Tag Archive for: Exercise

Resetting with Neurodiversity - Reset button neurodivergent reset plan

The Neurodivergent Reset Plan: Restore Your Energy and Focus

It is 2pm. The inbox has forty new messages, the meeting overran, and the plan for today quietly fell apart about an hour ago. Something needs to change in the next ten minutes, or the rest of the day goes with it. You need a neurodivergent reset plan

This is not a moment for a new productivity system or a long article you will never finish reading. It is a moment for something you already know how to do, because you decided what that was before you needed it. That is what a reset plan is: not a single trick, but a short, personal list of things that reliably bring you back online when everything has gone sideways.

My own need for resetting varies through the day, depending on fluctuating energy. The six strategies below are the ones I come back to. Some are practical, some are physical, some are about connection. None of them are complicated. The only skill involved is deciding which ones are yours before you are already overwhelmed.

TL;DR: A reset plan is a short, personal list of strategies for getting back on track when your day falls apart, decided in advance rather than worked out in the moment. This post covers six: taking a break, controlled breathing, prioritising one thing, skipping, reaching out, and looking after yourself.

Neurodivergent reset plan: Six strategies that actually work

Take a break: When you are overwhelmed and cannot make progress, the simplest step is usually the most effective one. Step away from the task, and do something different, even briefly. The key is having a plan for the break itself, so it does not drift into something that leaves you feeling worse. A deliberate break is productive. An unplanned one often is not.

Controlled breathing: It sounds obvious, but it works. Focusing on your breathing interrupts the loop of competing thoughts. You do not need long, and you do not need a yoga mat. Two minutes of focused breathing is often enough to create a pause and let your mind start to settle.

Prioritise one thing: When everything feels equally urgent, the answer is not to tackle everything. Pick the single most important task and complete it. The sense of achievement from finishing one thing, however small, creates momentum. It barely matters what comes next: identifying and completing one task is often enough to break the paralysis.

Skip: Skipping was my lockdown discovery, and it has stayed part of my daily routine ever since. It is almost impossible to think about anything else while skipping, which makes it one of the most effective mental resets I have found. Two to three minutes is enough to clear your head and shift your state. I wrote more about why this works here.

Reach out: A short conversation can move you forward faster than an hour of trying to think your way through a problem alone. This works particularly well if you are an external processor, someone who thinks out loud and uses conversation to make sense of things (more on external processing here). The practical point: keep a short list of people you can contact when you are stuck. Not for ongoing support, just for the kind of quick conversation that reorients you.

Look after yourself: this is the foundation everything else rests on. Sleep, movement, food, and boundaries around when you start and stop work all shape your resilience when things go wrong. When your physical reserves are low, small setbacks feel catastrophic. When they are solid, you bounce back faster. Capacity and Neurodiversity is worth reading alongside this post.

Building your own neurodivergent reset plan

These strategies work best when you have decided in advance which ones are yours. The middle of an overwhelming moment is the wrong time to choose. Pick two or three that suit how you are wired, and write them down somewhere you will actually find them again.

Treat this post as the starting point for your own toolkit, not the finished version. The goal is not to avoid difficult days. It is to move through them faster when they arrive.

Sometimes building a reset plan needs more structure than a blog post can give you. A Workplace Needs Assessment can help identify what is actually driving your overwhelm at work, not just how to recover from it.

If you would like to explore this further with support, coaching is a good next step, or get in touch to talk it through first.

Related reading

Skipping and Neurodiversity

Why skipping works as a reset tool, and how to build it into your day without it feeling like another thing on your list.

External Processing and Neurodiversity

If you are wondering about external processing, this post explains why thinking out loud works so well for some neurodivergent people.

Capacity and Neurodiversity

Understanding your capacity is what makes resetting sustainable. This post explores how to think about energy and output over time.

Stay connected

If this post was useful, there is plenty more where it came from. Every month, we share practical insights on neurodiversity, management, and how to make workplaces work better for everyone. Sign up for the newsletter here.

Man Skipping on green background with black rope.

Skipping and Neurodiversity: Is Skipping an Autistic Trait?

