Adult ADD Strengths » Clutter

De-cluttering Myths

Pete Quily — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:17:06 +0000

Good post by Gretchen Rubin on the 11 myths of De-cluttering. Clutter is often a very big problem for many ADHD adults and often causes a lot of stress and irritation for their spouses.

He are a few

5. “I can’t get rid of anything that I might possibly need one day.” How terrible would it be if you needed a glass jar and didn’t have one? Do you have gigantic stores of things like rubber bands or ketchup packets? How many coffee mugs does one family use?

6. “I might get that gizmo fixed.” Face it. If you’ve had something for more than six months, and it’s still not repaired, it’s clutter.

9. “I need to keep this as a memento of a happy time.” I’m a huge believer in mementos; remembering happy times in the past gives you a big happiness boost in the present. But ask yourself: do I need to keep all these t-shirts to remind me of college, or can I keep a few? Do I need to keep an enormous desk to remind me of my grandfather, or can I use a photograph? Do I need fifty finger-painted pictures by my toddler, or is one enough to capture this time of life? Mementos work best when they’re carefully chosen – and when they don’t take up much room!

Adults with ADHD quite often have many problems with clutter due to the nature of ADHD. We’re easily distracted, impulsive, forgetful, often have trouble planning and organizing etc. For many ADHD adults the costs of clutter can be very expensive and not just in the financial sense of the word.

Physical clutter often leads to mental and emotional clutter. Byproducts may include overload and overwhelm, stress, time wasted, and social isolation due to being too embarrassed to invite friends over to your place because of the clutter.

I have some of my adult ADHD coaching clients that are reluctant to hire a professional organizer to help them reduce their clutter because they’re too ashamed of their clutter, or feel they have to get organized first before inviting a professional organizer over to their place to help them get organized.

One thing I tell them is that the more clutter they have, the happier the professional organizer will be, because more clutter = more business for them.

What are some of your tips on reducing clutter and keeping your paper and other physical things organized well enough? Versus the “perfect organization” that never occurs outside the fantasies inside your head?

Taming The Chaos Decluttering Tips

Pete Quily — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:28:31 +0000

Adults with ADHD aren’t the only people who have problems with clutter, but we seem to have more problems than most people do for a variety of reasons. I.e., being more impulsive, distractable, disorganized and having more trouble than most people doing boring repetitive tasks, ie cleaning up stuff around the house.

One thing I’d emphasize is the importance of doing one room at a time. Or a portion of the room. Bite off a small sized chunk vs trying to eat the whole elephant at once. ADDers can often see the entire picture and get overwhelmed by it instead of seeing just one piece and working on that.

Adults with ADHD brains are understimulated (not enough dopamine) and thus we avoid boring repetitive things much more than most people do because boring task + understimulated brain= distract out, procrastinate out or shut down.

One way to make it easier to declutter is to crank up your dopamine in order to help you focus by getting some exercise before decluttering, or turning on some music you like.

Also try setting a timer for 10-15 minutes and just spending that long decluttering then stopping. If you want to more you can but you’re only committing to 10-15 minutes vs 3 hours.

What are some of your favorite tips for taming clutter?

The Action Method by Behance

Pete Quily — Wed, 30 May 2007 08:48:28 +0000

Great ideas are conceived and subsequently lost in the hands of creative geniuses, everyday. Frustration, rationalization, and despondence loom as creative people jump from idea, to idea, to idea… and fall short of actually making ideas happen. It is a shame that most creative breakthroughs never materialize.

via Kineda

Now this sounds like it was written for adults with Attention Deficit Disorder doesn’t it? While lost creative ideas aren’t solely the domain of adults with Attention Deficit Disorder, they probably occur more frequently with us, and cause us more grief than non ADDers

The Action method is a method of productive creativity by a company called Behance.

They say the key to their Action Method is to leave every occasion of creativity, a meeting, article read or a dream with 3 things

Action Steps
Back Burner Items
Reference Items

and to have them clearly defined and divided, not squashed all together.

