# Have So Many Creative Ideas You Can't Finish One? I've Got Tips!

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** How to ADHD
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZYXHU2omzE
- **Дата:** 21.04.2026
- **Длительность:** 21:21
- **Просмотры:** 36,914

## Описание

Need a place to store your creative ideas? Give xTiles a try! https://xtiles.app/en?fp_ref=jessica&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=paid-social&utm_campaign=ADHD

ADHD brains are WILDLY creative! But it can get annoying or just downright discouraging when we can't seem to make anything out of that creativity. Today I want to talk about it, and share what I do to help me not only stay creative but make something out of that creativity! #adhd #hobbies #creativity #mentalhealth 

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📚CHAPTERS
00:00 The Struggle
01:51 Do It Badly
05:18 Take Breaks
08:36 Creativity Loves Limits
14:25 Reward Your Creativity
16:16 Treat Your ADHD
18:48 Involve Other People

⁉️ WAIT IS JESSICA A LICENSED PROFESSIONAL?
Jessica McCabe is not a licensed mental health provider, but information presented on How to ADHD is reviewed by researchers and approved by licensed clinical psychologist Patrick LaCount, PhD (https://practicalpsychservices.com). While information presented on How to ADHD has historically been built in consultation with researchers and licensed providers, videos posted prior to April 2023 were not subjected to the same formal approval process required by the YouTube Health program.

For more information on the YouTube Health program and verification of health-related content, please visit: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/9795167

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## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZYXHU2omzE) The Struggle

Hello, Brains! In this video, I'm going to talk about my top tools for being creative as someone with ADHD. While packing for a talk I'm giving on ADHD and creativity. I promise this will make sense. I've created a lot of things. As someone with ADHD, I have created a YouTube channel, a company, a New York Times bestselling book. I have created songs I have written, talks, including the talk that. I am giving at this conference. I have even made a baby. So, yeah, I've created a. Lot of things. What you might not know is I have also struggled. Really, really hard to do. It. I struggle with unfulfilled potential. I kept hearing the same thing growing up. You have so much. Potential, and you just need to work harder to reach it. I dealt with a lot of guilt and shame over my unfulfilled potential. I had a hard time getting started. I had trouble finishing. I had trouble motivating myself to do it. Once the shiny wore off. Or sometimes my perfectionism was so bad that I wouldn't even try. I wouldn't even get started on the thing, because I knew that it wasn't gonna be good enough. when I started working one on one with people. You can see more about that in my video here. I noticed that they were struggling with a lot of the same things so when I was asked to give a keynote at an ADHD conference and told I could do anything that I wanted. I decided to. Talk about ADHD and creativity and share some of my top tools for being creative with an ADHD brain. I've done a video on the channel before about ADHD and creativity, and specifically the ways in which we can be more creative than our neurotypical peers. But I've never talked in depth about the tools that I personally use to help me be creative and tools that are really helpful for a lot of people in our community That talk is being recorded, by the way, If it's here, if you see it. It means it's up. If not, it is not up yet. but I am impatient. I want to share them with you now. Maybe you need them now. So, let's do it while.

