Savannah Rorex 7/11/25 Savannah Rorex 7/11/25

2h workouts 6-7 days a week to barely going for walks: Falling out of love with exercise.

(And 4 steps I’m taking to cultivate it instead.)

883 Words

I’ve got my favorite tank top and leggings on. The ones that make me feel unstoppable.

My pre-workout is tart. The second it his my tongue my brain knows it’s game time.

With good, loud music in my ears, I dance from machine to machine. Loving every rep of my workout.

“I made it” I thought.

“There’s no way this love could end.”

Boy was I wrong.

I was a book kid, not a sports kid

I tried to be active, but had little (if any) actual love for exercise. In 6th grade I spent many recesses in the library ffs.

Which is why when I fell in love with weightlifting at 22 I thought I had cracked the code.

“It’s finally a habit” I thought.

It felt effortless. My gym time was the highlight of my day.

Until I started working on my mental health at 24.

Meal prepping whole weeks turned into barely eating breakfast.

2 hour workouts turned into a pit of dread that froze me in place anytime I thought about the gym.

The more I supported my mental health, the harder things got.

It was so back asswards it made my head spin. Until I saw my “love” for what it was: coping.

2 years of working out almost constantly, yet very little actual progress. Why?

Because I wasn’t going to the gym for my health. I was going to maintain a sense of control in a situation where I had very little.

Once I was out of that situation, I got a lot of that control back. My love for the gym quickly turned into massive pressure to maintain what I had been doing before.

I know improving my mental health was the right move. But that didn’t stop all the feelings of failure.

I went from 2 hour sessions 6-7 days a week, to barely managing to take a 30 minute walk.

I didn’t understand how I could make that hard of a 180. I was so disappointed in myself.

Then the lesson sunk in.

Fitness is more like a relationship than we realize

When you find someone great, the honeymoon phase is fantastic. They’re fun, super easy to talk to, and everything is sunshine and rainbows.

But inevitably things get difficult.

You start disagreeing more, you annoy each other, and you start seeing things you didn’t before.

However, anyone that’s been in a long term relationship will tell you that just because things get hard doesn’t mean the relationship needs to end. It just means you have to start putting in work if you want things to work.

Learning to communicate better. Uncovering biases that affect how you see your partner. Developing the humility it takes to admit when you’re wrong.

You know what all those have in common?

They’re forms of growth.

If something is easy, it means you aren’t growing from it.

That’s not to say there will never easy times. But it definitely means there should be difficult times.

That’s why I needed to fall out of love

Of course it makes sense that as I healed my relationship with my mind, my toxic relationship with my body would suffer.

My mental growth showed me I deserved a healthy relationship with my body. And my body with me.

I had to learn what it really means to put in the work. That the mind needs to be challenged for the body to follow.

And that it’s wrong to manipulate my mind just to get my body to do what I want.

Now instead of waiting to fall in love, I get to cultivate it.

Here’s how:

First

I accept that waiting to stumble into that love again is a waste of time. It might happen, but it won’t be sustainable.

Better to purposefully start from the ground up than wait and hope for a shaky start at the top.

Second

I dial back my routine until it’s something I know I can do even when I don’t want to.

If that’s a 5 minute walk, so be it. Gotta start somewhere.

An intensive routine I have to bully myself into just attempting is the opposite of what I’m trying to do. If you think that’s the only way to go, *swats you with a newspaper* go. to. therapy.

Third

I feel the resistance and do it anyway.

Don’t try to solve it. It can’t be solved.

This is how we build that trusting relationship with the mind.

“I hear you. I know it sucks. But this is the right move.”

My brain and body need to know that it’s ok for it to suck. I’m not a bad person or unfit or whatever else just because it sucks.

Fourth (finally, and most importantly)

I celebrate that I pushed through.

This is how I own the growth I created by pushing through the suck.

Phrases like:

“it wasn’t that bad, why was I such a baby” minimize all the feelings I had before the thing.

Phrases like this on the other hand:

“That sucked, and I pushed through it. I did that. I climbed that hill.”

Train my brain to see how much I can accomplish. Providing me with more and more evidence to prove that I can tackle challenges.

I’ve just started

While I’ve had many beginnings on my health journey, I can honestly say this one feels like one of the most profound.

This was a pretty vulnerable one for me to write. I’ve been wrestling with these feelings for a while, and having a chance to articulate them has helped a lot.

I hope you find the change in perspective helpful. I know I have. Until next time.

Savannah

Savannah Rorex 6/26/25 Savannah Rorex 6/26/25

Why my healthy habits imploded (and what I’m doing about it)

775 words

You put your pen down.

You’ve got everything down to the minute.

Waking up.

Meal times.

Your workout.

You’ve researched tools and tactics guaranteed to make things easier.

Strategies for boosting motivation. Tricks to curb cravings. A nighttime routine the sandman is jealous of.

This should be a piece of cake. With this level of planning there’s no way you can fail… right?

Then you can’t fall asleep Sunday night.

Monday morning’s alarm sounds excessively aggressive.

Breakfast feels rushed and gross. Why did you think you liked those weird baked egg cups? The texture is awful.

No matter what you try, the looming workout is forming a dense pit of dread in your stomach.

Why does everything you do to make things easier only make it harder?

I thought strategy was “the secret”

I was wrong.

Once upon a time I was in the military. During the last couple years of my enlistment the gym was my favorite way to spend my free time. We’re talking 2 hour sessions, 6-7 days a week.

(Spoiler alert: can anyone spell coping mechanism?)

(Also, no I didn’t make much progress that way.)

I separated in the middle of 2023 and started taking my mental health seriously later that year.

I spent 6 years doing whatever I was told. So I was baffled when all my healthy habits started falling apart the more I worked on my mental health.

“Ok” I thought. “This just means I’m not planning properly. I just need to manipulate the variables.”

I was 100% convinced that habits didn’t have to be uncomfortable if I could just plan the right way. If I could just manipulate the variables enough to make the thing easy to stick to. If I could just lower the barrier to entry.

(If you haven’t heard of that, it’s just changing tasks a bit to make them easier to start. For example if you struggle to drink water, using a water bottle with a straw instead of a twist top helps.)

Looking back that was my default coping mechanism. I thought I could plan and organize away the discomfort.

I hung onto it like a vice for a good couple years.

But of course things never got easier.

A few weeks ago I finally accepted that I struggle with anxiety. And started deliberately working it.

Fear of falling behind. Fear of taking my youth for granted. Fear of feeling incapable.

I started chipping that away and as a result also took away the foundation that my “healthy lifestyle” was built on. Turns out my anxiety was really the only thing that kept the few healthy habits I had going.

Lately everything has been even harder. Working out, going for walks, waking up on time, even feeding myself.

On one hand I’m extremely frustrated.

I feel like I’ve wasted years of effort and that I have to start back at square one.

But on the logical hand I’m actually excited.

Because the path ahead of me is clearer than it has been in a long time.

Training your body requires training your mind

When building healthy habits that are inherently uncomfortable, it’s impossible to plan away the discomfort.

There’s lots of methods and frameworks out there to help.

But using them to avoid discomfort entirely guarantees the habits won’t form. Regardless if you do them for 21, 66, or 90 days.

The ugly (but also beautifully simple) truth is that pushing through the discomfort is forming the habit.

Habits aren’t built through programs or trackers or plans. They’re built through doing them when you don’t want to.

When you perform a habit you don’t want to do, you’re not only training the habit to be easier. You’re training your ability to push through.

Otherwise you’re dooming yourself to fall apart at every inconvenience.

I’m not saying go out there and run your nervous system ragged, trying to be as uncomfortable as possible as fast as possible. Unless you want to end up in a psych ward.

But meeting yourself where you’re at, understanding how much discomfort you can take at a time, then designing your habits to slightly challenge that level of discomfort will be much more effective than trying to plan it all away.

If things are feeling hard, that’s good! It’s like hypertrophy for the mind.

And you’re still allowed to lower the barrier to entry. But watch out for the trap of lowering it so low you forget how to jump.

From here on out my plan is to stop trying to fix the discomfort. Instead I want to get to know it. Become friends with it. And let it challenge me to grow the way it was meant to.

Here’s to starting from the top. Right this time.

Savannah

Savannah Rorex 5/22/25 Savannah Rorex 5/22/25

Focusing Pt 4/4: One method to rule them all

We’ve gone over a lot these last couple weeks.

Based on these letters you’d think all that training takes up a crazy amount of time and organization.

You may be wondering, “isn’t there any way to work on all that at once in a manageable space of time?”

Yes there is! And you’re probably not going to like it.

But first as always…

⚠️Disclaimers⚠️ because I care about the spicy meatballs between y’alls ears:

I am not a mental health expert in any capacity. The strategies I talk about in this series are just what I experimented with on myself.

I do believe what I’m going to be talking about is important. But ONLY if it DOES NOT JEAPARDIZE your mental health. There’s a difference between learning to work with distractibility and doing mental harm.

Working on this stuff is difficult and can be taxing, I won’t deny it.

So please please PuhLEASE for the love of the gods do not push yourself to the point of burning out. I promise any amount of progress you do get from running yourself into the ground is not worth it and minimal anyway so there’s legit no reason to subject yourself to that.

Also I have been diagnosed with ADHD (as much as my imposter syndrome likes to deny it). But that does not make these strategies, “ADHD strategies”. It also does not make me an expert on ADHD. I’m only an expert on my ADHD. I phrase lots of things in absolutes. That doesn’t make them law. I just don’t want to type “I think” 8 million times.

I’d also like to remind you of the Focus Training Ground Rules

Accept these strategies take PRACTICE and REPETITION
Self compassion is a MUST
Moderation is MANDATORY

If you’d like to read over the specifics for each and why they’re important, click here.

Now that’s out of the way, welcome back to my Focusing series!

As a reminder here’s the game plan:

Part 1: Non-negotiable rules and why

Part 2: The different parts of focusing

Part 3: Strategies I use for each aspect

Part 4: The ultimate training technique that you’re going to hate (⬅️ you are here)

If you missed Part 1, 2 or 3 you can click it to be taken to the web version.

We’re finally at the last part in this series. One method of training everything we’ve gone over. And please keep in mind I did warn you that you’d hate it and me for suggesting it.

Meditation!

Yes I know, everyone is preaching about meditation these days. I have no doubt you’re sick of hearing about it.

But I think about meditation differently than how I see others talking about it. Not that they’re wrong. I just had to think about it differently to get it to work for me.

To start, meditation was not relaxing at all in the beginning. For like a while.

My mind is hardly ever still or quiet. At least not without effort.

And it still doesn’t feel like some incredible connection to the divine (although I’m determined to keep working on that part).

For me, meditation is training.

Not only my mind, but my relationship with my mind.

Meditation is one of those things everyone hates to be told to do because it “just doesn’t work for them” or seems “pointless”.

I challenge those beliefs with, were you actively practicing something mentally while you were meditating? Or were you just sitting in silence expecting your brain to be quiet?

There’s a reason it’s called “practicing” meditation. It does not come easy to the majority of the population. Including myself.

Why is it good focus training?

First: On bad brain days, or if you’re new to meditation, you get to practice recognizing distraction and redirection like freaking crazy. There’s many days even now where I’ll spend my whole session reminding myself over and over to get back to what I was doing. Literally every 10 seconds or so (core focus concepts 2 and 3).
Second: If you’re having a good brain day, you can practice the “existing in the present moment” aspect of meditation. In other words, aiming to hold onto a single state of thought for as long as possible without getting distracted (core focus concept 1).
Third: no matter what kind of day you’re having, meditation is boring and uncomfortable. I’m not going to sugar coat it. Especially in the beginning. When you sit with the sole intention of doing nothing, it does get boring. And that boredom is uncomfortable (adjacent skills).

But I understand the apprehension. Especially because most calls to meditation hardly ever go into how.

Some tips

It’s easy to tell someone to find a comfortable quiet spot, focus on their breathing, and empty their mind. Actually doing it is another matter.

So I wanted to share some specific things that really helped me.

I’ll start with some obvious ones.

Music

Right off the bat I’m going to recommend listening to some kind of music. Especially if you’re a beginner. You do not have to be in complete silence to get the benefits of meditation.

The music you listen to is up to you. Personally I like songs that are slow, have no singing, and ideally no loud or intense beats. I know myself, and I know those things tend to distract me. So I pick playlists that fade into the background easily.

Position

What position you choose does not matter much. Now I like to sit on a pillow with my legs crossed. But I’ve also leaned against a wall, sat in a chair, and laid down. I’m a fan of all of them. It’s not a big deal if you don’t like the typical criss cross apple sauce.

Apps

Meditation apps are great. My favorite is Insight Timer (not sponsored, I use their free version) because you can make timer presets. I have a few for different lengths of meditation or yoga. One of my favorite parts of the app is in a preset you can set interval bells. So if I’m doing a longer session (20+ minutes) I can have a bell go off at halfway to kinda let me know where I’m at. I have shit sense of time otherwise.

Time

Frequency matters more than length of time.

It really does not take much. While my focus journey started at 10 minutes, my meditation journey started at 1.

Yes I seriously would set a 1 minute timer, and practice sitting in the present moment.

Did I see massive mental health benefits in the first month of consistent practice?

Hell no.

But I did get better at meditating.

And guess what happens when you get better at meditating.

You start to get mental health benefits.

Now I’m up to 10 and sometimes even 20 minutes.

And some not so obvious ones

The actual act of meditation can be hard to describe because I think it’s different for everyone.

For myself, it’s often the quality of really feeling and being in the present moment.

But telling people to do that is about as helpful as just telling people to meditate.

I had a really hard time figuring out how to do this. I’ve found specific visualizations to be extremely helpful

When I first started I really liked the “cars on the highway” comparison. Imagining you’re sitting next to a road or highway, and all the cars going past are your thoughts. You see them, but you don’t hold onto them. You let them pass at whatever speed they’re going. A similar one is imagining your thoughts as clouds.

But my head is nuts and the traffic jam was stressing me out. So I went with more of a shuffled card approach.

