Excellent perspective and advice. Sometimes I feel like the only one spinning too many plates, so it is very good to hear there are others in this situation too.
When my husband and I were first talking about getting married, I felt it was important that he knew some things about me first. The first one was that I am not domestic. That is not my first priority. I love having pleasant surroundings, but I have never been super consistent about it. Fortunately for me is that he is domestic and has always picked up the slack when I am either very busy or just need time out.
It is easier to forgive myself since I found out I am ADHD because In the minds of ADHDers priorities for us are all equal in terms of importance, so if I choose to do the things I find the most pleasant, I feel guilty for wanting to do the most pleasurable first. As a child, my mother gave me a box to fill from my “growing garden” of “I’ll do it later” stuff that accumulates before I could go outside and play.
Good strategy on her part, but putting tidiness first put me in a position where I couldn’t fully accomplish anything, so a lot of my personal projects lay unfinished. It’s a mindset of our Leave It To Beaver generation.
I was single for 25 years in between marriages and learned to handle this better, and allowed myself to do what I felt was most important, trying to earn enough to hire a housekeeper. Now we don’t worry about it too much unless we are having people over for dinner. We typically have tufts of paper, pill bottles, pens & pencils, etc., but now I just do what is important to me first.
I don’t know where I’m going with this but there ya go. All the organizing, systems, and plans don’t last long. Bravo for you having the discipline to make it work! Your advice is good and at the rate that you do things, I am amazed you get it all done.
What I forgot to say is to set a time for work to end so you still have some energy left over. Unless you are in the middle of an epiphany, stop at a set time, taking notes where you left off.
I can usually figure out my priorities but will also fail at that, feel overwhelm, then shut down and go lay down and veg out which seems to somehow make me not give a damn about any of it for the time being. Took me many weeks to finally work on/then finish a piece which had been a bitchy challenge for me......I also had to play the waiting game as I ordered some pieces for the work. I love love love the final piece and now feel free to move on to other ones I've started. I know that feeding my dog and the stray cats and possum are a priority and that happens without any issues. But even for myself....I'll forget to eat when I'm involved in the studio. Also, I do some online dating and was going to meet somone for lunch last week, but was feeling really uneasy about this one person. I finally cancelled it and a huge weight had been lifted from me. It was the right thing to do at the time and freed me up to work on a piece. Things get done; not always in the "right" order but it all works out in the end. I may be hard on myself but I also give me a lot of slack and forgiveness when I'm not quite on the ball.
Excellent perspective and advice. Sometimes I feel like the only one spinning too many plates, so it is very good to hear there are others in this situation too.
When my husband and I were first talking about getting married, I felt it was important that he knew some things about me first. The first one was that I am not domestic. That is not my first priority. I love having pleasant surroundings, but I have never been super consistent about it. Fortunately for me is that he is domestic and has always picked up the slack when I am either very busy or just need time out.
It is easier to forgive myself since I found out I am ADHD because In the minds of ADHDers priorities for us are all equal in terms of importance, so if I choose to do the things I find the most pleasant, I feel guilty for wanting to do the most pleasurable first. As a child, my mother gave me a box to fill from my “growing garden” of “I’ll do it later” stuff that accumulates before I could go outside and play.
Good strategy on her part, but putting tidiness first put me in a position where I couldn’t fully accomplish anything, so a lot of my personal projects lay unfinished. It’s a mindset of our Leave It To Beaver generation.
I was single for 25 years in between marriages and learned to handle this better, and allowed myself to do what I felt was most important, trying to earn enough to hire a housekeeper. Now we don’t worry about it too much unless we are having people over for dinner. We typically have tufts of paper, pill bottles, pens & pencils, etc., but now I just do what is important to me first.
I don’t know where I’m going with this but there ya go. All the organizing, systems, and plans don’t last long. Bravo for you having the discipline to make it work! Your advice is good and at the rate that you do things, I am amazed you get it all done.
What I forgot to say is to set a time for work to end so you still have some energy left over. Unless you are in the middle of an epiphany, stop at a set time, taking notes where you left off.
I can usually figure out my priorities but will also fail at that, feel overwhelm, then shut down and go lay down and veg out which seems to somehow make me not give a damn about any of it for the time being. Took me many weeks to finally work on/then finish a piece which had been a bitchy challenge for me......I also had to play the waiting game as I ordered some pieces for the work. I love love love the final piece and now feel free to move on to other ones I've started. I know that feeding my dog and the stray cats and possum are a priority and that happens without any issues. But even for myself....I'll forget to eat when I'm involved in the studio. Also, I do some online dating and was going to meet somone for lunch last week, but was feeling really uneasy about this one person. I finally cancelled it and a huge weight had been lifted from me. It was the right thing to do at the time and freed me up to work on a piece. Things get done; not always in the "right" order but it all works out in the end. I may be hard on myself but I also give me a lot of slack and forgiveness when I'm not quite on the ball.