Living with ADHD: A pair of insights

[elfs]

I had a lovely visit with lisakit last night and during our conversation I had an insight into two different behaviors of mine that I never thought were related.

At work, I tend to work on three or four different things at a time with a similar theme. Right now, we've adopted an extremely robust javascript layer, one that allows an astonishing amount of transaction management to be pushed out to the client, and to be displayed and manipulated in a lot of sexy ways. The way I do this kind of upgrade is to get buyoff on four different components that need upgrading, and then to upgrade each one a little bit. After a day or two I get bored with one and I go to the next, applying the lessons learned from the previous exercise. By the time I get to the fourth, I've learned enough about how the new layer works that I'm itching to go back to the first and polish it with what I've learned. After three or four passes through this, all four components have a consistent and high-quality look and feel, with all the bells, whistles, securities, and assertions needed to make them work.

This is one of my management techniques for dealing with my ADHD. The promise is not that I'll get done, but that there's something nifty waiting for me when I get done. That promise is what keeps me going.

The other behavior pattern is more straightforward, and much more mundane. Of all the chores one has to do in the house, the one I absolutely loathe without a moment's hesitation is emptying the dishwasher. Doing dishes isn't that onerous, but confronting a clean load of dishes fills me with an almost Lovecraftian dread. The reason for this, I believe, is because of the inherent chaos a loaded dishwasher represents. There are pans that have to go one place, dishes another, glasses another, utensils here, forks and knives there, kids' cups to the left, chopper to the right, and goddess forbid that the rice cooker was used the night before.

An open dishwasher in an invitation to bewilderment, because it's a list of choices, all of them equally valid. My brain just locks up. Where do I start? With all choices equally valid, how do I prioritize? Even through there's no possibility of making a mistake (look, just grab something and put it where it belongs) the choice itself makes my palms sweaty.

I've learned to deal with this by working clockwise through the kitchen. I start with the cabinet just overhead: dishware and glasses. Then right, to storage containers (Tupperware and the like), then the kid's stuff, then gadgets (hand blender, chopper), pots, pans, cooking utensils, and finally forks & knives and stuff.

But this drives Omaha crazy. Because it means that I'm unloading both the top and bottom of the dishwasher simultaneously, which means that if there's any water trapped in items up top it might slosh onto items left in the bottom during one of my passes. And I've tried to remember not to do that but it would mean breaking up the one system I've evolved to deal with my ADHD-inspired neurosis. I can live with the sloshing; I've learned to loop a kitchen hand-towel through a beltloop so it's on hand to deal with that problem.

I thought it was interesting to realize that these two behaviors were so related. I'm sure this way of doing things, of constantly spiking the variability circuit in my brain, up down up down, affects the way I learn things, and has encouraged me to float above too many issues when I should be delving deeper into individual ones and leaving the others to other people.

Comments

[anthologie.livejournal.com]

It's good you found a solution. I don't have ADHD but have similar problems with the dishwasher disarray, so I just pick the closest thing -- and do all of those. Usually bowls first (I stack them on the counter by type, then put them away), then all the mugs, then the drinking glasses. Those are all on the top level, so I can somewhat contain the sloshing ... then I do the bottom. Maybe you could hybridize your system just a touch so that both you and Omaha are happy?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I've tried to do it in two passes, the top and the bottom, but I guess I might have a little obsessive-compulsive about just getting it out of the way and I fall back into the old habit. I'm working on it.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. That dishes method is sorta what I was badly explaining last night. I always take the silverware first. Then plates and pans, thus unloading the bottom tray first. Then I move to the stuff on top. Of course I always load it the same way so things *in* the dishwasher will be where I expect them to be. Although when Loba loads it differently I don't have quite as much trouble as you do. My mind notes that it's a different pattern and lays out a different plan of attack right there. That's where my super-organizer patterner comes into play.

I really enjoy conversations with you, even when the geek talk gets over my head. :)