As a copywriter, Sarah would often find herself hyperfocused on client work. Things would be going amazingly well till she’d get a notification for another task she’d schedule at that time.

Every time Sarah had an internal struggle.
Continue the task that’s going well? It’s going sooo well. And who knows when she’d be able to get into flow again?
Or should she stop and move on to the scheduled task? It was scheduled for a reason. It’s important.

She'd waste 20 minutes agonizing over whether to stop or continue. Then feel bad about whichever choice she made.

Sarah tried everything. Setting better boundaries. Being more protective of flow time. Planning better. But the core problem kept happening - when she was hyperfocused on something important and another important thing came up, she had no idea what to choose.

Sarah knew there was no “one right answer.” She just couldn’t tell which one to do in the moment.

Hyperfocusing is one of ADHD’s superpowers.
Like all superpowers, if it goes too far, it sometimes gets in the way.

I’d never want to take away someone’s hyperfocus. At the same time, I know how much it can affect other areas of life.

Sarah needed to learn the skill of choosing what would be best in each situation.
And in order to choose well, you’ve got to use your thinking skill of comparing.

Once we improved Sarah’s foundational thinking skill of comparing, the skill of choosing what to do in the moment became a whole lot easier.

Whenever Sara wasn’t sure if she should continue what she was doing or follow the scheduled task, she was getting stuck in the moment.

Right now I’m feeling in flow, I want to do this work or right now this is what’s scheduled so that what I need to do.

What Sarah’s brain needed to do, was Zoom out, see the bigger picture, understand what she ultimately wanted and then compare her options to whichever fit better.

Where people get tripped up is that both answers fit the bigger picture and that’s were the comparing comes in.

We’ve got to make sure we’re comparing correctly so that way we go with the option that actually helps us.

But first, we need to get clear on what we want.

So, in the moment of the decision, instead of asking, should I continue the tasks I’m in middle of or should I do what’s on the schedule, ask yourself these 2 questions:

1. Zoom out and list what is important.
The goal of this question is to get your brain to actually stop and think about the bigger picture.

You’ll want to list out deadlines, energy levels, prioritize, what’s happening in your personal life. Just list it all.

Then comes the question:

2. What’s most important now?

This brings you back to the current situation but with more context.

If there is an immediate deadline, you know what’s more important. If you tend to crash out as soon as you’re out of flow, that’s context to what you should decide.

Remember, there is no right or wrong answer, just what’s best for this situation. And whatever you choose you want to be content with. Wasting energy thinking about the fact that you didn’t do the other task is only taking away for the choice you chose.

I’m telling you now, you’re probably gonna have a challenging time answering these two questions until your comparing is strong.

That’s why I did the following 2 exercises with Sarah to help improve her comparison.
Do these daily until they become easy and you start noticing you have an easy time deciding what to do in the moment.

Exercise #1
Put the following prompt into AI
“Give me a hypothetical list of 10 extremely important tasks to do that seem like competing priorities.”

Then, you’re gonna take the list and put the items in priority order.
You’ll need to get clear on what’s most important to be able to decide which one to do


Exercise #2
At the start of your day, take a minute to think about what is MOST important today (Just ONE goal) than prioritize your day accordingly.

We’re not done yet.

You’re gonna do this again, this time with a different hypothetical MOST important goal. Pick something else that could potentially be the most important, explain to yourself why and then prioritize your day accordingly

And you're gonna do this a third time.
This will get your brain thinking about the current situation differently and see how in different situations we have different priorities.


You’ll want to do both of these exercises daily until you feel like you know what to pick in each situation.

If you want more on comparing and making decisions, check out episode 544



Cheers to Peak Brain Performance!