Transcription
Hey guys, my name is Ali Al carulli. I am a systems engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, and in this video, I want to show you four techniques, especially if you're someone who has ADHD or higher up on the ADHD spectrum, that can help you get started instantly on tasks and overcome laziness.
I made a previous video where I went over this entire four steps to hyperfocus the ADHD system. In this video, I really want to focus on the execution piece. And in the previous video, I basically mentioned that in order to execute and get things done, you first need to get some things in order, such as clarity, prioritization, time management. You need to remove distractions, things from your life, and whatnot. And there's a few other things. But this video, I really want to talk about execution because eventually, you could have the most amazing plan in the world. You could have everything mapped out, but until you sit down and act and do the right things repeatedly over and over, nothing's going to happen.
And I know this works because this is exactly what I've done to graduate my PhD at 26, get my job at NASA. This was also what helped me grow my other YouTube channel, my engineering YouTube channel, 30k subscribers, which is projected to 100k in like a few months. So I know this stuff works. So I really want to talk about the execution.
So again, when it comes to execution, well, like what is laziness? Laziness is not wanting to do something, right? It's it's a state of just kind of sitting there and not doing something, right? And obviously, that's not desirable because you want to get up and get things done and execute and achieve your wildest dreams because eventually, I mean, we live in a physics-based world. It's the action that's going to cause the reaction, which is your results, in business and in life.
And most people don't understand this, but there's actually two pieces to execution. There's starting and there's continuing. And a lot of people struggle with starting. Some people struggle with continuing. I would say actually starting is usually the bigger problem because once you get started, often it is easier to continue. But continuing is often again about environment design, like just making sure that your phone is not near you, no one's distracting you. If you like the task, then that's going to help you hyperfocus. It's going to help you get really down on what you need to do. But I really want to talk about the starting piece, right?
Starting often has to do a lot with self-talk. Has has to do with the things that you're telling yourself, the stories you're telling yourself. If you take two people, who someone gets started very easily and is not very lazy, or someone who's a bit more lazy has a hard time starting, it really just comes down to the inner conversation they're having inside their brain. And I want to show you the techniques in a little bit, but I also want to make it clear that laziness very often is very misunderstood and is very misinterpreted. Like people who are perceived as lazy, and we kind of give them a negative connotation, "Oh, just stop being lazy. Just be more disciplined, bro. Just come on, just get the thing done." Like, what people don't understand is those lazy, undisciplined people, they want to be disciplined and not lazy more than anyone else. They just like something is blocking them. There's some resistance. And that resistance has to do with the self-talk.
So I want to go over four different self-talk techniques, again, especially relevant if you're someone with ADHD or higher up on the ADHD spectrum, meaning you're struggling to start on tasks, you struggle to focus for extended periods of time, you tend to have lower self-esteem because you're not, you know, you're smart, but you're not realizing your full potential. So I really want to go over these techniques and explain them in detail.
So, again, what is self-talk? Self-talk is the conversation you're having with yourself, right? It's basically either you reacting to something that's going on, or you issuing a command, you telling yourself, "Hey, go do this thing," or "Go do that thing." But more importantly, it's about the relationship you have with yourself, right? A lot of people don't understand this, but there's this subconscious conversation going on all the time between you and yourself. There's two people. There's the one who's talking, and there's the one who's listening. And these people make up who you are, basically.
And the first one that you need to do to overcome laziness and and kind of kickstart inertia is to annihilate overwhelm. Very often, laziness is a function or a byproduct of overwhelm. And to give you some examples, when you tell yourself, "I got to sit down and I make, I got to make a YouTube video," like, "Oh, oh, I got to make a video. I got to do this overwhelming thing," which has multiple components. Which are the components? Again, what do I have to do? I have, yeah, yeah, I'll just do it later. I'll, oh, what is this? Let me grab my phone. Right? This is how the brain works. Like when something seems daunting, overwhelming, when there's a big project going on, then you're going to be a lot more likely to put it off.
Now, imagine if instead of saying, "I got to make a video," all you said is, "Oh, I just got to turn on the ring light and record." And this is something, this is a process I went through as I was making this video. I have this ring light right here. And initially, I was feeling that I was feeling the resistance. Even as an NSA engineer, PhD, blah, blah, blah, all that, like very cool person, like I'm still a human, and I have ADHD. I'm pretty high up on the spectrum, and I can detect when my brain is like, "Oh, I got to make a video," and immediately I'm like, "No, no, no. I don't have to make a video. I just got to turn on my ring light and get my slides up and running." That's no big deal. And that alone kind of creates a relief. Okay, like I'll do that. That sounds a lot more doable. It's a lot more manageable.
