Mapping Your Universe

Sunday, May 20, 2012 Leave a comment

Getting Things Done – 101 part 2

Moving through the Ten Tips for Focus & Intentionality:
Prep-Time for Time Mapping

We LOVE Phillip Martin’s artword!

Lets begin by reviewing steps 1-6.

You need to have those firmly in mind to be able to go forward with what we’re going to do next.

1. House the Homeless
2. Name the Game
3. Mise en Plasse
4. Plant and Stake
5. Remember the Cookie
6. Stop and Drop (thanks Maria!)

Go back to read (or reread) Part 1 if you’re not ready to ride after reading those reminders.

As I said in the first part of Getting Things Done – 101:

The use of a Time Map – setting a regular and recurring time in your calendar or datebook where you plan to work on the same task each time – reduces the prefrontal cortex resource depletion that happens every darn time you try to DECIDE what to do.

Interestingly enough, shuffling the deck
- assuming you HAVE a deck to shuffle -
takes far fewer cognitive resources.

Think of it like a commune in your calendar. Every task has a tent, but the community members kind of float from one tent to the other, making sure all of the activities of the commune are attended to daily, weekly and monthly – just not always in the same tent.

This article begins to help you put that “deck” together.

Read more of this post

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Getting Things Done – 101

Thursday, May 17, 2012 Leave a comment

Ten Tips for Focus and Intentionality – part 1

I finally had time to sit down and read a past issue of Maria Gracia’s excellent Get Organized Now newsletter.  This one had a great article entitled “Hopping and Dropping.”  (If you don’t already know Maria’s website, RUN to sign up – you’ll thank me for the tip many times.)  

Thanks Maria!  Your article reminded me to go look for a similar document on Organization and Task Completion, hiding out somewhere on my hard drive waiting for its turn in the blog spotlight in the TaskMaster series.

Getting things DONE

Those of us who are highly distractible (as well as those who are highly impulsive) generally run out of day  l-o-n-g before we run out of To-Dos.  We shake our heads sadly and ask ourselves, “What did I DO all day? I’ve barely stopped working and I have nothing to show for it.”

Maria calls this “Hopping and Dropping — starting one task, hopping to another,” then dropping that task for something else, moving right along to whatever grabs your attention next — and repeating this process throughout the day.

This not only results in exhaustion, it’s lousy for getting much of anything DONE!

I call that exhaustion nonsense the [old] ADD Way!

The *NEW and IMPROVED* ADD Way: Ten Tips

This is a HUGE topic for a single article, so I’m going to whittle it down to a size we can manage in two ways:
1. dividing it into three parts, and 2. directing it primarily to those attemtping to Get Things Done at home, whether the tasks are personal or professional in nature.

1. House the Homeless

So maybe you don’t yet have “a place for everything,” maybe you rarely see a day when “everything’s in it’s place” and maybe you never will – but the concept is more important than ever when it comes to planning what you are going to do with your TIME!

The use of a Time Map — setting aside a regular and recurring time in your calendar or datebook where you plan to work on the same types of task each time – reduces the prefrontal cortex resource depletion that happens every darn time you try to DECIDE what to do when.

Interestingly enough, shuffling the deck
- assuming you HAVE a deck to shuffle -
takes far fewer cognitive resources.

Think of it like a commune in your calendar.
Every task has a tent, but the community members kind of float from one tent to the other — making sure all the kids get fed, the laundry  is done, all homework is attended to, sleep happens nightly, and all of the recurring activities of the commune are attended to daily, weekly and monthly – just not always in the same tent every time.

2. Name the Game

As I’ve said for almost 25 years now, how we name the game determines the rules.  Naming the Game is sometimes the only thing that makes it possible for us to play at all!  It clearly delineates a mini-goal for the activity at hand that keeps us on task and focused. It also makes it possible for us to make a wild stab at guessing how much time it’s likely to take.

Rank it for import



Make sure you’re naming a game that’s really worth playing.  Jettison the busy-work, the in-order-to’s, the impress-the-friends and neighbors, the everbody-has-tos, and other people’s agenda for your life.

  • At the end of the day, what will allow you to look back with satisfaction?
  • What are the tasks that you never seem to have time “left over” to handle — that make you feel crummy about yourself and about life every day you drop them out?
  • Those are YOUR high priority tasks – the ones that make you feel great about being, well, YOU.

