The whole reason for having a system is if you’re frustrated with certain things in your life or certain things keep happening and it’s just not okay with you. Then, you are perfectly ripe and ready to put some kind of a system in place so that you don’t have to have that kind of frustration.
Systems don’t come naturally to a lot of people, especially people with ADD. It’s something you learn.
Does everyone you know tell you that you do something different every single time that you do it?
With ADD, that may be the way your brain works naturally. But when you force yourself to integrate systems into your life, it all goes on autopilot and you don’t need to think about it.
For instance, here's a system you might use when traveling: “How to check out of a hotel room without leaving all your stuff behind.”
Like everybody with ADD, you probably come into a hotel room and take up pretty much all the available space. You may have clothes scattered, a suitcase over here, a computer hooked up, a cell phone is plugged in, etc.. It’s what a lot of ADD people do. The thing is, if you have ADD, you probably don’t really care where all those things are, but you do care about bringing them back home with you.
Here's where the system comes in:
When you're going to check out, visualize the exact opposite of how you actually leave the room. You know how when you walk into a hotel room, everything is all neat and pristine? All the doors are closed and the lights are off and all that? Do the exact opposite.
Open everything—all the doors, all the drawers, all the cupboards. Turn on all the lights.
Then start looking. Go from piece of furniture to piece of furniture to countertop to bathroom. As you're collecting your things—here’s all the stuff from the bathroom sink, as you do that, shut off the light, and shut the door. Then, you're done with that room and move to another.
When you begin by messing up everything in the entire place, your ADD brain starts paying attention. Then as you clean a place up, you know your brain is going to shut down anyway, and become confused. "Did I remember to check there?" "Do I have everything?" You might end up doing things all over again, when you have ADD. So you turn off the light and you shut the door when you're done with each room. You’re finished with it. It's over.
ADD-friendly systems are much different than, “Go to the store and pick up a book on organizing to figure out how all the linear-thinking people do it.” You notice right away that this particular system is way, way out of the ordinary, but it works for the ADD brain for the reasons you just said.
So now you have an example of a system—a series of events that happens on a consistent and rotating basis. It’s something that you do over and over and over again, consistently. That goes against the very nature of the way ADD people are--not wanting things to be boring.
Creating a system that you can live with for any task that may become muddled and confusing is the smart way to approach complicated or important tasks that you can't risk making mistakes on. Try to create systems, personal to your ADD-influenced behaviors and see if you aren't happy with the results.
Tellman Knudson, certified Hypnotherapist, is CEO of Overcome Everything, Inc. Stephanie Frank is an internationally known speaker, entrepreneur, and author of "The Accidental Millionaire." Together they founded ADDGold (ADDgold.com) and InstantADDSuccess.com ( instantaddsuccess.com). |
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