### [1:51](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZYXHU2omzE&t=111s) Do It Badly

I pack the props that I am thinking of using in my talk. today. I'm just ideating I'm just trying to play around with what might work and it in case it does. I'm not even going to, like, really worry about if it's a good idea just yet. Which brings me to. The first tool. Do it badly. So do it. Badly. Basically means write a shitty first draft. Try to come up. With instead of the best idea. Possible, the worst. Idea. Possible, or try. Idea mixing. So coming up with as many ideas as you can at once. Don't think that's a real term. Pretty sure I made it up, but everything's maxing right now, so we're going with it. go for. Quantity over quality. For those of us who want to do a good job, obviously quality is the ultimate goal, but at first, when you're just coming up with ideas, coming up with as many ideas as you can be really helpful because it takes the pressure off of coming up with one good idea. And if you come up with a 17 year ideas, maybe one of them's really good. A lot of times coming up with the right answer to a problem can be really intimidating, but it can be fun and playful to come up with the exact wrong idea, Coming up with the wrong answer or answers can sometimes be easier, and less intimidating for sure. And out of the wrong answers. Sometimes it's easy to get. To the right ones all of these techniques work because. Perfectionism triggers. Evaluation before idea generation. It interrupts the ideation process. If we're trying to come up with good ideas, then that means we're having to judge our ideas as we're coming up with them. creativity research has found that idea generation works best when, judgment is temporarily suspended. You're not trying to judge your ideas as you're coming up with them. The editing happens later, separating the creation and the evaluation means more original ideas can emerge. By the way. I don't know if I'm going to have time to talk about this in the talk or not, but this is my channel. I can. Do what I want, so do. It badly. Can also apply to releasing things, right? It definitely applies to the idea generation process. And typically eventually your shitty first draft becomes a better draft, becomes a polished draft. Right? But there's also some value for those who are really struggling with perfectionism to occasionally put something out that doesn't feel quite good enough. Yet because it's exposure. Right? Perfectionism is rooted in anxiety. anxiety is the. Out of proportion. Fear that something bad will happen, essentially. So if you put something out that's not perfect and you realize that the thing that you were afraid of. Everybody hates it and nobody wants to be your friend anymore. It doesn't happen. And in fact, maybe some people actually really love the imperfect version you put out that can make imperfection feel a little bit less intimidating, scary, and can make it easier. it quiets down. Your perfection. Monster. I don't know, it's totally the. Scientific terminology, I'm sure, but it works. Exposure therapy is a thing for anxiety. It can work for perfectionism. This is called air dry clay. It does what it says it does. And it dries if you expose it to the air, apparently. So do it badly. I don't know, make a terrible duck. Like. Great. That's a duck. Is it a duck? No, that's a terrible duck. Definitely not. But from there, I can start to see. Okay, well. That's a bill. Let's make it look more. Like a bill. Let's shape it more like a duck. This is a terrible example because I am. Not a sculptor. That is not. The type of creativity that I have. But theoretically, if one were to be a sculptor, they could do a bad job first and then make it better. I don't know, I might use something else. regretting my choices on this one. I'm just making it worse. You don't do it badly. It works. You know, I'm getting perfectionistic about it. We're going to come back to that one.

### [5:18](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZYXHU2omzE&t=318s) Take Breaks

Speaking of which, take breaks. Stepping away gives fresh insight. So if you're struggling with a creative problem, you can keep wrestling with it, but you might not make as much progress as if you just literally step away for five minutes and then come back. Stepping away is also really important in terms of sustaining motivation. So there's something really interesting that happens when people quit their day job, They're creative on the side, and they can't wait to quit their day job and do whatever creative thing that they love to do full time. And then they quit their job and. They go to try to do. The creative thing full time, thinking they'll have extra 40 hours a week or 60 hours a week, or 80 hours a week. To. Do their creative work, and they actually get less done a lot of the time than they did when they had a day job. And the reason for that is now they can create any time, all the time. that is not as good for motivation. If you only have a couple of hours to get the thing done, because then you got to go to. Work, you're more likely to do it. Also, a wall of awful starts to build. You can check out our video about that here. That's been in my hands concept. The more you don't do the thing, More you fail to do the thing that you intended to do. The bigger your wall of awful becomes, and the harder it becomes for you to do it. so. If you're expecting yourself to create all of the time, then any time you're not creating, you're failing, So one of. The things that can really help, is having an anti schedule, whether or not you have a day job right. job, great. That's time that you literally can't. Right. I was waiting tables. I can't be. Shooting. An episode while I'm waiting tables. That was time that I wasn't able to create. The ADHD brain still finds a way we can edit, Just having time where maybe ideas are okay and you can think of ideas or write them down, but you're not actively trying to create. Having time where create can be really. Good for the. Sustainability of your creativity long term, not only because it's not hurting your motivation, because you're like, well, of course I'm not creating. I'm not allowed to create right now. But also in terms of helping avoid burnout. Burnout is a thing. It's it happens a lot in our community. I have dealt with creative burnout a couple of times, it can happen even if you really. Love what you do. Because when I first started, I was working seven days a week. I was waiting tables, and anytime I wasn't waiting tables, I was checking comments and coming up with ideas and Everything from research to scripting to post-production every single week, and eventually a burnout. one of the things that I had to do to fix that is, say, Sundays. Not allowed to not allowed to. Create. In fact, I'm not even allowed to read the comments section. I actually need to step away. So if you are having a hard time creating, paradoxically, it might. Help if you step away. If you take breaks. Oh, wait, I'm supposed to be packing. Breaks. I promise that this would make sense. Okay, There's nothing that represents to me taking time away from something like flying a kite. it makes it feel like there's all the time in the world. There's nothing you've got to be doing right now if you're out flying a kite, right? Like there's nothing else that needs to be done. So. I. Didn't entirely think that through. I wonder if I can make this magic work on stage. Maybe there's going to be a podium. Did that look good? Maybe Creativity loves limits is.

