I have so many “indoor tasks” that I can’t do if it’s sunny out. Some are “dark, spooky basement tasks” like clearing off my workbench where I’ve been dumping stuff.
Well, the drought this spring and summer has made those difficult… nay, impossible to do.
.
And, being pretty ADHD, I HAVE to set calendar items with alerts set for the most mundane tasks: “Move car for street sweeping day”. And my memory’s bad enough that when my phone beeps, I’m surprised and think “Who put this on my calendar? Thank you, kind stranger.”
I have lived in New Jersey for 35 years and have driven to the airport many times over the years.
No matter how many times I drive to Newark Airport, everything goes fine on my way there, but I make a wrong turn on the way back and end up in Elizabeth.
And I know it’s going to happen. “Ok… just follow the signs to the NJ Turnpike… here’s one. There’s one… make a right here? Oh no! Back to Elizabeth I go!”
I have a one week pill box with places for morning and evening pills.
And an alarm
That won’t shut off until I turn it off. And if I have it in my hands it’s harder* to not get the pills, than it is to get the pills.
And… it beeps at varying intervals and volumes. It’s impossible to tune out.
Whoever designed this knows me.
*not completely impossible. I’ve done it a time or two when I was concentrating on something.
Yeah, the alarm I set yesterday worked just fine today. I was already awake and wasn’t doing much else when it went off. I know I can turn the alarm off in my sleep, and have absentmindedly dismissed other alarms when I was concentrating on something else.
Pills: Do not expect to put pills near your breakfast place or lounging place and have their presence remind you. Stuff that’s always in a place has no mnemonic value; it becomes literally part of the furniture.
Tie pills to activities, not places. Activities, even routine ones, are dynamic. Places are static. Dynamic attracts attention; static does not.
I eat 3 sets of pills per day: At wakeup, immediately after breakfast, and immediately after dinner. If I’m home I also brush teeth 5x/day: wakeup, after each meal, and at bed. Pills in their organizers live in the bathroom in the same drawer as the toothpaste. Get the organizers out first thing in the morning along with the wakeup toothbrushing. Every time I brush teeth look at the organizers to see whether something’s been skipped. So the breakfast brushing is a backup chance to eat the wakeup pills and the pre-bed brushing is a backup chance for the dinner pills.
IME/IMO for chronic daily meds the exact timing of 1x, 2x, or 3x per day is far less important than is avoiding routinely skipping doses. A pill taken 4 hours late is just fine for the vast majority of chronic meds. If that’s not true, the paperwork that came with that med will make that very very clear.
At bedtime the organizers go back in the drawer. handling them that way makes it a “bigger” reminder than just leaving them sit on the bathroom counter 24/7/365. The bigger the “ceremony” associated with something, the more memorable it is. At least for me.
Bigger picture I find lots of routine stuff is increasingly mentally burdensome as I get older and lazier. I don’t mind eating pills, but I resent the idea that something external is forcing me to. I don’t mind shaving, but I resent that society expects me to. Increasingly I find myself thinking “Awww, Mom! Why do I have to? I don’ wanna!!” And I also increasingly relish the act of rebellion of skipping doing whatever.
That is not a recipe for mental health nor for being an effective functional human being. But it is seductive.
Another medical one, but not tablets (or capsules) this time. Exercises.
I had to do 12 weeks of achilles stretching exercises. In short, you have to lift yourself up on tippy toe over 5 seconds; hold for 3 seconds; then lower yourself down again over 5 seconds. You do this 15 times, then rest and repeat. This is how I know that I cannot count to 15.I mean, not at all - the minimal concentration required to do the exercise made it impossible. I had to develop some weird finger positioning method (based on football down signals) in order to do it - yes, I was reduced to counting on my fingers in order to get to 15.
You have to remember to do this every other day. Ohh Noooo…
j
(ETA - sorry, I can’t say “pills” - industry veteran and all that.)
