All right, welcome everyone to another episode of the other things ADHD podcast.
All the things Yeah. Jazz hands,
which we already talked about in the past, so I shouldn't anyway, um Anyway, I've heard of your co host Lee Skallerup Bessette it's okay keep singing spring crazy as these Yes very
much in my troll era, right? Yeah, yes. Oh things so at the
speaking of the neutrals movie, my daughter had a fabulous conspiracy theory about the cause the trolls theme song is like the new song that came out of the recent Trolls Movie is so goddamn catchy. But they released it after the Spotify wraps had already published and so there's this weird area in in like December, were like what you listened to doesn't matter. Right? And she's like that was brilliant because then nobody's ever reminded again that they love this. Right?
That's your guilty pleasure. You should be able to like Mark through in Spotify throughout the year. I don't want this on my rapped. Yeah. I'm gonna listen to this for six weeks because I just had a breakup but like, I don't want the world to know. Yeah, well, no, because it was our song. Yeah. Wrapped. It's embarrassing.
No, I swear. I'm not a I'm not a late stage teenager with nostalgia for trollers movies who's listening to this super catchy lifestyle
and tell these the original cast elbow me like I don't want that on my.
Anyways, do you want to introduce yourself?
Yes. What is my name? I don't know. Okay, right. I am one of your co hosts. Any hope Morrison? The first. The only thing I found out the energy for 40 people today?
Oh, God, tell me about it. I've been in weight mode. I talked about this. I've been in weight mode. And so like the paralysis of not being able to do anything else because you're waiting but also have the energy of a billion suns. Yeah, while you're waiting and just like the can't focus on anything and can't do anything and is just like, you know, this is this is when my cuticles take the worst beatings is is possibly wait. That's
like when you have to get out of the car. It's at a stoplight and just do 10 Jumping jacks, right? Because like you've been in the car for too long, even if it's been five minutes, and you have so much energy that you're going to shoot laser beams at your fingertips if you don't find a productive way to get it out.
Yeah. All right. Just yell at other truckers.
Yeah. There's something wrong with me. Right.
Yeah. Anyway, so speaking of the crazies, and maybe that's an ableist term. Maybe we shouldn't use that. Maybe not the we've got the zoomies speak the zoomies. There we go. We've got the zoomies. We have the zoomies we are and why do we have the zoomies, it's been a while
since we have at this. We have the zoomies Lee because it's spring, right. And so we have addressed this topic before on the podcast when I got Q tips and rubbing alcohol out to like take dust off my ceiling fan spray, because I just really really needed to deep clean everything I owned, as I had an excess of energy, a kind of franticness. That is the flip side of the November's which of those of us who suffer clinically or sub clinically from seasonal affective disorder often find an urge for carbs in hibernation in November, a kind of tore poor and sluggishness that reduces motivation and focus. And in the spring, I have discovered the flip side of that is not that you're magically more productive and awake, you are a bit frantic, and maybe a bit manic and you have so much energy but are still not really able to direct it. At the level of intensity or focus that's required. Like your brain wants to focus on seven things all at the same time. And then all of a sudden, all the yard implements you own are strewn all about your yard and the sun has gone down and you have to leave everything and come in the house without having accomplished very much. But then it rains and everything gets rusty. That's what spring can look like when are zoomies get out ahead of our capacity to almost
Oh, I have wanted nothing more than to clean up my sewing space and organize my fabric. But I know what is going to happen is I'm going to take out all of my fabric that I have plans right winter fabrics, I'm not going to use for a while fabric that I've that I have lots of excess of but I've already made something out of it. So I'm probably not going to make something out of it again, like I have these organizational plans in my head. And then I just know, I'm gonna take everything out. It's gonna be all over my basement, and then it's gonna stay that
way. It's gonna say you're gonna get overwhelmed. Yeah, by looking at it and then actively avoid going into the basement.
Well, I can't it's my office, but I'll like have my blurry background so I don't ever have to see it ever again and just like never turn around. I would like because the door, the door to my office is like straight line to the desk. And the sewing stuff is all on the other side of the room. So I could possibly have blinders on and just never have to look over there. Yeah. But
yeah, so that's how like a good intention to become more organized leads actually to a greater profusion of mess, which is our sort of topic around the zoomies today is not only am I usually seized by an urge to clean things, and that might have to do with the angle of the light where it like comes in the house at such an angle now that I can see my baseboards on the far wall, and I'm like, Oh, my God. Yeah, those have never been dusted. I can't I can't exist in this house with these baseboards in the state that they are. But I also intend to like look around at my, at my sort of hibernation den, which I've constructed for myself, you know, where I have like 15 books in two piles on my side table, and like eight pairs of reading glasses next to every pillow and a bunch of throw blankets everywhere, and sweaters on the floor, like you just sort of like nest in, I think like the winter tends to be our hoarding era. Or like, take all the comfort objects out, and then just kind of leave them all over the place. And when it comes around to springtime, and I'm finishing up the teaching term, and I want to think about like, I want to clear the decks to have a nice summer where I'm not at the office all the time, and to like, have my research term start where even my desktop on both of my computers now has so many items on it, that they're overlapping with each other. And like I know exactly how it happened. And I know why. But they're at a point now where it stresses me out. Yep, yep. So like, I'm just going to save it to the desktop. Because if I save it somewhere else, it's going to take longer. Yeah, I want to when I want to share with somebody, then I'm gonna have to like go through all these menus, I'm just gonna put on the desktop because then it's easy.
For me. It's my downloads folder. Everything just ends up in my downloads, right?
