This episode is sponsored by CURE Hydration. You know that moment for me, it’s around like 2 or 3pm when my ADHD brain just decides we’re done for the day. We’re done here. The afternoon slump hits, the lights go off upstairs and suddenly answering an email or doing basically anything feels like climbing a mountain. That’s when I reach for Cure Energy. It’s a clean plant based energy drink mix made with 100 milligrams of natural caffeine and electrolytes. So I get the focus and hydration boost I need without jitters, without a crash and without that like I drink battery acid vi that some of the energy drinks have. The peach tea and acai berry flavors are my current go tos. Crisp, refreshing and they don’t taste fake, y’. All. They don’t taste fake. I’ll drink one before recording a session or when I need to get help through like that afternoon drag. And honestly, I. I drink it anytime. My brain just needs to cooperate. What’s wild is that Cure Energy is only 25 calories and has zero added sugar. It actually helps me stay hydrated while giving me energy. Okay, I love coffee, but coffee could never. Staying hydrated isn’t just about water. You also need electrolytes. And that’s why I love CUR Cure. It’s clean, it tastes great and it actually works. And remember, Cure is FSA HSA approved, which is amazing. You can use that money to pay for cure and for I have ADHD listeners, you can get 20% off your first order@curehydration.com I have ADHD with the code I have ADHD. And if you do get a post purchase survey, make sure to tell them that you heard about CURE right here on the podcast. It really helps to support the show. Don’t just drink more, upgrade it right with cure. Welcome to the I have ADHD podcast where it’s all about education, encouragement and coaching for adults with adhd. I’m your host Kristin Carter and I have adhd. Let’s chat about the frustrations, humor and challenges of adulting relationships working and achieving with this neurodevelopmental disorder disorder. I’ll help you understand your unique brain, unlock your potential and move from point A to point B. Hey, what’s up? This is Kristin Carter and you are listening to the I have ADHD podcast, episode number 128. I am medicated, I’m caffeinated and I’m ready to roll. How are you? How are you you? I am so glad that you are here with me today. Thank you for pressing play on this podcast. As always, I am grateful to you for your time, your attention, all the things. I’m going to try to keep this intro really short because this episode is a long one. And sometimes when I go to listen to podcasts and I see that they’re long, I’m like, I don’t know if I have it in me. I don’t know if I’ve got it in me to listen to this whole thing. So I assume that maybe you are like that as well. And I really want to be respectful of your time, but I am so looking forward to sharing this conversation with you. It’s with my client, Lindsay Eger. I adore her. We chat about adhd, creativity constraint, and all of the things in between. I love having fellow ADHD ers on my podcast because I think conversations like this, where two ADHDers are just sitting down together, kind of bantering back and forth, it just really normalizes the ADHD experience and it brings all of us so much connection. In my opinion. In my opinion, there’s a lot of peace and validation and connection. And there are people all over the world listening to this podcast. While you are listening to it right now, There are other ADHDers out there in the world listening to it as well. And there’s just something really communal and connected about that that I think is really important for those of us who are struggling so much on a daily basis. Like, isn’t it so good to know that there are smart and creative people just like you, who are successfully living with ADHD and experiencing all of the same struggles and drama and yet finding ways to cope, finding ways to heal, finding ways to improve, and that’s what these conversations are all about. I know know that you are just going to adore Lindsay and this conversation. She is a critically acclaimed author. She’s a redhead. She’s all around just like a fun person. I know you’re going to love her, so I’m so, so happy to share this conversation with you today. But before we get started, you know what time it is. It’s time for a quick ad break. This podcast is sponsored by Focused. Focused is my ADHD coaching program where we take the concepts that I dabble in on this podcast and we go deep. We study them, we apply them to our lives, and we make huge, sustainable changes. I’m a certified life coach with thousands of coaching hours under my belt. Thousands. I’ve coached all the people on all the things I’ve seen hundreds of success stories come out of the Focus program and I want to let you know that it’s the perfect complement to to an ADHD treatment protocol. So if you’re being treated for your adhd, but you feel like there’s still something missing, there’s still something holding me back. I want you to know that it is possible for you to take control of your Life. Go to ihaveadhd.com focused to learn more. And now please enjoy this conversation with my client, Lindsay Eager. So Lindsay, hi. I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you for coming on with me today. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so excited to talk to you. I am especially delighted to be chatting with you today because your story, your position in life, who you are, what you represent is going to be so relatable to so many of my listeners because you are a very creative person who is making your living as a creative. So tell us a little bit about what you do. I am a novelist. I’m a writer. I’ve always wanted to be a writer ever since I was small enough to hold a pencil and boss my siblings around into plays and ballets and always been a big book reader. And so that was always the dream to become a writer. And I sold my first book, my my first two books in 2014. I have six under contract. I am a working mid list writer and I love it. It’s great. I started teaching writing classes a couple years ago. Well, I guess only one year ago. What month is it? What year is it? It feels like who AM I between 2020 and 2021? I have no idea. I guess it was last, it was like January of 2020. I started teaching writing classes as supplemental income because writing and publishing is super feast or famine. It’s very like here’s a big paycheck and it needs to last you for nine months and you don’t know when you’re going to be paid again and you’re always owed money and always I don’t know. It’s great for if you have adhd, right? So I have been balancing teaching, writing and reading, writing, writing. And this summer, going forward for the next little while, I will be just writing writing, which is great. Wow, that seems very, I just have this like very idyllic picture in my mind of what your life is like. It’s for sure not whatever you are thinking, it’s not. And it’s also not like alcohol fueled. Like I have this burning inspiration. I need to get it out now. It’s really not. It’s. It’s always been for me, at least since I’ve been paid to do it, it’s been in tandem with being a stay at home mom. And so I’ve always done it with kids on my lap, kids running around me, kids talking to me and at me and getting 10, 15 minutes in at a time. But somehow, somehow I managed to cobble it together. You joked that it was like the perfect ADHD career. Were you being sarcastic or were you being serious? Like, how does it work with your adhd? It is both the best and the worst. It’s the best because I do have a lot of freedom. Obviously with adhd, I have a lot of ideas and that can be a good or a bad thing, depending on, you know, how you want to look at it. I can create my own momentum with hyper focus in a way that is really great. And all of the things that make somebody with ADHD so special are real attributes as a writer. But deadlines are hard. I’m my own boss and there’s nobody really. I mean, I have an editor, I have an agent, but it’s not the same as a boss who’s like, listen, you got to get your 40 hours in and then, you know, you get your paycheck every two weeks. It’s really. I am my own small business owner and I hate thinking about it that way. It’s really hard for me to think about it that way because I just want to be like a story machine and not deal with like the yucky business side of creating a schedule for myself and making sure I’m not working for 12 hours a day, 10 days in a row. So it’s, it’s, it’s a great career for someone with adhd and it’s also a difficult career. If I didn’t have the most chill husband in the world, it would probably be really hard. And you’re the sole earner in your family right now, aren’t you? I am right now. I am. Yeah. Last year, and this, this year, I am. It has not always been the case. That’s something that my husband and I sort of ping pong back and forth. Yeah. That’s pretty baller though. It is. It feels good. And I, I like to bring home the bacon. It’s. Yes. Oh my gosh, me too. I love it. Tell us a little bit about kind of the explosion of, you know, you’re writing your ADHD diagnosis, like how all of that is entwined because your diagnosis is fairly recent. Y. And how did all of that come about? So always, always, always. I have had all of these sort of hallmark characteristics of somebody with ADHD since I was a kid. I was difficult, I think, for my parents to wrangle. I