Keep those A-1 tasks on a notecard or a sticky note, and put them somewhere you can’t help but see them any time you’re likely to be vulnerable to distractions or hyperfocus.

This is what’s important to you.  If you don’t have time to do what’s important to YOU, you certainly don’t have time to do what’s NOT important to you.  Right?  Don’t let yourself ADD-out on your LIFE!   “Just say NO!”  

3. Mise en place

Pronounced something like “meez-own-plasse,” the term refers to a way of cooking that many chefs use to run professional kitchens.

They measure all ingredients for a particular dish into containers before they even think about turning on the stove.

This is the term we’ll use to remind you to be certain to have everything you need you to complete any particular task before you begin.

I don’t have to ask you to recall what happens when you decide to take time
for a scavenger hunt in the middle of a task, do I?  That’s right — nothing!

If you can develop this one habit, you will probably find that it will serve you well, leading you right into the task you need to accomplish — as long as you remember to name the game and chant it like a mantra while you go about this hunter/gatherer expedition.  It helps, by the way, to work from a list.

The further decision and action are from each other, the easier the decision is to make.  

Don’t float around the house hoping to recognize the things you’ll need.
Think about everything you are going to need before you look for the first thing.

A list of what you’re gathering for the task at hand, by the way, is a great use for all those sticky notes most organizers tell you to get rid of.  You most certainly will — just as soon as you’ve collected all the items you need to begin the project at hand, you’ll toss it right into the circular file (that means the trash can, for those of you who’ve never heard the term).

Since your first task will be to house the homeless (putting together that deck you’ll shuffle later), you will need to have at-the-ready the following ingredients:

1-sharpened pencils with decent erasers (a pencil sharpener?)
2-a calendar or datebook
3-a pad of paper, and
4-some kind of timer that is as easy to set as a kitchen egg timer.

If you can handle the ticking, a kitchen egg timer might be perfect for this task.
If not, see if you can find a nice quiet 30-minute hourglass; you’re going to work
on your map in 30-minute chunks.

I warn you away from going high-tech with this timer, and especially urge you not to use your computer or your smart phone. Beware — the next thing you know you’ll be checking your email, updating your FaceBook status and tinkering with technology.

4. Plant your flag and stake your territory

Practice setting boundaries with those who share your space.  Tell them what you need, clearly, with the expectation that they will be willing to work with you happily.

  • Privacy?  Ask them what they plan to do with the time you’ll be unavailable — and remind them when that unavailable time IS and what that means: no “one quick questions” what-so-ever.  Tell them that the only “emergencies” you want to know about are those that involve fire, flood or bloodshed.
  • Quiet?  Swap minutes of quiet time for noisy time — time they can turn the volume up on the latest cool tune while you hold a family dance party.  Everybody can use the exercise and the chance to work off a few extra calories — after you get the quiet time you need to finish the game you named for yourself. (I’m sure you can figure out how to adapt this one by trading what you need at the office for what they need at the office.)

5. Remember the cookie

If you think I’m talking about a snack, you need to go back an episode.
Click here to read about the importance of the cookie.

6. Stop and Drop 

- get thee to thy Boggle space!

I’m “stealing” Maria Gracia’s “Stop and Drop” for this hint – it’s PERFECT!  The text below is hers too, “Cliff Notes” of many of the points in The Boggle Book.

“Sometimes constant distractions lead to a frenzied state when we completely lose our ability to focus. It is time to stop and drop, meaning take a break, sit down, rest, breath deeply and reflect on our current state and what can we do to calmly continue with our day feeling refreshed and more focused.”

Mapping your universe

The next article will begin to explain how to create a Time Map to reduce the “cognitive drag” of daily decision-making.  Don’t worry – your calendar commune will be able to swap tasks at will, but now you’ll have some idea of how to keep everything humming along like a well-run summer camp, rather than an episode of Survivors Gone Wild – so stay tuned.

As always, if you want notification of new articles in this series – or any new posts on this blog – give your name and email to the nice form on the top of the skinny column to the right.  (You only have to do this once, so if you’ve already asked for notification about a prior series, you’re covered for this one too) STRICT No Spam Policy

Articles in the TaskMaster™ Series

Coming up in the TaskMaster™ Series:

  • Mapping your Universe (Getting Things Done-101, part 2)
  • TIME Mapping your Universe (Getting Things Done-101, part 3)
  • Calendars and To-Do Lists

Wanna’ see how I use this technique?

