Find Your Flow: Three Focus Day Models for ADHD Brains

It's a typical Wednesday, 9am you decide to quickly check your email. 45 minutes later, you're still in that inbox responding to “urgent” questions. Then you remember you need to write that weekly email newsletter, so you open a new tab. But first you think, let me just respond to this one Voxer message. Oh, and those LinkedIn comments, that shouldn't take too long, right? You know what maybe it's time to give focus days a try. So in this episode, I'll be sharing three different ways that you can do so. Let's be honest, friend, traditional time management advice makes us want to throw our planners across the freaking room.

Most productivity systems were designed by and for neurotypical brains that can seamlessly hop between tasks like they're changing TV channels. But our brains, well, they're more like vintage turntables. We need time to get up to speed, find our groove, and really hit our stride. Every time we switch between different types of work, say creative writing to analytical thinking to client service, it's like lifting the needle and starting a whole new song. And context switching isn't just annoying, it's expensive as hell. Research shows that it can take up to 25 minutes to fully recover your focus after switching. And for those of us with adhd, it can take even longer. Because we're not just switching tasks, we're switching entire mental frameworks.

Think about it like this, imagine you're a chef trying to prepare five different cuisines simultaneously in the same kitchen. You've got pasta boiling, sushi prep happening, carne asada grilling and curry spices grinding all at the same time, the result? Well, everything's either overcooked, totally bland, or barely started. That's our brain on traditional multitasking. So what if instead you dedicated a different day of the week to mastering each type of cuisine? Suddenly you're not a frazzled short order cook. You're a focused culinary artist and that is exactly what focus days can do for your business.

And because we love options, I'm going to share three of my favorite focus day models. Let's start with my own system. It's the one I know best and I've been using for the past three years. This is the one I call single focus scheduling. It's a five day a week model where each day of the week has one primary function. So you work in and on your business five days a week, w ell, this might be the right model for you too. Let me tell you how I structure my five day week. Monday is CEO day, no meetings, no client work, no content creation.

Pure strategic thinking. This is the day of the week I'm working on my business, not in it. Now between you and me, because I'm a solopreneur and I don't like to take myself so seriously. I don't actually think of myself as a CEO, it's just me and two part time virtual assistants. But I do love me some alliteration and the rest of the days and my single focus scheduling plan start with the letter C, so CEO day it is.

Tuesdays and Thursdays are client days. Nothing but client calls, client focused work and client related tasks. My brain gets to live in relationship and service delivery mode and nothing else on those two days a week. Now energetically, client days are both fulfilling and demanding, so I intentionally do not schedule them back to back, that's why they're Tuesday and Thursday. Now Wednesday is content day, recording both solo episodes and guest interviews for this podcast, doing interviews for other podcasts, newsletter writing, social media planning, and SEO work. My creative brain gets in the zone and stays there without interruption.

So for example, I will open up a couple of slots for free consultations on a Wednesday because the Friday slots are full and it might be easier for me than adding them to an already busy client day or making people wait. I'm also able to get back into the groove with client creation somewhat easily, so that's why I use Wednesdays as my overflow day for free consultations. One day I will not touch is my CEO day, and that is because it is the hardest one to commit to and stay committed. Now let me say a little bit more about CEO days. In this single focus five day model it might not be what you think it is.

And by the way, you can schedule your CEO day whenever it works best for you, but in my experience, Mondays tend to work best for most of us if we work a Monday through Friday Schedule this is true both energetically and psychologically, because CEO days are just hard for us to wrap our minds around and we've had the weekend as a break before we dig in. Now what a CEO day is not, a CEO day is not catching up on emails you didn't have time for the previous week. It is not for handling client requests that came in over the weekend or doing admin tasks you've been avoiding.

It's also not for putting out fires that have been lingering from last week or longer. And it's also not basically being a glorified cleanup crew for your own business. A kitchen sink day or a whatever day. The CEO day is actually your most focused and most important day of the week, but it can take some work to get into it. How I do my CEO days is like this. I start my morning reviewing my quarterly goals. And I don't mean just glancing at them or giving them the side eye or the once over, but like really looking at them and asking myself what is working? What isn't? Where am I? Am I ahead of schedule? Am I falling behind? And unlike many folks with adhd, I'm actually a morning person.

So focusing on my current goals first thing is actually the best time for me to do it. Mid-morning I dig into my business metrics. Which services are more profitable? Where are my clients finding me? What is my real hourly rate when I factor in all the behind the scenes work? This is not just number crunching for fun, because trust me, nothing about that sounds fun to me. But this data drives every other decision I make.

