Time management

Staying Focused During the Holidays

By Tereasa Jones | Published December 9, 2016

Are you ready for the holidays? I know I’m not. Each year I promise myself that I will get started earlier next year, but when next year gets here there seem to be all of these things that are pulling my attention elsewhere! I know you know the feeling! But if the holidays are to be what we want, then focus we must!

Planning, prioritizing, and organizing are three skills that are necessary to stay on top of things, yet those are three skills that are controlled by the executive functioning part of our brains. When you have ADHD, executive functioning is the part of your brain that is impaired. So what’s a person to do? Try these things to help yourself survive the rest of the holiday season.

Simplify – keep decorations, baking, cooking, and shopping, at a minimum. We all need to heed this little piece of advice. Look around you and you will notice that things are ramping up and in the next few weeks will start to spin out of control. Try and keep yourself separate from all of that. Decide on a few things that are really important to you and focus on those.
Make lists. My clients tell me this is hard because they already make lists. In fact, they make so many of them that they can’t find the ones they need and it contributes to the paper clutter, which creates more stress. Something that has worked for me for a lot of years now is to keep my lists all in the same notebook. I use steno notebooks because they are different than the usual notebook or sheet of paper which makes them easy to spot when things do pile up. I keep my steno pad next to me as I work. I continually add items to the book. Then from that book, I will transfer say, my grocery list to a sticky note, or notes about family members sizes I will put first in the notebook and then on a smaller piece of paper which goes in my wallet so it will be there as I shop. So why do it twice? If it’s in the notebook it isn’t going to get lost. Even if I lose the list in my wallet, I can always go back to the notebook to get the information. Somethings never leave the notebook, but for convenience in shopping, etc. some things do.
Simplify your shopping by mapping out where you are going which will save you time and stress later. Pick a day and time when the shopping malls and stores will be less likely to be crowded. Do your shopping as early in the season as you can. You will be less likely to purchase impulsively and more likely to avoid crowds.
Practice extreme self-care. If a massage will help you relax those tight muscles, schedule one. Put limits on how many invitations you will accept. Saying no if you are over extended is allowed. Really!!! Keep your expectations aligned with your values. What does this season mean to you? Don’t let all the hoopla steer you away from that. This might be an excellent time to keep that gratitude journal or list. Sometimes just five minutes to list all the things you can think of off the top of your head that you are grateful for can give you a quick attitude adjustment and bring your expectations back into alignment.
What are your family traditions? As families grow and new members join, what brought you joy might now bring you stress. Give yourself permission to reevaluate. This one has been hard for me, but we started out a family of five and now we are now a family of 16 and growing! I’ll let you in on a little secret, the first year of changing traditions is the hardest! After that the new traditions are pretty well accepted.
There are many demands on our time made at this time of the year from our jobs and communities. Everyone is trying their best to make our holidays special, and yet what really happens (if we aren’t careful) is that we are showing up for all the things we feel obligated to attend, and we are not showing up for all the things (and people) that we want to be present for.
Don’t over-spend. It kind of ruins the whole gift giving thing when you go over your budget and into debt. Again, set your expectations, communicate them with your family and friends, and then implement them! Nobody will love you less if you stick to your budget. I promise!

I hope these things will be gentle reminders for you as you go through this season. Mostly I hope that each of you will truly allow yourselves to enjoy this season. Without joy, we just become scrooges!

If you would like some help with your holidays, just let me know. I’d be happy to brainstorm with you to help you keep this time simple and joyful!

Also posted in ADD/ADHD | Tagged ADHD, holiday, organization, planning, prioritize, self-care, Time management | Leave a comment

Thinking Time and Your To-Do List

By Tereasa Jones | Published April 27, 2016

To-Do List-01

“How’d it go last week during your thinking time?” I asked one of my clients. He laughed and said, “It was a little rough. I thought of about a million things that I needed to do, but towards the end of the week I noticed that my mind stopped racing so much. I still thought of things to do, but not in the same way as the first few days.” I was curious. I wanted to know if his mind just got quieter as the days wore on or if he had a strategy. It turns out that he did have a strategy. He kept a notebook beside him and when he thought of something to do, he wrote it down.

Interesting! This has long been a habit of mine and I wondered if I had, at some time or another, shared it with him. Neither he nor I recalled that, but I was pleased to find that it was a strategy that worked for him.

Of course, I couldn’t just leave it there. I wanted to know if he did anything with the notes later. “Not really,” he said. “I just wrote them down.” My mind was full of questions. I asked him if he saw anything different in the amount of time he spent on his to-do list. As it turns out, his list got smaller. He went on to tell me that even though his list got smaller, he accomplished more. He found that even though he never looked at the notes again and he never put them on his to-do list, he was getting the things done anyway. Being the little researcher that I am, I had to find out what other people had to say about this. The question in my mind was, “Does the act of writing something down make it more likely that you will do it, even if you never look at your writing again?”

There are a lot of articles out there about writing things down. Most of them are about journaling, goal setting, or much more structured list writing with the purpose being to go back and mark things off your list as you accomplish them. There was a consensus that writing things down helps us process, focus, and dream bigger. Additionally, we get satisfaction out of the accomplishment of marking the things we get done off our lists. This wasn’t surprising to me, but it didn’t really answer my question.

