Reply To: Getting out the door on time

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the advice Larynxa.  Smartphone alerts, checking schedules and writing things down are all very good ideas, and I’m glad that these strategies work for you.  My problem with getting out the door, however, is that something often seems to just pop up to get in the way of my plans.  The only thing that I seem to have control over is the one where I don’t open my laptop until I get out of the house, but other than that things pop up regardless.

You’re also right that it takes discipline to follow through on those strategies once we commit to them, and those positive feelings of accomplishment and self-mastery certainly reinforce that commitment.  In my case, medication is only one part of the solution with ADHD, and as part of my treatment I also had several meetings with an ergotherapist, who created a personalized program to help me finish my dissertation and be more organized in general.  A lot of what you describe in your routine made it on to the list that she gave to me.

One point on the list of recommendations that seems pertinent here was to evaluate the time that it would take for me to get places and to accordingly set alarms so that I would drop everything I was doing and consecrate myself to preparing to leave.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, since obstacles just seem to arise unexpectedly, usually outside the scope of the steps that I took to plan for things.  This is what gives me a feeling of instability and at times a hopeless outlook.

One thing that we can all count on is that life is unpredictable, and if it were not then it would lose its flavor.  I like living in a world of surprises, but I also hope to have a bit more control in dealing with them when necessary.  In any case, getting organized and out the door in the morning is kind of a two-step-forward-one-step-back process for me.  At the end of the list of recommendations, the ergotherapist also noted that all of the strategies she outlined would take at least three months to really sink in and become integrated into my routine.

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