Sunday Reflections #5

discussing my overthinking brain and yet more reasons why i don’t rate the short term challenge

Welcome to the Perfect Manifesto Sunday Reflections.

This post is inspired by the week note format that many professionals use to reflect on their working week, except in these reflections I’ll be sharing various observations from all parts of my life, covering a range of topics, in short snippets that don’t quite justify fitting a full post.

A little bit neurodiverse… a little bit ADHD?

My employer sent out one of those staff opinion surveys this week, you know the thing where they get employees insights into their experiences working at an organisation, and then never seem to act on the feedback.

One of the questions asked

“Do you consider yourself neurodiverse?”

I’ve heard a lot about neurodiversity, but not really understood what it meant, though I noticed people connected it with things like mixing with large groups of people.

Going by my understanding, I thought how much that was me, so perhaps I should be answering ‘Yes’?

But before I did I looked up an official definition to help me understand it:

“The word neurodiversity refers to the diversity of all people, but it is often used in the context of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), as well as other neurological or developmental conditions such as ADHD or learning disabilities.”

Nicole Baumer, MD, MEd, Contributor, and Julia Frueh, MD, Health Harvard Publishing

In a separate situation I was talking to my barber about the farm he just bought, when people were asking how he was going to have time to manage it all he responded that he has ADHD – he can’t sit still and do nothing, and having a farm to run will keep him occupied.

I began to wonder if I had some form of ADHD, I struggle to relax, I have to constantly move, or have something to distract me, hell one of the reasons I started blogging was because I was exercising seven times a week and needed something to occupy my mind before my body broke down!

Before self-diagnosing I again decided to look up an official definition

“Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a condition that affects people’s behaviour. People with ADHD can seem restless, may have trouble concentrating and may act on impulse.”

nhs.uk

In reflection, I’m neither of these, but I overthink when I see certain traits of people who say they have these conditions, that match up to some parts of my own personality.

More on short term challenges

Something that didn’t quite fit in my post What’s With All the Short-Term Challenges? – Perfect Manifesto was my own recent experience of doing a short term challenge which inspired the post.

Everyday I’d aim to do 10,000 steps – being a desk worker I spend a lot of my day in a sedentary position, so the whole point of this daily goal is basically to move more.

In reality I only hit the mark on four of the seven days throughout the week. Come the new year I thought – wouldn’t it be good if I could achieve those 10,000 steps everyday?

So in the second week of January I made a deliberate effort to increase my step count. When I’d done previous challenges around particular activities like squatting, and press-ups, I always hit a plateau around the two week mark – at best I would get worse at performing the movements, at worst I’d pick up injuries from doing repetitive movements without allowing good rest in between.

But with walking I figured it was low impact, and therefore achievable. Some days were fine, other days reaching the 10,000 mark took a bit more effort, one day my body was so battered it felt like I’d been used as a punchbag in my sleep.

I don’t know if I do these challenges wrong – when your pushed to do daily press-ups, I still do my normal gym routine, maybe your not supposed to because your pushing your body a bit too much.

On Sunday I felt in agony from my walking, the pain in my side that had caused me a lot of problems throughout 2023 had returned (mentioned in my post Reflecting on a Bad Year), I was annoyed and frustrated because if it was back to causing problems that would mean my gym would be impacted and I’d have to go back to physios until I could get the pain down.

I decided to rest for the next few days, and I was grateful to find the pain settle down and disappear. I’ve enjoyed some steady pain free workouts, and although I’ve kept on walking I stopped pushing myself to hit that 10,000 mark everyday.

Anyway as I said in my post – screw those short-term challenges, think of long-term life changing habits.

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Thank you for reading

Wishing you the best in your success

James @Perfect Manifesto

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