Spring Cleaning: Slash Smartphone Distractions

May 7, 2012 in ADD, Everyday Life | No comments

Smartphones can be an indispensable tool to help you stay organized. Without my iPhone, I would have much more trouble managing my life and projects effectively. However, the iPhone has just as much capacity for sabotaging productivity, especially if you allow app clutter to rule your phone and distract you from its more useful features.

iphone

via Twicepix on Flickr

So how about celebrating Spring by cleaning up your home screen and streamlining this ubiquitous part of your life? I’m currently reading a book called Unclutter Your Life in One Week – which I’ll review shortly — and have applied some of the author’s philosophies to my iPhone with great success.

Here’s how you can take a little bit of time — maybe a couple of hours (with distractions) at most — to make sure you’re getting the most out of your smartphone:

  1. Open a new spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel or Google Documents. I always take a minute to format my list so it is visually appealing. This helps keep me engaged in adding things to my list because I enjoy looking at it. To get you started more quickly, I recommend clicking here to download my template. If you don’t have Microsoft Office, you can upload the file to Google Documents and edit it there for free.
  2. Go through your phone and fill out your spreadsheet, listing every app that has an icon on your home screen(s). Use a consistent system for expressing when you’ve last used an app. I choose less than 1 week, less than 1 month, less than 6 months, less than 1 year, more than 1 year, and never. If you haven’t used an app since the first day you installed it, choose never.
  3. If you’re using my template, any apps marked as never, more than 1 year, or less than 1 year in the last used column will be red. Use the Sort & Filter feature to filter by the red cells in the last used column. You’re now viewing your least-used apps. Scan the list for any special-case apps that you seldom use but are important to keep. I chose to keep my NYC subway map and TKTS app because I use them every time I travel to New York for a Broadway show (usually once or twice a year). Delete the rest. You’re not keeping apps you think you should use, and you’re not keeping the apps that make you look smart or tech-savvy to friends who happen to pick up your phone. You’re keeping what you actually use.
  4. Now, do the same for the yellow ones: apps you haven’t used within the past month. Scan for the same qualities listed above. You might see something like OpenTable, which you use often but you haven’t been to an OpenTable restaurant this month. I keep Dropbox on my phone so I can access my important files in a pinch, but I don’t need to do so on a monthly basis. Keep them, delete the rest.
  5. Now, filer by the green cells: the apps you use at least once per week. Think through your daily routine. Mine goes a little like this: at night before I go to bed, I check the weather to help me decide what to wear the next day, then set my alarm. I use my phone and text messaging throughout the day. I record my hours as I’m leaving work. I often use a calculator at the office. If I see something is running low while I’m preparing dinner, I add it to the grocery list. These apps, the ones, you use as part of your daily routine, are the ones — the ONLY ones — you will put on your first home screen.
  6. Move everything off of your first home screen and onto another one so you have a blank canvas. Organize your daily-use apps according to what you use together (for example, the clock and the weather, the food diary and the grocery list). Think about which apps you access constantly or need to get to quickly. Put them in the stationary row at the bottom if you have one.
  7. If your phone allows you to organize apps into folders on your home screen, follow this rule: get rid of the folders on your first home screen (the one you see immediately when you pick up your phone).
  8. If your phone contains default apps that you seldom or never use, put them all together on their own home screen so you won’t need to see them or page past them to get to your more useful apps. Organize seldom-used apps on additional home screens just past your first one.
  9. Live with your newly organized home screen(s) for a week. Is there anything on your first home screen you aren’t using as much as you thought you would? Move it to a new one and replace it with something you find yourself using more frequently. The iPhone allows you to access the camera from the lock screen, so even though I use the app at least once a day I have no need to put it on my first home screen. Instead, I made room for my new food log, which would be easy to forget and give up on after a few days if I didn’t see it every time I use my phone.