I love skipping…a lot. Skipping kept me going through lockdown and has continued to form a stimulating part of my life. I’ve noticed that it helps me and others that I’ve worked with manage their mood and energy levels effectively. My thoughts on skipping are purely based on my own experience and the people that I’ve worked with. I hear you ask why would a 50-year-old bloke enjoy jumping rope. Well, here are some of the reasons why skipping has formed part of my daily exercise habit:

  • It boosts my mood: it makes me feel bloody brilliant, as like many other forms of exercise it gets everything moving and as a result, I just feel better.
  • It challenges me: with skipping there are loads of different moves, you can do the double under, single under, hopping, bell, mic release, to mention just a few and all of these are doable, you just need to break them down and practice.
  • It gets my heart working: sometimes everyone’s heart needs a bit of an extra pump. I found it particularly helpful that skipping is aerobic, and I’ve noticed skipping improves how well I can breathe. There is a lot of evidence that shows skipping improves circulation and option delivery around the body…what’s not to like!
  • It burns calories: in a relatively short amount of time, I can burn a lot of calories, which for someone who spent a lot of time sitting at a desk job is brilliant.
  • It promotes brain function: skipping requires me to focus and to use my mental coordination to get my hands and feet in the right place.
  • It improves balance: I have noticed an improvement in my balance, which has aided me in gaining a better sense of limb placement within my surroundings. It’s fascinating to see how skipping has greatly benefited my daughter, who has been diagnosed with dyspraxia, by improving her coordination and building her strength, which she can now apply to other activities such as cycling.
  • It’s portable (it can be done anywhere): I love the fact that I can skip wherever I like within reason. I say within reason as I’ve not skipped on a train yet, but there may come a time when I do. I have skipped at a conference, in a hotel room, in a car park, in a normal park, on the road and outside a client’s office.

There are loads of resources on the internet, but I would recommend Coach Chris from The Jump Rope Company who’s put together 20 brilliant skipping variation exercises to try out over your first 20 days of skipping. Click here to watch the videos.

If you want to explore this as one of your strategies for managing your neurodivergent traits, such as to help calm a busy mind with repetitive moves, or reduce your restlessness and burn off extra energy, I can’t recommend it enough. As with everything you have to try it out to see if it works for you. All you need is your trainers and a skipping rope, anyone can do it, it doesn’t matter if you’re 55 or 105.

If you’ve taken the leap of faith and decided to embark on an adventure with your skipping rope, I’d be absolutely thrilled to hear all about it! Don’t hesitate to reach out and share your skipping adventures here.

RS200 Group B rally car in white with rally lights

Busy Brain and Neurodiversity: Quieting the Mental Noise

My busy brain! (The crazy brain that never stops working and sometimes drives me up the wall!)

One of my favourite cars is the Ford RS200, based very loosely on the Ford Sierra. It is an insane Group B rally version of the Sierra, but I think the only things that were original Ford were the doors and possibly the bonnet. The engine in this car revs incredibly high, and its power-to-weight ratio means it has the type of acceleration you would typically see in a Formula One car. And this is how my brain feels sometimes, overpowered without enough traction to stay in a straight line. It looks like a standard car but nothing like an ordinary one under the bonnet.

Keeping my busy brain on the road

My brain often operates like an ideas machine, firing out many wonderful, interesting, far-out-there ways of thinking about a problem or situation.

It sometimes behaves in a way that feels like my mouth can’t keep up, nor can my memory, meaning that ideas are flowing, and I can’t always capture them. It’s incredibly frustrating. I find I get loads of ideas and get inspired, which can take me off on all sorts of tangents. This can be both useful and incredibly tricky to manage. I’m particularly aware that when I’m communicating with others, if my brain starts to rev up, I can lose them and, as a result, have frustrating communications.

Driving in the suitable environments

When I feel safe and listened to, I can operate far better than when I feel threatened or unsure about what is happening. Also, how well I’m operating for the rest of my life and how well I’ve been looking after myself make a massive difference in how my brain works. For example, this busy brain can go into busy catastrophising if I’m having a tough time! So rather like the RS200, I risk blowing it up if I don’t look after it properly.

Keeping things ticking over

Keeping fit and healthy has become essential to managing my mental health, particularly my brain activity. I’ve noticed that when I exercise regularly, my brain operates far more effectively. This means I don’t tend to get overstressed and can also compartmentalise life more effectively. It’s almost like I need to go and burn some fuel to help support a healthy outlook.

Garage time matters

Sleep is essential for all of us, but more important for some. I’ve noticed that my mind is a complete mess when I don’t get enough sleep. I find it difficult to concentrate, can become easily distracted and ultimately waste a lot of time, so having a good sleep pattern means that my busy brain tends to cope more effectively and think more concisely about what I’m doing.

