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)
- Trouble with Transitions
- The Truth about Transitions
- Transitional Modes
- Transitions: Divide to Conquer
- Transition Tamer: Beware the Gap
- Commitment to Transition
- Transition Tasks
- Transition Tricks
Other related articles on this site:
- Are you OUT of your MIND?
- Escaping the Frame Changes the View
- About Executive Functions
- Nine Challenges to Effective Functioning
- The first of the Boggle Posts
- The first of the TaskMaster Posts
Transition related articles ‘ round the ‘net – different meanings of the term
- Transitions (akissofbliss.wordpress.com) -
a positive take on becoming - Transitions (stl16.wordpress.com) -
LIFE transitions, short & nicely done - Transition Period (positivelybranded.wordpress.com) -
for poetry lovers - Transition is like…the Matrix? (ifscarscouldtalk.wordpress.com) -
LOVELY, and it will make you think - To Get the Benefits of Change, Manage Transition (sbkandassociates.com) -
bringing in the POV of business and change management in a very effective article - Life on the other side of the tunnel (incredibleme.wordpress.com -
GREAT looking blog and an honest look at a transition that is more all-encompassing than the ones we face, day-to-day)