Action-Step-is-to-Reference-Item as Oil-is-to-Water
Per the Action Method, actions steps should always be kept separate from reference items. When you’re in a meeting, keep your action steps distinct from your notes on a separate part of the page, or use a different page altogether! When actions become interspersed in your reference items (notes, clippings, articles, etc…), they are unlikely to get your attention. And, without your attention, actions steps are seldom completed.

Which is so true. Like any great truth it’s obvious in hindsight, and not always easy to practice. I think this is so crucial to adults with Attention Deficit Disorder, because we’re often in the caught up in the dopamine frenzy of intellectual stimulation that we forget to do it. Or we don’t remember to take breaks and downtime and go go go until we drop and have no energy left at the end to separate and write down the action steps and say “I’ll do it later/tomorrow”, and often never set a reminder to do so and when later comes we’re on to the next distraction.

Fortunately they have a possibly solution to our frequent dilemma

Here is a modest proposal: When you are tempted to take copious notes in a meeting or cut out an article, make a separate action step to file the notes as a reference item in a particular place. Commit to filing the reference item in a predetermined spot, tagged or filed under an appropriate keyword. Otherwise, a reference item will just float around and never add value (or, even worst, serve as a distraction).

they’re got the site divided into 3 sections

Philosophy The why and the how of the action method

Articles tips and real life examples

Products and Services or Outfitter, where they have action pads, books, stickers etc

How do you separate out your action items from general ideas/notes?

The Tyranny of STUFF

Pete Quily — Sun, 07 Jan 2007 08:34:17 +0000

Serial Filler talks about the true cost of stuff.

It takes time and energy to take care of stuff. Physical stuff, intellectual property, outdated issues, unresolved traumas and conflicts, even memories. I have a choice: caretake my past or build my future.

How true. Many of us ADDers like the stimulating process of accumulating physical and intellectual things, (something new! cool!) and fail to consider the true or full costs of those things beside their initial purchase or creation prices. Which in the long run is often the smallest cost.

Every posession you have you need to:

find a place to keep it, and in doing so reduce your available space to move in.
Clean it
Maintain it
Repair it (if needed)

I believe that physical clutter leads to mental and emotional clutter.
Also, if we’re not willing to process issues and problems in the present, and are reluctant to go deal with the undealt with stuff from our past, it becomes clutter for our future.

I can’t grab the right stuff if my hands (and heart, and mind) are already full of wrong stuff, obsolete stuff, broken stuff, and even OK stuff that isn’t as important as I thought it was.

So less excess “stuff” means more freedom in the present moment. So what questions could you ask yourself before you’re about to add another bit of stuff to your life to make sure it’s the right stuff?

Related Posts:
Taming The Chaos Decluttering Tips
ADD hyperfocus sometimes can be dangerous
De-cluttering Myths
Instant Karma For Rude People
Another

Chris Pirillo Discusses ADD with Pete on His Podcast

Pete Quily — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 10:55:41 +0000

Chris Pirillo was here in Vancouver with Ponzi recently to speak at the Northern Voice blogging conference. He also did the Chris Pirillo show at the Take 5 Coffee shop downtown the night before Moose Camp. Chris talks with Vancouver blogger Will Pate, Scott Beale from Laughing Squid and Identity Woman, and myself.

Chris needs no introduction to those of you involved in the high tech world. For the rest here’s a line from his bio

The geek among geeks: technologist, television host, magazine columnist, blogger, author, and entrepreneur.

He’s the #1 search for Chris on the internet. He runs the Gnomedex conference, the Lockergnome content network, a podcast show, and his own blog and more.

I talk about ADD with Chris who says he has ADD, and I’m not disputing it:) How could you do all those different things if you didn’t have ADD? My piece starts at 1 hour 9 minutes 11 seconds and is about 15 minutes. Here’s the link to Chris’s Podcast.

We talked about ADD, ADD Coaching, and some reasons why ADD is an advantage in a high tech career, i.e., the gift of hyperfocus. We also talk about translating Chris’s visions, the vanilla people, and how clutter affects ADDers.

I also mention the importance of a good diagnosis, the popular 5 minute Harvard Adult ADD Screener test, and different ways of dealing with ADD.

