Day to day breakthrough/victory

[Afriendlyface]

I’m creating this thread for those wanting to share their successes and day to day victories, of all shapes and sizes.
Also, if you’re willing, it can be a place to provide:

• context as to why it has been weighing you down so much.
• the key to your success, how you got through it.

It’s only one morning so far, but after meeting with my psychologist, we decided it best to create an interactive routine list, to help me stay focused amoung the chaos of 3 children in the mornings and afternoons.

When I first was considering what this might look like, I kept putting it off and over-complicating the task, which was why I was procrastinating it!!!

This has had a ripple effect through my day to day life, where I start the day stressed, often end up speeding a little and ‘driving like a rally car’ nearly just to get to work on time sometimes and more often lately, I’ve even been late a few times!

This in term has lead to me being in a near constant state of overwhelmed during my day at work and at home, where I’ve been struggling to concentrate and stay focused on anything the whole day.

In short it’s been chaotic and a viscous cycle.

Feeling good about today and just wanted to share a little insight as to why this was such a ‘Small victory’.
If I’m able to keep this up, it will be very much a big victory and I just wanted to start a thread for others to share the like experiences, where they have a breakthrough or victory, of any size.

In my case today, it’s breaking the chaotic loop.

[Afriendlyface]

This is what lead to my success, a small notes section on my phone, that allows you to create and check of little tick boxes. ! --Quick, easy, effective-

[Brooklyn]

Great idea! It must be telepathy . . . I was thinking of starting a thread just like this . . .

@Afriendlyface

breakthrough, of any size.

Not a “breakthrough” perhaps, but a small sized “victory” took place yesterday when (after weeks) I got back on my exercise cycle. I usually do 30 minutes . . . but decided to do 20 minutes. And that “did it” . . . smoothed out my morning “grumpiness”. I always “know” that aerobic exercise smooths me out . . . But have to push myself to do it.

Thanks!

[Afriendlyface]

Great minds think alike!

Edited to say victories and breakthroughs. ~

Well done!! Step 1 is complete ~ getting back for the first time and breaking the cycle ~

A common aspect I feel that is easy to miss, that can help start this is:
~start small, keep it simple~

A concept I certainly struggle with when I approach struggles with a collection of my ‘top 100 most creative and effective solutions’.

[Leandro]

Heyyyy congratulations and keep up, you can do it, you are already doing it!!!

@Afriendlyface

kept putting it off and over-complicating the task, which was why I was procrastinating it!!!

It’s not like I did that ever… at all… in my whole life… basically

Over complicating things really kills me sometimes but I’m getting better at trying keeping things less complicated than usual.

I’m really on working on simplifying my routines and organizing things better so I feel less overwhelmed by having to keep track of too many things (making a lot more prone to forgetting about them), it still gets messy sometimes (normally when there are new activities/last minute changes), because besides myself I have to keep track of all the bills, housekeeping, my work/workshop related stuff, meds (for myself and everyone else) and some random house renovation/fixing that never ends, but I try to do what I can myself to at least keep it from falling apart…

Plus we had some family issues with my uncle in the last father’s day and my grandmother birthday is beginning September now and I have a feeling that things may get messy around here.

I have a hard time organizing and keep track of everything by myself while still trying to push in my own business forward somehow, someday, sometime, because it’s just too much stuff, even simplifying it as much as I can manage too, but I’m trying to keep on the shorter goals so I don’t feel too overwhelmed by everything, also I’m considering trying other meds, as my experience with ritalin wasn’t that good to see if it might help me, so let’s stay tuned in the future episodes!

[brytetyger]

@Afriendlyface and @Leandro and @Brooklyn ,

Thank you, all, for sharing and for getting this page going.

I can relate to what y’all have each said. Prior to my diagnosis and working with ADHD therapeutically, I lived life from second-to-second, like some kind of dynamo, almost always on my back heel/against the ropes. Now, since diagnosis, I have better tools with which to work but…I’m still not too good at working with each day and myself in a healthy way.

Lists…I am soooooo good at creating lists! I could teach people through a graduate program on list creation! Though my efforts and goals are sound in doing this, I have so infrequently stuck with them/used them more than about a week. Heck, I’m actually pretty good at losing them!

