Ten-Minute-Triage and GET-List

[sorcyress]

As always, the perpetual problem with everything I do is the moment something different happens.

(Frequently the something different is "partner comes to visit for a night". I would be _so effective at stuff if I were single, y'all! I just...literally have no idea what it's like to be single as an adult, I've only done it for a month and that was sixteen years ago.)

To back up, I am trying a new ToDo list set-up, because ~this time~ it will be the thing that ~actually works~. I have done it for three days, so prepare to never hear me mention it again ever.

But in the spirit of collecting ADHD brain games, have some details of how this one is deffo different and better and will actually work¹

• The first term I'm using to refer to this system is "Ten-Minute-Triage" and I'm trying to do thusly a few times a day. It's basically taking a few moments of mindfulness to think about what I Actually Need To Do in the next 1-5 hours, and writing down a few priorities for that timechunk.



• The other half is the "GET-List" which stands for "Gigantic Endless Todo". It has three tabs --one for me to put completed items so I can bask in the glow of having Done Things, one that is what it says on the tin and can get ANYTHING needs doing, no matter how minor, and one that I'm using to record my triage priorities.



• I'm also using Ten-Minute-Triage time to go through email, with my GET-List and calendar open, and archiving/dealing with as many of those emails as I can. Stuff I can't deal with right then get put on the GET-List or saved for later.



• The triage sheet has a "rewards" column, and when I was showing my therapist, she was pleased to note that most of the rewards were not actual rewards --because my brain really doesn't respond to that, because why wouldn't I just eat the chocolate anyways?-- but are things like "go into the rest of the evening guilt free". It's again with the stupid mindfulness thing.

Anyways, I've had two days where I actually managed to do all of my priorities, and then today where I...haven't. But as I alluded to in the beginning of this post, I technically set my priorities for this evening before I knew Austin was coming over early! And so while I made serious progress on 2/4, I only completed one of those, and the other two I didn't touch at all. I think I'm okay with that. Maybe I will find time in the next day or two to get to them? Certainly I'll try!

Part of the problem was my observation --shared by Austin, who is preparing to go to a seriously big conference in DC to present some stuff for TransitMatters in a few weeks-- that my fun hobby that is totally separate from my job actually involves a _lot_ of work and responsibility. I...I have a lot of dance deadlines in the next few months. Actually mostly just the next month.

I hope you have things that work for you and your brain, however its spice flows.

~Sor
MOOP!

1: To be clear, every once in a great while I come up with something that works. The Dailies Spreadsheet started in Feb of '21, with the "and you can earn a die if you do enough" part in Jan of '22, so that's 2-3 years. And then of course there's the really overwhelmingly "something that works" which is that I've missed 0.2% of the last 1800 days of writing at least 750words per 24-hour period. In case you're not up on your percentages, that's 1828/1832 days of writing since November 25th 2018.

Comments

[canyonwalker]

I use a few techniques similar to your Ten-Minute Triage. Even for a fairly neurotypical person it helps to organize one's thoughts and goals, the better to get stuff done, by writing them down. And occasionally JFDI-ing a small thing in 10 minutes or less to gain traction on a larger objective.