was the oldest, so I don’t think they knew any different. But it was hard to get down for naps and to go to sleep. I just would go, go, go, talk, talk, talk, play, play, play. Constantly needing media, books, movies, interaction, to get outside and play. And I mean, that goes all the way up through. I guess now even I am very much like that until, yeah, until the lights go out and I’m in bed and then I fall right asleep like a bird when you put a cover over their cage, which I’m very lucky. But I think I do wear myself out so that it’s easy for me to sleep. So for me, with ADHD and my career, I had a really great start. The way it works. I’ll keep this very short because there’s a million things we could talk about with publishing, but I won’t. But the way it works is you submit your manuscripts, a finished book to an agent and an agent finds an editor at a publishing company. And this is traditional publishing. There’s self publishing, there’s all sorts of different, like, variations of publishing. But I do. Mine is like traditional publishing with like a New York publisher who puts my books in bookstores and does distribution and all of that for me. So when I found my agent, I had four different agents who were interested in working with me, which was great. Then when we sold my book, it sold in this really quick auction that was very much like my email pinging and just like phone calls and like, this person’s interested and this person is going to raise their offering amount to this much and this editor’s. And it was so amazing. And I found the perfect editor to work with. She and I are really, really close. We still are working together after all this time. And my first two books were really, really successful. You know, I’ve earned royalties on my first book, which is very, very rare. Actually. Not a lot of books earn out. Books are lucky if they sell 2,000 copies in their entire lifetime and sold a lot more than that. So I’ve had. And on top of that, I mean, I just always had and still do have multiple projects, multiple irons in the fire. As soon as I turn something in, it’s like, okay, time to switch to something else. Or, you know, I’m bored with this one, so I’m going to switch to this One. And it’s always been, oh, my God, Lindsay is in the middle of a thousand things and wants to do and go a thousand different directions. And you can see how that, that’s a struggle. It was great the first few years. Then I missed a deadline. I was pregnant and had a really hard time just, like, staying awake. And my book got bumped back a season on the publishing schedule, and then the next book got bumped. And then I was so anxious about all of this happening and so anxious that I wasn’t having, like, bam, bam, bam. Books, books, books just coming out, coming out, coming out. I just got completely bogged down and kept saying yes to things and promising to deliver and just didn’t. Yeah, I mean, which is, like, heart wrenching to think back on. I was guilty all the time. I was angry all the time. I definitely looked around at my, you know, my family and thought, you guys are. Are just. You guys cost me so much time. If I just lived in a little hut alone, maybe I could get all of this done. But that, of course, wasn’t the issue. The issue. The issue was just me wanting to say yes to everything. So my diagnosis came. My. An unofficial diagnosis came in 2019 when I saw a counselor who said, yeah, you sound like this sounds like classic adhd, if you ask me. And I put off getting, like, an official diagnosis, like you do until last year. And it was. I remember, yes. And it was very cut and dry. It was very like, yes, you very clearly have adhd. Let’s get you help. And it’s been. I mean, it’s been wonderful to learn more about my brain and to learn why I do what I do, why my tendencies are what they are. But it’s also sometimes a hard mirror to look into. My husband has type 1 diabetes and has since he was 13. Dr. Russell, what’s his name that you love? Barkley. One of the very first videos I watched on YouTube was a lecture that he did about ADHD, and he compared ADHD to diabetes. Just saying, it’s a chronic condition. It’s not going to be healed. But there’s a very simple substance that you can replace and introduce into the body and into the brain that helps for diabetes. It’s insulin. You take your insulin, you manage, you can manage your diabetes. If you have adhd, the medication, it’s. So anyway, that was just a really good metaphor for my husband and I to latch onto. So that’s where I am now. And it seemed to me like when you were speaking of this stormy time in your life, of, you know, wanting to do all the things and over promising and under delivering and just really not knowing why you were doing what you were doing and just feeling all of that guilt and then projecting that out onto your family and being angry. There was a lot of emotion coming up for you. Yes. And there’s, I mean there’s a history there. So I, I won’t get too into this, but I was raised in Utah County, Utah. Raised very conservative LDS Mormon family. My family is not incredibly strict, but the community I was in was, you know, pretty conservative and very religious and I was like gold star Mormon girl. I was there at church every week. I mean, if I’m going to do something, I want to be the best. And so I was all in. And around age 12 is when I really started to notice A, my ambitions for my life didn’t exactly match up with like the women that I saw around me, what they were doing and B, being told that I would be a mother and that that would be my greatest sort of role as a person and a woman. Yes. And I have to be careful because I am a mother and like my mom was a mother who stayed home with us and like I have, I just have so much respect. Feels like such a trite, patronizing word. But I love, I love motherhood, I love moms, I love stay at home moms. But at 13 I had a church leader ask, you know, what do you want to do with your life when you grow up? I said, I want to travel, I want to write, I want to go see the world, I want to go everywhere and see everything. And I want to write a million books. And I want to be like that crazy book lady who just always has like ink stained hands and, and do that. And then after I’ve sort of lived a little, then maybe I’ll have kids, was what I said. And I remember him very distinctly saying, well, no, your life will begin when you do have kids. Wow. Oh my word. Oh my word. And I’ve always had a very rebellious streak, which sometimes I wonder, like, where does, is that my personality or is that adhd? Is that oppositional stuff with my. I have no idea. I do know if you tell me to do something, I will want to do the opposite. Doesn’t matter what it is. And I have, I have, I have to fight that a lot because it has led to a lot of bad, like touching the stove situations in my life. But I just remember in that moment just thinking, I’m never okay, then fine, then I’m not Gonna, I won’t be a mom. I’m not gonna do that. I’m not gonna get on that treadmill or conveyor belt, whatever. I’m not doing that. So when I became pregnant, surprise, surprise, at 22 with a horrible, emotionally abusive boy that had been dating for a long time. Oh, honey. I was sort of like, well, I, I mean, and I considered all my options and my parents were very like, you do what you got to do. Like, we support you no matter what. And I definitely considered everything and really just thought, and I just want to say, like, it wasn’t an ideological belief that made me decide to be a mother. Right. It was something else. I don’t know what it was. It was just a choice. Like, yeah, maybe this is what I actually want and need right now. So sometimes even now, and especially in the last few years when things have gotten really tough and it’s easy for me to blame my family for sucking up all my time and energy, there is a part of me that goes, wow, if 15 year old you could see you right now, she would be so disappointed that you became a mother. She would be pissed that you, after all that, you went and became a stay at home mom. Are you though? I mean, yes, I do stay home, but no, I’m not just a stay at home mom. And you know, like, my mom was not just a stay at home mom. Right. There’s a reason why Utah leads the nation in these MLM pyramid scheme businesses. They suck. They’re super exploitative. But there are so many women here who situationally are home and want to have careers and want to earn money. And so like, MLMs are not great. But there’s a reason why there’s so many and why those are so prevalent, I think in communities with conservative moms who are home with their kids. Because like, yes, they’re not just stay at home moms. I just. Anyway, I am with you. Yeah. Okay. That I think that we should have another conversation. And this is just like an aside, but I would love to do a whole episode on like motherhood and being an ambitious, creative person. I could talk for days about it. Same. Because I think that especially those of us who were raised in conservative homes, it is fascinating to make that transition. So for me, I did believe, like, okay, my life does start when I have kids. And then I had kids and I was like, wait, this is the worst. I actually hate this. I don’t hate my kids. I love my kids fiercely. Like, I’m obsessed with my kids. What I hated was the monotony and the boredom and the demands and the chaos of a stay at home mom life. And I’ll insert