Peace of Mind Organizing

Executive Function Deficit Disorder

20 December 2012

Last Friday, I listened to a recording of a great talk from Ari Tuckman, a psychologist who specializes in working with folks with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The talk, called Organizing the ADHD Brain Using Executive Functions, was presented at this year’s National Association of Professional Organizers conference.

In the talk, Dr. Tuckman said that ADHD could more appropriately be called Executive Function Deficit Disorder, because that’s what it boils down to. (He also said that this name change would never happen, since advocates fought hard to get people with ADHD accommodated through the Americans with Disabilities Act.)

According to the website of the National Center for Learning Disabilities:

Executive Function is a set of mental processes that helps connect past experience with present action. People use it to perform activities such as planning, organizing, strategizing, paying attention to and remembering details, and managing time and space.

Or, as Dr. Tuckman puts it, “Our highest- level brain processes that enable us to make good decisions in a complex world.”

Dr. Tuckman is the author of the book More Attention, Less Deficit: Success Strategies for Adults with ADHD, which provides lots of great information on executive function. In fact, he made the first chapter of his book about executive function because it is so fundamental to any discussion of ADHD. That chapter available as a free sample download.

In that chapter he discusses eight executive functions and the implications of their deficit for those with ADHD.

• Response inhibition: Taking a pause to weigh options before making a decision
• Working memory: The part of the memory that holds information about what we’re doing in the present moment
• Sense of time: The ability to have a good sense of the passage of time
• Remembering to remember: The capacity to remind yourself to do the right thing at the right time
• Emotional self-control: Being able to objectively assess feelings and dilute them as appropriate.
• Self-activation: Using internal pressure to get the ball rolling on tasks
• Persistence of effort: Keeping going once you get going
• Hindsight and forethought: Using the past and future to guide the present

Thinking about people with ADHD not so much as distractible or fidgety but rather lacking the eight executive functions described above is very helpful to me.

If this interests you, I urge you to download the first chapter of More Attention, Less Deficit (and buy and read the rest of the book!). If you’re a professional organizer, you may benefit from listening to the talk, Organizing the ADHD Brain Using Executive Functions, which is available for download here at VW Tapes.

Dr. Tuckman also offers a free 10-minute podcast, available through iTunes, in which he discusses many of these principles.

Help for your resolutions

18 December 2012

I’m all about goal setting. And I love doing it this time of year. This week and next, I’m working on taking stock of the year, seeing how well I did with the goals I set last year, and setting new ones for the coming year. I create measurable business-related goals.

But what about goals for those little behavioral changes we tend to call new year’s resolutions? Last year, in a blog post called, Goals, not resolutions, I blogged about some habits I was hoping to reinforce in 2012:

2012’s goals

• Putting away my clothes properly every night
• Exercising every morning
• Clearing my email inbox every workday
• Telling my gratitude buddy, Aby Garvey what I’m grateful for each day
• Taking multivitamins, calcium supplements, and fish oil capsules every morning

I’m happy to report that I’ve done really well on the last three. And while I’m not exercising every morning, I joined a gym at the beginning of October and am consistently working out there three times a week.

Putting away my clothes properly every night is still an elusive goal for me. I thought about it this morning when I was getting up. I think a clean sweep of the bureau—taking off everything on it and putting back only the essential items—will be a big help. When the bureau looks junky (as it tends to now with various random things taking up not-so-temporary residence there), putting away my clothes isn’t as rewarding, because there isn’t a broad expanse of clear surface.

I think the key to my success in creating successful habits is that I tend to be really clear about what I’m after. I try to be realistic. And, when I’m most successful, I link a new habit with an established one to create a routine. That makes it become more automatic, which is so helpful.

I’ve given some though to my behavioral goals for 2013 and here’s what I’m going to shoot for.

2013’s goals

• Putting away my clothes properly at night
• Exercising at least three times a week
• Eating more fruits and vegetables
• Establishing a sustainable housecleaning schedule
• Entertaining more often (the fifth goal will support the fourth)

My email inbox, gratitude and vitamin habits are pretty well established, so I’m going to let those drop off the list (though I fully intend to continue doing them).

Having stated these goals out loud by writing them here will help me remember them (which is a big deal when it comes to resolutions) and it will also motivate me to do them. For me, accountability is really powerful. I’ll check in later to see how it’s going!

