276: 4 Things Keeping You Stuck – Part 2 – Your ADHD Brain Needs Stress

Why Your Stress Level Might Be Too Low (Yes, Too Low)

Part two of a four-part series on what’s actually keeping us stuck

Yesterday we talked about measuring your capacity. Today, we’re talking about stress.

I know what you’re thinking: capacity and stress feel like the same conversation. They’re related, sure — but they work on us in completely different ways. Understanding both is key to figuring out why we get stuck in inaction, and how to create just enough stress to keep us moving.

A wise person once said: everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it’s stupid. So, fish — quit trying to climb trees while taking advice from well-intentioned monkeys. It’s time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your own life.

One quick notes before I dive in. I am not a doctor, psychiatrist, or any kind of medical professional. I’m a mom, a professional organizer, and a fellow fish brain who has spent years watching clients in various states of “stuck” and started noticing patterns. That’s what this whole series is about.

The Problem With Monkey Advice

Fish brains like us often get talked into leaning on “monkey advice” — the checklists, the color-coded planners, the perfectly ordered calendars with all the alerts set. We build the plan, lay it all out neatly, and expect ourselves to follow it just because it’s written down and reminders are pinging.

Here’s the thing: our brains are almost allergic to that kind of artificial structure. We don’t just fail to follow it — we actively rebel against it.

That’s because our brains don’t run on consistency or predictability. They run on novelty and urgency. When everything is broken into tidy, evenly-spaced deadlines designed so you never drop a ball, it simply doesn’t suit how our brains work. That’s a monkey trying to teach a fish how to climb a tree. You’re a fish. You’re built to swim around and encounter things that suddenly have to be handled now — because for us, time really only comes in two versions: now, and not now.

This is exactly what frustrated me during one of the most well-known organizing certification programs out there. The underlying assumption was that there are “naturally organized” people, and then there are the rest of us — people who apparently just needed to learn to keep like items together and add a little rainbow-order to our shelves, and everything would click into place. We all know that’s not a real fix for how our brains actually work.

You’re More Productive Than You Think

Think back on your life. When you’ve had all the deadlines stacked up, all the balls in the air, everything happening at once — that’s usually when you were at your most productive. Your brain thrives in that state.

You might only hit 80% of what you were aiming for in those moments. But 80% feels incredible when you’re used to running at 10%.

It’s a myth that the perfect checklist and the perfectly ordered system get you to 100%. Even the “monkeys” — the naturally structured, list-loving people — striving for 100% creates its own kind of stress, and they still drop balls too. Nobody is a perfect robot.

So Why Are You Stuck?

Here’s the real answer this series is building toward: you’re stuck because your stress is too low.

I can already hear the pushback — wait, I feel plenty stressed. But that stress is usually about disappointing people, letting yourself down, the “here I go again” spiral, the wish that you’d done it differently this time. It’s not the stress that actually gets things done.

Your brain is doing exactly what it’s been reinforced to do: kick into gear only once stress is high enough. If your stress is too low, or feels artificial, your brain won’t engage — no matter how real the deadline technically is. And if a deadline is far enough away, your brain simply won’t register it as a “now” obligation. Remember: everything is either now or not now, and you will feel the not now as basically nothing.

Case in point: I outlined this entire four-part series in advance. I had all the bullet points ready for all four episodes. I could have recorded them ahead of time and scheduled them to drop automatically. Instead, I’m recording this one the same morning it needs to publish — writing, editing, and blogging it, all before the day is out.

Is that the “right” way to do it? Definitely not the recommended approach. But I’m sitting here at 7am with real urgency, because yesterday, this task registered as “not now.” Today, it’s “now.” So today, it’s getting done.

Please stop beating yourself up over this. This is how your brain works. Leaning into it — instead of shaming yourself for it — is the move.

So What’s the Point of Planners and Calendars?

If we’re just going to rebel against the neat, structured system anyway, why bother with planners, lists, and calendar alerts at all?

Because they still help your brain register that something exists. Interestingly, I actually think your messy, handwritten, scribbled notes are a better tool for your brain than a polished app or planner. There’s something about physically writing things down that helps cement them, even if you never look at the note again.

This is why I encourage non-linear “pending lists” — lists you write and then walk away from, sometimes for weeks, only to come back and realize you can check off half of it without ever having consciously prioritized or tracked it. The act of writing it down did something, even if we can’t fully explain the mechanism (I’ll leave that to the brain scientists). If you’ve got piles of scribbled notes everywhere, that’s not a broken system — it’s probably working better for you than you realize.

The Real Fix: Accountability

What genuinely helps is accountability — specifically, body doubling.

Body doubling can be as simple as:

• Taking your work somewhere with activity, like a coffee shop or library, where the ambient presence of other people creates a low hum of “someone might notice I’m not working” pressure.
• Asking a friend who works from home if you can set up your laptop at their kitchen counter. You don’t need them to actively help — just having them walk by and ask “how’s it going?” periodically can be enough to trigger action.
• Partnering with a fellow fish brain and setting timers together, checking in by text (or a walkie-talkie style app like Voxer) every 30 minutes with quick updates on what got done.

Timers alone can help too, but without another person attached to them, they tend to fall flat. Still worth using — just don’t expect them to do all the work alone.

Tackle It Tuesdays

This is exactly why, inside my membership community, Fish School, one of the most-loved features is Tackle It Tuesdays. We hold multiple Zoom sessions throughout the day (to cover time zones across the US, Canada, and Australia) where members check in, say what they’re working on, set a timer, mute, and get to it — cameras optional, nothing recorded, zero judgment.

There’s something about seeing motion in those little Zoom windows — someone scrubbing a bathroom, someone at their desk, someone who disappears and comes back saying “sorry, I was doing dishes” — that gets things done in a way nothing else does. Some members build their whole week around Tackle It Tuesdays because it’s the day their house actually gets handled.

Fish School is $10 a month — intentionally priced so it’s accessible to as many people as possible. If you’re hesitating because you think everyone else in there has it more together than you, I promise: they don’t, and it wouldn’t matter if they did. It’s a genuinely friendly, judgment-free space, and you can always keep your camera pointed at a wall and still get the full benefit of the accountability.

You can join at joylovinghome.com/membership. If you run into any technical hiccups signing up, email me directly at joy@joylovinghome.com and I’ll help get you sorted.

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That’s it for today. Before tomorrow, sit with these two questions:

• What is your actual capacity — what do you really have the bandwidth for?
• What is your actual stress level — and is it enough to get you moving?

Tomorrow, we’ll dig into the next piece of the puzzle. Until then — continue to choose joy.