My standbys are:
Exercise is important for a peaceful mind
Sleep is important for stick-to-it-activities
Stress is toxic but hard to avoid
Diet is important and difficult to get fully right
Any of these things being out of whack makes life very hard

So, given these I usually try to attack physical issues first like eating well and sleeping. This is easier said than done because ADD people will constantly find something else to do and run out of time to get real exercise and stay up late doing things you can’t tell you did the next day – ruining sleep and exercise and making the day that much harder, repeating the cycle.

I’ve done this many times, along with cycling through different day planners, lists everywhere, 15 notebooks that are started and abandoned -all the nifty ADD stuff. I think it’s an affliction that is uniquely self-perpetuating.

So I also think of the All or Nothing approach, meaning take everything on at once and strive for perfect – the very thing that all ADD experts say NOT to do. But, I still think it might work. Yes I know that my unbound optimism has bit me in the ass before, but there’s an appealing ‘upward spiral’ that I hope to experience. Wish me luck.

I have recently picked up a habit (still working on it) that helps with this and other similar distractions. When you find yourself clicking away at garbage, or any stuff other than what you should be doing, say “Distraction!” out loud.  You needn’t yell it.  Your mind will hear the words and it will be like there’s someone else telling you.  Saying it out loud is very different than just thinking it.  Trust me.  I think that for me, when the words exit my body they aren’t ‘me’ anymore and consequently when I hear them, it’s like someone else is reminding me to not screw around.  Typically, if it’s someone else I am more likely to listen.  When I just think it… it is much harder to get back on track.

So, call foul on yourself, but make sure that your self can hear it from the outside.

So how do you GTD when you are actually exhausted or impaired from lack of rest ( not really from tequila )? I found a few ways. First, I use my scratchpad a little differently, and more. Normally, I use my scratchpad for very short queuing of tasks. Like when a next action that was well thought out actually has a precedent or a following next action that would otherwise be lost – I’ll write it on the scratch pad to keep the 1-2 in order and at hand.

Today, feeling the effects of having been awake with my children too much last night, I found myself writing down lots of tasks that were popping up. I realized that on other normal days I must have been handling more ‘pop-ups’ on the fly than I thought; meaning, I was nesting two or three items before and tracking it in my head – fairly successfully – and today didn’t have the brainpower for it. So, more items to the scratchpad and the items were less filtered.

Normally, my process is that if I can write a Next Action, I do. If it takes too much to process a thought into a next action, I send it to the in box, simply making sure it’s not forgotten, but scheduling the work to make a thought into a next action. Today, not so much filtering – they were nearly all in box items. So in regard to items in queue, I’m sure I lost ground today, but I was able to make the most of diminished capacity.

By the way, the scratchpad must be empty before turning off the computer. “Scratchpad zero.”

Now – how to get the kids to sleep better is another story.

Notes, or text editor, are great tools.  But only 1 window or instance.  I use a Mac, so I open Notes (on a PC, use Text Editor or Word) and start noting things I need to do or put in my GTD inbox.  This file stays open all day.  Handling Interruptions just got easier because now I can just tab to the open notes file and type away.  I have been putting things under projects like this:

Personal:

Add review of Tsheets notes to my weekly items

Write blog post about weekly items (vs. weekly review)

Calendar:

Add meeting with John next week to review CMS and graphics

This low-formatting method works great for capturing stuff fast.  Yes, I have to move things off the notepad into a proper Inbox item, but this can be done at the end of the day.  And, like a mini GTD unto inself, I handle it completely to an empty inbox (in this case empty notes).  If you consider the GTD system a system of queues or buffers, this is another little one.  It works.

Also, my business partner has noticed that I am recording stuff like this.  At times, he now asks me to ‘capture this’.  I don’t mind at all, we share work and this way it’s captured.  So, my personal GTD is already capturing someone else’s thoughts too.  Like GTD leverage.  Handling interruptions at work just became a bit easier.

