A therapist was recommended to me and all along I thought he was a specialist in ADD. I have been to two sessions. At yesterdays session, I asked him if he specialized in ADD and he said “no” and it made me wonder then why I was seeing him. I want to get to the bottom of this. How am I supposed to get a handle on it when my therapist doesn't specialize in it? He said that he specialized in addictions. Well, then we can talk about my planner addiction... although I seem to have a pretty good hold on that. Pretty good... I do fall off the wagon time after time.
I was pleased to see that the weekly calendar I chose was at-a-glances top seller!) See?
It's like the planner version of grey goose vodka... but not really, not expensive enough for that... I would say it is more like absolut.
Don't worry... I am just as scared as you.
Ok enough silliness.
Is it important for me to have a therapist who is a speciallist in ADD? My gut instinct says, “yes”. I mean, I have been with a therapist before and we have talked about everything under the sun and it is just good to HAVE a therapist and the therapist I am seeing seems to be good... I guess at our next session we will discuss whether I need a specialist or not. Maybe what I do is still look up a support group and go to that in addition to seeing my therapist.
I have good days. I have bad days. I realize on bad days that it is the fact that I overcomplicate that makes it a bad day. Some of the bad days are back wash from other days when I overcomplicated and didn't get stuff done and it spilled over into the next day. This is very much like the to do list. My tendancy always is to just make this huge daily list and OFCOURSE I won't get all of it done and then ofcourse I will feel bad at the end of the day and feel like I am not very accomplished. Oh, damn... I didn't re-shingle the roof!!!!
I read a book years ago called, “Time Management For Dummies” (I HATE those titles... why do they have to use the term dummie? It's cute, yes, but foundation wise, just so NOT productive and/or nurturing). It was written by a business coach named Jeffrey J. Mayer and he introduced me to the concept of the “Master List”. Here is an excerpt from his blog:
“Getting Your Important Work Done
This is my five-step approach for getting your important work done:
1. Before you go home at the end of the workday, review your
Master List and identify the three MOST important things you
MUST do tomorrow.
2. Write those three items on a piece of paper.
3. Block out time on your calendar to tackle these projects
as soon as you arrive tomorrow morning.
4. Turn off your phone. Don't check e-mail.
Don't allow yourself to be interrupted.
5. Go to work.
Once you've completed task #1, do task #2. When that's completed,
do task #3. Then look at your Master List once again and identify
the most important task that needs to be done.
Now wasn't that easy?
http://www.succeedinginbusiness.com/blog/
So instead of just taking each day out to write a to-do list, take fifteen minutes (as an exercise... remember MOST things just take fifteen minutes to do) and write out a master list. Jeffrey suggests doing it on a computer database and that is exactly what I do.
The problems arise when you start to stray from the master list and start using other lists. It truly should be one big list. As I have mentioned before, for THIS purpouse, Omni Outliner is GREAT.
I have it divided into groups: DO, CALL, E-MAIL and GO. I also have a success section called, “YOU DID IT!” and after things are checked off, I drag them to that section. As always always, KEEP IT SIMPLE. It is a SKILL we have to overcomplicate... but we also need to recognize when we are doing this and pull back the reigns.
Here I go talking in the third person again.