Not Any Old List Will Do
Disclaimer & Context: I have made it a goal in March to write in my blog 5 days a week (or less if in alignment with my energy). My plan is to use my morning contemplative time to isolate a thought or idea I would like to flesh out a bit more and then write a blog about it. I’m not giving myself a lot of time to write the blog because this challenge isn’t about the quality of my writing. The goal of this challenge is to work on my conversion process of idea to blog. I have noticed I have dozens and dozens of insights and ideas every day but rarely do I flesh them out and share them. This is a challenge to help me strengthen that muscle. So it’s important you and I both know I’m not specifically trying to make these posts 100% true, educational, or helpful to you at all. If it’s any of that: frosting.
selfie on 3/5/2022; facing north; getting ready to write this blog post
Yesterday I saw my therapist. I picked her because 1) she’s in my network and 2) she’s the only therapist on Psychology Today that mentioned focusing on neurodivergence in their profile. It’s been weird. Like, amazing, to talk to someone who is ADHD, knows it, leans into it, studies it, and helps other people with it. Yet at the time time, when I’m with her, I can see her ADHD bright as the sun. Parts of that are comforting in that she does things in our session that are deliberately there to support our working memory (like having a white board of ongoing discussion topics for us both to see). Then other times, I wonder if her ADHD contrasts against my own when we try to work on stuff. I don’t think the latter is a big problem, it’s just notable.
Before therapy, I was thinking what do I want to talk about? I have all kinds of BIG things processing through my brain. I felt pretty important when I thought of all the topics I could bring up with her, like meta-awareness, codependence, and unmasking. Those are sexy-ass topics! But I didn’t notice a lot of “feeling” when I scanned those discussion topics in my head. In the past, I would have talked with my therapist about the coolest/most dramatic issues I have in my life instead of the actual, urgent, right-now issues. So I thought about it and decided that maybe what I need to talk about is what I’m thinking about RIGHT… NOW.
What was I thinking about yesterday? I was thinking about how it’s been almost a week that I’ve been back from Alabama, which was an amazing ME experience. But now that I’m home, I’m noticing I’m very NOT present, very thought-centric, internalized sense of urgency about everything, pushing myself from one task to another, blurring beginnings and ends, and filling my body with day-long adrenaline. This is Old Marie. So … THAT was bothering me. Why can’t I slow down? Why can’t I sense my body? Why can’t I stop watching & associating myself with thoughts? I have been spending a lot of time this week revamping my organizational system on ToDoist. That thing is MY LIFE. Seriously. It’s how I move through my life and support my executive function and working memory.
I was embarrassed as I began to tell my therapist about my “crazy” ToDoist routine batching and my daily To-Do calendar hold where I organize what I want to do based on location. I’ve shown my systems to others before and either they start literally feeling anxious looking at it or they are mesmerized. You want to guess which group was mesmerized? The ADHD’ers.
My path with ADHD has resulted in me developing the kind of behavior that seeks to control. I don’t say that with judgment AT ALL. It’s the most NATURAL thing in the world to need to turn up the control volume in a human with low functioning executive function. I 100% see how I got here and I embrace the tools I’ve developed. However.
However, my organizational system has been stressing me out this week. I think I got overambitious, which often happens. Especially as I am able to access more energy and focus by taking Adderall. I’ve talked about this before. I COULD use Adderall to just burn myself out and be as hyperproductive as possible. However, that is not the outcome I am looking for. I want to use my focus to create a more balanced life. And being hyperproductive and highly controlling time into categories isn’t helping me find balance.
So I talked with my therapist about this. This seemingly “no big deal” issue. It really felt like that. No surprise it didn’t pop up to me as something to talk about. But my therapist has some good reflections. It’s a lot to get into if I were to literally explain my system, so let’s try a metaphor. We’ve got someone who is in a factory and they are able to handle one task at a time BRILLIANTLY. Their mind is its most creative and genius when it just focuses on one thing at a time. However, my ADHD mind hasn’t been able to do that up until recently. So that wasn’t even an option. So I’d been multitasking. In this case, that person in the factory is freaking out. They weren’t designed to just whip through shit like they’re a goddamn machine. Their brain was meant to majestically move through tasks and thoughts with grace, patience, curiosity, and focus. When you put a bunch of shit in front of them to-do, they do their worst work and stress out because they feel like they’re not doing their job right. They do their job FANTASTICALLY, though. It’s the STRUCTURE that isn’t working for them. Like many have told me, lean into your brain. Mold the world around you to suit YOUR neurology.
And the main to-do list that I’d been using for my daily tasks had gotten to a place where there were DOZENS of items on it. I had started storing shit there just in case I had the energy to do those things. A neurotypical person (or someone with more cognitive training) may see that list, not be able to complete it, and not worry about it beyond starting over again tomorrow. However, my brain freaks out seeing that big list in front of me. So I began to think how I could simplify how many “things” I put in front of my brain on a day-to-day basis. Because blocking time on my calendar for 4 different tasks stresses me out. I’m seeing too much and it doesn’t consider at all my energy and moods for these things.
The conclusion really isn’t that sexy. Sorry. But what I did was take off all those items from my daily to-do list and dumped them back into my master to-do application. I changed the system so there aren’t due dates but priorities. So when I get back from Zumba today, I can wait until I’m ready to think about doing a task, look at my to-do list, find something that feels accessible to do, and then take a stab at it. But the great thing is, I didn’t “assign” it to myself today and it’s not nested along with 12 other things that I need to do and subconsciously feel pressure to do since … I see them on the list. Gotta keep the day-to-day list SHORT and profoundly flexible. Getting any further into the details of how I organize myself might be something I write about in another post, but that’s good enough for today. Gotta get going to Zumba!