a stay at home mom mom life in America because, I mean, I don’t. Oh, my gosh, are we so privileged or what? Well, but also. No, I was going to say, like, community wise, cultural wise, there’s not support. Yeah. To be a family friendly, like, it’s not really a super family friendly country. Yeah, that’s true. Yeah. You’re isolated and if you want child care, you got to pay for it and be shamed for it and. But yeah, it’s isolating. Yeah. And especially for those of us who are hyperactive and just need the constant input, the constant feedback. So when I was in my stay at home mom days, I knew I had adhd, but I was unmedicated and I had no idea that it affected every part of my life. So I didn’t know that, like, my inability to manage the chaos in my home and, like, be okay with it was related to my adhd. I just thought it made. It was like, you’re a bad person. You’re a bad mom. You just don’t. Like, you know, other people can handle this and you can’t. Other people enjoy being at home with their kids and you don’t like. Which means you’re bad. Right. And this is your sacred calling. And if you are spending your whole time hating, it must mean that there’s something not right between you and the Lord somehow. So in an effort to honor the 15 year old version of yourself, you got an ADHD diagnosis. I did. You are treating your ADHD in a way that makes sense for you. You joined Focus prior to your diagnosis. I think I. To your official diagnosis. I think. I think so. Or I think I joined it right after I had left the psychiatrist’s office and was waiting for my, like, official diagnosis, but was pretty much like, come on, it’s gonna be. It would be very weird if it wasn’t. Right. She watched me, the psychiatrist watched me fill out my paperwork and was like, you’re jumping all over the place. I’m pretty sure. Just based on that. Seems like you probably have it. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I’m answering the questions that interest me most. Exactly. And then I’ll. Yeah, exactly. Circle back around. Yeah. When you joined the idea of constraint that I talk about a lot was something that really struck you and you’ve been latching onto ever since. Tell me about that. Like, tell me about your introduction to the idea of constraint. And then Kind of the evolution of you, you know, not hating it, maybe, like, not loving it. But we’re just strong words, Carter, incorporating it into your life a little bit. Tell me about that. The necessary evil. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Oh, actually, it’s not. It’s. So I always thought of the word that. The word that I should use was restraint. You don’t use restraint. You use constraints. And I’m guessing that’s probably deliberate. Yeah. Because they mean similar things. And I’ve heard restrain yourself or refrain yourself. And restraints. Restraints remind me of restraints. I mean, shackles, you know, which is what this whole concept has always reminded me of. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know the thing that my mom said to me the most growing up, and I remember her literally saying this to me probably for the first time when I was around five. So it was always, always something that she said to me was, lindsay, you’re amazing. You can do anything, but you cannot do everything. Yeah, you can’t do everything, but you could do anything. Just. You’re gonna have to pick because you literally can’t do all of it at once. And then, yes, surprise, surprise. Age, however old I was last year, 33, strolling into focused. And there’s Kristin Carter telling me the same thing in, you know, less words, which was just constraint. Constraint is the way to get things done. So one, I mean, very tangible, measurable thing that I can point to to, say, applied the concept or the practice of constraint in my work last year by just focusing on one book, one project that needed to get done. That is not how I usually work. I don’t work like that. How do you usually work? Oh, I usually. So when I’m starting a new draft or a new. Like, a new draft of a project or a new project altogether, all of my energy and momentum is there for, like, the first. I’m lucky. I get, like, a good 40% of the way in, and it is like rocket fuel. I’m so excited. I love it. And then I hit a wall. And that’s when I start branching off and doing other side projects. I’ve tried things like, oh, I’ll, you know, I need to inch forward on Project A, and then I can work on Project B as, like, a reward. Or I’ll do things where I’m like, okay, well, I’m drafting this project, so that means I can revise this one, because that’s a different stage or phase of the creative process, so it feels different enough. Or, like, I’ve done. This is my weekday project. This is my weekend Project, or this is my morning project. This is my nighttime project. I’ve always done that. And in August of last year, I knew I needed to. It was a big, huge project that got bumped back a couple times and needed to be basically burned down and started over completely. Like a total creative. Just start over. And I really wanted to give myself completely over to it and just get obsessed. Because I think what fuels that first, like, 40% of any project that I’m doing is enthusiasm, is obsession. It’s the first thing I think of when I wake up. I’m itching to work on it all day. I’m working on it. I’m thinking about it, you know, so if I can create that inorganically, if I have to, that’s fine. I can pretend I’m being interviewed by Oprah for my amazing book and let that generate some obsession, which is definitely something I do. Not Oprah specifically, but, like, somebody, like, know. Yeah. Then I can make it all the way through a project. So I just was like, I need to be obsessed with this project. I need to just work on just one thing. Because Kristen says this is the way to be productive, and she’s right. So from August to December, I worked on one project and got it finished. And I have to say, it took a lot longer than it usually does, but it was much less chaotic and. And it was cleaner than it usually is. Wow. Say more words about that. It was painful. A lot of days. Yeah. So something else to know about me is I am a very fast writer. Writing one book in a year and writing it, you know, getting the draft finished, getting it all the way revised, ready for publication. That’s a stretch for a lot of authors because it’s a lot of work. Most novels, let’s say, are like 90,000 words on average. If you wrote a thousand words a day, could take you three months without skipping a day just to write the first draft. That’s not including any kind of revising. Terrible. I love it. I know. I know. I’m sick. So I’ve always been able to write multiple books in a year. Like three or four or more books in a year. It takes me on, like, my debut novel that came out when I wrote that first draft. I wrote it in about 10 days. Oh, my gosh. So very, very fast writer for the most. I mean, there’s some projects that are, like, slower or whatever and that are problem children. Problem children. That’s what I call them. Like, my. This is a problem child. In 2019, before I started teaching writing, I Took on a job ghost writing romance books. Nice. And wrote 25 novels in one year. What? It was every two weeks I was finishing a novel. This was pre ADHD diagnosis. Can you tell? Oh, I mean, it was word. It was burnout for 11 months straight. It was bad. It was really bad. Never again. I can’t. That was just like. It was like about 10,000 words a day. That’s crazy. So I’m a fast writer, but right now my pace is like about a thousand words a day, which I would say is fairly average for the unblocked, unemotional writer who’s able to just kind of plod along. And it feels so slow. It’s really hard for me to switch over to doing just a little bit every day on a project that’s more long term rather than just like binge. Right? Yes. Yeah. And there will be times in the future when I will binge write. Like as soon as I have this next project. This. Well, this is the same project. This is just the revision. As soon as I have this turned in at the end of this month, I get to binge write my next book. And I’m so excited. I’m super excited. But I will not be doing it in a way that compromises my mental health or my family or the downtime that I know my brain needs. Wow. That just seems like such a beautiful evolution. Such evolvement has taken place in a very short amount of time for you to put the boundary of constraint on yourself and say, like, this is an important part of my life. Of course I’m obsessed, but I can’t do it at the detriment of my mental health, of my family and. Or at the detriment or to the detriment. Is that more accurate? I can’t do it to the detriment of, like, the projects that I’m trying to finish as well. And that was like, for sure the hamster wheel of hell that I got on, which was trying to hurry and binge write something. Hitting walls, burning out. Because of course. And also just trying to figure out, like, why do I keep burning out and hitting these walls and then realizing there’s actually no reason for it other than you have ADHD and this is what’s going to happen. I kept trying to solve and be like, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be able to go all the way through this whole project in 10 days, so why can’t I? And slowing down and just working on one thing at a time has really, let me see, kind of the ins and outs of