Y’know when you were a kid and you shuffled a deck of cards just by spreading them out all jumbled over a table?

That what I imagined my thoughts were. And I would imagine looking for a small gap in the “cards” to dive into. Because those gaps were quiet.

Short. But quiet.

Like driving under an overpass while it’s raining.

Those worked well initially. But I still had a hard time really getting it.

One of the first that actually helped me came from an Instagram reel. I wish I still had it so I could link it but I lost it. It was one of those constantly shifting images back when AI art was still kinda rare and new.

The voice over talked about imagining you just appeared where you are now. Absolutely no memories of the past. And since you had no memories of the past you didn’t have any thoughts about the future (because there’s no past experiences to influence those thoughts). That quality of being so here and now was one of my first insights into how meditation really felt.

That thought influenced a game I liked to play while I meditated. I called it the past future game. While I sat and tried to be in the here and now, of course thoughts came up. As soon as I recognized I was having a thought, I’d ask myself if it was past, now, or future. Thinking about mistakes I made were my most frequent past thoughts. But my anxiety likes to hide future thoughts in “preparing”, so this game helped me get really good at identifying them. Things like recognizing my stomach was rumbling, or hearing the birds outside were now thoughts. That’s where it was best to hang out.

The visualization I paired with that was imagining I had a pane of glass on either side of me. When I was thinking about the past or future I was on the outside of those panes. So I’d imagine staying between them for as long as possible.

Everything I described here might not click for you at all. That’s totally fine. But be on the lookout for any mindsets or visualizations that do click for you.

I didn’t have all of these visualizations when I started.

And honestly I don’t think I really would have understood them anyway (they’re all pretty hippy woo woo I know).

But each one seemed to build upon the previous to deepen my understanding and practice.

We’ve made it to the end

So to recap…

Focusing is made up of a few different parts:

Holding attention in one spot
Recognizing distraction
Redirecting back on task

And a few addition skills to enhance those parts:

Being bored
Being uncomfortable

I don’t think the root of distractibility is something that can be entirely trained away. But that doesn’t mean other things around it can’t be improved.

There’s many things you can do to practice all these skills. Timers help a lot. And meditation is my favorite time efficient way of working on all 5.

What I practice and develop during my meditations bleed to all other aspects of my life.

The patience and mental control I practice in my mind shows up in my relationships, my work, and even my self talk.

Granted I know meditation isn’t for everyone. Nothing is. That’s why I never said it’s mandatory.

But if what I’ve said about meditation had given you even a sliver of doubt that maybe you aren’t in the “it just doesn’t work for me” crowd, then I encourage you to explore it deeper. Because it may just be the best decision you make for yourself.

Shoutout to Maria for being interested in hearing me talk about focusing! I cannot tell you how happy I was to see that reply. Actually made me tear up a bit 🥹 because I’m dramatic. This was a topic I actually really enjoyed talking about.

If you have a topic you’d be interested to hear my thoughts on send me an email! I read all replies and I’m always looking for things to blabber on about. Until next time!

Savannah Rorex 5/15/25 Savannah Rorex 5/15/25

Focusing Pt 3/4: Training

Let’s hit the (mental) gym

All that’s left to do is get good sleep, find a quiet spot to work, do some deep breathing, clear your workspace and you’re all set. End of series.

…

Yeah I’m just kidding.

There’s tons of really solid tips out there on changing external factors to help focus. And I want to make it clear that I’m a huge fan of manipulating your environment to make things easier. It’s one of my favorite things to do actually.

I just don’t think that strategy covers the whole field.

I think the best improvement comes from setting up your environment…

And training you’re abilities.

So far you’ve learned how to protect yourself.

You’ve learned some specifics on what you could work on.

Now we can dive into the fun stuff. (My definition of “fun” includes “challenging” fyi)

But first as always…

⚠️Disclaimers⚠️ because I care about the spicy meatballs between y’alls ears:

I am not a mental health expert in any capacity. The strategies I talk about in this series are just what I experimented with on myself.

Working on this stuff is difficult and can be taxing, I won’t deny it.

I’d also like to remind you of the Focus Training Ground Rules

Accept these strategies take PRACTICE and REPETITION
Self compassion is a MUST
Moderation is MANDATORY

If you’d like to read over the specifics for each and why they’re important, click here.

Now that’s out of the way, welcome back to my Focusing series!

As a reminder here’s the game plan:

Part 1: Non-negotiable rules and why
Part 2: The different parts of focusing
Part 3: Strategies I use for each aspect (⬅️ you are here)
Part 4: The ultimate training technique that you’re going to hate

If you missed Part 1 or 2 you can click it to be taken to the web version.

Now I can feel warm and fuzzy that y’all at least know not run yourselves into the ground and that you have an idea of what each part of focusing means. Let’s get into the good stuff.

Time to Train (pun intended)

I am a personal trainer, so you have no idea how much I wish I could just give you a plan like, “do 3 sets of 1m staying on task, 4 sets of 12 reps recognizing distraction, etc.”

Lowkey sounds like a good idea in theory.

But unfortunately it’s not as simple as giving you a protocol to develop each part. The variables that impact how much each individual can handle varies wildly. Not only from person to person, but day to day, and even hour to hour.

Fortunately what you do to practice these can also vary wildly.

Some things are trained through more active practices (the core parts). Others are trained more passively (the adjacent skills).

Active training

When I say “active” I mean things that work best with dedicated sessions. Where you sit down to deliberately practice. The things that are at the core of the activity you’re trying to do.

To recap for focusing those are:

Holding attention in one spot
Recognizing distraction
Redirecting back on task

I’ve had the most success using simple timed sessions and letting the vibe of the day dictate what aspect I work on. Let me explain.

Start with timers (sorry I know, cliché, please don’t hate me)

It may take some trial and error to figure out your starting point. For some lucky souls that may be 45 minutes.

For me it was 10.

When I started dedicated training I only had about 10 minutes of concentrated effort in me per day before my effort outweighed any benefits.

For you it may even be 1. That’s totally fine. Don’t beat yourself up about it because that will only delay your progress. Gotta start somewhere.

Basically you want to pick a length of time that’s challenging but doesn’t turn your brain into complete mush.

Timers aren’t there to make sure you work for a certain length of time. They’re to confine your effort so you don’t overextend. I explain more on this later.

Your mental state determines what you work on

Which of the 3 core aspects you work on unfortunately isn’t entirely up to you.

On good brain days - when my thought tornado is more like a light breeze - I can practice staying on task for longer periods of time. By that I mean longer portions of the timer.

On these days I have to cap my work time. Relentlessly pushing feels productive in the moment. But almost always puts my brain on it’s ass. Don’t run yourself into the ground for the hell of it.

The time limit I set to protect myself is typically a total of 3 hours, broken up into 25 minute sections, each with 5 (ish) minute breaks. That’s not every day btw. (Also keep in mind different types of mental effort have different limits. I’m talking about creative mental effort here. But the specifics of that concept can be a letter on it’s own).

But on bad brain days there’s multiple thought tornados. That also have swarms of bees. IYKYK

They suck. I won’t lie. But they’re still valuable opportunities.

I use them to practice recognition and redirection.

I’ll set a timer, sit at my desk with my work pulled up, and get distracted constantly.

It’s challenging to describe how exactly to catch yourself in the act.

For myself I know keeping my work in front of me helps.

As my thoughts wander and my eyes follow I’ll end up looking at my computer screen eventually and remember what I was supposed to be doing. Every time I do, I say:

“Ope got distracted. That’s ok. Let’s refocus.”

Every. Single. Time.

It gets tiring. Developing skills is tiring. Like teaching a puppy to come when called. They’ll bolt a million times. But the more you call them back and reward them for it, the easier it gets.

That leads to redirecting back to work. Also a bit of a beast.

Pay attention to obstacles and barriers

The moment I realize I’ve veered off course and try to refocus is where I’m confronted with the most discomfort. Naturally my brain tries to protect me from it.

Sometimes that feeling is unbearable. Usually that signals an underlying issue. Like lack of clarity on what I’m supposed to be doing, or maybe something in my workspace is causing sensory discomfort.

In those cases I like to brain dump. It helps me to write out unedited streams of consciousness to help me uncover what exactly is causing the problem (I do this a LOT).

But sometimes that isn’t the case. Sometimes the only way is to push through. And that’s why setting a timer is so important.

If you sat me down on a bad brain day and told me to work on something until it was done, I’d be in agony. Not only would nothing get done, but my nervous system would be wrecked. Definitely for the day. Likely for a day or two.

But pushing for 25 minutes? That’s manageable.

I can tell myself, “I know today is a struggle. That’s ok. I’m allowed to struggle. Let’s just practice catching myself and redirecting for 25 minutes.”

Granted, on those days I don’t get a lot of actual work done. Instead I’ve invested energy into developing the necessary skills to work better in the future as opposed to stressing myself TF out and getting the same amount of work done anyway.

Practice and REST

Ground rule 1 reminder: You will not be good at this at first.

You won’t have it down in a week. You won’t master it if you only practice once a week either. It takes consistent repetition. More repetition that you think is reasonable.

It’s mental work. Worth it, but it’s exhausting. Which is why moderation is so important.

I like to use my frustration as the scale.

A little frustration is normal. Especially on a challenging project. And gradually pushing that threshold is beneficial.

It’s when it starts to feel controlling or overwhelming that it’s my sign to stop for the day.

It sucks to stop early. But pushing too far past that threshold strains your mental state, your relationship with focusing, and ultimately your work as a whole.

⚠️ Learn your own limits ⚠️

When I say I started at 10 minutes, I mean a total of 10 minutes. Per day.

Say what you want about how ineffective that sounds. But that grace created space for the development of my skills. Without frying my brain.

No matter what kind of brain day you’re having, pushing to improve faster at the expense of your mental health will reverse progress. I guarantee everyone will try it at least once though because I did myself. If you do, you’ll see what I mean.

Ground rule 2 reminder: NO SELF JUDGEMENT ALLOWED (i.e. self compassion is a must).

Not in a, “✨you should always love ❤️ yourself and everything is sunshine ☀️ and rainbows 🌈 and 🥰 happiness ✨” kind of way.

In a, “if you bully yourself during this practice the results will not stick” kind of way. At least not sustainably.

You’ll hate it. You’ll quit. You’ll end up right back where you started.

Like I said earlier, working on that self judgement and compassion is a skill to practice in itself. So seriously. Go easy on yourself.

Passive training

Working on the core skills alone will give some results. But they’re amplified if you work on the adjacent skills as well.

Discomfort and Boredom.

I say these are trained “passively” because I rarely use dedicated sessions.

As simple as they are to train, a lot of people avoid it. Because it’s uncomfortable.

My favorite way to train is just looking for opportunities to sit in boredom for a confined space of time.

Waiting to be called into a doctors appointment, (or waiting for the doctor if you want a real challenge).

Waiting in line somewhere.

Sitting on the toilet.

Waiting for water to boil.

Pretty much any point in time you can think of that you naturally pull your phone out to pass the time can be used as an opportunity to train boredom.

Notice all the things I listed have a defined end point. They don’t go on forever. That’s the key.

Discomfort tolerance is naturally trained when you practice being bored. If you weren’t uncomfortable being bored than you wouldn’t be trying to distract yourself from it right?

But discomfort can also be worked intentionally in other ways.

If I have to do chores, or cook, or go for a walk to get my daily steps in (really it could be anything) I like to look at how the activity feels. If it’s uncomfortable for any reason, I quickly think over if the level of discomfort is something I can tackle.

Sort of like fighting an enemy in a video game. You only want to fight enemies that are either slightly above your skill level or lower.

Like the discomfort of cleaning the kitchen is one thing. The discomfort of landscaping my mess of a backyard is completely different.

If the level of discomfort is something I feel I can handle, I start to do the task without any additional input (like podcasts or background shows).

I don’t try to distract myself from the discomfort. I don’t try to convince myself that it’s comfortable either. I exist with it, and when I complete the task I acknowledge that I did that in spite of what I was feeling. Reminding myself that I’m stronger than my mind seems to think.

“This task is uncomfortable. I know discomfort (in moderation) cannot hurt me. It is within my limits to handle.”

“Even though that felt like it sucked, I did it. I was able to do what I needed to do in spite of what I was feeling. And that is something to celebrate.”

So long story short, you need space to feel what your feeling. But that doesn’t mean you can’t also challenge yourself to move forward, and celebrate when you do.

You’re probably thinking, “how is any of that fun exactly?”

It’s not. At least not inherently.

But you have the power to make it fun.

Mindset shifts have been getting a lot of flak lately. Which I get, because I see a lot of people preaching them as the cure to everything.

I see them as tools.

Lately I’ve been thinking of many areas of my life like a video game. And it works really well in this circumstance.

You know that first time you played a game (especially a larger online multiplayer game) and you really freaking sucked. Zero kills, triple digit deaths, and your team lost.

But you saw potential.

During that one part you came 👌 this close to getting that one guy.

So you play again. This time you came even closer. Maybe the third time you get that first kill.

In the grand scheme of things you’re improving slowly. But it doesn’t matter because you’re enjoying the effort. Enjoying the challenge.

This concept is why I harp so hard on understanding the small areas of improvement and appreciating your wins.

I’ve been thinking about writing more about how I’m using video game context in my day to day life. I’m even working on a tool that let’s me collect “coins” and “xp” for day to day stuff. Lmk if y’all would like to hear about it.

But that’s all for this one. I hope you found it helpful! The next and final letter in this series will be about one method I use to train all 5 parts of focusing. And I guarantee some (if not most) of you will absolutely hate it and me for recommending it. 👀 Any guesses what it might be?

Savannah Rorex 5/8/25 Savannah Rorex 5/8/25

Focusing Pt 2/4: What is it actually?

If I had a nickel for every time I told myself, “I just need to focus”, I’d pay someone to focus for me. And then I’d ask who still uses nickels.

But seriously, what does that even mean?

For the longest time I knew I wanted to focus better. But I legitimately had no clue how to do that.

At first I figured that meant just trying to sit and work on one thing for as long as I possibly could.