If you listen to the podcast, let me know what you think of it.

19 Best Resources on Getting Things Done

Pete Quily — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 07:40:01 +0000

Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress Free Productivity is a book by David Allen on the topic of productivity that is a big hit in the blogosphere and there are several blogs that have been inspired by GTD. I particularly like his idea that we shouldn’t be relying on our memories to remember to do items and if we have a system to keep track of all the loose bits of data we have to do AND WE REVIEW IT REGULARLY, it frees up psychic space in our brain that we’d otherwise use to keep reminding us to do things (usually at times when we can’t). He also has a good visual matrix to process incoming information into logical areas. While their are core principals to the process, there’s a lot of room in flexibility in actually implementing it.

This is one reason I think that it may be appealing to ADDers. People with Attention Deficit Disorder need (and simultaneously resist) structure. I believe it works best when they can create the structure that works for them. One thing I notice when I coach ADDers around time management is how different we are, and there is not one solution that fits all. I believe that’s one reason (there are many more) why many ADDers have trouble with time management, they try to take a system designed for someone else and make it their own without adapting it to their needs and what works for them.

Here’s the place of his “official definition” of Getting Things Done, it’s worth checking out. Here’s one of his benefit paragraphs on that page

Implementing GTD alleviates the feeling of overwhelm, instills confidence, and releases a flood of creative energy. It provides structure without constraint, managing details with maximum flexibility. The system rigorously adheres to the core principles of productivity, while allowing tremendous freedom in the “how.” The only “right” way to do GTD is getting meaningful things done with truly the least amount of invested attention and energy

Listable is a cool site for creating lists where the users create lists which users vote on individual items within the list to change the ranking of them. An online democratic ranking system.

They created a list called the 19 Resources on the Best Getting Things Done Resources.

Here’s 10 of their top 19 Getting Things Done Resources

1. The delicious GTD tag
2. Lifehacker.com “geek to live, don’t live to geek”
3. 43 Folders. An industry in itself, blog, wiki, podcast, google groups and forums.
4. To Done
5. Lifehack.org Blog and forum. On Leon’s community pages is a researcher looking for procrastinators to participate in an paid online study. I may have a few readers that fall under this category:)
6. The blog from Mr Allen himself . Note that the blog ranks above his website.
7. The official site of David Allen, creator of the method.
8. What’s the next action. Here’s their top ten posts
9. GTD Jumpstart
10. The GDT zone of Officezealot

and #11 is Titled a Really Good Summary of Getting Things Done. It’s a nice set of notes from the GDT book.

Free Online To Do List Program, TA-DA Lists

Pete Quily — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 09:49:25 +0000

TA-DA Lists is a free online to do list program. Allows you to do a basic to do list, and leave it on the web so you can access it from work, home or cell phone. It’s a hosted service no software to install and you can keep the lists private or public, even subscribe to your list in RSS. It’s a very basic program there are many more comprehensive ones but sometimes basic is all you need.

Created by 37 Signals the creator of Basecamp business project management software.

ADD organization via webcam

Pete Quily — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 09:03:55 +0000

Want to catalogue every book, movie, music, and video game that you own digitally? Have a Mac and a firewire camera? Try Delicious Library.

You can use the webcam to scan the barcodes and it builds a searchable digital library, creating covers to be used on your digital bookshelf or ipod. You can even track items your friends borrowed. Via squee.gee at Core77.

Sometimes people with ADD have been known to by more than one book. I’ve had up to 3 copies of the same book (I read a lot and have too many books). It can be difficult for someone with Attention Deficit Disorder to organize their library and remember what they have if they buy a lot of books. This is an easy way to organize and keep track of all your digital collectables.

Messiest Closet Contest

Pete Quily — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 08:32:06 +0000

From Professional organizer Daine Halley.

Want to win 8 hours of free organizing? Do you live in the greater Vancouver area?

The Professional Organizers in Canada, BC Chapter are having a Messiest Closet Contest.

When I mentioned this at my Vancouver Adult ADD Support Group Meeting on Tuesday, seemed liked there were a lot of willing contestants:)