You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!: The Classic Self-Help Book for Adults With Attention Deficit Disorder (37 page)

1. When you go to a bookstore, do you head for the self-help aisle in search of books with titles such as
   Five Steps to a More Organized Life
   by Ima N. Disarray or
   Systematizing Stuff
   by R. U. Tidy?
   
2. How many of these kinds of books do you own?
   
3. Do you decorate your rooms with Post-it notes instead of wallpaper?
   
4. Do you try a new filing system several times per month?
   
5. How many reminders do you have written on your left hand? Your right hand?
   
6. How many times do you search for your missing car keys every day?
   
7. How many times do you arrive at the grocery store without your shopping list?
   
8. How many piles of unopened mail are there in your house?
   
9. How many items have you listed on your “to do” list? Do you have a “to do” list? Do you have a “to do” list for your “to do” list?
   
10. How many times were you late for an appointment in the past week?
    
11. Do you frequently say the words “I forgot”? How many times did you say them in the past twenty-four hours?
    
12. How many times does your child go to a soccer game with wet socks because you forgot to put them in the dryer?
    
13. How many days after a business trip do you leave your suitcase still packed in the corner?
    
14. How many times do you get to your hotel and remember that your suitcase is thousands of miles away on the floor of your bedroom?
    
15. How often do you have to call hotel room service for a toothbrush or shampoo because you forgot to pack yours?
    
16. Do you wear a waterproof watch in the shower to keep track of time? Do you set the timer on your watch as a reminder to get out before you drain the hot-water tank?
    

We haven’t standardized the diagnostic criteria
of our test, but we think we might be on to something here. We’re guessing that readers who “failed” this test know who they are. So, just how many times a day do you lose your keys, your child, your mind? We hope you know that this means you are in good company with many other wonderful, distractible ADD adults.

Although we began this chapter with a reference to (dis)organization, it’s impossible
to separate it from the larger issues of learning, attention and memory. The jury is still out regarding the specific reasons for the ADDer’s problems with time and space. Are they symptoms of the disorder? Are they specific learning disabilities that come packaged with the ADD? Or are they a result of a basic difficulty with selective focus?

Creating Order—Where Do You Start?

Regardless of the specific causes of ADD adults’ time and space problems, life is indeed difficult for the organizationally impaired! Feeling perpetually disorganized may be a daily reality. Many of
us never seem to know how to manage the time and stuff of our world and often feel at the mercy of forces beyond our control.

Decide Whether the Disorder in Your Life Causes Stress:
Your messy closets and desk aren’t problems simply because your spouse thinks they’re disorganized. If you can find what you need relatively easily and are comfortable with the seeming disarray, you don’t have a problem.

If you decided that a messy house is a satisfactory trade-off for extra free time, you don’t have a problem. Of course, it’s important that this trade-off
is acceptable to the rest of your family. Their needs should be a part of your balance sheet.

If disorganization isn’t a problem for you, skip this discussion and focus on the other areas of your life that require your attention. If you scanned the table of contents and immediately flipped open to this chapter, you know you have a problem with organization. If you’re constantly putting out fires
and your life is cluttered with missed deadlines and paperwork pileup, you need to make a conscious decision to work at developing a sense of order.

Remember That There Is No Such Things as a Perfect System:
Although you may feel that organizing your life is an impossible task, it really isn’t! With some creativity, work and planning, you can create order in your life. Don’t worry, though, about coming up with the correct organizational system, because there is no right or wrong method.

Although you’re an adult, you may still operate with
parental admonitions ringing in your ears: “Put your soccer shoes in the closet as soon as you get home … Don’t hang your jacket on the doorknob.” Maybe hanging your jacket on the doorknob is a great system because it jogs your memory about the errand you still need to do. Perhaps leaving your shoes by the front door reminds you to polish them. The point is, you need to toss out the old “shoulds”
and do what works for you.

Review your balance sheet. Think about your list and consider some of the following general time-and-space issues:

What are the spaces in your home and how do you use them?
Do you feel comfortable in the spaces you live and work in?

What objects fill your home and your life?
How often are these objects used—frequently, occasionally, never?

What things have remained unused for a long time?
How much time do you spend trying to figure out how to get started?

Do you have trouble controlling: Time? Stuff? Both?

To Get Organized, Approach Your Disorganization in an Organized Way:
For starters, divide the global idea of order into smaller pieces. When you characterize yourself as a disorganized person, what do you really mean? Identify the problem areas, prioritize
them according to severity and then design a plan for dealing with a reasonable number of them. By establishing a limited number of goals, you’re already on your way to becoming more organized.

