Well-Ordered Chaos » schedule

Keeping it together

Addy — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 19:17:29 +0000

Have you ever seen the sun look this predatory?

Sometimes, my full-spectrum studio lighting is not a good thing.

I tend to spend a lot of my waking hours at my studio table. I work on art here, and I keep my laptop here, so I’m pretty much here whenever I’m at home.

If I’m watching TV in the evening, I start feeling sleepy at 11 or 11:30, and it’s pretty easy to be in bed by midnight. When I’m working in my studio, not so much. The lights give me enough of a boost that I can do just “one more” coat of paint or glue down “one more” piece in that collage. That, of course, is if I’m paying attention to the time at all, which is no sure thing.

Sunday night I came home at about 11. I’d spent the afternoon and evening in a movie marathon with friends, snacking on things I usually avoid eating, and sitting in a room with the shades drawn. I sat down at my studio table “just to check my e-mail”, and an hour later I was wide awake, unable to think about sleeping. Thanks to my nice, bright, daylit studio, I was up until 5:30 that morning.

Since I got up late the next day, I thought it would be clever to take a reduced dose of my meds so I “could go to bed early”. Ha. I spent the day in a fog, munching on sugary snacks, and was up until 3. Sometimes I forget that my meds actually help me sleep.

I am slowly, slowly getting myself back on a normal schedule.

When trying to outsmart yourself, it’s important to be consistent

Addy — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:38:21 +0000

So, I had a doctor’s appointment today. Since I always wind up being late getting to this particular doctor, I frequently mark my calendar so that the appointment reads as 15 minutes earlier than it actually is.

So today, I was eating my lunch, minding my own business, when I looked at the clock and realized it was 12:35. My appointment was for 1 pm. It takes 35 minutes to get to the doctor and deal with their parking ramp, which is so narrow that a Geo Prizm and Prius can barely pass each other in the traffic lane. So, I was already running 20 minutes late, and I still had to run around the house finding my shoes and stuff like that, so by the time I got out the door it was 12:45.

“Well,” I thought to myself, “at least I know I have an extra fifteen minutes padding my schedule!”

But no. When I arrived at my doctor’s office I was told that my appointment really, truly was for 1 pm.

Now, the weird thing about my clinic is that they actually stick to a schedule there so you know you won’t be there all day. That means that sometimes I screw myself out of my appointments. The bitch of it was that this appointment had to be made 2 months in advance, and my insurance would be changing at the end of the month (again), causing a whole new healthcare drama in my life.

Fortunately there was another practitioner with an opening at 2 pm this afternoon, so I wasn’t completely screwed.

But I clearly need to rethink this 15-minutes-early strategy.

The Value of That Old Routine

Addy — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:31:41 +0000

I’ve been back from my holiday trip for two weeks now, and since then I’ve managed to be on time exactly once.

Being on time has always been a struggle for me, and it’s an area where I’ve made great strides in recent years. I’m still not perfect, but I used to be late for absolutely everything all the time. It got to the point where my friends would just plan on seeing me half an hour after we were supposed to meet up.

Over the last few years, I’ve managed to get better at it, but I couldn’t quite tell you how — possibly this has something to do with why things have gotten chaotic over the past few weeks. The trip caused a disruption, and then being sick caused another disruption, and I just lost my grip on my routine.

Routine is a scary word for a lot of adults with ADD. By its very definition it threatens the spontenaity we ADD types love and excel at. “Routine” conjures up bad memories of school, or the job we hate, or the structure that was imposed upon us by others — often, we were told, because we are too careless or scatterbrained to manage our own schedules. Like “organized” or “neat” or “schedule”, it’s a word that makes us feel like screw-ups.

It took a long time for me to even want a routine, let alone to know how to build one, but starting last summer I began to create a schedule for myself. One thing that helped, of course, is that it was my schedule; it wasn’t something imposed on me as a punishment for handing in my assignments late, or bring home a bad report card. The other thing that helped was changing the way I think about routine.

You see, I realized that routine, far from being an inherently boring monotony, is actually a way to streamline the boring stuff and give myself more time for what I enjoy. If I know that I clean my kitchen from 1:30 to 2:30 on Wednesdays, and I know what order in which I do each part of that task, I don’t have to waste time thinking about how to clean my kitchen. I don’t have to waste time wondering how long it will take. I don’t have to set aside all afternoon and evening on Friday because company is coming on Saturday and the entire house is a disaster.

Likewise, if I know that I get the same items at the grocery store every week, I can have a copy of that list on my cell phone. My list has items to buy every week, like bread, and another section for things to check on every week, like olive oil. I don’t have to waste time each week making up a brand new grocery list. Furthermore, if my list takes the store lay-out into account, I don’t have to wander around backtracking or looking for items on my list. I start with the bread, then the dairy, and so on. I can be in and out of the grocery store in under 20 minutes.

My routine leaves me more time to be spontaneous. If I want to make an unplanned stop on the way home from the store — no problem, I have the time. If I want to go out with friends on Friday night — no problem, the house is clean. The time that I used to spend writing grocery lists and doing emergency cleaning is time that I can now spend making art, blogging, or just watching TV.

I guess now I just need a routine for leaving the house in the morning.

I Hate Disruptions

Addy — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:28:51 +0000

When I was a sophomore in high school, we used to joke about our American History teacher’s compulsive habits. If you moved the stapler, the three hole punch, or the pencil sharpener even slightly out of alignment, he would immediately notice and put them back. For awhile we tried moving them around to mess with him, because these kinds of things are hilarious when you’re fifteen, but he just inevitably and without comment replaced the objects exactly as they had been.

The game quickly ceased to be amusing, and anyway the teacher proved himself to be a pretty cool guy. Eventually I got to know him well enough to remark that he must be an incredibly organized person.