Related articles

Filed under G5k. TimePeace™, G5l. Organization & Task Completion, G8. TaskMaster™ Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Transitional Modes

Wednesday, May 16, 2012 2 Comments

Sherlock YourSELF, John

Thanks to artist/educator Phillip Martin for capturing so MANY of my concepts in his images – and for their use.

There ain’t no IS about ADD

All human beings, even “identical” twins, have differences — all the way down to the celular level.

Those differences are magnified and multiplied when you throw attentional spectrum disorders into the mix.

While your challenges and talents may be impacted by (or even a product of) ADD, don’t make the mistake of assuming that your experience is reflective of ADD in general.

Throughout the Transitions Series, for instance, I offer my examples to help you compile and categorize your troublesome transitions.

But don’t assume that you work the same way
I do simply because we both have ADD. 

EVEN when we share what seems to be an
identical list of transitional challenges,
when we dig deeper we will find that they
are challenging for completely different reasons.

Read more of this post

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The Truth about Transitions

Saturday, May 12, 2012 1 Comment

Sherlocking Transitions

As I said in Trouble with Transitions, the first article in the Transitions Series:

One of the primary reasons that transitions are so tricky is that we have only one word to describe THREE phases of the same darned task: 

COMPLETION – transitioning out of
– “putting away your toys”

PREPARATION – transitioning into
– “getting out the pieces of the new puzzle”

and

THE GAP – that “toy free”
period between the two.

Read more of this post

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Trouble with Transitions

Wednesday, May 9, 2012 2 Comments

Fade In - Fade Out

Transition Trials

As we work our way from dawn to dusk — multi-tasking, time-slicing or hyperfocusing — the moment we realize that we must begin a particular task before we have completed what we are currently doing is the very stake in the heart of “trouble with transitions.”

But WHY are transitions so difficult?

Wait! Let’s ask a better question: who claimed that transitioning was supposed to be easy?  

ADD or vanilla, most of us have some degree of trouble with transitions —  a big-time reason why most of us reach the exhausted end of many a busy day with so many undone to-dos.

It is merely a trick of language that promotes the fallacy that we will be able to transition from one task to the next with the ease with which one image dissolves into another at the movies — or the way a really great cross-fade between tunes seems to sneak the volume of one song down just as the other comes up.

Easy? NO WAY!

How many times has an activity taken longer than planned because it was more complicated to BEGIN than you had envisioned?

Or maybe you got right to it, but you began tweaking pieces of the project and entered what I call the transition time-warp: one minute you are right on schedule, but when you look up a “moment” later, you’re way behind, and still need just another “moment” to reach a point where you feel like you can put it away.

And so it goes.

One of the primary reasons that transitions are so tricky . . .

Artwork courtesy of Phillip Martin

. . . is that we use only one word to describe two completely different processes

• Completion – transitioning out of
– i.e., “putting away your toys”

and

• Preparation – transitioning into
-- i.e., “getting out the pieces of the new puzzle”

If that weren’t tricky enough, THEN we have to deal with the gap!

Unless you deliberately plan things another way, between the period where you “put away the toys” you used in the prior activity and get out new puzzle pieces, there almost always a brief period that is toy free:  THE DREADED GAP.

For some people, the gap is where transitions break down. 

  • They get stuck in that between-task “space of nothingness” far longer than the few moments it takes for others to move through it.
  • Some experience so much difficulty transitioning from doing nothing to doing something, that even the few brief seconds of most gaps might as well be quicksand.

Hang tight about the gap

Another article in this series will offer more help to you gap-challenged folk.  Let’s start with a little more about the transitions process, focusing on the first two transition challenges.

Transitions 101:

There is a way to teach yourself to navigate transitions, regardless of where the process breaks down for you, just as soon as you understand what you’ve got working for you and what you are going to have to avoid, ignore or overcome.

The most important thing for you to hold onto:
Folks who have never struggled rarely understand folks who do.

  • Trust Fund Babies can’t understand poverty;
  • Math geniuses don’t really comprehend the struggles of those with dyscalculia;
  • People who have perfect pitch will never appreciate the reality that “ear training” is impossible for the tone deaf.

The privileged unenlightened (who preface statements with words like “just” and “only” — as in, “Just set an alarm, put away one project and go on to the next thing!” or
“It’s only a matter of setting your priorities)  . . . REALLY don’t get it.

