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Why People With ADHD Are Messy

Written by ADDer Leave a Comment

Or, why people with ADD ignore messes and organize by pile.

If you have ADHD, or you know someone with ADHD, you may have noticed that people with ADD have a tendency to be messy. On the same hand, many people with ADHD cannot deal with other people’s messes and are obsessively clean about certain things.

I, for one, have an office that others would consider messy. My kitchen counters on the other hand are typically very clean. The key in both cases is the main working area is clean, the “messes” are around the edge, where the ADHD mind will ignore them as background clutter, even as it finds distractions in other areas.

ADHD Workspace

As someone with ADHD, I can’t have things in my main working area. Not only are they a distraction, they are constantly in the way in a way that frequently requires my attention leading to additional distraction.

If I’m going to get any writing done, my hand (or arm) can’t hit anything while I type. If I’m going to get any cooking done, my counters can’t have “other stuff” on them.

adhd organization desktop
Sure, it looks messy, but you see the area from notebook, to keyboard, to mouse is all free and clear of any clutter

ADHD Organization – The Sides

But, you see that area under the monitors?

Those are what I call the sides.

The sides are near the main workspace but not in it. As someone with ADHD, when I sit down, my attention is drawn to that clutter just outside of my main workspace. I use that to my advantage. That pile to the left is mail, notes, and other things that I still need to deal with.

While I will completely ignore that clutter once I start typing, since it is outside my focus zone, I do see it several times a day when I sit back down. In addition, if that pile starts to get too big, it will encroach on my main working space. That means I will eventually deal with what is there, either to reduce the pile size back out of my main workspace, or just out of annoyance.

The Need Pile

More difficult to see is that the clutter is also items that I need, and need quickly while working.

organized ADHD clutter
It looks messy, but I need some of that stuff.

As an adult with ADD, I can’t take the chance of having to go find something while I’m in the middle of work.

That multicolored bag has my colored pens in it. If I need to brainstorm, or journal something, I will want those pens. If I have to stop and go find those pens, or retrieve them from another area too far away to reach while still sitting, chances are I will get distracted and lose my focus. So, I keep them right there, even though it is clutter.

ADHD Organization Drawers

The ADHD organization solution that would really help is a desk with drawers, but that isn’t what I bought 15 years ago, and the list of other things that I want to spend my money on is very long. I could get some IKEA drawers for a small price, but they won’t fit under the short desk that I have.

Don’t worry. I love IKEA. I will find a solution sooner or later 🙂

NORDLI 6-drawer dresser, white, 47 1/4x21 1/4 "
Ooooh. This would make a great printer stand / organizational unit for my office….

People with ADHD don’t like being disorganized, and dream of the next device, furniture, planner, or organizer that will fix all of their ADHD problems. For this reason, people with ADD love IKEA.

ADHD Workspace – The Piles

Surrounding my desk are the piles.

The pile is a very important part of ADHD organization.

Piles created by the person with ADD do not register in their brain as clutter. Rather they are pseudo-organized stacks that blend as effortlessly into the background as if they were camouflaged by Rangers in the field.

That's not a mess, that's my ADHD pile
Pile? What pile? – The ADD Mind

That pile on top of my computer needs to be scanned. You can see my printer/scanner combo behind it, so of course it goes there. — The ADHD mind is precise in its own way. (I don’t know why I need to know that 250mg is 3 fl. oz like it says on that sticky note. Probably for one of my cancer meds, not an ADD med, but until I remember, I can’t throw away that note. Ironically, I haven’t noticed it in months until it showed up in this photograph.)

The stuff underneath the to-scan pile, is an old iPad and my daughter’s old laptop. Both of which I’ve been meaning to repurpose as treadmill screens for exercise routines like from Peleton or iFit training. Although those don’t technically belong up there, I don’t want to put them on the floor where they might accidentally get stepped on.– It’s only been six or seven weeks. I’ll get to it… eventually.

Below is the kind of pile that drives other non-ADD people (my wife) crazy, but that blends into the background noise of the ADHD adult that created them.

A mess to some, organized piles to me

To the untrained, non-ADHD mind, this is a big mess. To my ADHD brain, this is actually five distinct piles. The main Disney World book pile is, obviously, Disney World books for planning our DisneyWorld vacation. There are a couple of cookbooks under there. — I recently got a new air fryer.

The pile directly to its left is actually my tax records pile (it’s 2021 tax season as I write this). That bigger book is there because it messes up the pile of smaller format books.