### [8:36](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZYXHU2omzE&t=516s) Creativity Loves Limits

A quote that I have on this slide. Art lives from. Constraints and dies from freedom. Leonardo da Vinci. Part of why is if you have ADHD, your brain is probably very good at divergent thinking, coming up with lots of different ideas. But research has found that we're no better at narrowing those ideas down. So what happens is you end up with lots more ideas than you know what to do it. because we're not any better at convergent thinking, it can help to have a way of supporting with that convergent thinking process. And one way to do that is limits. Basically I narrow it down to time tools and rules. So time when I first started my YouTube channel, I had a week I could make the video as good as I possibly could within that week, but it had to post on Tuesday. So there was. That limit, right? I had to do what I could before Tuesday. It helped. With motivation. It helped with narrowing it down because I couldn't make the best thing possible in the entire world because I had a week to do it helped me narrow down the. Scope of. What I could do. Another way is tools. So if you're writing a song, maybe you can only use guitar and flute does. Those are the only tools you have at your disposal. Or rules is the other one. So for this talk, we came up with rules simple text. We're using the same white backdrop throughout. It can be textured or not textured and abstract art. We have somebody on the team who is a graphic designer who created the slides. by, in order to bypass her perfectionism, my perfectionism, and like what I would request for each slide, those were the rules we agreed on, and it turned out beautifully. And, you know, it, it got done on time early, actually, because of those limits that we put in place. limits are especially good for our brain because we are still going to be creative within those limits. Right? We can only do that for the slides, but that doesn't mean we couldn't bring a. Toolbox with props. By the way, speaking of divergent ideas and creative ideas and having too many of them. It's really easy to lose track of how many creative projects we have going at any given time. Organization can be really hard for our brains, and we have all of these ideas, and we also might bounce around from one project to the next. there's lots of. Different ways to do that, but one of my favorites is xtiles. xtiles allows you to be creative and organized. It's easy to map out ideas, drag boxes and dump out information, and then organize your projects with goals and tasks directly in your weekly planner. there are a bunch of templates you can use even with the free version, because I have the paid version, I have access to something called the clarity ADHD planner, This is just the basic template. goals, personal goals, habit tracker, mini wins, upcoming deadlines. meeting with my editor next Thursday. Mini wins. Finished planning next season of content. I'm very proud of that. What inspires me? You can put a quote I love quotes, you can put what your goals are links. If there's links that you want to be able to easily access habit tracker. But the habit tracker gets even cooler. If you go over to this Habit Tracker tab, you can track how much of the thing you did. So for me, right now it's go, go for a walk. If I go for the walk, I want to go on, I can click 100%. But for people, they need. Just getting started is a challenge, and it's good for us to get into the habit of just getting started. So, let's say, I don't know, today I did 20%. I just put my shoes on and opened the door and stood outside. Does that count as going for walk? No, not exactly, but it does count is making progress toward going for a walk. So I'm getting credit for that You can also do a reflection at the end of the week. What supported the habit? my dog What went well, you know, maybe I did 20% at least every day. So now instead of beating myself up over not doing 100%, I can at least give myself credit for the fact that I'm making progress. It's really cool. You can set clear goals for yourself. There's a meal planner with built in meal ideas if that's something you need, you can also delete stuff if you don't need it. I plan my meals differently, so I'm just going to delete that page. So yeah, this is the clarity ADHD planner. You can change everything about it. But it's often nice to not start from scratch. let's say I want my personal planner to feel more personal to me. this feels like clarity to me. You can check out xtiles using the link in the description. Huge thanks to them for supporting this channel and for helping us work with our brains, not against them. okay, I'll speak for myself here. I might not value my creative ideas as much as I should because I have so many of them. But they are valuable. And by capturing them and making meaningful progress on them, I think it helps with that. Like closing the gap. It helps. It helps you feel like you're reaching your creative potential if you're not starting and then never finishing a ton of projects, to look at them and say, you know what? I'm choosing not to work on that project as opposed to like, I forgot about it or I don't remember what I was even doing. I think we're still going to have way more ideas for projects and we can possibly complete, but at least if you're capturing them, if you're organizing them, then you get to make a mindful choice, which I think is a lot better for our self-esteem than if we just are dropping. Balls on projects. You know, Time, tools and rules. Time is very easy to represent. Right? Limits. You could see this from a stage right? Okay, I'm going back. To do a badly for a second. What am I going to do for that? It's ridiculous. This is the one I'm struggling with. Wrong answers only. Let's try it. Okay. Wrong answers only do it badly. Wrong answers only would be something's perfect, right? Oh, I. Know what I can do. Hang on. I have a song. Called Do It Badly that I wrote on the. Ukulele. It's fits. Heck, yeah. That's awesome. Okay, if I play this song, which I might do, I'm going to need this, but I'll have, like, this version. I'm getting so perfectionistic about this one. Okay. do a badly. reward your creativity, That means not rewarding, just the end result.