  • EVEN if they had to put more than a little up-front time and effort into tasks that now seem so simple to them, they’ll never understand that it will not compare to the amount of time and effort that those of us with executive functioning struggles will have to spend to be able to manage at, by their standards, even the most rudimentary levels.
  • Few of the clue-free intend to be shaming or cruel when they use that “What-are-you-brain-dead?!” tone of voice – and they REALLY don’t get that that’s exactly how they come across.
  • They also don’t get that, since they are over-represented in the comments section of our lives, they leave us with a sense of disempowerment, rather than the opposite.

They can’t teach what they don’t know

Those who have never struggled have nothing to offer to those who struggle still.

The best teachers are almost always the ones who broke through their initial struggles to experience ease of accomplishment (at least some of the time).  They tend to be motivated, by a mixture of relief and empathy, to improve the lives of those who are still struggling.

In other words, as you work through your challenges, do your dardest to ignore the comments of the “just” and “only” crowd.  Smile, thank them for sharing, dust yourself off, and keep your eyes and ears open for models who seems like they have  been there, done that.

Meanwhile, keep reading this blog!

Anyone who knows me well can assure you that, not only have I been there, done that, I still go there regularly.

The difference now is my willingness and ability to keep “getting back on the horse” — along with a quarter of a century’s worth of experience with ADDers (and a frightening amount of brain-based information, that some would say borders on the obsessional).

As the late Thomas J. Leonard (the founder of the Coaching Profession and my first professional coaching mentor)
was fond of saying:

Information is the booby prize.

Still, I share what I’ve learned in the hopes that it will help most of my community at least some of the time – and that you will put it into ACTION in your lives.

Not everything will work for YOU, but simply knowing that you are not the only person who struggles in areas that seem to be relatively easy for many others will help. You will feel a great deal more positive about yourself, armed with enough self-esteem to continue your search for solutions.

Your best bet would be to work privately with a highly ADD-literate ADD Coach who can help you uncover the implications of your particular flavor of ADD to your particular functional profile.

THAT kind of coach will help you acquire the tools to allow YOU to keep getting back on the horse.

However, if you will keep reading (and DO the exercises suggested), you will probably be amazed at the improvements in your functioning, your sense of well-being, and your ability to accomplish what you set out to do.

So What IS a Transition?

Most of the people I asked to define the term said something like the following:

Transition?    It’s about going from one thing to another
 – getting from point A to point B!

Hardly!

It’s more accurate to say that during most transitions we are moving from A to Z –
passing a whole lot of tempting distractions along the way.

Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary defines transition as:

passage from one state, stage or place to another: change;
a movement, development or evolution from one form, stage, or style to another.

Did you notice that “change” word?

Humans aren’t particularly comfortable when things change. Oh sure, as a therapist I know often said, everybody wants things to be different, but nobody wants life to change.

From a brain-based standpoint, change activates the “Danger, Will Robinson” part of our brain, the amygdala.

The neuroscience crowd has recently discovered that amygdala activation strongly correlates with a deactivation of the seat of our executive functions – exactly the areas we need to be on board and working well to be able to cope effectively with change, and exactly the areas ALREADY implicated in the challenges faced by those of us with executive functioning dysregulations.

No wonder we struggle!

Still, not all of us struggle with change to the same degree.

In particular, some of us seem to navigate transitions pretty darn well.  I’m guessing that anyone still reading is probably not a member of that particular tribe, however.

EVEN SO, those of us who struggle with transitions don’t always find the same parts of the transition challenging.

In fact, if you will pay attention (between now and the posting of the next article in this series), I’ll bet you will find that you tend to have a tougher time with one of the “coming out of/going into” stages of transitions than you do with the other (even if you already realize that you are seriously gap-challenged).

Coming up in this series, in addition to the promised gap content, we’ll take a look at the kinds of transitions that tend to Boggle those of us on team ADD, as well as some that might be making it tough for you to master tasks.

You will be asked to choose ONE of the non-gap phases to work on first, so DO make it a point to remember to notice which of the two is most problematic in YOUR life.  (If you’re flying coachless and REALLY want to get this bear behind you, read the linked Boggle and Taskmaster posts in the paragraph above, and do the work suggested there).

IN ANY CASE, stay tuned.  There’s a lot more to come.

