Let it Slide-An ADHD Trait

If you or someone in your life is affected by ADHD, you are familiar with not following through, putting it off, or letting it slide. Whatever you call it, the bottom line is the same. Assignments, responsibilities, and promises are disregarded. They are put on the back burner and soon forgotten.

With or without ADHD, we can become a chronic procrastinator. Or, we can be off-and-on procrastinators, choosing to avoid certain tasks while openly accepting others. No matter how we rationalize our use of procrastination, it is a negative behavior that produces more stress in our life.

Procrastination is a damaging habit that is brought about by delay. We habitually tell ourselves that we will do it, or get to it later; but, not just now.

Making it worse for those with ADHD is the encoding problem. The request is often forgotten before it registers. It is common for the ADHD person to continuously have numerous thoughts, images and visualizations playing in their mind at the same time. This can be likened to watching and keeping track of the information on several computer screens at one time. Each one vying for your attention. Thus, the dilemma for encoding messagess that require a blank screen.

Fortunately, there are techniques that work for the procrastinator whether habit or ADHD induced.

One of the first steps is developing the ability to attend. To attend fully to one task or activity at a time is a powerful tool. Even when your job requires multi-tasking, full attention must be placed on each task while performing it. Once you learn to fully attend, your life will take a turn around. You will be more effective and stress will be reduced. You will not only accomplish more, but quality will improve as well.

If you have ADHD, you must take control of the numerous screens playing in your head. You have to be in charge of the images, the daydreaming, the video games, the music, the replaying of addictions, and thoughts based on negative emotions such as worry, and fear.

Establish an external trigger that will be the cue for a new, blank screen to appear to receive and incode messaages, directives, and assignments.

With practice you can achieve the ability to retrieve any one of the screens in your mind as needed. Use the following technique.

Actually pull the needed screen down in front of your face using your thumb and finger(s) as though reaching through your forehead and taking hold of it. When you pull this down, front and center, the remaining screens will disappear. They will continue to be closed out as long as you focus on the screen that you pulled down. If it disappears to rejoin the other images, reach in and pull it down again.

When using the above retrieval system, write necessary notes for the task. Attend and focus on placing the note in a pre-designated place. Keep focused until the physical placement is completed. This will avoid the frequent, "I just had it in my hand and now it's gone" mystery.

Set a specific amount of time in which you will devote to tasks that, for whatever reason, you would rather put off doing. Stick to it. Start with a short amount of time (20 minutes) and gradually increase it to an hour or more. This will soon end the procrastination of dreaded tasks.

Before you know, you will roll up your sleeves and tackle duties that you normally would set aside. You will experience the relief of getting them out of the way to enjoy those tasks that you love.

Give your procrastination habit a name. One that depicts its nature. The name could be fear, unsuredness, dislike, indecision, or something similar. It may be a person, place or thing in your life that instigated it. By doing this you can obtain useful insight that may lead to core issues behind your procrastination.

Last of all, do not be so hard on yourself. Stop beating yourself up over your procrastination. Be positive. At the end of the day, give yourself credit for what you accomplished rather than bemoaning what you left undone.

Congratulate yourself.

The items you used to let slide will soon appear on your list of accomplishments.