Pete Wright:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Taking Control, the ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I’m Pete Wright, and I’m here with Nikki Kinzer.

Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.

Pete Wright:
Hi, Nikki Kinzer. Welcome to this, the ultimate episode of our season. This is the end of season — what even is it — 32 of this show.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.

Pete Wright:
We’re about to head into our summer break. I’m very excited. I will be jetting off to New York for a few weeks and sitting by the lake. Why do I have to go all the way to New York to sit by a lake when we have plenty of perfectly serviceable lakes here in Oregon? That’s a great question that will have to be answered by the long arc of history. But this summer, I’m in New York. I can’t wait to be there. You don’t get any vacations, because you’ve taken them all already.

Nikki Kinzer:
I’ve taken them already. But that’s okay.

Pete Wright:
That’s right. You hold it down.

Nikki Kinzer:
I’ll hold the fort down.

Pete Wright:
Today we’re wrapping up this season talking about how we notice progress without actually measuring that progress. And this is all you. I’m very excited to hear what you have to say about this.

Before we dig into the show, don’t forget — even though we’re about to take some weeks off for our summer break, there’s still time to look into our Patreon community, because they’re gonna be here the whole time. If you are a regular listener, if you haven’t yet caught up on all seven hundred-plus episodes of the show, check out Patreon. It is a fantastic way to get to know our community over the break, and you get all kinds of great benefits, like ad-free access to every episode, access to the member-only channels in our Discord server, and a seat in the live stream recordings of the show, where you get to ask questions to us and our guests as we record. Plus we throw in special events along the way all the time.

But honestly, the thing we hear most about the community isn’t any of that. It’s about the people themselves. This is a group of real people who have chosen to join this community and live out loud with their ADHD. They show up for each other in a way that is really special and hard to find. So if you’ve ever wanted to be more than just a listener, this is where it happens. All you have to do is visit patreon.com/theADHDpodcast to learn more and join us. And if you’re not ready for that, that’s fine too. You can find us at takecontroladhd.com, connect with us on the socials, join us in the Discord on the free side, or sign up for the weekly email newsletter. We would love to have you wherever you land.

All right, Nikki, here we go. It’s the end of the day. I’m in bed. My brain is fried, and it’s doing that thing. It’s doing the accounting of what I didn’t accomplish during the day. Tell me — how do I notice my progress without measuring it?

Nikki Kinzer:
I love that. And let’s start with the title. I think that you did the title, and you probably didn’t even think I was gonna analyze the title as much as I did. But I’m gonna analyze it for you right now. “How to notice progress without measuring it.” Those two words — “without measuring” — they’re actually doing a lot of work here. Because measuring typically means that there’s some kind of scorecard that we’re aiming for. We’re tracking, and we’re trying to check off as many things as we can on the to-do list. Streaks — that was more of a thing for my daughter back in middle school, with, I think it was Snapchat.

Pete Wright:
Oh, it’s all about streaks.

Nikki Kinzer:
Streaks, yeah, that was a big deal. It’s basically all the “did I do the things,” and that scorecard was really built for a brain that runs on importance and consistency, and likes statistics and likes the facts. And I do have clients who really do want to know how to measure their success. That’s important to them — to figure out, are they at the status quo, or are they above average? But the problem is that it runs into so many issues.

The title’s real claim here, that we need to appreciate, is that we’re noticing something, and that’s the skill that replaces measuring it. We want to notice; we don’t need to necessarily measure it. And it’s interesting, because last week, at the end of the show, you were like, “Oh, I hope that landed right.” And I’m thinking, yeah, it landed perfectly to go into this show. Because last show was about not being broken — you’re contextual. Where you are, what you’re doing, how you’re feeling — all matters in what’s gonna get done. So this means there’s never been a fixed line that we can count on to measure ourselves against ourselves in the first place. Measuring really fails by definition, because it’s not the same all the time.

Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
And noticing is what works for a brain that shows up differently in every room. I love this idea. Let’s notice instead of trying to measure it.

Pete Wright:
It’s so funny, because, reflecting on this against last week, it reminds me just how much I like to measure — but only in certain rooms. Do you know what I mean? Carrying the metaphor.

Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.

Pete Wright:
I’m on my fitness journey right now. I have been for now over a year. And right now I’m in a space where I’m really appreciating the scale, because I like seeing progress. I’m tracking, mostly automated — it’s just a thing that’s syncing to my whole setup. And Duolingo is so dumb. It’s all about the streaks, and I do it every day, and I have over a thousand days. Some days I just push the button and do the bare minimum, but that’s all that matters, because I feel like I’m just touching it. I’m visiting it. And some days I spend an hour going through a bunch of lessons. But that’s one where I need that feedback. Those are the two rooms in my ADHD life where I appreciate the tracking, hardcore. Every place else, it becomes an overwhelm.

Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm, absolutely.

Pete Wright:
And I think it gets in the way of actually doing the noticing.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Well, especially if you broke the streak, or the number didn’t go down, it went up. Then it can be this psychological — for me — war, of fighting that.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right, then I’m broken.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. I want to talk a little bit about what is happening when we only count the things that are undone — just to give people an understanding, because I think that awareness is really important. The undone is often really loud, where the win is very silent. And what I mean by that is, if you have a chair full of laundry, that’s screaming at you. If you have a list of 20 things that are popping up for today, that’s loud, and it’s screaming at you. But what’s not screaming at you is the email that you already sent off today. We don’t see the checked-off stuff. We only see what’s left.

And so we’re already at a disadvantage, because what is loudest is getting our attention. What’s silent, we’re ignoring, or we’re forgetting about. And then — we’ve talked about this a lot in these past episodes — you’re stuck between this lifetime of being measured in different ways, whether it’s report cards, performance reviews, people doing things in a quicker, more efficient way than what you’re able to. All of these things that are showing up for you. And we forget that the progress is silent; it’s quiet. So that’s something that I just want people to think about. Because when I was thinking about it, I’m like, that’s so true. I’m always faced with what’s left. I can see that the dishes are still needing to be done, but I forget that I just did a webinar on Tuesday that I prepped for, you know?

Pete Wright:
Totally. Right.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.

Pete Wright:
Okay, so it might not surprise you to know that I did a little research, and I found something that really, really surprised me. And so I have to introduce you to somebody named Bluma Zeigarnik. Bluma Zeigarnik, who was a Lithuanian-Soviet psychologist, in nineteen twenty-seven —

Nikki Kinzer:
Okay. Bluma.

Pete Wright:
We have coined the Zeigarnik effect. 1927.

Nikki Kinzer:
That’s a long time ago.

Pete Wright:
It is a psychological phenomenon where people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks far better than completed ones. When you start an activity, your brain creates a task-specific tension that keeps the information active in your working memory until the task is fully resolved.

Now, for neuronormative brains — those that exist without living on the shelf of shame — that task-specific tension ideally creates a subconscious drive to finish the task. You’re aroused to the point that details stay fresh. But in ADHD brains, that tension is more likely to create that sort of shame loop, where it’s not just that the thing is uncompleted, it’s “I am a terrible person for not living in a state of completion,” and those things start to stack up. The drive to finish gets supplanted by the emotional resonance of not having completed the task, and that can sometimes get in the way of actually being able to turn the corner and complete the task.

The examples that I found looking up the Zeigarnik effect were things like waiters — professional servers are notoriously able to remember complex orders perfectly, but forget them the moment the bill is paid. That’s where it’s super useful for people in that space.

Nikki Kinzer:
Interesting.

Pete Wright:
Cliffhangers in books and TV shows and video games use this all the time. If you are super engaged in a cliffhanger, you’ll remember what happened until the next episode three months from now, or the next book in a year, because it is complicated and emotionally wrought — if it’s done right — and really powerful. It’s a powerful signal that will live in your brain in this task-specific tension. I think the trick, when we’re noticing, is being able to remember that task-specific tension is a thing, and how can we use it and not be buried under it.

Nikki Kinzer:
Ooh, I love that. How to use it and not be buried under it.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Bluma Zeigarnik.

Nikki Kinzer:
So what do you got?

Pete Wright:
No, that was — now I toss it back to you.

Nikki Kinzer:
How do we use it?

Pete Wright:
This is now your turn.

Nikki Kinzer:
Dang, I thought you were gonna come up with more research and all that.

Pete Wright:
No, that was it. It was a sidebar to Bluma Zeigarnik — and I’m gonna say it over and over again, because it’s the best name that I’ve heard today. She should be a superhero.

Nikki Kinzer:
It really is. Okay. Well, what does noticing actually look like? Let’s talk about that. I see that somebody in our chat put down that noticing puts things into the category of a mindfulness practice. And I think that’s very true. I think it’s being present and being mindful of what’s going right. And that’s hard. That’s so hard when you’re so used to doing the opposite.

But I think what we need to be realistic about is that it’s quiet. The noticing is quiet, and it’s subtle. With ADHD, it’s very easy to think in all-or-nothing terms: if I didn’t get the whole thing done, then I failed. So if we can just have that little tiny shift of, “I didn’t get it all done, but — and this is a good ‘but’ — I did this, and this, and this. And that’s really great, and I’m really proud of myself, and I can hang my hat on that.” Like, I can see that as being a success. So it’s a subtle thing.