And then like after a while, like it's easy to link things from your downloads folder like until your downloads folder is so full of stuff that you have to search, you actually have to use the search function in your downloads folder to find the easy save that you just did. You know exactly. Yeah, so what do we do leave when we have the zoomies, which means we have a lot of energy but we're a bit frantic and frazzled about it. And we notice that we have accumulated piles of paper piles of clothing piles of dust piles of downloaded documents piles of to do lists that the fresh spring sunshine is revealing to us in all of their numerous glory. And we feel like we wish we were a little less encumbered. Yes, I this stuff. Yeah, do we do?
That's a really good question. I don't know I I'm I'm procrastinating productively about cleaning up my sewing space because I figure like for me I'll get over it. I don't know if that's the best way but it's not like there's nothing urgent about it like it's almost like I'm cleaning out my sewing space would be procrastinating about something else. So it's like I'll find something else to procrastinate about. And like when it when the urge passes all get back to sewing again in the in like this in this area. But even as I'm talking about I'm like no, don't do that. Go and organize everything. Wouldn't it be nice wouldn't be so good if you organize things and I'm like so like I'm I'm currently going through this internal battle right now where it's like there's Yeah, I mean, my big thing and we've talked about this over and over again is I just I list I do lists right like what are the what are those things it's like what we were talking about in terms of making tasks manageable or attractive doable unit Yeah, exactly. And so like I mean it's also this because if it was just the baseboards right that we wanted to does that would be one thing but once we get started with the baseboards then we noticed that all the corners are also and then we noticed that in behind the baseboard in behind this thing and then oh well now like so it's never just because if it was just the baseboards then that would be the smallest possible unit and we could cross that off the list right? I got my Swiffer I'm sorry Swiffer doesn't support us but like you know what I mean I've got my my my my replacement for what used to be feather dusters got around all the baseboards in the house and I can check that off the list but it's the everything that you notice along the way that could distract you or you know and then so then you have half the baseboards all your furniture has moved away from the walls and like so that's the that's the sort of challenge to is that like
there wouldn't be if it was just organizing that I wouldn't fall down the rabbit hole of Oh, wow, I remember this and I really need to reread it and suddenly you're rereading this article and they've just started a whole new research project but yet you're in you know your shot. You don't know me. Yeah, no, of course. I don't know you. This hasn't been. So four years, five years this but
we're describing a couple of problems here. The first one is school. Open creep, right? Where you're like, Yeah, I'm going to I'm going to do the baseboards because the baseboards in this room are gross. And then you're in the baseboards and you're like, you know, I feel like there's a lot of dust accumulating on the surfaces of my piano, which I can see because I'm dusting the baseboards under the piano. So I'm going to do that. And like, oh, the stool next to the piano is like, you know, what, I'm just everything in here is probably does, I'm gonna like do maybe I'm gonna check on the door jams and stuff. And now, you have not got that you didn't even get the baseboards finished, because you're like, well, while I'm under the piano, now, I'm just gonna do the whole piano. So now Tom baseboard and most of the piano, but you need the can of compressed air to get the cat furrow from between the keys of the piano, then you go downstairs to get the can of compressed air, but your kid is watching an interesting anime. So you sit down with them, and now it's lunch. So like, that's sort of what happens to me. But like scope creep then leads to a kind of attenuation of our attention, right? It just branches out and branches out and we start 100 things and don't finish any of them. Yeah, right. But now we also have like our cleaning tools are on the floor. So in addition to it's still being dusty. Now you have like a can of compressed air on the kitchen counter because you never managed to bring it upstairs, you have your like Swiffer and
you forget why, why is that? Why scan here? And then somebody's like,
my husband will text me like, why is this candle compressed? Here? I'm like, God, why is anybody trying to bother me when I'm doing chores? Yeah, right. So I'd like scope creep is one, like, I'm going to do all small task. And I'm going to complete it. And if any other tasks like show up, like maybe I'll make on my to do list, like maybe like do the piano, right? Don't be like just because I'm here, I might as well like, do this next thing when the first thing is only half completed. And that leads like to the second thing, which is sometimes a strategy and sometimes disservice to ourselves. And that's like what I call the pinball method or the Roomba method. Yeah, which is like, if it's in front of me, I do it. And then I noticed the next thing and I do it, but at a certain point, you can't be like, I'm going to take all the papers that I've strewn about on the floor, and tidy them into a pile. Because the next time you try to do that, maybe you notice like, wait, I already have a pile, right? You can't just put up a wall put the second pile next to the first pile. Because they're distinct, right? You don't know me? Yeah. So like in my bedroom, I call this like, Tom laughs at me, I call it floor juggling, right. So like, I want to clean up the pile of stuff that's in between my night table, and my dresser because underneath my night table, that's where my laundry basket is. It's like a little hamper. A basket, put my laundry in there. But sometimes like when I take my clothes off at night, I want to wear them in the morning. And then I'll like fold them up and put them next to that on the floor at but then I'll put two textbooks on top of that, because at the textbooks in bed with me, but I'm going to need them in the morning. So put that on top of the clothes. And then maybe on top of that there'll be a pillow and stuffed animal. And then some papers that I had put down on the bed earlier because I wanted to file them but I haven't filed them yet. So now it's sort of making like a Dagwood sandwich of different things. And then in the morning, I'll be like, Oh my God, what a mess. Like I just knocked over this giant pile of stuff looking for my sweat pants that I put on the floor, so it'd be easy to put on in the morning. Instead of praying in the drawer. The drawer is six inches higher than the floor pile. Yeah, but I couldn't get into it. Because the floor pile actually, if it goes on the bottom of your pile is blocking the door. So I'll take everything off the floor that I just put on the floor the night before. And then I will put it on my bed and I will split them into categories like this is clothing, I could put this away. Here's some papers that need filing. Here's some glasses that belong downstairs. I