### [14:25](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZYXHU2omzE&t=865s) Reward Your Creativity

That means rewarding the process that leads to the end result that you would like to see, instead of just rewarding yourself when you have finished a thing. Reward yourself for. Starting it. Reward yourself for working on it. for those with ADHD, research has shown that smaller, more frequent rewards are often more powerful. Than larger, less frequent rewards. So a reward that's closer. To the action that you would like to encourage in yourself, in. Someone else, That's going to be more effective for most people with ADHD. So reward. Your creativity. And do it as close to the act of creation as you can to kind of reinforce that. food rewards should not be the only rewards, right? But they are very effective. So are stickers. For me for a lot of. People, ADHD stickers. I type a sentence, I get a stickers, type another, and I get a sticker. If it works for toddlers, it works for adults. Even praise. This was something that I learned kind of the hard way, when I was trying to be more effective and efficient. At work of. Okay, well, I can start to delegate some things, right? So I had my community manager responding to comments when a video dropped for a while instead of me, so that I could keep working and focusing on other things. And I found myself actually being less and less effective and less productive, despite the fact that I had more time now because I had taken away. A big reward. For myself, which was getting to see how the video does when it first comes out, getting to chat with people about it. That was a really rewarding thing for my brain. And so by trying to be efficient about my productivity and my creativity and going to create, instead of being there to read the comments, that actually hurt my creativity. So I started. Hanging out in the comments again for the first hour after video promotes. Unless there's some reason I absolutely can't be there. Because that was actually an important part of my creativity. It was that reward.