If you’d like some advice and guidance on getting what you want in the new year, I have a great resource to offer (and a chance to save $5 on it). A few years ago, my friend and life coach Shannon Wilkinson and I created a teleclass called Why Resolutions Don’t Work—and How to Get What You Want Anyway. A year later, we added a workbook to it. It sells for only $19 for both the audio recording of the teleclass and the 24-page workbook based on the content of the audio. But between now and January 15, if you use the coupon code SAVE5, you’ll save $5. So you can get this great resource for only $14. Click here to purchase yours. It could be just what you need to help you create realistic goals for the new year.

Cutting myself some slack

14 December 2012

I drove over an hour to work with a client today and on my way listened to a great talk about executive function. On the way back, I plotted a blog post about executive function, with the plan to write that post this afternoon upon my return.

But I stopped for lunch on the way home and learned about today’s tragic school shooting in Connecticut. And when I got home I learned about a shooting just a block away from my home and about the knife attack at a primary school in China.

And, somehow, writing about executive function doesn’t seem that important this afternoon.

So I’ve decided to cut myself a little slack and forego the post on executive function (look for that next week). Instead, I just want to say that my heart and thoughts are with the victims (those who survived and those who did not) of today’s senseless violence.

Keep it simple and give clutter-free gifts

12 December 2012

I’m all about letting the holidays be easy. And I’m also very keen on not giving gifts that might weigh the recipient down. I see in my clients a tendency to hang onto items that were given as gifts, even if the items aren’t used or loved.

So every holiday season, I bang my drum for clutter-free gift giving. Here are some ideas on things you can give that won’t risk turning into clutter:

• Electronic subscriptions or gift cards. Every year my brother and I renew our parents’ subscriptions to a digital photo frame and an email service. (They don’t have—or want—a computer.) Another great option is a Netflix or Hulu Plus gift subscription. (Personally, I love receiving iTunes gift certificates.)

• Give the gift of time together. Instead of exchanging gifts, why not go out to lunch and a movie with a friend? Or, if you have friends or family a distance away, give the gift of regular phone calls. Or a plane ticket to come visit. It’s about your relationship, not the stuff.

• Offer a service. Do you have a friend who could use some help around the house? Either offer to do it yourself, or hire someone who can help. That can work well for housekeeping, errand running, babysitting, all sorts of services.

• Give edibles. Cook or bake something and deliver it yourself. Or, if your gift recipients live out of town, order them something consumable. I always like Wolferman’s but there are lots of wonderful options out there.

• Share your special skill. Is there something you do well that others don’t like or know how to do? Share it! For example, you could help a friend clean out her files. (I love other people’s paper!) Maybe you could give someone a lesson on how to use Pinterest. Or teach them to knit. Or organize their music on their cell phone.

• Make a donation. If you and your gift recipient share a passion for a cause, consider giving a donation to that charity in your friend’s name. It doesn’t create clutter and it makes you both feel good.

One of the things I love about clutter-free gift giving is that it’s much easier on the shopper. Some of these ideas take very little time. And many don’t cost much money. Everybody wins.

Last December, I appeared on the local morning program Great Day St. Louis, talking about clutter-free gift giving. Here’s the video, if you’re interested:

Southwest Airlines: A great model for customer service

10 December 2012

I’m flying home now from my trip to visit my parents in Washington state. I’m flying Southwest, which is always my first-choice airline. Getting to Walla Walla can be a bit challenging and this time I flew Southwest to Spokane, rented a car and drove the three hours to Walla Walla. This morning, I was set to drive back for my return flight, which was to be at 2:40 p.m., flying via Las Vegas.

At 5:45 a.m. I was awakened by a text-message notification. To my consternation, it was Southwest, telling me that flight was delayed by an hour. I knew that meant I’d more than likely miss my connecting flight to St. Louis, since my layover was just an hour.

So I planned to try to get to the airport extra early, in case that was helpful, and I braced myself for long, tense hours in the airport today and the likelihood that I’d end up spending the night in Vegas.

Instead, just as I was getting ready to leave for Spokane, I received a phone call from an actual human with Southwest Airlines. She told me about the delayed flight (turns out it was because of fog in Philadelphia this morning) and the likelihood I’d miss my connecting flight. Then she offered to put me on the 1:40 flight to Denver, which would get me home by 9:20 p.m. (The original itinerary had me arriving home at 10:55 p.m.) When I book this itinerary, I chose not to fly through Denver because of the unpredictability of the weather there. But the weather there today is fine and I jumped at the opportunity.