As you can probably attest, that didn’t go well.

Trying to improve a skill without actually knowing what was being worked on proved to be exhausting and disheartening. It’s hard to see progress when you don’t know where to look.

So I figured I had to break it down.

But first…

⚠️Disclaimers⚠️ because I care about the spicy meatballs between y’alls ears:

I am not a mental health expert in any capacity. The strategies I talk about in this series are just what I experimented with on myself.

Working on this stuff is difficult and can be taxing, I won’t deny it.

I’d also like to remind you of the Focus Training Ground Rules

Accept these strategies take PRACTICE and REPETITION
Self compassion is a MUST
Moderation is MANDATORY

If you’d like to read over the specifics for each and why they’re important, click here.

Now that’s out of the way, welcome back to my Focusing series!

As a reminder, here’s the game plan:

Part 1: Non-negotiable rules and why

Part 2: The different parts of focusing (⬅️ you are here)

Part 3: Strategies I use for each aspect

Part 4: The ultimate training technique that you’re going to hate

If you missed Part 1 you can click it to be taken to the web version.

The way I see it, “focusing” is made up of a few different skills:

In this letter (Part 2) I’m breaking down what I believe “focusing” consists of.

I figure there’s 3 main parts:

Holding attention in one spot
Recognizing distraction
Redirecting back to the task

And a couple of adjacent skills that help:

Being uncomfortable
Being bored

There’s a reason I call all of these skills. Because I believe they can (to a certain extent) be trained.

I know it seems dumb to break things down this far. But hear me out.

The more you understand what specific parts you struggle with, the easier it will be to pinpoint specific strategies that help you. The more targeted you are with practicing, the more your focusing will improve. There’s a reason people say Knowledge is Power.

The anatomy of focus

Holding attention

Probably what you think of when you hear “focus.” Keeping your attention in one spot for a period of time without getting distracted. And personally it’s the part I struggle with the most.

Reminder: I’m not an ADHD expert, just a girl with ADHD. So take my opinions with a grain of salt. But I believe this is a key factor in ADHD focusing struggles.

We expect to be able to just hold our attention in one spot for however long we need without getting side tracked.

But unfortunately due to our wiring, we’re going to get distracted at some point (realistically multiple points) no matter what.

Do I think how long it takes to get distracted can be trained to a certain (probably small) degree? Yes I do. But I don’t think that distractibility can be trained away.

That’s where the next 2 parts come in. If we can’t train away the distractibility, then we can to train to work with it.

Recognizing distraction

I think we’ve all experienced the feeling. You’re working on an essay or a project.

You pause to try to think something through.
So you look out the window and see all the leaves.
You start thinking about how you should probably rake those up.
That reminds you of the gutters that are clogged up.
When is the next time it’s supposed to rain?
You should check the weather so those get cleaned before the next storm.
*Opens Phone*
Oh you’ve got a few Instagram notifications.

Aaaaand then it’s been half an hour, your computer went to sleep, and you never figured out the next step in your project.

This skill is probably the trickiest of the bunch, because it relies on your ability to recognize when you’ve gotten off track.

And if you’re not used to doing so it can be challenging to pull yourself out of the thought tornado.

ESPECIALLY if you hold yourself to the unrealistic expectation that you won’t get distracted in the first place.

But once you do recognize the fact you’ve gotten distracted, then you work on redirecting.

Redirecting back on task

This really is the bread and butter of improving focus for folks who struggle with distractibility.

Once you’ve recognized that your head is somewhere else besides what you’re working on, you can practice bringing your attention back to where you want it.

I also think this is the most difficult and uncomfortable part of focusing. Especially on a day my brain really is all over the place. Some days trying to redirect my attention to where it needs to be feels like throwing a bouncy ball against the wall expecting it to stick.

But the truth is just because something is difficult or uncomfortable doesn’t mean it’s bad for you.

In fact the only way to progress in life and as a person is to push your limits of difficulty and discomfort.

Here’s where the adjacent skills come in.

Being uncomfortable

Do you think Da Vinci was comfortable the entire time he was creating plans for machines that didn’t exist yet?

Or how about Galileo when he was working to uncover and explain secrets of space?

Of course not. Because challenging your brain to grow and progress is not comfortable.

In the modern age of technology it has become so easy to numb uncomfortable feelings.

How many times have you been confronted with the discomfort of starting/working on that project and thought:

“Ugh I’m not feeling this. I’ll just scroll until I feel ready.”

Only to come back to your work an hour later feeling worse than you did before?

This is a good time to remind everyone I am NOT a therapist or mental health expert. As such I am not talking about big scary feelings here. I am ONLY talking about that feeling you get when you don’t want to do work because it’s hard. Clear? Ok good.

Like I was saying earlier, “uncomfortable” does not equal “bad for you”.

Reducing discomfort around tasks is 100% a valuable strategy, and is also a skill that should be developed. That’s for another letter.

But the harsh reality is that you cannot reduce the discomfort of everything to zero. And you cannot only work on things that are comfortable or immediately interesting to you if you want to grow.

Therefore, learning to be uncomfortable is vital for effective focusing.

Fortunately there’s a free, easy access, and mild effort tool that anyone can use to work on this.

Being bored

Boredom for most people is uncomfortable. Especially with modern technology.

I want you to be brutally honest with yourself for a second, and think about the last time you were in a boring situation. Did you pull your phone out?

Waiting in a long line at the pharmacy?

Waiting for an appointment?

Sitting on the toilet?

Boredom is everywhere. It’s part of life. And with little computers in our pockets it’s become exponentially easier to avoid.

And that’s a bad thing.

Boredom is a vital feeling because it creates contrast in life.

If you’re constantly stimulated than anything you do that doesn’t match the level of entertainment you’re used to will feel extraordinarily difficult and boring.

Like focusing.

If you can’t sit on the toilet for 5 minutes without scrolling through a thousand 6 second videos how do you expect to focus on that mundane work that needs to get done?

This doesn’t only apply to work either. Constantly being stimulated impacts hobbies and leisure activities as well.

You can watch an entire collection of beautiful (but short) piano and art videos, feel super inspired, just to feel absolutely 0 motivation to create anything yourself.

Boredom is an incredible resource and mental training opportunity if you know how to use it.

At least that’s how I’ve seen and experienced it

Of all the things I’ve worked on in my effort to focus better, these are the things that I’ve noticed the most impact with.

On the one hand, it may be annoying to think about all these different parts.

But on the other hand, when I thought I just had to sit my ass down and get ‘er done I was filled to the brim with frustration and disappointment that I had to work so damn hard all the time with so little results.

Breaking it down into:

Staying on task AND,
Recognizing when I’ve gotten distracted AND,
Getting back on task AND,
Dealing with discomfort of being bored doing the task

Gave me digestible pieces to work on that were actually within my limits to improve. Meaning less frustration and more overall progress.

Which part or adjacent skill do you think is your biggest hang up? I know mine but I’m interested to know if anyone has anything different.

Keep an eye on your inbox because next week I’ll be talking about how I work on each part!

Savannah Rorex 5/1/25 Savannah Rorex 5/1/25

Focusing Pt 1/4: The ground rules

For when my brain is acting like a pinball machine

It’s sitting right in front of you.

You cannot deny what you’re supposed to be working on.

And yet…

Your brain finds any and all excuses to look at literally anything else.

Bouncing from one thing to the next. Somehow always avoiding the one important thing.

“I should check my email”
“I think I heard my phone go off, I should handle that.”
“Man my desktop is a mess.”

It’s almost funny how easy your brain repeatedly passes over what you’re supposed to be doing in favor of a million other random things that don’t mean much. Leaving that document/project/task abandoned in minimized purgatory.

I know how that feels.

Unfortunately I haven’t solved it. But I have figured out how to make it a little bit easier. At least for myself.

So welcome to part one of my Focusing series!

Here’s the game plan:

Part 1: Non-negotiable rules and why (⬅️ you are here)
Part 2: The different parts of focusing
Part 3: Strategies I use for each aspect
Part 4: The ultimate training technique that you’re going to hate

We’re kicking off part 1 with 3 rules I came up with.

The reason they’re in a letter by themselves is because at least 1 or 2 of them will probably take some getting used to.

So my logic in giving them out on their own first is to give you a week to get comfy with them before we get into the hard stuff.

Like them or not, I believe they’re vital to actually making progress with focusing. Without all of them the chances of being stuck in a futile and damaging loop skyrocket.

Which leads me to…

⚠️Disclaimers⚠️ because I care about the spicy meatballs between y’alls ears:

I am not a mental health expert in any capacity. The strategies I talk about in this series are just what I experimented with on myself.

Working on this stuff is difficult and can be taxing, I won’t deny it.

Onto the ground rules

1. Accept these strategies take PRACTICE and REPETITION

I was not magically able to focus overnight. Neither will you. It takes time.

If someone told you what note each key on a keyboard was you wouldn’t expect to suddenly become a piano aficionado the next day.

If you only work on these things for like 3 days and think, “It just doesn’t work for me”…

Yeah no shit.

A river doesn’t form a canyon in 3 days.

You’re going to be bad at it at first. That’s the whole freaking point. You’re bad at it so you have to practice to get better slowly over time.

Also don’t expect to have it all down pat if you only practice once a week either. It takes consistent repetition. More repetition that you think is reasonable.

You won’t notice progress day to day.

If you look at a tree sapling every day, you won’t be able to tell it’s growing until a few months later and you realize it’s “suddenly” a foot tall.

Daily progress happens in miniscule amounts, but adds up.

2. Self compassion is a MUST

Because these things take time and practice, that little perfectionist voice in your head is probably going to be vocal.

It’s uncomfortable with being bad at things.

What it seems to fail to realize (or rather refuse to acknowledge) is that being bad at a thing is often a prerequisite for being good at the thing.

Depending on your relationship with that voice, it might be rather mean.

As much as that voice would like you to believe, you CANNOT bully yourself into SUSTAINABLE improvement.

You are not any less of a person because you struggle to focus. I don’t even need to know how hard it is for you to focus. I’m going to say it again.

You are not
Any less of a person
Because you struggle to focus.

Improving a skill becomes so much easier when the desire to improve is framed by a positive mindset.

And I know some of you have self deprecation as an unofficial job title.

But self compassion can also developed through practice and repetition. It is 💯% something I like to call an Investment Skill and it’s one that pays MASSIVE dividends.

I’m no psychology expert. But I had to go through my own self compassion training and I still practice on the regular. Worth it.

3. Moderation is MANDATORY

This goes hand in hand with both rules above. Like I said, you will not develop laser focus over night. No matter how hard you try.

In fact, if you push yourself too far you will literally push yourself in the wrong direction.

You don’t dump Lake Michigan on your tomato plant to make it grow faster.

You give it a little bit of water on a frequent basis. Spread out over weeks and months.

Before I started taking a smarter approach with improving my focus I’d just muscle through for as long as I could.

Which usually left my brain needing to buffer for over a day afterward. When I’d come back, it felt even harder to stay on task.

In case you’re a visual learner, here’s a graph comparing effort to progress to demonstrate what I mean:

This rule get’s it’s own slot because I know damn well that perfectionist voice is going to ignore rule 2 and try to bully you into being a master immediately. I am here to tell you that is the wrong move.

I also bring it up because learning to focus better is super uncomfortable. It took me forever to realize a big portion of the reason I had such a hard time was because I kept trying to avoid that discomfort.

Often growth is achieved by pushing through discomfort. BUT pushing too far will only leave you drained and wanting to avoid the effort altogether. Also counterproductive.

Yeah all of that sounds hippy woo woo mushy gushy whatever

But that doesn’t make them any less important.

Things I’ll talk about in this series will take thousands of repetitions. And if you bully yourself each time about it,

“why can’t I just stay on task? why can’t I just get back to work?”

It will take more like millions.

Believe me or not. But I’ve been there.

On good brain days I’d work myself to the bone because it felt like my only chance to get things done. Leading to frequent bad brain days.

Then on those bad brain days I’d mentally berate myself because I just couldn’t keep myself on task no matter how hard I tried.

And I wondered why I was so stressed 🙃

That’s all for part 1!

Next week I’ll be breaking down what I consider to be the core parts of focusing, as well as some adjacent skills I use for some extra oompf. So spend this week getting comfy cozy with the ground rules.

Which one do you think you’ll struggle with the most? I swear number 3 is the bane of my existence.

Savannah Rorex 4/28/25 Savannah Rorex 4/28/25

An apology, a confession, and a re-introduction

And possibly a good-bye

First things first: I want to apologize.

It’s been too long. And I’m sorry for the inconsistency. Both in my timing and content.

I know how annoying it is to sign up for something just for the creator to barely show up in my inbox (if at all) talking about things that barely had anything to do with the reason I signed up.

I’m not going anywhere, but I have been thinking a lot about what I truly love talking about and the direction I want this newsletter to go.

Which leads me to my confession.

I was out of my depth while thinking too shallowly.

Once upon a time before I started this newsletter I was making simple health and fitness content on Instagram.

I won’t lie. I hated it.

I loved talking about health a fitness. But it just felt so shallow.

Protein, lifting weights, drinking water...

I was just regurgitating what I’d learned in my certifications. Granted those are important.

But the struggle often isn’t just lack of knowledge.

I started getting more interested in the how.

How to make those things a normal part of life. How to legitimately integrate habits and routines. I wasn’t satisfied with the, “it takes X amount of days to form a habit” bullshit.

It just so happens around that same time I was diagnosed with ADHD.

The more I looked into ADHD the more fascinated I became. Especially because I started learning how symptoms typically made it difficult stay on top of things, including fitness. Problem solving my way through various ADHD symptoms made it feel like I was tackling root causes of inconsistency.

I thought, “this is it, this is what I love talking about. Maintaining healthy habits with ADHD.”

If memory serves, somewhere in this window was where I started this newsletter.

Then I kept reading.

And learned I was way out of my depth.

