By admin on August 17, 2009
Do I tell my friend the accountant that she doesn’t think creatively enough?
Do I tell my friends who envy my ability to sit down on the floor in the middle of Barnes & Noble that they’re too inhibited?
Did I scoff at my friend who was awed at my ability to run a community festival because I’m able to improvise and think on my feet?
When did having different talents become a reason to be labeled as deficient? I find ways to compensate for my weaknesses, if it helps me get where I want.
Many high level executives have it figured out. They aren’t expected to do it all themselves and they have an assistant. An astute business owner and entrepreneur realizes hiring an expert to help with an area of weakness–sales, marketing, or bookkeeping–frees her up to use her talents, drive, and passion to make the business work.
So many resources scream there’s something *wrong* with me. Frankly, I think my talents are just as useful as the next person’s. If everyone wanted to be an accountant, there wouldn’t be much work for them to do. And, if everyone wanted to be in sales, or process improvement, there wouldn’t be much work, either.
Today we need teams with multiple talents I have them. Don’t tell me I’m broken, or you may never see the benefits of the talents because I don’t believe I”m worth anything. Or maybe you’ll find me walk on eggshells to prove I’m capable.
Sometimes I wonder if finding out changes the way I cope or not. In the end, I guess I can’t know.
Posted in ADD Ramblings, Labels |
By admin on June 17, 2009
While some things should be obvious to an intelligent, relativly well-adjusted adult, my sleep patterns are off lately. This is due to a lot of factors including a contracting job, but it is really affecting my mood and general outlook. I allowed myself to sleep in this morning.
The surprising news is that partial, or low-level, sleep deprivation has a bigger effect on behavior than either the short or long-term complete sleep deprivation experienced by residents (Sleep, May 1996). Until recently, the effects of partial sleep deprivation have been seriously underestimated.
Always deciding to play that last game on the computer or finish an online chat session before going to sleep might actually be more detrimental to my moods and functioning instead of staying up all night. The article, while old, gives me something to think about.
http://www.drgreene.com/21_621.html
Posted in ADD Ramblings, General | Tagged ADD Ramblings, related disorders, sleep |
By admin on June 12, 2009
We’ll see how this goes. I’m always printing papers or directions to take to meetings and have misplaced them by the date of the meeting.
Today, I bought 30 pocketed dividers and labled them with days of the month. My plan is to stick anything I need for a day in the corrisponding pocket.
Posted in ADD Ramblings, Products | Tagged folders, organized, organizing, papers |
By admin on June 10, 2009
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.
-Eleanor Roosevelt
I took a risk last night and brought up issues in a discussion. Some might have called them minor, but they’ve have been bothering me for a while. While it was the right move, the reaction stings. I just have to look at the quote above and remind myeslf that it was the right move because the more I thought about the more agitated and worried I got. The ruminating process is quite powerful and I would be a mess today if I had put off the discussion.
Personality is the way we react to the world given a preset dispostion. Sometimes I take things too literally, or I’ll ignore important issues when someone is being serious because I don’t recognize it as demanding that level of attention. This is part of who I am. Some of it I can learn to modify.
Just think about this:
Noun
personality (plural personalities)
- A set of qualities that make a person (or thing) distinct from another.
Posted in ADD Ramblings |
By admin on June 2, 2009
Sometimes I can be hyperfocused. Sometimes I can be distracted as a five-year-old on Christmas morning. There are days when my computer helps me do both and today it seems to be a love/hate relationship. However, my computer certainly did not remind me that I was cooking lunch when I left the house to go and run errands. It did remind me that I want to finish my billing, it told me that I want to attend an event tonight and several other things. It also had provided me with useful, but not directly related information for my business.
- Researching VOIP due to an email? Check.
- Reading About ADD? Check.
- Setting up plans to go swimming? Check.
While I’m extremely grateful that I”m interested in what I’m doing and that the Internet can provide so many great resources. It’s a bit amusing to realize that I haven’t necessarily accomplished what I set out to do. But, on the upside my business knowledge has been enhanced.
Today’s Strategies for coping:
- shut down distracting windows like IM clients
- make plans to go swimming
- find the timer and set it and work on a project for at set amount of time.
In 3…2…1…
Posted in ADD Ramblings, General | Tagged ADD Ramblings |
By admin on May 21, 2009
I checked this book out from the library earlier in the week. Interesting to see something that was focused beyond the initial diagnosis and deals with roadblocks and plateauing once you get beyond the initial diagnosis, release, and acceptance of ADD.
I appear to be somewhere in what she terms Journey Two: Crisis of Identity, focusing on yourself. I’m working on developing a more realistic and well-rounded self-view. It’s hard work to stop seeing yourself through a distorted lens of “oh, I’m messy, disorganized and that almost always leads me to failure.” My favorite self-distortion seems to be either minimizing the positive or discounting it entirely.
Page 75 #2 Wipe out: Self-distortion makes you believe that others cannot see the good in you or value any of your positive qualities as long as the difficulties of your AD/HD are detectable. Which of the following statements best describes how you feel when others see you blunders?