That’s the way I refer to myself, by the way, as an ‘ADD thinker’ vs. ‘I am an ADD’ which seems horribly like ‘I am a _____’ fill in the blank of some significant physical handicap, which this does not really resemble, at least under an objective lens.

Takeaways:

* I’m not looking to be ‘fixed’ and I’m suggesting implicitly that you don’t need to be ‘fixed either; we just need to identify what will improve our lives from where we are today.  (This should be everyone’s goal, all the time, IMO.)

* The things that I find to be most effective toward the end of improving my life need not involve complex and expensive activities.

Why is this such a big deal?

Heads are no place for remembering the minutiae of administering a modern life, with emails, phone calls, advertisements, distractions, SMS, etc. all vying for attention, anyone can get overwhelmed with input, and an ADD thinker is certainly susceptible too.

Is this MORE important for ADD thinkers than others?

IMO, yes.  We are easily distracted and at the same time we like processes and systems.  Make any lists lately?  Lose track of any lists lately?  Thought so.  This is a system for keeping it all together.

This blog will chronicle my experience through setting up my own personal GTD system so that we may learn it together.  Why ‘personal’?  I’ve found that the book, while impossibly thick for me @ ~3/4″ considering the face purpose of organizing your personal workflow, is actually a guideline more than a treatise.  Many GTD’ers as they are oft referred to online really geek out on the process, including sharing photos of workstations on flickr and other sites.  I suspect I will too even though I am anything but a compulsive online sharer.  Truly, these ancillary sources are some of the most helpful places for actually implementing the system.  Don’t go there yet, you can find it anytime and I’ll bring in the best examples.  There’s a reason I didn’t link to it – stay with me.

Background:

I’ve known of GTD for a year or so.  In ADD style, I read the book via audio through iTunes.  After becoming overwhelmed with input from time to time and these intervals narrowing with obligations around money, and my primary relationship suffering, I am getting more serious about dealing with some personal shortcomings and this is one of them.  Make no mistake, I’m not expecting a panacea and this isn’t the only thing I’m doing, but it is a part of it.

More in another post.

In college, this meant doing art projects with wine and music – at the time I just liked wine and music and thought little of it.  Now, it’s a regular strategy.  Classical is good for this, Baroque in particular.  Don’t buy anything, listen online through iTunes or here.

But I digress.  This is about email distrations.  You may have multiple email accounts.  You may have a blackberry.  You may be so totally plugged in that the idea of reducing email distractions seems impossible- at least without cutting off your information supply – good along with bad.  However, it can be done.

This particular advice follows Ben Franklin’s ‘ounce of prevention’ concept.  If you get less email, you’re less distracted by it, at least from the perspective of the number of things you have to deal with.  Remember, for ADD/ADHD types, the overhead associated with dealing with an email is toxic – it’s not just the 5 seconds of dealing with the email itself (even though it’s almost never 5 seconds).

Bottom line:

Cut your subscriptions.

This doesn’t have to be done all at once, and probably can’t.  But take every opportunity to unsubscribe to outdated or non-useful subscriptions.  Remember, you surf and search like a demon anyway, if you want it, you can find it.

If you can’t make yourself unsubscribe fully from email distractions (subscriptions) that have multiple feeds (like organic gardening, saving electricity and something else) at least reduce it.  You’ll have another opportunity to reduce/eliminate it later.

If you can’t find how to cancel it, create a filter and have it go automatically into a folder or archive under the label ‘ignorable subscriptions’.  Do it.  This is sometimes easier to swallow because it’s not ‘gone’, (for the digital pack rat).

Blackberry/iPhone/etc

If you have a bunch of filters, you may find that the emails slip past your desk email distraction station but still hit your mobile.  Either set up separate filters for your phone or kill the subscription already.

I’ve been doing this for a few weeks.  I can already sense the lighter email load and I like it.  I’m also still schocked at how many are still coming through.  I’m choosing to interpret this as even more reason to continue.