should bring them downstairs and my textbook I'm gonna put in the office. And then guess what I don't touch them all day. Don't do it. And then when I like in the afternoon, I'll go into my room because I'm like, I just want to sit on my bed with the cat and do the Sudoku. Oh, fuck, I can't sit on my bed. There's too much stuff on it right? So I'm mad about it, but don't move the piles. And then when I want to go to bed Thomas, sometimes my piles have extended to his side of the bed, right because now I've got on actually a laundry basket of clean laundry that I just need to put away. But I can't put it where my piles are so put on his side. So he'll take that basket of laundry and put it on the floor beside my side of the bed and they'll be like, and then I'll push that over closer to the wall. But now I have to move the air purifier out of the way and the dog bed that's still there from when my kid was gone. And now I'm so tired because it's 10 o'clock at night and I had these piles on my bed that I sorted into categories. And guess what I put them back on the floor. Another language this is called floor juggling. I don't be like but maybe these things like today I don't want to lose my sweatpants. So I'm going to put them on top of the pile of clean laundry that's still in the basket that's on the floor where I did push the air purifier out of the way but now I can't get the door open all the way into my room. So we're squeezing into the room and now I put yesterday's clothes on top of clean and folded laundry but then the next morning I'm like, Oh no, I got my period. I need to get my period underwear but oh, it was in the clean laundry. It's at the bottom of the basket. So I just shove my arm down the bottom of the basket and now all my clean clothes are like and I don't know why it's so As the bigger the piles are, the less and less able I am to actually just put that shit away. Yeah, you know? Yeah. So that like the floor piles are getting bigger and bigger and I'm getting more and more frazzled, and it's like getting harder for me to be like I will. I'm just gonna put this on top of this other thing, so I can grab it first thing in the morning. Right? But then I can't because there's so many things I can't even see. Yeah,
yeah, exactly. You're just looking at it going like i What? What happened last night? Yeah. And what was past me thinking? Yeah, it's constantly it's a constant loop of what was past me thinking, Oh, well, future me we'll just deal with this. Like, it's just like this cycle of cursing past me and shoving it off to future me.
I managed to unload a laundry basket that wasn't full of like laundry necessarily, but was things I was bringing from other parts of the house that then got laundry put on like folded things that I was going to wear again, put on top of it because I couldn't access the drawers because the floor piles. And when I finally like I lifted it up, but I was like, this is really heavy. What is in here and it was like a bunch of Christmas decorations. Right that I had brought in the laundry basket from the downstairs to the upstairs, so I could put them in the almost completed go back to the attic Christmas box that was in front of the attic door. So we can actually get up to the attic. And I've been there for like, probably two and a half months. And I completely forgot what's in the bottom of that basket. And like, listen, Lee, this isn't how I want to live. No. And I didn't used to live like this. And so it gets to a point where I'm like, I will say to Tom, like I don't even like I'll make my floor pile into the bed pile today. But then once it's on the bed, I actually don't have other places I could put that stuff now, right? It's like, Oh, I'm gonna take the pile of Office papers out of my bedroom. And I'm gonna bring them into my office because they're office papers. But I have too many piles of Office papers, papers,
yeah, in my office, right, which is how they ended up in the bedroom to begin with.
So now some pile of them is on the Adleman of my reading chair, which is where I tried to sit when I couldn't sit on my bed because of the piles. I was gonna do the Sudoku in my office chair, my reading chair in my office, except it was also covered in poor piles. And I was like, Oh my God. I'm not emotionally attached to these things. Like, this is not a hoarding issue.
No, this is just a overwhelm, ya know, it's straight up overwhelming. And that's like, I have the same problem like i It has been pretty much my mess has now been contained to my office. That was that was the trade off. It's like you get the whole basement. Right. And it's a fairly large basement like this is I get the whole basement. Yeah. But this is where your mess is gonna live. Right? Right. Like this is, you know, I have some clothes at the end of the bed. I sort of have that closed system going on. But like, the majority of the mess has to stay down here. Right. Which I've been very good, like, pretty good about,
right. I've been very, I've been pretty good about it, like downgraded your self assessment, you
know, like, well, like, because we also have a reading room. So it's not like there aren't books that migrate their way up into the meeting room because there's no, there's only a small I know, folks should be in a reading room. That seems Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. But you know, and you know, so like, they'll there's there are the piles of unread books on my side of the couch in the reading room. Right? You know, and that sort of thing. But like the late Yeah, like it's good. Like, by I've even, I actually had a cause because Cassie didn't want it anymore. And so like a little metal drawers from IKEA. She wanted it. And now she didn't want it. And she gave it back. And it was just sitting here empty. And I like rearranged my sewing space because I've like I've got too many notions, right. And so I actually semi organized the notions. It's not like neatly organized, but at least it's like, organized by theme. And I think that that's kind of one of the ways that like, and it sounds like you're doing it that way too. But like I I'm trying to force myself to take that next step of like, what are at least the themes? Yeah. And Where Where did these themes live? And I was getting overwhelmed by by notions because they used to live in one place, right? And now I'm like, Oh, I have this drawer. Right? Let let me at least move them in. You know, like, these are long zippers, these short zippers. Here's stuff for fascinating things. And then like, it's not like organized by color or anything like that. But it's really just like, Okay, I have too many piles of notions. And now that piles need to go into stratum. Yeah. So is this. Go ahead? Yeah. So it's understanding that it's like it's never going to be perfectly organized, right? Like we are never, maybe not never, but we're probably not going to get to Marie Kondo levels of like, organization and labor. Oh my gosh. I was watching a recent cruise or a Queer Eye. And it was a former nun living in New Orleans and she's a lawyer. Yeah, and everything was labeled. They're like, put the label Make her away. Right? Yeah, fix Yeah. And the exact opposite where I was just like, there were labels on literally every single drawer, and every single panel and everything was like, acutely organized and accounted for. Like, and I was like that's, that's horrifying to me like why?