The pile behind the tax records pile is items that I need to sort. I actually need to throw most of that away. Most of it is for electronics we no longer own, or items that don’t work, but I feel like there is a use for them… or maybe I just don’t like throwing away electronics.

Behind that is my messenger bag, which is both the pile my messenger bag is stored in, and a pile of stuff that is inside the messenger bag as well.

Finally, behind that is my printer paper, on top of a dictionary. This isn’t where the dictionary goes, but out of sight…. actually, the dictoionary is bothering me now, because it goes in the bookcase, and…

Must resist urge to stop writing this article and go put away the dictionary…. because if I do… I’ll never come back to this article and will have wasted the effort I already put in… (the sunken cost fallacy looms large in the ADHD world.)

The ADHD Mind Eliminates Clutter As a Distraction

The irony is that the ADHD mind actually is less distracted by such clutter than others. Our hyper-focus (for lack of a better term) edits out possible distractions that it already knows are unimportant. This is in contrast to any novel elements in the environment that command an outsized amount of attention from the ADHD mind.

How To Use ADHD Clutter Piles To Your Advantage

There are many ways to use ADHD to your advantage once you understand and accept your ADD mind. Clutter piles are one area that can be leveraged as an ADHD advantage.

The key is to find a place that the piles do not bother your spouse. Then, let the piles flow.

The Right Number of Piles for ADHD Organization

Organized clutter piles only become a deficit when used improperly, usually by having too few piles. If you have a pile that contains both important paperwork that needs action, blended with a pile of important paperwork that just needs filed, you will correctly avoid throwing those items away.

That’s good.

But, you will likely not act on the papers that require action because your mind will consider the file according to its lowest priority in your mind, that is, “too be filed,” in this case.

If you had two separate piles, the needs action pile would draw your attention and occasionally, your focus and action, resulting in more things getting done appropriately. (The to be filed pile will languish until it is so big it causes an extra distraction.)

The Right Place for Piles for ADHD Organization

The other important thing to get right is where to put your ADHD piles.

A pile of papers than needs scanned should go near the scanner if possible. Thus, when the pile draws your attention, its corresponding action is close by.

A pile of papers to be scanned sitting in the kitchen requires you to disengage from whatever task you are in the kitchen for, to instead go scan some paper. This will likely be a distraction from what you need to be doing at the moment (cooking dinner).

In a larger house, it may be necessary to have piles whose sole function is to be moved to a different location.

Remember that to be scanned pile? Chances are some of that is mail — mail that you open in the kitchen after you come in through the garage. You know it needs scanned, but you have other mail… and maybe groceries… and maybe you’re thirsty and the water is right there…

Whatever the reason, chances are you will just put that to-be-scanned document into a pile there in the kitchen.

But, what if you put that mail into a specific pile which is nothing more than a pile to be moved to your office? Then, eventually, you will notice, and move that pile to the scanning pile, where you will end up scanning the documents you need to archive.

Avoid Mixed Piles

The worst piles for ADHD are mixed piles. Your mind will not process properly that there are things in there that need your focus. Instead, your mind will rank that pile by the lowest item in there.

The pile to be avoided at all costs is a general pile. General piles will be ignored as unnecessary clutter until you do some sort of whole room or area cleanup. Important things will fall through the cracks.

Specific, single-use piles, can have great benefit for ADHD distraction. Consider using bins, or drawers to contain such piles, but be sure they also follow the rules: single use, or single priority.

Otherwise, you’ll end up with just another junk drawer.

Filed Under: ADHD Traits Tagged With: ADD Organization Tips, ADD Planner, ADD/ADHD, adhd organization, adhd planner, adhd tools, messy

Just Do It By Crashing Forward

Written by ADDer Leave a Comment

My last post here was 12 days ago. That’s not unusual here, or for other blogs. However, my goal (one of my New Year’s Resolutions, actually) was to write here (and on my other blogs) daily.

Now, in all fairness, that’s a tall order, but 12 days between posts isn’t even in the ballpark. As Jules from Pulp Fiction might say, “That’s not even the same damn sport.”

The issue, as is so often the case for us with adult ADD and ADHD, is a combination of getting started, and keeping going. Depending upon the way your personal ADD manifests, one of those two things might be harder for you. For me, it’s the former, although, at any point if some external event causes a break in the flow, it’s just as likely as not that I will not get restarted. (One might argue that this is still the issue of getting started, just from a new, unexpected, starting place.) For example, just now, I remembered that my coffee should be ready. I know that if I leave to get that coffee, this article will likely sit in an open tab in Chrome for DAYS, and that’s if I ever get back to it at all.