With my clients, where I see it is somebody who is self-compassionate to themselves. They didn’t beat themselves up when they didn’t finish the task list, or they actually gave themselves permission to let something go, and they didn’t feel guilty about it. This is a subtle thing that has happened. It didn’t take away the list or anything like that. They didn’t do more, but they were accepting of it. They’re still holding themselves with compassion and understanding and acceptance. And I think that’s really big. So it’s catching ourselves being aware of something that we’re doing that maybe we think should just be expected, too. Well, we always get up, we always brush our teeth, we always do that. But you know what? It’s kind of still a big deal. You got up out of bed when you didn’t want to.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, we had to figure that out.

Nikki Kinzer:
You showed up when you didn’t want to.

Pete Wright:
At some point, we didn’t get up and brush our teeth. At some point we had to figure out how to do that on our own.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right. So, the same situation that has come up for you a million times, where you felt guilt — let’s say you were late, and every time you felt guilty about being late, and then one time you feel a little less guilty about it. You apologize, or whatever you need to do, and you let it go. You don’t hang on to it. That’s noticing it. That’s forgiving yourself and being okay. “I don’t need to have this ruin my day.”

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Back to Bluma Zeigarnik — the task-specific tension is a space that I don’t think is going to be unfamiliar for people living with ADHD. That’s task-specific weight. But the other side of that, that I feel like you’re pulling out, is completion-specific relief. The CSR. That’s what I want. I want to be able to notice the stuff that I’ve done and been successful at, and that needs to be part of the routine.

I actually don’t mind living in some task-specific tension, because it does help motivate me to get things done — right up to the point where it becomes a weight and a blocking task. It’s useful energy during a workday. But at the end of the workday, I need to let go of that and be able to exist in this completion-specific relief state, where I can just celebrate the things that I have done. Notice that I have moved some things forward — even if not all the things that I wanted to move forward — and be able to celebrate those internally as a way to lighten the load.

Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
All right. So here’s another example that I got to witness from a client this week, where she was talking about doing some things for her family, and actually feeling good about the choice. Even though there were other things that needed to be done, she knows that her family is one of the most important things. So she took that time to actually be in it, and be with her family member, and was able to release that guilt or self-criticism that might have popped up.

And it seems like, “Well, of course — it’s family. Of course you’re gonna drop everything for family.” But you don’t always leave the guilt. You do it because we know that that’s what we need to do, and that’s where we want to be, but you still can hold on to that guilt of, “Well, I can’t do enough. I still need to do this. Even though I’m paying attention to this, I need to do more when I get back to the office,” or whatever. Being able to let that go and just be in the moment — that’s the measurement that we are — well, it’s not the measurement, it’s when we’re noticing that something is shifting for us. And I think that’s really key. Just to keep noticing those little things, those little moments where we can reframe something and have it be more compassionate.

Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, I want to get to the practical. When you’re coaching, how do you coach making that shift? Because it’s not a natural state to notice stuff. That’s not a natural thing. It’s a muscle, it’s a practice. It’s a sort of devotion to the positive in our lives, to progress, and it doesn’t become a thing that we do naturally unless we really try. I’m curious how you guide people to learn to do this — to be this kind of a person, a noticer.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. Going back to the mindfulness, I think it’s about practice. And I think it’s also about not trying to turn the noticing into a new thing to measure.

Pete Wright:
Right. That’s the whole thing.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right?

Pete Wright:
Because my first instinct is, “Okay, well then obviously I need a checklist. I need a worksheet. I need something.” But that completely defiles the point.

Nikki Kinzer:
Right. It’s dressing it up as a nicer scorecard. But that’s not what we’re trying to do. I relate to this specifically around anxiety. If I am aware of my anxiety, my anxiety can produce more anxiety, because now I’m anxious — and I know I’m anxious. And so now what am I gonna do with all of this black cloud around me?

So I think it’s being careful that we’re just noticing, and we’re not putting any standards around what we’re noticing. We’re not putting any judgment. We’re not grading ourselves about how self-compassionate I was today, from one to five. That’s not what we’re doing. We’re noticing that, “All right, I’m feeling pretty low. I’m not feeling great. I don’t feel like I had a great day — but let’s notice what was good. What is one thing that you did visit?” And I think this is where the “visit” becomes really important. Just opening the email matters. Maybe you didn’t reply, maybe you didn’t do anything with it, but you did visit it. That is something to notice, and not to just let it go. Getting up out of bed — “All right, I didn’t do much at work, but I showed up. I was there. I was present.” That’s something.

