This afternoon, while the classic Seattle spring erratic weather moves between sun and shadows over the evergreens outside my window, I did something slightly dangerous. I opened an incognito tab and searched for “ADHD coaching in Seattle.”

I am an ICF-credentialed coach. I have a business degree, specialized training, and a deep, lived experience with neurodivergence. I know the mechanics of my work inside and out.

But on Google? Page one: Nope. Page two: Crickets. It turns out, the internet algorithms have little to no idea I’m still relevant.

What happened next was a textbook example of the divergent brain in the wild. I didn’t gently close the tab and make a pragmatic note for later. Instead, I spent the next four hours hyperfocusing on search who is showing up and why, website architecture, and digital visibility. By dinner time, I had generated a sprawling, deeply intimidating laundry list of structural updates I needed to make to my website.

My brain said no. My task doing is maxed out. I was staring at a massive, abstract plan, and my execution level had completely disengaged. I was, ironically, entirely frozen by my own business.

This is the exact moment my clients—brilliant, high-responsibility professionals and creative entrepreneurs—either cry, or go all-out for the next 18 hours and then need a week of recovery. When the gap between “here” and “there” feels impossibly wide, the instinct is often to either brute-force the entire list by staying up until 3 AM (hello, ADHD tax) or avoid the project entirely because the mismatched energy is too painful to hold.

We get trapped in the abstract planning layer, and when we need to reconnect to managing the body and focus in the moment we hit a no-go space..

But here is where the both/and approach becomes a lifeline. I can hold the reality that my business systems need a lot of architectural reconstruction, AND I can regulate my nervous system enough to take one micro-action today.

As a coach, I cannot bypass the tools I use with my clients. I have to design for the brain I have. And my brain, like many of yours, runs on an interest-based nervous system. Urgency and fear are not sustainable motivators. I cannot shame myself into a massive website overhaul.

Right now, I have interest, I have a keyboard, and I have a quiet realization about my own business. So, I asked myself the question that serves as my favorite functional bridge: What is the smallest definition of done?

The answer wasn’t “rebuild the homepage.” The answer was taking the interest and the tools available right now to write a single blog post.

We move from stuck to starting by changing the conditions, not by breaking our own spirit to meet an artificial standard. We lower the barrier to entry until it feels like a natural step rather than a monumental leap. We use what is alive in the moment—in this case, my own highly relatable frustration—as the fuel for activation.

If you are staring down a massive, abstract project today and feeling that familiar freeze, I invite you to pause. Step away from the sprawling list. You do not need to manufacture decisions for the entire year today. (Ok, blog post is not small, but I’m still processing less to do it!)

What is your smallest definition of done? What is one micro-action that uses the interest you have available right now? Let’s start there.
Let’s start there.

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