As always, if you want notification of new articles in this series – or any new posts on this blog – give your name and email to the nice form on the top of the skinny column to the right.  (You only have to do this once, so if you’ve already asked for notification about a prior series, you’re covered for this one too) STRICT No Spam Policy

MORE Transition Articles on the way . . .

The Transition Series
(links turn red on mouseover, ONLY when they’re ready to go)

Other related articles on this site:

Transition related articles ‘ round the ‘net – different meanings of the term

Filed under A5a. Attention & Focus, A5f. Organization & Task Completion, A5g. Distractions & Transitions, G5j. Transition Tamer, G5l. Organization & Task Completion, H. Brain Based Coaching/Training Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Ten ADD Organizing Principles

Friday, April 27, 2012 Leave a comment

NOT Your Mama’s Organization

As I began in an earlier post (ADD & Organized?) . . .

Yes, even YOU can learn to be organized –
JUST AS SOON AS YOU UNDERSTAND
the REASONS why you’ve been stopped in the past.  

HERE’S the KICKER: it’s a different mix of stoppers for every single one of us.  

If you don’t understand how YOU work, you’ll never be able to determine what YOU need to do to to keep from spending half your life looking for things that were “right here a minute ago” – and the other half tripping over dirt and detritus.

So much for helpful hints and tidy lists!  

That said, I’m going to go w-a-a-y out on a limb by offering ten ADD organizing principles that I call, collectively, The ADD Organizaing Manifesto — a summary of some basic concepts that need to be embraced and understood if you want to have a shot at working out what YOU need to do for YOU to be organized.

In future posts in this series, I’ll expand on some of the points below.
For NOW, print ‘em out and hang ‘em up!

Read more of this post

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Avoiding Re-Boggle

Sunday, April 15, 2012 Leave a comment

Re-Entry

Excerpted from my upcoming Boggle Book ©Madelyn Grifith-Haynie-all rights reserved.

The only thing worse than Boggle
is re-Boggle.

Have you ever noticed that when things go wrong first thing in the morning, they seem to continue on a downward trajectory all day? That’s because your brain is “primed” to respond to situations that match your prior experience.

We’ll talk more about that in a minute, but for now, I want you to memorize the following sentence:

Once your system is “sensitized,”
it takes increasingly less stimulation to activate it.

So let’s talk about how to DE-sensitize it.

As you read in the article on the TBZ, after a relatively short period of time, once you have removed yourself from the possibility of continued over-stimulation, you will notice that you are calm enough to think about leaving your Temporary Boggle Zone (or your perfectly designed Boggle Space, if you’ve given yourself that gift while you’ve been reading this series over the past few months).

Boggle Technique has helped enough to enable your “real” self to peek tentatively out from behind the banshee clone that took over your body just moments ago — because you removed yourself from the environment where you became over-stimulated.

Relatively quickly, you will begin to notice that you are bored, or that you feelling a bit silly, or that you are eager to do anything except continued breathing and affirming.

When you reach that point, you are ready to begin to think about the situation that caused the Boggle in the first place.

  • If you feel any twinges of re-Boggle as you replay the scenario, go back to square breathing.
  • Only when you can focus calmly on the activity that precipitated your retreat are you ready to even begin to think about re-entry.

Don’t leave yet.

Read more of this post

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Boggle Bait

Sunday, April 15, 2012 Leave a comment

Phillip Martin artwork - THANKS!

Panoramic

Excerpted from my upcoming Boggle Book ©Madelyn Grifith-Haynie-all rights reserved.

Understanding Boggle Build-up

In the last section, Anticipating Boggle,  you began to pay attention to the unique way that YOU build to the Boggle point, and you began to capture your personal triggers in real time.

Continue what you’ve been doing for the rest of the month, with the addition of a few more lists that will give you the perspective of specialized cycles.

That Time of the Month

Every one of us has regular dips in functioning, male or female, ADD or non.  Your biological rhythms are not constant.  They are, however, predictable, given close enough attention.

Have you ever taken the time to observe those times of the month when things go well, as well as those times of the month when they do not?

  • Do your eating patterns change during this period?
  • How about your sleep habits?
  • What ELSE is different?
  • How does that affect your functioning?

Write down anything you can recall from memory, and begin to pay attention to the changes through the cycle of a month as you continue to track your day-to-day Boggle triggers.

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Anticipating Boggle

Saturday, March 31, 2012 Leave a comment

Jaws Music

Excerpted from my upcoming Boggle Book ©Madelyn Grifith-Haynie-all rights reserved.

