I'll have you know my inbox is completely clean. Because I spent part of a day this week cleaning up six months worth of emails. Because I was procrastinating doing something I wanted to do less than clean up my inbox.
But you get to check off one of those items on your long list of todos… if you think about it.
I'm also using a to don't list. Whenever I get a crazy idea and think "why not?" I pull out my to don't list and make sure I haven't already banned myself from that behavior.
Yes!
To Don't
🔲 Stay up til 4am
🔲 Watch war movies
🔲 Go to bed without showering
🔲 Hook up with ex that was crazy in bed
🔲 Skip my prescribed meds
🔲 Listen to, believe, or take personal anything from [certain individuals]
I just want to say that this is fucking genius.
In the same way I can't memorize a "to do" list, I can't perfectly recall what not to do either. It's so simple.
the only thing I don't do is lose my earbuds. i couldn't possibly live without music every day on my walks to work. i always keep them in my backpack.
Holy Fucksnacks. See those badges drive me bonkers, so I am compelled to mark everything as read when I get too triggered.
Same. Having badges constantly populated basically ensures that I'm gonna miss something important. But once it gets to 4 digits on email... yeah there's no catching up without mass deletion. And you don't want to delete something important.
There is. You need to filter your e-mails by sender then select all but ones you might inspect. This way you may be able to delete 2000 mails within half an hour. After that you start at the top and shortly review everthing left. You will need a keyboard to be fast. E.g. a better mail user agent (MUA).
I started a habit of occasionally archiving all my emails to achieve an empty (or nearly empty) inbox.
Spending money on projects you either won’t ever do, or you won’t start for at least a year, so the materials sit around collecting dust.
Fun fact: I once was going to build this kick-ass workbench/cabinet for my garage. I bought the cabinet-grade plywood and lean backing, as well as the very expensive soft-closing drawer slides. That was probably 5 years ago, I think? I still haven’t opened the UPS package of drawer slides.
The ceiling fans in my garage from shortly after moving in can commiserate with your workbench-to-be.
I actually have 5 pairs of ear buds rn, pixel buds, soundcore, Sony, and 2 Jlabs so that if i lose one, I can soon find a different one as i pray to find the one i lost soon (aka it appears out of nowhere), oh, and impulse spending... 😅 How you think i got all of those earbuds?
IMO minimalism is an amazing tool for people with shit attentiveness, that removes many distractions and places where things can get lost into. And this might just be me, but i find that it has helped me flip the spending habits 180°, so i'm if anything too reticent to spend money.
Some other things that help me is using the P!n app on android (it's available on f-droid, no clue about gplay store) to keep a persistent notification at the top of the list, so important to-do items are constantly shoved right into my face.
I make ample use of the calendar app with default reminders set to 1hr/30m/10m before the event so i have plenty of time to prepare myself and yet won't forget about it.
The To Do list! I knew I was forgetting something!
...eh I'll get around to it eventually.
The to do list is a black hole. I remember to add things about 50% of the time, and forget to check the list ever again 100% of the time.
I have a whole collection of to-do lists! One for every conceivable situation. The only lists that ever get checked off are grocery lists, and even then I get home and realise I've forgotten something.
I was just wondering the other day, is the LD50 of caffeine different for us than for the norms?
It is. Unmedicated I can have a full cup of coffee an hour before bed and still sleep like a baby
that's not what LD50 means, LD50 is the dose that kills half of the population when exposed to it.
You can't just go by the dose that causes an obvious effect to estimate the LD50, assuming that you need a higher dose for it to be lethal is a terrible idea.
I had this same problem with email my entire life, and I found a good solution to it. I turned it into an email service:
https://sciactive.com/2023/07/17/the-best-email-for-those-who-struggle-with-organization/
I sometimes wonder since I was the introverted kid when I was young and some wierdisms I have but I certainly don't impulse spend. quite the opposite.
Not all people with ADHD show the exact same behaviours. Executive dysfunction is the key one. If you find yourself switching between getting lost in tasks, unable to change what you are doing even when you know you should and being unable to focus on tasks, constantly having your focus jump between different things, that is the core symptom of ADHD.
yeah its a bit hard to say as I am way older now and I did sorta have that but because of the negative effects I have a lot of things I did. during college I could not start a book to close to the semester lest I not do my assigned readings and I have a host of ways of managing tasks and ways of brinigng myself back on them which is really about repetition of review of them. I don't know how much I do is typical of coping with life most folks do or if it was coping for a particular way I am. Likely with everyone its a bit of both.
that was before other media could hold a candle to it to but yeah starting a good book before a semester was a death sentence for my grades.
also important to note that neurodivergence diagnoses are generally based on you meeting something like 6 out of 8 criteria, and that there's a significant overlap between the symptoms between people with varying diagnoses.
I honestly don't really like the way we handle it, i much prefer simply grouping it all into a big bag of neurodivergence and talking about the specific symptoms and whether they negatively affect you.
Using cash instead of cards helps.
I keep my cards at home except for when I'm going to the ATM at the bank to take cash and then I keep extra cash at home and use a credit card only for online stuff.
You spend a lot less money when you actually have to take it out.
I carry a credit card if I'm traveling for emergencies or if there are places that require a card.
i make a point of never saving my debit card details on my devices for this reason, if i'm going to buy something online it better be worth me pulling the card out of my wallet and entering the numbers manually.
I'm still surprised I haven't lost my earbuds yet…
Maybe it's because I'm paranoid about bot loosing them…