thinkythink

Music to Work By

In my last post, I mentioned putting some music on to have in the background while I was working. I thought I'd talk a little about which music works. Amazingly, this is yet another area where people have their shoulds. They tell you which music helps you to concentrate, and which is distracting, or that you should or should not use music while you're working. By now you know my perspective is this: Whatever works for you, is what works. Use whatever works for you. And from my experience, what works for people is different depending on who they are, as well as the circumstances they're in.

Right now I'm listening to some Brazilian music. My favorite Brazilian album to work by, or do much of anything by, is called São Paulo Confessions by Suba.  

For something a little more straight-ahead upbeat, I love this Quebecois band called Le Vent du Nord. I most often listen to their album Les Amants du Saint-Laurent . They even play the hurdy-gurdy.

If the downtempo edge of Sao Paulo Confessions works for you- and coincidentally, it seems to for a lot of my clients, I listen to this internet radio station called "Afternoon Nap," whose stream you can open by going to downtempo.org, and which, despite its name, doesn't put me to sleep- it only helps to lull the mental noise. 

But these are just some of the things that work for me. Music can put me to sleep, wake me up, depress me, distract me, or create the optimum bonus background stimulation to keep me focused. The right soundtrack depends on who you are and what's going on. It's not Mozart for everyone. A friend just mentioned she liked listening to loud music during childbirth. No, setting a tranquil scene doesn't do it for all of us. I'm keeping that in mind as I assemble possible playlists for my empending effort. When I was in college, I listened to very loud music while I read stuff that was hard to concentrate on. Seriously loud music that I wouldn't recommend now. If I were going for the seriously hopping music, I'd go with something like They Might Be Giants. Or a few minutes of one of these awesome podcasts called Podrunner to kick-start myself.  As a bonus, DJ Steveboy's voice is so friendly, it makes me feel good about the human race just to realize he's put time into helping people to work out- or just work. He mixes each podcast with a specific bpm, and I wonder if Steve ever realized  his beats per minute would help anyone to simply concentrate on their paperwork?

 

Pregnant malfunctioning: I've set a timer for this one.

I've set a timer to write this post. Actually, since I'm writing on my husband's computer, I just installed a google app to time me for twenty minutes. Setting a timer is one of those magic tricks to keep us on task. As I've explained in earlier posts, off my meds, pregnant, my brain is working differently- and it's not entirely predictable how it works. This past week or so, I've experienced something I only remember from years and years ago: it's a particular brand of not getting engaged in anything at all. Here's how it works: there are any number of projects and just maintenance stuff, in the personal as well as business realm, that normally I could dump myself into when I'm tired or spacey. Completing them gives me increased focus, and a sense of accomplishment. For me those things can include:

• doing some laundry
• cleaning one room
• going through a stack of mail/bills
• answering some e-mails

I think the key is that these things are tangible, even if "circular" (ie things that are never completed, because they just need to keep happening), and once I start, my brain doesn't have to do much to keep going, kind of like playing solitaire.

Why isn't it working right now? I know that on a neurobiological level, something is going on that's different, but I don't know exactly what. I do know that I'm experiencing this:
I have a lot of projects I want to do, and tasks to complete. None of them are reaching out and grabbing me. None of them feel easier to do than others (because I'm physically, well, pregnant). None of them is appealing to my sense of gratification- or sense of possibility. Here's another trick that often helps me to pick something to do:

• What will have a good impact, in terms of functioning now, or how I feel by getting it done?

In other words, what's something I can do that would be a matter of being nice to me- like tidying up, which gives me a clearer mind and a more pleasant foundation to work from. Or, like a project that would feel great to have done, or to finally have off the list. In order to answer that question, first I must ask myself:

• How am I doing right now? How much energy do I have, mentally and physically?

And then I can use that to help inform my choices.

But hey, I said none of that was really working right now. So I've set a timer to do something I really do like, something I was ready to do, but still had trouble engaging in. I set the attention stage. Today's elements include:

• Turning on all the lights in my office. This helps me feel awake.
• Playing some music on my computer.
• Wearing comfortable clothing.
• Making the temperature in my office reasonable (failed today folks, because of the nasty humidity here, but I did my best)
• Making sure I've gone to the bathroom, eaten and had something to drink.
• Not trying to do everything I wanted to do first, in this case, I gave up on taking a walk first, because that would be one thing too many.
• Setting a countdown timer for 20 minutes. This is a period that feels doable, and I may be so into it when the timer goes off that I keep going. But remember: if nothing gets done in that time, the agreement was only to do my best during that time.

The elements for you depend on what helps. Listen to yourself to see when you're just putting it off, and setting the timer and saying "go" will do more for you than anything else, or if there's something you need to take care of. A bunch of timed activities might work great- like 20 minutes at your desk, then 10 minutes of cleaning (the desk if you're at the office, anything if you're at home.), or a half-hour workout or walk. Or you might get right on into your work with the help of the magic timer. I say magic, because it's weird that it helps so much. It's the homunculus that keeps track of focus for you right then, and you can just go. I guess it worked for me today!