One last comment about app cleanup that you may find controversial: when I did this, I deleted all games from my phone. I also block all games on Facebook. These games are fun, sure, but before you install too many ask yourself this: what is really important in my life? How many hours am I spending on each of these games, and how much am I spending on the projects that really matter to me? To be fair, I am am by no means anti-gaming. I play World of Warcraft almost every day. However, WoW satisfies an additional social function in my life because I connect with several good friends via the game and I’m an integral part of a team. Mobile and Facebook games are, to me, just a black hole for time and energy. Now that I no longer have eight Words With Friends games going at once, when I look at my phone during a few minutes of down time I catch up on blogs, news articles, and emails. I check in with my project management app to gauge my progress on home and creative projects. My mental energy is directed toward things I have identified as important priorities in my life.

That said, you may have any number of reasons you wouldn’t want to toss out all of these games. It’s all about moderation and identifying what is important to you and why.

One thing is certain, though: once those priorities are reflected in your simplified, uncluttered home screen, your smart phone will spend a lot more time working for you and a lot less time distracting you from what’s really important.

Do you have a different method for curbing phone clutter? Feel free to share!

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Sometimes It Pays to Pay

April 23, 2012 in ADD, Everyday Life | No comments

Sometimes, it pays to pay someone to help you catch up on a task that has gotten out of hand. Sometimes, that little breath of relief is all you need to make some headway on a creative project that’s been suffering.

overgrown garden

In some cases, the metaphor for a long-outstanding task's effect on your motivation and inspiration is just too obvious. Look at that poor garden choked with weeds!

A coworker recently told me a story about a job he had over a college winter break. A professor had asked him to help clean out his office, and when he arrived, he found it worse than he ever expected: the professor’s desk at the rear of the room wasn’t accessible via a tiny path through the walls of clutter, it was accessible through a tunnel of clutter. One had to pass under junk literally balanced overhead.

Though this is an extreme example, I, too, knew more than one professor with a messy office when I was in college. One of the professors I admired most worked at a desk whose surface I never saw. I got the idea that many artists were “just like that.”

Perhaps you have experienced a similar situation in your own life. Maybe it’s not the whole house, but just a closet or a room that gradually got away from you until cleaning it up felt too overwhelming to consider. I know it happened to me. In fact, I wrote about it in my very first post about medicating ADHD as an adult. I had moved furniture around upstairs to create a beautiful office work space and, characteristically, I had left behind plenty of unfinished business:

…when I created my office, I left behind another room. A room with too many furniture pieces, a room where we discarded everything we weren’t sure what to do with. Every time I entered this room to clean it up, my thoughts seemed to disperse, fleeing in every direction as an overwhelmed feeling washed over me and I shut the door again. I literally pretended this room did not exist in my house for four months.

That time, I successfully cleaned it up. Almost a year later, I demolished the walls of that same room for an exciting renovation project and got stymied by the more detail-oriented task. That room still sits bare to the studs after seven months.

Unsurprisingly, these looming and often embarrassing unattended projects sap creative energy.

There is no shame in asking for help in reaching your full potential.

I recently decided that, while paying someone to put up the drywall — which is sitting and gathering dust in a corner — in our spare room is cost prohibitive, there is other work that is not. For example: ever since my shoulder surgery in 2010 set me back on the garden, I have hardly touched it. This spring, I got fed up with the back yard. It was overgrown and unkempt and just plain embarrassing. I stopped wanting to talk to my neighbors because I didn’t want them to see me writing on the porch when the back yard (which they have to look at, too) was such a terrible mess.

Rather than add this to the list of overwhelming problems ruining my life, I took decisive action. My boss had a neighbor who was looking for odd gardening jobs. We were getting a tax refund. I had been eyeing the neighbors enviously as they took advantage of those bright Spring days to work in their gardens.

A few days later I found myself not in the yard, but sitting on the washing machine, escaping the unseasonable heat and working on the script I haven’t touched for weeks. Why? Because hiring someone to help me catch up on the garden had energized me to do the creative work that enriches my life and gets me closer to my big goals. Now all I’ll need to do is stay on top of the weeding, which is much more manageable than a large-scale rehab.

new garden

I realize hiring someone to give you a boost on household tasks may not be a possibility for everyone — the term “starving artist” has a few roots in truth — but it’s worth considering. If money is tight you may want to set aside an unexpected windfall like a tax refund. Or you could calculate how much you spend on one unnecessary thing and put the money in a jar for your project instead. Think cab rides instead of walking or taking the bus, lattes at Starbucks instead of making them at home, ordering Chinese instead of planning your meals and cooking during the week, paper towels instead of real ones, cigarettes when you keep saying you should quit. The possibility of an exciting reward may even provide the motivation you need to stick to these good habits.