Many of the aspects of working with ADHD I found the most fascinating were also the most sensitive and potentially dangerous. I realized I didn’t feel comfortable attempting to give advice on anything other than surface level stuff because it’s so easy to be unintentionally harmful. I’ll experiment on myself all day. But I won’t risk anyone else.

Plus I don’t have the time or money to get a psychology degree (or anything similar that would actually qualify me) so I need to stay in my lane anyway. Maybe one day.

(I still plan on exploring the area btw. But not with the intent to advise anyone. Anything I write will just be about my own experience.)

Honestly I was bummed about this decision because I felt really attached to the topic, but I knew it was the right choice. I kept searching.

After some reflection I decided it wasn’t necessarily ADHD specifically that I liked talking about. It was creating strategies and tools to work with ADHD. I am a puzzle fanatic after all.

I thought maybe I’ll just focus on strategies and tools for health and fitness then.

And I do love that topic. But guess who has ADHD and get’s bored with topics that feel restricting.

Yep, this girl.

Plus it still felt like I was missing something. There’s so many other topics that fascinate me (like focusing for example 👀 I know I promised that one a while ago, note and another apology on that at the end).

Now the re-introduction

I’ve always been fascinated by the personal development sphere. Health and fitness obviously. But also mindset, productivity, some would argue spirituality as well, and many others. Really I enjoy growth as a concept.

But I grew to hate how personal development always seemed to be about more.

Doing more work to get the promotion.

Studying more to get the grade.

Exercising more to get the body.

When I was deep in the clutches of traditional personal development and productivity I was getting a lot done. For short periods of time before crashing.

It felt like I was staying just barely ahead while somehow simultaneously always behind.

Exhausting.

Not to mention it also felt like I was missing something fundamental. Not to personal development. But to living.

So that’s where I’m going from here.

I believe personal development should be about fulfillment, peace, and happiness.

Using productivity to create the space you need, not just to cram more into your day.

Using mindset to learn to enjoy life, not just win it.

Using problem solving to figure out how to get all the little pieces of life and routine to fit in a way that serves you instead of enslaving you.

What I seek to research, experiment with, and write about, is how to use personal development and problem solving as a means of balancing growth with living in the present moment.

That is what this newsletter is moving towards.

With this shift I have a promise

I promise I’m not going to become a creator that talks about business building or productivity for productivity’s sake

Those are areas of the personal development space I don’t want to touch because frankly building a business by telling you to build a business or work more feels weird to me.

I may go into how I stay on top of my finances, or how I use productivity to help me work if that ends up being something you guys are interested in hearing about from me. But it will not be the whole point, or even a consistent point in these letters.

For some of you this may be good-bye

If my ADHD content was the main reason you signed up, I apologize. I understand if the new direction isn’t something you want to stick around for. The unsubscribe button is at the bottom of my emails.

(Pro tip: if for some reason you click it and it says the page can’t be shown it may be whatever internet you’re connected to has some ad blocker settings. That happens to me a lot and I’m not trying to hold anyone unintentionally hostage here.)

For those of you staying I appreciate you! I look forward to the journey of what this newsletter becomes. And I won’t lie to you, things might change again. Because as I learn more I always want to implement more. But I’ll do my best to keep the changes to a minimum.

Oh and I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure the name Chaotic Consistency really hits the mark anymore. I’m going to do some brainstorming but if anyone has any cool ideas for what the new name could be send me an email! I read all replies.

Speaking of which, the focus newsletter is coming out! I haven’t forgotten about you Maria! And I am sorry it’s taken me so long! I’m damn near finished with it and it’s an absolute monster. So that’ll be coming out in parts starting next week!

This one was a bit shorter than my usual (which is also something I’m working on because I’m sure y’all don’t really want to read a novel every week), but that’s all I got. Until the next one!

Savannah Rorex 2/21/25 Savannah Rorex 2/21/25

ADHD Experiment #10: Recharge Protocol

Because Google has been no help

You ever try to look up, “how to relax”?

Go for a walk, they say. Paint a picture, they say.

But it seems like I can’t find any explanation on what it really means to rest and recharge.

The internet is full of “how to be more productive”, but no one seems to answer “how to rest better”.

Resting (or lack of) can be a huge limiting factor in people’s lives and growth. It should 100% be prioritized and deemed necessary.

Yet, in a world of trying to increase productivity, improving rest is maybe the most underutilized route.

I have a theory that’s because rest isn’t something that happens naturally for most.

And if there’s one thing I’ve learned since working on improving my life with ADHD, it’s that the brain cannot be left unsupervised or with unclear instructions. And “relax” is about as unclear as it can get.

Rather I think it’s a skill. One that can be cultivated and refined. On that’s vital for growth.

So I’m gonna figure it out.

I thought I had too much going on to rest.

Trying to keep up with weekly chores, work, school, you get it.

Any time I had a chance to take a breather all I had energy for was sitting on the couch, on my phone, with a show I’ve seen 27 times playing on the TV. The crazy thing is looking back I think I did that rather frequently. I felt like I had no time to rest but I’m pretty sure that was a weekly (even close to daily) occurrence.

With everything else being chaotic it was easy to find excuses to rot my time away. But in the last couple months I decided I didn’t like feeling that way. I wanted to figure out how to actually feel rested.

So I tackled what I thought was the main issue and created my Weekly Calibration.

A process to help me make sure all the usual weekend responsibilities (cleaning, meal prepping, laundry, etc.) were taken care of without eating up 2 days.

For those of you who joined more recently you can read all about what Weekly Calibration is more specifically and my trials with setting it up in the Chaotic Archives on my site.

Weekly Calibration helped a lot. It’s not perfect (my processes never are because I think of small changes frequently), but it’s helped me confine my chores to about half a day.

But it also showed me one glaring problem:

I don’t actually know how to rest.

With the extra time I freed up I found myself either finding more chores/work to do until I really did run out of time, or right back on the couch like I did for all those years.

I will say I don’t think this problem is as deeply rooted as my sleep problems (you can also read about my current sleep experiment on my site, it’s going quite well). But it’s definitely at least 7 or 8 years old. For reference, at the time I’m writing this I’m 26. I left home at 18 to join the military so that’s likely when/how it started.

I also want to say I fully know this is a first world problem. Not knowing how to rest is 100% a problem I’m very lucky to be able to focus on. But I also don’t think that makes it asinine.

Lack of rest is starting to limit my growth in other areas.

Lack of quality rest means I don’t feel recharged.
So I have less overall energy.
Making basic maintenance much harder to keep up with.
Resulting in things required to grow feeling impossibly difficult.

See what I mean?

So time to build a rest skill

I’ll be perfectly honest, I have no idea where this experiment is going to go. I have some audiobooks lined up on rest to see what I can learn. I also have a list of questions I aim to answer (which will almost definitely change as time goes on btw):

Obviously, how do I relax?
What does that mean for me?
How do I know when I’ve “fully recharged”?
What kinds of activities help me do that?
How long do I need on a weekly or daily basis?
Can I build a flexible practice that allows me to reliably rest and recharge when I need it?

For now, I’m setting something up as a starting point based off what I already know.

I know that spending all my off time scrolling or watching TV makes me feel like shit (not morally btw just like mentally sluggish, it’s important to me to keep morality out of it).

On the flip side of that, I know that I really struggle to stick with what I call analog hobbies (or acoustic hobbies if you will). I’m willing to bet it’s because I’m so used to getting such a massive amount of dopamine from just sitting on my phone that anything requiring effort feels like too much effort.

I know those analog hobbies require persistence in order to refine the skills associated with them. And the whole idea of enjoying hobbies is to enjoy that refinement.

But I know that all my attempts to integrate those hobbies right off the bat into my everyday life have failed.

And finally, I know with my time management skills if I try to confine this experiment to only an hour or two in the beginning it will get completely missed over and over again.

So here’s the experiment

I will set aside 8-12 hours (for now) of one day a week to be a recharge day. And that day will be split into 3 parts. They are scheduled in the day based off the concept of mental entropy, something I first heard from the creator Dan Koe.

Entropy means chaos. And mental entropy changes throughout the day. For myself, mental entropy is lowest in the morning. During this 2-4 hour window (sometimes less, sometimes more) is it much easier for me to focus and have control over the monkey brain, so to speak. In the evening the monkey brain is much stronger.

💡 NOTE: My focus hours are something I have continually developed and practiced over time. It was not something I starting magically doing. It’s not easy and it’s not a cure for ADHD. It takes work, but is very worth it. When I started I capped out at around 10 minutes. Total. Per day. If you’re interested in hearing about how I did/do this, reply to this email with “Focus” and if I get 5 I’ll write out a newsletter on it. BUT again this is not a cure and is not a replacement for psychological or medical advice. Just how I went about it.

Forge time (previously development time but forge sounds cooler): Time to refine and develop skills I want.
- Time dedicated to things I know don’t give the biggest dopamine hit, but only because I’m not good at them or haven’t worked on enjoying the growth process with them yet.
- Things I crave spending time on but have difficulty because of the level of dopamine I’m used to with scrolling and binging TV. Drawing, playing music, wood working, you get it.
- This time is scheduled for the first part of the day when mental entropy is lowest. Making it much less likely to be skipped.
Chaos time: Time to let the brain run wild.
- Following random research rabbit holes, making plans for a new hobby (or new plans for an old hobby), building a Notion tool I’ve been thinking about, literally whatever is sparking the brain that day.
- This time is scheduled second. When mental entropy is getting a bit higher, but I want to let the brain run a while off leash before settling into rot time. This is usually the time I get my best ideas.
Rot time: Time to let the brain be mush.
- Video games, scrolling, TV, etc.
- Just because I don’t want these to take up all my time doesn’t mean I want to give them up entirely. I fully believe they have a place in a balanced Recharge Protocol just like chips and ice cream do in a diet. If I don’t structure it in, it will lead to binges, guilt, ignoring the other times, and not actually resting (ask me how I know).
- Naturally this falls in the evening when my mental entropy is highest. On work days, at this point my brain is usually (intellectually satisfied) mush from exercising it in the morning. I notice days where I had a quality chunk of work time I feel mentally tired, but not mentally sluggish. Which I believe to be an important difference. It’s when I feel like this I expect rot time to be the most beneficial in relaxing.

This all seems a bit extra

I know I know. Setting up a framework to rest seems unnecessary. And like a lot.

But here’s the thing.

For me, I know if I don’t have a clear goal in mind for resting, I’m just going to resort back to TV and scrolling.

At the time this experiment was introduced even video games were difficult for me to pick up because they require just slightly more effort than scrolling.

(For the record, when I started this experiment I theorized that this would change over time and it’s starting to which is so cool. I’m starting to crave video games over my phone. Huge step in the right direction.)

I’d like to reiterate that scrolling and TV are totally fine if that’s what you legitimately like.

But I’ve proven to myself time and time again that those things do not make me feel good or rested.

I have strong cravings to do more with my time. I crave creation and growth and skill refinement because I think activities like that are the most fun especially in the long run.

Things like drawing, playing instruments, yoga, etc..

The struggle is those things don’t give the immediate dopamine hit that screens do, so it’s tough to get myself to do them consistently. Consistently enough to build the skill to the point that it’s rewarding anyway.

I’ve done many experiments in the past trying to implement those types of things into my daily life. And they’ve all failed.

Looking back, part of the problem was my weekly maintenance requirements being a bit unmanageable, sure. But I think the bigger problem was I expected to just enjoy those things right off the bat. Even though my idea of a fun weekend at the time was staring at 1-2 glowing boxes for 12 hours straight.

Here’s what I think is gonna happen

If you didn’t catch it, there’s a few points this experiment is aiming at.

Learning what rest really means for me (what it feels like and how to do it).
Improving enjoyment and time spent on analog hobbies (moving away from screens a bit).
Understanding when and how much I need to rest to best support my mental state.

And so there’s a few things I hypothesize will happen:

I’ll be more in control of my rest

The more I consistently initiate Recharge Protocol, the more I’ll understand how I rest
The easier it will get to rest on command.
I’ll understand better when I need specific types of rest.
- Like if I had a mentally demanding week maybe I’ll feel better with more chaos and rot time to let my mind off leash. Or if it was a very emotionally demanding week more forge time will help me take my mind off it all. Who knows ¯\(ツ)/¯ but I would love the ability to further tailor my rest days to what I specifically need at the time
It’ll take less time to effectively recharge
- Note: this is not the main goal at all. But I do want to develop some flexibility in maintaining my feeling of being recharged. I won’t always be able to dedicate a whole day every week. For now I just need that time to work on understanding the concept of rest better.

As I increase time spent on more mentally demanding (analog) hobbies they’ll be easier to stick to.

I wasn’t fair to my past self by expecting to just enjoy these hobbies right off the bat. It’s difficult to immediately and fully enjoy something that requires developing a skill. So that is why these hobbies will be scheduled in forge time no matter what. If I don’t schedule time to get better at them, they’ll get neglected. I understand I won’t always want to. Which again, is why they’re schedule for the first part of the day.
Here’s how I think it’ll go down: as I give more time to these hobbies, the better I’ll get (because that’s what happens when you practice consistently), the more I’ll start to enjoy the act of getting better, and the easier it’ll be to work on them long term.
- This guess isn’t made blindly either. This process is how I learned to exercise consistently and to enjoy cooking consistently

Gaming will be used as a transition to analog hobbies

I think that spending rot time on video games is going to have a similar effect. Rot time is scheduled for when mental entropy is highest for me, when I have a harder time pushing myself to do things. So by filling that time with something that gives a high amount of dopamine, but still requires a little bit of mental effort, I’m working on enjoying effort more and more. Remember, my default is scrolling while watching a comfort show. So gaming requires comparatively more effort than what I’m used to.
This part of the process is already in the works and I’ve already noticed improvements. I’m starting with games I know I’ll like, kinda like choosing a comfort show. But my plan is to work on integrating new games more and more as time goes on to really work on building that enjoyment of effort.
From there what I suspect will happen is the craving to put in effort will spread to other areas. Until I’m craving analog hobbies more than digital hobbies. Not automatically, but by choosing what aspects of the hobbies I’m focusing on improving.
Not that I’ll completely ditch scrolling and TV. I just don’t want to rely on it to relax because it doesn’t feel great. Kinda like how I don’t want to eat chocolate cake every day. It tastes really good but too much over time and I’m gonna feel sluggish.

