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

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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

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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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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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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!

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When the Game is Rigged

Friday, February 24, 2012 2 Comments

Reward and acknowledgment, part 3

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

Don’t be STINGY!

Think back to my earlier reminder that, during the training phase, you make good with those cookie bribes frequently.

Remember that I said that you can reconsider what has to be done for what kind of reward once the training is complete?

Don’t forget as you reconsider, however,
that you are working with an inner KID.  

Most adults I know have lost touch with how much they loved cookies as a kid.

Oh, we remember that kids love cookies, all right, that’s not the problem.

  • In fact, most Moms resort to keeping the cookies in a place the kids can’t reach them.
  • They say they want to keep the kids from eating every single cookie in the jar.

In another unbelievable application of black and white thinking, “You may not eat all of the cookies” transforms into “You may not eat ANY of the cookies” before a three-year-old can figure out what happened.

Since Moms generally dislike interruptions when they are busy and most Mom’s are pretty busy most days, repeated requests for a cookie are quickly considered whining for a cookie. Most Moms don’t like to give in to whining.

The game is rigged!

What’s the poor kid supposed to do? You’re too busy to stop long enough to crack the cookie safe on request and in a minute never comes.

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Doling out the Cookies

Thursday, February 16, 2012 Leave a comment

Reward and acknowledgment, part 2

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

Before we leave the discussion about acknowledgment, lets talk about how it works.

An acknowledgment, properly executed, carries one message and one message only:  GOOD JOB!

Think about the way we talk to each other.  Think about the subtext of the messages we send when we praise.  Think about the words we use.

•  Not bad!
•  Decent!
•  Almost perfect!
•  Great!  Now try it again with your back straight.

Excuse me?  I don’t know about your inner three-year-old, but mine hears an underlying message that takes away as much as it gives.

What tries to pass for acknowlegment above leaves me with the not-so-subtle feeling that, no matter how hard I try or how much I do, I will never be “perfect enough.”

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Task Anxiety Awareness

Saturday, February 11, 2012 1 Comment

Task Anxiety 101 - part 1

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

Get out your notebook

Before I go into a bit of background explanation about task anxiety, I am about to ask you to make another list.

For those times when you attempt to complete something or in response to attempting to begin something, make a List of Ten actities you find yourself doing INSTEAD.  What is it that YOU do that leaves you chronically behind and befuddled.

As I asked in the first article in the TaskMaster Series:

What were some of the tactics you used to deal with your anxiety about not knowing how to tackle a particular task?
(Those supposed “procrastination” activities you took on instead of what you intended or needed to do)

I find it more useful, AND more accurate, to reframe those tasks as “avoidance” activities: avoiding task anxiety.

So now it’s time to get to work on changing a few things.

I’ll get you started by sharing my own list of activities I do when I “go unconscious” about my own task anxiety. To get the benefit of this section, you need to connect PERSONALLY – so take the time to write out your own List of Ten, so that you will be able to do the four exercises that follow.

I’ll bet you a year’s free coaching, if you don’t actually DO the exercises, there will be no new insights — and you will dismiss them as a huge waste of time and energy as you read about them.

(At the bottom of this article, I’ll give the skeptics among you a couple of credible scientists
to check out, with links to what they have to say about optimizing internal processing.)

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TaskMaster – Getting Things DONE!

Sunday, January 29, 2012 5 Comments

Taming Training 101

You are about to learn to become your own Task Master.

Nooooo - I don’t mean standing with a chair and a whip, caging the beast that is YOU.

The TASKS must be trained.  They need to be tamed so they’ll work the way YOU need them to work.

Task taming is a multi-stepped process:

•  Tasks must be trained initially, then
•  Revisited and re-trained every time you learn something new about what you really need.

Let me guess . . . at this point, ALL you know about what you really need is that whatever others tell you to do doesn’t seem to work for YOU, right?

I’m about to let you in on an important ADD secret that many of us had to learn about the hard way. Shhhhhhhh!

At least 80% of what others have been telling you wasn’t designed to work for you!

  • It was actually intended to chastise you for not ALREADY knowing how to make it work, and
  • to get you to stop looking to others for help (especially them!)

Really! And I’ll bet it worked just as designed.

Think about it. Didn’t you feel thoroughly chastised, tongue-tied about what to say next, and reluctant to ask for help the next time?

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Filed under A5f. Organization & Task Completion, A5g. Distractions & Transitions, ADD | ADHD | Attention Deficit Disorder, G5j. Transition Tamer, G5l. Organization & Task Completion, G8. TaskMaster™ Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

Naming the Game

Tuesday, August 9, 2011 Leave a comment

The Name of the Game Determines the Rules

Line drawing of a woman advancing up a hill wearing a hard hat, mops & brooms over one shoulder, dustpan in hand, arm raise; over her head, in outlined letters, it says CHARGE!I tell my clients that part of the problem we have accomplishing specific tasks is a direct result of how we Name the Game.

HOW WE “NAME THE GAME” DETERMINES HOW WE PLAY

For example:

If the Name of the Game is clean-up-the-house, our mental To-Do list can include anything – from “defrost freezer” to “launder all slipcovers & bedding” to “remove, wash and wax ceiling fan blades.”

Lordy Mercy, as they say in the South, just shoot me now!

“Clean-up-the-house” is far too large a task to conceptualize without Boggle, making it all the more difficult for us to activate to take any steps at all.  So we usually don’t.

We agonize over our “procrastination“ problem instead.

Since we have given our conscious mind little beyond a vague idea of what we mean by clean-up-the-house, our subconscious mind is clueless.  Round and round our brain it spins, seeking out all the bits and pieces filed under “cleaning,” “not clean” and “house.” Endlessly!

If we ARE somehow able to get ourselves going, broom, mop, and hardhat at the ready, most of us boggle somewhere early in the task, then wallow in the despair that comes from failing, yet again, to accomplish what we set out to do.

Then we agonize over our “follow-through” problem.

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Filed under A5a. Attention & Focus, A5f. Organization & Task Completion, G5l. Organization & Task Completion Tagged with , , , , , , ,

ADD & Organized?

Sunday, June 19, 2011 Leave a comment

Organization for ADDers is NOT Pipe Dream

Drawing of a man popping out of the top drawer of a file cabinet, holding a file, with a self-satisfied smile on his faceYes, 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.”

So much for helpful hints and tidy lists!  

That said, what follows is an Organizing Overview summarizing 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 a series of articles to follow, I will “unpack” the list and explain the concepts.  FOR NOW, reflect on the list itself, and stay tuned for articles to follow.

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Filed under A5f. Organization & Task Completion, G5b. The Challenges Inventory™, G5l. Organization & Task Completion, G7. STUFF - and Nonsense! Tagged with , , , , , , ,

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