There is something about September that makes me feel like I should be getting my shit together.
It probably goes back to school. The weather changes. The air feels different (is it the smell of pumpkin spice already?) Summer is over. Where I live it has become damp and rainy. And with that there is a sense that it’s time to start again.
And I remember going back to school with my nice new pens and freshly sharpened pencils, convinced that this year would be different.
This year I would always do my homework. This year I would never leave an essay until 20 minutes before it was due. This year I would be organized. This year, obviously, I would become an entirely different person.
Spoiler alert: the personality transplant never happened.
I was usually back to not doing my homework about three days into term.
And I think a version of that fantasy follows a lot of us into adulthood, particularly if we have ADHD. Maybe September is when we’ll finally get organized. Maybe we’ll find the right planner, the right app, the right morning routine, the right productivity system.
“Maybe this is the thing that will finally make me the person who gets everything done!”
Except it doesn’t work like that. You cannot organize, schedule, plan or habit-build your way out of having an ADHD brain. And that isn’t because you aren’t trying hard enough.
I spent quite a while being stuck.
For a couple of years, I wasn’t doing much to move my business forward. I was staying safe. I was doing the things I already knew I could do. I’d start new things sometimes, but then I’d overthink them and stop. I wasn’t networking much. I wasn’t putting new things out into the world.
I was, in my own words, hermitting. Hiding away and preserving my energy. And actually, I think I needed to do that. I’d had a stressful and eventful few years and I’d probably burned myself out. Moving house, puppies, a bereavement, perimenopause… I don’t look back at that period and think I was doing life wrong.
But I was stuck. And for a while I was afraid I might be stuck forever.
But, fear not, I did get unstuck.
I’ve been getting out there more. Saying yes to things. Putting myself forward for opportunities. Getting Work.Life.Smarts moving again.
And a lot of that started somewhere I wasn’t expecting: acting and singing.
I’ve been putting myself out there creatively and getting a surprising amount of traction. I’ve had opportunities come my way. I’ve stood on stages and done difficult things and, more importantly, I’ve had a bloody great time doing them.
And I think that did something to me. It made staying safe feel less satisfying. It made me believe in myself a little more. It gave me enough of a push, and just enough self-belief to get in motion with other things.
If I can get up on a stage and make a whole audience cry night after night (this really happened!), perhaps I can do difficult things elsewhere too.
I also started to recognize that some of what was keeping me stuck wasn’t laziness or lack of discipline (despite being told as a teenager that I was suffering from both).
Some of it was ADHD.
And understanding that made a difference. Not because knowing I have an ADHD brain magically fixed anything. It didn’t. But it gave me something useful to work with. Instead of beating myself up for not doing things the way I thought I should be able to do them, I could get curious about what was actually getting in the way.
And then I could find ways to navigate it.
I don’t have a five-year plan.
What? Aren’t you supposed to have one of those???? Set a goal, make a plan, execute it: that’s business 101, right?
Sure, but it can also work against an ADHD brain.
Let me explain. Things are moving. I’m excited. I’m energized. I’m curious. I’m taking action. And I don’t actually know exactly where I will end up.
I don’t have a beautifully mapped-out plan for exactly what my business will look like in 5 years, how many clients I’ll have, or what my revenue will be in 2031. (Actually even writing 2031 feels so weird I can’t even believe that’s a real year).
What I do have, is a clear vision of what I want more of.
I want to enjoy my life. My business is a big part of my life, so I want to do work that feels good to me. I know what that looks like.
I want to spend more time doing the things I love. And I say yes to opportunities that seem likely to take me in that direction. I know what it feels like when I take the right opportunities.
I’m not choosing a destination. I’m choosing a direction.
And I think there’s something useful in that for ADHD entrepreneurs, particularly at this time of year.
Because September can bring a lot of pressure to get back on track. To catch up. To get organised. To finally sort everything out.
But what if you don’t need to get back on track at all? What if you just need to start moving?
You don’t need to know the whole route.
One of the things I love about being in motion is that you can course-correct.
You can try something. See what happens. Learn something. Change your mind. Take a different turn. You can discover things by doing them that you simply couldn’t have known by sitting on the sofa thinking about them.
And sometimes I think we make getting started much harder than it needs to be because we think starting means committing.
It doesn’t.
You don’t have to know exactly where you’re going before you take the first step. You don’t even have to know whether it’s the right step. It just needs to be a step in a direction that feels worth exploring.
This is actually one of the reasons I created The Business Plan You’ll Actually Use. (Pssst If you want to get early access to this when it’s launched, along with a discount, go here to register your interest –> https://forms.gle/z1dCjS92Tg9fr3hZA
I hate traditional business plans. They’re usually long, linear and designed to make you look like you have everything figured out. That’s a lot of pressure.
I don’t have everything figured out.
And I don’t think you need to either.
What you want instead is enough clarity to help you decide what matters now. To help you ride the wave of excitement and anticipation of the new season, without getting bogged down in overthinking a future that’s too far away to even feel real.
What deserves your attention over the next few months? What do you want more of? Who do you want to work with? What are you selling? What are you going to try?
Not forever. Just for now.
Because maybe a three-month plan is enough. Maybe that’s all the certainty you need. You can start moving. And once you’re moving, you can see where you are. You can decide whether you like the direction. You can change course. You can stop. You can try something else. You can keep going.
And perhaps that’s a much more useful way to think about September than “Right. Time to get my shit together.”
You don’t need new pens.
You don’t need a personality transplant.
You don’t need to have the whole year figured out.
You just need enough clarity to choose your next direction.
And then you can see what happens.