Ever find yourself wasting minutes, or even hours doom-scrolling through social media? That was me and it had been getting worse to the point where I felt like it was taking away from things I needed or wanted to be doing. Been working slowly on a few things for a while now but decided near the first of the new year to take some more active steps toward that goal. As such I have deactivated/suspended facebook and instagram accounts, removed both them, as well as tiktok and imgur, from my phone. My hope is that with less distractions readily at hand I’ll be more inclined to make my time usage more purposeful.
I saw a video recently of a recovering alcohol addict who said “the liquor wasn’t the problem…” and I believe he was right. What he was suggesting is that liquor was what he used to ‘cope’ or in reality ‘hide’ from the problem, but it wasn’t the underlying problem he had to deal with. He said in order to address his alcoholism, he first had to address the real problems in himself so he wouldn’t feel compelled to reach for the bottle. I’m certainly not making light of substance abuse or addiction in general, but parallels can be drawn. In my case my doom-scrolling isn’t the problem so much as the easier thing I fall back to. When I’m facing a new task I’m not already a master of or something I’ve struggled to figure out in the past, I let myself get anxious about it. Rather than facing that anxiety and pushing myself to do the thing I know I should be doing, I opt for an easier task that doesn’t ask anything of me in return.
Enough.
I keep saying I want to do x project or y thing but I’m not doing them. While I do face some limitations with my health, and I’m still working on a fixed income budget…time to get ‘me’ out of my own way!
I’ve just ordered a ‘pomodoro timer’ from A!. My intention is to utilize this tool to set realistic goals for focusing on a task, because the only thing worse for an AuDHD mind is being given no direction or constraint! lol I have a running list of projects/tasks/ideas I want to work on, things I want to teach myself, and things I know a little about but that I’d like to master. I’ll use that list and start creating time where I set the pomodoro for 30 minutes…or 60…and ‘lock in’ as the kids say…put on some music and dive in on just the one thing till the timer goes off, then I can take a break or move on to another ‘bite’ of time. Ever heard the old adage, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. I’m not calling this a resolution, not setting any particular time frame by which to accomplish any specific metric. I just want to focus on being more mindful and purposeful with my time.
Time shall tell!
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