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adhd_chicks2009-08-02 01:35 pm
santraginus_v) wrote in adhd_chicks2009-08-02 01:35 pm
Entry tags:
Personal Standards and Getting Things Done
Hi all. I have been taking vacations and swamped with my job, and I have neglected this community sadly, but I intend to rectify this now that I am back! Let's make this an active place. :)
Housekeeping: First, I'm the same mod, but I've switched over to managing the community with the username I have for my personal, ADD-related journal (which has also been neglected of late) because . . . well, that just makes more sense to me.
Second: If anyone has any links to any ADHD resources (any resources, but particularly those with an emphasis on women), please comment with them in this post or PM me so I can add them to our link list.
Having just returned from a ten day stay with my parents, I have realized something that seems to be very important: I am holding myself to the wrong standards.
You'd think that this would have taken me less time to figure out, but sometimes these things come slowly to me. I've realized that when I'm doing chores, for example: washing dishes, cleaning, even the way I structure my tasking at home—I do it as if someone is standing over my shoulder. (In my case, my mom, who had the delightful habit of doing that very thing while I was doing chores growing up.) And the problem there is that my mom and I are two very different people, and she's not standing over my shoulder anymore.
So let's say I have to do dishes. I'm going to break this task down, because I know for most people it just comes automatically, but for me, not so much. I know I have to do dishes, because not doing them is gross and leads to not having any clean dishes. But when I do the dishes, I have been doing them according to the standard my parents set when I was a kid: don't run the dishwasher until it's full; put certain items in a certain area of the dishwasher; don't walk away until the dishes are done; empty the dishwasher promptly.
This seems simple enough, but what it does is create a number of places where I can get completely overwhelmed (this sounds silly, but that's kind of an ADD Thing—putting something unpleasant or boring off because one hits a roadblock, which may actually be a pebble in the road). Household tasks have always had that effect on me. I get to a point where I have to make a decision and if I can't choose the "right" one, I walk away or let it go undone.
So why have I decided that my mom's way is the only "right" one and I'm a failure for not meeting her standards? She's not here. I've seen dozens of people do their entire household routine. There are as many "right" ways as there are ways—as long as it gets done, who cares?
And I live by myself now, not in a household of six people. For me to fill up a dishwasher can take a week. That means I can "allow" myself a week to put off doing the dishes—except hello, I run out of dishes before that and letting your cereal bowl sit for five days is kind of nasty, right?
So over the next couple of weeks, I am going to analyze my actions. When I'm putting off a chore, I'm going to consciously acknowledge any reasons why I'm not doing what needs to be done, and I'm going to write it down. And then I'm going to go through that list and address each item, and I'm going to adjust the way I do things to meet my own standards of acceptability, instead of my mom's.
What do y'all think? Do you put off things for similar reasons? How have you dealt with overcoming this?
Housekeeping: First, I'm the same mod, but I've switched over to managing the community with the username I have for my personal, ADD-related journal (which has also been neglected of late) because . . . well, that just makes more sense to me.
Second: If anyone has any links to any ADHD resources (any resources, but particularly those with an emphasis on women), please comment with them in this post or PM me so I can add them to our link list.
Having just returned from a ten day stay with my parents, I have realized something that seems to be very important: I am holding myself to the wrong standards.
You'd think that this would have taken me less time to figure out, but sometimes these things come slowly to me. I've realized that when I'm doing chores, for example: washing dishes, cleaning, even the way I structure my tasking at home—I do it as if someone is standing over my shoulder. (In my case, my mom, who had the delightful habit of doing that very thing while I was doing chores growing up.) And the problem there is that my mom and I are two very different people, and she's not standing over my shoulder anymore.
So let's say I have to do dishes. I'm going to break this task down, because I know for most people it just comes automatically, but for me, not so much. I know I have to do dishes, because not doing them is gross and leads to not having any clean dishes. But when I do the dishes, I have been doing them according to the standard my parents set when I was a kid: don't run the dishwasher until it's full; put certain items in a certain area of the dishwasher; don't walk away until the dishes are done; empty the dishwasher promptly.
This seems simple enough, but what it does is create a number of places where I can get completely overwhelmed (this sounds silly, but that's kind of an ADD Thing—putting something unpleasant or boring off because one hits a roadblock, which may actually be a pebble in the road). Household tasks have always had that effect on me. I get to a point where I have to make a decision and if I can't choose the "right" one, I walk away or let it go undone.
So why have I decided that my mom's way is the only "right" one and I'm a failure for not meeting her standards? She's not here. I've seen dozens of people do their entire household routine. There are as many "right" ways as there are ways—as long as it gets done, who cares?
And I live by myself now, not in a household of six people. For me to fill up a dishwasher can take a week. That means I can "allow" myself a week to put off doing the dishes—except hello, I run out of dishes before that and letting your cereal bowl sit for five days is kind of nasty, right?
So over the next couple of weeks, I am going to analyze my actions. When I'm putting off a chore, I'm going to consciously acknowledge any reasons why I'm not doing what needs to be done, and I'm going to write it down. And then I'm going to go through that list and address each item, and I'm going to adjust the way I do things to meet my own standards of acceptability, instead of my mom's.
What do y'all think? Do you put off things for similar reasons? How have you dealt with overcoming this?
no subject
In terms of putting things off, I tend to put things off if the task is too overwhelming. If I don't understand the task or if I can't seem to break it up into manageable chunks, I procrastinate.
Analyzing why you're putting it off is a good exercise I think. As for me, I need to learn to be more mindful in my every day tasks. :)
no subject
Oh, same here, definitely. This is one of my biggest struggles, especially at work! One of the things that I've found works best for me is when I find myself doing that, I open up a Word document and start writing instructions for how I would tell someone else to do the project. Nine times out of ten, this works like a charm to help get me started on something, to organize it into chunks I can handle, or at least to pick a direction to focus on.