Writing: scrapping & starting over

Oh thank you! I cannot tell you how many times i have written blogs or parts of stories or papers and deleted whole sections. I even deleted four blogs because i had a huge hyper focus dump of blog ideas and they didn’t fit but all the thoughts/blog ideas ended up being important!

Sara Richter

This seems like the overarching tunnel vision problem that we face, and I've just recently realized how critically important what you say at the end of this video is: we need to regularly stop and ask "Why?" or "What am I missing?"

Merlock Fairwood

I can completely relate to Gregg's experience. Completely. I think it's really interesting how you say "dual-classing my mono-tasking". I would say "focused multi-tasking". I do exactly what you do. I jump between a couple of tasks. Especially at work, where there are data processing jobs that take a while to run - I work on them, then jump to something else that has a deadline. Back and forth all day long. A month ago, before I knew anything about ADHD, it was unfocused. Unmanageable. Things forgotten, lots of balls dropped. Now that I understand my brain; now that I'm on meds, it's really good. I have my tools to help me - to-do lists, timer on my phone, I pin every actionable email to the wall in front of me. I get things done. It's not perfect - at the office it works; but if I decide to work from home for a day, it all goes to hell in handbasket. But that's just learning the limits of my system.

Oh, and thank you, Jessica. You are a critical resource in my ADHD journey, both the information you bring and the wonderful positive energy you share.

re: dual-class mono-tasking -- I do this too! I came about it by a different route, tho. This was before I'd been diagnosed (which is an important detail). For 20 years I worked in a software R&D group. On any given day we each had 3 to 12 research projects on our plate (most were short-term...some, not so much). I got a reputation as someone who could multitask really well, though the reality was that I was exceptionally good at starting a project, working it until I got bored (2-3 days, average)...and then burying it. I'd report on some useful insight I'd gained, which was really just a guess -- but I was right more often than I was wrong because I am blessed with exceptional "tech intuition". But this generated huge amounts of guilt and shame for me. Many bricks for the wall of awful. Eventually I got called on it and I had to come up with some explanation as to why so many of my important projects were left "on the back burner". Not really aware of how I actually manage to get things done, I ran with that phrase and made up a story about how I have one "front burner" for the project that needs to go out *today* and a bunch of "back burners" where I let projects "stew in my back-brain until an insight happens". They bought it. But so did I! The method was fictional, just made up on the spot to get me out of trouble with my managers, but I realized that I really DID do things this way. Only my stove really has just 2 burners and when I get bored cooking on the front one, I just switch pots. Eventually, someone will come along and taste whatever's cooking -- I serve it up, toss the pan in the sink, and grab whatever interests me from the array of half-cooked pot strewn around the kitchen counter of my brain. I keep cooking like that till either I run out things to cook or the food gets stale enough to toss. I still do this today, though now I work as the CTO for a startup -- and I'm diagnosed, which has allowed me to understand my own behaviors and also allows me to dismantle the wall of awful and all its task-uncompleted shame bricks.

hehe love this i may get my ADHD Dad to download this app to 'badger' him into completing my ADHD assessment from for relatives :P xx