A bit more noodling on executive function

[wildeabandon]

I suddenly have an awful lot of it at the moment. I'm fairly sure that this is largely a result of having freed up all the capacity I was using being anxious about the thing that I'm no longer anxious about, but it does serve as a salutary reminder of just how much impact my emotional health has on my ability to get stuff done, and how much impact holding myself in a place of uncertainly has on my emotional health, even if it's not making me obviously miserable. Both things to remember next time I'm feeling less capable than I am at the moment.

I think I need to be a little bit more conscious about where I'm spending all these new spoons that I've got, as I'm sure this current blessed state won't last forever. At the moment a lot of them are going on paid work, and that's fine in the short term, as it's a very busy time, and staying on top of things makes me less anxious about that, which is something of a virtuous circle, but a lot of the other things in my life are more important to me than work, so I want to make sure they're getting their fair share. I'm working today, even though in theory I have Fridays off, but over the weekend I think I should do a bit of planning and prioritising.

On another note, harking back to the post I made a week or so ago about finding it difficult to switch from mindless phone poking even to doing other things I enjoy, one thing that seems to have been helping with that is trying to cultivate a habit of asking myself, "How long am I going to poke my phone for?" and more crucially "what am I going to do next?" A lot of the time the thing that is sucking me in to long periods of wasted time is the decision paralysis, rather than actually changing what I'm doing, so making the decision in advance helps quite a lot.

Comments

[atreic]

Oh, yes, I think you’re spot on about doing ‘I will spod for 15 minutes before I start on the report’ as a way out of accidentally losing endless time, and I hadn’t managed to articulate that that clearly to myself before! Interesting :-)

[mtbc]

To avoid paralysis I sometimes approach tasks semi-randomly as I notice or think of them, glad to be getting anything done and making overall progress. Though I do keep a shortlist of what seems more urgent - I currently have a list with a "no rush" subtitle for the items beyond a third of the way down - so I can scan that for ideas and to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

[juliet]

Oh that's a good idea (re "how long for" and "then what"); I will try that.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm glad you have some spare spoons at the moment!

I'm definitely going to try the 'how long' technique, thank you; I feel like giving myself a defined time of putting off making a decision in might help with actually making one afterwards.

[tenebrousphantom]

Although apparently logging in to things is challenging today...