Failing to clear ridiculously low bars

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Please assure me I am not alone at this. I mean, you assign yourself some challenge, something small, maybe ridiculously small … and then fail at it any way?

Like, well, okay, I’m not in great shape, but I can at least go for a ten minute walk every day? Or, no matter what, I won’t go to bed until I have tidied up my kitchen sink? Maybe, I can’t keep up with everything these days, but at least I’ll read the front page of the newspaper?

Some tiny, beginner, baby step towards being a normally functional human adult…and you learn you can’t even manage that much, let alone move on to a step further?

My current failure: I need to take daily medications twice a day. Simple, yes? All I have to do is swallow some insignificant sized pills, what does that take, five seconds? Okay, make it thirty seconds to get a glass of water for it.

And I make it ridiculously easy on myself. I have two of those weekly pills-for-the-day boxes. One I keep right on the table where I eat breakfast each day. The other is beside the chair where I watch TV or play on the computer. With an alarm clock set to go off each day at the assigned time! NOTHING could be easier to do, right?

So why did I discover this morning that yesterday’s morning pill section is still filled??? Sigh.

And something like this happens at least once every other week.

Please. Somebody tell me they too cannot handle their own truly minuscule challenges.

2

I guess mine would be dusting. I hate dusting with a passion. I do a thorough house cleaning every Thursday, but I don’t dust. I walk by and see the layer of dust on various pieces of furniture and tell myself I need to dust. I told myself yesterday that I’ll dust on the next crummy weather day. I’ll dust if we have a get together. Maybe I should invite someone over. That will get my butt in gear.

We’re supposed to have cool weather and rain this weekend. I guess I’d better start getting prepared now. :persevere:

3

Yes. Morning pills no problem, the routine is completely established. When I had to start taking a pill in the evening, I would forget once in a while. Also it’s one of my chores, once a week, to take out the garbage bins for collection (about 10’ from the garage out to the edge of the sidewalk), and maybe 4 or 5 times a year I would forget. Something was on my mind, or normal routine was broken for some reason, and it didn’t get done.

So now I send myself email reminders, one every night for the evening pill, one every week for the garbage bins. It’s free (I use sendrecurring dot com) and effective. I could send myself a text instead, but I don’t think that’s free. I accept my shortcomings to some degree (i.e. my memory is not perfect, I depend too much on routine schedules to get routine things done) and work around it, and that also feels like success.

4

Failing to identify challenges in accomplishing a goal is the stuff of failing even low bars. In the case of taking pills, it sounds like the issue is simply not remembering to do the task rather than procrastinating or actually resisting the effort. Is this not the case? If so, then setting a timer on one’s phone or clock could certainly address that shortcoming.

But I hear you. We spend so much of our lives running on auto-pilot, that it’s remarkably easy to not be aware of things that might pose a challenge to the accomplishment of even seemingly simple things.

5

I used to forget my anti-hypertensive medications every so often. Once I thought I’d forgotten, but hadn’t, so when I took a second round of pills I ended up dizzy.

I realized I never forgot to take my pills while on vacation, since they were all in two week pill organizers. So now I use pill organizers at home and I never forget.

6

Sometimes the bar seems lower than it actually is. It’s like if you set a challenge of being able to do a bicep curl of 10 pounds at the local gym. Sounds easy. But then there’s the matter of getting a membership to the gym, making sure your gym clothes are ready to wear, having transportation to get to the gym, having time in your day to go work out, etc. Once you consider all the associated tasks, the challenge isn’t such a low bar anymore.

7

No, I think my problem is that “taking my pills” is actually a process and not a single step, and somehow my stupid mind marks the job as ‘done’ as soon as I’ve done the first step(s) rather than at the final step.

Today’s incident was unusual, generally I have no problem with my morning pills. Likely because I’m already sitting down to eat (while watching the birds/squirrels/bunnies at our feeding area) and there’s a glass/mug of liquid already at hand. So I notice the pill box, pop open that segment, toss them in my mouth and have a swallow of orange juice or whatever. Done.