These looming and often embarrassing unattended projects sap creative energy.

Also, just because you pay someone to redo your garden doesn’t mean you need to have them come every week to mow your lawn. Hiring a service to scan all your old photographs only needs to happen once if you’ve moved on to digital.  A cleaning service can provide a single-visit deep clean to make it more manageable for you to start a regular cleaning schedule of your own.

Even if you grew up in a household that wasn’t the type to pay others to do work you could do yourselves, there is no shame in asking for a little help in reaching your full potential. Remember, once a task becomes overwhelming (like a garden that hasn’t been tended for two years or a renovation project that has left you without a kitchen for 10 months), you are going to have an extremely difficult time breaking it into bite-size pieces and getting started again on your own. If a little money is all it takes to put you back on your feet and able to rededicate yourself to a creative project, so be it.

I’m interested to know if any of my artist (or non-artist — you’re welcome too!) friends have benefited from paying someone to help them over a task that had become an insurmountable hurdle. If you have, please share!

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Book Review: Is it You, Me, or Adult ADD? Stopping the Roller Coaster When Someone You Love Has Attention Deficit Disorder

April 15, 2012 in ADD, Book Reviews, Everyday Life | 7 comments

You Me or Adult ADD cover art

I tend to read a lot, and as I read books about adult ADHD and/or creative work, I’d like to write and share reviews with you.

Recently I finished Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.? Stopping the Roller Coaster When Someone You Love Has Attention Deficit Disorder by Gina Pera.

If you don’t read the whole review, know this: Stopping the Roller Coaster is an absolute must for anyone in a long-term relationship where one or more partners have ADHD. Even without a formal diagnosis, I recommend it to any creative person who has been called irresponsible, lacking common sense, disorganized, or plain old hard to live with.

In my senior Business of Art course, our professor gave the women in the room some frank advice: keep your name when you get married. Artists are difficult to live with, he said. If we built an art career — very much about name recognition — only to have our marriages fail, we didn’t want to sabotage that career by reverting to a previous and unfamiliar name. We didn’t want to start from zero with networking and with search engine optimization because our names were our business.

And having a marriage fall apart was, he warned, going to be more likely for us than for regular folk.

Why? That singular dedication and drive, that chaos, that unwillingness or even inability to prioritize our spouses and our practical responsibilities over our work, which we might get wrapped up in for days or weeks. We may not come to bed until 3:00 a.m. We may not pay the bills on time or remember to pick up the dry cleaning before a formal gala. We may appear not to care about anything or anyone when we are working.

Having a marriage fall apart was, our professor warned, going to be more likely for us artists than for regular folk.

That sounds an awful lot like ADHD, which affects a great deal of intense creative thinkers. In fact, my husband — a computer programmer, which is a cousin to artist — fits this description exactly.

When I read this book, I gave it to him immediately, saying, “this is a book about us.” He now credits Stopping the Roller Coaster with changing his entire perspective on life.

Stopping the Roller Coaster focuses not just on obvious task completion problems associated with ADHD, but the oft-overlooked range of executive functioning deficiencies that create serious relationship schisms and render typical couples’ therapy and communication/conflict resolution strategies ineffective, including:

  • Listening — really listening — to your partner and comprehending what they’ve told you
  • Empathy
  • Seeing a situation from your partner’s perspective
  • Comprehending cause and effect, including the impact your behavior has on your partner
  • Emotional regulation, biploar behavior, and/or heightened emotional responses to everyday situations
  • Handling adult responsibilities and being reliable when your partner needs you

Pera also hits on the surprising manifestations of hyperactivity and in attentiveness in adults:

  • Hyperfocus — getting absorbed in a project to the exclusion of anything (or anyone) else
  • High-risk behavior, including substance abuse and aggressive driving
  • Picking fights, then blaming your partner for becoming upset as a result of the conflict
  • Blurting out private or inappropriate information about your partner in social settings
  • Insatiability and an inability to feel satisfied with anything (or anyone) in your life

The extensive research and real-life anecdotes open the door for couples to see clearly and begin to make sense of the ADHD partner’s “confusing ups and downs of selfishness and generosity, irritability and sweetness, brilliance and boneheadedness.”