I have my assistant update a monthly spreadsheet we call Pulse Metrics and literally track everything that can be measured in the business. And while I used to make every excuse in the freaking book to avoid looking at my numbers, turns out data is much more reliable than feelings and hunches when it comes to decision making and I really don't like the kind of surprises that come when you're not paying attention to your numbers. Mid-afternoon after a proper lunch and a rest break, I move into strategic planning mode. So I'm mapping out the next quarter, identifying bottlenecks, new opportunities, and sometimes making the hard decision to kill something that's not working or has just run its course and leveled off.

Currently I'm focusing on switching to an LLC and also registering my first trademark. Late afternoon is systems thinking time. What processes need to be created or improved? I'm currently upgrading and updating my client offboarding processes. I also look at what's eating up too much of my time that could be automated, delegated, or eliminated entirely. I also regularly review our tech stack during this time and identify opportunities to increase efficiency and reduce overhead, sometimes just by switching providers.

For example, just this month I canceled my Zoom Pro subscription and switched to Google Meet. I also dropped my monthly subscription cost to Loom by replacing it with Convey, purchasing a lifetime license on AppSumo. And a few months ago I did the very same thing, swapping Calendly for Tidycal. I'll link to all of these in the Show Notes if you're interested in any of these platforms. But the key principle is on Mondays I'm thinking like a boss, not an employee in my own business. Everything I do on Monday sets the direction for the other four days and honestly, for the entire year.

And here's why this works beautifully for ADHD brains, by Wednesday, when I'm in content creation mode, I'm not wondering what I should be talking about because I planned it on Monday. By Friday, when I'm heavily into networking, I know what types of connections I'm looking for because I identified gaps during my strategic time. Now, I'll be real with you, it took me years to make the decision to do this and about six months to fully implement it. I don't say that to throw you off, but to calibrate expectations realistically. Even after I committed to this type of focus day schedule, I would continue to quickly check my client messages, even on CEO days, or quickly write a social media post if I had time on client days.

But I'll be honest with you, every time I did it, it was like letting a toddler loose in my perfectly organized mental workspace. But old habits are hard to break because not only are we creating new routines and changing behaviors, we're actually creating new neural pathways. And the brain is kind of fucking lazy about that. The breakthrough came when I realized that protecting these boundaries was not about being rigid. It was about protecting and preserving my most precious resources, my time, and my talent.

Now you want to hear another one? Okay, if the five structured days a week feels like way too much, or maybe you only work in your business three days a week, either because you're maintaining a job or that's the amount of days you want to work in your business, consider what I call the essential three model that is Create, Connect, Consume. Here's how it goes, Create days are for all your output work. I'm talking writing, designing, strategizing, planning, anything where you're producing something new. Connect days are for all the people focused work your client calls, networking, team meetings, customer service, anything involving human interaction.

Then consume days, they are all about input activities, reading, learning, researching, admin planning, data analysis, anything where you're taking information in rather than putting it out. Now this model may be perfect for you if you thrive on having both structure and spontaneity in your week. Maybe you work your business Monday, Wednesday, Friday and the other days are completely free or devoted to other commitments. Or maybe you prefer having only three days of structure in your business and two days that are spontaneous and flexible based on whatever is going on. I have a client who uses this model because she's growing a business and also working as a freelancer with several long-term clients.

So she keeps her structured business work to Monday create, Wednesday connect and Friday consume. And because her freelance work is done for you rather than done with you, she can move those other days around to accommodate illness, holidays and take advantage of the occasional conference or all day training. The beauty of this this system is that it honors the reality that not everyone can commit to five days of structure focus or needs to, but it still gives your brain some clear lanes and guardrails to operate with.

Then there is the third option, I call this one the split screen approach. This third approach is perfect for parents dealing with school age children and their schedules, people with chronic health conditions that can affect their energy levels, and anyone who simply can't spend an entire day doing one thing for a variety of reasons or wants to do so. So instead of creating full focus days, you create focused half days based on your natural energy patterns and other obligations. Here's how that might look. You might have morning momentum, afternoon flow this is a very common split.

Some people have sharper analytical thinking in the morning and better relational or creative energy in the afternoon. So mornings might be for strategic work planning, complex problem solving, while afternoons are for content creation, client calls or admin. Here's what you need to pay attention to with this model your own energetic patterns. Some people are night owls that don't hit their cognitive stride until well after lunch. Others like me, kind of have a 2pm crash. So in fact it's so predictable you could just about set your watch by it.