Do y’all, when using lists, set alerts/timers to help you stick to doing the tasks? I have alerts set on the calendar which comes with my e-mail, and when those alerts pop-up…“DISMISS” , then go back to whatever I was doing. Clearly I’m looking at creating healthy habits here, and it’s no failing of the task list or the alerts. I’d love to hear what tips/tricks y’all might be able to share regarding what works for y’all.

Wee breakthroughs/victories: so dang awesome! Good on y’all for taking these in for what they are and congratulating yourself. I have seen great benefit in my life treating tiny-though-large successes as successes all the same. When I’m done cleaning the kitchen counter, folding my clothes, or even watering my tiny tree, I can gains lots by taking a step back and considering that those tasks weren’t completed seconds ago, and I allow myself a smile. What’s even better: if I take these moments of success and use them to fuel me to do more, if need be and time permits.

Anyhow, thanks a bunch. y’all. I hope y’all are well.
-trav

[Brooklyn]

@brytetyger

I’d love to hear what tips/tricks y’all might be able to share regarding what works for y’all.

If I must not forget something that needs to be done in the morning, I write a note (1 word or 2) and tape it onto the bathroom mirror over the sink. Given my 73 year old body and its plumbing system . . . (Guys, you know what I’m talking about **) . . . I will be reminded more than once during the night, as well as upon waking up in the morning!

And if it is not something I must due immediately in the morning . . . I tape or binder-clip the note to my body . . . Best placed near the entrance to my plumbing . . .

Simple but effective. . .

**I just gotta be humorous . . . credit my ADHD . . . you know . . . poor impulse control, quick wit, and creativity . . . not necessarily in that order, but who can remember . . .

[brytetyger]

@Brooklyn

Hah! I am grateful for the humor. On that note: I’ve found most people with ADD/ADHD (and other cognitive/mental challenges) often have great senses of humor!

I dig the notes. I’ve been in such a save-the-planet mode for the last 20 yrs that I’ve scrapped to take as much of my note-taking online and, though it helps (maybe) ease my environmental preservation concerns, it’s not always the best means for me to see and address immediate needs.

I’ll give the notes a good shake. Thank you for sharing and for adding humor!

Cheers.
-trav

[Afriendlyface]

@brytetyger

I’d love to hear what tips/tricks y’all might be able to share regarding what works for y’all.

For my routine, like you, I’ve tried and succeeded for no further than a week or two many times, tried timers, spent months procrastinating some fancy interactive chart and never ended up making it because it was too overwhelming.
Ok, so now we can agree on what often doesn’t work and I’m done doing off on a tangent

Routine:

• What I’m finding (so far) is working better is an electronic to do list on my phone. When I feel s little overwhelmed or like I’m wondering around/ not getting ready.
• it really helps to be able to walk over to my phone and visually see what I have left to do vs time i have until i need to leave, it minimizes the time I’m side tracked.

Important tasks/reminders etc: (need to be completed either that day or week.)

• they end up on a post it note, on the corner of the counter.
• this works for me, the same way @Brooklyn s system works for him, it’s somewhere I frequently walk past and can see.
  For me, it’s on the way to the kitchen. (My metabolism is ridiculous!)
• if I need to remember something first thing in the morning, I post it to my espresso machine! Because that’s the first place I visit everyday, religiously.

For groceries:

• my wife and I both use a white board.
• a staple we use often and will need straight after it running out, gets written on the white board.
• in between week shop items like milk, bread, fruit and ingredients we’ve missed from planned meals end up in one of two places, in a box drawn in the corner of the white board or a post it note on the corner of the kitchen counter.

Also quick side note, regarding finances:
I’ve recently been looking into the BFI (Australian finance book ~ barefoot investor, not body fat indicator!)

• And the number one tip I’ve taken away, that has helped heaps, is having two ‘bucket’ accounts.
  ~1 for groceries, fuel/public transport costs.
  ~1 for surplus weekly spending, on what you want.

They are only called bucket accounts because you treat them like a bucket, once it’s empty, once they’re empty, you don’t spend anything from that category for the week.

It certainly helps reduce my impulse spending and excuses for spending other bill money on things like groceries, like saying, ‘I need groceries, so it’s ok to spend more.’ If that makes sense?

It can be very easy to lose sight of bills that aren’t immediate or urgent and over send week to week, especially given our common deficits!

And in my experience, a bucket mentality can be quite simple and easy to set up and follow.

If you want to know more, just let me know. The whole book is based around simplifying finances!