For many readers, Pera’s research will bring together disparate pieces they never knew belonged to the same puzzle. For those with unrecognized/undiagnosed ADHD, it will be a revelation. My husband responded after the first few chapters that he couldn’t believe everything he “didn’t like about [himself]” had a common root and could be changed with proper strategies and medication.

For that sense of hope alone, I recommend this book for any adult who is consistently late, has trouble thinking before speaking, misses deadlines constantly, and struggles to manage long-term intimate relationships. Often these people know they are not reaching their full potential but feel powerless to get their lives under control. Because they are perfectly capable of focusing — hyperfocusing, even — on things that deeply interest them, their partners and colleagues come to the sensible but wholly incorrect conclusion that they just don’t care.

Pera concisely debunks the idea that mental disorders are a “gift”

As I mentioned in my previous post about the notion of crazy or tormented artists, absent-minded computer scientists, and other brilliant and gifted people with little common sense or life skills, it’s not an either/or proposition. Pera concisely debunks the idea that such mental disorders are a “gift” and stresses that our “strengths are independent of [our] ADHD” and, in fact, the “ADHD fog can obscure the best of qualities.” Treating these disorders doesn’t remove our capacity for innovation and brilliance. Quite the contrary: it frees us from our feelings of helplessness and lack of control.

Many readers may find the consistent roller coaster metaphor helps them string together concepts expressed throughout the book. I found it tedious and distracting because I prefer to delve straight into theories and statistics. However, my distaste for the visual metaphor was by far my biggest criticism, and I suspect Stopping the Roller Coaster has saved more than a few marriages. I had no idea how lucky we were until I read all those other couples’ stories!

There is an audio book version available, which I purchased for my husband because he prefers to read books that way. If you are an audio book fan, be warned: he found the narrator a bit too “frowny” during the anecdotes and examples of ADHD partners’ bad behavior, which undermined the spirit of the text. That said, if you feel you or your partner will only read the book in this format, it’s still well worth the investment. Personally, I preferred the Kindle edition so I could make copious notes, bookmarks, and highlights that would be sortable and searchable later.

All in all, Stopping the Roller Coaster combines just enough science for the lay reader with a wealth of real-life stories from people in long-term relationships with an ADHD partner. It can feel disorienting to read so many stories you thought were unique to you, your marriage, or your partner, but the end result is hope: hope that you can be successful in all aspects of life, hope that this is not the price you pay for talent and creativity, hope that you can reduce the baseline of anxiety and frustration in your home, and hope that you can take control of your life in a way you never thought possible.

Full disclosure: Mix Tapes & Scribbles has an affiliate agreement with Amazon, so I am eligible to earn a commission for sales generated from the links on this page. Feel free to purchase your books however and wherever you want.

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Medication & The Crazy Artist: Are We Becoming Zombies or Finally Putting Our Potential Within Reach?

March 31, 2012 in ADD, Medication | 4 comments

Was every legendary artist crazy? It’s a question a lot of people ask, especially those of us who earned an art history minor through many hours fighting off sleep in a warm, dark room, listening to the soothing click-click of the slide projector. Dry as that may sound, art from every period in human history has a fascinating story to tell. All the violence, the longing for the divine, the hedonism and academia of our collective history is hidden in these images.

Of course, once you enter this world you can never again look at those Starry Night mousepads or jokey The Scream souvenirs in quite the same way. You can’t help but catch the irony, given the tormented psyches that created them.

In college I was particularly taken by van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows. It is rumored — though, like with many facts surrounding his death, not confirmed — to be his last painting, created just weeks before he shot himself in this same wheatfield.

Van Gogh struggled all his life with mental illness, and eventually succumbed to it. Society is quick to romanticize cases like this, however tragic, because we believe a little dose of crazy is necessary for great art. However, we forget the other side of the coin: van Gogh didn’t relish his illness. He wanted to overcome it, even moved away from gloomy Paris to try to get away from it, and hated the times when it immobilized him and prevented him from working at his highest capacity.

