Distractions

I've been trying to post during my lunch hour, but today somebody popped open the "Alarm Will Sound" door on my floor.  Did I mention I'm highly distractable?  Consider this a placeholder.  I'll post later some of the "Why's" of living with ADD

Where am I?

Have you ever been completely mentally “away?” Not just daydreaming, but mentally fully immersed in a completely different situation? This happens to me a lot. My understanding is that this is why what my brain does is called Attention Deficit Disorder . It’s not that I can’t maintain focus, it’s that I have a disorder that makes it difficult for me to switch between a deep focus when intermittent focus is needed or switch out of intermittent mode when I need to be focusing deeply on something, like you know, my next blog post.
Something that has helped me understand this brain mechanism better is meditation. Apparently there are two basic kinds of meditation – I’m going to call them the orange and nitrogen because I have no idea what they’re really called.

The Orange:

In this form of meditation you take a single item, like an orange or a raisin or an action (your breath) and you focus everything on that. You consider the folds and the valleys and the color and the stem and every single thing related to that orange. You train your mind to exclude all other stimuli so that you can deeply concentrate on the scent and the weight and the texture of that orange. Just like a muddy stream settling after a storm, gradually all the sediment in your mind settles and you’re completely clear. It’s amazingly powerful and I’ve finished this kind of a meditation feeling as though I’ve awaken from the deepest most refreshing sleep.

Nitrogen:

In this form of meditation you focus on everything in and around you. It helps me to think of nitrogen – it’s everywhere in our environment, and as a gas it gets into our bloodstream and our lungs and fills every space that we move in. When meditating like this you keep yourself grounded in the here and now, becoming deeply aware of all of your thoughts and your feelings and all the sights and sounds around you. I have deep trouble doing this. For whatever reason I start out focusing on the mundane activities of life around me and the next thing I know my mind is a million miles away. I pull it back and bring my focus back to the spaces that nitrogen has crept into and I’m gone again, thinking about how I need to add fertilizer to my plants. My personal theory is that I’m already uncommonly aware of the things around me, and as such this kind of meditation doesn’t help my brain settle.

So what’s my point?

Anchors help me. As I write this I have a printed sheet of paper across the room with my top three priorities on it. As my mind wanders off my gaze lights on my priority list and it narrows my focus back onto my priorities. At home I’ve taken a slightly different tack: rather than have a priority list tacked to the wall, I remove the distractions. The TV set is tucked into a back room and I keep the computers closed up unless I specifically need them for a task. My phone ringer and calendar reminders are on, but text message notifications are off. I know where my mind goes, and I’m learning how to direct it where I want it to go.

Today’s Question: Who am I Not?

I’ve worked with a lot of people in various stages of life. One of the techniques that I’ve seen help some people figure out what direction to go in is to first eliminate the options they don’t like. Horribly paraphrasing Sherlock Holmes, once you have eliminated the unwanted, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the direction you should take.

I know I’m easily distracted from the boring task at hand by the promise of a hilarious tweet or another news story or yummm chocolate. The Buddhists call this state of mind “Monkey Mind” meaning unsettled; restless; capricious; whimsical; fanciful; inconstant; confused; indecisive; uncontrollable". Ok. Um, this is not who I want to be.

So, taking Sherlock Holmes advice, who do I want to be? I want to be consistent and responsible. I want my decisions to be reasoned and thought out and made in a timely manner. I want to be dependable and clearheaded. Those of you who know me in real life may say “But this is who you are” If so, Hooray! But I do want to mention how much effort it takes me to be like this.

• I write everything down or text/email it to myself. Very simply, if it isn’t recorded, I don’t consider it “known”
• I schedule everything. If you look at my calendar, you’ll see a lot of 1 minute appointments for random things.
• My “appointments” have multiple reminders
• I work with my strengths – For example, I know that I like being around people. Rather than try to do things that I’m bad at by myself, I schedule them with people, or in conjunction with things I like to do.
• I realize that some things are going to take me a lot more time to do and I’ve learned to accept that.
• I apologize a lot. Unfortunately, even with all the tips and tricks I use, I still say things in the heat of the moment that I probably shouldn’t say, forget things I’ve promised to do, and miss events. Still, a humble heart is supposed to be good for you, and I figure all of the oops’es have definitely made me more humble.