“Oh, not at all,” he said, looking surprised. “You should see my house. The reason why I need everything in its place is because I’m so disorganized.”

At the time, I found it hard to believe that a fellow chaos demon could possibly be organized, at all, ever, in any way. These days, it makes a little more sense. For instance, today my partner asked me to pick up a library book for him. I felt myself getting stressed and irritated and cursey. Dammit, I thought, the library closes at 5:30, and that mean’s I’ll need to leave for my art lesson early, and that will just screw everything up…

Because I get ready to leave for my lesson at 3:30. This allows me time to pack any supplies I need to bring, change into paint clothes, find my shoes and keys, get out the door, and make the 15 minute drive to my student’s house, and be ready to start the lesson at 4. As long as I start getting ready to go at 3:30, I’m fine. Tuesday afternoons. 3:30. That’s it.

If I have to run another errand before my lesson, I need to leave even earlier. How much earlier? I have no idea. When I manage to be punctual, it’s because I’ve figured out the hard time at which I need to start getting ready to leave. This takes a tremendous amount of mental effort, and once I’ve expended that effort, I can’t tamper with it or it the whole system dissolves.

So, today, I tried to get to the library, but in spite of my best efforts I couldn’t start getting ready until 3:30. I didn’t make it to the library, so I’ll have to run a separate library errand tomorrow, which of course is another disruption.

To disrupt my day even further, my partner’s birthday is this weekend, so after my lesson I had to go to the mall, which I hate, to get his present … and as long as I was there, I really needed new bras, because I’ve lost weight and the crappy ones I got at TJ Maxx don’t fit right and I haven’t been fitted properly in years … so I went to Nordstrom, which I’ve heard has expert bra fitters. And it does. But that was another couple of hours, and my whole evening was shot.

Did I mention that I hate the mall?

How to Use Gmail Calendar

Addy — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 21:49:17 +0000

In case you’re not up with the gmail these days, it’s a free, web-based e-mail system with unlimited storage that is run by Google. One of gmail’s many (many) features is its calendar, which you can tweak to your heart’s content. You can create as many calendars as you want — for home and work, for each of your kids — and choose a different color for each of them. You can also set as many reminders as you like in the form of e-mail, text message, and pop-up, as far ahead of the event as you would like.

Using gmail calendar is pretty self-explanatory — just click on the calendar link in your gmail inbox:

The "calendar" feature to the right of "gmail" in the top left corner of your browser. I have highlighted it for your convenience. Don't say I never did anything for you.

When you click on the calendar link, you’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:

Click on a time slot to create an event. Go on... all the cool kids are doing it.

To create an event, just click on a day and a time. You can create an event quickly by typing it into the dialogue box that appears. If you want to create an repeating event, click “edit” in the dialogue box. You’ll be taken to a page that looks like this:

The ability to set SMS reminders is one of the most powerful tools in in gmail calendar. Customize them to keep from getting overwhelmed.

If you have a recurring event, click the “does not repeat” tool bar. You’ll be given options to have the event repeat daily, weekly, monthy, MWF, TTh, what have you. If you’d like to set reminders for yourself, customize the e-mail, SMS, and pop-up settings.

I’ve found that the reminders work best when I have the one-day e-mail reminders set only for events for which I have to leave the house. If I need to be somewhere at a certain time, I set an SMS reminder for an hour or 90 minutes in advance, depending on how far I have to travel.

For events that just require task-switching — that is, where I remain at the same location, but need to start doing something else — I found that the 24-hour e-mail notice was actually counterproductive. I found that I simply ignored an e-mail telling me that I was supposed to, say, start doing research 24 hours from now. What was worse, is that I found I started to ignore all e-mail calendar reminders. I’ve found that SMS and pop-ups, set at 30 minutes and 10 minutes in advance, to be the most helpful for task-switching. They provide me with a visual and aural reminder that it’s time to wind down what I’m doing and to go work on something else.

Time Management, Day 3

Addy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:55:43 +0000

On Monday I sat down and made myself a new schedule on my gmail calendar. Have I mentioned how much I love my gmail calendar? I’ve got it set to give me reminders via e-mail, SMS, and pop-ups at various times. I also have nice color coding of my activities:

My gmail calendar

But, yesterday morning I overslept, meaning it was noon before I ate and got it together enough to get anything done. No chores for me. I was on time for my student, but since I was hungry by the time I got to the grocery store (an errand that shows up below the bottom of the screenshot), I was distracted and it took much longer than it should have. By the time I came home and ate supper, I was hungry and tired, and wound up missing the reminder to go work on art.

Then I got distracted by the internet.

I’m frustrated, but I’m going to try sticking to this for a few days and see what happens. Today has been good so far — worked out, got chores done, writing this post — and now it’s just about time to shift gears and hit the studio.

Time Management: gimme the fish and nobody gets hurt

Addy — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 23:33:09 +0000

You know the saying about giving someone a fish, and feeding them for a day, versus teaching them to fish, and feeding them for a lifetime?

Over the summer, I worked with an ADD coach to learn how to create a schedule for myself. With her help, I was able to create (and even stick to, sort of) a schedule of work, chores, creative work, and various appointments and things. For the first time in my life, my house stayed more or less clean, because there were certain times on certain days devoted to certain chores. I almost felt like housework was beginning to take care of itself.

Now I’m done with my coaching run, I’m back from vacation, and my schedule has changed. When I was out of town I turned off all my calendar reminders, since some of them no longer applied and I wouldn’t need them anyway… and in the week since I got back, well, let’s just say my house has gotten progressively scuzzier and I’ve spent a lot of time on You Tube.

It’s time to see if I learned to fish, or if I just ate the fish my coach gave me.