my, like my daily rhythms and my weekly rhythms. But don’t get me wrong, it’s miserable a lot of the time. I don’t want to say that it doesn’t feel like a beautiful evolution. It feels like I’m behind. It feels like, I mean, if I could turn my camera, I would show you my stacks and stacks of notebooks of projects that are waiting for me. And I actually used to keep post its right here next to me of all the projects that I wanted to work on and I. It used to feel motivating to have them on there. All of the active things that I was working on. And then I took them all down because I was like, I’m going so slow. And I still do the thing too where I write my to do list. And then I keep adding to it and adding to it and adding to it until I feel bad for not getting it done. But also feel like, well, of course I can get all this done because I’m Lindsay Eager and I can get this done. Yeah, but should I? Right? Because I can. Does that mean I should? So it’s. The evolution is still happening and it’s in, it’s my. It’s in my head. It’s my acceptance daily, weekly, monthly that like there’s other stuff in my life besides writing. And it’s okay for me to like by constraining down to just one to do item or one book or one project. It actually frees me up later to work on something else. But man, it’s a hard switch. It still goes against all my instincts. Yep. But my instincts are dumb. So like my. They are like, I’m just trying to realize that like that was the best. Can you say it again? My instincts are dumb. Say more words. Well, if I followed my instincts, whatever instincts are, I don’t know, that could mean a million things. I would be in lots of weird dumb places. Because my instincts, I think my particular brains instincts are to work as much as possible all the time, to constantly be busy, to constantly be coming up with new ideas and new projects and new like, oh, what else could I do with the kids this summer? Let’s make a list. Let’s make a chart. Let’s make a. Let’s do a fairy garden. Let’s plan a vacation here. Let’s like do a reading chart. Like, let’s do. So my. Those are my instincts. My instincts are never to sit and think. God, no, thank you. I don’t want to. I don’t want to sit and Think I don’t want to hear what’s in there? No, thank you. That I would like to keep that. The waters constantly churning so I don’t have to look at what’s down at the bottom. No, thanks. But, like, if I follow those instincts, then I’m never going to sleep, never going to really have any kind of, like, connection with my children and husband. It’s always going to be just trying to make sure they’re busy and taken care of so that I can get back to what I’m doing. Yes. Oh, I relate to that so much. And also, like, my instinct is to want that. Like. Like, I do want that. Like, I feel like I probably. I probably could spend my whole life just, like, setting my kids up with activities that keep them out of my hair so I can write. And I bet at 70 years old, I wouldn’t have any regrets. Yeah, Like, I bet my kids would be healthy and happy and well adjusted and we would have a great relationship. But, like, is that what I. Is that what I want to do? I don’t know. I go back and forth on that. Totally. Totally. I used to love to read, like, historical fiction and I used to judge the mothers that would send their children to boarding school. Yep. Now I’m like, oh, my gosh, I totally get it. Yep. Yeah, it’s fascinating. I’m so glad that you brought up the fact that our instincts are really dumb, because I think most ADHD brains, not all, but most ADHD brains, are very creative. And most of us have a ton of amazing ideas. And most of us have these instincts to jump around from idea to idea or to make those charts, to make those lists. And we have this kind of, like, idea graveyard that just kind of hangs over our heads. And I’ve worked with a lot of clients who really shame themselves for not being able to bring their ideas to life. And they have this kind of erroneous belief that they should be able to. Like, I have 7 million ideas and I should be able to bring all of them to life. And I think that what you’re describing as you describe, like, your interaction with the concept and then of constraint and then the practice of, like, grafting it into your life. What you’re describing is tuning into reality of, like, we live in a world where we don’t get to bring 7 million ideas to life. No, this is not a thing that people do. And then when I’ve talked to clients about this, they’ve said things like, well, like, I should be able to, or why not? Or like, this isn’t fair. And I think that there’s a grieving process that happens when we actually enter reality. Right. So, like, I’m a creative person. I’m also smart, I’m also gorgeous. I could do a million things. And so what that often will do with an ADHD brain is we end up doing zero things because we think I should be able to do all of this and I should be able. I should be able to make handbags and be a makeup artist and be a writer all at the same time. And actually I could. Like, I’m skilled in all three of these areas. Except you can’t. Like, no, no one can be successful on, like, in these three areas. And so one of the most beautiful things that I think is happening for you is that, like, acceptance of reality. Like, I live in the world. Like, hi, I’m on Earth, planet Earth, and I’m a human being and I’m flawed. And like, we’re not in the afterlife, we’re not in heaven yet. Like, this is like a broken world, we. Where not everything works out perfectly. And so being able to know, like, if I’m going to be successful, it’s going to be because I’ve harnessed all of my creativity and all of my intellects into this one thing. Yeah. And when that one thing is done, I get to move on to something else if I want to. Right. Yeah. I just have so many thoughts and so many things that this relates to. And so 2019 was that year when I wrote 25 romance novels. The year before that, I had written and finished four novels, which was a lot. And I remember thinking at the end of that year, oh, no, I wrote four novels this year. I bet next year I could write six. And I remember feeling like it was one of those out of body experiences where I could see myself having a thought pattern that was not dangerous but like, hazardous. Because I remember thinking, well, okay, at what point? Like, if you do six novels next year, what are you going to do the next year after that? And then, I mean, the next year I ended up doing 25 because it was like, quick turnaround for cash. Kept my family afloat when my husband lost his job. But that was the year where I was like, okay, I need to stop making number goals like this because my tendency and my instinct is to try to outdo myself. I also had to tell friends and families to stop saying that they were impressed with me. Oh, fascinating. Because it just immediately made me want to go, oh, yeah, you were impressed with four novels? Well, Wait till you see what I do next year. I’m going to do even more. Because if you’re telling me that you’re impressed that a human could write four novels in a year and. And then I’m gonna be superhuman next year, I had to just say stop, because my brain just wants to go, oh, yeah, I’m gonna do more then, like, wait till they see this. Yeah. I don’t know where that. I don’t know where that comes from. Because I’m a pretty. I have a lot of conviction and I don’t feel like I have a lot to prove. So I don’t. I don’t know what that is exactly. It sounds a little bit like the oppositional defiance. It’s kind of a little bit, you know, where it’s like, oh, you think that’s good? That’s not. That’s not even. Yeah, that was just warm up. Yeah. Yeah. I also am reminded of a time. So I am that adhder who has a million tabs open on my phone all the time stresses out my husband so much. Stresses me out. I’ll get to the 500 limit and have to go through and close read things and close them. It’s bad. It’s really bad. I didn’t even know there was a 500 limit. There’s a 500 limit and I have reached many, many times. And I used to do this thing where I, like, screenshot all of the things that I had been saving and post it on my Instagram and make a joke out of it. Like, let’s see what Lindsay has been saving to read. Why is she trying to read about Catfish in the Amazon? I don’t know, but it’s been open on my phone for three months. Like, must have been related to something. But one time I accidentally closed all my tabs at once and it felt like I had lost 500 ideas or 500. I mean, it just felt like, oh, no. I was like, I was saving that. That was like an external brain and it’s gone now. And there were all sorts of people who were like, there’s all these things you can do to bring them back to restore them. And I handed my phone to my husband and was like, don’t. I don’t let me restore them. I need to just see if I even am thinking about them tomorrow. And as soon as I went to sleep, the slate wiped clean. I could like, wow. Didn’t worry about it at all. That makes me wonder if some of that having, like, the external ideas and like the Notebooks full of projects is a form of not trusting yourself as you are right now and your brain to just produce enough to like, be amazing at this one project right now. It’s like, I don’t really trust my brain so much right now, so I need to go, like, store all of this over here. Or I don’t trust myself to remember, or I don’t trust myself to even come up