Oh had her dresser. Yeah labeled like the wooden dresser. It'd be like the drawer label would say like, panties. Yeah, like listen, it's your dresser. It's got a drawer. The drawer just has that one thing and I'm pretty sure you don't even label to remember. Yeah, this but it was like a control thing. Yes. And sometimes actually, that's a response. You know, it can go two ways. We probably go different ways on this because that seems to be our experience is that sometimes when my life feels at its most chaotic, like I remember when my mom was dying, and there was nothing I could do. I one day took everything out of my pantry. It's a floor to ceiling pantry that's about maybe 16 inches deep and 20 No, it's 30 inches across. So it's pretty big. And it's floor to ceiling and I took everything out. And I like wiped the insides of all the cupboards there and I wiped like you know, the bottle of oil sometimes gets a bit sticky around it. Oh, yeah, girl bottles get gummy. I like clean that I dusted like the tops of the spice bottles. And I like I just but I must have spent two days doing it. Right? It was like, because I needed something I could control. Yes. Yeah, I like so sometimes when we get overwhelmed and like, did my pantry, like need that level of organizing? I'm glad I did it like yes, a Martha Stewart level of like, honestly, I'd be embarrassed if people looked in here because it's kind of sticky. And but there were there other things that I should have been doing like probably not. So that's like no harm, no foul, but like if you want a place where you're like, like, say, for example. So Tom has organized me a salon tonight of some of my lady friends are coming over and we're going to sit around and drink wine. Right? And so we're like, what would we have to get done before they come? And I'm like, like, what if they come upstairs? They're not going to come upstairs. So now I'm like, I should get the compressed air and clean up the keys of my piano. Nobody's going to be looking behind the keys of my piano. But also I don't have food yet. Right. So sometimes we tend to sell so everybody knows you have a cat. Everybody knows I have a cat. Right? So I just want everything. So yeah, the dog. So sometimes we any teenager. Yeah. So sometimes we like exert control by cleaning out our pantries. And that's like, that's fine. That's a great way to use up and fidget energy and you're not avoiding something else that's more important. Yeah, and I haven't chosen the wrong.
And to be perfectly honest, that's also where I'm kind of at right now with weight mode and cleaning. And just like there's a lot of stuff that's going on outside of my control again, because that's what I need in my life right now. Where it's like, I can control my son in space. Yep. Right. And, and again, like I'm, I'm sort of at that same point to where there's really not much that's pressing that I have to do. Like, I haven't been told I need to do need to get organized for taxes yet. So I'm not really avoiding that task. But but but I think like, because when it comes to like, when people and I see this, again, with the sewing stuff, and like you were saying, right, like, I'm not going for peak efficiency organization. Right? I am trying to make better piles, I guess is like kind of what I'm thinking of is like, how do I make better piles, where the organizational structure is still idiosyncratic, it is still like me, it's not gonna, it's not gonna be color organized. It's not going to be organized by size. It'll probably be organized by like, fabric type, but like, that might be like the extent of it, you know, so I mean, I've seen people where it's like, it is color coordinated according to ascending amounts of fabric I have in like, you know, when I'm
like, Yeah, or like I have my threads sorted by like the cotton versus the blend versus the embroidery like, listen, it goes in a bucket. So what exactly what you're describing is like I would call this like the sort of DEF CON levels of organization, right and so if you have a drawer so like I have in front of me in my desk, I have a drawer of office supplies so it's office stuff that small it goes in the drawer. So for a while it sort of looked like a junk drawer because it had like it was just a cupboard it was a space it was one square and it was like passports and checkbook and whiteboard markers and some cloth to clean my glasses an extra pair of glasses and my emergency zoom lipstick and a chocolate bar and some sticky notes and some paper clips in a bag plus all my university ID from all the universities I've ever attended and some bookmarks I got a conferences as a jumble. Right? So that's, that's not organized. No there's like a way that even if you take all the whiteboard markers out of the drawer, put it out elastic around them and put them back in. Yeah, that's more organized. Right, exactly. Instead of like so I did my knitting supplies a couple of weeks ago because I was finishing Toms sweater and I needed like the yarn needles to the, the not pointing needles around pointed like needles with the big head on them to do yarn sewing. And I had to dig through 10 different knitting bags to find them. And then I sat down to do it. And then I couldn't find my scissors which were in a different location. And when I was like looking for my scissors, I found the measuring tape I had lost and then I needed to do the ribbing. And I did not know where the needles were for that. So I had like different kinds of yarn stashes it was like bags that had projects in them where I had like some yarn for one project in my closet. Some yarn was in the attic. Some yarn was like, in individual bags in different parts of the house so that whenever I tried to do on knitting project, I did do like the seven Stations of the Cross going around, trying to find the Catholic Church, Catholic church, I was like dragging across behind my back the whole way. I was like, I just want to knit something, right? Yeah. Like Tom's like, you wanna watch TV? I'm like, yeah, let me just get my knitting. He's like, Oh, boys before
Yeah, he's like, alright, well, I'm gonna watch something. And that's about a half an hour long and then right. So like,
that was ridiculous. So like, what I did was I just made piles one pile was like all the yarn in the house. Yeah, I was in this pile. We are all the knitting needles that I own. I found all the needles, that's a different pile. And then I like found the pile of like, I guess like all the patterns like things I printed off the internet or like different kinds of books because I would have in one yarn bag, a pattern book from a pattern that was from the project I did before this one, but the project I'm doing right now the pattern would be on my desk at work. Like Listen, this is ridiculous. So I need to like find all this stuff. And then I just made those piles and then most of the yarn like I'm not using was a lot of yarn, like not huge amounts of yarn. And then I just like put it in individual bags. According to like, this is chunky yarn. Yes, yes, this worsted weight and wool. This is like a sorted odds and ends of leftover in different sizes, and then I put it in a Rubbermaid container. And I know that's where all the gardens are. That's where yarn is. That's where yarn is like so my friend Bev did something different. So when her mother died like Bev's a knitter, her sister's a knitter her mom, Jody was a knitter. And when Jody died, they've got all the yarn and had to figure out what to do with it and had so much yarn. You know, when you have so much like with fabric, you'd start a new project, you don't even remember what you have,
and how much Oh, no, definitely. And then you go out and buy a new one. And then you're like, wait, I
already had this, right. And she told me she spent like a fairly lengthy amount of time measured in days and frustration and bottles of wine to like, do the sort of Ravelry database of like, this is what I have. This is how much yardage I have. This is the weight of it. So then when you're comparing patterns, you're like, Yeah, I do have the yarn. Yeah, do that. So it was like three days just to organize her yarn, I would say I spent an hour and a half. Right. And both of our systems are great. She has a lot more yarn than me and is a lot more fond of having spreadsheets than I am. And so now I know all my knitting needles are in one place. Do I remember what sizes I have? No. But if I go up, I know exactly where they are in my yarn bucket in the attic, because they're not like at the bottom. They're in their own bag in a big rubber bands. Yeah, but I'll just pull it out and see like, Oh, here's what I have, or buy new ones or not, I'm not going to check on my database on my computer. Like I'm not that organized. But now I don't have yarn stashes all over the house, like a squirrel. Nuts all winter, right. So there's like levels of organization where it's like, instead of having your sewing notions where like the threads and the needles and like the seam tape are all in one spot, you're digging through them, like I'm gonna have a bucket that just has spread in it. And I'm gonna have a bucket that has all my different needles in it, the end and
a spot on my bookshelf or All my patterns.