You may laugh if I draw a comparison to ADHD, but consider this: in adults, ADHD is often misdiagnosed as bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, narcissism, anxiety, and/or depression. For many of these disorders, it can be easy to glorify symptoms: depressed people can find beauty in sadness, and by its very nature bipolar disorder provides the highest highs as a counterbalance to the lowest lows. I have met people who choose not to medicate their bipolar disorder because they don’t want to “give up” the manic end of the spectrum.

Using a stimulant medication like Adderall or Ritalin as an adult may create a feeling of stigma over taking a medication intended for hyperactive kids. It may cause fear of becoming a “zombie.” It may even go against our creative grain: artists are supposed to be scattered. The ups and downs and constant agitated thought are part of what keep us spontaneous and inspired. After all, we don’t aspire to be super-organized, rational, socially adept professionals with sparkling clean work spaces and a meticulously balanced check book…do we? Isn’t that why we scoff at the corporate world?

All of those common misdiagnoses are, on their own, crippling disorders. Interestingly, the key difference between bipolar and ADHD is the frequency, not even the severity, of the mood fluctuations. To be diagnosed with high-frequency bipolar disorder, patients must demonstrate four mood cycles in a twelve-month period, and each period of depression or mania lasts not less than two weeks. For ADHD adults, this can describe mood fluctuations throughout a single day. While bipolar mood shifts have no grounding in external events, people with ADHD experience the world more vividly and spin off into extreme highs and lows as a result of trigger events.

A year or two ago I expressed a degree of sympathy for my highly pragmatic best friend and office mate, who I have seen lose control of his emotions only once in the five years I have known him. He is always on such an even keel, I suspected he was missing out on the intense — even blinding at times — glitter with which I experienced life on a daily basis. Granted, I could spiral into abject despondency just as easily, but that seemed a small price to pay.

Many of our most beloved creative icons were tormented, even destroyed, by mental illness: Vincent van Gogh, Sylvia Plath, Jackson Pollock. Consider this quote from Edvard Munch, on his inspiration for his famous painting The Scream:

I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.

It’s easy to romanticize this vision of the tortured artist. Indeed, I resisted medication for a long time because I didn’t want to turn down the volume and brightness on life.

However, I’m left to wonder if that higher plane is where I do my best work. I’ve been working on a script I started last year, and I’m learning that writing characters is strikingly similar to acting them (disclaimer: I don’t really know anything about acting).  So I’m taking a cue. When I watch actors prepare for a performance, I see them practicing an awareness of their bodies and a serenity in their minds, as if they were creating a blank slate and opening themselves up, preparing to accept the character. This grounding, this pulling in of one’s consciousness, is how I need to approach my script-writing. It begets a slower, steadier pace than I am used to, but a calmer mind keeps perspective. It doesn’t fluctuate between feverish bouts of inspiration and devastating periods of artist’s block. The other day, when I skipped my afternoon medication dose, the emotional whirlwind actually prevented me from sitting down and working on my script. Anguish and lack of control doesn’t always beget great work.

The decision to medicate a disorder or live with its effects, good and bad, is complex and highly personal. When we allow stereotypes and popular opinion to influence that decision, the ramifications — both career and personal — can be tragic. Medication for a recognized imbalance in brain chemistry is no different than eyeglasses to correct nearsightedness or medication to correct an underactive thyroid. The sooner we can all see it that way, the sooner we can make informed decisions about how we care for our minds and bodies.

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Sharpening Goals to a Point

March 24, 2012 in ADD, Goals | No comments

Recently I had to tackle an issue that is always tough for me: prioritization. Settings priorities — and the related task of setting boundaries — can be especially difficult for ADHD adults. However, effectively managing priorities and knowing when to draw a line can have a huge impact on quality of life.