I’m very intrigued to see how this experiment changes and shifts as I learn more about what I actually need. I’m also looking forward to finally using all the hobby supplies I’ve bought over the years on a consistent basis.

I’m thinking of changing up how I send out stuff on my experiments because I realized I am not great about keeping you guys in the loop lol. I evaluate how experiments are going every Thursday (my Friday). So I’m thinking of sending out a short summary every Thursday with what I was focusing on for the week, what I learned/am gonna change, ending on my focuses for the upcoming week.

If you’re interested in seeing more in depth how I move through my experiments like this lmk. I read all emails. I’ll probably do it regardless if anyone wants it or not because I like talking about it but I want to hear your thoughts anyway.

But that’s all for this one. Until next time.

-Savannah

Thank you so much for reading the Chaotically Consistent Newsletter! I’m Savannah, the personal trainer with ADHD. I started this newsletter because I enjoy creating and experimenting with processes and systems to make life easier for my brain, and I like sharing what I learn. If you’ve ever wished that you had help setting up systems in the 4 main pillars of health; exercise, nutrition, sleep, and rest, then stay tuned because I have an exciting announcement coming soon!

Savannah Rorex 2/7/25 Savannah Rorex 2/7/25

How I Meal Prep With ADHD Part 2

Steps 2-4

Here’s part 2 with steps 2-4! If you missed part 1 you can find that here where I discuss the benefits of setting this system up along with a detailed description of step 1. Let’s jump into step 2!

Shopping

Like I said in my thread, unfortunately there’s only so much I can do about going out in public.

BUT there are a plethora of ADHD taxes you can pay to help, such as grocery delivery or even grocery pick up. But for all the produce control freaks like me here’s 2 things you can do.

Have a dedicated shopping day

In our house it’s changed a few times but lately it has been Thursday afternoons.

I don’t think the actual day matters too much, we mainly chose Thursday so we don’t have to leave the house all weekend.

But I do know I will never have Sunday be my shopping day. At least around here that’s the store’s busy day and I like to avoid crowds as much as possible.

The added benefit of having a set shopping day is you can put a recurring calendar event or reminder in your phone so there’s less mental energy involved with actually remembering to go. After a few weeks it at least for myself, it started to feel more routine.

Plus with a set day for it it’s almost easier for me to mentally prepare to go. Versus if I look in the fridge on a random Tuesday and realize there’s no food then the demand avoidance kicks in hard and dragging myself to the store nearly empties my energy budget for the week.

Organize shopping list by section

This really helps eliminate going back and forth across the store because your list is all jumbled up.

It also really helps decrease the mental load of looking at the list and trying to make sure you get everything in the section you’re in before moving on.

And then probably having to go back anyway because you’re eyes skimmed over “bread” that was between “carrots” and “milk”.

More bonus points if your sections are ordered by how you usually go through the store.

For us we usually hit produce first, then meats, then the center isles before making our way to frozen and dairy. We move one direction. We hardly ever have to backtrack. And we hardly ever forget anything as long as it’s on the list.

This is something that my tool does and it’s also got a mobile friendly page so you never have to worry about forgetting your shopping list on the counter again. As long as you remember to take at least your phone.

Cooking

Cooking can be another mental (and sometimes physical) nightmare. Countless times I’ve slaved away for 7+ hours on meal prep, draining every ounce of mental effort I have making sure all the recipes turn out right and absolutely decimating my feet and back.

And I was totally sick of it.

Unfortunately again there’s only so much you can do about the actual cooking itself. But there are some things you can put in place to lighten the load, and I can vouch they make a huge difference. I only spend max around 3-4 hours prepping now and that’s on a long day. All of these I’ve found through trial and error FYI so you may have different ones or even more.

Know your limits

From experience I know I can’t make a breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks every single week.

I mean I technically am physically capable, and I’ve done it before.

But it takes forever, is completely exhausting, and I usually need a day or two to recover afterwards. And I just don’t find that an effective use of my time.

Like I said earlier, I find it’s so much easier (on the mind and body) to make a lot of a few things rather than a little of many things.

Designate a prep day

This has similar benefits to having a specific shopping day. You can again set up recurring reminders (probably set for just after the shopping reminders).

And with a set day you can mentally prepare yourself for it.

Plus after you experiment a bit and get a feel for how you physically and mentally handle meal prep you can play around with picking days that best support you.

Maybe you feel best if you have a day off before prepping.

Maybe you’re more consistent when you have a day off after prepping.

Maybe you like prepping immediately after grocery shopping or you need to put them on different days.

I thought I was a different day gal but with my system in it’s simplest form I don’t mind prepping on the same day I shop. Depending on the recipe. I won’t start a slow cooker recipe at 1700 for example. But I may precut the veggies for it or something. Which leads me to…

Plan steps ahead of time

The complexity of this is determined by the complexity of your recipes. And the less recipes you have the easier this is.

For example let’s say the lunch/dinner option I have for the week is stir fry (don’t forget I always do breakfast chicken). My plan for prep day would look something like this:

Start breakfast chicken first so it has time to cool before freezing
1. preheat oven
2. line pan
3. oil and season chicken
4. start baking (and take out whenever it’s done to cool)
While that’s baking, chop veggies for stir fry
Make the sauce
Lay out all ingredients next to the stove in the order that I’ll use them
1. One of my favorite cooking hacks, helps prevent the mental scramble of trying to find what I need
Make stir fry on the stove (I don’t have the recipe next to me but you get it)
Transfer to freezing molds to cool
Move breakfast chicken to a bag once cooled and freeze
Move stir fry to freezer once cold as well

You can see how that would easily get more complicated the more recipes you have to deal with.

There is absolutely no shame in doing one recipe entirely before moving onto the next and so on. I just like to keep meal prep as short as possible.

The way I kinda structure my steps is I like to think of the recipes that will take the longest (either to cook or cool) and do those first.

If my lunch/dinner was slow cooker chili I would’ve started that in it’s entirety before even looking at breakfast chicken.

If the recipes seem about the same then I’ll try and cut all veggies/meats needed for all recipes to get it knocked out.

Then I’ll look at cooking methods. I usually start anything that needs the oven before I start anything on the stove. Because as long as I set a timer I can do other things while stuff is in the oven but stove stuff usually requires more attention.

Of course there are some ADHD taxes to make all this easier. Buying precut veggies and meat is a fantastic option which I use quite frequently. Cutting veggies is usually my longest step so I like anything that helps cut down on that time.

Storing

Here is where this system shines. In the past I’d only use the fridge to store my meal preps, which is totally fine if that works for you.

But my struggle came when I felt like I had to eat the preps I made for that day, so the demand avoidance kicked in along with the ick, and then like half of my preps would go bad because I couldn’t make myself eat them without gagging.

The pressure to eat something within the week of making it because that’s how long it lasts in the fridge is way too much for me. It took me quite a while to realize that was a problem of mine, but once I did I decided to start freezing everything.

Not that things don’t go bad in the freezer, they definitely do. But having the span of a month (more often like 3 or 4) to eat something drastically reduced the pressure for me and helped make eating actually enjoyable. Which is very important to me.

And by making things that can be frozen, whatever doesn’t get eaten week 1 can be options for following weeks. This is how I can meal prep one thing but eat different things throughout the week.

The other added benefit is if you decide you want to cook something fresh with all that energy you saved from simplifying meal prep, you absolutely can. No guilt for not eating what you already made because you can just eat it at a later date.

This happens in my house a lot.

We’ll prep for the week, but for whatever reason inspiration strikes and I want to try making a new recipe just for one night. Or we both get cravings for Lo Mein so we decide to go out. Again, no guilt for not eating what we prepped.

That really is the core of this system.

The point isn’t to lock you into a strict meal plan for the week. The point is to prep some food ahead of time so you always have something nutritious available when you need it.

I like to think of it as creating my own little grocery store frozen meal section but way cheaper.

I recognize that not everyone has access to a large freezer so space can be limited. But even keeping 3 or 4 meals on hand even if it’s just for a couple dinners can make a huge difference in reducing mental load.

Particularly on days where you have very low energy and taking that time to really rest will help recharge you faster.

Freezing in single serve molds is my favorite way to go now. But if you don’t have access to them they are absolutely not required.

When I first started taking full advantage of my freezer we full on just used Ziplock bags and those cheap plastic meal prep containers from Wal Mart. I think for a long time I also just used those really big silicone ice cube trays, also from Wal Mart. Those work really well for sauces and soups and stuff.

So how tf do you implement this?

For a brief recap, here’s my system:

I meal plan and make my list on Fridays
We shop the following Thursday
I make anywhere from 6-20 servings of one recipe for breakfasts and of one recipe for lunches and dinners
1. Numbers are based on math I did for how many servings my bf and I roughly need for 1-2 weeks
I freeze everything in single serve molds

I wanted to touch on implementation, because I know that trying to add in all of these steps at once is a lot.

I do not recommend entirely ditching what you do now right off the bat.

Instead start by making slow shifts.

Maybe once a week you start of with just practicing meal planning and getting a shopping list together.

After that feels good, then you can start by making a small amount of 1 thing to freeze. Something that you just keep on hand for low energy days.

Keep adding in small steps over the weeks and before you know it you’ll have a full inventory of freezer meals on hand, you only cook for sustenance 1 day a week, and you have so much extra mental capacity to do whatever you want with.

I will never lie to you guys and say setting up a system is a piece of cake. It’s not. It takes a lot of work. But unlike the work it takes to just embrace the suck and deal with things how they are, the work put into setting up a system is 100% an investment that pays back crazy amounts of energy in the long run.

In addition, this process won’t work for everyone.

I would not be surprised if I am one of the only people that every part of this system works for. And that’s ok.

My hope with sharing this system is that you guys can take parts and experiment with them to find what works for you. Maybe you take and change other parts or maybe you leave them out. Maybe you combine it with other things you’ve tried in the past. This is not “the ultimate meal prep system.” It’s just the one I like best right now.

In fact it even changes for me constantly.

Lately I’ve been enjoying cooking, so I put less emphasis on making sure I make all the servings on prep day or stick with my criteria for picking recipes.

The point of setting up a system like this isn’t to confine you to a box that you stay in forever.

The point is to provide a safety net that you can fall back on when you need to.

I feel good lately in cooking many days out of the week. Even trying long and complex recipes because I enjoy them. I also am really interesting in getting into gardening and processing a lot of stuff I grow myself. When I get into that this system is going to have to change to accommodate that.

I also know that I will hit another low energy period. They always happen because that’s life. And I know that when that happens I can come back to this system to make sure I have good nutritious food on hand without having to expend all the energy I have available during those times.

Because honestly, for myself I’ve found that one of the fastest ways out of low energy points is to rest. And that’s real hard to do if I have to expend all my energy making sure I’m fed.

But that’s all I have for this absolute novel. Thank you so much for reading and I sincerely hope it helps you guys ease some of the mental load around getting fed! Until next time!

-Savannah

Savannah Rorex 2/5/25 Savannah Rorex 2/5/25

How I Meal Prep With ADHD Part 1

Because I can’t photosynthesize yet

This week I’m breaking down my meal prep system in detail! Even though eating is required for survival it is one of the great nuisances of my life. So I created a way to make sure I do it regularly without completely draining my energy bank.

Some quick admin stuff:

Thank you all so much for your patience, I know I promised this one a while ago. It was an absolute BEAST to write. I amaze myself with how much I have to say sometimes.

As a result I’m splitting this into 2 parts because let’s be honest, I have a decent idea of what y’alls attention span is and I want this letter to be actually helpful.

So part 1 will cover all the benefits of setting up a system, a broad overview of how I set mine up, and a detailed description of the first step. It’s the longest and takes the most mental energy, so frankly it kinda deserves it’s own letter.

Part 2 will be steps 2-4 and discuss a bit about implementation. It’s scheduled to go out in 2 days to give you guys a chance to play around with step 1.

Ok, back to it ⬇️

I feel like I see a lot of things claiming to be “The last meal prep system you’ll ever need” or “The only right way to meal prep”. I’ll tell you now that’s not how this letter is going to be.

Frankly I think it’s possible that this system in it’s entirety may not work for anyone EXCEPT me. But convincing you to use my system is not the point of this letter.

My hope is that my system gives you some ideas to improve (or even create) your own system.

I hope that you pick it apart, take what sounds good to you, and experiment to create something that keeps you well fed without eating up all your mental capacity.

The benefits I’ve gotten from creating a meal prep system that works for me have been astronomical.

I cook once a week

Obviously one main benefit of meal prep in general is cooking one day a week. I realized this aspect was important to me a long time ago when I used to tell myself I was just gonna wing it that week for lunches and dinners.

The mental load was stupid high for coming up with meals on the spot, making the actual cooking feel even more daunting. Daunting enough that I would frequently resort to chips (or even nothing) for dinner because I didn’t want to deal with the thinking.

For the record I’m not saying chips for dinner is the worst thing in the world. Fed is best. BUT I can’t ignore how physically terrible I would feel and I don’t think just because I deal with executive functioning challenges means I should just suck it up.

I rarely allow food to go bad

This benefit is like a two for one.

It saves money.

And it really lowers the mental load associated with trying to eat everything in time before it goes bad.

I honestly think that a lot of the high cost we see with eating healthy comes from food going bad too fast rather than the actual cost of the food itself.

Unless you buy snacks marketed as health food. Or organic. Which I do not. I know, sue me.

In general produce is relatively cheap. The issue is it just goes bad so fast. Even faster when it takes 1-2 business weeks to build up enough executive function points to actually use them.

This fact was one huge driver for me to create a system that prevents this from happening.

I’m a huge fan of paying the ADHD tax up front if it’s available, which helps a lot.

Buying chopped carrots, pre-minced garlic, the sliced and washed mushrooms, etc.

