Week One in the Process: Project Creep in the Vacuum
In which Douglas discovers the wheel and wonders what to do with it.
I wrote a blog two weeks ago that struck terror into my heart. My favorite flaw had reared its ugly head again, like a perennial popping up out of the muck every Spring. I had Multi-Irons Syndrome (MIS). However, instead of just quitting a bunch of projects only to add more back over time as I usually do, I decided I would do something different. I'd tackle this MIS once and for all and chart my progress here.
My first step was to clear my schedule a bit so I could focus on the problem. I did this by quitting Irish whistle lessons and prewriting articles for the rest of the month and scheduling them for automagic publication. Then I picked two irons from the fire that I knew could be finished within a month and set about to accomplish them. One iron was a paid assignment. The other was a personal goal. This time, however, instead of letting my ADHD mess things up on me, I would take notes and see what obstacles I encountered and what solutions I needed get around them.
The first thing my wife and I noticed once I started pulling irons was that I was extremely adept at finding new irons to replace them. The whole point of pruning my schedule was to make more time for the projects and goals that were important to me, not make room for new projects. However, as anybody who has tried to simplify their life can tell you, life has a way of complicating things, especially if you have ADHD. Reader JeanJeanie succinctly stated it the other day:
This means that when we begin to prune our project list, we need to do more than just prune the list. We need a new mental approach to the problem or we will become overwhelmed by projects again. Only by retraining our minds can we hope to have any success. This will be something I will investigate further.
Second thing I noticed was that my distraction time was considerable. I'm going to have to analyze this one a bit deeper as well. This one aspect of ADHD is my greatest weakness and the source of most of my short-comings.
On an upside, by being focused on just two projects I am making greater progress in them. Benjamin Fudge is coming along, but better yet, I was able to zero in on my client's website and discover that I had underestimated the work load. I had a productive phone conference with the client and turned the one website job into a two website job. More work, but more money. In the end her site's brand and message will be better for it.
That's my week in review. I hope yours went well. Don't just lurk in the cyber shadows. Pick an aspect of ADHD or Depression that bothers you and chart your progress here as you work to overcome it.
I wrote a blog two weeks ago that struck terror into my heart. My favorite flaw had reared its ugly head again, like a perennial popping up out of the muck every Spring. I had Multi-Irons Syndrome (MIS). However, instead of just quitting a bunch of projects only to add more back over time as I usually do, I decided I would do something different. I'd tackle this MIS once and for all and chart my progress here. My first step was to clear my schedule a bit so I could focus on the problem. I did this by quitting Irish whistle lessons and prewriting articles for the rest of the month and scheduling them for automagic publication. Then I picked two irons from the fire that I knew could be finished within a month and set about to accomplish them. One iron was a paid assignment. The other was a personal goal. This time, however, instead of letting my ADHD mess things up on me, I would take notes and see what obstacles I encountered and what solutions I needed get around them.
The first thing my wife and I noticed once I started pulling irons was that I was extremely adept at finding new irons to replace them. The whole point of pruning my schedule was to make more time for the projects and goals that were important to me, not make room for new projects. However, as anybody who has tried to simplify their life can tell you, life has a way of complicating things, especially if you have ADHD. Reader JeanJeanie succinctly stated it the other day:
"Problem is, every time I manage to kill an iron, there's two or three waiting in the wings to replace it. Some of them are voluntary and I can force myself to avoid them, but some of them are forced on me by life and I can't avoid them. And it's constantly Too Much On My Plate. "
This means that when we begin to prune our project list, we need to do more than just prune the list. We need a new mental approach to the problem or we will become overwhelmed by projects again. Only by retraining our minds can we hope to have any success. This will be something I will investigate further.
Second thing I noticed was that my distraction time was considerable. I'm going to have to analyze this one a bit deeper as well. This one aspect of ADHD is my greatest weakness and the source of most of my short-comings.
