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Here's to Not Catching Our Hair on Fire: An Absent-Minded Tale of Life with Giftedness and Attention Deficit - Oh Look! A Chicken!

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Stacey Turis

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“Fire children are often told to "settle down", "be still", or - even worse - diagnosed with ADD when they may simply have a very energetic disposition from being a Fire element.”

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“As your Daily Planner assumes its place among your “tools of daily life” (i.e., keys, cell phone, wallet, purse, etc.), you will use it to schedule upcoming commitments, such as social events, exams, meetings, appointments, etc. as they arise. In addition to organizing your day, the time spent thinking about and planning your activities is a “priming” activity that increases the likelihood of behavioral follow-through.”

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“There are a series of philosophical problems known as Zeno’s paradoxes. One of them says that as you attempt to leave a room, you must first reach the midpoint between you and the exit. As you continue toward the doorway, you will again reach the new midpoint, with each successive attempt to exit the room requiring you to reach the next midpoint. The paradox is that you should be unable to leave a room because you can infinitely halve the distance to the exit without ever getting out of the room. You may often feel like you are the person trying to leave the room when facing tasks on your Daily To-Do List inasmuch as it seems as though you can never get them started. We use the Zeno’s paradox example to illustrate that most tasks you will encounter can be broken down into ever-smaller component steps. More importantly, taking the right first step on a task gives you the sense that “I can do this,” a seemingly small matter that holds big rewards. When setting out your priority tasks, you will encounter some undertakings that activate a sense of dread, an overwhelmed feeling, or thoughts that you cannot deal with them. Rather than automatically avoiding them (“I can’t handle this now!”), the first step is to consider what you want to accomplish and if your task, at least as you currently think of it, is too big or vague. The overall objective is still important, such as “organize my room” or “work on paper for school,” but framed in such broad terms it is hard to picture a way to get started.”

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“As noted before, ADHD is characterized by problems developing, organizing, and enacting plans in your life across time, particularly those for which there is not some sort of immediate payoff or urgency attached. Thus, you will have to pay more attention to getting started on tasks in your Daily Planner than most other people. You know what you need to do, but you need to develop a better grasp for how you don’t do things in order to more effectively tackle these barriers, which is the focus of this chapter. The first step is to make sure you have a clear idea of the steps you need to take to follow through on your plan.”

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“Despite the previously mentioned strategies, you may still find yourself having difficulties getting started on tasks. The sorts of tasks on which you continue to procrastinate are likely those for which you view even these small steps as being somewhat boring or painful, such as various chores, academic tasks (e.g., reading textbooks, writing assignments), or administrative tasks of adult life (e.g., dealing with taxes, finances). These and other tasks trigger negative thoughts and feelings for you that also interfere with follow-through, even on initial steps. A way to get started on these tasks is to define in strict, behavioral steps the smallest behaviors that are required to start the task. These initial behaviors may not involve actually completing the task, but they are necessary steps and help you to “touch” a task rather than keeping it at arm’s length. This approach is meant to help you break down tasks into their strict behavioral steps, akin to a recipe for cooking. You may say, “I do not know how to cook” or “I cannot do it.” However, once you follow the specific steps, including “get saucepan out of cupboard,” “fill with water,” etc., you are now engaged in the task rather than being cognitively, emotionally, and behaviorally removed from it. It is an interesting exercise to see how other tasks that are typically avoided can be broken down into steps, such as a phone call (“pick up phone receiver, enter the nine-digit phone number, wait for answer, converse in my native language . . .”) or going to the gym (“stand up, go to room and find workout clothes, put in gym bag, . . .”).”

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“An important point to remember is that you still may not be “in the mood” to perform the task or action. In fact, remember that you may overestimate how little energy, focus, etc. is actually required to start a task. The final push to start a task or action is similar to legislative “swing votes”—it need not be a unanimous decision; you simply need to get to a 51–49 result to take the first step of behavioral engagement. As most people proclaim, “Once I got started, it was not as bad as I thought it would be.” Once you get engaged in the task, by definition, you are no longer procrastinating and the likelihood of persistence increases exponentially. This good start does not mean that you are immune to interruptions, distractions, or frustrations, but it is an important step to move from the anticipations of a task to engaging in the reality of the task.”

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“The first step in dealing with negative automatic thoughts about a task or plan is to catch them by asking, “What am I thinking right now?” These thoughts often do not occur in the form of grammatically correct sentences, but may be expressed in brief phrases (e.g., “Oh no,” “I hate this stuff,” a string of expletives, etc.). In fact, sometimes procrastination starts with an accurate statement (e.g., “The gym is crowded after work.”), but that can kick off a string of assumptions that result in procrastination (e.g., “I won’t be able to find any open machines. It will either take me 3 hours to finish my workout or I won’t be able to do my full workout. I’m tired and I’m not up to dealing with crowds tonight. There is no use in going to the gym.”). The subsequent evening spent watching lousy television shows while eating way too many cheese puffs leads to self-critical thoughts and frustration with the missed workout (e.g., “I could have gone to the gym. I would have been done by now. Now I have to find time to make up this workout.”). At the outset, it is vital to be aware of how your thoughts make you prone to procrastinate. Automatic thoughts are often distorted and impact your feelings about tasks. Hence, you start to psych yourself out of doing something without having a chance to get started on it, which increases the likelihood of resorting to avoiding the task through an escape behavior. In Chapter 7, we will discuss in greater detail some of the distorted thoughts and strategies for modifying them, particularly with regard to the emotions they trigger, including pure and simple discomfort about a task (i.e., “Ugh”). When dealing with procrastination, however, the most common distortion we encounter is magnification/minimization. That is, you pull out and embellish all the negative elements about performing a task and you overlook or play down the positive elements and your ability to handle the task in question.”

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“Some people just aren’t meant for the grind. I was in one of those huge public middle schools, taking seven different classes a day. I couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t even remember my locker combination! So I started shutting down—figuratively and literally, during classes. I’d been fully alert at ten years old; then I turned eleven and suddenly I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I’d fall asleep right there at my desk. And not because I wasn’t totally well rested; I totally was! It was so weird. And in the next class, I’d nod off again, at a different desk.”

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