finished floor.

• After the ceiling is complete, I like to start at the entry of the room and work from left to right.

• If it helps, number the walls and write your list from step three based on tasks for each wall. Wall One needs XYZ, Wall Two needs ABC... How nice would it be to check an entire wall off your to-do list?

Tip Four.One:

Make it a game.

Take your list from step three and put each large task on one sheet of paper. So for me "Finish wall tile" and all its accompanying tasks would be on one sheet and "Finish ceiling" would be on another.

• Finish Tile

  • Apply tile to wall

  • Grout wall tile

  • Grout counter tile

  • Caulk edges

• Finish Ceiling

  • Sand ceiling

  • Apply 1 layer of drywall mud

  • Sand again

  • Paint ceiling white

When you have each larger task written on a page then the steps of each broken down put them all in a basket and blindly pick which tast to complete next. You can also write each small task on its own paper and draw one tiny task at a time. For this projet that might be too chaotic but it could also make it really fun....

Tip Five:

Do something else for a day or two

This tip seems like it's in direct contradiction to Tip One but hear me out. I am not in any way shape or form telling you to start a new project. But there are two productive ways to do something else temporarily just to get some mojo back.

One way is to work on an ongoing but never ending project. The key here is to give yourself a time limit or very specific parameters. For me, one task I'm always working on is organizing and decluttering. So when I feel myself becoming bored with my current project I will put on my calendar a day of declutter. To make sure I'm getting the dopamine hit I need I make it one very specific task, "declutter front coat closet and take donations to a charity shop"

It's a small specific task that has a clear completion point so once it's done there is a refreshed feeling and enough dopamine to get back to my project at hand.

The second way is a little more dicey but can work if you have enough dicipline. Work on a previous project that was left 95% complete. This can look like finishing the project or just writing it in the calendar to work on XYZ project for two days then get back to your origional project. I don't love doing this just because I'll think that a project is going to be quick and easy but then it ends up taking longer than I thought or i hit a snag and lose even more motivation, which is very unhelpful when I'm already struggling with task completion.

These are Five of my best strategies to completing the last 5% of a task you've started. This list was very home renovation focused. I'll try to extrapolite the ideas a little better to apply the tips to non-rennovation type tasks. Just wrting this post I've come up with 4 more post ideas about this same topic so make sure to check back soon for more ideas!