Taking on the Cult of Cheerfulness

Ah, what a relief to read articles about people thinking my way about things- trying to relieve us all of the burden and patronizing attitude that we should just feel better about things, so they'll be better.

In ADD land, we talk a lot about how ADD is a way of being, a different way of being, and not necessarily a bad thing. There are lots of good things about it. Then I've had clients come to me who feel frustrated that they can't embrace its goodness- because it is frustrating and painful to deal with their ADD.

I teach them a mantra of sorts:
"it sucks."

So stab me with the cult of cheerfulness. If we just think about the half-fullness, the wonder of it all, good things will come of it. To flip that over, what we're hearing is, if you don't choose to be happy and optimistic and notice the good stuff, it's your fault that you're unhappy and a failure. So you've now saddled us all up with a huge burden. Be happy or you're a failure.

My tip: if something sucks, name it. Name it as a fact that it sucks. Notice that it sucks.

This isn't the same as dwelling, ruminating, or self-pitying. Ok, sometimes there's some of this involved, but the point is not that I'm recommending you dig yourself a mud pit and wallow in it, unless that's helpful of course. I am recommending that you stop blaming yourself for feeling bad about things that aren't so pleasant in life.

This works to help people just get where they're at, and accept that it's hard. And accept that they didn't make it that way. And guess what: certain things do suck. What I've found is that a lot of people are in pain, a lot of people have dealt with a lot of crap, misunderstanding, frustration, and adversity-- and spent a lot of time blaming themselves. The idea that we should always be positive just perpetuates that. It makes it easier for the people who aren't having such a rotten time to be comfortable with the pain of people who are. It makes it easier to disguise the suckiness of things for people.

Telling me to just be happy, and to just focus on the good stuff, is dishonest and mean, whether so intended or not.

web apps for students- also for us

Check out this roundup of web apps for students over at read/write web!
Try some note-taking or mindmapping apps for me and tell me how they work for you!

Pregnant Functioning

The most strenuous executive function challenge I think, is when I'm trying to make a decision but I've got this tree going with many many branches, all apparently equally valid, and I'm just sitting there trying to reason my way into flipping a switch to go down one of them. But I can't. The switch-flipper has gone out to lunch, and I keep trying to find a way to pick one.

Taking medication for ADHD has helped me in the past to bring that switch-flipper back to the office, at least a lot of the time. It has also helped me to notice that the darling was AWOL in the first place, so I could stop fighting so hard and get a bit more Zen about the situation.

I'm not taking meds now because I'm pregnant. Lots of people say that their ADHD seems to be less of a problem during pregnancy. There are clearly hormonal differences to help out- to start with, there's hormonal stability, and the usual instability can much with cognition in fun and exciting ways. Regardless of what's going on specifically, I get to experiment with (a) not being on meds and (b) a different hormonal state. I feel like a little mental experiment here- it reminds me of studying psycholinguistics. We'd look at someone with some injury to the brain and see which bits of language they still had- to try to understand what kinds of units it comes in. Like some people will lose the ability to make grammatical sentences, yet be able to come with all kinds of words. Or come up with words, but they come up with the wrong words for things.

Since becoming pregnant, my ADHD isn't bugging me as much in general, but certain aspects of  executive function are nonexistent:  decision-making, whatever's required for doing crappy paperwork type stuff.

But it's different from pre-medication difficulty. I was wondering this morning if it's because I'm so sleepy half the time, but that can't really be it; in my usual non-gestational state, it's precisely when I'm tired that my brain has those arguments with itself. In contrast to that experience, my brain is pretty darned quiet a lot of the time. It's really peaceful in here. So while I've got my preggo fatigue and need for ridiculous amounts of sleep, the struggle isn't nearly so prevalent.

I became aware of this the other day when I had a few hours of the old struggle. Peter (husband) was away for work, so it was just me and the grey matter for a couple days, especially given that being so sleepy in general, I'm not so keen on running out and doing loads of "fun" things with people some days. Anyhow, I wanted to get some errands done and I finally got myself in the car when the invasion came in full. I had to pull over around the corner from my house and have a chat with myself, because I couldn't decide what order I was going to do things in and whether I really ought to be going to the store right now. I was flooded with it.

Now I realize that this hasn't happened so much since I've been pregnant at all. And even when it did, I just had the chat with myself and off I went to the store. On the most hideous of days in the past, I'd give up, go home, and have a nap, knowing that the grocery store would be an exhausting stream of stimulation and decisions I wouldn't be able to make. (This is a strategy I recommend, ie giving up if it's a bad time. There's enough to exhaust yourself with without the ineffective errand.)

But in general my mind doesn't even go to that place of fight and push. I may know I'm not getting around to things because I'm tired, and that may kinda bug me or disappoint me. I may not get to the bills and paperwork. But I am also not so concerned about it.Oh and believe me, I detest it when I here people being told to just not be so worried about things or to just think less. It don't work that way. I guess it's a gift of my pregnancy that even while I may be impotent on the decision-making front, I'm not fighting against the situation, either.