Knowing when you’ve hit the red line with the busy brain

Overwhelm is a reality we all experience, but particularly for me, I’m not always conscious when it’s happening. It will sometimes creep up on me and debilitate me to the point where I’m no longer racing; I’m barely crawling and unable to think or move forwards effectively. Simply put, the best solution is to pause and take a significant break. This means typically putting on my running shoes, contacting a friend and going for a long run. Once I’ve done this, I can generally return and effectively continue moving forward.

Capturing the magic

As I mentioned, my brain often throws out many ideas rapidly, and my biggest frustration is that my short-term memory can’t hold on to many ideas. This means that I get very, very frustrated in missing ideas and rethinking them at a later stage. I then recognised that I already had the thought but had forgotten it. I use Evernote to help me manage this effectively, as it allows me to dictate ideas straight into my phone and file them away. There are many tools you can use, and this is only one of them, but I like Evernote for the following reasons:

  • It’s platform-independent – it doesn’t matter if I change my phone or use my computer; it works everywhere.
  • It allows me to dictate –I can get my ideas out of my head quickly and efficiently.
  • It’s organised – Evernote will enable me to collect and reorganise my notes rapidly, meaning I don’t lose ideas, and I can formulate them in the right place quickly.
  • I can add images – I often think in pictures and get inspired by things I see, so photographing objects or situations and organising them with my thoughts enables me to capture this effectively.

When I am most busy

I find my brain working most effectively in the morning, in the shower, when I’m out on a run or exercising. I’ve noticed that to get the most out of what I’m doing; I need to remove all other distractions and be somewhere different.

How do I get my brain to tick over

Quietening my brain down can be tricky. As I’ve mentioned, exercise can be helpful, but sometimes not even that does the job. Verbalising my thoughts is effective, as when they are stuck in my head, they often whirl around continuously. I do not understand their importance or priority so I can be completely overwhelmed by something unimportant. I also find it helpful to have a structured routine to go to sleep and have time to wind down.

My wind-down routine looks like the following:

  • Screens off (no screens in the bedroom).
  • Get a drink of water.
  • Shower and go to the toilet.
  • Practice crow pose, crane pose, double-arm lever, and squat (I can give more details on this if you’re interested).
  • Turn the lights down.
  • Make sure the blackout blind is down.
  • Get into bed.
  • Read for 15 minutes.
  • Lights off.

It can be really helpful to formalise what is working and what could be better.

A good way to do this is a workplace needs assessment

If you would like to discuss managing your busy brain and some of the challenges and ideas I’ve written in this blog, please get in contact.

Warning: These processes have worked for me, and that doesn’t mean they will work for you. It would be best if you approached managing your neurodiverse traits like a project. You must try ideas out, keep the solutions that work and get rid of the ideas that don’t. There’s no harm in testing, but don’t throw away a process until you have something better to replace it with.

 

Doing a Handstand - Praxis and Neurodiversity

Why praxis and neurodiversity is essential?

Handstand, crow, double-arm lever, bear, monkey, frogger and crab are just a few of the terms I found out about during lockdown. These are all bodyweight exercises you can perform in your own home or anywhere else you fancy without any equipment. Many of them look easy when you see someone who has practiced them, but often, especially when you first try and undertake them, they prove frustrating and challenging. So what’s that got to do with praxis and neurodiversity?

Praxis – means practice as distinguished from theory!

Praxis and neurodiversity – the why!

Being effective at work is about mastering our strengths and managing things we find difficult. To do this well, we need to practice in a structured way that allows us to perform at our very best. The model that I was fortunate enough to use to learn some of the skills mentioned in the first paragraph works just as well with workplace strategies.

It looks a bit like this:

Prepare

Get yourself in the right place to do the work you need to do. I’m a great believer that we are whole people and that means that we need to put our bodies and our minds in the right place to learn. This could be something as simple as making sure we have downloaded everything we shouldn’t be thinking about. as well as making sure we are not stiff or in an uncomfortable position to start the learning process.

Practice

Amplifying strengths and managing the things that we find difficult is about practice. That practice needs to happen in a safe place where we can experiment with different ways of doing things and build processes that work. What is important here is to practice things that are difficult for us and work out what’s good and what needs to be changed. This is helpful as it allows us to work out where we need to focus.