So in my five day work week with the single focus scheduling model, I have a midday lunch and rest break built in. One of my clients discovered that her brain worked completely differently at different times of the day. So she uses mornings for detail work, admin, email scheduling, anything that requires precision but not necessarily creativity. Then afternoons were when her big picture thinking came alive. That's when she did her strategy, content planning and business development. The key here is to work with your natural rhythms instead of fighting them. So if you're naturally chatty and energetic at 10am, then that's probably not the best type for your deep, focused work. If you hit a wall at 3pm every day, you should not be scheduling important client calls after that.

The split screen approach has less structure by design, so it requires more self-awareness. Self awareness about your energetic rhythms and strategies for starting, stopping and shifting gears. I did a three-episode momentum series just a couple of months ago on these very topics and I will link to that in the show notes as well as the free guide for all of the starting, stopping and shifting strategies that are mentioned. Now, you've heard the three models and you probably have some intuitive feeling for which one would be best for you, but you might feel more drawn to one and not the others. And if you want a more strategic approach to deciding which one to give a try, here are the things I want you to consider.

We've been talking about energy patterns. Are you someone that bounces out of bed ready to tackle the world? Or do you need two cups of coffee and a more gentle easing into your day? Do you hit a wall in the afternoon or do you get a second wind after dinner? If you have predictable energy shifts throughout the day, the split screen approach is probably your best bet. You can match the types of tasks to your energy levels instead of fighting your natural rhythms and just trying to force yourself to do whatever needs to be done. Another thing to consider are your scheduling constraints.

I mean, can you realistically protect an entire day for focused work? Or do you have regular commitments and the interruptions that go with them, like school pickup, medical appointments or other commitments? If you need maximum flexibility, I'd go with the essential 3. It gives you the structure and the breathing room. If you can commit to more rigid boundaries, the single focused scheduling might be the way to go. Also, consider your business maturity. Are you in startup mode, where everything feels urgent and you're still figuring out what works? Or are you at a point where you know your core services and your client base pretty well?

Newer businesses usually benefit from the flexibility of the essential 3. More established businesses can often handle the structure of the single focused scheduling model. And here's a big one, overwhelm tolerance do you thrive when you have detailed structure and clear boundaries? Or do you feel trapped when there's too many roles? Some of us need structure to feel safe, others need flexibility to feel creative. If roles feel supportive go for the single focus scheduling. If they feel too restrictive, start with the essential three.

ADHD brains all benefit from structure and spontaneity, but the balance between the two varies quite a bit from person to person as well as in addition to our adhd, our stage of life, our temperament, our other obligations, our family structure, and our individual preferences. Do you pay attention to your natural batching preferences? That will give you clues too. I mean, maybe you already find yourself naturally grouping similar things together. Like do you tend to answer your emails all at once a couple times a day rather than going in and out of your inbox all day long? Do you prefer to schedule all of your calls on the same day and even run them back to back so you can stay in the zone as well as max out on efficiency?

Well, if you're already a natural batcher, any of these systems will feel intuitive if batching feels foreign. And frankly, even though you know it's probably a good idea, you're feeling a lot of resistance. Start with the split screen approach. It requires the least dramatic change to how you probably already work. Here are some other observable patterns to look for in making your decision. If you get frustrated when business tasks interrupt creative work, then the Create, Connect, Consume model might be just perfect.

If you work better in shorter bursts, either due to health, family or energetic constraints, the split screen is probably calling your name. In truth, there's no perfect system for all ADHD brains, only the system that works for your specific ADHD brain as well as your business and your life circumstances. And here's something important, you can experiment. Try one approach for three weeks, then reevaluate what worked, what didn't, what drove you crazy, and what felt like sweet, sweet relief. And by the way, in case you need permission, you can take any of these three focus day models as a baseline and adapt it to your unique situation and preferences.

Now, if you've made it all the way to this point in the episode without wondering, yeah, well, what happens when someone has an emergency? Because you know when that happens, and it will, it can threaten to hijack your beautifully planned focus day. So let's just talk about the elephant in the room. Here's the brutal truth, and you might not be ready to hear it, 95% of business emergencies are not actual emergencies. I'm going to say that again for the folks in the back. Up to 95% of business emergencies aren't actual emergencies. They're just things that feel urgent because we're going for dopamine and we haven't trained ourselves or our clients to distinguish between urgent and important.

And believe me, I have just as much trouble as you do because I love helping people and I kind of like the idea of just, ooh, I wonder what this is about, oh, let me just check. So, because emergencies, real emergencies do happen and we need to be able to tell the difference between real emergencies and just the urgent ADHD tendency to stop, drop and roll. I use what I call the 24-hour rule with escape hatches, it's really kind of two things in one. Most things that feel urgent can actually wait 24 hours without the world ending. I tell clients I'll get back to you by the end of business tomorrow for anything that comes in outside of designated client days.

