How I tricked my ADHD brain into building my business & life

All right. Hey, I'm Dean Jackson and welcome to episode 4. I've kept a journal for 30 plus years and this is what I know so far. We're going through my journals and I'm sharing insights and things that I've picked up after 30 years of developing what became the most important habit in my life.

I look I journal every single day. It's without question the most important thing that I do. Um, one of the things that I use the journal for is to keep a running commentary of my thoughts. I use it to think out loud and think with myself.

I like to think on paper. Uh, because I'm an introvert and in my way that's kind of like a um that's a way of of having conversation without having conversation I guess, you know. Um, I just noticed that on page 31 of journal number one, I was first introduced to the MyersBriggs personality type. And I am an INTP, which means I'm introverted.

I am intuitive, I'm a thinker, and I'm a perceiver. um you know which means I like to theoretically create things in my own world. I think the thing is the architect is the uh the actual like name of the thing or some people call the the professor or the the absent-minded professor if you're ADD like me. Um, but it was such that was such an insight and uh Sony Jackson is who Sony Peters at the time.

Sony Jackson, who later became my wife, she's the one who introduced me to this whole personality typing of of MyersBriggs. And I introduced it to Eban Pagan and it became a real foundational thing that we would use to it's almost like a superpower when you're able to type people and you know that you're talking to an introvert versus an extrovert or someone who's detailoriented versus big picture or someone who's takes their feelings into account more than their thoughts or logical things. and someone who likes to have things decided and ordered rather than open and and undecided like me. It really helps in the inter inter dynamics.

That's been this was the beginning of really that personal uh discovery you know and knowing everything that you can about yourself is an advantage. It's going to really help you. So over time, you know, I've added to my collection of of insight things that I've learned about myself both in my MyersBriggs INTP, the Colby, which is a uh it's another sort of um person, not personality, but your natural tendencies, the way that you work when you're striving. And so, uh, there's to know that if you're if you know Colby, I'm a 44101.

I'm not going to explain what all of that means, but I'm a long quick start and I'm a low implementer in terms of using uh technology tools. But knowing that about yourself and on that I would layer the working genius as another um example of knowing where your strengths are and not trying to fight them. not trying to change yourself, but to change the world or your environment to accommodate yourself, to support you in being the best version of of what you can be. And I mention that because one of the things that I would constantly use my journal for is to ask guiding questions.

I would ask a question of myself and then I would paint a picture of what the ideal is that I want and then I would list 10 or 12 or 13 or more ideas about how I could get that um ideal environ thing. I'm looking page 33 of my first journal. One of the things that I was asking was how can I have a clean and neat environment consistently? It's not a natural strength of mine.

And so I said, so I paint the picture of what the ideal looks like. I wake up and everything is in its place. I love my environment because it's energizing knowing everything is organized. I don't have to waste time looking for anything or doing a big time cleanup all the time.

Just it would be easier if everything was in. I can appreciate an organized environment, but I can tell you 30 years later, it's not a natural thing for me, but when I start looking through and now setting my mind to do the work for me, my mind loves to solve problems. your mind does too. If you just give it the chance and ask it the right question and give it a pencil and let it go to work, you're going to come up with some amazing solutions.

Questions um create a vacuum in your mind. When you ask a question, you almost can't not answer it. So, if I said I would list those things and so I came up with a list of ideas. First, I could set up clothes baskets for laundry, different clothes baskets.

Um, make my bed every day. Set up a holding area for papers and magazines. This was something that was great. We have I still to this day I have these wonderful baskets by the club chairs in my kitchen which like a Starbucks uh rather than having a kitchen table of two great club chairs but there's a basket beside it where I can put magazines and books and things that are reading materials so that they're not just kind of strewn all over.

There's a holding area for it. Um um all of these things. I have a checklist for my uh cleaning solutions. Keep contact solution in the bathroom and by the bed.

I wear contact lenses. Now I wear daily disposable lenses. So it's new. You don't have to put them in a little case and clean them.

Things have gotten so much better with uh contacts. But that was an an amazing thing. scan areas every night. I remember hearing that one of the things they would do at McDonald's is at the end of the day, they would clean the grill.

And that means there's a whole shutdown process that cleans and prepares the entire kitchen and environment so that everything is set that when you come in in the morning, it's completely set up for an amazing day. And I still use this format of asking these questions of myself and coming up with ideas. And I'm excited because in a few years we're going to hear about some ways that this evolved. I don't want to to spoil it now, but the starter kit to it is asking these guiding questions.

I would just put one on a page. put the guiding question. How can I what? How can I what is it?

Whatever it is you want to do. Then paint a picture and a paragraph of exactly what that would look like. And then just list all the ways, all the suggestions that you could possibly do to make those things come true. So that's two more great insights from journal number one.

Um, so stay tuned. More coming. We're just We're not even halfway through journal number one, but the insights will uh will keep coming. We're available on YouTube now if you want to go and follow along there at that DeanJack.

You'll see all of the episodes. And don't forget to subscribe and hit that like button and notifications and tell your friends. We're going viral. We're going viral.

We almost got a 100red views on the second episode at the time I was recording this. So, I'm counting on you. Facebook is fun, but YouTube is where the party is.