Approach the reading and digesting of this chapter in the same fashion. We realize this section is chock-full of suggestions, some of which may not apply to your individual situation. The volume of information
may also be overwhelming. Break this chapter down into smaller chunks, tackling a piece at a time. If you find yourself becoming confused or overwhelmed, close the book for a while and come back to it later.

Organization Begins with a Pencil and Paper:
To figure out your specific organizational problems, start with a pencil, a planning notebook and some quiet time. If you can find all three of
these things, you may not be as disorganized as you thought you were!

Think about the things in your life that make you feel disorganized. If the first thing you write on your list is “everything,” tear off that sheet of paper and try again! You need to focus on isolated problems so you can systematically work out solutions.

Emotions can be useful clues for identifying and isolating specific
problems. Think about a typical day and run through it event by event in your mind. Stay tuned in to your emotional responses to various situations. If you begin to feel anxious just thinking about the milk that’s still on the grocery store shelf instead of in your refrigerator, you’ve hit on a problem! Continue the process by writing down each problem as you think about it.

Put Limits on the Number of Problem Areas:
Don’t give up if you end up with pages of identified problems. Pare down your list by initially setting aside everything but the first four to six items. You might try to analyze your list by ranking the problems in a general way and focusing only on the most problematic issues. Your ranking can be based on the level of personal aggravation: drives me crazy, sort of bothers
me and no sweat. Perhaps cleaning out the storage closet doesn’t have to be done right now, but if the mess constantly grates on you, rank it close to the top of your list.

Work with Your Prioritized List:
If you get this far and file it somewhere in your unmanageable file cabinet, you will accomplish nothing except to have wasted some time. Although you may have precious little down time, schedule
some extra to deal with your problem-solving list. If you simply wait to get around to it, it will never happen. Make a conscious decision to meet with yourself at prearranged times to visit your list and develop solutions.

Organization experts focus on simplifying issues by breaking them down to smaller, more manageable parts. Consider the components of each problem area and individually list
them on your paper. If your cluttered office is driving you crazy, think through the specifics of the problem. A cluttered office is a space problem with many sub-items. Is your desk messy? Are there too many papers tossed around carelessly? Are your garbage cans overflowing? Is your calendar still turned to the previous month?

This detailed list will help you get started with your personally
designed organizational system. As you consider the discussion and ideas that follow, use your prioritized list as a framework. Think about your particular problems and individual style and try to match them to the ideas that appeal to you. Ignore the others and don’t get distracted by things that aren’t on your list. They may be important, but you can’t fix everything at once.

General Mess Management

If you are like many ADD adults, your
What Drives Me the Craziest
list probably includes a variety of time and space problems. We’ll save discussion of time management for later in this chapter and focus on space problems or mess management now.

Mess management has two components: clearing out and storing. Keeping track of the stuff of your world requires the same effort and planning as many
other areas of your life. It really is a shame that planning—the thing most of us hate more than anything else—is the single most important thing we can do for
ourselves! It’s probably more accurate to say we’re planning impaired than organizationally impaired.

You’ll need to make a plan if you’re going to have control over the stuff of your life. A logical way to start developing this plan is
with an analysis of the clutter in your world. Take a house tour and make an inventory that focuses specifically on stuff. By using this
Stuff Inventory
and the
What Drives Me the Craziest Inventory
, you’ll have a framework for your action plan.

Compile Your Stuff Inventory:
Do you live in a house with large storage closets? They are great places for dumping the stuff you clear out from other
places but have a particularly troublesome drawback. They are deep, black holes into which stuff falls, never to be seen again! When it’s time to get out your winter boots, you may not be able to remember where you put them. You’re probably already late for the sledding party and in too much of a hurry to find them. You may arrive home hours later with wet gym shoes and frostbitten toes!

As you
do your inventory, make a note of how often you use various items. Divide your paper into three columns and categorize everything: the things you routinely use, occasionally use and haven’t used anytime in recent memory. When your list is complete, schedule a time to come back and get to work clearing out the clutter in each room.

Arm Yourself with Three Big Boxes:
Physically separate the objects
in each room according to their frequency of use. For starters, put anything you access with great frequency in a
Use
All the Time
box. Everything else should go in the garbage can or into one of two clearly labeled boxes:
Occasionally Use
and
Haven’t Used in a Long Time
. If in doubt about whether to keep something, don’t waste time thinking about it. For now, just put it in your Haven’t Used
in a Long Time box.

Work with your first box, putting these routinely used items in readily accessible places. If you need to buy a bookcase or hanging
shelves to maximize storage, jot a reminder in your notebook. Tape contents lists on your other two boxes, put them in a closet or out of the way somewhere and schedule a time for their subsequent review. When you discover several months later
that you still haven’t used something, take the plunge and throw it away!