Some days, you meal prep a crockpot full of soup. Other days, eating half a bag of caramel corn feels like a perfectly reasonable plan. And sometimes you own five pounds of carrots and still need to figure out what you're actually going to eat. Welcome to feeding yourself with a neurodivergent brain.

This time, Amy and Megan are talking about food, executive function, decision fatigue, and the little things that make feeding yourself (and sometimes an entire family) harder than it needs to be. Because apparently, deciding what to eat, finding the ingredients, preparing the food, and remembering that food exists are all separate tasks.

Megan shares how her family makes giant batches of chicken and rice soup, keeps salad ingredients ready to assemble, and relies on a collection of kitchen appliances that includes multiple crockpots, an Instant Pot, an air fryer toaster oven, and a vacuum sealer. Amy has her air-fryer baked potatoes, instant couscous, carrots, and a truly impressive amount of croutons. Everyone has their thing.

They also talk about safe foods, sensory preferences, picky eaters, food allergies, and the reality of feeding kids who don't necessarily want to eat what everyone else is eating. Sometimes you find a meal that works and eat it on repeat. Sometimes you need variety, but not so much variety that eating starts feeling like another demand. And sometimes dinner is just a collection of snacks, and that's okay too.

The bigger conversation is about finding ways to feed yourself that fit your actual energy, budget, preferences, and household. Not the imaginary version of you who lovingly prepares seven different meals every Sunday and never gets tired of any of them.

Because self-care doesn't have to be complicated. Sometimes it's soup in the fridge. Sometimes it's couscous and carrots. And sometimes it's just making sure there's something you can eat without having to negotiate with your own brain first.

#ADHD #Neurodivergent #ExecutiveFunction #ADHDLifeHacks #SensoryProcessing #MealPrep

You know that thing where you have a perfectly reasonable, relatively simple idea… and then 4 hours and 45 minutes later you're three rabbit holes deep, talking to six people, researching seventeen things, and wondering how this became a project? Yeah. Amy and Megan know that one.

In this episode, they compare notes on two projects that looked deceptively simple at first. Megan thought she was basically just making a decision. Amy thought she was basically just going to send a few emails, secure a space, and show up for a two-session coworking pilot. Naturally, neither of those things remained remotely that simple.

Megan's "quick decision" turned into research, benchmarking, checking whether the idea actually made business sense, asking other people for input, and discovering even more things to consider every time she talked it through. Amy forgot what happens with an event: meetings, multiple organizations, flyers, event promotion, figuring out who should attend, explaining why people should care, and getting everyone on the same page before the whole thing developed 15 different versions of itself.

They talk about the very neurodivergent experience of getting excited about an idea while your brain conveniently glosses over all the tiny details that will eventually come back demanding attention. They also get into the opposite problem: knowing there are endless things you could consider, and trying to account for every possible risk before actually moving forward. And to be fair, both of these were simpler than other projects each has started. They were already smaller, and still involved more than anticipated.

And then there's the unexpected upside. Even if the project doesn't work out, the research, learning, experience, connections, and skills gained along the way aren't necessarily wasted. Sometimes the project is the project… and sometimes the project is accidentally becoming a much more complicated way of learning something you didn't know you needed to learn.

Basically: two neurodivergent brains, two "simple" ideas, approximately 900 unexpected layers, and one very questionable approach to project management. At least this time, there was a scope. Sort of.

#ADHD #Neurodivergent #ADHDProjectManagement #ExecutiveFunction #Neurodiversity #DecisionMaking

We regret to inform you that the squirrels have been given access to the trains.

This episode started with Amy and Megan trying to have a conversation while simultaneously realizing they needed to write down completely unrelated thoughts before those thoughts vanished forever. From there, naturally, we ended up discussing working memory, externalizing information, Notion, notebooks, Excel, Google Calendar, reminders, prospective memory, and the surprisingly complicated question of “Where did I put that thing I wrote down?”

There is a particular ADHD/neurodivergent flavor of productivity where getting something out of your brain is only half the battle. You can write it down. You can build a system. You can create a reminder. You can even make it searchable. And then six months later, your brain has decided that the system is boring and would like a new system, please.

We also get into the weird tradeoff of having systems that are structured enough to keep things moving but flexible enough to survive changing circumstances and the inevitable loss of novelty. Because apparently, the productivity system itself has to remain interesting enough for the ADHD brain to continue caring about it.

So yes, we're basically trying to create designated train tracks for our thoughts while giving the squirrels enough new scenery to keep them entertained. Totally normal conversation.

ADHD #Neurodivergent #ExecutiveFunction #ADHDProductivity #WorkingMemory #Neurodiversity