A Splintered Mind

On those days that you wake up with a jetpack on and 20 minutes behind schedule, you don't have time to deal with elaborate todo list systems. Franklin Covey? Get Things Done? Obviously, those systems have their strengths, but they all require work & upkeep, something that can be thwarted by the flighty ADHD mind. Most Organizing Systems Require Maintenance The Franklin Covey system with its A, B, & Cs helps prioritize your projects, but requires daily review and reorganizing. The Get Things Done system also hopes to simplify your life by moving unimportant projects out of your mindspace, and only requires a weekly review. But the ADHD mind is often bored by meticulous systems, or more likely, meticulous systems are often destroyed by ADHD minds. Those minds have a fondness for distractions. All one needs is a day or two forgotten and these life lists become terribly outdated. So it's a bad day at the office and an evening lost on Netflix then? Not quite. ...

Since I like jotting down notes on the go as opposed to just thinking of fantastic ideas that I later forget, I love checking out new note taking apps on the iPhone and iPad. I came across the Moleskine app a few months ago, but it languished in my "Prune" folder. I stick apps in there that I don't immediately connect with, but think that they might deserve a second, more in depth glance. Today I gave the Moleskine app a thorough look over. It's very slick, even powerful. The GUI is clean and you can tell that the developers took time to release a polished app. There are lots of features. So many features. Maybe even too many features. I can label my thoughts, color them, give them nifty icons, geo tag them, and fiddle with the font size and color. I can even import photos, crop them, then resize them for insertion on the page. The words will actually wrap around the photo, which is a powerful word processor feature not found in most note taking apps. It's al...

I had a nice chat with a friend from Israel the other day. His life was on the up. He had a (well deserved) promotion at work. He also had a new addition to his family that pleased him and his wife to no end. He was busy and successful, and yet he was frustrated. He didn't have time to write anymore, and when he did have time, he couldn't stick to one idea. I believe a lot of people have this very same problem. Their heads are filled with ideas, and when it comes time to actually realize these ideas, they flounder. Which idea is best? Which will capture their interest until the end?  I recently encountered this myself as I tried to think of what I should be working on this moment. It's a new year and I'm ready to commit to writing again. Ready to blog. Ready to write. Ready to live. But what project should occupy my time? Should I tackle the rewrite of my novel? Should I begin a new novel? Is now the perfect time to write that winning entry for Writers of the Fu...

Just a quick note to let you know that I started importing old blog entries from my Posterous blog ( http://douglascootey.posterous.com ) into A Splintered Mind last night. You may see these entries show up as "new" in your RSS feed. I'll also be moving the new entries from douglascootey.com over here. I hope you enjoy reading them. I'll be doing a bit of tweaking behind the scenes over the next few weeks. Some of this will show up in the RSS feed as well, especially when I reorganize my blog tags. I have over 40 different categories. Maybe that's too many? I don't know. You'd think I had ADHD or something and was constantly bored. At least I'm not like Neil Gaiman who makes up new ones on the fly with each entry. Can you imagine what his tag list looks like after ten years? I'm thinking I will reduce my blog categories down to a manageable nine, with an extra "Stuff" getting everything else. What categories/tags would you like to s...

Originally published at Absentminded Author, v2 .

Celebrating Year Nine I’m Douglas Cootey, and I’ve been blogging here since 2 January 2005 . Before that I blogged for years into a tiny text file called “what’s_new.html” and hosted it on a site so old not even archive.org remembers it very well. I would update that blog via telnet using vi on a 1200 baud modem. It was very exciting. I started out blogging about mental health in order to accomplish three goals: First, I wanted to overcome the stigma.  I couldn’t talk about my ADHD  or Depression  without feeling shame. The method I used to overcome this was self-deprecating humor and honesty—a method that continues to work well for me.  Next, I wanted to reach out to others who shared my issues.   My blog has reached thousands of people, many of who don't comment because the mental health stigma is strong. However, many of whom send me emails thanking me from time to time for something that I have written. I have learned so much from thei...

Even tho you chose not to donate at this time, I hope that something I write in the future will inspire you to contribute. I don't get paid to blog, and I take time from other projects to write here, so I ask folks to share the small price of a bus ride, hamburger, or tiny island off of Greece to help me make ends meet. Every penny folks send my way is a form of encouragement (especially those rare steel ones from last century), and my daughters and I appreciate it. Maybe next time. ~Dˢ

Thank you so much for your donation. Your encouragement will help me make it to next week’s post. It's not like I'm dying over here, but sometimes it's easier to work on other projects than this blog—especially projects that pay me with those funny, floppy green things bill collectors are always so happy to take from me. When people donate, no matter the size, they let me know I’m not just whistling into the wind. Thanks for all the support. And if there is a topic you would like to see me cover, feel free to drop me a line at the address below: ~Dˢ