But I do have predefined escape hatches, actual emergencies that can and do interrupt my focus days. For me, those are a genuine emergency in the lives of one of my closest friends, family members, or pets, or something that threatens my health, my security, or my livelihood. Everything else gets captured and scheduled for the appropriate day. And remember, this took me a while to learn, commit to, and fully implement. When I get the sudden urge to brainstorm new content ideas, I don't just run with it, I capture the ideas and plug them into my next content day.

Does one of my clients need to discuss something and it's not a client day? Well, it's going to have to be a client day, 9 times out of 10. In fact, I'd say 99 times out of 100. A new networking opportunity, love it. When is my next available connection day? Sometimes you have to be willing to stand your ground when it involves other people and their preferred schedules. If someone wants to interview me for their podcast and they say they're only available on a day that's a client day or a CEO day for me, that has to be a hard no. And if I've been pursuing a new connection and the only day they can make themselves as available is a Tuesday, I will think twice.

But I might try to fit it in, if I can do so without canceling or neglecting any clients on that day. The goal is to have more rules and fewer exceptions. Not to be so rigid and hard ass that you turn people off and miss genuine opportunities. Here's the thing that took me forever to learn. Saying I'll handle that on Thursday is not being difficult, it's being professional. You're not a 24/7 crisis hotline. You are a strategic business owner who does better work when you can focus properly. I had to have some somewhat uncomfortable conversations at first, but they have become far fewer over time.

We really do teach people how to treat us based on how willing we are to stop, drop and roll every time they snap their fingers or send a text, email or Voxer message. But you know what? What's also true, one of my newest coaching clients commented that when they were scheduling a free consultation with me, they noticed the options to do so were actually pretty limited and instead of being annoyed by that, they told me that it conveyed that I am a busy professional who respects my time and actually created more value for working with me. In their eyes, the key to making all of this work is communication and obviously it's much better to calibrate expectations early on in a relationship than long after you've started working with them.

This is an official part of my client screening and onboarding processes because all my clients have ADHD and many of them struggle with rejection sensitivity. So, it's really important to me that not to set expectations that I can't maintain over time. So, I let my clients know how I work and why I work that way. I'll say something like I found that I do much better work when I can give my full focus to one thing at a time rather than trying to squeeze in meeting your needs between other things.

Most clients actually respect this approach once they understand it, and it signals that I'm a thoughtful professional who tries very hard not to be scattered or reactive. And here's a little secret, when you stop being so available for every random request, people often solve their own problems, it is amazing how that works. I even had a client complain to me at first that they thought I should be available all the time, but later decided to adopt my approach for their business. All right, let's bring this home. You've got three models to consider and choose from.

You now know how to pick the right one for your brain and circumstances, and you've got strategies for protecting your focus from the chaos of daily business life, as well as permission to tweak whichever model you choose to fit your goals, preferences and circumstances. Now, how to actually make this happen instead of just being one more great suggestion you heard on this podcast. Start with one model and experiment for two to three weeks. Don't try to perfect it immediately or ever. Don't overthink it. Just pick the approach that feels most doable right now, either intuitively or by running it through the conditions that I suggested a few minutes ago.

Give it a test drive and expect some resistance from your brain, from your clients from your team, maybe even family members who are just a little too used to being able to interrupt you at will and expect you to be available on demand all the time. That resistance doesn't mean this system isn't working. It means you're changing patterns that have been in place for a while, and change can be hard. Oh, and if you're one of those ADHDers who tends to announce their new way of doing things on a regular basis, only to abandon it two weeks later. Maybe you want to keep this one to yourself until you decide how you feel about it. Pay attention to what feels like relief and what feels like you're forcing it.

If something consistently feels like you're swimming upstream, modify it or maybe ditch it altogether. Maybe you need different days or different time blocks or different boundaries. This is not about following any system perfectly. It's about creating a system that works for you and your brain. And remember, you're not trying to become a productivity bot. You're trying to give your brilliant, creative ADHD brain the structure it needs to do your best work. You might discover you actually need more flexibility than you thought, or that you've been craving structure and wondering why you feel so scattered all the time. Both discoveries are valuable.

The goal isn't perfection, it's progress. It's moving from feeling like you're constantly playing productivity whack a mole to feeling like you have some degree of control over your time, focus and energy. And hey, if you try this and it changes how you work, I want to hear about it. Leave me a comment on Spotify if that's where you listen. I personally respond to each comment and I love hearing how these strategies play out with real people in real businesses. And if you're an Apple podcast person, a review on this episode would be the best way to thank me for making your work life just a little bit easier. Until next time, this is ADHD-ish and I'm Diann Wingert reminding you that the way your brain works is not a bug, it's a feature. You just need the right structure, systems and supports.