On the other hand, when I do get going, the results are often really good. It’s just that I can’t necessarily make myself get going. That’s really more of the whole depression/anxiety side of things, than a pure ADD trait, but it doesn’t matter where it comes from. The fact is, that it holds me up from achieving everything I am capable of achieving, and therefore, it must be dealt with.

Actually Getting Something Done

For nearly four years, we debated what to do with the little patch of land beside the sidewalk to the front of our house. It was once nicely landscaped by the previous owners, but had been let go by us. But, we made a decision to do something… four years ago. There was a plan. To execute the plan we had to go to Home Depot. Then, it turns out that plan was pretty expensive, so we put the project on hold, you know, to do some research and stuff. Then we came up with another plan. Another reason to put it on hold.

Finally, earlier this summer after literally FOUR SUMMERS of plans and no action, my daughter and I dug it up, laid down landscape fabric, covered it with wood chips, and planted three lilac bushes. It looks pretty good. It took less than half a day. Boom! Done.

add project done
Yes, I need to pull those weeds, but if I stopped to do that after taking the picture, I wouldn’t have come back to write this article.

What happened?

It came down to the fact that after all of the years of failed plans, my wife officially gave up. (I’m not blaming her, but she has the design skills and planning skills. I just copy what I see someone else do.) The other critical factor was we bought the lilac bushes and put them in big pots, but it turns out, you can’t grow lilac bushes in a pot like that, so they were dying. It was, do something now, or throw away the plants, and the $100 we spent on them. Now, I may be ADD lazy, but I’m also a former financial planner, and a world class tightwad. The reality is that I could have thrown them away and not cared, but I knew in the back of my mind that I would have to buy something else to replace them, and when it comes to spending money, I always want to spend it on Hawaii, not house stuff.

Editors note: I just went and got the coffee. That was a foolish decision, but I really wanted it. And, having mocked myself earlier in the article, I made a deal with myself that I would, for sure, come back to writing. I usually weasel out of these kinds of deals with myself (they aren’t REAL deals), but having just talked about it, I was able to see the problem coming and avoid it by rushing up, and back down before I could move my brain onto something else. — This is the point of this article, if you can see it coming, you can avoid it (sometimes).

The problem is that motivation is fleeting. So, I did two things that ended up ensuring the project would actually go. (I didn’t do either of these things intentionally. I realized after the fact, when I was trying to figure out why I can do some things –like this project– but end up not doing other things.) First, I offered my daughter allowance money for helping out. This is important. I never let my kids down. I let myself down all the time, but never my kids. Backing out of the project now, meant taking away an opportunity that I had promised her. Not going to happen if I can help it. Second, I didn’t plan. I didn’t figure it out. We measured quickly, and we went straight to home depot. We bought that red cedar mulch (it’s what they use at the Botanic Gardens), and came straight home, unloaded the bags, and started digging. Once we had part of it ready, we stopped digging and moved onto laying down the landscape fabric and wood chips. (It’s disheartening to work hard and then still have a long way to go, so “completing” parts is a good strategy if you can make it work.) Before you know it we were done.

Go! Go! Go!

Total time from initial motivation to DOING SOMETHING: Less than 10 minutes. — This is critical.

Total time from start to finish of project: Less than a day. — Not always practical, but super helpful.

Basking in my success, I announced that on Monday I would go get sod and fix the backyard. No plan, just sod the whole thing. Plus, I would figure out how to glue down the loose bricks on the back patio.

Boom! Nice yard, no more weeds, stable bricks.

Except…..

My wife gave me that look that says, not only do I not really approve of what you are doing, you should already know why I don’t approve of it.

So, I stopped. We talked… for 45 minutes. Have we really decided to keep the brick patio? Do we really want the whole thing to be grass? Do we want a deck, a platform, a pergola?

You can probably guess what happened from there.

We planned. We agreed. NEXT WEEKEND, we went to Home Depot. It would take $1000+ to execute the plan, and not just a weekend, but WEEKENDS… several actually.

Was that really the way we wanted to spend our summer?

The result?

my add backyard
Sigh.

My yard is still full of weeds and loose bricks.

Crashing Forward

The key to living successfully with ADD / ADHD, is knowing what it is and how it affects you. I don’t mean the fancy descriptions in all those ADD Books you probably already read, or about executive function, and serotonin levels. I mean, what trips you up. When does it happen, and can you see it coming, and if so, can you head it off at the pass?

