The Adulting Club is a space for neurodivergent people to gather together and get their too-hard basket done. Let’s get it together.
- How many unread emails do you have?
- How many subscriptions do you need to cancel?
- How many times have you tried to back up your phone?
- How many attempts have there been to sort your photo album?
We have a lot of things we leave… and this causes negative emotions, about the thing, and about ourselves.
- How stressed do you get doing your taxes?
- How much anxiety does making appointments give you?
- How hard is it for you to structure your life, organise your time, and plan your meals?
These are the things we do together at The Adulting Club.
It is a place for all those low-dopamine jobs to get done.
Sign up for The Adulting Club here.
Why the Modern World Overwhelms Neurodivergent People
Humans were not designed to sit at desks and answer emails, have our phones go off and interrupt us a million times a day, be required to plan weeks ahead just to see a doctor, be bombarded by advertisements everywhere we go, and receive contradictory advice on literally everything.
And the data backs this up. Evidence suggests the average person is now consuming approximately 74GB of information a day — that’s about 16 movies… every single day.
To put that into perspective, it’s the equivalent of everything a highly educated person from 500 years ago would have been exposed to in their entire lifetime.
No wonder we are overwhelmed.
Neurodivergent Brains Process 42% More Sensory Information
Velázquez and Galan (2013) found that autistic children’s brains produce approximately 42% more information at rest compared with neurotypical peers. When neurodivergent people say we experience more — that something is extra itchy, extra loud, extra bright — we really mean it.
When a neurodivergent person goes to a shopping centre, we don’t just see a series of shops connected by a large enclosed walkway. We see every single item in every single shop, the fluorescent lighting, the signs. We hear the background music like it’s a rave. The Boost Juice blenders at the other end of the strip are all-consuming. The smell of coffee from the café is intense. The sheer number of things competing for our attention is insane.
Why Adulting is Harder for Neurodivergent People
We are expected to work in cubicles with our colleague’s tuna bake wafting over the pinboard divider, every phone call from every other member of staff buzzing in our ears, the sound of typing, clicking, breathing.
We are somehow meant to manage our affairs when every email comes with an action to perform, one we often don’t feel equipped to follow through on.
Mail is meant to be opened and actioned right after we get home from work. Right when our clothes are touching us too tightly. Right when we are thirsty from our commute, our pet is begging for attention, and we are already worried about dinner.
I am meant to ignore all of that, open the mail, get on my computer — whilst still in my bra, which has kept my boobs in jail all day already — and go through the rigmarole of hoops and buttons and checks and email verifications, to pay a bill that is entirely inflated because of this insane world we live in, which then makes me worry about the state of the world and our children’s future?
No sir. I say no. The mail will stay next to the key bowl, the emails will stay unopened, and I will feel like a useless adult unable to survive in this insane world.
The Hunter-Gatherer Brain: Why Neurodivergent People Struggle with Routine
There’s a reason many of us dream of an apocalypse. We feel we would do so well, provided we survived the first wave of zombie attacks.
It’s because we would.
Neurodivergent people have been found to find more berries faster when compared to neurotypical people gathering. Our circadian rhythm is built for periods of alertness, whilst the rest of the tribe sleeps. Our attention is fine-tuned to hyperfocus on a hunt for days, followed by deep rest. We were not built for fluorescent offices and back-to-back meetings. We were built for the wild.
This is why so many entrepreneurs are neurodivergent. We suffocate with the drudgery of 9-5. We see the patterns in businesses and work out solutions to inefficiencies that others walk past every day. We innovate, explore, adventure, and take risks in ways many neurotypical people simply don’t care to. This is not to say we, or they, are any better. Simply different, with different skills and abilities.
The Reality of Low-Dopamine Tasks for Neurodivergent Adults
The sad thing is, this world requires drudgery. Those low-dopamine tasks. The ones that make you feel useless because you can’t do them, and everyone around you seems to think they are “simple.”
And they are simple for many people.
Grocery shopping sounds easy if you go in with a list, buy the things, and leave without noticing the signage, the noise, the lighting, the advertisements, or the opportunities we see everywhere we look.
My husband refuses to let me go grocery shopping because I come home with ingredients that neither of us knows what to do with, ones I got excited about to diversify our gut microbiome. I buy myself a vegetable that requires a full learning experience and then wonder why I am tired.
It is not that we can’t do these mundane tasks. It’s that our brain was built for more excitement, more innovation, more magic. When we just have to follow a process, it bores us, and no one likes being bored.
How The Adulting Club Helps You Clear Your To-Do List
We all have that list. The list of things we need to do but don’t want to, because it is boring, because nothing terrible has happened yet from not doing it, and because we don’t have the dopamine or the time management skills to get them done.
Yet the list hangs over our heads like the memory of a bad boyfriend we really shouldn’t have dated. It reminds us constantly that we suck, that we aren’t good enough, that we can’t do anything.