Another example is if you're someone who's running a business and you have to run paid ads. Instead of telling yourself, "Oh, I got to make 10 new ads," like that sounds so overwhelming, so terrifying. Imagine if you just said, "No, I just got to write a hook or an outline for just one ad." Right? I just got to do that one small thing and get started. And that alone will get you in to get started. Very often, once you write one ad, you will want to write the second and the second and the second. But again, very often laziness in this example is just a function of overwhelm. You know that the thing you have to do is just so difficult and daunting, like, "Oh man, I don't want to do it." Where if you just say yourself, "I just got to do this small thing," very often that'll help you keep going.
Again, a very simple one is, let's say you have an evening routine that helps you get ready for bed and whatnot, and you lay out the steps. When you say, "Oh, I got to do my evening routine," like that sounds like work. But instead, you could say, "Oh, I just got to open my tracking sheet." Like, for example, if you have a sheet that tracks your evening routine, that's all I got to do. And once you do that, then you'll say, "Oh, I'll do the next thing, and then the next thing, and the next thing, and so on."
Now, that's technique number one: to use self-talk to reduce overwhelm and to basically make it easy to get started on something.
Second thing is, again, something that's going on in the back of your mind, you're often not detecting, is choice and ownership. This one's very important because very often, when you say, again, like when it comes to laziness, you're often thinking, "Oh man, I have to do this thing. I have to make a video, and I have to sit down and do this thing," and it sounds like someone's forcing something on you, killing your freedom, killing your ownership. And this is very, very important to change. Instead of saying, "I have to record a video," you just say, "Oh, I get to make a cool video." Like, you have to constantly sell yourself and reframe yourself on what it is that you're trying to do.
Now, this is actually a lot harder than it seems. You may have even heard this before, but implementing it requires a lot of iteration and repetition. Because, for example, in my case, when I, my default self-talk would be, "Oh, I got to sit down and make a YouTube video." And I, again, I was able to catch myself and say, "No, no, no. I get to make it cool. I'm literally changing people's lives. I'm helping people right now who are, I don't know, who may perceive themselves as lazy, who get scrutinized by society all the time, and they just need to make small, minor tweaks." And when I think of it like that, I'm like, "Yeah, that's something I want to do. I give myself empowerment and ownership." And again, that kind of feeds into a spiral of self-talk of like, "Man, you know, actually, I love making videos. I love this YouTube channel. This thing is awesome. I want to share my ideas with the world. I want to do these things." And all that started with, again, that very simple trigger of catching myself whenever I think, "I have to," or "I got to," or "Someone's making me," "Someone's holding a gun to my head." It's like, "Yeah, just do this thing." Like, your immediate response as a human is to be like, "Nope, I don't want to do that."
Third technique is, so again, first thing we covered is annihilate overwhelm by breaking things into very, very small things to just make starting easy. Giving yourself choice and ownership. Third one, this again, very, very important. Very often, like you're lazy because you don't know why you're doing what you're doing. And many people are clear on their like big why. Like, for example, "I want to take care of my family. I want to scale my business so I can achieve all these amazing things. I want to live my life to the fullest. I want to travel and see the world." Like, people have a very long why that they kind of make a lot of sense of. But again, especially if you're someone with ADHD, long-term stuff doesn't really seem to motivate you. What you need is kind of like short-term rewards. The ADHD brain is lower on dopamine. Like, there's hardware differences that make people with ADHD again, a lot more likely to be lazy than someone. Now, with ADHD, again, because if you know something's important long-term and you have a strong why for like six months from now, but that just doesn't do it for you, your brain needs kind of a more of an instant dopamine hit. So you got to sell yourself on it, especially you got to do it in the short term, and you got to remind yourself of the benefits, especially the short-term benefits, right?
So, like, for example, when you're thinking, "Oh, I got to plan tomorrow." You can't just say, "I have to plan tomorrow," and your brain doesn't even know why you're doing that, and you're like, "Oh man, that sounds like a chore." Instead, again, using techniques 1, 2, 3, you say, "I'll write down three things to do tomorrow so I'll have a productive day and feel good about myself." Like, for me, when I think, "Okay, tomorrow," like when I visualize myself feeling better tomorrow morning, that's going to motivate me a lot more than achieving some crazy goal in six months. Again, that's just how my brain works, and I have to work with that, right?