Push

Once we start to become good at a task, then it is time to push it to see how far we can take it, for example, this might be around planning, using a new tool to write, or about being more confident in a different situation. The key is about finding the limits of what is possible for you because quite often this will go way beyond what you expect.

Play

The serious work now begins. It is time to play with the skills that we’re developing and see where else we can take them and use them, for example, we might be great at planning at home but unable to do this effectively in the workplace.

Ponder

Most importantly (and often the most underrated) for any learning is to reflect on what happened, what worked well and what we would like to work more on next time. This is where we start to set goals for what we are going to do next and how we can push ideas to the next level by reusing the model above.

If you’d like to find out more about how to amplify strengths and manage difficulties in the workplace, please get in contact.

Never forget any progress is progress, any movement forward is movement and that’s why praxis and neurodiversity matter.

So that’s what praxis and neurodiversity is all about!

Get in contact to find out more. Contact me here.

 

Method credit GMB Fitness, possibly the greatest fitness organisation on earth. Take a look

running

Does it take a village – to run well?

Running my first 10 kilometre (km) race, this story started five years ago when a few friends and I decided that we wanted to row (we were the most ragtag bunch of rowers you can imagine). At the time I was out of shape but wanted to be a better version of myself for me and my children. So, a friend of mine called Dave and I (with a couple of others), set up something called Monday Club, which as you can guess happens every Monday. It is an opportunity for some 40+ year old men and women to work out and play at being boxers and gymnasts. This club inspired me to do more with myself and through conversations with my friends, I decided I was going to give running a go (I wanted to run well).

Running begins

I started to run regularly with a bunch of people from Monday Club who inspired and helped me to move forward and signed up for my first big race!

Time to race

When the race came around, I was expecting to be looking at my watch working out my timings and trying not to run way too fast. Adding at this point that my nickname was “the beast” as I do everything at full throttle, not holding anything back and burning out much of the time. Come race day I expected to turn up on my own and run the race which I had practised.

We were off

The race began in a flurry of activity and the guy I was chasing down the road started to encourage me to run with him and this is where the support began. Turning the first corner my friend Simon was there rooting for me, telling me to take it easy and run at the pace I had planned. Running a further 500 meters up the road and my friend Dave was there telling me not to overcook it and keep to my pace, pull my shoulders back, breathe and enjoy it. As I continued to run the race these two guys keep popping up, rooting for me, pushing me and encouraging me to be the best I could be.

The final 2 km

Things were starting to hurt now and my shoulders were all hunched. Then my friend Dave appeared and started to run with me. At first, this was about me getting my confidence and form back, then I noticed myself accelerating. Moving from someone slipping backwards to someone who was overtaking people and running faster and faster.

Finishing strong

Coming into the final 700 meters I was a transformed person running with determination and gusto. Finishing the race in 41 minutes 26 seconds, 1 minute 26 seconds outside of the goal I set myself, but that did not matter, I had learned how to run a race well and that is a lesson I will not forget.

My first 10 k race was not run on my own, I ran it with people who believed in me and enabled me to do my absolute best, inspiring me to do it again.

What I learnt

Sometimes things take longer than you first expect.

When I started this journey, I wanted to row a boat and I ended up running a race. That does not mean that I will not row a boat one day too. What I did instead was achieve something else that takes me closer to that goal.

Sometimes what you want takes time to work out

This is true in many aspects of our lives. What is important is to keep moving forwards. It is vital to have champions and cheerleaders on your team to keep encouraging you to seek out what you want. In my case, it is about being a better version of myself, for you it may be quite different, but I would encourage you to keep on looking for it.

Practice is the key to everything – you will need to do it a lot so make sure it is fun!

As with everything worth doing there is always a lot of practice involved. The biggest transition for me has been the movement from only enjoying the end goal to enjoying the practice. This is relevant to the roles we do and the things we want to achieve. If we do not enjoy the day-to-day work to get us to a goal I do not believe we will be anywhere near as fulfilled as we should be.

The best coaches will come and run along with you

Sometimes we need help, sometimes we need advice and sometimes we need people to run along with us. It lifts our heads and gives us the capability to be genuinely great.

Doing things with a village is the best

Reflecting on this experience, the image of the village of people supporting one another to achieve their goals is an incredibly attractive one. Where one achieves much, everyone achieves much and this is a principle that can help move forward some of the key aims we have in our lives.

Who is in your village?

If you would like some help to explore this further, please get in contact.