This episode explores the frustrations of procrastination and task management, particularly when relying on others for reminders. It delves into the emotional cycle of resentment that builds between individuals and suggests a ‘visit-based’ approach to break free from the endless creation of incomplete tasks. Instead of arguing with emotions, the episode advocates for simply being present with tasks to foster productivity and reduce resentment, ultimately aiming for more aligned and harmonious task completion. The episode concludes with a piece of music titled ‘Wooded Hills’ in D Minor.

00:00 Avoiding a Taskmaster

01:45 The Sisyphean Struggle: Why Organizing Feels Impossible with ADHD

02:46 The Trap of Outsourcing Agency: “Can You Remind Me…?” and the Taskmaster Effect

04:34 Beyond “Feeling Like It”

05:22 Wooded Hills

Transcript

Picture this: feeling scattered, surrounded by a sea of sticky notes. You ask a friend to remind you to do that one important thing, but when they actually do, you find yourself saying, “well, not now. I’m busy.” Suddenly you’re both caught in this cycle of frustration and resentment each waiting for the other to make the next move.

So what’s going on here?

 

The Sisyphean Struggle: Why Organizing Feels Impossible with ADHD

“Hey, can you remind me to do that thing?”

Trying to do the dishes, getting the report done, making that important call, it can all feel like some Sisyphean task, seeing the world around us full of incomplete projects. Scribbles on the calendar, post-it notes, all trying to yell past each other as they turn to some vague yellow sea.

It’s a rare thing for those stars to align. But when they do, you’re in it. Well, that is until you’re either done or exhausted. And either way, chaos returns as inevitable as it is in our world.

So you might reason, you know what?

If something’s important enough, it’ll find me.

But when those things arrive, we still not only have some sense of inability, we have that injured sense of agency described in episode nine.

When the important thing shows up, unless it’s shiny or on fire, some part of us might just refuse lay down and say No, I don’t wanna, I can’t be bothered. Many other possibilities.

The Trap of Outsourcing Agency: “Can You Remind Me…?” and the Taskmaster Effect

Then we can have this idea. What if I ask someone to help me, a friend, a loved one.

Hey, can you remind me about whatever it is?

But then when it comes time for that, someone else to say, Hey, what if you do that thing Now? We might just say,

“well, not now. I’m busy, or I’ll get to it.”

Something in us just isn’t quite feeling it. What happens here though is that we’ve just thrown the ball back at the other person who now continues to hold the task. Both you and they have now colluded to create a task master.

Worse yet this new task master is now in a position of having to read our mind better than we even know it ourselves.

They have to target this often impossible place where we’d feel like it, where our own conscious and unconscious worlds and stars would align in ways that we ourselves don’t even know. These positions create resentment. Both in ourselves as we begin to feel them as harassing us and in them who feel that they have to harass us.

Whether boss, spouse, parent, child, friend, or otherwise, any relationship- this can happen sadly, often in our most vital relationships. This resentment can build. And importantly resentment’s a particularly insidious emotion. Much of it is unconscious. We may try to suppress it because after all, they often love care for feel dependent on us or us on them.

How is it that I can feel so angry?

How is it they can feel so angry with me?

I shouldn’t feel this way.

Well, making these arguments, I mean, how often has that strategy of arguing with these emotions ever worked for you?

Beyond “Feeling Like It”

The benefit of a visit based approach as I’ve gotten into in episode four, is that we don’t need to feel like it to be there.

We can simply be, be at the materials, be at the place. It’s in our being there, let’s say at the dishes, where we might decide to nudge something forward, we might nudge another one forward and get on a roll perhaps, or maybe we stop.

And then if we’re not done, we can always create this invite for ourselves for another future visit where we would make the same attempt. By making a visit, we begin to create the very conditions we need for those stars to align.

As you improve your abilities to take greater and greater charge of your calendar, your tasks, and yourself, you remove these seen and sometimes unseen burdens on your relationships.

And what can that do other than improve those relationships?

Untangling these enmeshments are by no means easy.

That can only happen as we learn how we can trust ourselves, a genuine trust. How can we develop the relationships between our past, present, and future selves often embodied in these markings on the calendar, in our tasks, and in the reminders we create for ourselves.

Can we rely on our future selves when we send them a message? But as these relationships rely on trust, they take time to be nurtured into some strength. There are many skills we can practice , and it can be overwhelming to think of practicing them.

But I do find that things tend to go well when we start small.

A Takeaway

So as a takeaway, if this seems to be a problem that you tend to get yourself into, maybe consider one small thing that you’ve somehow offloaded to someone else and consider, is there a way to bring that back to you? Something that you can do to remind yourself.

When that reminder comes, then can you honor that past self that created that reminder by showing up to the thing, showing up to the materials, showing up to the phone call, whatever it happens to be, being there and then deciding whatever it is you decide to do, respecting the present self that’s there.

Wooded Hills

  Piano has been a companion of mine for years now, and much like any relationship, I develop a sort of shorthand. Things said, get compressed, and more is said in smaller tones, words, phrases. Some of these pieces have developed almost an impressionistic vibe, like paintings that come together as a series of dots.

The notes themselves don’t seem to matter quite so much as what they carry together.

This piece is called Wooded Hills, and it’s written in D Minor for the most part. There are some moments where what would normally be B flat becomes a B major throwing things off a little, I suppose, or maybe that’s just me hears it that way.

In any case, I hope you enjoy it.