Another example is, say, "Oh, I have to go to the gym." Again, sounds like a chore. Okay, yeah, in six months I'll get the amazing abs, all that cool stuff. But short-term, the reward is a lot more appealing to me where I say, "Oh, I'm going to exercise for 30 minutes because I can feel more confident and I'll have energy to get things done." And that's something I can do today. That's a reward I can achieve today, a reward I can reap today. And again, that's something very, very important with ADHD brains. You want to focus more on short-term stuff. Long-term stuff is going to inspire you, it's going to make you feel amazing, but you're not going to take action. We're trying to motivate action here again, because overcoming laziness has to do with taking action. And basically, that's an example.
Now, fourth one, which is extremely important, again, like this one is something that's kind of made to be this esoteric thing or this kind of fluffy thing on social media, which I hate, is the idea of self-love. And most people like think of self-love as like, "Oh, you just, I don't know, like take yourself to spas and whatnot." And like, I don't even know how people perceive self-love. To me, self-love is about self-respect and about just kind of giving yourself the support you need. And the example I use is that it's often you against the whole world. The world is so competitive. And again, like imagine if there's two people inside of you. There's you who's acting, and then there's you who's listening. If you're not going to love yourself, if you're not going to take care of yourself, how the hell are you going to fight the whole world on your own, right? You need all the support you need.
So for that, I say, never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever beat yourself up. Like there's literally zero benefit in self-criticism, in any type of negative self-talk. And like, "Oh dude, you're so dumb. You just did this thing again. Come on, I can't believe you did that. Come on, last week you said you weren't." Like this kind of self-talk does not help at all, right? Instead, what you want to do is you want to give yourself compassion and say, "Okay, I did something which I don't know why I did it. Maybe I do know why I did it. Instead of criticizing myself, let me see why I did it. Let me try to solve the problem." For example, if I'm, I don't know, if I just ate fast food and I promised myself that I'm not going to eat fast food, then maybe I shouldn't have so much junk laying around my house, right? Maybe I should not hang out with my friends who all they do is eat fast food, and I know that they're going to want to do that. Like maybe I just need a minor tweak in my environment. Like it's nothing wrong with me. Nothing's wrong with me. It has nothing to do with me or who I am. It's just my system or my environment. Something is wrong. Something that I'm doing is wrong. Something about my behavior is wrong. Something about my decision is wrong. So again, it's not something that's wrong with me. It's something that's wrong with my decisions, my behaviors. Obviously, these things are mine, but the idea is that I can change those things. But if I'm going to criticize myself and beat myself up, that's going to be of no help. Guess what that's going to do? That's going to make me not want to do any work, and that's going to feed into the laziness cycle, and I'm going to be even lazier. And guess who that benefits? Absolutely no one.
So if you're having a long day and you say, "Oh, I didn't get much done today. I kind of wasted the whole day. I'm such a piece of..." like you could say, "Okay, I didn't accomplish much. That's fine. Why? Why didn't I accomplish much?" Right? Like you want to instantly switch from self-criticism to like putting on your problem-solving hat and thinking, "Let me be inquisitive. Why did I not get much work?" Okay, maybe I don't know what I need to do. Maybe I haven't figured out what I need to do. Maybe my environment needs change. Maybe I should not be in my room all day. Maybe I should try grabbing my laptop and going to some coffee shop or some university nearby. Maybe I should call a friend. I feel lonely as hell, and that makes me not motivated to take any work." Like you instantly start diagnosing and solving the problem, and you spend like no time beating yourself up, right?
Again, what I like about this is it does not lower your self-esteem. It does not feed into that laziness cycle of like, "Oh, I don't want to do this." To like, "Okay, let me figure out why I'm not doing it." And there's a quote I want to finish off with, which is: "When you love yourself, you are far more likely to become the best person you could be." And if you genuinely want to overcome laziness long-term, one area that you can very quickly detect and see if it's going wrong is if you're someone who criticizes themselves. And instantly try to be someone who's like, "No, no, no. Nothing's wrong with me. I'm going to try to solve the problem. I'm going to solve the problem, right? I'm going to figure out why I did that."
Okay, so again, these are pretty much the four techniques that I would use. And now, again, I don't want you to just go ahead and like forget all about this. There are ways that you can reinforce this on a day-to-day basis. One day is you can have reminders, whether through your phone or through your computer or things of that nature. Another one is you can have like pin-ups on your wall or something like that. And I go into a bit more detail in my program. I'll put a link for that below, but you don't have to get it. If you can go ahead and watch the rest of my videos so you can just familiarize yourself with what else is going on on how to be more productive, whether someone who has ADHD or not. And again, if you found this video useful, or if you have an idea on, or if any of this resonated, leave a comment below. Introduce yourself, say hi. This is still a very new channel, so I'll be responding to all the comments as of now, so you can ask me anything you want. So yeah, with that being said, I'll see you in the next video. Peace. Love.