I don’t absolutely love it, as I’d really like to use as little plastic as I can and save that money eventually. But paying the ADHD tax is the most sustainable for me for now. My hope is eventually I’ll learn to free up energy in other areas to dedicate more to cooking.

Meats are on the more expensive side but again that’s why having a system to prevent things going bad is so important.

And all that doesn’t even account for the mental load of eating traditional meal prep.

Raise your hand if you worked your ass off to make 7 breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, landing you in ADHD paralysis jail for at least a day after, just to have the ick for everything you just made?

And then feeling massive pressure to eat it all anyway because you spent time and money on it and plus it just feels horrible to have food go to waste?

So the whole week is just full of mental turmoil where the guilt over letting food sit in the fridge wars with the sickening feeling of having to eat something you really don’t want to and that’s where all your available energy goes?

✋🏽

Yeah me too.

I easily get my protein and veggies

Now I will say I do crave protein and veggies. But I wasn’t always like this, it was something I had to work on.

The issue I was trying to solve with this system was the mental load associated with making sure I get them in.

Because let’s be honest, even cravings for healthy food can’t be the only thing that’s relied on to make sure they’re consumed, at least not with ADHD. I can barely rely on my hunger signals, let alone cravings.

Back when I would try and “wing it” I would always either have way too much of one or the other, or way too little. It was really difficult for me to create “balanced” meals. I mean I could. But the mental effort of doing so was a lot even for one night, let alone a whole week.

I don’t have to eat the same thing for 5 days straight

I’ll be totally real, I definitely eat the same thing for multiple days in a row sometimes.

BUT those are times where I’m just legitimately enjoying what I made. There is absolutely 0 pressure for me to eat everything within a week.

I believe that fact alone has made my apatite so much more regular.

I’m sure if you’ve meal prepped the usual way before you know what I’m talking about.

Just like I said above, you spend hours and hours making perfectly portioned meals for the whole week, but then by day 3 you’re really not feeling the now slightly suspicious looking chicken alfredo that’s been sitting in the fridge.

But you feel guilty for potentially wasting the food so you push through.

For a day.

And then the pressure the next few days make you not want to eat at all. And then stuff goes bad and you have to throw it out and all the bad feelings come up and you decide meal prep isn’t for you.

Yep I’ve been in that exact spot.

How?

(Remember: all of this is optional. You do not have to copy any of this step for step. This is just how I did it.)

When I was working on setting up this system I tried to think about all the things that I absolutely hated about cooking at home, and how I would fix them.

The first thing was feeling stressed about the entire process in general.

Trying to pick out meals, making the list, remembering to go shopping, and then remembering to use everything I bought, etc.

Also remembering to block out time to cook because for some reason my brain thinks everything should only take 5 minutes so when things took an hour I’d get stressed AF.

Every. single. week. I’d have to start from square one.

Organize all my thoughts and the steps, to the point that anything related to food took waaaayyy longer than it should, which again, stressed me tf out.

I broke everything down once and for all.

Then systemized as much as possible so my brain is responsible for as little as possible.

Here are the main steps:

Planning
Shopping
Cooking
Storing

There is a bonus 5th step that a wonderful creator on Threads pointed out which is cleaning up. I do plan on smoothing out this step to include it but have not had the chance to experiment with anything yet so I’ll only be including the first 4 in this letter.

Fair warning: setting up a system does take a lot of effort.

Going through the trial and error to find what works can be very draining.

But I am here to tell you that unlike the drain of just accepting how it is, the energy put into setting up a system is 100% an investment.

Planning - the mental nightmare

(This is the longest section because it takes the most mental energy. Stick with me, I promise it’s worth it)

I’ll reiterate what I said in my thread; I HATED this step before this system. I’m sure anyone who’s had to decide “what’s for dinner?” and then proceed to make a shopping list after can agree.

I swear that question is like that gadget in Men in Black. As soon as it get’s asked (doesn’t matter if it comes from someone else or myself) it’s like I forget anything I’ve ever eaten (let alone liked) ever.

To make this step easier on myself I picked it apart to find the specific parts I hated:

Trying to think about what kind of food I was “feeling”.
Having to Google breakfast, lunch and dinner recipes every week based on said feeling.
Sifting through said recipes to find what would actually be feasible for me to do.
Going through the mental gymnastics of writing a shopping list that isn’t missing anything.
- This was the most draining part for me. I’d always either skim over something that was important or end up buying stuff I already had in the house no matter how many times I looked over the list.

It seriously felt like so much freaking effort and I’d dread it all week. Forcing myself to sit down and do all that felt like dragging myself across a bed of nails.

I fucking hated it.

And I was tired of how drained it left me.

You’re telling me this is how adult life is supposed to be? Being so drained from setting up basic survival needs that I hardly have energy for things I love?

Nah I don’t accept that. So here’s what I did to make this step easier.

I picked 1 day as a meal plan day

I put a weekly recurring reminder in my phone and made a point to sit down and meal plan no matter how I felt.

Yep that meant plenty weeks the meal plan was just a variation of chicken rice and broccoli or some sort of pasta, but I had to get that habit going to save my sanity.

I also dabbled a bit with meal planning monthly and have thought about trying to do quarterly or even yearly. But I think I’ll have to have some more structures in place if I ever want that to work.

Honestly, and surprisingly, weekly has worked pretty well for me so far.

I stick to a prep style

I am 100% sure that I have not tried all the possible styles out there.

As I’m writing this I Googled meal prep styles just to see what came up (and to make sure it can actually be looked up before I talk out of my ass) and there’s definitely some I haven’t given an honest effort to.

In the past I remember trying to do full meal preps (breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks) because I thought that was what meal prepping was.

I’ve done simple ingredient preps where I would just make some rice and chicken and use that in whatever.

Not a terrible option and it made prep really simple but I still really struggled with the mental load of deciding what to do with them when meal times rolled around.

Now I just like to make a huge batch of 2 things. For myself I’ve found that it’s easier to make a lot of a couple things than a little of many things.

I could probably get away with just doing a big batch of 1 thing but my absolute favorite breakfast is chicken, broccoli, and toast.

I know I know it sounds gross and I swear it’s not because of the whole chicken and broccoli gym stereotype. It’s literally because it’s the breakfast that makes me feel physically the best.

Plus it’s super easy to prep. We order diced chicken from the butcher (my favorite ADHD tax to pay because I hate touching raw chicken) and we bake it in a big batch. Then we freeze it in a bag and buy a big bag of frozen broccoli. In the mornings we pour a little bit of frozen chicken and a little bit of frozen broccoli into the air fryer and I’m eating in 8 minutes.

I make my own bread because I think it’s fun but I don’t think I’d recommend it for meal prep.

I’m really picky with my recipes

I think this may be the biggest contributor to making meal prep easier. The recipes I pick have to meet a certain criteria if I’m going to attempt to use it for a meal prep:

Needs to be freezable:
1. Recipes won’t always say if they’re freezable, but a lot of times you can go to the comments if you’re finding the recipe on Google and see if someone asked the question (hit ctrl + f and search for “freeze” to save time).
2. Or you can look at the recipe itself and with some experience you’ll be able to tell. For example I now know (from experience) that I cannot get many dairy related casseroles to freeze right. Cheesy pasta dishes do ok but I’ll never forget this one hashbrown thing that ended up as a watery, disgusting mess. Yeah you’re gonna fuck up recipes some times (or probably many times in the beginning) ¯\(ツ)/¯ it’s part of the learning process.
Needs to be big batch compatible:
1. This can mean paying attention to equipment. For example I have some pretty big pans but a really small food processor so I’m set for cooking on the stove but I pay attention if something calls for a lot of blending.
2. It can mean paying attention to cost. I’m not going to make a huge batch of something that has like shrimp as it’s primary protein because that shit is expensive.
3. It can mean paying attention to capacity. I really love freezer burritos. I think they’re the shit. But sometimes they’re a huge pain in the ass. Laying out all the tortillas, getting all the toppings put on, rolling all them up so they don’t come apart, etc. I’ve done it before. And I do love them. But I don’t always have the energy to deal with them. Slow cooker meals on the other hand are fantastic. All just in one big pot that I transfer to freezer molds later.
4. Or whatever other factors that play a part in allowing you to batch cook.
Needs to have decent protein, vegetables, and carbs:
1. What can I say, I’m still a personal trainer and nutrition coach so of course this is a requirement for me. And I think it’s so important to add good stuff in rather than try to cut stuff out. So I make sure all the recipes I collect for my meal preps have at least 20-30g of protein per serving.
2. Veggies I’m a bit more lax on but only because I make sure to keep steam-able bags of vegetables in the freezer at all times. Like I have this Korean Beef recipe that’s delicious but the meal prep is literally only the ground beef itself and a sauce. When I actually eat it I make some rice in the rice cooker and pop a bag of vegetables in the microwave and call it a day.
3. Carbs come so naturally I don’t have to think about them too much, but I do shoot for whole grains as often as possible to get some more fiber. And similar to the veg situation above sometimes the prep itself doesn’t have all the carbs I like so I add them in later. I have a chili recipe which is ground beef, carrots, bell peppers, kidney beans and black beans. The beans and the veggies have some carbs but when I go to actually eat it I like to make a little bit of fresh whole grain pasta (spirals of course) and mix in some extra cheese to make a chili mac.

Find a way to save and organize recipes

Doesn’t matter how you do it, you can write them all down by hand, you can store all of them in a bookmark folder on Google, you can print them out and put them in a binder, whatever floats your boat.

But find a way that works for you and use it for all your recipes.

I’m telling you, this helps a TON when faced with the “what do I want to eat?” question that always seems to wipe our memory.

If you have them all collected in one place, instead of trying to pull something from thin air you can flip through what you have saved like a catalogue.

And hey, some weeks maybe you’ll have more energy and you can look for something new. But if not, you’ve got some basics to fall back on.

Bonus points if you organize them by something.

All my recipes are sorted by 2 criteria, newness and difficulty.

Recipes are marked as; “New”, “Needs Work”, or “Tried and True”, so it’s easy for me to see which I’ve tried before usually go well and which need some tweaking for them to be considered trustworthy. And then they’re marked as the basic “easy”, “medium”, “hard”, so if I‘m lower energy I can pick something easier for me to handle.

Systemize your shopping list

This is definitely in the more advanced category of setting up a meal prep system but it does help a lot.

A huge struggle for me for a long time was putting together a shopping list from multiple recipes.

I’d have like 4 recipes on different tabs in my phone and then my notes app pulled up. I’d keep switching back and forth between all the recipes and then back to the notes app trying not only to make sure I got everything down, but also to make sure there are no duplicates and then had to go through the kitchen to see what we actually have on hand.

Everyone reading with ADHD can see how that’s riddled with pitfalls.

Short term memory issues made making the shopping list initially feel like hell. I could only remember one item at a time and would not remember which recipe I got it from, meaning I switched between all the recipes several times.

What should have realistically took like 5 minutes max would take upwards of 15-30 minutes because I just couldn’t hold the information in my head.

Not to mention trying to scan for duplicates or missing ingredients, losing focus halfway through the list and having to start over. 3 times. And THEN trying to go through what I already have so I don’t waste money. But then I have to go back through all the recipes to check the amounts of ingredients I’ll need and I’m back to Google tab musical chairs.

Systemizing this can look different for everyone.

My first solution to this was to keep a note on my phone that was a huge checklist of every ingredient I frequently bought at the store (separated by section and alphabetized because I’m a nerd). The default was for everything to be checked so when I needed to make a shopping list I would just find the ingredient and uncheck it. That way if multiple recipes needed it I could see it was indeed unchecked. This worked really well for a while. Then it graduated to a Google Sheets document and now it’s a Notion tool.

This is where I’m goin to end part 1. Hopefully you got some good ideas to help streamline your planning process and free up some mental energy. Talk to you in a couple days.

-Savannah

Savannah Rorex 1/20/25 Savannah Rorex 1/20/25

ADHD Experiment #9: The Night Owl Project

Yep, fixing my sleep by staying up late

Hello and welcome to the Chaotically Consistent Newsletter! For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m Savannah, the personal trainer with ADHD. I started this newsletter because I really enjoy creating and experimenting with processes and systems to make life easier for my brain, and I like sharing what I’ve been learning. Let’s get into it!

The Night Owl Project is my attempt to fix my sleep by embracing a night owl schedule.

Sounds backwards huh? I know.

In this letter I’ll be explaining:

my sleep struggles
my past with sleep
everything I’ve tried to do to fix it
my theories on why those things didn’t work (and what’s actually wrong)
and how I’m attempting to fix it now.

Before we get into the letter it’s important to me to give this quick disclaimer. I am not a therapist and I am not a sleep specialist. These letters are not a replacement for therapy or medical advice. If you have severe sleep struggles please go see a therapist or sleep specialist.

TLDR: I’m tired of being tired

The purpose of the Night Owl Project is to get a handle on my sleep. It wasn’t until a year or so after my diagnosis that I found out it’s common for ADHDers to struggle with sleep. There seems to be a multitude of reasons. Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome is one you hear about a lot. But I think the main one (at least for me) is the struggle to just fall asleep. Regardless of the time.

Every time I go to lay down at night it’s always a coin toss as to whether or not I’ll fall asleep at a reasonable time. Actually 50/50 odds are pretty generous. And it SUCKS. I’m TIRED OF IT (pun intended).

There’s so many things I want to do and my sleep is holding back a lot of them. Poor sleep means:

exercise sucks (I want to become a freaking weapon in the gym damnit)
a wonky appetite so healthy eating sucks
trying to focus on business work sucks
more stress so trying to relax sucks

You see what I’m getting at here?

Yes sometimes to grow you have to push forward. But pushing forward doesn’t do any good if something keeps pulling you back. And at this point, my sleep keeps pulling me back. By improving this one part of my life, improving all those other areas becomes easier.

I desperately want to be a morning person. I’ve tried for most of my life to become one. I do think it’s possible. But not before I tackle the root issue. That is the only way I believe I’ll be able to be a morning person sustainably.

Sleep has never been easy for me

This issue didn’t just randomly appear when I heard about it. I’ve struggled with sleep for as long as I can remember.