Yeah, exactly. Like like, Have you organized them into binders maybe but like maybe it's just like for me right now I have a cardboard box. So pretty cardboard box will live because all my patterns are like different sizes and sort of I don't have that many patterns yet. But now I know all the ones I have are in this box. Because going through a pile of papers on my deadly that I had taken off my floor and I found a sewing powder my friend Megan had sent to me. And I was like, oh shit, I wondered where that went. There was like, sandwiched in between like one of my kids, French tests from high school and some toxic material. And then underneath that was seven New Yorkers. So yeah, and the
swelling and like so I actually have I actually invested in like an air table template to organize. I think I've talked about this before. And it's been great. So I and I hacked it, which I was very proud of myself because I'm like this is like so because there's printed and unprinted patterns because I have mostly PDF patterns. And and it got too overwhelming to be able to remember which ones I printed and which ones I hadn't. So I created a new like a A new tab. And I automated it so that when I change it from under printed it that was already a category. When I go from no to yes, it automatically populates this other list. So I know and then on that one, I added a added a. It's not trigger, but I added like a column, I guess, because you could do it as a spreadsheet. But I added a Anyways, that was whether or not it was assembled. Right? Because you because and so now, I can very quickly look and see what is it do I have printed? Because very often I printed this, like the same type of pattern,
right? Multiple
times where I
cut it out 50 times and then take the pieces together if you've already done it, right. Yeah, exactly.
And or like, or is it like something that I really need right now? Yeah. So let's look at what I have printed, because I like it could be a couple of things. But I just need something for like this, this particular fabric or this particular event, or this particular mood that has struck me, but then it also is sort of like when I'm in my like funks. And I'm just like, I don't want to so. But I don't want to just sit here and watch and listen to podcasts. So it's like, oh, this is when I assemble patterns. Okay, so what patterns aren't assembled yet? What what what sort of hits my fancy for like what I could possibly. So next and then I'll so that's funny strategies. Yeah. But and so here's, here's the third one is that there's actually a tab for fabric. And so I tried to organize my fabric that way. And it does not work. No. So like that. One is sort of like if I'm going to reorganize my fabric, I'm not updating that database. In fact, I might actually like just delete it altogether. Because I don't use it. i It's great for me for my patterns. And I figured out a way and because it's nice a visual and it's like flipping through. But the fabric is more like I have to see it all in front of me. Right? I don't need to see the patterns all in front of me. Right, I need to see the fabric all in front of me. So that's so I'm sort of learning again. And I think this is the best piece of advice for like getting a little bit more organized and making it less overwhelming. And taming those zoomies is like, trial and error will tell you what sort of level of organization you need. Yeah, for the various parts of your like, like you're saying for like, you know, for me, the spreadsheet, you know, the more visual spreadsheet on air table is great for my sewing patterns.