Like many people with ADD, I have some level (relatively low I think) of depression and anxiety that makes forcing myself to so something very difficult. If I can just harness any motivation that does pop up, that really helps. It’s not the whole ballgame, but it helps a lot. Unfortunately, some things that need to be done I’m never motivated to do. But, for those other things, the key is to catch that momentum, get it going, and keep it going.

I’m calling this idea crashing forward. For me (and I bet for a lot of others) the main issue is letting all of those “other” things that are in the way stop us. Nike used to say, Just Do It, and that’s right, just doing something is great, but just do what? Therein lies the rub. If just doing it, means setup, prep, thinking, designing, planning, scheduling, and so on, then it’s game over. What I need is to crash through those steps and just get going. Will I make mistakes? Yes. Will things go wrong? Yes. Will I maybe do it the wrong way and have to do it over? Again, yes.

But…

I will DO IT!

This is the key. Imagine if for the backyard, I hadn’t said anything. Imagine I had just gone out and sodded the whole thing and glued down the bricks. That doesn’t mean we couldn’t have planned out something better. It doesn’t mean we couldn’t have done it the following weekend. But, if, in the very likely circumstance, it took a little while to execute, we would have a nice yard in the meantime. Now, it’s fall, and I don’t really have time, and… here we go again.

It comes down to the difference between the long-game and the short-game. I win the long game by playing the short game. I’ll never finish a full curriculum on my own, but you bet I can finish a crash course when my energy and enthusiasm is high. That’s what I need, a way to turn everything into the crash course version. Not just any crash course, but the crashiest possible course.

That’s my new project: Crashiest.

It’s a time management, organization, to-do list, motivation, all natural ADD treatment, planning, task management, completion system. — I bought the domain name a year ago. There is still no website. Why? I’ve been looking at whether to make it a blog or a regular website, researching frameworks, looking at templates, picking fonts, deciding on how to code the site, figuring out linking and design and….

You get the picture. Obviously I have work to do, both on myself, and on that website / system / program.

I’m headed there next to build it. I made a mistake coming here and blogging about it first, but I still have some motivation, so… wish me luck.

If it worked this time (09/20/2016), by the end of the day you should see something at crashiest.com when you click. I’m going to crash forward right here, right now.

I’m going to make it a regular website. I’ll add a blog. I’m going to use the Zurb Foundation framework/template thing, but I’m going to leave off all the extras. I can add them in later if I choose.

It should be ugly to start. It should have a lame design, and need some work. It should not be ready for me to use as a project sample for my web development career. Not yet.

But, what it should be is THERE, because I did something, instead of “working on it.”

 

Filed Under: ADD Tools Tagged With: ADD, ADD Organization Tips, add symptoms, ADD Tips, add tools, ADD Tricks, ADD/ADHD, ADHD, adhd symptoms, ADHD Tips, adhd tools, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Calendars, Distraction, procrastination, Time Management

Can a Room Trigger ADD ADHD?

Written by ADDer Leave a Comment

Sooner or later, after your diagnosis with ADD, whether it’s a long time, or right away, you’ll start to wonder what things are “you”, what things are ADD / ADHD, and what things are something else altogether.

It matters for a lot of different reasons. First, people ADD tend to be more introspective than others. Years of trying to figure out “what is wrong” will do that to you. Second, one can logically expect that things that are due to ADHD will eventually (hopefully) respond to ADD treatments, whether that is Adderall, or Vyvanse, or something else entirely. But, the things that are you, or are otherwise external, would need to be sorted out separately.

What Triggers ADHD and ADD?

add triggers adhdOf course, Attention Deficit Disorder (and the more diagnostic, if less accurate Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) are both likely alterations in brain chemistry. These differences in serotonin levels, or whatever, don’t necessarily come and go, so they aren’t actually triggered, per se. However, if you have had ADD for a while, you know that some things seem to make you more focused, and some things are particularly distracting.

But, what about the things that are more subtle?

Can a Room or Lighting Increase ADD and ADHD?

I’ve noticed lately that I seem to wake up tired and groggy. This is normal, and yes, I should figure out how to get more / better sleep. But, after some coffee kicks in, I tend to have gung ho type thoughts in my head: ideas I want to explore, projects to work on, dreams to pursue, that sort of thing. I get the kids ready for school, and on the drive back, things are still on track.