So it’s really practicing being mindful, practicing what you’re noticing. We talked about this a few episodes back, where I had this picture on Facebook where it said, “How many blue items can you see in the picture?”

Pete Wright:
Yeah, and it was the yellow vase.

Nikki Kinzer:
You’re only focused on the blue items, and then it goes back and says, “What was yellow in the picture?” And I don’t remember what was yellow in the picture. And then I look at the picture, and there’s this big huge yellow vase right in the middle of the picture. How did I miss that? That’s what’s happening. That’s the example. We never notice everything. We’re only noticing what’s bad, and that’s what’s drawing our attention. That’s what’s keeping us in shame. That’s what’s keeping us stuck.

So it’s really saying, “Okay, I want to do something different. I want to open up my eyeballs, and I really want to start noticing everything.” It’s practice, it’s patience.

Pete Wright:
Yeah.

Nikki Kinzer:
I also think that for parents who have kids with ADHD — I can’t stress this enough — model it for your kiddos. I don’t care if they’re three or if they’re 25, like our kids. We need to model this too. If they see Mom and Dad struggling, but instead of beating themselves up, they’re also highlighting, “Well, this was good,” or however it looks — that’s a great model. Because then your kid’s gonna believe, “Okay, I’m not a horrible person.”

Pete Wright:
Yeah. We used to have a thing when the kids were — all the way through high school, until they left. We would all sit down to dinner at the same time together at the table, when everybody was available. And we would always say, “What were the best parts of people’s days?” It’s just a weird way to say it, but we’d always say it. And that was, I think, implicitly our effort to do that — to remind everybody at the table that, however hard the day was, there was a best part. And the only thing you couldn’t say was dinner. You couldn’t say where you are right now. You had to pick something else. But you could say something you were really looking forward to — like you were so excited about what was gonna happen right after dinner. Whatever it was, you had to find a reason to celebrate.

That is a little bit of what I think we’re talking about — of noticing, of it becoming a practice to notice. But I also know that there are people out there listening to this who are going to say, “I’m not going to be able to remember to notice.” So I would just like to throw in there: you may need to set a reminder. You may need to do that in order to make it a practice. And it doesn’t mean you need a checklist. It just means you have to set a little reminder that says “notice.” Just notice right now. To help you build that muscle.

Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely. And I love that, because I love the simplicity of just “notice.” That word carries so much. I remember when we did our presentation about finding joy, and that was the thing that really resonated — that joy doesn’t just happen, you find it. You look for it. And it can be in little things. It doesn’t have to be going on vacation. I mean, this is a joyful thing, that you’re going on vacation in the summer; I went on vacation in the spring. Those are great joyful things. But we can also get a lot of joy from petting our animals, from looking at a flower outside, or having that first cup of coffee. All of these things — we have to find it, and we have to notice it. And I love that reminder of “and practice.” We practice it.

Pete Wright:
We practice. Yeah. That is probably the hardest thing to do. And especially as we zoom out of this season — we’re talking about building a lot of internal muscles, about the interiority of our experience every day, and figuring out where we get to take permission to do the things that we need to do in our lives, and how we manage our energy, and how we manage our capacity, and what is broken versus what is contextual. All of those things are asking kind of a heavy load of us, and of our experience inside our skin, as we relate to the world and deal with the overwhelm and the RSD. We know all of that is a reality. And maybe that little daily tickler that just says “notice” is the reminder of the entirety of the season — of all of these conversations, and all of the guest conversations about what it means to be good enough. Maybe you just notice, and that’s enough to get yourself started on this road. It’s all really the same skill.

Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, absolutely. I love it.

Pete Wright:
Okay.

Nikki Kinzer:
So, we have to again remind people that even though we’re on a summer break from the show, our community doesn’t go quiet, folks.

Pete Wright:
Oh no.

Nikki Kinzer:
It gets louder, in some ways. So I just want to remind people to check out our Patreon membership. We have lots of things that we do on a monthly basis. We have Coaching with Nikki, Coffee with Pete, the Accountability Anchor body-doubling sessions. There are people in there every single day. So come check those out. They’re all inside of our Patreon community. We would love to have you there and be part of this community. Go check out takecontroladhd.com/patreon.

Pete Wright:
Thank you, everybody. Thank you so much for downloading and listening to the show. Thank you for your time and your attention. And please check out Patreon, and jump over into the Show Talk channel. That’s where we go after these episodes are recorded, for conversation and insights from the community. You can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the Deluxe level or better. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I’m Pete Wright, and we’ll see you right back here next season on Taking Control, the ADHD Podcast.