By Donna Hoffmeyer
(original post on Medium)
Around 2004 I was in the military, stationed at RAF Lakenheath in England, working as a Labor and Delivery nurse. One night shift I was talking with my coworker and friend, Brittany. I don’t remember the details of the conversation, but she responded with, “You are so organized.” I nearly choked on my drink, as I cracked up.
Little secret folks…I do not have an organized mind.
If I could describe the functioning of my brain, I would equate it to 100 little squirrels on crack attempting to all run on the same treadmill, that has been lit on fire, and set at a speed of 500 mph. They are continuously flung off and charred but still go back for more. All. Day. Long.
Exhausting…yes. Creative…often. Entertaining…always.
It wasn’t until around 2015, I was diagnosed with Executive Functioning Disorder…or EFD for short. Essentially, I struggle to take in information and properly prioritize it. Starting a project takes enormous energy. What to do first is ever-changing. I sometimes will do 10 little things that could be done later, instead of starting the one large project that is time sensitive; only to finally start the project under the pressure of short suspense I created by procrastinating.
Often EFD can be a result of another diagnosis, such as ADHD, anxiety/depression, OCD, TBI, etc…. I learned about EFD when our son was diagnosed with ADHD 7 years ago, and subsequently EFD. The three Ps, projects, presentations, and papers significantly raise the stress level in our house.
However, after almost a half-century living with my crack-squirrel brain, I’ve learned a few tricks that have helped me be relatively successful in my life. No, these suggestions have not been put through a double-blind study. They are my hacks; the nuggets of advice I share with my ADHD/EFD son, in hopes he will not have to go through as many trials, errors, and complete burn-the-house-down failures as I have.
And now I’ll share them with you…in no particular order.
Sticky notes are your friends. Our son is in 8th grade. We have begged, pleaded, and rewarded/bribed him to use a planner. No-go. He cannot remember to even take it out to write in. So we resorted to a sticky note on his Chromebook. Not perfect…but he at least sees it to write things down. My office computer screen was often loaded with them. It probably looked like chaos to most people, but I could scan them and remember what I needed to do. When I was done, I just threw it away. Simple…but effective.
Work at your best hours…and no, they are not always office hours. It was an enormous challenge for my pingy-out-of-the-box thinking gray matter to work in an office setting with a large number of neurotypical (aka organized) brains. Those were the hours of the meetings, phone calls, working groups, etc. They were also not my best hours for getting my work done.
I work best first thing in the morning from 7–10, and the afternoon/early evening, between the hours of 4 and 7. No idea why, but I seem to be more focused. It would work better for me to have meetings between 10 am — 3 pm and focused time in the morning or late afternoon to accomplish specific tasks.
Create micro-routines. Okay, this is one of the tougher ones. However, once you can master this, life becomes a little easier. It doesn’t have to be something grandiose or complicated. It CANNOT be grandiose or complicated…it will not work with our scattered brain cells. It needs to be quick, consistent, and simple. A few examples:
Grocery routine options:
— Keep a magnet pad on your refrigerator; immediately write down needed items.
— Tell Alexa to make a grocery list; have the list sent to your phone
— Have a note section in your phone for needed items; add it as soon as you are out of something.
Coming home routine:
— Put keys on the same hook, clean out bag/backpack, put lunch box on the counter, make lunch for the next day, and place bag in designated area.
Paying Bill Routine:
— Autopay is your friend! Partial or full payments.
— Reminder on your phone/calendar
— Put bills in one location
Yes, they may seem trivial…but creating micro-routines allows me to keep on task. Anything complicated or taking too long and my interest is G.O.N.E. (Fling! There goes another crack squirrel.)
Find a place for everything. Now let me clarify. This does not mean to have everything organized in its place. Our brains are already in overdrive. Making sure the DVDs are organized by genre is not happening. However, making sure all the DVDs are back in the DVD binder is doable. No, my shoes will never make it into an individual see-through shoe box, but I can toss them into a box that holds sneakers/sandals/boots. Maybe you never hang your jackets up in the closet, but can remember to throw them on a hook behind the door. Having general spots for everything keeps a certain level of organization where you can find things when you are busy thinking of 50 other things. Trust me, when I don’t put my keys in the draw, bad things happen. One time I lost my keys for a week; only to have my husband find them in the back of my SUV. I had laid them down, grabbed groceries, and forgot them there. (Luckily I had a spare.)
Brain breaks. My squirrely brain does this naturally. I’ll be in the middle of a major thought, or trying to complete a task, and I will all of a sudden grab the phone and scroll through some social media for 5–10 seconds. The only way I can describe it is all the information comes in at warp speed and I need a few seconds to process it…so my brain distracts itself for a moment to allow it to happen. When you are feeling overwhelmed take a brain break…just make sure your breaks are not longer than work periods (okay, occasionally guilty).
Parent yourself. Yes, this sounds odd. Let me give you an example. One of my issues is that objects can become part of the furniture. I may bring a glass of water upstairs and leave it on the nightstand. It easily stayed on the nightstand for a week before my husband will bring it back to the kitchen. It’s not that I don’t see it. I do see it. The problem is, although I am looking at it, my mind is thinking about 30 other things and does not process that I have to bring it back to the kitchen.
