Learning What is Reasonable...

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.

5. Develop the habit of checking my alternate list everyday to see if there is anything that I need to pay attention to ASAP.