Mostly my problem comes at night. My alarm goes off, I think, right, time to take my pills. I look around, there’s my pill box, but no water. Get up, go to the kitchen, get a glass of water, come back to my chair and sit down, look at the tv or computer screen…and that’s it. I never think of the pills again. I’ll even sip the water until it’s gone, without a thought of the pill box that is sitting RIGHT IN FRONT of the monitor. It’s like the alarm triggered a loop that is somehow satisfied when I’ve gotten the glass of water, and it never triggers again. :frowning:

I was talking about this with a friend, who suggested that I should pick up the pill box when the alarm goes off, and carry it with me when I get the glass on water so it’s right there in my hand and how could I forget then? But self-knowledge tells me I’d probably set the pill box down to free one hand for the glass and one hand for the faucet, and all this would change is that I’d then have to hunt down what I did with the pill box when the alarm goes off the next evening.

May if I could train myself to keep a full water bottle beside that chair? So the ‘loop’ reduces to open the pill compartment, take a swig of water? I guess it’s worth a try.

8

Would it be possible to keep the pill box right where you get the water? Either next to the sink, or even in the glass you use to drink if it’s consistently the same one? That way the alarm goes off and you go to get the water and the pills are right there.

I find that reorganizing the placement of items and the order of activities helps me to build a routine that works.

9

I totally got you. I only have to take one pill a day. I’m supposed to take it at roughly the same time every day. That’s usually around 9AM or so. Today the trigger for me to take it was reading your post at noon. :clown_face:

I should probably set an alarm.

10

Part of the problem with these (admittedly) low effort - long term goals is when you’re starting, there’s bound to be something that derails you. Yeah, I plan on taking that walk at lunch. Oh, but there’s been a whole bunch of activity on SDMB today. Yesterday, I stepped wrong and turned my ankle. Today, my achilles is aching; won’t walk today. Then it’s really easy to get down on yourself for not fulfilling a simple task. Can you tell I’ve been in the EXACT same place? With both of those EXACT same goals? (BTW - you’re not my wife, are you? :wink: )

The solution (and this falls into “much easier said than done”) is to not get down on yourself. Don’t dwell on the failure. Tomorrow, take that walk. Remind yourself that the SDMB will be there in the evening - you can check the messages while watching TV. And, maybe, the walk will help stretch out that tendon.

11

I take a daily medication and vitamins. I have made it a part of my brushing my teeth routine.

Morning - brush my teeth - take my pills

Evening - brush my teeth - take my pills

Don’t make it a goal…turn it into a routine habit that occurs naturally.

12

I planted a hedge out at the front of my lawn a few months ago. I have an app on my phone that tells me when to water and fertilize the plants. Even if it wants me to do everything, it should take less than 10 minutes total to do it, but still I forget at least every other day. I’ve already lost a rhododendron and a juniper that I’m going to have to replace. The rest seem to be hanging on okay, but mostly in spite of my “care.”

13

A bar? Fuck, tape on the floor stops me in my tracks. Assuming I was moving to begin with.

14

For three times, I have missed, or nearly-missed, interviews with employers because of not distinguishing EST from Texas time zone. (Thankfully, not the same employer each time.)

15

Just having a routine might not be enough because your mind might trick you into believing that you already finished a task when you actually skipped it. A written and numbered routine posted in plain sight might be better. Look at the list, pick a task, do the task and check it off, go to the next. I have a small whiteboard on my refrigerator for this purpose.

16

That’s not a bug, that’s a feature.

17

At this time of year, most of Texas is in EST. It’s just that it’s called CDT instead.

18

mines trying to do something useful each day… i mostly fail lol

19

Is this possibly an ADHD thing?

20

My morning routine is: convince the cat that I can’t get up and feed him if he’s sitting on my chest, get something resembling dressed, go to the bathroom, go to the kitchen and get my yogurt (or occasionally a bowl of cereal) and juice, open a can of cat food and split it between two bowls - one for my cat and one for the stray that comes up on my deck - then take breakfast into the office. My weekly pill holder sits on my desk so I don’t forget to take my morning pills. I spend the morning reading my emails, checking out assorted websites, and playing a few games.

The problem I have with trying to clear low bars is that I keep telling myself I should be getting daily exercise. I used to take morning walks, and I have an exercycle which sits in my living room sneering at me. Also, there’s a lot of cleaning and organizing that I need to do, and I keep telling myself that instead of looking at them as a “project” to spend a day doing, I should just spend fifteen minutes or so every day, or maybe even twice a day, working on them. But of course I don’t do that.