Sorry about that, I’m on no way affiliated with the author, just really excited at the idea of simplicity concepts that I’ve learnt from it. ‍♂

[Leandro]

@brytetyber, did you tried using a planner (you can try fetch one that uses recycled paper or other kind of eco friendly material) as it’s bulkier than just pieces of paper it’s a big harder to loose and forget about it, but still very possible to possible.

I do almost all my planning and scheduling, todos, lists on my phone, it’s easier for me to remember and I’m pretty much always with it so I can always remember to check it, whenever I get the “am I forgetting something?” feelings on me.

My best tip is get something simple that (we do tend to over complicate things and create complex systems to do simple things) so trying to be mindful of that at least until you get used to doing it (after you form the habit of keeping track of the things I thing it gets a lot more manageable to keep up with it).

Also if you try something out and it didn’t work out, try to figure out why it wasn’t working , sometimes even if we try something and fail we can get useful information about ourselves to correct and better our methods, I tried many times keep a planner with me to keep track of things but I never get to get back on using it as I used in the school because I found out that when I was in school I always had it with me in my bag or in my room when I needed it and that wasn’t the case any more, so I tough what DID I get with me all the time that I could use to keep track of my things, then light bulb lit eureka moment came: my phone! From there was a matter of finding the apps that worked for me and getting on the habit of putting the information I needed there and keep it update, also I find it very useful for shopping lists as I can visually see what I bought already and what is still missing as I tick things from the list and its a lot harder for me to loose my phone than the lists (I do still forget it at home sometimes but I can’t be perfect all the time after all… ).

I try to use alarms more for long term appointments of things that I have to to in some specific date or month as my temporal tracking is really bad (I rarely knows the day of the week I’m at the moment, the month sometimes, the year usually I get right… ) so I try to set alarms of have notes to remember when I’m near or at something I have to act upon and I have to get it to be fools proof or I might mess it.

Like after I get a appointment with my asthma doctor she asks me to return in a couple of months, so I usually set me a reminder to call back to her to mark the appointment in the said month (I try to do that after my appointment so it’s one less things for me to do and worry but sometimes I have to wait to make the appointment, then when I actually have a date for it I make another (or change the one I already made) to the due date of the appointment (I set a couple reminders before the date if I might have to do some exam prior) but usually as I’m always checking my phone for the things I have in the near future so I manage to see it getting near the top when I’m near the date so I can plan myself and organize myself without too much trouble. It does get messy with last minute additions or changes to my schedule but sometimes sh*t happens and I try not to freak too much about it when it does happen…

[Afriendlyface]

Two working days into meditation, near as reasonably possible to 100% concentration on actually working on work related tasks.
Time on other tasks/distractions was limited to under 15 min per 7 hr shift.

Granted, it has been a little exhausting and I’m trying to remind myself to take it at a sustainable pace.
But there is literally no comparison to how I was without it.
With my best days previously, my concentration would be perhaps just over 60% and would get a lot done but would be useless the rest of the week and exhausted.

It’s certainly no magic pill, but what I’d describe as now ‘subtle’ differences, really pile up and the will power I already had gets me much much further than it used to. (started it 5 days ago)

#proudmoment
#gottagetbacktoworknow ‍♂ ‍♂

[Leandro]

Yay congratulation!!! Happy to hear its working that good for you!!!

@Afriendlyface

With my best days previously, my concentration would be perhaps just over 60% and would get a lot done but would be useless the rest of the week and exhausted.

My guess is that is because you had to put quite the mental effort on keeping your focus where you need to and that is indeed quite mentally tiring (at least for me), hope you don’t get any bad side effects from it too!!!

I started with the psychologist last Friday, too soon yet to say something about it yet but I liked her at least and I felt comfortable enough to talk the things without much worry, I still searching for a doctor to try the other meds and see how it goes but no luck with that yet.

Oh and how was your wife appointment with the doctor? Or it wasn’t yet? Im curious! lol

[j_d_aengus]

I started a new job two months ago and realized that I needed a system to keep track of all the things I need to do. (I previously worked retail and then tech support, and in both roles I usually dealt with work as it came in. I didn’t have to do much project and planning work.)

Now that I finally realize that I’m not neurotypical, and that my Inattentive traits (which include difficulty with time management and planning) are simply a part of me, it’s easier for me to accept my limitations. That’s me real breakthrough, knowing myself better

My recent victories are that I’ve started efforts in both my personal life and at work that will help me. For my personal life, I’m working on establishing good habits. I’m using a phone app named “Habits” for that.