Does not work for my fabric. Right. Okay. So let me sum up. Yeah, generalize here. So the first thing is, things don't need to be organized until it gets to a point where it's bothering you more. Yeah, the way it is not organized. Right. Yeah. Then like, sometimes I just leave stuff out where I know I can grab it. I have like things at work where it doesn't look organized, but it works very well for us. Right. Yeah. So that doesn't actually need me to organize it. Right. I know you like to surround like your workstation with a lot of stuff. Yeah, that I would find visually distracting, but you're like, No, this is what I need. I can see the stuff that I have, like when I'm working on a writing project. And I'll be like, Nobody's allowed into my office because I need to put like the 30 pages of the draft on board. And it's going to stay there for five days. But that's fine, because it's working for me. Right? Okay. Yeah. So, the first step is like, the system that you have is working for you. Doesn't matter what anybody says about what it should look like, or what they would do if they were you. That doesn't matter if it's working for you. It's working for you. It's no longer working for you. Like I went on a tear. Last summer I was like so irritated every time I open my medicine chest in the bathroom, like my vanity, where like my toothpaste is at my face creams and all this stuff I could see like seven years of kind of accumulated Schwartz. Like you know, where the toothpaste kind of drips a little Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. To add or like your greasy fingers get in the face of love because it's glass shelves and it just looks dirty. Right? It's like that. And I was like, oh, I should clean that because it makes me mad every time I look at it. Like it's bothering me now. It's like not like I'm going to close the door on it doesn't bother me. Right? It started to bother me. So I was like, this is important that I was like, Oh, I don't think I can do this because once I start taking things out of this cabinet, then I'm gonna have to deal with them and I thought what if what if I don't have to reorganize the cabinet? What if I just take things out one shelf at a time clean that shelf and then just put everything right back where it was? Yeah, right. So just because it's like well once I've got this opened up, I might as well or I should write if it's an I should do this other part don't it don't bothering you is that the shelves in your medicine cabinet are sticky and dusty. But it doesn't bother you that you have three half used tubes of tester face cream, right? Then don't like just deal with one problem and the other ones don't actually problem so. So when the level of irritation from the things current level of organization exceeds whatever spoons you save by not having organized it is time to organize. Right? And then you can organize it the way that you want to the extent that you want. So you found a tool, right, that allows you to organize your pattern so that you can keep track of, you know, because a pattern is kind of an abstract thing. It's like you're trying to picture in your mind, it's just a series of sheets of paper that you've printed or not printed, like fine. Put that in digital form super. But your fabric, you want to touch it, you want to see it, right. So you're like, I'm not going to bother inventorying all my fabric in this tool that allows me to do that. It's not like well, the tool says, I can do this. I have to do
this now. Exactly. Why don't just you know, I know that you need Yeah,
right? Which so only do the parts that work for you, which I think is is great. And then the other one is like stalking a bit. So you're like I'm listening to podcasts. And I'm organizing these things right now. So it's a little bit temptation, stalking. It's like too boring to listen to a podcast without doing anything. Yeah, but it's too hard to like organize paper patterns without something else to do with your brain. So stack those temptations. So these are like, we have to know ourselves to know like, what is the point at which be saving everything to my desktop, saved me the irritation of having to dig through folders just to attach like, you know, when you want to put a picture on Twitter? Yeah, I'm gonna be like Hannah Gadsby. And like her new specialist, just like Twitter winter, winter, winter. This is like refusing to they're refusing developments. No, it's not very funny. So like, sometimes I want to put a picture on Twitter. And I should be able to just grab it out of my photo apps and like drag it and drop it onto the Twitter interface. But I can't because it's like an AGI see on my photos. So I have to like, export. This is so stupid. I know. Where do I put it? Li oh my god damn desktop. Yeah, it is where I put it. And then I drag and drop it onto there. But like, I just wanted to do a tweet. I'm not trying to clutter up my desktop, right? Until one day when I'm like, I just saved my lecture plan on to my desktop, and I can't find it. So now obviously, this search tool to find something on my desktop, which is like, not what that's for. So for me in that scenario, I will use the minimum level of organization because like, let's say there's, there's like 50 or 60 items on my desktop. Don't judge me.
I don't want no no, no, no, this is like tabs for me. My Downloads folder, right?
So what I will do, because I just need to make a start on it. Because I can't see anything as I will create some folders that are the biggest possible buckets. One yet research. Yeah, we'll be teaching, one will be screen grabs, right? And I just grabbed documents. And I'm like, Is it A, B or C? Yeah. And then I dump it into that folder. So now I have three folders. That at least if I'm like, if I'm feeling ambitious, I could go into the screenshots folder and be like, how many of these do I have to keep? Yeah, right. So we're, where do I want to put them, but it's not like I'm individually looking at each of the 50 to 60 documents that are on my desktop, and having to decide its fate. I'm just like, first, I'm going to categorize them in the biggest possible buckets, so that I can actually see what I have. And now instead of one giant problem, I have three smaller problems that are at least more organized. Like it's not like I took 1/3 of the things on my desktop and just put it in a in a folder labeled first. And then second. And then third, like I did a bit of an executive function by saying this is research. This is teaching, you know, this is Miscellaneous work nonsense, or this is screenshots. So I just was like, dump it. And then when I go in the research thing, I'll see like, oh, I actually saved in here, some downloaded PDFs from the library. Like I should figure out a place to put those those are readings and they have a separate place they go Are these are stubs of writing for different projects. And now since usually I have folders for those projects somewhere I can now move those out. Yeah, to those folders, and then whatever. And it
becomes, again, the smallest possible like, No, I'm not going through hundreds of files I'm going through. And it also it also reduces the cognitive load. Absolutely right. I'm not making decisions about 17 things. I'm making decisions about this one thing, and this one thing can be broken down into much more manageable chunks as in this goes in readings. This goes in you know, writing projects, this goes in Yeah,
it's like I've taken I've taken all like 100% value 40 page essay question and turned it into a series of multiple choice questions, each of which only has three possible answers. Yeah, right. Yeah. research, teaching screenshots, the end, right. So I'm making the easiest possible decisions and and so when we want to start doing these decluttering tasks, like it can be very overwhelming. That's why we need to do them is because we're feeling that overwhelm yet related to that's how it piled up like that. It was convenient until it wasn't. And then we usually go through this kind of latency period where we're like kind of closing your eyes or squinting at it. You're like yeah, I'm I'm trying to bring Genesis still working for me. And then one day is completely overwhelming. Like I said to Tom, I don't have room to take my bed pile and turn it into a floor pile, because somehow I've managed to make a second floor pile during the day. So I can't even do my floor juggling like this is out of control. But at that point, I'm so frazzled and frustrated, I have to find the easiest biggest when you I can do first. And usually it's like, whatever is clothing. I'll deal with it. Because clothing is bulky. And it's easy. It's not like a giant pile of paper, some of which is like teaching notes, some of which is like, well, in my case,
it's way easier to quickly identify. Yes, right. Like, I know, a shirt is a shirt and pants or pants and panties. Or socks. Yeah. And so it's not like I have to sit here and actually read what this thing is and possibly get distracted by the fact that I'm reading it. It is just like that. These are things that are are again, lessening the cognitive load, there's less decision fatigue, there's less, any of that other stuff is just like, sucks. And
yeah, yeah. So like, what I'll do then is like, find the easiest thing to do like so on my computer desktop, the easiest thing to do is just sort things into the biggest possible categories. And now I can see my desktop again, I'm a little calmer. And in my room when I have like piles of stuff, I will do things like are there dishes in here because I often eat breakfast in bed and then my dishes sort of stack up or like other empty pop cans was always empty pop cans in my room, like just, I won't even bring it downstairs, I'll just put it in the hole. Because then I'll bring it downstairs. I'm like, I need to clear the floor piles. So first thing is like any garbage that needs to go. And the second thing is like clothes dirty or clean. And if it's stuff that goes in my dressers, I will put it in my dresser and if it's stuff that goes to hang up in my closet, my closets in the hallway, I will just take the items and I will throw them into the hallway. Yeah, because I know as soon as I leave my room, I'm gonna go put them in the closet, but if to walk back and forth between my room and my closet, I'm gonna get distracted, right? So I'm just trying to do this. You're
gonna look up and go like, damn, I gotta break in. I gotta frickin dust the
I'm getting overheated. From all this moving around. I'm gonna turn the ceiling fan on. Holy shit that's dirty. I can't turn this on until I you know, get the whatever. But like, yeah, so do the thing. That's easiest. Like sometimes the easiest one in the house is the front hall. Right? Yeah. Yeah, like the front hall.