- If you have a good opinion of me, it is just because they don’t know what I’m really like.
- If they saw the mess I left behind, they wouldn’t have the same good opinion of me.
- If I let people get too close to me, I would be “found out” as the impostor I am.
- When AD/HD happens, it wipes out for me all sense of worth and accomplishment.
For me, the last one really struck home. I’ve always viewed myself as someone who should be accomplished, and somehow fool the world into thinking that I am. Mostly things like setting up a meeting incorrectly or forgetting something to send someone I’ve said I would. If it isn’t beyond someone’s expectations, it isn’t isn’t good. So, most of the time, I’ve just felt neutral about anything “good” I’ve done. This opinion is changing though.
Posted in Books |
By admin on May 18, 2009
Why I am going to go garden after work to alleviate frustration with technical glitches:
Some researchers have proposed that the sharp rise in asthma and allergy cases over the past century stems, unexpectedly, from living too clean. The idea is that routine exposure to harmless microorganisms in the environment—soil bacteria, for instance—trains our immune systems to ignore benign molecules like pollen or the dandruff on a neighbor’s dog. Taking this “hygiene hypothesis” in an even more surprising direction, recent studies indicate that treatment with a specific soil bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, may be able to alleviate depression.
http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/raw-data-is-dirt-the-new-prozac
Posted in Uncategorized |
By admin on May 15, 2009
I was actually amazed when my doctor took my self-diagnosis at face value. I expected to hear “you’re too smart/well organized/put together to have ADD”. We did in the following weeks formalize the diagnosis.
Of course, I’d come to the appoitment with 30 or 40 pages of material culled from the 150+ pages I’d read and deemed to be the most important, but had left my cell phone and the self-diagnosis test sitting on my desk at home before the appointment. Needless to say, I’d already made three trips back inside to pick up something I’d forgotten.
Entreprenuers do seem to be a group that self-identifies as ADHD. Diverse interests, and drive for something you love (even to the point of hyperfocus) may be a savior in the job market. Famous ADD people I’m aware of? Founder of Zipcar, Southwest Airlines, Benjamin Franklin (suspected), and others. My biggest challenge in being an entreprenuer? Remembering I don’t have to do it all. Which is hard when I was raised as someone who is self-sufficient and should be able to do it all–even the things I don’t like including billing and record keeping.
http://adhdhunter.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/youre-too-smart-to-have-adhd/
Posted in ADD Ramblings |
By admin on May 14, 2009
It’s really easy to forget to exercise, and yet, I pay for it when I don’t. My thinking is muddled and it becomes harder to focus. I’m able to focus more easily when exercising, but when i focus better, it is really easy to get absorbed in just one project. If I do this for a few days, my computer screen sits blankly in front of me, cursor blinking slowly until i realize I’m frustrated because I can’t think…if I think hard enough and long enough, it happens that I’ll realize that my heart rate hasn’t been elevated naturally. (Caffeine is not equal to exercise!)
One of my favorite pastimes is dancing. Dancing doesn’t just make me feel good but fulfills multiple core values including being social, exercise and participating in activities I’m good at.
It struck me today that I *AM* a dancer. This is a funny thought, but I’ve always thought of dancing as something I do, maybe a hobby, but I’ve never considered assigning myself the label “dancer”. Yet reading blog and Facebook status updates, I”m often listing these very words to describe myself.. Saying I AM ___fill in the blank___ is one of the most powerful phrases in our mind. It’s how you identify your self, the images you create and believe and relay your self concept to others to help them understand you. A friend recently actually described me as athletic, even though this would be one of the last words I use to describe myself. Maybe it’s time to let go of old labels and use some new ones that the world sees me as.
What labels do you use for yourself? Are they positive? Can you change any of them or should you?
Posted in ADD Ramblings, Labels |
By admin on May 11, 2009
I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to impose my own “structure” on life. As I am contemplating entreprenuership, how do I balance and manintain separation? So often, I want to structure my time as “now” and “not now”. I came across this excertpt again:
The roles of wife and mother add new dimensions of complexity to daily life of a woman with AD/HD. In our society, women often bear more of the responsibility for maintaining the household and raising the children. We expect the homemaker to provide organization and structure for the rest of the family members. Office jobs often have specific schedules and clear job descriptions. The home is much less structured. Tasks may not have a clear beginning or end.
http://www.ncpamd.com/Women_with_ADD.htm
It’s the clear “begenning and ending” that jumped out at me. I’ve often when I’m finding myself overwhelmed, or dissatisfied with a project, task or job, is because I don’t see an end to it. If there is an end–in a significant type of way, I might be able to push through, but finishing a task, just to have to do it over again, or something that is almost the same, often feels defeating.
In this way, something about project management work seems interesting, because if I can keep my head wrapped around the details, some of the projects do end. One thing I was starting to recognize even before I had begun to think about an ADD diagnosis was that I wasn’t good with coming up with beginnings and endings. I have tried to figure out how to impose an end, or know when something is “done.” I’m still working on this one.
Posted in Uncategorized |