and be creative. Like, I might not be creative next month when I’m done with this project. So I need to save all of this. Does that resonate with you? It totally does. And I think it’s also, it’s a common conversation among other writers. Like, do you write down your ideas if you wake up in the middle of the night? Or like, what happens if you forget this? If you, if you’re out walking and you don’t have something to write down, this brilliant breakthrough, what do you do? And there are some writers who say, oh, I purposely don’t write that stuff down because if it’s right, it’ll come back. If it’s a logical connection or idea that my brain needs to work on, it’ll find its way back to me, which is a little woo woo to think about. And I’ve never been that person, obviously. But I think also there’s part of it that’s like, there’s no quantifiable way to say that I am the best writer. Like, there’s no way for me to be. I mean, maybe if I made a billion dollars and was on the New York Times list every single week, maybe I would accept, right? But probably not. The goalposts would probably move again. So I think somewhere along the line I decided, well, if I can’t be the best, I will be the fastest, or I will be the one with the most ideas, or I will be the one who, like, has the most varied ideas and the irons in all the fires. Because I can’t be the best and I’m not going to be. I don’t think I’ll be the richest because that’s so much like buying a lottery ticket to be plucked, you know, out of publishing to, to be the big star. I don’t want to play with those odds. So instead I’ll just be, I’ll be the something else. And I for sure identify as the idea person. Yes. So bringing this back around to constraint, it goes against every fiber in your body to constrain down to one idea. It does. So why have you bothered? Because I need to get stuff done. So Tell me how it’s helping you to actually finish. Okay, let me think. Let me, let me. Because I’m in a fight with constraint this week. Yes. You guys are like. You’re on just, like, rocky ground. Here’s something that you said, is that being a writer means starting and finishing. Yeah. It doesn’t mean just starting. And I think that all creatives can apply that. I mean, all humans, but, like, especially creative brains who just like our idea factories. I could make this. I could make this. I could sew this. I could. I could whatever. But being successful, being employed, getting paid for doing your work or your creative endeavor means starting and finishing. And I just thought that was. I mean, very simple but very profound because I think the finishing part is where the constraint comes in. Yeah. And I think there’s a way to. I split myself on this in some ways, because I think there’s. I think I very much want to have lived, you know, at the end of my life, I want to have lived a creative life where I’m always in the middle of stuff. I always want my brain to be. If I can die with files and files and files of other stories and just, like, things that never happen, like, that’s gonna happen. There’s no way I’ll finish everything. And then I’ve made my peace with that. But I also feel like that is the kind of life I want to live. But. And you can live that kind of life. You can be a creative person who’s just always dabbling, and there’s no shame in that at all. That can be a really good way to be creative. However, if I want to sell my stuff or be paid for being creative or have any kind of creative products in the marketplace, I cannot show up on the doorstep of all my readers and say, here’s my notes. Here’s how it’ll end. You don’t know how it ends. I haven’t finished the end yet. But it’s going to end like this. Nobody. Nobody wants that. Yeah. So I am a creative person, but I’m also a professional creative who gets paid money to make up lies and make them stories and sell them and have them in libraries and schools. If I’m going to do that, if it’s going to become a product, which can be, like, gross to think about your creative work as a product, but, like, that’s what you’re doing. If you’re trying to sell or swap or offer something to someone, it needs to. To be finished. Yes. That is such a good word, because I think you make a very clear distinction between just enjoying your creative project and having all the ideas and just being that factory of just generating all of this creativity. And that is beautiful. And there’s no shame in that. But if you want to sell what you have to offer and you don’t have to. Right, like work a day job, and that’s perfect, and then you get home and you can be as creative as you want to be, and nothing needs to be finished. And that’s beautiful. It’s a trade off. And I have met. I have met many, many people who hear that I’m a writer and they want to tell me their book idea, and they tell me they’ve been gathering notes on it for five years and they haven’t written a word of it. Or they’re. They’re still not finished. I can’t tell you how often this happens. Like. Like all the time. And there’s a way to do that. But the trade off then is you’re not gonna have a book for people to read. So that’s the trade off. Yeah. Yeah. And if it’s worth it to you, awesome and great. Yeah. And I will say, like, one trick that I have told other writers that I’ll do and that I probably should do more often is if I’m stuck, if I’m in the middle of a project and I’m feeling that momentum dry up getting to the finish line so that I can wrap it up even if I am artificially creating a finishing spot, and then there’s an avalanche and everybody dies. The end. Right. Still, it’s a placeholder ending, whatever. But it teaches my brain to kind of close that other parenthesis and like, okay, finished. We, you know, we’re practicing finishing things. It’s done. Instead of leaving all of these open files everywhere, I think that is brilliant. So. And I feel like it applies to other things too. Like if you’re baking something, like, just put it in the oven then and say done. Or like painting or whatever. Like, just. Just get to the end. Make an ending now if you know you’re done. That sounds like your interpretation of B minus work. Oh, yes, for sure it is. That’s what it feels like to me. Yeah, it is. Yeah. I was gonna say something else about constraint. This is going into, like, personal territory. I just want to talk about my dad for a minute because he definitely won’t listen to this, but he’s a person that I think about a lot when it comes to constraint. My dad is also a major idea person. Major, major. Idea person, just an idea factory and super confident in his ideas to the point where like if he is ready to tell you about his idea that he’s been fussing with, he will literally start the sentence with, this is going to change the world or this is going to solve world hunger. Like big ideas. Very into. I invented this and this is something no one’s ever seen before. And I came up with this brand new way of doing things in a way that I don’t think is always accurate, but that’s the way that I think he needs to feel about his ideas. Zero of these ideas have ever come to fruition. Wow. He’ll have prototypes that to me are very half assed. He’s gone. He’s gone so far as to go find what he called investors and what I would say are generous family members. He doesn’t want to do. He doesn’t want. He doesn’t even, I think, really want to do B minus work. Because it’s not a matter of do B minus work and it’ll be fine. It’s more like don’t even really put any effort towards it and expect to be rewarded for the idea. Wow. The perfect example of somebody who comes up with lots of ideas, can’t execute, and I think has a lot of resentment towards me in particular, but is somebody who I think about a lot. When I think about, oh my God, what if I die with 80 books that are unfinished? I do not want to be like how my dad is full of ideas, unable to execute and finish and move on to the next step. It haunts me. Terrifies me. It seems to be. Even though it is haunting, it does seem to give you a determination to finish. Yeah, yeah. And a willingness to bear up under the weight of like, I don’t want to do this. Yes. Or I could be doing something else. Oh, that’s a good one. Yeah. That’s probably the main refrain that comes in my head when I’m struggling to constrain on one project is, oh, I could be doing this, or should I be doing this other thing instead? Talk to me a little bit about what you do when you hit a wall as far as like practical, like you, like when it’s like an emotional wall when, when that thought comes up of like, I should be doing something else or I could be doing something else and it feels like that something else is so deliciously tantalizing. Like if I could only just go over there with that idea that is seducing me right now, I would feel so good and yet you’ve chosen this project that you’re going to finish and you’re going to produce a product. At the end, you will have something to offer the world. It’s not just going to be an idea, it’s going to be a product. And so what do you do when you have the urge to go to do something else more fun that seems more fun in the moment? Right. A couple things. So first, and this is something that I’ve done this year a lot and it’s helped tremendously is I look around at my physical environment. Oftentimes I feel very tempted by. By other projects because I’ve brought the notebook downstairs and set it in the stack of like. It’s like literally