Okay, let me tell you the wrong way and the right way to handle your piles if you’re someone with ADHD.
Because the way you think you need to do it is to set aside time to go through the pile and put everything where it goes. Or go through the closet and purge stuff. Or go through the shelf of books and finally get rid of the things that you’re never going to read. That’s the wrong way to do it.
I mean, if you like doing it that way, then do it. But if you liked doing it that way, it would be getting done, right? Is it getting done? Okay, so you don’t like doing it that way.
So I recommend instead creating a habit, a daily habit that takes two or three minutes every day. You will need an alarm if it’s going to become a habit, right? Needs to be at a set time with an alarm.
I’ll fight you on that. But what you need to do when that alarm goes off is pick up one thing from that pile and decide where it needs to go. Best guess at where it needs to go, put it there or create the place for it and then move on with your day.
And here are three reasons why this is better than a project-based putting-away system:
Number one reason it’s better is because you can always access the thought. It’s just two minutes. I can do anything for two minutes.
Number two, it gets easier as you go because you’ll have fewer decisions to make and fewer homes to create as you go through the pile.
And three, it turns you into a person who habitually whittles away at things instead of habitually putting them off.
Solutions for your objections are below!
1. “The pile gets bigger faster than I am putting it away!”
A: First off, shrinking it by one and creating homes for the things in it means that EVENTUALLY you will have access to the thought, “I COULD just put this where it GOES.” Even if the pile keeps growing while you use this method, it will make it so that you can later build the habit of putting things away immediately. Which means no more likes.
Second, if you calculate the AVERAGE number of items being added to the pile daily or weekly….then you know you need to put away ONE more than that average every day in order to keep decreasing it.
2. “I can’t decide where to put things!”
A: Usually, this means you are trying to find the “right” or “perfect” place for them. Choose an intermediary home. Make a list in your planner of all the items stored in intermediary homes (because you’ll forget they are there since it is not intuitive). Then, when you have no more likes, you can start upleveling HOMES to more logical, efficient places.
3. “I can never decide what to get rid of/throw away/keep!”
A: This really hints at fear that you won’t be able to solve future problems or that you have a habit of self-talk that makes you feel shame or regret instead of gratitude for making the best decision you could at the time. I would love to talk with you about this!
4. “I won’t want to do it for even two minutes.”
A: Make it more meaningful or engaging by showing yourself that this isn’t about the pile. It’s about you taking control of doing things that matter to you and building habits. If you can learn to build this one, you can learn to build other, bigger ones.
Engagement would look like this: “I wonder what would happen if I sprinted to the pile and picked up a piece of paper. Would my emotions CHANGE? What if I got to put a bead in a jar for every paper I filed? What if I did this while listening to “Eye of the Tiger?”
Xoxo,
Jessica
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