What do you think I’m doing‽
I entered the thread hoping this would be the first comment; thank you for fulfilling my wishes.
Man, I really need to binge that show. I only saw some episodes as a kid.
My husband and I watch an episode or two every night before bed. Much better than doomscrolling.
Truth. 🥰
And what have we learned from this and what skills are we going to put in place to help?
“Complete the task.” I repeat that to myself all the time.
This is how Factorio feels when you have a spaghetti base
My first thought was “Is that really an adhd thing? I thought it was just normal behavior.”
And then I realized…
It is normal to realize a series of steps are needed to accomplish a goal, but we are supposed to learn over time what is practical within the time constraints we have.
This persons list might be entirely practical if they are spending an entire day cleaning and organizing, and they can mentally keep track of the general order things should be done in.
People start calling things ADHD or ADD when someone is trying to fit that entire list into 30 minutes, and/or they don’t actually need to do 90% of it at all anyways.
What about when it’s “I’m totally going to do my laundry today” in the morning, and then suddenly realizing it’s already evening and I haven’t done a fucking thing all day, and saying “Okay, tomorrow for sure.” For literal weeks at a time.
Or how about this one? I start organizing in the morning, intending to spend the day decluttering. Ten minutes in, I get distracted with a book, or some craft supplies, or an unfinished, forgotten project, or whatever the hell else I find in the piles of clutter that crowd my room because I’m never quite done with it, but I rarely actually get back fo it because I’m always starting something new and hardly ever finishing anything.
You like learning new things, when they aren’t new anymore they aren’t fun, which is why you have a thousand hobbies that have “just been started and abandoned”. Part of this is accepting that you no longer are intrigued by older hobbies, and making room for new ones. I would recommend disposing of or donating your old hobby supplies, or simply storing them out of the way in bins.
For the second part, it sounds like you don’t enjoy cleaning or organizing, and are easily distracted by more enjoyable activities. A good way to go about this is to reward yourself with those things once you finish the chore or task you set yourself, rather than to switch to them immediately.
I’d also add that if you have a chore you can put off for weeks on end, it might not be that important of a chore in the first place.
Yeah, laundry isn’t that important. I can just wear the same clothes for months on end before they start to feel stiff and grimy…
And it’s not that I mind organizing. It’s that I have to study every thing individually to see whether I still need it out or if I can put it away. “Oh yeah, I got this book out cause I meant to read it. Let me look at the back cover and table of contents to see whether I’m still interested…” “Oh, here’s my embroidery hoop! Lemme just finish up this project real quick before I put it away.”
Lastly, having a thousand unfinished projects and constantly starting new hobbies isn’t that big of a deal, but the same pattern exists when it comes to career path, and it’s kinda hard to develop job skills when I literally can’t give a shit about something for more than a month at a time…
Well you do have a skill others might be envious of, which is the ability to change and learn new things without it causing stress or anxiety. You might do better changing jobs frequently rather than staying in something long term. I think some of the problems surrounding this kind of thing are more to due with the gap between what you expect of yourself and how you actually behave. I would just be careful that the expectations you place on yourself are realistic as its very easy to have them skewed by TV, movies, and social media. If you have unreasonable expectations of yourself you will never meet them and it will cause frustration.
I think its helpful to have a perspective that says that everyone is different but that different does not mean better or worse. Instead of one right answer, there are many. The things you think might make your life harder are also the things that are special about you, and there is a good use for them out there somewhere.
You can envy my personal hell, and I will envy yours.
I can agree to that!
Eventually I learned to tell myself, ‘one thing at a time’ (mean mentally but when I realize I’m wanting to do two things at once) it doesn’t always work but does better when in the middle of single task like clean the kitchen. As opposed to juggling the garage and kitchen cleaning because you started running to both. Though I guess it works well there too. Start on something? Do that, heh yes I know but if you remind yourself your brain may realize one day.
Actually mostly used to happen from coming inside, dealing with grabbing some water, washing hands and putting a few things in the kitchen away, I kept half washing hand before moving on and would try an optimize some putting away with cleaning then drop something cause wet hands. Once I kept reminding myself for awhile the tasks went smoother without wanting everything done 5 seconds ago.
Dunno if this is useful to others but figured I’d share cause without some effort my mind will put me on that path.
I think of the quote “to make an apple pie from scratch, fist you need to create the universe” a lot
1990’s
1990s
Word.
Too busy to notice that needless apostrophe, I assume?
I normally wouldn’t even get up to do the laundry. I need meds (weed) to even begin.
It should have said that they went to get a rag to clean up the spilled jug and realized that they had no clean rags because laundry wasn’t done so they went to do laundry…
Got lost shaving the yak.
Gotta write DO THE LAUNDRY in sharpie on my forearm so I remember.
This made me think of episodes with the Silence in Doctor Who. Another chore, another mark on your arm…
I break it down into:
- sort laundry (material, color, temperature)
- start laundry
- empty machine
- hang laundry
- take down laundry
- put laundry away
Sorting, taking down, putting away laundry doesn’t need to happen in one session, but can be broken down further. For example I can only put underwear into the drawer and nothing else else.
Much more manageable.
Laundry is one of the things I’m actually doing quite well with.
I buy new detergent before the old one runs out. Also I buy big packs, so I buy detergent once a year or so. I have four different types of detergent: white, color, black, wool/silk. So even if I run out of one, I can still use one of of the others. Washing whites with color detergent is fine for example.
Sometimes I break down the tasks into smaller pieces and it works but sometimes I get even more overwhelmed by the multiple new tasks so I end up doing nothing
I understand completely. That’s why I only break down the next tiny step at a time, not a full long list.