I use Microsoft Office 365 at work, which includes a task-management app called “To Do”. I’m using that app to implement the Getting Things Done (GTD) method. I’ve got to make this work, because I’ve already gotten behind in my work (having been working from a mix of paper and electronic notes up until now… and I keep forgetting or misplacing things). Using one location as the central hub should help me keep track of it all.

[Lustforlife]

Omg, m a j o r light bulb moment last Friday!

I’ve been struggling with working out what to do when with the four classes I teach. I don’t know why I never worked this out earlier, but I think the answer to a lot of my planning issues is this:

I see most of my classes three times a week. So from now on, we will do Vocab and current affairs one day, and literature and ‘the text book’ on the day we have two lessons on the same day.

So all homework is for a while week later, everyone knows which books to bring to which class (instead of bringing all of them each time - or picking the skinniest and hoping that will be OK ).

And I can work out a schedule for the whole term, win win win win win!

I had finally got really good at planning lessons with groups I saw once a week (this was in one of the jobs I left this summer), but was getting a bit stressed with groups I see several times (ie in my new job) and also not everyone has all the right books yet etc etc. I was giving homework for the next class, but if they didn’t have any study periods between classes that didn’t work, and I felt like I didn’t know how to control the learning programme with so many variables outside of my control.

And now with this simple idea I can see woods, I can see trees, I should even be able to see leaves on the trees and hear the birds singing​:grinning:

Basically it’s like pretending I teach 9 separate classes instead of three classes I see three times a week. I also have a class I only see twice a week. I’m still working that one out, but I think that will involve two fixed things per session.

[Bubbles17]

Well, my victory of the day: vomiting

Might sound a bit weird, but it is a breakthrough moment for me. See, the healthier I start eating, the more sensitive I become for unhealthy food. Today I’ve been eating unhealthy food for most of the day. It was cheat day for me. Only, I also ate a bunch of food. So I went to do Pilates after a while and that got me feeling sick. I went to lie down, and a while later some of the food came out.

The reason that it’s a break trough is because it only motivates me more to eat healthy.

Disclaimer: I didn’t vomit on purpose. I never did. My stomach just didn’t accept the amount of unhealthy food and sent it back out. I’m not starving myself in case anybody would be thinking that.

[Leandro]

@Bubbles17, some types of exercise can make you dizzy or nauseous actually specially the ones that use belly breathing so that might have something to do as well, that’s one of the reasons they usually recommend to eat something light before exercising, but what we eat has a much bigger impact in how we function than we usually think it has, so learning what we should eat and what we should avoid is a good think to know.

[Leandro]

@Lustforlife I can relale to this so much, once upon a time when I was forced to teach arts I had 10 classes of more or less 45 younglings (5th, 6th and 7th grades) each twice a week, plus my graduation and the planning period I got I had to use to actually get from university to school so I had to do all of the “off class stuff” at home after class plus my own stuff and as it was my first time doing it I had a lot of work to do to prepare each of the topics as I wanted to make it easier for them to learn and have references images from things that were period accurate, I almost went nuts with all the work, and some of the classes just don’t helped me at all, it was quite frustrating to me trying to teach something that most of the students weren’t really interested in, so congratulations on your organizational epiphany and hope that it helps you cope with the situation better, I too find doing thing sporadically too hard to keep track and keep a routine over it specially if its not on the same week day every week but I guess this is more of a struggle of me being aware of the time than an actual planning difficulty as I usually forget or am unaware of the day of the week we are until I need to do something that info might be necessary…

[Bubbles17]

I usually don’t follow the whole breathing thing. I can breathe fine on my own

I usually don’t have this problem during Pilates. It was just this one time that in happened

[Leandro]

@Bubbles17

I usually don’t have this problem during Pilates. It was just this one time that in happened

@Bubbles17, glad to hear that!

@Bubbles17

I usually don’t follow the whole breathing thing. I can breathe fine on my own

Lol, yeah, but I guess belly breathing helps you relax, at least for me it gives me that impression, you could try both and see if you feel any difference (not in breathing but in relaxing).

[Bubbles17]

It relaxes me more to not go along with that breathing. The breathing rather stressed me out. It kinda makes me self conscious about my own breathing