within reach. I can see it. So pausing and doing like a clean and making sure I literally can’t see any of the other things that are tempting me. And I do. I should say, like, I only work on the laptop when it’s absolutely necessary. That’s why I use. I have this. It’s a word processor. It’s called an Alpha Smart. It. It. They’re like, they used to be used in school for teaching kids typing. So there’s just literally a little screen that shows like three lines at a time and you type and it holds like 10,000 words. And then you upload it onto your computer. There’s no Internet. It auto saves. It’s on and off. It’s run by battery. It weighs like three pounds. It’s great. Wow. So making sure I don’t have any other files on there that are like other projects that might be fun. I don’t use the laptop, so I don’t go on the Internet. I. I have like the forest app that I use on my phone that grows trees. Do you know this? I do. And then the trees die if you go on. Yeah. If you click out kills. You do not want to be a tree killer. Exactly. Or instead of listening to music on Spotify, I’ll listen to it on YouTube because I can’t switch out of the window without stopping music anyway. So just like making sure my physical environment is not tempting me and like putting things away, away out of sight. Huge. Because I have no object permanence. Really. Like, I know a lot of ADHD deers have this too, but like literally if I can’t see, it doesn’t. It probably doesn’t exist. I don’t even think about it. The same goes for people. Yep. And bills and obligations and all sorts. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That’s exactly it. And I’ve like sort of made my piece with that. I’m like, I, that’s. You’re gonna have to deal with that if you’re in my life and husbands, you just are gonna have to handle the things that I don’t see and forget. So. Yeah, so just like clearing the physical space of distractions. The second thing I would say is I have a few emails from, for this, this book in particular. When I very first sent my editor the first draft, her response back after she had read it was so. I mean, it was like, this is amazing. This is. I can’t wait to work on this book with you. Like, this is. Holy crap. How did you do this? I didn’t know you could write like this. Blah. Like very complimentary. And I like have very like tons of printouts of it. I have it screenshot all over. So whenever I need to like remind myself like, oh, yeah, this is why I’m doing this. Or even like songs that remind me of like when I was first, first writing the book that like get me into that headspace or movies that like influenced it. So like coming back to like the things that ground me in the project and that remind me of like, why I even wanted to do this. Yes, huge is really helpful to me. And then the third thing that I’ll mention, and this is like, like easier said than done. But for me, when I want to switch, it’s because, yes, I can, I can like say it’s for all of these other reasons and make it sound really smart. But really I just want to have fun. Right? I’m bored. Yeah, I have fun. And it’s so funny because I used to think, like, I don’t get bored. Which is so cute because really it was just that I hurried and switched to something so quickly that I didn’t have time to notice I was bored. Yeah, you never allowed it. No, but I get bored a lot. I just never made that connection until I had ADHD and then was like, but I don’t get bored. That’s silly. I’ve never said I’m bored in my life. And it’s. Yeah, I don’t, don’t even get to that point. Don’t let myself even get there. No tolerance for boredom. No tolerance for boredom. So I do the thing where like, if I feel bored by whatever I’m working on and sometimes it is really boring because we’re talking about like scenes in books and like made up characters that need to get from point A to point B and sentences and like, I love all that stuff. But on a bad day, it sure feels like it would be more fun to brainstorm a whole new story or a magic system or whatever. So I try to generate some fun with what I have. So there’s like, a writing adage that, like, if you’re thinking of a story and you want to write a book, you should, like, make an outline or think about, you know, the scenes that will be in the book. And then you should have a few scenes that really excite you. And sometimes people call them, like, candy bar scenes or, like, cookie scenes. And those are the things, like, you write through the boring stuff to get to the fun. The fight or the big battle or the big reveal. And so you’re willing to go through the boring things. I don’t have boring scenes. Then I make sure every single scene and every sentence is a candy bar sentence. And that sometimes does mean it’s boring right now to me. So then I literally have to think, how can I make this fun? What would be fun to write about? What is it about this other shiny idea that seems fun? Is it because it’s like a road trip and that sounds fun? Maybe I can send these characters on a road trip. Or is it a different kind of language that I like? What is it about what sounds fun and how can I bring it here? Because I can generate fun for myself once I know how to do that. And sometimes, too, there’s nothing wrong with what’s on the page. Or I’m past the point where I can change what’s on the page in that way. And so then I need to have fun in a different way. And this is where I’ll, like, put on a special sweater and turn on this special playlist and, like, bake myself something special and pretend I’m a writer in a cafe and that I’m very famous and very important and, like, role play almost, which is so funny because I’m not that person at all. Whoever. I don’t like to do that generally, but feeling like I’m being watched or that there’s, like, a documentary being made of me. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Or like, someone is like, look, there’s. That’s Lindsey Eager. She must be working on her next book or something like that. I don’t know, like, some kind of. It’s silly, I know, but, like, to put on a playlist that makes me feel like a very important person and, like, get my work done as if I’m. I don’t know. It just. That is not silly. It is brilliant. So there’s other ways to make it fun. But also, I mean, part of what you. You and, like, focused are teaching me is like, it’s okay if it feels bad. Yeah. Like it’s actually supposed to sometimes. Yes. Writing is boring. It’s like having homework every day for the rest of your life. That you made for yourself. Yeah. That you decided to do. Yes. Who. Who is doing this to me? Me. I chose this, right? Yeah. Oh, my goodness. Okay, one last thing, and I just want to get your perspective because I thought this was really profound. In your email that you sent, I want to hear about the ebb and flow of your work and how accepting essentially that you’re not a robot and that there will be time. I know. It’s so annoying accepting that there will be times when you are absolutely incredibly amazing, like, generating 10,000 words a day, whatever it is. And then there will be times when you’re just staring at the wall, not producing anything. Tell me just a little bit. Before you knew that was a thing, before you knew that you could accept that, how did you treat yourself? What was it like when there would be an ebb? What was the experience like for you? Oh, horrible. Deadening. Just absolutely terrifying. And angry. I mean, it just made me angry. And I do think, like, I would hear other creative people talk about ebb and flow and sort of think to myself, like, oh, how sad. They have ebb. I don’t. I don’t know her. I don’t know. Like, I don’t. I don’t have that. Why didn’t you recognize it? I just. I think I just thought it was always like, external factors or like, like, like moral failings. Moral failings. Like, well, if I had scheduled things better, I wouldn’t be in ebb. So therefore it’s not really, eh. Because I would do the work. If I. If everything was perfect, I would be in flow all the time. Well, no kidding. That’s like. Yes, duh, duh. It reminds me a lot of. There’s lots of books about, like, famous writers and their writing habits and their stories of, like, PG Wodehouse would wake up and ring the bell for his paper, and then his wife would bring him a cream cheese sandwich. And like, Charles Dickens would like, all of, like, you know, writers and they’re, they’re writing rituals and like, spoiler, it’s almost always like, old white guys with wives and a whole. Right. And butlers. Yeah, and butlers. But I remember, like, reading about Dickens and his writing routine and thinking, well, yeah, no kidding, no kidding. He’s capable of such amazing thoughts. He has everything taken care for him. And not only that, he has his ego stroked all the time. If I had that, I’d freaking be Dickens too. Everyone would. So. So on one hand, like, yeah, I could be flow all the time if conditions were perfect. But that’s a big if. And if conditions were perfect, like, lots of things would happen. Totally. We could say, like, if only, like, it’s just a silly rabbit hole to fall down. So I can make the conditions as perfect as I can. But it doesn’t change reality, which is that I am not a robot, sadly. And I was gonna say there’s limitations, but it’s not even that. It’s just like, God, be grateful for, like, you’re able to get your work done at all. You don’t have to, like, hit a million three pointers every