Then, I go down to my office. Lately, that seems to sap all the willpower from me. My time management goes to hell, my procrastination increases. I spend hours just surfing through Twitter, or reading news, or whatever, but nothing productive.

Just this afternoon, it occurred to me.

Could it be my office?

Could it be light? Should it be brighter, darker, different?

Is it the monitor?

Is it the chair?

Is it jealousy for the cat sleeping 20 hours a day in a little square pillow bed?

The truly weird part is that I’ve been thinking this all day, and yet, I haven’t tried going anywhere else. My mind rebels at the thought.

“No. I like my office. I want to be in it. I want to sit there, in that light, looking at that computer.”

I guess tonight, when I’m not in the office, I’ll setup my work to occur somewhere else to see if things go any different. If so, I’ll try some self-experimentation to see if I can isolate the issue.

Either way, I need to do something. My productivity has been absolute crap this whole week, and Friday is tomorrow.

Filed Under: ADHD Traits Tagged With: ADD, add symptoms, ADD Tips, ADD Tricks, ADD/ADHD, ADHD, adhd symptoms, ADHD Tips, adhd tools, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, procrastination, Time Management

Organization With ADD Getting Started

Written by ADDer Leave a Comment

Whether you were just diagnosed with ADD / ADHD, or if you were diagnosed a long time ago, organization is an ongoing challenge. Knowing yourself and reading about your ADHD is a good start. Whether you are taking ADD medication, or trying some alternative ADD therapies, you know that medicine alone won’t change your organization and time management habits.

So, what will?

Fake It Until You Make It

If you are an adult with ADD, chances are that you have owned more than your fair share of planners, calendars and organizers in your life. You may have even looked for a specific planner for people with ADD. The truth is that an organizer or calendar is essential for time management and organization. Just because it hasn’t worked before doesn’t mean it never will.

ADD planner organizer ADHDIf you are successfully using an electronic organizer like your cell phone or Microsoft Outlook, or the like, then don’t mess with success. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

On the other hand, if you are still struggling with ADD organization and time management, I recommend getting a physical, paper calendar, organizer, or just a notebook. The reason is that you are trying to change an established habit. The best way to do that is to do something new. If you aren’t used to carrying around a planner, then starting to do so, is something new.

The catch, as you probably know, is that it won’t take right away. You’ll forget your planner at home; you’ll leave it sitting on your desk. Even worse, you’ll write things in it and then forget all about it, or you’ll forget to write important things in it in the first place. It doesn’t matter. Keep at it.

New ADHD Organization Habits

They say it takes six weeks to turn something into a habit. I don’t know if that is a solid number, but I do know that it takes time. The trick to developing an organizer, calendar, planner habit is to keep trying to use it.

Start by taking it with you. Throw it in your work bag. Carry it out and set it on the front seat of your car. Take it into a restaurant. Bring it with you to meetings. First, you might be developing nothing more than the habit of having it with you, even if you forget to read it, or write in it. But, don’t worry, that is step one.

Once you have a habit of carrying it with you, you will slowly develop a habit of using it. Maybe it will be when you have forgotten all about it, but you need a piece of paper and realize, “Wait! I have my planner right here.”

Maybe, you’ll need to remember something, or find a piece of information, and you’ll realize that you have your planner with you, and the data you need is right at your fingertips.

The key is to keep taking it with you, even if you don’t use it. Do TRY and use it, but make your focus just having it with you.

Just today, I realized that I needed a website that I had looked at but forgot all about. As a shot in the dark, I flipped through my notebook (and noticed TONS of great stuff that I forgot about. Need to remember to pull this thing out more often.) There it was, a quick note about the website, and it’s address. It saved me tons of online searching and wasted time.

The best part is, that’s one reward for my unconscious brain about the value of my notebook organizer. Enough of those, and instead of subconsciously forgetting about it all of the time, I’ll start subconsciously remembering it.

BTW, my latest notebook (not calendar, just notebook) is a Miquelrius. It has the subject sections broken out not by tabs, but by colors at the edge of the sheets. Not that I don’t have 50 other types sitting on my shelf right now. Perhaps a blog post about all my empty, and just barely started notebooks is in order 🙂

add-notebook-miquelrius

Filed Under: ADHD-ADD Tips Tagged With: ADD, ADD Organization Tips, ADD Tips, add tools, ADD/ADHD, ADHD, adhd planner, ADHD Tips, adhd tools, Calendars, Organizers, Planners, Time Management

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