On an upside, by being focused on just two projects I am making greater progress in them. Benjamin Fudge is coming along, but better yet, I was able to zero in on my client's website and discover that I had underestimated the work load. I had a productive phone conference with the client and turned the one website job into a two website job. More work, but more money. In the end her site's brand and message will be better for it.
That's my week in review. I hope yours went well. Don't just lurk in the cyber shadows. Pick an aspect of ADHD or Depression that bothers you and chart your progress here as you work to overcome it.
Comments
I want so badly to simplify my life, but even that's a time-consuming chore, so I keep putting it off and carry on with my juggling act. I'm currently doing Summerwrite, though, a lengthier NaNo-type project that gives us four months to complete 150,000 words, and that, at least, is helping me make my novel a priority.
How do non-ADD types set priorities and stick with them? I think it might be easier to retrain my brain if I knew.
I also get distracted easily, which is why I am commenting here instead of putting my kids to bed, or working on my grad school final paper. However, I can still manage to keep all the plates spinning, with a crash much more rarely than my dear husband, who is profoundly ADHD and in a major clinical depression (how I found this blog a few years ago and got hooked to Douglas' wit and humor, not to mention hope for the future).
I am fairly strong in my opinion of what is important. That helps me choose what to put my time and energy in where it counts first. My personal priorities are:
God
My kids
Grad school
My job
My husband
My church
My extended family
Somewhere after that comes actually taking care of my own needs! Although it sounds callous to put my job before my husband, right now I am the bread winner. If I took a day off to support him every time he was having a tough day mentally (most of this past winter) I'd quickly be out of work as well. I have a job that carries home with me as well. I don't know many teachers who can get it all done in an eight hour day.
My typical day starts at 7. I try to get to work around 8, for meetings or what have you. I teach from 9-4. After school, I work in my classroom for an hour getting things together for the next day, and then I pick up the kids. We get home for supper around 5:40. I devote the evening to my kids, and then after they are safely in bed, I grade papers, work on grad school stuff, surf the net, and take care of general things around the house. If I have grad school the next day, that pops to the first thing on the list. If I have company coming soon, that pops higher up the list.
Does that make sense? It isn't easy or simple. It's a juggling act for everyone everyday, I think. Right now I need to go put the kiddos to bed. Priorities!!!!
mountain faerie
Never having been diagnosed with ADHD, I believe that IRS is more common than anyone would like to believe.
I have a drive to always have something (a task, a chore, an obligation) lurking over my head (as in the form of a "to do" list. I don't know why I have this need, but it has been a part of my life since childhood.
Sometimes this feels good; sometimes not so good.
I'd like to know the answer to that as well. I'll let you know if I find out.
Claire ~ Thanks for sharing that with us, Claire. I don't intend to set ADHD people apart as the only ones with life balance issues, but, as you said I said ;), the degree/intensity for ADHD is usually worse. You sound like a fairly productive person, judging by your schedule, but looking at your schedule I know that I would spend the night surfing the net after putting the kids to bed, remember to grade papers at 2am, and leave no time whatsoever for grad school. If I did make time for grad school I'd stay up late into the night, robbing myself of sleep. Eventually, the house of cards would collapse.
The way you shift tasks is very admirable, and not something easy at all for somebody with ADHD such as myself.
Anon~ Planning too much is the problem. People with ADHD constantly plan too much. They seem, generally speaking, very poor at managing what's on their plate. That's why I'm investigating this matter. It's not as simple as not taking on too much at a time. I need to understand why I take on too much so I can stop myself from doing it.
Remember, the ADHD brain is "allergic" to boredom. We can take on new projects without even a conscious thought. There have been many times I've found myself weeks into a project before realizing I had let myself get sidetracked again.
Deborah Clark Ebel ~ Great comments. Thanks for participating. IRS is a serious problem. I hope to find a solution for it.
DMQ~ I eventually had to go cold turkey on video games. It was the only way to eliminate the waste of time those games represented for me. You have really good insights into the game mentality. Those scores sure do feel like accomplishments, don't they? In the end, though, they are meaningless if we fail to meet our goals.
Excellent comments, everybody. Thanks for taking time to share.