single game. I don’t know sports very well. I hope that’s the right term. But, like, you don’t have to play. Yeah. You don’t have to get an A plus every single time. You can do some B minus, have some B minus games. It’s okay to just show up and, like, quietly get the work done. Yeah. This is just another aspect of, like, accepting reality, which I hate. I hate it. Yeah. You spend your life. You spend most of your life not in reality. Right. You’re writing fiction. Exactly. I know. Isn’t that. Yeah. Maybe someday I’ll be able to, like, make that connection between disassociation and my job. But, like, love it. I don’t want to do that yet. Well, another thing that helps me, too, is definitely recognizing ebb and flow, which I never. I almost never do when I’m in the middle of it. I think it’s okay that it’s not until I step back a few months or even years later and go, oh, okay. Like, yeah, yeah, that doesn’t. That makes sense. So. So I try really hard not to look at my career on a month by month basis. Yeah. But instead, zoom out and. And then I can really see the ebbs and flows. And there’s not as many ebbs as it feels like in the moment. But I also don’t ever make any plans, big or small, when I’m in flow. Oh, tell me more about that. This comes from, I think, the YouTube video years ago about bullet journaling. And I, like, was going back and looking through her archives when I first got diagnosed, like you do. And she said, when you’re making your bullet journal, don’t do it on a day when you’ve been like, so productive and so good, because on a bad day, it’s going to basically feel impossible. So wait until you’re having a bad day and then set up habits. Scheduling Genius. Isn’t that great? So when I’m feeling high and feeling like I can conquer the world, I for sure make plans because, like, it feels good to do that, but I try really hard to disregard them and instead make plans when I’m in that ebb because it’ll be more grounded in the reality of what I can accomplish and what I actually want to do. Like, just because I can do something doesn’t mean I have to. Yes. And if you want to do it on a bad day, then you really want to do it. Yes, exactly. Well, and I. Like, another part of my life that I don’t think even you know about is I was classically trained on the piano all of my childhood and, and sang in high school and played the guitar and played the violin and played, like, all sorts of instruments and for sure thought I was going to be like the next Regina Spector or Tori Amos, like, girl with a piano thing. I was, like, getting ready to record an EP and, like, fully thought that would be something that I did, that music would be my life forever. And, like, it really isn’t. I mean, I. When I had my daughter, I basically was like, okay, I have limited time. I can write or I can keep trying to do piano stuff and music stuff and naturally constrained to writing. And music is still a part of my life. Like, I still get myself to the piano every once in a while. I taught piano lessons for a long time. But like, I naturally constrained. I naturally constrained to just one husband. Like I. Like naturally. I have chosen. I naturally constrain in a lot of places. Yes. So why do we tell ourselves that we should not constrain with our creativity? Why does that feel so alarming? I think it’s a misunderstanding of what creativity is, which is not a resource that is limited, but a sort of place you can go to anytime you want. Wow. And also, like, you dip into it as needed. There’s a lot of work that has been done on this topic recently by a lot of women writers. I’m thinking about Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote Eat, Pray, Love, but she also wrote this manifesto on creativity called Big Magic, which I highly recommend, which is all about, like, if you want to be creative, it doesn’t mean that you are earning a living and everything that you are eating is earned through your creativity. And it also doesn’t mean that you are like an artsy, fartsy person. Creativity is required. It is a human privilege. Yes. Whether you are this straight laced accountant or not, you have access to it anytime. And so I think it comes for me. It’s a, it is definitely a feeling of scarcity, like, oh my God, I better do all of this while I can. And I think it’s also a greedy kind of gratitude. Like, wow, I’m brilliant. I get all these great ideas. It would be such a slap in the face if I didn’t turn them all into books. Because there are people out there who would love my job, who would love my brain, who would love my abilities, and they, they can’t. Not that I would do anything for anyone else because I try really hard not to do that, but just like, why wouldn’t I? Yeah. This is such a gift. So why wouldn’t I? I don’t know. And it’s also like, who wouldn’t want to eat brownies for every meal? Exactly. Yes. See, that’s the thing. It’s like when you have that thought and you bring up such a good point, because I think so many of our thoughts just feel so right. For example, the thought of like, there are so many people out there who would love my creative brain, who would love to have the intelligence that I have and be able to like synthesize everything and write an amazing novel. And so because of that, that means that I can’t let any projects go unfinished or I can’t let any of these ideas not come to fruition because I would be doing a disservice to the world who would love to have these. Yeah, exactly. Right. That reminds me of like, I don’t know if you heard this as a kid. I didn’t really hear this as a kid, but some people heard this as a kid where it’s like, if you don’t finish what’s on your plate. So because of that, because there are hungry kids wherever, in wherever country, in whatever country, you need to finish what you have. As if your privilege as a creative person and as an intelligent person and the combination of the two precludes you or just makes it so that you have to be, you have to be following through on every single idea rather than saying, in addition to being creative and intelligent, I’m also human. Yeah. And humans only do certain amount of things. Right. And as a parent, I understand the inclination to say something like that to foster a spirit of gratitude in your children for the food they have. But the problem is it Completely disregards food distribution in the world. They don’t have anything to do with each other. Yeah. The food on your plate and hungry people starving in other places. Yeah. They’re not directly related. At all. At all. And so, and can I just add in there, my child is not obligated to a child across the world. No. So the food on their plate means zero obligation to someone else’s lack. And I mean, how would it fill their stomach anyway? I don’t understand how it would help. So. But like, it’s the same though, with like your brain and your ideas and your creativity actually had nothing to do with other humans in the world who may or may not be envious of your talent. Right. Yeah. And like, while you were talking about that, I thought about another way in which I have naturally constrained in my career, which was in 2019, ghost writing romance novels and realizing, oh, there’s this whole other subgenre of publishing and writing which is like self published romance books, which is a huge, huge market. I mean there are people, there are writers who are making so much money writing these romance novels and there are readers who read like three romance novels a day on their Kindles. They’re just like ravenous. Oh yeah. It’s a whole thing. Oh yes, yes, yes, yes. A whole thing. And like, just like any other genre, there’s like good books and not so great books and it just doesn’t matter because that’s not the issue. But I was good at it. I could pound out those books. I was. I made great romance novels. I did the Meet Cute and the Banter and the sexy parts and all of it. I was capable of all of it. Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean I have to do it. Yeah. And man, that was hard because even up until like February of this year, I would sneak over on Amazon and be like, what’s selling? Like, I could write a few contemporary romances on the side and just pop them up and like make. I don’t want to write that I don’t like when I die. I want Lindsay Eager books to be books that like, are so me. And then I poured my heart and soul into because those are the only things I’m capable of. Only I am capable of writing. Lindsay Eager. Yes, yes, I am capable of writing a lot of books, but nobody else can write what I can write. So I regularly have to constrain and say, no, no, no, no. Just because I can do the romance churn doesn’t mean I’m going to choose to do it. Totally. I relate to this so much because I think for me there are so many ways to use my gifts as a coach. And like I could be speaking, I could be, I could be doing a lot of other things and even just so many ways to like make money. Like I have people teaching me like, hey, you’re an influencer. And I’m like, I’m really like, I don’t. It’s a no. Right. But like, it’s not that, that’s not tempting. It’s not like it’s like, oh, I could, like this could be a thing, you know? Or like, I could go do this or I should offer this other substance instead of focus. Or I could like expanding focus is always a mother. Right? I bet. And. But I was going to say I love about what I love about focused is. This is a bad pun coming in, but how