Arm Wrestling With Acceptance
Sometimes, is “good enough” better than perfect?
During an ADHD deep-dive, I listened to a podcast called ‘Hacking Your ADHD’ by William Curb, specifically the episode ‘How to Do Hard Things: Part I’). In it, he explores the concept that some projects aren’t earth-shatteringly important. Some things are fine done with a.. rougher touch. Say, doing laundry. Curb noticed that after getting all his laundry done — which is a multi-step, oft energy-depleting task — he found he would run out of steam by the time it came to folding and getting everything put away. Despite wanting everything to land in its proper place, it just wasn’t happening.
It was a familiar story (as someone whose travel suitcases remain as little time capsules for sometimes weeks after return). Things got less familiar with his next move. Rather than self-castigating, flagellating, cursing the piles of clothing and the seeming mental and moral ineptitude of just getting this task crossed off the list, William decided he would alter his goal and achieve “good enough” results. Rather than forcing the fold and put-away, he implemented a system of multiple laundry baskets to separate and hold his clean clothes, right there on the floor.
Is it an elegant solution? No. Did it provoke my sense of internalized disappointment to rear its judgmental head like, “That’s just a way of not accomplishing the task and saying it’s OK. Lazy!” Yes. But then I got to considering.
It’s OK to Chill
If following this system provides this person a greater sense of peace — no fretting about laundry or lamenting that the task wasn’t finished — why is it not a perfectly appropriate and, indeed, ideal solution? Sure, it defies the prevailing sense of “order” and “right”-ness. Most people put their laundry away. It feels a little messy. And, does any of that matter?
This guy seemed to have relative ease in choosing an approach centering his own peace and well-being as the priority. I think I was a little surprised, even jealous, of that. I’ve worked toward this goal over the last several years with increasing success, thankfully, but the sense isn’t primed as the go-to in a situation, however menial, that could be construed as “FAILURE.”
A lightbulb lit up. Maybe for non life-or-death situations, I, too, could afford myself a little leniency. Instead of a third attempt clambering onto my dining table to awkwardly scrub candle soot from the ceiling, I could accept that the ceiling might just live like that. Rather than crafting elaborate plans to wake up in the wee hours of the morning to joyfully compose a novel before the workday, I can accept that my path of progress looks like 20 minutes snatched here and there with the help of habit-tracking apps. It might just be what works.
Switched onto “Hard Mode”
In the aforementioned podcast, Mr. Curb credits another ADHD-caster, Brendan Mahan of ADHD Essentials, with describing the disorder as life on “Hard Mode.” This gamified lens makes me feel even more inclined to take the less-serious challenges, well, less seriously, and go easier on myself. Just as I wouldn’t break out the mental flagella for skidding out in a super hard Mario Kart course (well, maybe just a little), I can recognize that some things are challenging, whether I consider them worthy of feeling challenging or not.
Rather than adding more to the “failed” or “soon” lists, I can rejigger a reasonable goal and find a place of acceptance with it.
It might not be the cut-and-dry perfection that one (who’s been conditioned by our achieve-it-all society) might hope for, but the greater gentleness towards one’s psyche probably reaps greater rewards (though my conditioning and I still side-eye this concept).
As a footnote, these are a few obstacles that prevented me from writing/posting this:
- I cross-post on Instagram, and wasn’t sure what photo to use there
- Migrating from Substack to Medium last week “counted” as progress
- I logged hours this week writing about death so, I wrote enough
- If I write this, I probably want to update my writing website, and that task feels annoying
- It had been too long since I previously wrote