Every January, I outline my goals for the year. I follow up by keeping lists and tracking my progress. This year one of my goals insists that I “don’t abandon good ideas or things I love.” Because such a broad statement demands specifics, I defined that to mean:

  • Playing the piano at least three times per week
  • Completing the first 100 photos for a new project I have in the works
  • Hosting a literary reading
  • Continuing to meet with a close friend regularly to pursue our joint creative endeavors (whatever those turn out to be)

Years' worth of projects can sit unfinished if they ALL take priority.

These ARE all good ideas, and I do love them. However, this list represents one relatively small piece of a pretty ambitious plan for the year. And as much as I would love to think I can push myself hard enough to succeed at all of it, I hit a breaking point pretty quickly. I’m currently medicating my ADHD, which is a tremendous help, but maintaining a high level of focus can be exhausting. I need to schedule intentional downtime to avoid a complete meltdown.

Perhaps the biggest benefit I get from medicating is additional perspective. My brain comprehends things in a totally different way. In this case, that meant instead of getting overwhelmed by my list and beating myself up for never completing anything I start, never meeting my goals, and being totally disorganized and unmotivated, I could rethink my context: had I set reasonable goals?

When I check off goals for One Task, One Stone, I will give myself credit for completing a daily to-do list even when I haven’t done everything on one condition: that I was together enough to rethink my list and cross off any unreasonable items by noon.

It’s just as valuable to take stock midway through a process and retool your goals as it is to accomplish everything you originally set out to do. Perhaps more so, because this demonstrates the capacity to assess what is reasonable and what needs to be cut to better preserve the important stuff.

This leads me back to priorities. Is it more meaningful for me to check off everything on the list, or to determine my own capacity and focus my energies on that which is most important? Lately I have begun to realize, for the first time ever, that it’s the latter. Life is about balance, not constant motion. I need to hone a valuable skill: identifying one or two projects to work on exclusively and letting the others go – or at least saving them for later when I can do them justice. Sharpening my focus not only gives me hope for actually finishing a project, it leaves time to rest and recharge so I come to my work prepared to give it my best. Only when we learn to suss out what truly matters to us and give it more than a fleeting cameo on our to-do list can we look forward to feeling successful and fulfilled.

 

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Sharpening Focus

March 17, 2012 in ADD | No comments

You might have noticed I haven’t posted for a while. This doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten the blog, but I have spent some time considering my audience and my reason for blogging. While applicable to creative projects, many of my posts have revolved around goal-setting, work process, and systems to achieve success.

The experience — and I think it’s a common one — of surveying a landscape of ambitious, smart, inspiring, and unfinished creative projects in one’s life resonates with me. Living in a household comprised of two talented adults and countless projects full of potential (but few results) has inspired me to share not just what our lives are like, but some effective strategies for regulating and channeling our efforts.

Mix Tapes & Scribbles has been headed this way for a while, so really I am just formalizing a sharper focus: gifted, creative adults with learning disabilities. I want to share more articles, more strategies, more stories that shed light on what can be a monumentally frustrating problem. Learning disabilities are not correlated with low intelligence or talent. In fact, the opposite is often true, making the string of unfinished projects, unpaid bills, and/or failed relationships all the more painful when viewed through the lens of unrealized potential.

So from here on out I want to use this space to give voice to those creative minds among us who are brilliant, talented, fascinating, and a bit hard to live with. I want to provide a space to share our unique strengths, struggles, and triumphs.

I’m hoping to reorganize a few things in the sidebar and add a resource page over the next week or so, then develop some kind of reasonable posting schedule. If you want in or have suggestions, please let me know!

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One Task, One Stone: Three and a Half Months Later

December 31, 2011 in ADD, Everyday Life | No comments

Several weeks ago I noticed I’d been marking off fewer and fewer successes on my weekly goals. I was writing less, I hadn’t done anything with music, and the book I’d borrowed from a friend still sat unfinished on my nightstand. My big idea for a new photography project had yet to get off the ground despite significant hype on my part. How disappointing, I thought — once again, a miracle strategy for keeping myself on task had failed. One Task, One Stone had proven no more likely to help me thrive than any other system.

Jar of StonesOr had it?

I looked again at my jar of stones. It was still three-quarters of the way full. That part stood out in my mind: three-quarters of the way full. I may have gotten off track recently, but unlike any other task management system I’d tried, my progress was still there. It was just like a video game I hadn’t played for a while — when I logged back in, I would still be at the exact same level where I’d left off.