That meant i had to make a beeline for Spokane, but luckily the call had come in time. I drove through heavy fog, which is no fun, but I got to the Spokane airport at 12:45 p.m. My boarding passes were waiting and I only had to wait at the gate for a few minutes. The flight left on time and I have an hour layover in Denver. The flight isn’t crowded and it has wifi. Life is good.

Thanks to Southwest’s amazing customer service and extra effort they made to ensure their customers wouldn’t be stranded, what was looking like a very stressful day is turning into a relatively stress-free one.

This is why I choose Southwest whenever possible. The customer experience is superior to that of any other domestic airline.

This is how they differentiate themselves:

• They make the customer experience fun (or as fun as possible given the circumstances).
• They go the extra mile for the customer.
• Their seat selection and boarding process is simpler and more straightforward than other airlines. (I love the general boarding on Southwest.)
• They don’t nickel and dime the customers. (Other airlines charge extra for checked bags and for what they consider premium seats.)
• They aren’t super serious. They actually tell jokes.

All of these customer service attributes are things that I like to think I do for my clients. Next time I’m faced with a customer-service quandary, I’m going to ask myself, WWSWAD? (What would Southwest Airlines do?)

The joy of an organized yarn stash

5 December 2012

I’m a knitter, and like most knitters, I have quite a bit of yarn. I don’t go out and buy yarn for the sake of buying it. Typically, I purchase yarn for specific projects. But sometimes those projects don’t pan out and I unravel them. And lots of times, I have yarn left over after finishing a project. Multi-color projects, in particular, can lend themselves to a lot of leftover yarn.

But the good news (for me) is that my yarn stash is well organized. As I have mentioned here, back in 2008 I purchased a bank of Elfa drawers to organize my yarn and knitting supplies. Four years later, I’m still thrilled with the system.

Case in point: A friend had a baby recently and I decided to knit the baby a teddy bear. I’ve knitted several teddy bears, out of a plush yarn called Oh My! My friend Lisa knit a different bear recently and I wanted to try out that free pattern. Alas, the yarn called for in the pattern is now discontinued and I wasn’t willing to go to a lot of work to try to track it down.

So yesterday, I wondered whether I had any Oh My! yarn left over from past bears. That teddy bear has a little sweater, so I thought maybe there would be some leftover pink yarn out of which I could knit a tiny scarf for the new bear.

I knew exactly where to look: the drawer marked “novelty yarn.” To my delight, I found 1.5 skeins of teddy-bear brown Oh My! And I also found some colored yarn for the scarf. No trip to the yarn store necessary for me. No money needed to spent. I can start on this pattern as soon as I get home.

My organized yarn stash saved me time and money yesterday. It allowed me easy access to my yarn without any frantic searching. It also helps my stash stay neat and tidy. I love my Elfa drawers!

Worth repeating: Organized travel documents

3 December 2012

I’m leaving tomorrow for another trip to see my parents in Walla Walla. On July 25, 2011, just after I’d returned from a trip to Walla Walla, I blogged about the swell travel organizer I use to keep track of my paperwork while I travel. I’ve used it for every trip I’ve taken since (which must be at least a dozen) and the durable organizer continues to work well. I so I figured it was worth re-running my review.

I went on a week-long trip to visit my parents in mid-July. It involved air travel, car rental, and hotel stay (my parents live in a small condo, so I don’t stay with them).

I’m not a nervous traveler, but I definitely like to have my ducks in a row. So I was delighted when Smead sent me a two-pack of their Travel Organizer to try out and consider blogging about. This is a three-sectioned document holder, and each section has an index tab. There’s a pocket in the front with velcro closure for receipts (or it could be used for boarding passes). A tab that comes from the back over the front keeps papers from falling out.

I customized my Travel Organizer for this trip with my handy Brother P-Touch label maker. To make it prettier and easier to spot in my bag, I used berry pink labels with white writing. I labeled the whole folder for the trip, then put labels on each tab for plane, car, and hotel.

Here’s a photo of my customized travel organizer:

I customized the organizer for my trip.

Talk about having my ducks in a row! I was able to find just what I needed quickly and easily. I had a safe place to stash my receipts so my wallet didn’t get clogged. I haven’t yet entered my receipts in to Quickbooks (this week, I promise!) so they’re all in a safe place awaiting entry.

I foresee changing the trip label and using the Travel Organizer for each trip I take. Being able to create three separate sections and access them easily is a step above the colored poly slash folder I’ve been using for years when I travel.