I
think that a vital piece of becoming unstuck is learning what is
reasonable. What I mean is that, as persons with AD/HD, there are
limits to what we should expect to accomplish in a day. I
am always struggling with the never-ending DAILY to do list. In the
evening I move the 4 to 10 unfinished items from today's list to
tomorrow's and then I try to remember all of the other things that need
to be done, I go to bed anxious that I omitted something vital from my
list. I
get up the next morning and if all goes well, I look at my list again
and I typically think of 3 or 4 more things I forgot. Sometimes by the
end of the day I have added even more items than I have checked off. I
don't know what to do first, unable to assign a logical value to any of
the items. I then become stuck, paralyzed, boggled, because what was
going to be my handy dandy to do list has now grown to a size that a
"normal" person would have trouble finishing in a day. I still feel
guilty for not checking off all of the things on my list. Just the sheer volume of items listed is enough to boggle me, but I do the same thing the next day and the next... So,
I have been trying to figure out why I do this. I have come up with
this hypothesis: I think that I write everything on my list because Im
afraid that I will forget something. I
am trying to approach this quandary as an outsider because sometimes
being too close, the solution is hard to see. There must be some way to
write my stuff down so that I won't forget, yet not boggle myself. My brilliant plan: 1.
Learn what is reasonable, by experimentation, try different lists out
for size until I figure out what a manageable size for myself is. 2. Have an alternate sheet for stuff that I remember needs to be done but can wait until another day. 3. Learn what questions to ask myself, so that I can start to prioritize my tasks. 4.
Learn to be happy with my new down sized list, and celebrate my
accomplishments not berating myself for not being able to handle the
same load as Mrs. X. |
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Stuck >
Learning What is Reasonable... |