All artwork on this page: courtesy of Phillip Martin

Remember the movie about the great hunt for the killer shark that turned a formerly peaceful resort town a living nightmare?

Remember the gradually building staccato music that warned the audience that something terrible was about to happen?

Not only did that musical build-up fail to make it any less startling when those great jaws suddenly loomed into view, it acutally heightened the sense of anxiety and impending doom, making the appearance of that shark all the more frightening.

By the midpoint of the movie, people were squirming in their seats and holding their hands up ready to cover their faces with nothing more than the music itself, even when the visual was seemingly placid.

That Jaws music meant something dreadful was just about to happen.  The viewers had become sensitized to expect the worst from the first few notes of the theme.

Guess what? You have your own internal version of Jaws music sensitizing you to expect the worst as well.

You probably don’t consciously realize that you are poised for Boggle from the first moment that one of your early Boggle triggers is activated, but you certainly do experience a mounting sense of anxiety and dread in your body.

Just like our forefather Og’s body was preparing to run like the wind from the moment he saw that first sabre tooth tiger on the horizon, you are now on high alert, fearful of what is likely to happen next unless that “Jaws music” STOPS.

Read more of this post

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Juggling Invisible Balls

Thursday, March 29, 2012 2 Comments

Some Juggling is an INSIDE Job

Part 2 of a 2-part article;
another in a entire series of excerpts from
my upcoming book, TaskMaster™ – see article list below

Juggling invisible balls is my term for our conscious attempts to screen out persistent, irrelevent, or intrusive, off-task, background “noise.”

“Noise” refers to input from any modality (an area of information processing using our sensory apparatus) — with “juggling” a metaphor to help us understand the mechanism by which we handle life’s many demands.

In the previous TaskMaster Series article, Taking Your Functional Temperature, I introduced several analogies that help illuminate what’s going on “behind the scenes” to help explain WHY we struggle with focus — and WHY we struggle in ways that make it difficult-to-impossible to get things done.

If you haven’t read the previous article, I STRONGLY suggest you start there, or I doubt the content below will be as valuable to you as it could be.

In this second section, we’re going to take a closer look at some of the reasons why functioning can be so erratic.

As I said in the first part of this article, on an average day, you may well be able to handle a great many things that, on another day, you simply cannot.

  • It makes sense ONLY if you start becoming aware of – and counting – invisible balls, so that you can better predict your functioning level BEFORE you attempt to take on more than you can manage.
  • Part of the value of ADD Coaching is helping you develop the habit of taking your functional temperature to help you take on the type and number of tasks that will keep you stimulated but not overwhelmed.

You will find tasks easier to manage if you learn to think of your day as if it were one long juggling performance for the Red Queen.  You plan what objects you TAKE to her palace, but you determine the order of your performance in the moment, so that the objects don’t come crashing down around you to the tune of, “Off with your head!”

Read more of this post

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Taking Your Functional Temperature

Sunday, March 18, 2012 4 Comments

Functional Temperature

Part 1 of a 2-part article;
another in a entire series of excerpts from
my upcoming book, TaskMaster™ – see article list below

artwork courtesy of Phillip Martin

Some days I don’t wanna’

When I look at my wide and wonderful list of things I DO want to to, it seems the items I must do to keep a roof over my head, food on my table (and some semblance of organization and order in my life) are seldom the items that make me drool.

I often fantasize about what I’d do if I were to win the lottery, so I know, without stopping to think, exactly what I’d do first: I’d prepay everything for a decade or so!

Next, I’d throw a couple of years of generous support to a would-rather-be-a-stay-at-home Mom to add me to her list of charges.

THAT would allow me to coach and train, and write, and jump on the speaker’s circuit to advocate and educate for NOTHING — following my bliss every single second of every single day — freed from the constraints of capitalist imperatives.

Alas! Since I would probably need to drive someplace to purchase a ticket to said lottery (and my car is currently feeling too lazy to run), I doubt I’m likely to experience said windfall any time soon.

So if anybody knows somebody in that 1% who’s in
a philanthropic mood, send ‘em my way.  

Until then I, like you, must figure out an effective way to bob and weave between the tasks that allow me to make a living and the activities that make life worth living.