It'll be like, I
hate it. Because it's got like a bunch of road salt on it and a bunch of pet hair and like people's stuff and like a bunch of like the little stickers that go on the poop bags. But it's all getting the little empty containers and the little empty tubes. Yeah, yeah. Like, you know what, I'm just going to throw that stuff out. And then I'm going to put my shoes in the closet. And I'm going to vacuum the front hall. And I'm going to like, if there's purses I purses out because I brought four different purses to campus this week, I will then just empty the purses of the things that need to go elsewhere and put the purses away. And like, wow, now every time I was like, that's a sort of point in the house that if you want to go upstairs, you gotta go through the front hall. Downstairs, you gotta go through the front hall. So it's a constant irritant. And if I can get that done, that's an easy win the house already feels a lot more manageable.
Yeah. Right. And and I think the other point that you made about well let go of the should write, don't worry about what you should be doing worry about the thing that is most pressing, annoying, distracting, right? Like the short is when we go off on side quests. Yeah. And so like stick to the or like you were saying, put it on your to do list? Yep, make it another item, and then decide afterwards, if you want to look at it. Okay, what's the next thing that I should be doing? Yeah, let's be doing I guess some
of your tasks like the easiest ones for me to do. Like I get cognitively overwhelmed when stuff builds up, right. And in that state of cognitive overwhelm, I'm not really going to go through the part of my medicine chest that has my medicine cabinet that has all the little Estee Lauder tester things that I got bought all of my magical face smoothing pills. I'm not going to go through all of those when what's bothering me is the shelves are dirty, like I need to do and easy when that does not actually require decision making. Right? It's dirty, wipe it with hot water and soap and it will be clean. It's not like, am I going to use this eye cream? Should I put this with the travel supplies? Or should I just like put my regular creams away and just use up all of these testers or just throw them out that feels like because now it's even now it's emotionally and cognitively overwhelming, right? And I clean up my front hall and I'm putting stuff in the closet what I'm going to notice which I always noticed is like I think we have too many coats. Right? Like I think we have too many winter coats and we don't wear all of them. We should probably donate some of these but which ones and I should clean them and that's an overwhelming like like fuck it. I'm just putting the shoes away. Yep, purses like yeah, and then if I have a tidy hallway for five or six days in a row, then maybe calm enough to be like, you know, I think it's time to deal with those coats. Right? So probably that's good advice for people to is just deal with the mechanical part. The simplest like the dishes are dirty too. To wash the dishes, don't be like everything is mismatched. And I think I should polish the silver add like, what if I had new dishes and a better organizing system? No, your counter is covered in dirty dishes to wash the dishes. Yes. Right, clear some space of just the physical clutter. So that if there are deeper organizational tasks that need doing later, you'll be ready to tackle them. Right? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. So I guess this is like harm reduction. Proposing, right? You're overwhelmed by your stuff, like, try to just tidy it, or do the easy wins first, and live with that for a little bit, until you see it. You're like, I wanted to clean a bunch of stuff in my office, like, I have a bunch of piano books that I need to sort them because I can't, I can't find the ones or it's not easy for me to access the ones that I use regularly. But the ones that I don't need are like in my face constantly. And I wanted to put them out on the floor. So I could kind of organize them. But I already had too much stuff on the floor. Right? So it's like, that's a later job. Like right now. I'm just going to deal with what's on the floor, finding, like tidy those things away. So that eventually when I want to do a task that requires me to spread stuff out on the floor, the floor is clean. Well,
then I think it's the good enough. Yeah. Right. And I live with somebody who's like, if it's not done to 100%, then it's not done. It's not complete. And I'm like Okay, so let me get this straight. You would rather that the dishwasher not get unloaded at all or loaded? Yeah. Then all the way then then like the the kind of, like mostly done job that I you know, that we managed to do? And like sometimes, yes, I get that. But like, so that's, I think that there's also letting go of that. Like, if it's not 100% They're just not done. It's like now is good enough is good enough. Everyone
helps you are closer to done. Yes. If you do part of it. I mean, unless it's my floor juggling because I never getting closer, right? It's like, if all I'm doing is like taking it from one pile in one location, spreading it out. And then nighttime, I'm just like rebuilding that sort of Sisyphus with the floor piles, right? Yeah. But if you wash the dishes, now you have clean dishes. And if somebody's like, Well, you didn't wipe the counters after like, well, guess what? Now we can see the counters. Yep.
