Soon people will be resolving this or that. But small resolutions are the easiest to keep. The article below may or may not inspire you. But it is time to tell the world what worked for you!
The small change I made, a long time ago, was to make everything I’m thinking about in life, a desktop background on my computer.
Prior to that, due to ADHD, I had a terrible time remembering or keeping track of things. It took great effort to constantly remind myself of this or that, and I couldn’t study either. My spending was out of control and I was mired in credit-card debt for eight years. I could not keep track of deadlines and little got done.
But by making my classes, my budget, my finances, all put as a rotating desktop background (Windows automatically changes the background once a minute,) suddenly I was being constantly reminded of all the things I needed to be thinking about, without having to put effort into it - over 1,000 times a day. I passed my exams without really needing to study (since the backgrounds would force that class material in front of my eyes a hundred times a day.) My spending got under control. I started to have much more direction in life.
I exercise for overall health and (more importantly) enjoyment, not weight loss.
Going to half-water half-wine versus just wine while still drinking a glass or two at dinner.
This year… I stopped thinking about things that upset me. It is so simple to implement yet profoundly impactful. My anxiety and PTSD have improved tremendously as a result.
The process is like… I find myself getting physically agitated. I notice I’m thinking about something upsetting. Almost always there is some mental process maintaining that agitation. I say, okay, I’m not going to engage with that thought right now. What else can I think about instead? Then I think about something important to me. This usually leads to positive behavior.
Bonus points if the thing I’m doing attacks the root of the upsetting thought. If I’m thinking I’m a bad parent, for example, I go spend time with my kid. Not because I’m trying to get myself to stop believing the thought, but because I value being there for my son. Often times our greatest anxieties point directly toward what we value most. I’m just leveraging that.
The thought can be true or false or of unknowable status. It could be memories of the past or fear of the future. It can be as big as major loss, or as small as an Internet post I regret. Literally no kind of thought is off the table for this technique.
Is there any benefit to me thinking about this right now? No? Done.
I stopped drinking soft drinks during the day. Ice water with a slice of lemon has been my default choice for decades. It is good for my health and good for my wallet. Same with quitting tobacco, but that wasn’t a small thing for me.
Complete elimination of sugary beverages. I used to drink 3-5 cans of coke per day. When I stopped, I lost 40 lbs, and I don’t have new cavities when I go to the dentist.
Now I’m used to drinking carbonated lime water, and I find coke cloyingly sweet and gross.
THAT is brilliant! I have ADD (the H would be handy sometimes, but nooooo…), and I’ve been putting absolutely everything on the calendar on my phone. With an alert, even if there’s no specific time involved.
But that means that every time I look at my phone, there’s a notification: “Thank Mom for Xmas”, “Printer Ink”.
My wife now says “Can you do fix that outlet?” pause. “You putting it on your phone?”
She knows that if I wait even five minutes, I’ll forget it (see Memento movie).
I’m confused about this. When I’m working on the computer, I am not seeing the desktop. And when my desktop is visible, it is because I am not actively working on the computer (and therefore not seeing it).
How are you making this work?
mmm
If you’ll forgive a nitpick, the current diagnosis regardless of whether you’re hyperactive is ADHD. There is a subtype of ADHD called Innatentive Type which means you’re not hyperactive.
So the diagnosis is literally: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Innatentive Type.
Yes, this is stupid, and it also makes it that much more difficult for folks like you and me to get diagnosed. I was 34 when I received my diagnosis. Most doctors won’t even acknowledge we exist. But we’ve always been here, the dreamers, the quiet kids with our heads in the clouds, the people pretending to follow what you’re saying because it’s too embarrassing to admit we weren’t listening.
The way I like to describe it is that I find the inside of my own head incredibly distracting.
/Nitpick
I use an external monitor, so it’s 2 screens. Both screens are displaying my backgrounds (I typically run a slideshow of about 200 at any given time.) So even though I’m working and have to view my stuff on Word, Excel, etc., there’s still hundreds of times when I have to x in or out of something and would end up viewing the backgrounds. And sometimes when I can’t use the computer (such as when I’m having heavily-lotioned hands because of eczema and can’t type because I’d get the keyboard all gunky,) I’ll just sit in front of my computer and read the backgrounds slideshows for an hour or two, while my hand skin soaks in the lotion.
This month, my desktop background slideshow has been mostly about IRS estimated taxes, future travel plans to Asia, photos of my girlfriend and I, some budgeting stuff, human-resources stuff and info about flight school.
How do you compile all of this? Do you just have separate files for each thing you have you remember and then rotate through the files?