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Filed under A5f. Organization & Task Completion, ADD | ADHD | Attention Deficit Disorder, G5a. The ADD Lens™, G5l. Organization & Task Completion, H. Brain Based Coaching/Training Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Sherlocking Task Anxiety

Wednesday, March 14, 2012 2 Comments

Task Anxiety 101 - part 2

Part of a Series of Articles from my upcoming book, TaskMaster™ – see article list below

Watson, we need to review

The three most recent segments introduced a unique connection between bribery and intentionality. reward and acknowledgment (introducing inner three-year-olds, the cookie concept, reward and acknowledgment).

IF you’ve been playing along . . .

In the TaskMaster Series Introduction and in Task Anxiety Awareness, you made some lists.

One is a List of Ten – activities you find yourself doing INSTEAD whenever you attempt to complete a task, or in response to an attempt to initiate a task.

  • This is a list of any ten of the things that YOU do that leaves you chronically behind and befuddled.
  • Many of you had self-identified with that not-very-helpful “chronic procrastinator” label as a result.
  • I encouraged you to reframe those tasks as “avoidance” activities: avoiding task anxiety.

You also have a List of Five Feelings.

I asked you to think of a specific example in your life where you tried to listen to “logical” advice from those who did not take the time to understand  the parameters of your problem before stepping in to suggest their “simple solutions.”

  • I asked you to recall how you felt when you attempted to take that “logical” advice (or even thought about taking it), especially when accompanied by a failure to reach a goal or complete a task.
  • I suggested you write down at least five descriptive feeling words, then walked you through four paired-awareness exercises, shuffling the paired words around a bit to see if any new insights bubbled up from your unconscious.

Now, dear Watson, let’s connect some dots!

Filed under A5f. Organization & Task Completion, ADD | ADHD | Attention Deficit Disorder, G5j. Transition Tamer, G5l. Organization & Task Completion, G8. TaskMaster™ Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Building to Boggle

Monday, March 12, 2012 Leave a comment

Deja Vu all over again

Excerpted from my upcoming Boggle Book ©Madelyn Grifith-Haynie-all rights reserved.

Sherlocking Boggle Build-up

In this section you will begin to pay attention to the unique way that YOU build to the Boggle point.

Unless you are brand-spanking-new to the idea of ADD, you probably already know some of your Boggle triggers.

However, unless you have been dealing with the ADD brain-style for quite a while, I doubt that you realize how many there are, or the unique way in which certain combinations can be deadly!

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Filed under ADD | ADHD | Attention Deficit Disorder, G1. The Boggle Book Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Remembrance of Selves Past

Sunday, March 11, 2012 8 Comments

A not-so-new form of Self-advocacy

Practically all of us here in ADD-land have what the neuropsychs call “short-term memory deficits.”

Not only does that make it tough to run our lives, day to day, it also has a negative effect on what we are able to remember about our past.

Since one’s memories become the fabric of one’s sense of self, self-esteem can only be battered by the trade winds of today if you have no reliable sense of past to keep you moored.

It also makes it difficult to explain ourselves, our decisions, and our conclusions – even to ourselves!

Many of you who battled with teachers who accused you of cheating because you had the answer but couldn’t “show your work” know just what I mean by that statement.

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Filed under A5a. Attention & Focus, A5e. Memory and Info Processing, G5d. Intentional Attending, G5g. MoodMender™ Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Boggle: Cooperation & Support

Sunday, March 4, 2012 1 Comment

Dealing with Others

Excerpted from my upcoming Boggle Book ©Madelyn Grifith-Haynie-all rights reserved.

Reasonable Accommodations

Whether you have been doing the work or not, simply by reading the articles in the Boggle series, you have begun the process of taking responsibility for your ADD in some brand new ways.

Congratulations.

A major tool is the Boggle Space. Are you ready to add it to your toolchest?

My partner will have a fit if I try to claim a space all my own.

Let’s face it – in order to set up a Boggle Space that will work for us, we will be asking for some accommodations from our loved ones.

But aren’t we already? 

Living with a loved one with ADD places a lot of demands on the rest of the family.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you don’t want to ask for one more thing. What you are requesting is an accommodation that will lessen the other demands your ADD will place upon everyone in your life.

You do have to find a way to initiate the conversation, however, and that can be daunting, I know.

The steps of the following communication technique have been useful for some of my clients.  Adapt the language to your personal style.  Combine steps, if it makes more sense to you, but make sure you don’t skip any of the steps in the process.

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Filed under ADD | ADHD | Attention Deficit Disorder, G1. The Boggle Book Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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