focused it is it? You have such integrity with what you are and are not going to do. Yeah, I’m never worried that I’m going to like log in and you’re going to be like, big news, we’re actually going to do this other weird new thing instead. Or now you have to choose. Do you want to be on this tier or this tier or this tier? I don’t have to. It’s very, very constrained. And because of that I think it’s really successful. I mean, also because you’re awesome. But I think when you do constrained just what you want to do and what the vision is, then you have room to grow and be beyond competent in those areas. Yes, I love that and I’m so glad that you do notice that and that you know, you and others telling me things like this, like, it’s so simple, it’s just very intuitive. And I don’t stray from what we started out as. Like, we, I mean we of course we like improve it, make it prettier but like really it’s just the same because. And people, it’s not that people don’t give me ideas like, hey, we should do this, we should do this, we should have a class on this, blah, blah. But I, I consider myself a very creative person. It doesn’t come out in like creative arts, but I’m very creative and I have so many ideas. But I just am convinced that constraint gives us so much freedom to think, thrive and to flourish in what we are absolutely amazing at. And if we can not shackle ourselves. And you are right, like the difference between restraining yourself and constraining yourself, it is just such a mild shift but it is important, like if we can just put these gentle boundaries on ourselves and say, listen, I know you’re smart, I know you’re creative, I know you could do anything. But let’s just do this one thing and let’s see it through and let’s help so many people. And like in your case, let’s delight so many readers, right? Let’s just make them go crazy because of this incredible book that we’ve written. We haven’t written 25 books this year for the people who aren’t our people. Right. We’ve written two books that are our very best work and are delighting our people. And I just think there’s so much power in that. Yeah, well, the other, the other thing too is, you know, as you, you were saying, delighting all these readers. Well, I, I decided a long time ago, around the time when I first started getting reviews for my book, about six months before it came out. I was really weirded out that the reviews didn’t affect me emotionally the way that they did with a lot of my other writer friends who just felt devastated with 1 star reviews or like so elated with 5 star reviews. I was just like. And I don’t, I don’t know if I care that much because emotionally I’d already moved on and I was working on my next book anyway. So I constrained to just delighting one person, person with my books and that is me. I get, I mean my novels are technically for children. They’re like 12 and up. I mean, they’re big fat 500 page novels. But I get, I get letters from kids, I get letters from librarians and emails from teachers and people and kids who love my books. And that sounds like the cutest thing in the world and it is, don’t get me wrong. But it doesn’t make me go like, oh, they’re my people. I just am like, great. This thing I made affected them. I’m working on something that will affect me because that’s the only person I can delight. Oh my word. Well, I wonder often about the relationship between difficulty with constraint and like constantly like going off on all these different directions and that conviction of like, I only care about what I like. I wonder sometimes if there is a relationship there, but also adhd, so probably not. Well, I wanted to ask you too. I know like, we’ve been talking for a long time, but I wondered what, what do you do with your ideas that come that are not that tempt you and that you could utilize, but that you that are clearly not fitting into what you already have constrained. Do you just like release them back into the wild of your subconscious? Or do you write them down or do you sell them or like what do you do? Oh my gosh. So I have these journals that I keep and it’s just like a simple. I guess it’s like the bullet journals, but the ones that are grid. I like the grids. I like boxes and I do my thought downloads in here and I take notes in here. I mean it’s like, it’s, it’s an array of whatever. It’s your brain on paper. Yeah, it’s my brain on paper. And you know, I’ll go. But usually I’m writing in it almost every day. It’s not like an intentional whatever. But anyway, I know that my ideas are in one of these books, so, so, but like, like as they come to you, you’ll write it down and then you just know in the future it’s in one of those somewhere. But the thing is, with what, like I am so convinced that where I am right now is where I should be, that when an idea comes, I don’t have an attachment to it. Yeah, I think that’s what it is. Like, I am so laser focused on helping as many adults with ADHD as possible in this one specific way that I do it. Or actually two. Right. Like the podcast and then coaching that I am not attached to ideas that come. And I think it’s that attachment that really does give me a lot of power to constrain because I’m not thinking like, oh shoot, what if I don’t remember this? I’m just like, I am so freaking excited about what I’m doing now. I don’t really care about this other thing. There are two things though, like two big things that have been kind of looming and brewing and generating and one of them is completely different than anything that I have going on right now. And it is nagging at me and it won’t leave me alone. And so that is interesting. It is like just kind of always there and I talk to my coaches about it and they, I really do listen to outsiders with that kind of like, different idea because I’m like, you know, I could also do this other thing and I would be really good at it. And they’re like, uh huh, and we’re gonna like stay the course for now. And I do see the value in staying the course, you know, and the course being like, I’m using air quotes now. Like, what I mean by staying the course is like, really growing what we have now into something that is just like a functioning, adult, healthy, sustainable, independent business. You know, it’s like a teenager right now. And teenagers are great, but they’re also, like, a lot of work. And so I don’t want to adopt a new baby until I’ve kind of, like, gotten this one to independence. So that’s kind of how I think about it. But honestly. Honestly, I think really the secret sauce for me is just not being attached. I love that. No, that makes total sense. Because then why. Yeah, why? It won’t even be tempting, really. Yeah, it’s really not. Except for this one thing that’s nagging. This is going to sound really egotistical, but I just feel like they will come back around. Yes. And that if I don’t, those ideas will come back around for me. And if I don’t end up following it, kind of like you said before, like, it wasn’t meant to be. It’s fine. Like, new ideas will come. I can. All I need is like, a walk or, you know, a conversation with my best friend or something like that, and an amazing idea pops into my head. So it’s not something that I have a scarcity mindset about. Yeah. They’re so cheap. Ideas are so cheap. Ideas are cheap. They’re. Oh, my gosh. And what’s expensive is like the currency of discomfort. Yes. Yeah. That’s what is costly is the willingness to constrain, the willingness to exchange my comfort, my fun, my dopamine, my willingness to exchange that for a finished product. And in my case, that helps people. A finished product that changes the world. In your case, a finished product that, like, delights you, that you’re just like, this is the best of the best of the best. And there is a. An exchange there. There absolutely is. And either it’s worth it or it’s not. And if it’s not worth it, then, like, there’s your answer. Yes, exactly. I think, as we wrap up, tell all of my listeners where they can find you, where they can find your books, how they can reach out to you. My work can be found. You can, like, Google me. They’re in every. Any bookstore that you want to find. Lindsay Eager. It’s E, A G A R. So I have three books out now. I have another book coming out next year and then probably one more either next fall or the year after that. Lindsay Eager, books.comlove. that’s my website. And most of the time, the best place to find me is on Twitter, which is linked somewhere or if you just go on Twitter and search for my name, you’ll find me. I love it. Thank you for being here with me. All right, my friends, that’s it for today. I hope you really enjoyed this conversation, and I will see you next time. Bye. Bye. A few years ago, I went looking for help. I wanted to find someone to teach me how to feel better about myself and to help me improve my organization. Productivity, time management, emotional regulation, you know, all the things that we adults with ADHD struggle with. I couldn’t find anything, so I researched and I studied and I hired coaches and I figured it out. Then I created Focused for your. Focused is my monthly coaching membership where I teach educated professional adults how to accept their ADHD brain and hijack their ability to get stuff done. Hundreds of people from all over the world are already benefiting from this program, and I’m confident that you will, too. Go to ihaveadhd.com focused for all the details.