(I think this is awesome btw.)
Telling myself, “That will keep until morning” when ruminating in the middle of the night.
Sort of. I have thousands of background images in one big “My Pictures”-type folder. Then, I have another one for “current backgrounds” - the slideshow I cycle through for this particular week or month. That one will usually contain no more than 200 images; it’s distracting and un-focusing to have any more than that.
When preparing to take certification exams, I might clear everything else out and only put things related to that particular exam I’m about to take, for a week, so I’m constantly having exam material in front of my eyes. If I’m about to perform in a music concert, then I might have my backgrounds consist solely or mostly of the music sheets for that week. If I’m going on vacation, then I put my travel itinerary and airplane schedule on as backgrounds, Etc. etc.
I sometimes use photos of my girlfriend to help alleviate the boredom of things. So for instance, this past month I had to do a lot of studying about electronics, LEDs and semiconductors for an internship (none of which was company-confidential tech material) - some of the driest topics for studying that one could suffer through. So I would splice photos of my girlfriend into the tech diagrams/charts to make them more “look-able” (or, conversely, copy and paste some info about voltage, watts, ohms, amps, MCUs, etc. into photos of my girlfriend.) Kind of odd to be reading about electrons and current-resistance at the same time that one gazes at a photo of one’s partner eating food in a restaurant, but whatever works. (I showed her some such photos/backgrounds that featured her, and she was bemused but flattered.)
Write things down, whether it’s in my phone (Reminders, notes) or on pieces of paper*. I also use this for planning. We (husband and I) currently have a 2 week vacation. Each day has breakfast, lunch, snack and activities, including chores, listed on it. I do this also when we go on trips. I also have separate lists for groceries, specialty shops, etc.
The papers are available, so husband can see them as well. If we agree he’s going to take out the compost, I’ll put it on the list. I don’t worry about him remembering and then I also don’t remind (nag) him about it.
When the day is done, anything which didn’t get done will go on a new page.
We used to have huge lists of things to get done over vacation, and didn’t do them until the end, or didn’t do them at all and then we felt like we wasted on vacation time. This way, each day has a little bit of getting things done, plus we have plenty of time to laze about.
*Some years ago I accidentally bought a ream of A3 paper (11.7 x 16.5 inches), which is too big for my printer at home. I cut it up into A6 pieces (4.1 x 5.8 inches) which is useful for my lists.
For an entire week I kept a notepad beside me while watching the news. In it, I noted each story which actually caused a change in my behavior (anything I needed to react to, or to alter what I was doing).
At the end of the week, the notepad was blank. I turned off the national news completely, and haven’t watched it since (2015). I reduced local news to one 30 minute cycle in the mornings with my wife (her request), but used the remote to silence all politicians, celebrities, and ads. Eventually I decided I didn’t need this either, so I now live without any news shows at all. None.
Watching celebs and politicians is like sticking my head into a sewer pipe to see the offal and waste pass by. It’s revolting, and will actually make you ill. So I limit exposure to such garbage to what’s absolutely necessary – the rare occasions my plumber is repairing a toilet, and the rare occasions I must go and vote.
I applied a similar reduction in social media, executing a mass “friend-ectomy” on some sites.
It resulted in a substantial improvement in my outlook and mood. I don’t need that garbage piped into my life, and it’s absurdly easy to shut it off.
Ah, thanks.
I think this is brilliant.
mmm
I started investing money rather than just letting it sit in a savings account earning next to nothing.
I knew little about investing, but I did see the paperwork that my boss printed out about his private investments. It got me interested, so I opened an account at Schwab and invested my small inheritance in a variety of stocks and funds. I made a couple of mistakes, but I learned from them, and eventually got a respectable little portfolio going. This enabled me to pay off our mortgage just as we retired.
It was a small change in that it took next to no major effort. Had I been interested before the advent of online brokerage accounts, it might have been a chore, but just linking an account and doing everything at my own computer brought it all within reach, and was easy.
I took my daughter to a square dance class at a local engineering school. That connected me with a community of geeks-like-me, and has been the focus of my social life ever since.
The other minor change I’ve made has been to put everything on my calendar. For example, “take evening pills”. It’s made a huge difference in being on-time to things (and in remembering to take my evening pills before supper.)
Sort a sucky 1st-world thing, but my decision to waste food. I had the usual childhood exhortations not to waste food, and when I first lived on my own I found myself over-eating because most things come in portions too big for one person. Decades later, I still sigh to myself about the waste, but it’s part of what removed 50lbs of excess weight and kept it off.