#83🙈 Overcoming the ADHD 'Shoulds'
How to Identify Your Values and Make Confident Decisions as a Product Manager
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I am an ADHD and product management coach helping you change one belief and take one action each week.
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Part 9 of the Self-Care Series
🦋The Takeaways
Belief: I should be like or do X.
Reality: "Should" fills the space when you don't know what you're striving for.
Action: Identify your values to quiet the should.
⭐️Introduction
I'm sorry. Yep, I'm starting this newsletter with a classic ADHD apology. You don't know what I've done, but I will apologize for it now anyway.
I'm apologizing to you and me for not publishing a blog post since September 4th. I haven’t solo written a piece since August 22nd. It’s been 5 weeks?! Did I say I'm sorry yet?
A lot has happened in the last month. Travel, sickness, life changes, job challenges, birthday, and small business challenges have all hit me recently.
At my lowest, I think, "I suck, how did I let this happen?" At my highest, I think "I can do it, it'll be OK." Thanks to ADHD, I can oscillate between my highs and lows within minutes. It's exhausting.
I've made so many potentially life changing decisions the last 5 weeks I didn't have time to get stuck in my anxiety of what I "should" do.
I don't know if the decisions were the right ones yet, but I feel good about myself. Why? Because if you're consistent with the values you make your decisions from, you'll eventually get to where you need to be.
😵💫The Belief – I should be like…
"Should" can be a loud voice when you have ADHD and work as a product manager. Should is the voice in your head that tells you how to live up to others' expectations. It can consume you because you can look at others and think, "If I was just like them, maybe life wouldn't be so hard?"
It can be so loud it stops me from taking action. Others may look at my inaction as laziness when in reality, it's the anxiety of the "should" or unknown that keeps me in place.
That feeling is amplified in ambiguous tech roles like product management (PM). PMs can be so different from company to company or from team to team. You can take two PMs and ask them the same question and you might get two different answers. Who was right? Depends on who's asking.
With unclear ways to measure what a PM "should" do across teams or companies, "should" can be all you hear in your head. It can hold you in anxiety or depression, making you believe that you're one mistake away from being found as a fraud.
🤝The Reality - Should vs Values
Values are the expectations you set for yourself to live up to. They are the voice that you define to guide you when you're unsure what to do. They fill the space of what you "should" do with "how" you do it.
Values help you be "clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts, and behaviors align with those beliefs." - Brene Brown
They are the stories that you tell yourself of how you want to live. Having identified values helps you quiet the should. Values hold the spaces of what we strive to make true. They are the boundaries you create to prevent "should" from filling those spaces.
My core values are curiosity and inclusion.
Curiosity reminds me to keep learning and asking questions. To have an open mind about the world and to put my ego aside when my understanding or beliefs are challenged. It's the gift that sends me down a rabbit hole at the wrong time of day to learn something new. And the gift that allowed me to be an expert in numerous fields.
Inclusion drives me to invite others into spaces they might have wanted to be in but never felt welcome. To bring together people and things that have never intersected before to create something greater. It's why I've run beer festivals, large tech events, and am good at connecting with people. It’s part of why I write this newsletter.
Knowing my values helped give me confidence in the face of uncertainty. I don't know if each decision I made was right or wrong at the moment. But I knew I was heading in the right direction.
🛠️The Action – Identifying your values
Here are some strategies to help you identify values and quiet the should:
📝 Identify your values with the Dare to Lead Values worksheet. Created by shame researcher Brene Brown, the worksheet lists values where you pick your top 2. That might be hard, but having just 2 values helps give clarity on how to prioritize your values and the decisions you make with them.
I found that while I resonate with more values than 2, they all laddered up into my top 2 of curiosity and inclusion.
🤔 Get under the "Should" with "Want and Need" - When should gets loud, get under it.
Create a list of your shoulds. I recommend externalizing it by writing it on paper or telling someone to get it out of your head. Should is always loudest in your head.
Create a list of your wants. Want is a reflection of how you feel about the question at hand. It's a reflection of what you'd like to do vs what you think you should do.
If you're not sure of what you want, you can start with the question "What does my body feel?" Your physical sensation often reflects what you feel before you realize it.
Make a list of your needs. Need is a mix of what you want to do and how you want to solve the problem. They are the conviction of what you think needs to be done vs what should be done.
👑 Next time you're stuck with something at work, ask yourself, "If you were in complete charge, what would you do?"
I learned this strategy from my manager recently. We were brainstorming on how to solve a problem we were both stuck on. They paused and asked me what I would do if I were in charge.
My brain switched from "should" mode to "lead" mode. From the anxiety of "What can I do to not mess up?" to the empowerment of "There's a problem, how do I fix it for the team?" ADHD brains like a good crisis, right?
✨Conclusion
Being aware of my values and practicing them in my actions gives me confidence that I'm moving in the right direction. Each action I take is because I want to do it. I choose not to let the should of anxiety or ADHD keep me in place.
It's not a perfect system. I still hear the voice of should in my head. I still procrastinate or make decisions I shouldn't. The difference, though, is that I also hear the voice of my values. Of what I want and need to do for myself and others. And I know that voice will always drive me in the right direction.
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