I find it quite annoying (needless to say, my husband does too). I have trained myself to internally talk to myself. I see the glass, but my mind is on something else. However, there is a split second it recognizes it doesn’t belong there. At that moment I will tell myself, Donna, pick it up and bring it downstairs. It has taken lots of practice, but it works.
I use this technique in most of my day-to-day life. When I get into a project, it becomes too mundane or too taxing, my mind will often look for ways out…catch up on emails, work on marketing, remember someone I need to text, make my dental appointment…the list is endless. When I recognize this, I will bargain with myself. Okay, go back to what you were doing. If you finish this page and then you can take a break, stop it for today, or go on to work on something else.
Chunking. I have no idea if this is an official term or not, but it is what I call it. I do this in many different ways. One of the hardest things to do with a chaotic mind is to break down a problem into manageable pieces. We often try to attack the whole thing at once…and it never works. I’d equate it to a machine gun firing in circles. A barrage of ideas/problems/solutions all coming out at once, hitting a variety of intended and unintended targets, and potentially setting off random chain reactions I have no control over; often resulting in One. Huge. Mess.
When any problem arises the goal should be to first stop and try to figure out the big overarching ideas/issues, then figure out what needs to be done in each area. I’ll use cleaning my son’s room as an analogy. If I asked him to go into his room and clean, he would stand in the middle of his room, and be overwhelmed by where to start. This is what many of us do in our day-to-day life…stand in the middle and wonder where to start. If I walked into his room and gave him a smaller specific area to clean, he was more apt to focus on and take care of it, and in turn, feel accomplished, leading him to be interested (with parent encouragement, of course) in cleaning another area.
Adults are not much different. There may be more rooms, bigger messes (although I doubt you could top our kid), or messes spilling into many rooms (also our kid)…but the breakdown should be the same. Chunk it out. Big ideas/themes, find the issues, and fix each issue. Yes, you are going to have to parent yourself through some of this to stay on task…but if you are getting too off track, then the task may be too big…break it down again.
Sleep. Another tough one for many people. Why? Well, we are trying to keep up with all the flying squirrels in our minds…and what better time to attempt to organize them, than at 2 am. Of course, it doesn’t work, we get overwhelmed and our mind decides to try to figure out that the only word in the English language that ends with “mt” is way more interesting than the squirrels or sleep. (FYI…it’s dreamt…now you can sleep.)
However, sleep is a micro-routine that is critical to manage that daft cerebrum. The average adult needs a minimum of 7 hours. Yes, yes, many of you are talking to this article telling me you function fine on 4–6…and for a day or so, you probably are. However, the experts (CDC, Mayo Clinic, National Sleep Foundation) all agree 7 or more hours is optimal.
I’m not here to lecture you on how to do it. There is plenty of information out in the ethernet to research and try. I am telling you to make sleep a priority. And if you are working on getting your day-to-day life a bit more organized, and fewer squirrels are flying off the treadmill, then in theory, sleep should become easier.
Befriend and/or work with organized people. Let me start by saying it might be a good idea to give them an insight into your squirrely brain because invariably you are going to drive them to some level of madness. However, when you can find an organized brain that resonates with you, magic can happen. They help you stay on track, you bring them solutions to ideas they would never show up on their radar. Learn from each other.
This ties into our last nugget of advice.
Ask for help. Swallow the ego folks. We do not live in a bubble and cannot live our optimal life trying to do everything on our own. Impossible, we need others to help us reflect and gain self-awareness. (If you are again talking to this article, and arguing with me, then my point is proven.) We’ve all tried it (including myself), and whether we want to admit it or not, we do not get as far as we could if we just asked for help.
So, let people see your squirrely brain! It is not all bad…not by a long shot. We are the ones that have zero idea where the box is and will come up with that idea that everyone thinking in the box cannot see. We invigorate and inspire (and sometimes lose) the neurotypicals. They look at us in awe and amazement (take it as a good thing). Yes, life is calmer without us…but is also so much less interesting too.
Once they figure out how you function, they will learn how to work with you, befriend you, collaborate with you, and help you…and you will do the same for them. When you learn to empower each other’s strengths and fill in for each other’s weaknesses, amazing things will happen.
Before I wrap this up, there is another level of asking for help I want to ensure is discussed.
There are times when our brain is chaotic due to external factors, such as mental or physical trauma. The brain’s number one priority will always be to protect itself, and sometimes in its attempt to help, it inadvertently causes processing issues.
This is where the professionals can come in…therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists. They have a variety of modalities to help retrain the brain — talk therapy, behavioral therapy, biofeedback, neurofeedback, EMDR, equine therapy, post-exposure, and group therapy are just a few.
I will not speak for anyone, as each journey is unique. What I want you to take away is, if there comes a point where it is all too much, going to the professionals is the best way to start getting the brain back on track.
There is no shame in asking for help to heal your brain.
On a final note, I’m sure one of you is mentally asking me why I didn’t list “Set a timer”. I didn’t because it stresses the hell out of me. I will hyper-focus on when the timer is going to go off rather than getting my work done. So, since it is my list, it’s a no-go for me. But if it works for you, knock yourself out.
There is no single solution, but rather an ever-growing conglomerate of trial and error. I’d love for you to share your nuggets of advice and let us know what works for you!
