Holidays: The Death of the Routines
How to survive the season of "Extra Shit"
I have such a love/hate with the holidays. But just so you know I’m not a total Scrooge, I’ll start with some things I love about them. For me, the holidays in question are Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
I love how much my kids love these holidays, especially in their younger years. I love the big meal on Thanksgiving. I don’t watch sports normally, but I have such a huge nostalgic vibe to watching football on Thanksgiving.
I have fond memories of old Uncle Johnny sharing his latest invention, “The Happy Fun Ball,” which were just clear plastic keg cups arranged into a ball with various string lights all around it. It had various settings which he declared were the different levels of “fun” it offered.
I love the smell of Christmas trees, the smell of Christmas cooking, the songs, the presents under the tree, seeing kids ripping open gifts while we are all in our pajamas. It’s so much fun. The holidays are a magically whimsical time for merriment and joy.
Insert record scratch.
It’s so much extra shit!!!
For an ADHDer struggling with executive function, we spend months toiling over getting our shit together. We cobble together routines. We expend all kinds of resources to manage life and get things off our to-do list. Executive function stuff ain’t easy on a normal day.
And then three months of brand new shit gets dumped on us!
Extra plans. Extra projects. Extra to-dos. All the things we suck at! We have:
Costumes to buy or build
Meals to plan
A home to clean for company
Extra events to attend
Gifts to buy and wrap
A tree to bring home
Various decorations to pull out and put away three fucking times!
Routines: murdered.
Maybe we can take solace in the fact that this is going to be overwhelming at times? Maybe. Here are some things that might help you either maintain your routines or get them back with less stress.
Schedule your holiday tasks in advance
How often do we say things like “I’m gonna set up the decorations this week”?
It’s just a phrase we say. It’s a general intention. There’s no regard for the fact that we will forget, it won’t feel right in the moment, and it will get pushed until either someone is too frustrated with us, or we decide “Ah, screw exterior decorations this year.”
Weekly planning…DO IT!
I realize “planning” is a gross term that pulls the joy out of following our whims and moods. Give it a go anyway. When you are doing your weekly planning, determine exactly what you will get done for decorations and holiday stuff that week. Be realistic. (If you don’t know how to do a weekly plan, get your ass into ADHDBB and we’ll teach you how we do it).
Do you plan to mail out Christmas cards? What’s the next step? Buy the cards?
Okay, when during the week do you have the time to do that?
ADHDBB Tip: This isn’t a “when will it feel right” question. It’s never going to feel right in the moment. Know this. Accept this. No need to embrace it, but be aware!
Ask yourself: When would it be the most convenient, and/or when would it fit into your schedule without disrupting your routine(s)? Put that in your calendar as an appointment.
When you take charge of your time, and you are efficient with planning and scheduling, it takes quite a bit of the stress out of life and allows the best opportunity to maintain your routines.
When you can’t salvage a routine because holidays are so all-consuming
When we have a routine, it feels good. There’s a sense of being on auto-pilot and things feeling ‘right’. But when that routine goes away, it is often not possible to simply get back into it.
When my routines go away, it sometimes feels like I’m starting all over again. My experience with this is that it’s helpful to first be cool with myself about that.
It happens. It happened. Big deal. It just means that I need to be conscious of my effort while I’m re-introducing it back into my life.
Was I waking up at 6:30am every morning and doing a brisk walk and now I’m snoozing until 7:30am? If I want that routine back, I can’t just flip a switch. It never seems to work like that for me. If that’s you, too, give this a thwackskipoo:
Step 1: Maybe I start by just waking up at 6:30am. To prevent snoozing, I set the alarm on the other side of the room and create a rule that I’m not allowed to get back in bed. I just want to be “guy that gets up at 6:30am” again. Good starting point.
Step 2: Then, I start introducing going outside.
Step 3: Then, I start bringing the walk back.
I recommend removing the “I should be able to just wake up and go for a walk like I used to” from the naysaying mental clutter of our skull spaghetti. If your inner voice is like mine, it’s going to say that garbage anyway, so let’s make an additional effort to be cool with ourselves about it and carry on regardless.
Some days you’ll hit the brisk walk, some days you won’t. Try to start with one simple black and white rule to begin with and that is your foundation to build the routine back up.
Hope that helps! Good luck on your holidays and steering clear of getting buried in “extra shit.”
When you are ready to do the work, and get the necessary accountability to make the work more likely to happen, come to ADHDBB and let’s expedite the process!