Making Your Natural Adrenaline Moments Work For You!

This morning I was coaching a client with ADD and she had the neatest breakthrough that I thought you might like.  In my ADD coaching training I learned about a phenomenon called  "Completion Chemistry."

Essentially it means that many people, especially those of us with ADD, are more motivated to work on a task when we need to FIND something.  For example, we may hate to file or put things away while we are in midst of doing other far more interested things.  But when we really need to find something, we get a burst of adrenaline for the "hunt".   

My client was teeling me about her successes of the week and mentioned how she had needed to find something in the box of papers she had gathered up while organizing last week.  The box had been sitting there for days and she had had no motivation to work on it.  Suddenly when she needed something in that box, she got a burst of "energy" and become motivated to finally sort out some of the papers in that box.

What a perfect example of "Completion Chemistry"!  I let her what a great strategy that was and explained how she could use it more often and she LOVED it!!!  She felt so validated that she already had an effective strategy and now she could consciously work with it and harness it more often - without feeling guilty about the time she let pass before she got around to organizing the box. 

She even came up with her own name for the strategy  - "Riding the Wave" 

We talked about other ways she could apply this and came up with the idea of using the energy of a deadline to help her "activate" for other tasks by leaving extra time before the deadline and she is goign to try this...instead of seeing the task of having to take her daughter to  a 4:30 appt every day as an interruption, she is going to start getting ready to go an hour before use that hour to "scan" the first floor and do any little tasks that need doing, like sort the mail, return a couple calls, put things away etc. 

I'm leaving at 5:00 tonite to go to the regional NAPO conference in Washington DC so I'm going to ride my adrenaline wave to get packed and ready to go and then answer as many emails as I can, return  calls, and tie up other "loose ends" as FAST as possible!   

How do you "ride the wave of completion chemistry" in your daily life?  What new situations can you apply this concept to?

Comments

[Bethany]

I read this and immediately related it to cleaning up before we have visitors. At some point I realized I would get so stressed out cleaning up the house whenever anyone came to visit. I decided that I didn't need that stress. We are all human, it is okay if people see my mess. It might even make them feel better about themselves to know they aren't the only ones who don't live in a showroom. Anyway, soon after I made that decision I realized that I still had a natural motivation to tidy up a bit... but without all the stress. So now I just "ride the wave." I love that the motivation is natural and that I can just quit when I feel like it or when the doorbell rings.

[Zann Carter]

This is what happens to me, and seems related to what you are describing here:

I often actively participate in and help organize group events: social action demonstrations, creative workshops, small group spiritual gatherings. I do a pretty good job of planning, preparing and being ready to go when it's time.

However, I have come to expect a last-minute spurt of creative energy, one or more great ideas that have me scurrying around to implement them in the last minutes before I must leave. Often these things are some of the best I bring to the event.

But sometimes there just isn't enough time to fully realize the last-minute vision. Or I'm left feeling rushed and stressed by the effort to add them in.

I've been thinking about this phenomena lately myself. I'm trying to figure out how to invite the inspiration storm to hit a little earlier than 20-30 minutes before I have to leave!

[Jay, writer Memberspeed.com]

It's different strokes for different folks, I suppose. Sometimes, this completion chemistry works for me. Other times, I would rather have all the time to prepare in the world. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I end up producing half-baked attempts when a task is left alone for too long.

[Charity]

I do this all the time! That is actually how I get many tasks done; simply because there is something I am looking for and when I am searching, I am mentally 'organizing' the space and once I find what I am looking for, I am motivated to actually organize that spot so that it's easier to find things later.