Thanks... this is great advice. I think people have been saying "focus on one thing at a time" for a long time... in fact, I've been saying it to myself for a long time, too, but I have not really been hearing it. The idea of adding 1 new habit every 30 days is interesting and powerful... the mechanics of it can be kind of weird, though--what if there's something I just want to do a couple of times a week, and it's secondary which day it happens on?
When your problem is not getting things done, it is not secondary what day you do things. Doing things "whenever" is the natural enemy of forming a positive habit. The more concrete your plan (including a timeline), the easier it will be for you to follow it.
This is much harder. You should start with things that are every day, for your first month or two, so you are already doing well and motivated to continue. And even then I would pick the days of the week beforehand, so you're not tempted to put it off through the week.
Personally I have had more success with NEGATIVE 30 day challenges, than positive 30 day challenges, for this very reason. A negative 30 day challenge is when I don't do something every day, for 30 days. One habit might be not drinking any soda for 30 days. Then you might add not eating any fast food or pizza for 30 days.
Once I stopped medicating myself with food and weed, my true emotions surfaced and it became easier to know when I was deceiving myself. For example, when I am goofing off more than I should, I now feel sad and pained (not guilty), and consequently correct my behavior.
I second the idea of not drinking soda for 30 days. That stuff is unhealthy in various ways, and after a couple weeks, you won't miss it. It's a clear easy win. I did this in high school and have not regretted it.
Thanks; I think this is a similar point to someone who was saying "Maybe you've had it too easy." I swear that I get exercise... ;-) The short walk down a plain street is more difficult for me to understand... what does it really change?
I took my 7-year-old son hiking a couple of weeks ago. He's very much a city kid, and has gotten far too used to constant technology and stimulation. I wanted to get him out in nature.
When we first started walking, he was annoyed and didn't want to be there. He shuffled along, staring at his feet, and kept whining "Can we go back yet?" (we'd gone maybe a quarter mile on flat grass when this started). I suggested he look up at the things around him instead of at his feet, because there's a lot of cool stuff to see. He glanced around, and nearly yelled, "No there ISN'T! There's just... this!"
A few minutes later an eagle flew by above us and I pointed it out, and suddenly he got excited. Then we saw a harmless snake in the path and chased it so he could see how it moved. Then we stopped and skipped rocks in the nearby river. By the time we made it back to the beginning of the trail an hour later, he was full of energy and running around, and yelling "Mom! Mom! Guess what? We saw an eagle, and a hawk, and three snakes, and there was a fish in the river..."
Walking down the street is very similar to that. There are all kinds of things to see around you that go unnoticed so much of the time. You could walk down that same street every day going to and from work, but chances are you're focused on what's at the end of it. Taking a walk with no specific purpose is a completely different animal. You have to find purpose along the way, so you start looking around you for interesting details. Maybe there's a cool bar tucked into the alley that you never saw. Maybe there's a crazy graffiti mural on the next block over that you can take pictures of. Maybe there's a hot girl at the bus stop with whom you can make friends. Maybe there's something as simple as a happy dog wagging his tail and smiling at you that could brighten your day.
You might find a fresh perspective on a small corner of your life... but once it starts it tends to spread quickly.
+1 to paying attention to your surroundings, and making sure you maintain joy and fascination in the small things. I think it's something that many if not all adults could learn from, and it's something that kids are great at teaching us.
>The short walk down a plain street is more difficult for me to understand... what does it really change?
It changes you. What wasn't said is that during that short walk down the street you need to leave all your devices and gadgets at your house. Then, simply walk down the street and observe. Be in that moment of walking and focusing on all that is going on around you in that very moment.
It sounds easy, and is a very zen thing to do but is a lot harder than you think. My mind is always racing with everything that needs to happen so that it's easy to become vapor locked. I take a walk outside and focus on feeling the warmth of the sun, the sounds, the visuals and everything that I need to do simply unfolds in front of me. It's hard to explain, but works.