Look how far you’ve come, I told myself. You are getting really close to Level 12! I thought about what would happen when I filled that jar and got my reward, then started a new one with Level 13 at  the bottom. I would never go back to Level 1 on this journey.

Back in September I wrote about One Task, One Stone and why I thought it was brilliant. My version of the system connects to my weekly goal sheets, which outline how much of any given task (relaxing with my husband, playing the piano, writing/revising, reading great fiction, etc.) I want to engage in every week. It awards one stone for each day I do that activity within the range I’ve set. So if I want to play the piano 3-5 days per week, I’ll get a stone every day up to and including the fifth day I play. Once I hit three, I’ll get a two-stone bonus for meeting my minimum goal. The genius of this is that it incorporates a leveling system — already familiar to someone who plays video games — into everyday life. It introduces the urge to level up by completing just one more objective, and then just one more, to real-life task completion.

Goal Sheet December 2011Such is how I’ve come to reach Level 11.

The true value of this system didn’t hit me until months later, when in a moment of discouragement I looked at my jar and was surprised to realize all of my stones were still there. I hadn’t lost a single thing.

Sometimes it’s difficult for me to keep perspective on the big picture. I always tell people that “learning disability” is actually a misnomer. School-based learning, with its structure and concrete expectations, can be the easy part for someone relatively bright. It’s real life that becomes a challenge. But even if you don’ t suffer from any kind of disability or disorder, I’m sure you’ve experienced a time when you lost track of how far you’d come. It’s easy to think that just because things haven’t been going well lately, they’re not going well at all.

One Task, One Stone has given me a much-needed visual anchor to help keep perspective on my progress. It helps remind me that most progress is never really lost, just slowed.

How do you keep track of your accomplishments? What keeps you on track and helps boost your confidence?

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Learning the Language

December 21, 2011 in Everyday Life, Music | No comments

I used to fight my piano. After years of having it easy on instruments with which I was naturally gifted, after years of being such a big fish in a small pond I never needed practice outside of rehearsals to keep up, the piano felt daunting. I struggled to learn each phrase, and when my fingers finally marched their way through I would bang the notes out triumphantly and without finesse. For just a brief moment, I had tamed the piano.

PianoOver the past few months, I’ve had to master a few of life’s challenges in much the same way. I’ve struggled to find my way and marked each success with a clumsy and bombastic victory march. I speak figuratively here, but not so much as you may think.

Despite (or maybe because of) my struggle to figure it out, I’ve always regretted not learning to play the piano as a child. Incidentally, though, on meeting my recent challenges I remembered the pillar of support I’d turned to in my youth: music.

Suddenly, my time at the piano became an escape, not a struggle. Now I’m beginning to channel that same feeling I got when I was learning the flute, my most natural instrument — it’s like learning to speak a new language. My fingers let me talk to the piano now, and even though I stumble from time to time there are moments when I find myself lost in it. Speaking without thinking, the first mark of fluency. I can forget my native tongue and sing a brand new song.

Too often we say we are wrestling with something. Struggling. We forget that the best path is discovered by learning the language. Closing our eyes for a second, finding the rhythm, and letting the right words, the right thoughts, the right notes come out. Growing up near a sizable river, I was taught that to escape an eddy you never fight back to the surface. You find the current and follow it down to the bottom, then turn downstream and swim out to safety.

So don’t struggle. Open your heart, find the song, and let your fingers show you the right notes to play.

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Wherein We Reaffirm That Love is Scary

October 22, 2011 in Baltimore, Everyday Life, Music, Theatre | No comments

A couple of months ago I engaged in a side project of sorts. It was no big deal, really — I just volunteered to perform in the choir for a few nights during Single Carrot Theatre’s run of Church. I paraded out, sang for about two minutes, then disappeared.

BUT. But.

But I had forgotten, having been away for so many (eight!) years, what it feels like to be in front of a real audience. I had forgotten how everything disappears, how backstage nerves evaporate under the lights and how I enter a different world. There’s no other way to that world, and it’s the only place where I feel 100% calm, free, at peace…at home. Whether the performance itself is good or bad, that feeling never changes.

