Being a different thinker has its perks, and it has it’s pain in the butt things– Project Anxiety Creep™ (PAXC)™ is one of them.
This is one of the more common things that I work with clients on if they are having issues getting things done on time or getting started with a project. When people talk about “accountability” this is one of the things they are talking about.
I have another article about ™ (PAC for short) and while I was working on that I realized that there is also Project Anxiety Creep ™. I highly recommend that you go check out that video and article too.
While the two are similar there is an order to these two. PAXC comes first, causing one to start to avoid the project, and then it can turn into PAC.
Project Anxiety Creep ™ PAXC is an anxiety that builds in the space between when a person is given or receives a project and the point where that person starts to do and complete the project.
It may dissipate some once we start the project or it may not.
Where this is different from Project Avoidance Creep™ is that the anxiety alone is what is building about the project, not the avoidance. Avoidance can be the resulting action from the anxiety and then that action can have its own shame, blame, and guilt.
PAC becomes its own thing. PAXC stays attached to the project.
“Why does this difference matter?” you ask. I was thinking the same thing as I started down this vein, let me answer that.
It matters because as a dyslexic, ADHD, or autistic person sometimes to release something being held hostage by anxiety, you need to be able to understand the “why” and get to the root of the situation.
I have experienced this from time to time and I often experience it with clients. They want to shift, they can logically understand why they need to shift and do the thing, but they just can’t get themselves going on it.
Often when we get to the root the anxiety just disappears, poof, and they shift into gear. Language matters and having the right words to help us express our feelings and emotions is critical to mental wellness and growth.
Project Anxiety Creep™ (PAXC)™ can happen in a fraction of a second. My clients can sometimes describe the exact feeling they have when they are reading an email, or someone is verbally explaining a project and the anxiety grabs hold. Then they freeze.
They don’t start on the project, they might not reply to the email, they don’t add it to the calendar, and it doesn’t go on their to-do list. Nope, none of that productive stuff. They ignore.
Here is where it gets even more layered. If there was no deadline given to the project, they start to get anxious as to when someone will notice they are not doing the thing.
If the project does have a timeline, they typically will thaw out from freeze days or hours before the project is due and quickly get it done, often not to the best of their ability. Plus, they feel like crap that they waited so long, and it didn’t turn out better.
If you want to understand more about anxiety and the neurodiverse, I have a couple of other articles that might be helpful:
Anxiety and Dyslexia in Adults Part 1 – What is anxiety?
Anger and the Connection to Anxiety Common in ADHD and Dyslexia
I have a great story to share about this and I will add it in a little later. First, you need to know what you can do if you are struggling with Project Anxiety Creep™ (PAXC)™ and how to deal with it moving forward.
5 Steps to Rescue a Project from an Anxiety Kidnapping
Step 1: Identify that your anxiety is lying to you and has kidnapped a task.
Step 2: Ask for help. ASAP. Who do you know that is good at breaking down a project? What tools can you use (maybe goblin.tools – AI software written by a different thinker)
Step 3: Create a project outline or scope with all of the action steps you need to take.
Step 4: Take action. As soon as possible start on the first step of your project and keep working on it a little at a time each day. Or schedule out blocks of time to get it done.
Step 5: Keep up the momentum to complete the project ahead of schedule or on time and even better than you could have anticipated.
Years ago, I had a business owner client who loved to come up with ideas. He makes an incredible living off of his ideas.
He has good ideas, and people are not able to implement or even start to design those ideas if he doesn’t get them out of his head with ALL the details only he has access to in his brain.
5 Second SEGWAY: I will give you a little hint, you can’t delegate things to engineers without telling them “why” they are doing something. That is just how they roll.
The breakdown between him and his engineering team was immense and darn costly too.
It took us a bit of work to get at the root of what was going on and it was PAXC. He loved to come up with the ideas and once his brain did and he placed it into the engineering cue with a few details his brain moved on to the next idea.
Because he didn’t want to slow down at the time he was passing the idea to the engineers he would say to himself, “I’ll get back to this later and update it with all the details, right now I need to get back to _________________.”
Right there in that moment was the lie and the place where anxiety was hijacking his project. While the project was in the engineering cue and not being started, it would stay in PAXC.
He was going to get around to it. He would say to himself, “I’m going to do it later today” and never did.
Here is where the shift would come. When the engineering team started to ask him questions about it because they were going to start working on it, he would feel guilty for not getting it done and every day that went by that he didn’t update the details, he added on more shame, blame, and guilt about avoiding the project.
Now he had two things going on PAXC and PAC. Things would get very stuck until there was a blow-up between him and the engineers and they would finally be able to get some details out of him, but it was never enough and he would be frustrated with the poor results they created and be disappointed at them.
It was a whole thing that wasted time, money, and sanity.
Once we got clear on the breakdown and his internal dialog, he could call out the BS about how he was going to come back to this later and update it.
That statement was a lie and when he heard it internally, he learned to call it out, laugh at it, and instead do what was best for him– spend the time placing as many details as he could possibly come up with before he moved on to anything else.
In case you are wondering what we did for him, we created a better system for him to share all of the details he had to go with his ideas.
We added a staff person to his process who would contact him, anywhere in the world, right after he submitted a new idea to the team. That staffer would ask lots of questions and help extract the important information that was easily accessible as it was top of mind at that moment.
His team was then able to implement his ideas quickly and communication between him and the team moved into an easy flow. And yes, it increased the company’s value by 3x what it was before we resolved this problem.
Don’t you love a good story? I do, that’s why I try to add them to my articles so you the reader can relate a little more to what you are learning.
If you know that you are fighting with PAXC ™ I hope that with this new information, you can start to fight back. You might not win all the time, but progress over perfect is better than nothing, so start today.
If you have enjoyed this article, please check out the others on my website. If you need help implementing a system for shifting out of PAXC™ let me know. I’m a coach and that is kinda the thing I do.
Be well and embrace your brain and the adventures it brings to each day,
JoyGenea
BONUS NOTE:
If you are wondering why I picked the image of clocks reproducing, it was because I thought it helped to represent the feeling of, “This is going to take forever.”