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Eat That Frog and ADD

People with ADD often times have issues with time management. There are almost as many books out there to help you be more organized and procrastinate less as there are books to help you lose weight. For adults with ADHD, they can have very different value.

ADHD Eat That Frog

The book Eat That Frog is an organization and time management book built around the semi-funny premise of eating a frog. The idea is that as you plan out your day, there are different tasks. Each task takes a varying degree of time and effort, but typically, there is one task that is your biggest, perhaps least pleasant task. The idea of eating that frog is that you should do that task first.

The title comes from the hypothetical situation in which your to-do list contains the task of eating a frog. Clearly this isn’t pleasant, but if it must be done, then the idea is that if you do it first, you get it out of the way, and then you can go about your day with your most onerous task already completed and done.

But, does the Eat That Frog methodology work well for people with ADD?

I believe that you should, whenever possible, play to your strengths, and when you can turn your weaknesses to your advantage. As someone with ADD, my problem isn’t that I never get to one task, or that procrastinating on a single task causes my issues.

Instead, my problem is the inability to “force” myself into most anything to-do list wise. And yet, the whole premise of this book is to go against whatever your nature is and instead suck it up and do that one big task first. In a lot of ways, this is “Just Do It” in a different wrapper, and you know how I feel about that little gem.

So, does that mean that people with ADHD can’t use the Eat That Frog book?

Not at all, but remember that where a book like Eat That Frog is asking normal people to go against their nature and do something, it might actually be asking more (too much?) of people with advanced structural organizational issues like those of us with ADD have.

There is increasing evidence that willpower is a finite resource in the human body, and if you use it all up getting through just one task, is that your best move?

I suppose like all fixed ideas, it can only do so much. For me, I suppose I might try it when I have one of those days where there really is only one thing that matters. In that case, eating that frog makes perfect sense. But for me, most days are a maze of deadlines, milestones, and projects that all need attention. Simply getting the biggest, or least pleasant one, out of the way wouldn’t make the day a success for me.

How do you feel about Eat That Frog? Success? Bust? Useful, but modified? Let me know.

ADHD ADD Planner Take 2

Written by ADDer 3 Comments

It’s not uncommon for everyone, whether they have ADHD or not to start the new year with a resolution to be more organized. At the heart of that endeavor is often a new planner or organizer. For people with ADD-ADHD planners have a special meaning often characterized by a love / hate relationship.

By mid-year, it has probably become very clear whether or not the planner you have is the right planner for ADD-ADHD symptoms of yours. If not, this time of year is like New Years all over again for buying organizers, planners, and calendars.

Calendar and planner makers can’t live by selling their organizers just once a year. So, they use a variety of strategies to boost sales. There are 18-month planners that run from July to December of the following year. That’s July 2015 to December 2016 this year. Then there are Academic planners, back to school planners, teacher’s planners and all other types of calendars and organizers filling the shelves at your local Target, Office Depot, Staples, Wal-mart, or other favorite store.

So, if your planner can’t handle your ADD-ADHD needs, head out and take another look at planners now. Keep in mind what ways your current planner has not worked out for you.

Do you need more room for notes? Do you need longer days? Do you need a Daily ADD Planner instead of a Weekly ADD planner? Do you need better visibility for weekend days instead of them being tucked away in a corner?

Or, stop trying to make something not made specifically for those with ADHD and ADD and keep your eyes peeled to ADDessories for our upcoming customized ADD Planners and ADHD Organizers which should be ready soon!

Procrastinating by Saving

Written by ADDer 3 Comments

There are a lot of programs, applications, and online services to help you be more organized and have a better schedule. There are ways to manage to-do lists, to create to-do lists and to create and print calendars. I’m even working on an ADD Planner application to help with people with ADHD improve organization and scheduling. However, there is an unfortunate side effect to some of these time savers, they can make procrastination worse.

add-focus-adhd One of my toughest procrastination challenges comes from internet browsers. I generally use Firefox because I have built up a suite of plugins and add-ons that allow me to get things done faster and more efficiently. I also use Google Chrome. Some of those Firefox plugins block annoying things like Flash, ads, and JavaScript, so when I want to see the un-sanitized version of a website, I use Chrome where I have resisted the urge to add all of my usual blocking plugins.

However, bookmark management is absolutely terrible in Google Chrome. There are no tags for bookmarks, which is just dumb. Furthermore, when you open your bookmark manager, every one of your bookmark folders is expanded by default, which defeats the entire purpose of folders. In other words, bookmarks are useless in Google Chrome. When I want to bookmark something, I literally open Firefox and paste the URL into it, and then bookmark it there.

Too Many Bookmarks?

The strange thing is, that for all of the technically savvy, demanding internet users that use Google Chrome, there is a shocking lack of complaints about how bookmarks are implemented in Chrome. That got me thinking.

Do I have too many bookmarks?

