We welcome you. Come on in and care and share your way to wholeness by attending our group meetings and working the 12 Steps of ADD. Please join us in seeking personal growth and recovery from Adult Attention Deficit Disorder. We are on a journey to living at our full potential and nothing can get in our way unless we let it. Higher Power or Universe or Cosmos willing, that is.
Challenge: Failure to Account for Time Eaters
What are time eaters? Grossman explains that time eaters are the
seemingly trivial, peripheral activities that accompany most actions we
take, eating into our time without our awareness. They include traffic
snarls, searching for parking spots, walking from parking lots into
buildings, elevator delays, finding the right office, and the need to
run back to the car for a forgotten item. Time eaters also show up at
our work place, interfering with on-task effectiveness. They include
phone calls, audible e-mail alerts, and stoppers-by.
Solutions:
Build in plenty of time to account for time eaters.
Double or triple the amount of time you normally allow for traveling to
a destination.
To optimize timely task completion, choose a chunk of
time when you’ll turn off the phone ringer and the e-mail alert system,
and hang a sign on your closed door requesting no interruptions.
Challenge: A Desire to Avoid Being Early, Which Results in Being Late
Grossman notes that some people simply don’t like to arrive places
early. They may dread the discomfort or tedium of waiting for a meeting
or appointment to start.
Solutions:
Pack a Guilty-Pleasures tote bag and keep it in your car
to use just in case you arrive somewhere early. Guilty-Pleasure items
are those you enjoy, but often deny yourself due to a perceived lack of
time. They might include magazines, novels, catalogs, or crossword and
sudoku puzzles. A variation on this theme is a Found-Time tote bag,
which might include projects without a set deadline, such as thank-you
cards (along with pens and envelopes). You may even find yourself
aiming to arrive early so you can reward yourself with your “indulgent”
activity.
Use the waiting time as necessary downtime in your
day. Try a simple meditation technique of focusing on your breath, or
simply remind yourself that a few minutes of daily downtime is required
for recharging your brain, making it a productive use of your time.
Use the waiting time as found time for getting done
those things you are unlikely to schedule such as cleaning out your
wallet or purse, balancing your checkbook, or tweaking your to-do list.
The next time you find yourself running late, review Grossman’s
list. Find your “challenge” and try each of the suggested solutions.
You may find yourself arriving places on time (maybe even early!),
feeling much more relaxed and happy. It will be nice to say goodbye to
the frazzled feelings that come with being late.
I
February 25, 2011Unconscious CommunicationChronic Lateness
Addressing chronic lateness helps us to better honor both others and ourselves.
Being late for an appointment or a date can seem like a small thing
that really doesn’t matter, but it communicates volumes, whether we
mean it to or not. Being kept waiting is an experience that almost no
one enjoys, because at best, it wastes their time, and at worst, it
indicates a lack of regard. It’s as if we’re saying that our time is
more important than their time, so we don’t need to honor them by
showing up when we said we would. When we are running late, it means a
lot if we call and let the person know, especially if it’s going to be
more than ten minutes. However, if we are chronically late, it may take
more than a phone call to properly address the issue.
If it’s become a habit of ours not to be on time, we may want to look
inside ourselves and see what’s going on. It’s easy enough to make
excuses about our behavior, or to project responsibility on the other
person, perceiving them to be uptight if they are irritated by our
tardiness. What’s more difficult, and more meaningful, is looking at
ourselves and asking why it is that we always, or often, show up late.
Sometimes this happens out of a lack of self-regard, as if we aren’t
really important anyway, so why will anyone care if we’re late, or
don’t show up at all. Chronic lateness can also stem from being
disorganized, or simply trying to do too much in one day. Another
possible reason for being late to a particular appointment, or date, is
that we don’t really want to be there. We communicate our disinterest
or boredom by not showing up on time.
Whatever our reasons, if we raise them to the conscious level, we have
an opportunity to live a more conscious life. As we begin to understand
the deeper reasons behind our inability to show up on time, we have the
option to communicate clearly and consciously about how we really feel,
rather than communicating unconsciously by being late.--------------I am neither disinterested nor bored, and I certainly care about you and what you must think. I will make a concerted effort to be on time from now on. Maryellen