It seems that the more my client got done, the more energy he had to do other things on his actual to-do list. I’m not sure whether this was true because he wrote them down, or because he wrote them down during his “thinking” time, or because simply allowing himself to clear his head on a regular basis created more energy. But he reported not only getting more done, but having energy to spare. A theory of mine is that when we keep things locked up inside of ourselves, our brains are constantly reminding us to complete our tasks; make long overdue phone calls; schedule dreaded, but important appointments; finish our projects; and much more. The energy used for these constant reminders is tremendous! When we allow ourselves to just relax and satisfy the “reminder” part of ourselves by writing these things down during this time, we are saying to that part of us, “It’s okay. I’ve got it covered. It’s written down. You can stop reminding me now.” Now satisfied, the little reminder can quiet down and allow you to do the same.

I wonder if he completed the things he wrote down with no further prompting because our minds remember more readily when they are in a relaxed state. Is it possible that this practice helps with memory? I wouldn’t be surprised if we find that it does. Sometimes, when I have too much to do and I’m running from one thing to another, I don’t remember entire conversations or having driven to my destination. It’s almost as if I am sleepwalking through life. However, when I take time to stop running and start relaxing into the natural flow of thought I find that everything becomes clearer.

Is this true for you? If you have incorporated thinking time into your life I’d like to hear about what you have discovered. If you haven’t incorporated it, why not give it a try this week? In any case, I invite you to let me know what you think. Change your thoughts (and perhaps write them down) and you’ll change your life!

Also posted in Life Coaching | Leave a comment

Take Time to Think

By Tereasa Jones | Published April 13, 2016

Thinking Time-01

You schedule time to work.
You make time to go grocery shopping.
Even during the busiest times of the year, you manage to find time to watch television.
Everything you do has found its way into your daily routine, from getting dressed to eating dinner.

But when did you last take time to just think?

“Why do I need thinking time?” you might ask. Well, quite literally, to think! Life is lived at such a pace today that thinking—quality, intentional thinking—doesn’t just happen. Or, if you are like me, it happens at night when I’m finally still, the house is quiet, and most people are sleeping. Suddenly, my brain goes crazy and I feel bombarded with thoughts! I do everything I can think of to shut off those thoughts so I can catch a few hours of sleep. It rarely works. I wonder, though, if I could get more sleep at night if I were to schedule in some thinking time during the day. Interesting thought!

My quest to understand this thinking thing has been a little frustrating. When I try to find something written about thinking, it is usually about meditating or leadership or rather purposeful thinking. I’m more interested in the kind of thinking that frees your mind, the kind that will allow creative thoughts in. The kind that encourages curiosity. The kind that will cause you to ponder for a while. The kind that perhaps you remember having as a child when you hadn’t a care in the world. (I’m sure plenty of us remember daydreaming while watching the clouds float through the sky. Maybe we should revisit our childlike tendencies more often!)

As I thought about thinking, I began to wonder whether it would help to have a designated spot to think. There is a book that I haven’t read, but whose title I love. It is named “Find a Quiet Corner.” Somehow, I like the idea of having a particular spot—a quiet corner—to go to when I want to think. I’ve tried various spots for my thinking time, but it turns out my spot isn’t really a spot at all! It is nature. I do my best thinking when I am free from the confines of walls and doors. I sometimes sit on my front porch, other times on my patio. Sometimes I stroll down to the neighborhood lake and sit on the dock. I feel at peace at these times.

You might wonder what I think about. It wouldn’t be terribly exciting to you. It’s not terribly exciting to me usually, but it sort of clears my head of the daily clutter that piles up. You know the stuff: errands to run, housework to do, projects to complete, groceries to buy, deadlines to meet. Not to mention all of the what-am-I-going-to-do-about-this-or-that kinds of thoughts. When I am outside in nature I can just let all of that go. When I let it go, the most amazing things sometime happen. They usually don’t happen right then while I’m thinking, but they tend to manifest later. Creative ideas come more easily. With little effort, ideas for the direction I want to go in my practice (or in my community, or with my family) start to show up. Ideas start to grow and plans start to formulate about what I want in these key areas of my life.

I have come to the conclusion that if we would all take more time to think, we would find that some of the worries we have might just fade away. Our minds would be still and we would be able to see more clearly. We might come up with solutions to problems where others have failed. Most of all, we would get to know ourselves again. We might even like the people we become! We would most likely grow to appreciate more and to be less disgruntled.

If any of this is making sense to you (and I hope it is!) ask yourself these questions:

Do I have my own “quiet corner?”
If not, where would my quiet corner be?
Where do I feel the most free?
Where do I feel the weight of the world being lifted from my shoulders?
How often do I go there?
What would happen if I were to go there more often?

If you still have trouble getting to your quiet corner, consider scheduling in the time for thinking each day. Ask yourself:

How much time do I want to spend thinking?
What time of day do I do my best thinking?
How often do I want to visit my thinking spot?
Is it outside or inside?

