There are a thousand ways to define being an adult. But, I think the most practical way of thinking of being an adult is being in charge of yourself (and, potentially, others). That ‘in charge of’ means that if you babysat as a kid you were practicing being an adult.(Congratulations! You aren’t as much of a Novice Adult™ as you thought!)
Being in charge means more freedom, and it means more responsibility.
Being in charge means you are in charge of where you live, what you drive (if you drive), when you go to bed, what you eat, where you work, when you work, what you do for fun, who you hang out with…..etc. etc. etc.
That’s a lot of decisions, and it can easily lead to something called decision fatigue. According to the American Medical Association, decision fatigue is the idea that the more decisions you make in a period of time, the harder it gets to make more decisions. And while that might sound all fancy, more than that, decision fatigue is a real thing, and it’s even harder if you have a neurodivergency like ADHD.
The easiest way to avoid decision fatigue is to make as many of decisions as possible either automatic or as easy as possible. And the easiest way to make day to day decisions easier is by planning ahead. An hour or two of planning and really thinking about what you want to do with your own life means that when a decision comes your way, you already have a framework for how to make that decision.
Where are we going with this today? I want you to start thinking today about what you are going to do with this new superpower of being an adult. Over the next four blog posts we are going to set you up for streamlining life decisions by asking yourself four big questions.
- What are my major goals in life?
- How do I get to those goals?
- What motivates me?
- What do I do when I inevitably screw up?
After we’ve talked about the big picture things, we can start to talk about how the more mundane pieces of adulting. Money. Food. Shelter. Transportation. But none of that means anything if you don’t know why you are doing what you are doing anyway, so – let’s just tackle the biggest baddest questions first. No problem.
We’ll start next post.