The answer is a resounding YES. I not only have bookmarks that I have no idea what they are for, I have FOLDERS of bookmarks that I don’t know the purpose of. I opened some of these mystery bookmarks and still don’t know what I ever saved them.

Did I think it was a good webpage design?

Did I really care about Colorado crystals at some point?

Do I really want to sign up to be a volunteer for a non-profit organization five states away?

It was about this time that a little light bulb went on.

The reason I have many of these bookmarks is because I meant to do something with them LATER.

I have another extension for Firefox called Read It Later which essentially bookmarks webpages for you to read later. It is so full that I could never hope to read half of what is in there. What’s worse, is that while I regularly add pages to Read It Later, I never actually go in an read any of them.

Computer Enabled Procrastination

Everyone procrastinates but people with attention deficit disorder have a whole extra layer of procrastination tendencies. Procrastination for us with ADD comes in two very sneaky forms.

Procrastinating to avoid uninteresting tasks
Procrastinating to avoid being distracted

The first is not uncommon whether you have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or not. However, for those with ADHD, it can be tougher to notice.

My wife, who does not have ADD, knows when she is procrastinating. Sometimes, she does it anyway. There are many times when I don’t even realize that I’m procrastinating.

It is most common when I’m online. One moment I’m diligently researching a freelance writing article and the next I’m reading about World War II bombers thanks to an intriguing link from the Smithsonian website. Having been unknowingly distracted, it isn’t until I manually check in with myself that I realize I’ve moved off task.

At that point in time, I will either:

a) Chastise myself, close the window and return immediately to work

b) Decide I’ll do better later, and keep reading

c) BOOKMARK the webpage so I can read it later when I have free time

Which, brings us to procrastination type #2.

After being diagnosed with ADD you begin to try and not indulge your ADHD habits. ADD medications don’t solve everything they say, over and over again. You also have to change your habits and ways of exhibiting ADD behaviors. To do so, you try and notice when you are ADDing and then, stop it.

One method of trying to accomplish this is to put aside distractions until “later,” in other words procrastinating.

If you are putting off something that is distracting you from work or other important tasks, then that is good procrastination, even if it is technically procrastinating.

What I have noticed is that my bookmarks and my Read It Later list are filled with things that I meant to get around too, either productively or leisurely. For example, there are dozens of programming tutorials or tips that I have bookmarked to look at later. There are also dozens of “interesting” things to read.

Either way, those bookmarks are procrastinated tasks that were never completed.

It’s time for a new standard. From now on, bookmarks are reserved for known-useful references and functions, not for things to get back to. If it can’t be done now, I will leave a tab open in the browser. When there are too many tabs, choices will have to be made. In the end, virtually none of the “get back to” tabs will ever be read. After all, life is too interesting and new distractions appear every day.

Whenever I have free time, I can be assured that there will be numerous useful, interesting, entertaining or provocative things ready and waiting before my eyes without every clicking a link or opening a bookmark folder. Thus, those that were saved will be forever on the to-do lists, at least, that is, until they are finally purged as too old.

Do you procrastinate with bookmarks? Do you productively (or not) use Read It Later, or the like? Let me know.

Deals On Organization Tools for ADD ADHD

Written by ADDer Leave a Comment

I usually don’t do a lot with deals or online coupons here on ADDessories. There are a lot of deal websites and coupon websites out there that do it better, mostly because they do it 24/7. However, this time I am making an exception, because there are Target stores everywhere, and because the planning and organizing tools that they have right now are so cheap that they are a good way to test out what kind of ADD tools and ADHD organization resources might work best for you.

I’m making a big assumption here that most Targets, or at least most Super Targets have a similar layout and structure to the ones here in Denver, Colorado. If not, you might have to look around the aisles a little bit or see if they have the same deals online or maybe if there are some Target coupon codes online that you can use to get the same kind of value.

Near the entrance of our Target stores, there is a dollar area. The items in this little section are rotated in and out fairly regularly and typically cost $1 or $2.50 depending upon the item. Either way, that is a good deal for a little white board, cork board tiles, or notebooks. Don’t get me wrong this is not high quality office supply store type stuff. These are cheapo, made in China, the cheapest way possible items. However, they will work for a little while and that gives ADDers an opportunity to try them out.

Have you ever wondered if a good ADD organization tip would be to put a white board in every room of your house, or if it would be a great way for people with ADHD to remember things to have a little corkboard tile section by the front door, backdoor, and the door to your bedroom and office? It can be an expensive experiment to see if that works for you if you are shelling out $15 per whiteboard. But, with these cheap whiteboards and dry erase calendars at Target, you could put one in every room of a 10 bedroom house for less than $30. That’s a good way to try out some ideas.

Check out your local Target or pop over to Target.com and see if you can get rock bottom priced dry erase boards, dry-erase calendars, and more to help improve your organization skills and manage your ADD better without new medications or anything chemical for a change.

– Everyone have a nice– “Hey, is that something interesting over there?” 🙂