I have asked several of my clients to come along this thinking journey with me. Of the ones who have chosen to do so, the reports are positive. They are finding reduced stress, more creative solutions, increased productivity, and a general quieting of their spirits. Why not give it a shot? There isn’t much to lose and there could be so much to gain. Take time for your thoughts and you’ll change your life!

Also posted in Coaching | Leave a comment

Interruptions: The Cost, Plus 7 Ways to Stay on Track

By Tereasa Jones | Published July 9, 2015

We are interrupted almost constantly throughout our days. Although not all interruptions can be avoided, you can use these seven effective techniques to keep your focus and take control of your time at work.

People experience an interruption of some sort approximately every ten minutes. Furthermore, it takes an average of five to ten minutes to recover from an interruption. Five minutes is the amount of time it takes you to reorient while the ten minute span may be necessary to get yourself back into the “space” you were in prior to the interruption. A few simple math calculations indicate that for every hour you are working on a project you are really only productive about half of that hour. If you are working a standard eight hour day your productivity is reduced to about four hours. Those calculations are based on the five minute recovery time. If you have ADHD this is compounded even more. With productivity basically cut into less than half, it would appear that we have a huge problem here.

So, what is interrupting us?

Two things come to mind readily: technological and environmental interruptions. While technology is a wonderful thing, when we are “plugged in” we are subjecting ourselves to constant interruptions in the form of emails popping into our inbox, text messages clamoring for our instant attention, and phone calls no matter where you are (not to mention the ongoing beckoning of social media). Yesterday, I was sitting in a hotel lobby and saw a group of ten people walking from the elevator to the restaurant. Out of the ten, five were walking while either texting or reading something on their phones, one got a call and answered it, and two stopped walking in order to take a closer look at whatever fascinated them on their screens. Only two of the ten walked to the restaurant without interruption! That was in one casual observation for only a few minutes!

Environmentally, we have moved away from brick and mortar as well as walls in general. One in five people in the United States work from home. Among those who go to brick and mortar buildings, approximately 80% of them work either in a cubicle, partitioned space, or completely open space. All of these factors invite interruption right into your world. In one study about 80% of the people working in these kinds of settings said that they experienced a great deal of frustration due to environmental factors.

So, what’s a person to do?

Here are a few things we can do to help us focus more on what we are doing and experience fewer interruptions.

1. Plan Your Day: Your daily planning should really happen the day before. Decide ahead of time 3 to 5 things that you will accomplish the next day. No more than 5. EVER!

2. Schedule Your Time: Get out your planner and block out the amount of time you will need to complete these items. Then double it. Now block out that amount of time.

3. Location, Location, Location: If you can go to a less distracting place to work, plan to do so. Some people like coffee shops; others prefer book stores. If the weather is good, try a park or the beach. The key is to find a location that keeps you focused on the task at hand.

4. Block Unwanted Noise: Use noise cancellation devices such as headphones. Some people like white noise which can be as simple as a fan or inexpensive noise machine.

5. Alert Others: Let people know that you prefer not to be interrupted unless it absolutely imperative.

6. Shut it Down: Turn off alarms and notifications while you are working on projects. Agree with yourself that you will check email and text messages only at certain times. Stick to your schedule!

7. Take Arranged Breaks: Schedule in time to surf the web or check Facebook or other social media.

There may be other things you can do to avoid constant interruption. Ask yourself what those things might be and take steps to implement changes that might help. We might not be able to change our environments, but we can always change the way we respond.

What interrupts or distracts you from your work, relationships, or goals? How do you overcome these obstacles to become more productive and intentional with your time? Let’s talk about it in the comments!

Also posted in ADD/ADHD | Leave a comment

Decisions, Decisions! Not Easy for Adults with ADHD

By Tereasa Jones | Published March 6, 2014

A friend is writing a book about decision management. She says that you can’t manage time, but you can manage decisions. I think she might be right unless…….You have ADHD. Decisions are difficult for people with ADHD. Because decisions are difficult many times they over-complicate an issue. They take a walk down the “What If” lane.

An example might be trying to make a decision about what color of T-shirt to buy. Seriously! This is difficult for those with ADHD. Should they buy the blue, red or green one? They might stand there trying to decide for a good little while until……they either walk away without buying any, or they buy one in each color. As they walk away, however, they have buyer’s remorse if they bought one in each color or near panic if they didn’t buy any of them. They fear that if they decide that they want the shirt, they will be sold out, or they fear getting their credit card bill in the mail and having to explain to their spouse that they did it again! They couldn’t decide so, they bought them all!

While you might think this is rather amusing, it’s really painful for the Adult with ADHD. So what’s the way out? A little self- talk would be in order here. Tell yourself that you would rather have different styles of shirts so you will only buy one. But which one will it be??? The one that goes with your eyes, of course. Hold the shirt up close to your face and see if it brightens your face. If it does, that’s the one! It really is just that simple. Give it a shot and let me know how it works out for you! Oh, and by the way, this happens with non-ADHD people too, so listen up!

Also posted in ADD/ADHD, Decision Management | Tagged ADHD, Decision management, Time management | Leave a comment