And I can realize that it needs to be wiped. Yeah, exactly. Well, I haven't eaten yet today. So that's my turn to do that. Yes, and you have a you have kind of a hard stop right now.
Kind of a hard stop. Yeah. So
we're gonna end it here. But what we want to do is we've gotten lots, thank you so much for listener messages and email, and all that kind of stuff. We love them. And we have lots of show suggestions. And so we want to share these suggestions because we will get to them but they're like, you know, Amy, and I typically, as you well know, I DM her on Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, and go podcast. And she either responds yes or no, or in which case sometimes yeah, sometimes not at all, which is fine to which is like, just I get that we're fine. Again, this is how we work. We have a system, we both appreciate it. Enjoy, it is productive for us anyways. So these subjects are ones that we're we are need to give more thought. But we also want to throw it out to you the listeners, if you have any suggestions about not just future topics, but to address the topics that have been asked of us. And so the first one sort of boiled down to its essence is what do I do? Why and I inevitably fuck up. Yeah, particularly when it comes to impulse control, and emotional sort of dysregulation, right? When you have that outburst when you have that moment where you immediately regret it. And then the rejection sensitivity kicks in, and you get into the shame spiral and all of that kind of stuff. So like, what do you do? How do you how do you? How do you mend fences? How do you recover? How do you do any of these kinds of things when it comes to neurodivergent? Oopsies? Yeah,
here's like, I'm giving you a quick one. My quick one is once the school buses got canceled in the morning because of snow and our child used to go to and from school on the bus, right and a certain point they could come home on the bus and go in the house without us and that was fine. Except one day the buses got canceled. And we drove our kid to school in the morning and then forgot to pick them up because we were out. And we were assuming they were coming home on the school bus which in fact had still been canceled because that's how school buses work. And yeah, we it was an interruption to the routine. It was an interruption to the routine and so like we were out for a run but like at the track where we didn't have our phones like the phones were in our bags and so like they can call us or we miss it so like we just straight up forgot to pick up our kid from school and they wound up calling my sister and my sister to go get her so like that was a fuckup from executive function. How do you deal with stuff like that? You have to apologize to people, you've imperiled your relationships. So we would love to hear your anecdotes about fucking up. Yeah. How you fixed it if you fixed it, because that's something you wish you could have fixed it. Yeah.
And then another one is around being productive in terms of scholarship, we have a lot of academics, we are academics ourselves. We've talked about these kinds of things. And but I think never really in a real targeted way. Right, in terms of that. So also in terms of alternative forms and venue, I think that my answer start a podcast.
Great news. I'm writing a paper about this, Lee.
I'm not surprised. Yeah. But, again, there's all kinds of things. But certainly, if you have been successful with alternative forms of scholarship, and publishing and quote, unquote, academic productivity, I'm doing air quotes right now. You know, to just, you know, let us know, we'd love to share the examples and hear the advice. And then the other one is, I love this, if you're designing an ADHD or neurodivergent coaching development program, particularly for academics, what would it look like? I love this. Yeah, no, me too. But I would like we would also like to hear from our listeners about not necessarily specifically strictly academic, but if you were to hire a coach, what kinds of things would you like that coach to provide? And how would you like to provide it, I found, I had a very interesting interaction with with my youngest, who is very resistant right now for a very variety of reasons to therapy. Right. And some of the stuff I totally get, I understand the therapy route and all that. And so finally, I was like, okay, so what is it right now? Right, like, and he was like, it feels inauthentic because they're too professional. Right? Right. And I was like, Oh, okay. Like, that's a really interesting, sort of, that I wouldn't have expected from him, I guess is, but like, that's the sort of thing and again, your mileage may vary, as we said, like, the what works for you, Amy is not to say that works for me. But you know, thinking about like, even just like how, what kind of approach would work? Yeah, right. Is it a super professional? Like, let's get let's get stuff done? Or is it a more, you know, holistic, friendly, you know, like, even just stuff like that, I think is a really interesting sort of thing to think about when it comes to these kinds of relationships that you could have with someone whose goal is to help you.
Yeah, a great way into this for any of our listeners who have had frustrating encounters in coaching before, right, is think about what was not working. Right. Like I exactly, it's like being insomniac. And they're like, You should get some sleep like this. Actually, this advice doesn't help me.
Melatonin? Yeah.
Have you like tried having a neurotypical brain? Like first, right. So think about things that haven't worked or ways you felt excluded in in coaching? These are trainings and like, what do you really need the help with? What how would you like to receive it? Because we'd love to think about that. We're not starting a business I don't think we're helping and we're just sort of interesting in interested in figuring out what people want help with
and hey, if it helps, if it helps you start a business then great, you know, like, um, you know, let's let's help each other here that we we've got enough stuff on our plate right
now that we don't need, like, let me know because I could claim it under knowledge mobilization
maybe yes, no, exactly. And and let her know because maybe she'll hire you so she can finally finished.
Sorry. Wow. All right, now that we've roasted me to hell and back and so
but again, all the things adhd@gmail.com Amy is still very active on Twitter, which will always be known as Twitter. So I am less active on Twitter. I'm less active on all the socials but I'm still there. It's almost like because my attention has been spread across you know, multiple ones. It's less. But we I am ready writing on all of the socials blue sky, Twitter, Instagram, and even Mastodon even on fate, well, no, I think on my real name on Facebook. And then Amy is Digi walk. So feel free to reach out to us and address these questions and we will devote episodes to these. You know when when we get around when we
get around to it well, how To recover from the time change which I'm dropping here as a trigger because we're not going to talk about it because we're leaving right now I'm just gonna drop it on you and hanging on up
