When we work for an employer or as part of a team, meetings often serve as touchstones for actions and activities. They help with brainstorming new ideas and solutions and, if recorded, they provide a reminder of tasks which need doing and can even celebrate wins.
So what do you do when you work for yourself, are your own boss, and maybe don’t have employees or a team - you hold meetings with yourself!
Don’t laugh … it works really well.
And if your brain runs on the ADHD operating system, like mine does, a meeting with yourself is less a productivity ritual and more a survival tool.
Having regular meetings with yourself helps you focus on what’s important. You can set an agenda, follow through and follow up the next week to see what you’ve achieved. You can set goals, itemise the steps you need to take to get to the end and record how you did. The notes will help you reflect and serve as a bit of a road map, as well as a good aid to your memory if you want to do a similar project again.
Don’t discount the benefits of holding solo meetings however silly you may feel.
If you have ADHD, this weekly appointment matters even more. Working memory is not our strong suit, and a written agenda does the remembering for you. It’s a bit like body doubling with an audience of one: the meeting itself gives you enough structure to start, and starting is usually the hard part.
I regularly hold meetings with only me in attendance. There are major benefits of being the only person in the metaphorical room! You don’t have to listen to other people waffle on or go off on tangents, you control the narrative and the outcomes.
(Well, mostly. My brain still tries to hijack the agenda with shiny new ideas, but now they get written in the “any other business” section instead of derailing the whole week. Parking them on paper keeps them from rattling around in my head all week.)
Being a solopreneur can be a lonely time, the worst of which is that you don’t have anyone to bounce ideas off and no one on the sidelines either giving you a hand or telling you you’ve done a good job.
Solo meetings can fill some of those gaps. You can play around with ideas, be your own Devil’s Advocate and look at the pros and cons of introducing something new. You can record your progress in your projects, identify your pressure points and work out solutions because you have created the time to do this. For ADHD brains, that ticked-off list is also a genuine dopamine hit: proof in writing that you did things, even the ones your brain has already decided to forget you did.
Set aside at least an hour once a week to have your meetings. Grab a coffee or drink of your choice, a snack and a pad and paper. Once you have held your first meeting, make notes and file them, then bring those notes along to the next meeting with yourself.
If time blindness is a thing for you, set a timer. An hour can evaporate before you’ve opened the notebook, or stretch into an afternoon you didn’t have. The timer takes the guesswork out of it. I also put my meeting in my calendar as a recurring appointment, so it carries the same weight as a client booking. If it’s in the diary, it happens.
"If you see me talking to myself, don't interrupt. I'm having a staff meeting."
Put an agenda together similar to this one - add or subtract things that don’t work for you:
1. MINUTES
Review the minutes/notes of your last meeting. Don’t skip this one. Last week you left notes for this week’s you on purpose.
2. THIS WEEK’S PROJECTS
Look at those things which you completed and note any pressure points, things to remember for the future etc. If it was client work, was the effort you made to get the work done equal to amount you are charging. If not, review this and think about changing your pricing to make the work viable if you do a similar task again.
And celebrate the wins out loud, even the small ones. ADHD brains discount their own achievements at an alarming rate. Write them down anyway.
3. PRICING
Checking your pricing should lead to a pricing menu for your work if you are a service-based business. If you sell products, you should ensure your profit margin is viable and if not, you will need to check where leaks can be plugged or pricing adjustments made.
4. NEW CLIENTS
Make some notes about any new clients which will help for future reference. Were they easy to work with, would you work with them again?
5. TIME MANAGEMENT
Review your past week’s time management - was there any time you could have reworked so you would have more time for yourself? Could you consider scheduling client appointments all on the same day/s so you don’t have to break up concentrated work effort for meetings. Are there better ways to manage your time?
With ADHD, the honest version of this question is: what did I actually do, rather than what did I plan to do? Track it for a few weeks and the gap between the two will show you exactly where the time goes.
6. NEXT WEEK
Look at the coming week - what work have you got coming up, are there time slots you can allocate for certain work etc.
Be realistic here, not optimistic. If everything takes 20 per cent longer than you think it will, add the 20 per cent now and thank yourself later.
7. MARKETING
What worked this week? What will you do next week? Do you have a theme this month /week for your social media? Do you have to plan some content?
8. FINANCES
How are they looking? What was your income v expenses? Are there any big bills coming up? Any other financial matters you need to think about?
This is one worth automating or delegating if you can. If money admin lives in your “avoid pile”, a recurring appointment or a bookkeeper beats willpower every time.
9. NEW PRODUCTS/OFFERS/WORKSHOPS
Brainstorm some ideas.
10. PERSONAL TIME / FAMILY TIME
Block it in for the coming week.
Non-negotiable. ADHD brains need downtime to reset, and we’re usually the last to notice we’ve run out of it. If it’s not blocked in, it doesn’t happen.
11. ANY OTHER BUSINESS
Anything else you can think of you’d like to discuss with yourself!
If you’d like support putting ideas like this into practice, come and work with me at nanberrett.com.au, or join The Dandelion Clock, my membership for late-diagnosed ADHD women, where this kind of weekly structure is what we do together.