I remember being as young as 8 or 9 years old asking my aunt if I could borrow her Enigma CD. I wanted to put it on my iPod to try and use it to fall asleep to. It didn’t work. Multiple times I just laid in bed and listened to the whole freaking album.

I always hated bedtime because I hated having to lay there and just wait for sleep. I would procrastinate it often. Any way I could think of. Sneaking my DS into bed. Reading late into the night. Starting random crafts as quietly as I could. Anything

The only place I ever remember falling asleep easily was on car rides (still true now actually).

But weird music for an 8 year old wasn’t the only thing I tried.

To save us all some time I’m just gonna list these things out. If I gave a paragraph to everything I’d probably put you to sleep. Here’s everything I’ve tried that I can think of:

getting sunshine within an hour of waking
having strict bedtime at 2200 (10pm) and getting up at strict 15 minutes intervals which was supposed to train my association with my bed but just ended up pissing me off
maintaining a consistent sleep routine where I tried to keep a 2230-0730 schedule. It felt like I was trying to keep a house of cards standing, it always fell apart at the slightest unintentional breath
at home cognitive restructuring (a therapy technique)
at home autogenic training (a relaxation technique)
4-7-8 breathing
mind shuffling which is a method of getting the brain into something called the default mode network, it’s supposed to help the brain drift off (actually still one of my favorite tools)
evening sunshine and walks
blue light blockers
3 hour long bedtime routines that included no screens
so many different types of tea
magnesium glycinate
melatonin which I do not recommend as a daily btw
chill music
sleep music, and not only the super slow calming music but also the specific frequency and “theta” wavelength type of music
white/brown/pink/green noise, and probably some other colors too
bedtime stories
tart cherry juice
stretching
meditating
I even tried warm milk for a while

And that’s only the stuff I remember. Sleep and I have done this stupid dance for like 2 decades now.

I don’t half ass it either. Many of those things (AM sun, magnesium, meditating, maintaining routine) require some time of consistency before they show improvement. I assure you that I either worked at those for a long enough and consistent enough amount of time that I should have noticed a difference, or they were unsustainable enough that I could not maintain consistency no matter how hard I tried.

So what’s wrong?

It’s hard to know for sure, but I have some theories on why I struggle to fall asleep so much.

NOTE: I do sleep. Getting there is difficult. But I do sleep. I am not saying in this letter that I don’t. I actually sleep decent amounts most nights. And one thing I’m learning on this journey is to hold onto that fact (there’s reasons why but that will be for a future letter).

My issue is I’m not confident in my ability to fall asleep when I need to. Leading to not being confident that I’ll have quality energy the next day. And with the normal fluctuations in energy that come with ADHD I want to make sure I’m doing all that I can to support myself. Being confident and able to reliably fall asleep is a huge part of that.

Now I’m not saying all those things I listed in the last section don’t work or are inherently flawed. In fact I think a lot of them are quality habits that really improve sleep (not all of them though, looking at you melatonin 👀).

BUT it’s difficult to improve on a foundation that’s barely there. Trying to do all those things was like trying to load up on creatine and protein powder without actually going to the gym. The tools didn’t have anything of substance to work on.

I believe my sleep issues started young because of the ADHD. But I think they got worse when I was a teenager.

Another interesting thing I learned on the journey to understand sleep was that teenagers naturally have a delayed circadian rhythm. They naturally don’t get tired until after midnight and won’t want to get up until 9 or 10. No matter how hard they try this rhythm really can’t be shifted much at that age. If you remember being a teenager this might not surprise you. Honestly it’s bonkers to me that schools require kids to get up before 7 in some places. Who knows how much that hinders learning. But I could rant about that forever.

All that is fine and dandy. Here’s the kicker. I was one of those ADHD kids that fell into the people pleasing pipeline. I picked up pattern recognition skills to make it look like I was doing well in school and to make sure all the authority figures were pleased with me. But you know what I couldn’t fake? A good sleep schedule.

My theory as to why bedtime stresses me out so much is no matter how hard I tried to do the “right” thing that my parents, school, and society tried to get me to do (go to sleep and wake up early) I couldn’t do it. Physically it was impossible. I mean I woke up early sure. I had to get to school. But that didn’t mean I was able to fall asleep at night.

I spent so much of my teenage years like most of us did, walking zombies. And I spent those same years trying and failing over and over again to get on the “right” sleep schedule. No wonder bedtime is so stress inducing for me.

All that only got worse as I got older. The stress and anxiety about sleep was already there. It just kept multiplying every time I tried to “fix” my sleep. It’s so unbelievably frustrating to put so much effort into so many parts of my day, years on end, just to not feel tired night after night. And I believe that frustration is precisely the problem. For me, bedtime = frustration and anxiety.

This is why I believe all those things I listed might actually work, but just didn’t work for me at the time.

W. Chris Winter M.D. put it really well. He says that thinking sleep hygiene alone will fix sleep is like thinking just because you cleaned your house really well before a party means that everyone will have fun. It might help but it’s really not the root of the situation.

And I think I know how to fix it.

The experiment:

The rules (with explanations)

So now that you have the whole backstory, you understand when I say the goal of this experiment is to fix my relationship with sleep. I have a few rules that I split up into 2 categories, Ground Rules and Add-Ons.

The purpose of the Ground Rules are strictly to work on my association. These rules at the end of the day are going to be the ones that fix my relationship with sleep (if I’m right).

Add-Ons are rules I can be a bit more lenient with, but I want to incorporate because they have solid scientific or personal backing as to why they’re important (I’ll explain each).

Ground Rules

I’m not allowed to go to bed until I’m sleepy, regardless of what time it is
1. This is to prevent laying awake being stressed about falling asleep. Also this will hopefully train my body and brain that bed = sleepy.
I will get up out of bed if I’m not falling asleep and do something boring
1. This is probably the trickiest one because if I set like a 15 minute alarm to tell me when I haven’t fallen asleep in 15 minutes I’ll spend that entire time stressing about the stupid alarm. And won’t fall asleep. So I’ll be playing around with different approaches to this. For now I think my rule of thumb will be if I feel the urge to check the time (or dread about the possible time) it’s probably time to get up.
No alarm to wake up
1. If I have an alarm to wake up I’ll be laying awake doing math trying to figure out how much sleep I’ll get. I’ve also noticed lately I have quite a bit of anxiety when I wake up about just getting up so I’m hoping this will help with that as well.

Add-Ons

Sunlight as soon as I wake up
1. I could write a whole letter on how cool this concept is alone but for the purpose of not making this letter a novel I’ll give you the super condensed version. Essentially the human circadian rhythm runs slightly longer than 24 hours. Getting sunlight in the morning helps reset that clock so I’m feeling sleepy at a decent time. Otherwise with the association rules above eventually I’d be on a fully nocturnal schedule.
No coffee and no tea caffeine after 1200
1. So this one is a bit dramatic, as I’ll likely have coffee as a little treat on the weekends. But I will not be drinking it every morning. The strength of coffee increases my anxiety at this point in my life. And reducing anxiety is like the main point of this whole experiment. Plus caffeine can stay in your system for up to like 10 or 12 hours and I’m typically laying down around midnight to 1am. Sources seem to vary (probably because of genetic differences) on the actual time, so I decided to play it safe. If this experiment is going to work I want to remove as many variables that impact sleepiness as possible.
Done eating by 2200
1. This one is based more on personal experience than science. There are claims that digesting food can impact sleep. Which I believe. But I also know trying to fall asleep hungry usually doesn’t work for me either. That’s why this one is an add on. If I finish eating all my meals by 2200 and I feel good than great. But if I’m hungry I’m not going to suck it up for the sake of preventing mild sleep disturbances
No tech after 2300
1. I won’t lie, this one was real close to being a ground rule. Blue light does impact melatonin production and therefore sleepiness. BUT I know me so I know if I try to set a hard and fast rule like this, cutting out something I’m used to, I will crash and burn. Not to mention I would classify this as sort of a supplemental action, sorta like the AM sun. So it’s something I will be working on, especially because when I want to shift to an earlier bedtime I can work on shifting this time back as like a catalyst. Like a transition step.

Theories on those rules

My main theory is that the ground rules will help ease the pressure so I’ll feel more relaxed around bedtime.

If I don’t know what it feels like to easily fall asleep, I won’t know what to shoot for. So in an effort to learn how to fall asleep easily AND quickly I’m removing the pressure of getting to bed and waking up by a certain time.

I’m using the same principle that I used when healing my relationship with food. I’m taking away the strict rules (outside of what I listed, which will be re-evaluated if they cause any anxiety) in order to build a relationship free of guilt, shame, and expectation.

As I’ve been trying to implement these rules I’m noticing other difficulties come up, which is a good thing! Since the anxiety and stress is slowly being taken out of the equation, I’m able to see other environmental or procedural issues that I can work on systemizing.

Conclusion

If I’m right, this experiment will help me fix how I feel about going to sleep and waking up. Hopefully developing the “skill” of falling asleep. And if that’s the case, my hope is that eventually I’ll be able use that “skill” to shift to going to bed and waking up earlier. Not that I think it’s necessary to wake up super early. But I love being up in the mornings. I just need to find a way to make it sustainable.

Are there other ways I could’ve gone about this? Absolutely. In fact I know I’m really lucky to be in a situation where I can do something like this. CBT-i is a fantastic option for anyone looking to improve their sleep. In fact that’s basically what I’m trying to do just on my own.

In addition to the rules I’m also trying to learn as much as I can about sleep. The more info I have to work with when thinking about processes and such the better. I’ve only listened to a couple sources so far.

I have listened to a good chunk of Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker, PhD. It is a very interesting book in understanding a lot of the nitty gritty science behind sleep, but so far hasn’t really told me anything I didn’t know in terms of improving it.

The Sleep Solution by W. Chris Winter M.D. has been giving much more actionable advice and I’m not that far into it so I look forward to what ever else I might learn.

Before I close out I want to reiterate that I am not a therapist of sleep specialist. This experiment isn’t just about setting up some rules to follow. There’s also a lot of mindset work that goes with it to make sure these rules work. I really believe that I have the necessary tools to do that mindset work because of my time spent in therapy. If you have sleep struggles please go see a therapist or sleep specialist.

That’s all for this letter. Sweet dreams!

-Savannah

Savannah Rorex 12/30/24 Savannah Rorex 12/30/24

ADHD Experiment #8: Weekly Calibration Part 3&4

*Kronk voice* Oh yeah, it’s all coming together

Kronk voice Oh yeah, it’s all coming together

Hello and welcome to the Chaotically Consistent Newsletter! For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m Savannah, the personal trainer with ADHD. I started this newsletter because I really enjoy creating and experimenting with processes and systems to make life easier for my brain, and I wanted to start sharing what I’ve been learning. Let’s get into it!

What is Weekly Calibration again?

(This is the same explanation as last week fyi in case you caught it last week and want to skip it)

I started this experiment after Thanksgiving when the holiday weekend completely threw me off of everything. I spent the whole weekend relaxing (aka stressing about all the stuff that wasn’t getting prepped for the week) and so the work week after that SUCKED. I’m scattered anyway but when I don’t prepare for my weeks there’s like 3x multiplier.

But even before Thanksgiving I didn’t have a good system. “Preparing for my weeks” meant I filled up my weekend with the most asinine shit because it felt like, “I have the time so that means I have to wash all the baseboards, organize every neglected drawer, and landscape the yard right now right?” 🙄

I decided I was fed up with either working the entire weekend in an effort to set myself up for the week

trying to “relax” while being filled with so much guilt that I was somehow less rested than when the weekend started. Plus nothing was set up for the week. Double whammy.

This is part 3 where I talk about my third trial. If you want to read how the first and second trial run went in more detail, you can read that here: 1 & 2

But to briefly catch up,

I’m not gonna leave you totally in the dark about parts 1 and 2 if you don’t want to go back and read them (hey no hard feelings, I get it). So to give a quick recap…

The first run was horrendous. I was doing some sort of work all flippin weekend. But not because there was too much. It was solely based on my poor planning.

With that first run I learned there’s a lot of things I make harder on myself. I let some processes run longer than they should. I make some processes more complex than they need to be (looking at you meal prep).

I also learned a bit more about my limits as well, as in how much I can handle in one day, and how that makes me feel in following days.

I like to make a point to recognize this kind of insight because it’s really what helps drive change. I like to remember how much consequences of certain decisions or actions sucked and to weigh them out. Like, does the reward of doing this thing outweigh the suckiness of doing the thing. Or on the opposite side, does the consequence of not doing this thing suck wayyyyyy more than just doing the thing (meal prep is a huge one for me).

Run 2 went so much better. I had a better idea of what level of planning and time was needed. It still took a lot of Thursday and Friday but I actually had time to myself on Saturday. Huge win.

2 main problems popped up though. First, I forgot to account for quality time with my boyfriend so we didn’t get time together (he works Saturdays). Second, I didn’t know what to do with my off time. Absolutely no clue how to relax.

So through run 2 I learned that I could probably condense Weekly Calibration even further (one day, or even half a day), and that I need to learn how to actually rest. That leads us to run 3

Run 3

This run went SO MUCH BETTER. I got damn near everything I needed to get done on Thursday. At least all the big things that take the most mental energy.

Laundry
Grocery shopping
Meal prepping
Cleaning

But my Weekly Review (a weekly digital clean up basically) happened on Friday morning. Didn’t love it at first, but I sort warmed up to it. My boyfriend wanted to be a part of it this week because part of it is tracking finances and he wanted to get a look at what we had going on. And I won’t lie, it feels kind of nice starting off my weekend by getting some things sorted out. As long as I keep it capped at an hour that is.

I keep the dishes on Saturday because I like to start with a clean slate for the week. Although I still did them throughout the weekend to keep the pile down. But dishes won’t always have their own spot in the system. It’s only because I don’t have a kitchen right now (hot water leak in the floor, everything had to get ripped out).

Of course, once again I didn’t know what to do with my time off

Run 4

I’m including run 4 in the same letter because it just happened 4 days ago and went very similarly. Except I was able to knock out my workout on Thursday as well!

