10-Minute Walk: When You Feel Like You Didn’t Get Things Done | 65

If you've been running all day and still feel behind, this 10-minute ADHD-friendly walking workout is your circuit breaker. Not a productivity lecture. Not another system. Just a quick walk that gives you the receipts… proof that you're doing way more than your brain is giving you credit for.

This short walk break gives you:

• A Dopamine swap: Change that "I’m behind" anxiety for the physical and mental hit of seeing what’s actually finished (you rock - seriously).
• A movement snack: The cardio needed to kick the oatmeal-brain to the curb and reset your focus for whatever is next (it works).
• Proof of your awesomeness: A no-effort way to see everything you actually did... so your brain can finally shut up about it. (Hush now.)
• About 1,200 steps in (woo hoo).

You can walk outside or inside on a treadmill or walking pad. 

And because I cannot stay in a straight line, I also wander into:

• The Norway dresser label story and the ordensmenneske dream that lasted 48 hours 
• My ADHD diagnosis in my 50s
• Cat notepads from TJ Maxx
• Yello’s “Oh Yeah…”
• Dancing in the streets during walks
• Not caring what people think of me the older I get

This is a guided walk with background music to keep your pace and a bell at the halfway point so you don’t accidentally end up three neighborhoods over.

Tap Follow so my next walk is waiting for you. 
 
