Distraction versus Do It Now

One of the trickiest things about dealing with ADD is that it happens inside of your own brain, which makes it incredibly difficult to be truly objective.  In turn, that lack of objectivity can lead to making bad decisions.

The most important symptom of ADD is being chronically distracted in a manner above and beyond the norm.  This condition is often referred to as distractibility.  Once you have been diagnosed with ADD, you spend a fair amount of time searching for that distraction occurring within your own mind.  This in itself can become a distraction, but we’ll leave that aside for today.

How To Tell If It’s ADD Distraction

Today I was working at my desk.  I am a freelance writer who works from home.  I have created a small office in a closet in my basement as a way to both block out the distractions of working at home — TV, Internet, kids playing — and a way to focus on my work.  My desk fits against a wall.  On either side are shelves with office supplies, books and printers.  All in all, as distraction free of an environment as you can get without resorting to blank walls, empty desks, and soundproofing.  Still, as an adult with ADD, distractions pop into my brain all of the time without any additional stimulus.

On this particular morning, the thought that showed up uninvited in my mind was that I needed to make a phone call that I had been putting off for a few days.  Like many people with ADHD, I would think of making the call, decide to do it "in a minute" and then forget all about it.  So, when it came up during a time when I was both willing and able to make the call, I grabbed the opportunity.

When I returned to my desk, I started beating myself up about getting distracted while I was supposed to be working.  Then, it hit me.

Was I really distracted, or did I finally take care of something that needed to be done by doing it right away.

This is, of course, a trick question.

• Doing something that needs to be done right away is a good thing.
• Stopping what you are supposed to be doing in order to do something else is a bad thing.

The trick is that it was not a "bad" thing to take care of something that needed to be taken care of.  What was a "bad" thing was not doing it before during all of the other windows that were available so that I didn’t have to interrupt what I needed to be doing to finally take care of it.

As ADDers, we beat ourselves up too much anyway.  Be sure that you are at least trying to correct the right thing.

In this case, I should have been proud of myself for returning immediately to work after making the call and glad that the task had been completed.  The correction that I need to make is getting to these things before I should be focusing on something else.

Oh, and the other thing I need to work on a bit is not writing blog posts whenever I have a thought about ADD instead of getting back to work on the paying freelance writing gig that is due this week 🙂