This article is what inspired today's blog post, even though I didn't really stay on topic. Still, it’s worth a read because basically this is what I try to do – outsmart my baser self by setting up “tricks” that keep me productive.

“Capable psychonauts who think about thinking, about states of mind, about set and setting, can get things done not because they have more will power, more drive, but because they know productivity is a game of cat and mouse versus a childish primal human predilection for pleasure and novelty which can never be excised from the soul. Your effort is better spent outsmarting yourself than making empty promises through plugging dates into a calendar or setting deadlines for push ups.” Thanks David McRaney for the quote that I've been thinking about all day.

National Blog Posting Month

I tried to do NaNoWriMo'09, which ended in a major crash and burn when our life was turned upside down and shaken, not stirred.  I simply didn't have it in me to create new stuff when real life was demanding every ounce of creativity I had.  I WANT to write, and I love the community of NaNoWriMo, life just got in the way.

Somehow November showed up on my doorstep again.  I'm still trying to figure out how that happened, but one thing I do know:  I want to write.  I need to write.  When I write I feel better in my skin.  I just don't want to commit myself to 50K words.  Debbi suggested I try NaBloPoMo instead, so here I am (and Jenn insisted that I capitalize it NaBloPoMo)

The other reason I'm trying for NaBloPoMo is that I'm not sure what direction to take Phera's Focus, and I'm hoping a month of writing and interacting will help me figure this out.

Questions I'm going to try to answer:

• Who am I?  <-- this one's a hard one for me!  You know those bio snippets on every social media site?  I hate'em.  
• What do I value?
• What inspires me?
• What do I fear?
• What do I desire most?
• What are my talents, interests, and strengths?
• Where will I be 15 years from now?

Will you explore these questions with me?  Thanks! I need the encouragement :)

Use Paper Towels

City Living Lesson 2: Pretreat Daily, Wash Weekly (and use paper towels)

I love microfiber cloths. I adore them...I don't love them as much after they've been mouldering in my rag bag for a week. My step ladder is now doubling as a rag drying rack and I grab for a paper towel if I have a bad spill to clean up. Clothes that get stained get a quick squirt of stain remover and then get added to the hamper.

It's different for me, but probably most different for our son. He used to be able to get away with adding clean discarded clothes to the hamper-now I grill him on each item because I don't want to haul any more than I have to down to the laundromat.

The tiny closets in our apartment and in the houses we've looked at are also inspiring me to cut down on the amount of clothing we have. Now that the boxes are mostly unpacked I can start thinking about that sort of thing. I'm surprised at how much we brought with us that we don't need.

Wear Good Shoes

In addition to shaking up all our stuff, moving has shaken up how we do things in our household.  The most important lesson so far?  


Wear good shoes and always carry a good shoulder bag/tote.  


We have no garage or even a reserved parking spot.  At best we walk 30 yards from the street to the apartment. At worst? Well, let's just say it's a good thing I've got experience as an AT hiker. I never leave the house now without good shoes on. Our son learned about carrying a good bag when we left the public library with armfuls of books and had to hike to our parking spot.


On the plus side, I'm going to leave some excess baggage in Kansas:  I've lost 5 pounds in this first week alone

One Week in New York City

I've been married for 15 years and doing laundry and other chores for as long as I can remember, and it's interesting how one week in New York City can change the way I look at and plan my household chores.

First thing I've learned? Wear good shoes and always carry a good shoulder bag/tote. 

I also have a list of things I've changed: 

Old rule: a load of laundry a day

NYC change: spot treat stains daily, head to the laundromat once a week

Old rule: once a week grocery shopping

NYC change: a little at a time (and I'm considering delivery service)

Old rule: keep the box

NYC rule: reuse/recycle/remove everything!

Stay the same: do the dishes immediately

I'll tell you more about these throughout the week.

In the meantime, what's your moving/getting settled tip?