Unfortunately for me, before we left for grocery shopping we found another water leak in our bathrooms. We will be losing those this week as well. Pretty sure we’re going to have to stay somewhere else at this point. I could make it without the kitchen. But no kitchen and no bathrooms? So that was a fun little surprise.

That about wraps #8 up

All that aside, I am officially declaring Experiment #8 a success! At this point Weekly Calibration has proven doable and effective. These 2 runs were enough proof to myself that I really can get all the difficult points done in one day and still feel relatively good. All that’s left for this process is to continue to practice and refine it. Making small changes to how things are ordered to best make use of the time.

This may come as a surprise to some, as it’s nowhere near perfect (and will be heavily tested in the coming weeks thanks to the pipes). But something I’ve realized when making these processes and systems is they’re never really 100% perfect or done. You get them to a point that they function well enough, and then as time goes by you allow them to flex and change as you do. But the basic concept of the process stays the same until it no longer serves you.

I cannot tell you how many processes and systems I’ve built, used, and let go of in the last couple years. And that’s not to say all of them were bad or poorly thought out (don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of those too). But many of them I just grew out of. And that’s ok.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Weekly Calibration will change countless times. But there’s also no doubt that it’ll be around for a while.

I am so unbelievably grateful that I happened to have this system set up before losing the bathrooms. Instances like this remind me exactly why I do what I do. Having Weekly Calibration in place means that even with things getting shaken up, I have this anchor point. This system that helps me make sure the admin stuff that helps me feel good each week gets done. Helps me maintain maintenance.

So what now?

And with that I am super happy to introduce ADHD Experiment #10: Recharge Protocol. I am determined to stop leaving resting up to chance. I will figure this out.

I have some really cool ideas planned for this one so stay tuned! I put updates out on Threads but of course these letters will always have more detail.

If you have areas of your life you want to systemize to decrease the mental load feel free to respond to this email! I read all replies and I might be able to help you out!

I also offer 1 on 1 coaching where I help you start and iterate on systems in 4 major areas; exercise, nutrition, sleep, and rest. You can apply here

Otherwise I’m going to leave this one here. Next letter will either introduce Experiment #10 in full or give an update on #9, we’ll see how the week goes. Until next time! Have a happy New Year!

-Savannah

Savannah Rorex 12/23/24 Savannah Rorex 12/23/24

ADHD Experiment #8: Weekly Calibration Part 2

I’m getting the hang of it

Hello and welcome to the Chaotically Consistent Newsletter! For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m Savannah, the personal trainer with ADHD. I started this newsletter because I really enjoy creating and experimenting with processes and systems to make life easier for my brain, and I wanted to start sharing what I’ve been learning. Let’s get into it!

What is Weekly Calibration again?

I decided I was fed up with either working the entire weekend in an effort to set myself up for the week

trying to “relax” while being filled with so much guilt that I was somehow less rested than when the weekend started. Plus nothing was set up for the week. Double whammy.

This is part 2 where I talk about the second run through. If you want to read how the first trial run went you can read that HERE

But to give a brief recap of part 1:

It sucked. Absolutely sucked.

An appointment Friday morning delayed grocery shopping until like 1300 (1pm).
Didn’t start meal prepping until 1500 (3pm), which took 5 hours and didn’t even get finished.
Did my weekly review Saturday morning which was a bad choice in the first place. Then I took a long time because I got swept up in improving some tools of mine (that happens a lot).
I waited too long to do dishes so they piled up and took FOREVER (like an hour and a half, dishes without a kitchen SUCKS).
Didn’t get to cleaning the house at all.
Didn’t get any time to relax either. My first day of work that week was ROUGH.

I did get laundry done though

How I learned from all those things (and more) and adjusted the process is all in part 1. But now I get to talk about the second run through!

Run 2

Wow this one went so much better. The first run was such a shit show that I was determined to to actually have some time to relax. Thursday came around and I was ready for it.

After doing some work we went grocery shopping. After we got back I knocked out my weekly review (kept it under an hour). And then I chopped a bunch of veggies that I needed for meal prep on Friday.

Friday rolled around and I jumped on meal prep pretty quick. Having only 2 things to make really helped cut down on time. Trying to prep 3 things really was a secret killer last run (I promise promise promise I’ll come out with an explanation of my meal prep system soon).

The only thing I had left to do on Saturday was the last little bit of dishes and my self care tasks.

It was far from perfect though.

Thursday’s activities still ran pretty late, around 1900 (7pm).

And because one of my preps was a slow cooker meal it took a while for it to do it’s thing. I wasn’t moving it to containers to freeze until around 1900 (7pm) on Friday.

That combined with cleaning meant I had hardly any time with my boyfriend which isn’t great.

I also finally ran into a problem I’ve been expecting.

I don’t know how to relax. I had some time on Saturday and I had no clue what to do with it. I know I could have easily scrolled it away. Or played video games. But I know from experience that those things don’t actually leave me feeling recharged which is the whole point of figuring all this out.

What I learned and what I’m changing

It was a relief to know that the process wouldn’t take my entire weekend forever. However this run showed me that I really do want to work on condensing it even more. I hadn’t realized before this run that I failed to account for quality time with my boyfriend. Huge error.

In an ideal world, the entire calibration can be done in one day. But there’s a few obstacles.

First, I have to be really careful not to push too far for one day. Not because I can’t necessarily handle it, but I know in the future if it continues to feel like a lot to push through it won’t be sustainable for me in the long run.

Second, with my boyfriend’s current work schedule he has Thursday and Friday off. I think it’s feasible to do it all in one day. However, at this time I don’t think it can happen on a day I also do work in the morning (I work Thursdays). And I know I need to keep the day before work (Saturdays) clear if I’m going to feel good that work week.

So I’m considering a temporary fix. For now I’m turning Thursdays into like an admin day until his schedule changes in a couple weeks. No work. Just calibration.

I know a lot of people don’t have that luxury. I am not saying it will be permanent. Just until his schedule changes. And it gives me an opportunity to see how well the entire thing functions in a single day multiple times.

I need get a feel for it all being in one day, and prove to myself that it can be replicated without too much strain. After that I’ll look at either condensing it further (maybe to an afternoon), that way I can put it after work on Thursday, or I’ll see if I can condense it to the first part of the day on Friday. We’ll kinda see how things feel. All I know is I want to have at least half a day with my boyfriend and at least one full day to myself.

It freaks me out a bit

I can tell this is the right next step because the idea of trying to get it all into one day makes me a little nervous. But it’s also the next logical step forward. I mean there’s only so many times I can practice meal prepping and doing laundry over a 2 day period.

What’s exciting about this though, 👀 is I can start phase 2 soon. I’m writing this letter after just completing the third trial of Weekly Calibration, and I’ll tell you a little secret. It went well enough that I can start experimenting with ways to relax and rest now!

Otherwise I’m going to leave this one here. Happy Yule!

-Savannah

Savannah Rorex 12/23/24 Savannah Rorex 12/23/24

ADHD Experiment #8: Weekly Calibration Part 1

Big Fail

Welcome to the very first letter of Chaotically Consistent! I’m super stoked that this is the topic of the first letter because it’s a concept I’m really excited about.

For anyone who doesn’t know, I’m Savannah, the personal trainer with ADHD. I started this newsletter because I really enjoy creating/experimenting with processes/systems to make life easier for my brain, and I wanted to start sharing what I’ve been learning. Let’s get into it!

So what even is a “Weekly Calibration”?

The purpose of my Weekly Calibration Process will be to set myself up for the week ahead, while simultaneously optimizing my rest on the weekend. Yes I do think fun names for systems matter.

Why bother?

Setting up a system is a lot of fucking work. So why do I want put myself through that?

Because I’m tired.

Every week it seems has one of 2 outcomes:

I either try to “set myself up” and end up doing some form of work all flippin’ weekend. So when I’m supposed to start work on Sunday (I work Sunday to Thursday) I feel absolutely drained because I haven’t actually rested at all.

I decide to “relax” which anyone with ADHD will know is really a guilt ridden 2 days where I try to ignore all the thoughts that I should be doing something to prepare. Even if I do manage to actually rest, the work week is massively scattered and unproductive because I didn’t set anything up on the weekend.

And I think that’s bullshit. Just because I can’t manage to do this shit on autopilot doesn’t mean I have to sit and suffer. So I’m determined to create a process for myself that sets me up for the week, AND optimizes my rest on the weekend.

DISCLAIMER: I do believe that learning to actually rest is a skill that needs to be practiced. I have a little bit of practice, but I believe having this system set up will allow me to get even better at resting effectively. That’s probably the subject of another experiment.

Eventually I want the process to take as little time as possible (ideally a single day, maybe split into 2 parts). I want to create the flexibility to use this not only for weekends, but also for holidays and vacations. Having a process to do before leaving or taking multiple days off will allow for more mental relaxation and will make coming back easier to handle.

This whole idea was sparked by Thanksgiving weekend actually. The work week after that SUCKED and that was the final straw for me.

For now it will have to be sort of a strict process until I work out the kinks. Then I can really work on the flexibility aspect.

Set up

I knew that when left unsupervised I find a million things I “have to get done”. Spoiler alert: most of them actually don’t matter. So I started off by listing all the things I actually do have to get done on a weekly basis. And here’s the important part: I made sure none of them had anything to do with new projects. Everything is maintenance only.

In the little tool I made to go along with this I broke everything down into individual steps to give me a real clear idea, but here’s a condensed version of the list:

Laundry
Errands
- Including grocery shopping
Weekly Review
- A digital clean up basically. I track expenses, clear out emails, organize my calendar, meal plan for the following week, etc.
- NOTE: This process was solidified in place before even thinking about the Weekly Calibration. I wouldn’t try to figure both out at the same time. Honestly kinda wish I’d thought of Weekly Calibration first but ¯\*(ツ)*/¯ ya win some ya lose some.
Meal prep
Clean the house
Dishes
- Normally would be done daily, but I don’t have a kitchen right now because of a leak so dishes have to be done by hand in a bathroom sink and are a separate beast
Self care tasks
- I wanted to schedule time for weekly basis self care things like cutting my nails and stuff so I don’t forget and have to do it during the week

In the first version of the list I had:

the tasks
their status
date last completed (because some things can be skipped but I wanna know if I’ve skipped them for too long)
and how long each one takes (which I ultimately got rid of because I totally forgot to keep track of it anyway, BUT might be a helpful idea for some)

All that was left was for me to test it. Considering I set up the protocol Thursday morning (the day the thing was supposed to start), I was already doomed to fail.

Run 1

Here’s everything I can remember that went wrong

Didn’t do anything Thursday night to get started
Had a doctors appointment scheduled Friday morning
Tried to go grocery shopping and do my meal prep on the same day (Friday)
Meal prep didn’t start until around 1500 (3pm)
Ended up having to make a second trip to the grocery store because I forgot stuff
Did not try to clean up dishes as I prepped
Had to finish prep Saturday
- Which was a slow cooker meal, easy enough to make but a pain in the ass to store because it took FOREVER to cool down. I didn’t finish until like 2200 (10pm) that night
My Weekly Review took at least 3 hours because I kept getting distracted by fixing pieces of it
Dishes took an HOUR AND A FREAKING HALF
- Not really my fault but a fact nonetheless so it needs to be considered
Didn’t get to cleaning AT ALL
Barely got through my self care tasks, which this week was literally just cutting my nails

Honestly probably more went wrong that I forgot about. But it was an absolute disaster.

What I learned and will be implementing

After run 1, I learned a few things from my failures. Here’s the changes I implemented:

Weekly review needs to be capped at 1 hour
- It is very easy for time to slip away from me during this process. I easily get caught up in changing structures of tools or diving deep into ideas emails sparked or a million other possibilities.
- So I put mandatory things at the top of list (tracking finances, meal planning, etc.), and marked ones that are ok to skip if time runs short
- I also added in a new rule: I’m not allowed to make any tool changes during that time. I gotta schedule them in somewhere else
Only do 2 meal preps instead of 3
- One of these days I’ll explain my meal prep system in full. Long story short, I make huge batches of stuff and freeze it. Over time I end up with my own little freezer section like at the grocery store
- BUT it’s also easy for me to go overboard. So new rule: only prep one breakfast option and one dinner option (I make like 20 servings and dinner options are also used as lunch options, I promise I’ll explain it more in a future letter because it’s a system I’m really proud of)
Grocery shopping needs to happen Thursday not Friday
- I don’t think this would have been as much of a problem if grocery shopping was the only thing we did Friday morning. But having to wait to start meal prep until like 1500 (3pm) because of how long errands went did NOT work out at all
- So for next week, grocery shopping was scheduled for Thursday after work
- I also considered possibly cutting veggies Thursday night to have ready for prep on Friday
Starting prep earlier in the morning
- I decided that next week I needed to be able to start meal prep Friday morning, no later than like 1200 if I was going to finish at a reasonable time
Doing most of the dishes Friday and attempting to clean them as I use them instead of letting them pile
- This one doesn’t need much explanation. And really won’t be a factor in the final product because hopefully we get a kitchen back at some point.
Leaving Saturday mostly empty to relax before starting work on Sunday
- Having Saturday full of crap before starting work on Sunday was NOT the move. I felt terrible. So next week the plan was to do everything in my power to keep Saturday as clear as I could

Conclusion

Overall, rough freaking start. But honestly I expected nothing less. As messy as it was, it clearly showed me a lot of rough spots to plan for and adjust.

One of the most annoying parts about a system like this is since it’s a weekly process I can’t do it every day to work on refining it. I have to wait for the next week to roll around.

But I feel very hopeful about the discoveries I made. Not that next week will be perfect. Far from it. But I know how I want to move forward.

I’m going to leave this one here because it’s getting way too long to hold even my attention. Can’t imagine what you guys are feeling. I know it’s a bit of a cliffhanger. I am actively writing about how week 2 went and plan on sending it out next week! So keep your eyes open for part 2 of ADHD Experiment #8!

Savannah