PS. Connect with me on social media at @yourwalkingpodcast

Transcript

MAIN: 0:00

This is a guided walk that you can do outside or inside on a walking pad or treadmill. You can hit pause if you need to grab your shoes. Going to start at an easy warm-up pace. "Help me, I'm drowning"d I kind of felt like I was drowning in my to-do list. Always behind and always trying to catch up. Go, Helen, go. Never feeling like I'd done enough. And pulling all-nighters, even at my advanced age. Always looking for that one system that would magically fix everything. And then one day I heard someone mention their done list during a workshop. And I thought, what? When I first heard done list, I thought, done with what? Life? I hear ya. Marriage? Hmm. Cleaning? Nope. Your done list is just a way to stop beating yourself up over what you didn't do and actually look at what you did do. Because a lot of us, and most of us, and probably all of us, don't give ourselves credit for all the things that we do do. We do, do, do. Da, da, da, da. If you're walking outside, you'll hear a bell at the halfway point. So, you know, when to turn around if you want. Hold on to this warm-up pace. Regular to-do lists are so rude, and they just sit there and stare at you. Yeah, but you didn't do this, sucker. And when I was doing some research about the done list, I saw someone on Reddit say their therapist officially calls it their "to done list". And that's so cool. This is my two done list. So your to done list captures all the stuff that drains your day but never gets written down. The stuff we just do. Like your pet stuff and errands, phone call, emails. You clean a mess because you walk past it because who else is going to clean it? You fix something. You help someone. You refill the thing. You do the thing. And at the end of the day, your brain goes, You didn't do anything. Okay, well, thanks for that. That was super helpful. So your done list is basically like a receipt, and it's your proof, and it's your way of saying, Actually, I did do things today. Like my son says, pics, or it didn't happen. Go a little bit faster now. It's a purposeful pace. A little bit uncomfortable, but not a sprint. Find the beat and follow it. Now take a deep breath in through your nose. And exhale through your mouth. And why I tell you to breathe all the time is because a lot of times when we're stressed or busy, we don't really get enough oxygen. We breathe more shallow. So this way we get all that oxygen in, and then we feel better, have more energy, and feel happier. And you can still keep your normal to-do list, and you probably should, because unless you have superpowers, we all need those reminders. But add the second list just to see what you actually did. Because this episode is not one of those throw away your to-do list and become a new person. You can do it. Hustle kind of things, you know, and I don't believe in that. But I would be lost without my to-do list, or lists. I have a few different kinds. For the big project stuff, I use my project manager. And the other quick ones, I write on a notepad I got cheap at TJ Maxx. It has cats on it. Surprise! I use a pen. And it's faster. It's right in front of me, right next to my computer, and I just jot it down. But the done list is what keeps you from feeling like you've got nothing done, because sometimes it's hard to knock those things off your list. hold on to your pace. Kind of think of it like a captain's log. Nothing fancy. Not full paragraphs. Just two lines at the end of the day that say what you did and where your time went. Client calls, grocery run, laundry, paid bills, email clients. You know, just two lines and you're done. And then later, when you feel like you've got nothing done all week, then you look back, and you Oh, I did a lot. Another kind of fun version, if you're visual, is having a done jar, kind of like your cursing jar. You write some quick tasks on sticky notes. Then when you finish one, you scrunch it up and throw it in the jar. At the end of the week, just dump it out, and there's your visual proof. Dump it out at your own risk if you have cats, because you know that they're going to knock them all to the floor. Another thing you can do is actually transfer Transfer the weekly jar into a bigger month jar. As you can imagine, a massive bowl filled with hundreds of little pieces of paper. Because you can't argue with that. It actually shows you visually what you did. So you can just look at it and nod and go, Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hold on to your speed. Stay with that beat. Find the rhythm. Roll those shoulders backwards now. Big, big, big rolls. And roll them forward. Go all the way up and then forward and all the way down. Big, big circle. Nice and slow. Okay, go a little bit faster if you want. I'm not the boss of you. It's a brisker pace. Keep your hands loose. Practice that deep, steady breathing. Remember, oxygen is our friend. Use those arms to help you walk. Help keep your pace. Just feel how good it feels to move that body. That's going to be my new tagline. So I've been chasing that, finally got it all together, feeling my whole life, and I didn't know I had ADHD, which, you know, explains a lot. So one time when I was a teenager in Norway, I decided I was going to become an organized person. I went to my room and I got out a pen and I wrote little labels for every single drawer in my dresser, like this goes here, that goes there, this goes here. I wrote it all by hand and I made it look really official and awesome. Then I went, I found my mom and I told her I was going to be an ordensmenneske, which is a tidy, organized person, and she didn't say much because I think she'd seen this behavior before, and my"ordensmenneske-ness" only lasted for a couple of days of even that. And then fast forward to my 50s, I finally am diagnosed with ADHD. And I thought, this explains everything. I've always had a lot of planners because I was trying to outsmart myself. And once I even created this custom planner online, which was really cool. And I thought it would work for my brain, but it didn't work. So the done list was the first thing that actually helped, not because it made me more organized, but because it stopped me from lying to myself about how much I wasn't doing, because I would just look at my list and then beat myself up over it. All the phone calls, emails, research, learning something new, all the household stuff. You know, all that stuff was never accounted for in my day. And I kept wondering, what am I doing with my time Stay with that brisk pace. When I looked, I thought, you are doing stuff, Helen. I felt vindicated. Because there it was, it was proof. And I wasn't behind because it was lazy or disorganized or bad at life,(whisper: which sometimes I can be). I was behind because I did the 5,000 things that were never on the list. And then I thought, no wonder I've always felt like I wasn't doing enough. I wasn't giving myself credit for half my life. Keep that breathing going. Keep the shoulders soft. Follow the music. Do a little dance if you want. Sometimes I dance down the street. Depending on what I'm listening to. And I think people think I'm a weirdo. But that's okay. I'd rather be a dancing weirdo than a different kind of weirdo. Okay, we're going to slow it down a little bit. We're going to recover. Take a deep breath in again through your nose. And exhale through your mouth. Do you ever notice the older you get, you're not afraid to be a weirdo and be different. Like when you're a teenager, you know, you don't want to be different. And then we're older. We're like, yeah, whatever. I'm going to dance, whatever. You don't like it. Don't look. So later today or tonight, take about 60 seconds and think back. What did I actually do today? Don't look at what's left, not what you didn't do, just what's done. And you'll probably be surprised just like I was. And that real magic is looking back at the end of the week. Kind of like that block method for movement that I talked about in episode 50. You're like, wow, I actually did something. Because you're doing more than you think. And I'm doing more than I think. And sometimes our brains just forget. Slow it down a little more now. So give yourself some proof. Remember, pics or it didn't happen. Make sure you stretch a little bit when you're done. And if you know someone who could use this episode, just send it to them or people like to walk. And I'll see you next time.