Well, aside from all that internal narrative being completely wrong, we can get it done. We just need the right conditions. And that is exactly what The Adulting Club provides.
What The Adulting Club Actually Does
The Adulting Club is more than a class. It is a community of people who also get it. These people are there doing the same mundane, excruciating jobs that you are doing. Organising files on their phone or computer, replying to emails, finally writing that job application, booking appointments. You name it.
They are just doing it with a few key differences which shift it from torture to success.
The Mindset Shift The Adulting Club Teaches
The first thing we do at The Adulting Club is work on our mindset. If you are anything like I used to be, your internal monologue runs on the language of inferiority, uselessness, and self-doubt. I am still working on the language I use, both verbally and internally, to show up as the person I know I am, rather than the insecure, disempowered version I sometimes behave as.
The Adulting Club gets you into a state where you feel confident, competent, and courageous. You can do this boring stuff. You can break a 15-step task into manageable sections. You can get this thing off your list. And you will.
How The Adulting Club Helps You Make a Plan
The next thing we do at The Adulting Club is make a plan. This isn’t to say I am there dictating what you do. Sometimes, no plan is the plan, and that is perfectly okay. However, most of the time when I have been stuck, it isn’t because I can’t do something. It is because I either don’t know what to do (I can’t choose between all my conflicting priorities) or I don’t know how to start. We overcome both of these at The Adulting Club.
There are always options, and there is so much freedom, because I know better than anyone that everyone is different and everyone needs something slightly customised to get themselves going.
If you want to ignore me and just start working, go for it.
If you want to listen and learn about every option I suggest, brilliant.
If you have your own solution and you just needed a space to do it in, here is your space.
How The Adulting Club Helps Neurodivergent People Prioritise
So many of us struggle with prioritising so much that we forget one of the most important factors in how we actually live. We need dopamine. So, what do you want to do?
This is your dessert before dinner moment.
Do you want to write an exhaustive list of everything and order it?
Do you need to brain dump everything out of your head?
Do you need to talk with someone to verbally process your options and priorities?
Do you simply want to pick something, anything, and not care how important it is?
If you have 30 things to do, and they have all been waiting months or even years to get done, does it really make a difference which one you choose first? Probably not. The Adulting Club gives you the conditions to feel ready. And when you feel ready, you will get started.
How The Adulting Club Gets You Out of Paralysis and Into Action
Wonderful, you have worked out what to do. Now, how do you do it?
Again, that is up to you. I both love and hate it when people tell me what to do. On the one hand, just tell me so I don’t need to use my executive function to work it out. On the other hand, there are so many reasons why whatever that person has told me simply doesn’t work for me. Then I am stuck in a loop of feeling misunderstood rather than assisted.
The Adulting Club is about taking back your power. No one will tell you what to do. I firmly believe that the person most capable of making change in your life (the only person, actually) is yourself. I am just a traffic controller pointing out paths you are more than capable of driving down.
Getting started can take so many forms:
- Holding your breath and counting to three as if you were jumping in a pool.
- Working out the plan and executing it step by step.
- Asking for advice or help.
- Just doing it for 90 seconds, and if you want to continue, great, and if not, don’t.
Many of us know all the techniques, but we just don’t execute them. Why? Because it takes dopamine. And dopamine is what I provide. The body doubling, the absolute belief in you.
I’ll have you planning marathons, not miles. (Not really. I am actually so averse to running, that I think the only way you would see me run is in the case of a zombie apocalypse, and that is simply so I can survive long enough for my natural skills to flourish.)
This is what happens when I run!
The Adulting Club Community: Why You Won’t Do This Alone
The thing that separates The Adulting Club from other neurodivergent events is that this isn’t for friendship, this isn’t for networking, and it isn’t simply to get things done. It is a space where the community itself creates the support, the love, the care, the advice, the action, the joy, the cheerleaders, the drive to do all the things.
There is something extra special about being around other people who get you. About knowing that you are not alone, and that you are all so capable in your own ways.
The Adulting Club is much like a gym. People go there to get stronger, but rather than working on their muscles, they are working on their minds. You go feeling weak and insecure, and you leave, realising that gym culture is about growth, not ability. No one cares what you do. They are all there to be the best they can be. People in the gym don’t negatively compare themselves to each other; they aspirationally judge. The person over there lifting something heavy doesn’t make you feel weak. It just makes you do one more rep on your machine.
Or so I am told. I find gyms overstimulating, but my husband swears by this culture, so I am believing him here.
My attempt at being a gym person… that one time.
Join The Adulting Club: A Space Built for Neurodivergent Adults
So welcome. I am so happy you are here. Although this is a place primarily for neurodivergent individuals, everyone is welcome. If you are ready to shift your mindset, embody the person you know you are, and play to your strengths whilst doing what you are most likely weakest at, then this is the place for you.
I am so proud of you.
For taking this step. For showing up.
Let’s get it together.