### [16:16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZYXHU2omzE&t=976s) Treat Your ADHD

Treating your ADHD. Where are my meds? this is an interesting one, because a lot of people are hesitant to treat their ADHD because they like having this wild horse of a chaotic creative brain, and they are worried that taking medication will inhibit their creativity. There is good news about that. On the research front, Research has found that it does help with convergent thinking. Stimulant medication helps us narrow ideas down, helps us see an idea through to fruition, but it doesn't actually negatively impact our divergent thinking. That was a really surprising finding for me, and more research is needed. But I talked to a few different experts on why that might be doctors, ADHD researchers, and what seems to be is that you get used to how your brain works. And so if you take something and your brain is not working the way that you're used to it working, it can feel weird, it can feel disconcerting, and it can feel like a negative thing. if you're still having lots of ideas, but you're able to pick one and then follow it through, that can feel less creative, even though you're actually being more creative. Because the other part of this is creativity isn't just having ideas, it's also being able to focus on them and communicate them long enough and well enough to be able to get them done We need more research here. But in the meantime, what we do know is that there is more to creativity than coming up with ideas. It's being able to communicate those ideas, flush them out, execute on them. And ADHD medication can help with that. If you. Do feel like you've taken meds before, or you are on meds and it is impacting or was impacting your creativity. what one doctor recommended is getting really specific with your doctor. About how. What's happening if you feel like it's impacting your creativity, you're not able to be as creative on your meds. get really, really specific with it so that you can come to them with the challenges and they can help you work that out. this particular doctor said that a lot of the time when she. Goes. Through this process of asking her patients very specific questions about how it's impacting their creativity, they realize it's not actually hurting it. It's more of a perception thing where it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. They've heard the ADHD meds impact creativity, and so it must be it's interesting. It's just interesting that the a lot of people with ADHD are actually able to be more creative on meds than off of them, and I am one of them. I don't always feel as. Creative, but. I am definitely getting more done. I'm definitely coming up with lots of cool ideas and executing on them, and I have a much harder time doing that personally if I am not getting treatment. So, for your ADHD Other people. There are a lot of different ways that we can benefit

### [18:48](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZYXHU2omzE&t=1128s) Involve Other People

from the involvement of other people. We can collaborate. We can work on a project together with somebody. If you're going to write a book, read a bunch of books, if you're going to make a movie, watch a bunch of movies, right, using other people as inspiration. Or. Have conversations and maybe something sparks for. You. Body doubling so that can help with the execution. Accountability can be helpful. Definitely leaned on that really hard with my book, where every week that I was supposed to be working on my book, I met with my editor, the day after I agreed to turn in whatever I had written that week. So that. I knew that there was not only this deadline, but that my editor was setting aside time to read what I had written the next morning, and then we were going to meet about it. So there is a lot of accountability in that helped, for sure. If you don't need to work with other people on the projects that you're working on, generally speaking, at least encourage and welcome and listen to feedback. Feedback can be really valuable and helping us hone art, hone our skills, improve our ideas. Right? It can also be really hard when you have ADHD. If you are dealing with rejection sensitivity. Which a lot of us are, Feedback can be really hard to hear. So I just want to share this about feedback. Just because somebody gives you feedback doesn't mean you have to take it is your job as the creative to decide, is this feedback worth incorporating? is this going to make my creative work different. Worse. Or better in a way that it's worth implementing this feedback? That it's worth taking? This note This is my puppet. Other people, What do you think I should do for? Do it badly. You should do it badly. Good point. thank you so much to my brain advocates and all my Patreon brains for supporting the work that this entire team does on this channel. Because, again, creatives don't work alone. I have an incredible team that helps. If you'd like to support what we do and support my team, you can at Patreon. com/ howtoadhd I hope these tips were helpful for you. Let me know in the comments below if there are any tools that I missed that you find really valuable, that you find helpful. Or I don't know, just say hi. I can't believe everything fit. Oh, no. Okay. There. I think I can bring it to a box through TSA? Like subscribe, click all the things, and I will see you next video. Bye Brains!

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*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/48973*