I acknowledge it now, but only sideways. I don't believe in wrapping up problems and tucking them away into a diagnosis... I'm a whole person, and if I have ADHD, it's a part of who I am. Part of what makes legitimizing ADHD difficult for me is that there's no litmus test--we have to rely on psychiatrists to make diagnoses, and it seems to me that the diagnosis is just as likely to be "bad habits" as it is to be "ADHD."
I understand that, and I sympathize with it. In fact, that is probably the majority opinion, the popular position. It was also my position until recently--some of it still is my position.
You are right about much of what you're saying here. Please know that I'm not trying to be glib or sarcastic. If I was being short with my reply, it was because I was in the exam room of a doctor typing on my phone while waiting on her to get back and resume our interview and examination for prescribing medication for my new diagnosis of ADHD. So in a way this discussion is serendipitous for me.
Let me offer a difference of opinion on a few small points in what you've said here.
First, unless you're doing it wrong (pardon the meme), then you will not be wrapping up problems and tucking them away. Not into a diagnosis, not anywhere. But to discount the diagnosis would be an equally problematic mistake to embracing it as a catch-all. If you're diagnosed as having rotten roots beneath a tooth of yours, that doesn't wrap the problem of a toothache up in that diagnosis so that you can then go about ignoring it. It ascribes a cause and a probable form of treatment to your situation.
If you have ADHD, it is a part of who you are, absolutely. It's a part of your strengths as well as your struggles. But your question here was, "What am I doing wrong?" and if you've been diagnosed as ADHD, there's an excellent change you can find good answers that encompass and respect the totality of your person by going further down that trail.
As for the lack of a litmus test, I strongly empathize with that idea as well. While I am neither a psychiatrist nor a psychologist, I have been paying attention to this issue, trying to go deeper into those reservations.
In fact, there are some good tests for ADHD that don't just rely on an interview with a psychiatrist (though I would argue that that interview has more validity to it than you might be willing to grant it). There are brainwave scans that can be done. There are functional tests. There are eye-tracking tests.
That last bit about bad habits is the one that I think is most doggedly pernicious, at least based on my experience. My thinking went along these lines: I'm lazy. I'm undisciplined. These things are hard for everyone. These are behavioral problems, not biological problems--matters of willpower, not matters of capability.
The thing about psychological disorders is that they can all be dismissed as bad behavior, as moral issues, if you are prepped to see it that way, especially for the layman. We've gotten better as a society at acknowledging naturalistic, deterministic causes to these things in order of severity. Things like schizophrenia or dissociative disorder or mania--that stuff we look at and say, "Yeah, there's probably something off with the chemistry or structure of that person's brain." With something like dysthymia or ADHD, though, we still are more inclined to discount the physiological, the neurological components of that cycle of behaviors.
To an extent, you're right. These are learned behaviors. Cognitive-behavioral therapy can do a world of good in undoing them. Heck, even just adapting through self-management can do a lot of good. At the same time, the two worlds, that of mind and body, are inexorably linked. They determine one another in either a vicious or virtuous circle.
Proper treatment for ADHD addresses both aspects of that reality. It addresses your personhood and your physicality, your learned behaviors as well as your proclivities.
I'm not trying to be overbearing here. Please excuse me, and I certainly don't presume to know much about you or your condition. But I hope you're open at least to reconsidering your views on ADHD, or maybe not even reconsidering, just broadening and deepening.
I see so much of myself in what you've described here, and when I saw that you've been diagnosed as ADHD, it lined up with the self-discovery I am in the process of. Your reply here does that even more so, and while I don't want to diminish your individuality and your uniqueness, I think we may be a lot alike and can help one another by having this discussion. I'm open to having my mind changed--I'm not singularly focused on getting you to take meds or anything; other than maybe validating my decision, I have no motive for doing so. That said, validating, or invalidating, each of our positions only stands to bring more light to the situation for each of us and may be of some benefit to other observers as well.
In short, I understand if you disagree with me, and that's certainly your right, but if you'd be willing, I'd love to go back and forth a little more, for our mutual benefit. This reply is my effort to that end, and I hope it doesn't come across as arrogant or rude or dismissive in any way. It's just a topic I care a lot about right now, and in my opinion, it may be one that could yield the type of breakthroughs that you opened this post in hopes of finding.
Thanks so much for your help.