I’m in love with performing, you see. But I’m also a sucker for unrequited love, and that’s why it’s been eight years.

Why? Because love is scary. When we first met, I felt comfortable loving my husband because I felt sure he would stay in love with someone else. I’d never have to go out on a limb with my feelings. I won’t even touch on the rich storylines of the gay best friends who’ve shared my life.

Love — romantic, friendly, or otherwise — is scary because to engage your feelings fully, to express yourself in words and actions, you have to take a risk. You have to accept the possibility of failure. Of loss.

In ninth grade, I had already printed the full application to Berklee School of Music. I wanted to spend the next three and a half years securing my acceptance into their music performance program. But somewhere along the line, someone told me I would have to work harder than I realized. I would no longer be the big fish in the small pond. I would have to practice for eight hours a day to keep up with my peers, who would all be at least as talented as I was. I glimpsed a life devoid of writing or drawing or photography, and probably a distinct possibility that I didn’t have what it took to land a spot in a world-class symphony orchestra. By tenth grade, I had decided to become something else when I grew up.

At face value, this can seem like lack of ambition, but I think a lot of us are frightened by how much we love our true craft. It feels like that rush of unrequited emotion when we are in love with our best friend. There’s a place we feel like we belong, but reaching out and trying to seize that place also means risking everything. Sometimes it’s easier to nurse a longing in our hearts than to learn we don’t audition well or we’re too old or something else about us just won’t cut it.

Eventually, though, I came clean with my husband. As you may have guessed, he responded with “me too.”

In my last post I wrote about the dedication, the falling down and getting back up again, required before we can take our big leap. It’s no less difficult to take the leap itself and give or craft a chance to say “me too.”

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Taking a Leap Takes Work

October 16, 2011 in Everyday Life, Music | 1 comment

I need to be famous.

So I wrote in a journal at age 13. And probably 14, 15, and 16. Looking back, my yearning probably had nothing to do with fame and notoriety. It had everything to do with the rush of emotion I felt when, after sneaking back into the auditorium after orchestra rehearsals, I stood at center stage and looked out over the empty seats. I imagined every one full. I imagined myself singing my own songs.

We all have a vision of ourselves when we close our eyes. For me it oscillates between early-morning writing or photo editing over coffee in my home office and sharing a stage with someone truly fantastic.

It’s important to remember, though, that these visions aren’t necessarily our fates. Becoming the people — the artists — we believe we’re meant to be takes hard work and discipline. Sometimes we have to make difficult decisions, and sometimes we have to be brave. It takes more than the feeling of need we write down in our journals.

So what ever came of my dream of singing my own songs onstage? I still fear that my songs won’t be good or someone will tell me I can’t sing. Even though I’d still love to be cast in a play, I fear it’s too late to learn the acting skills I’d need.

leapRecently, I attended a wedding with a good friend who loves to dance. I always experience a bit of anxiety around the dancing portion of a wedding because, as I told my friend, I’m a pretty poor dancer. In response to this she told me “the only way to be a bad dancer is to care. If you don’t care, you can’t be bad.” There’s probably a limit to this theory, but the difference between holding back and going for it wholeheartedly is what separates greatness from mediocrity.

In the most recent season of So You Think You Can Dance, Melanie (who went on to win) did a dance with all-star Neil that had everyone talking about that leap — how she abandoned all fear and lept what seemed like the entire length of the stage into Neil’s arms.

Every artist can learn from that leap. Not just the decisive moment, allowing ourselves to fall from the precipice and abandon ourselves to our dreams, but the discipline it takes to get to the edge in the first place. You don’t start with the leap. You start with an exaggerated step, then keep increasing the distance as you get stronger and braver. Achieving that moment — the one that gives everyone chills — requires discipline, dedication, and a willingness to make tough choices to make and keep your work a top priority. Then it requires a lot of faith and a big leap.

As we get older, we risk holding back more, putting more into the “should haves” list. Don’t do that. Take advantage of the fact that you only become more comfortable with yourself as years go by and start taking more risks. Remember you will only fail if you get care too much what you look like.

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