In my last post, In My Day, You Just Had to Know Things, I talked about how crazy it is that I can have so much information at my fingertips. I aged myself by talking about the olden days, and having to find a person or a resource when you had a question. Knowing things was important because you couldn’t just find an answer in seconds.
I admit. It’s been fun. My ADHD brain has had a lot of fun looking up things, going from one video to the next, signing up for every masterclass or free webinar. Now it’s tired and today I’m feeling overwhelmed with all of the things I want to be able to do, the things I want to learn, and the fact that’s there’s still so much out there I haven’t even found yet.
I don’t know if it’s just an ADHD thing but too many options can actually become crippling. For ADHD brains, new is exciting, and if while you’re looking at this new, a newer new comes along, you want to head down that path and of course as you start down that path, you notice that there were three other paths. Now, shouldn’t I check what is on those paths before I commit to this path?
For those of you who don’t have ADHD and you like to start one thing and follow it through to completion. Congratulations, and I’m a little (okay, today, I’m a lot) jealous. Because today, I’m staring at so many things I want to do, I don’t even know where to start.
This is a very common ADHD challenge and shows itself in the day to day activities a person wants (needs) to get done. For me, it’s the needing to know I’m doing the tasks in the most efficient order possible before I can get started. (I do see the irony, the desire to be so efficient that I waste a pile of time trying to figure out how to it in the least amount of time possible.)
Other times, it’s task initiation – I haven’t figured out what the starting point for the task is, or the “wall of awful” – there’s just something negative attached to the task that keeps me from being able to get started.
But today it’s the Closing Time problem. Some might refer to it as a variation of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).
You see, when I look at a whole list of things I actually want to do, I realize that making a choice to do something means making a choice not to do something else. My ADHD brain isn’t great at recognizing I can do the something else at a different time. It thinks that I am choosing not to do the other things and because it wants to do ALL of the things RIGHT NOW, none of them get done.
“Closing Time
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
Semisonic, Closing Time (1998)
Just like the song, I see starting something as being the end of something else. Deciding to do one thing is deciding not to do the others and that feels like a pretty big decision. (And for me, there is some truth to this because if I get really interested in something, unless I HAVE TO do something else, I probably won’t. I’m not a great dabbler or task shifter.)
Yes. My life is complicated. Yes, I know that I’m the one who complicates it. If I could just stop doing it and get out of my own way, I would.
But today isn’t the day I’m going to figure this out. Today is the day I’m too inspired and hoping to lose a little inspiration so I can actually pick one of the things I want to do and get started.
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