Susan Pinsky - Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 3rd Edition: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized

Not surprisingly, my jobs as a professional organizer and as the parent of an ADHD child soon began to overlap. Based on what I was learning about ADHD, I was able to use my expertise as a professional organizer to weigh, adopt, reject, or modify organizational systems that could help my daughter, and I was shocked to realize that many of the systems I had heretofore instituted to help her stay organized were instead sabotaging her ability to function. Furthermore, my newfound knowledge of ADHD revealed that many of my chronically disorganized clientsand sometimes a clients chronically disorganized spouse or childwere exhibiting what I knew to be ADHD behaviors and symptoms. I also discovered that the organizing systems I was using at home to assist my daughter were far more effective in the homes of these clients than the standard values, methods, and tricks of the trade I had previously employed. Over time, I was able to develop a clear methodology that responded to the specific needs of someone with ADHD, and soon my client base drew heavily from that community.

Our society is not designed for people with ADHD. The standard organizational systems we use, for them are often unhelpful at best and actively detrimental at worst. Over the course of my life and career, I have found that by reexamining societal values surrounding organization and identifying those that are counterproductive we can tailor an organizational system that supports people with ADHD instead of frustrating and hindering them. By using a new lens to adjust the very definition of organization, we can modify organizational systems appropriately for an ADHD person. These methods can help those with ADHD organize their actual life and home, not the life or home society expects them to inhabit.

This book is geared toward anyone whose life and home are affected by ADHD, which includes both those with ADHD and their family members whose help and systems are not always, well, helping. It addresses those ADHD symptoms that stand in the way of organizingimpulsivity, distractibility, perfectionism, memory lapses, and procrastinationbut it also calls on the common strengths of those with ADHDenthusiasm, intelligence, ingenuity, and creativityto aid in the search for a more organized life.

A word of warning though: these methods are not typical. They reject many worthy values while encouraging a slap-dash, get-it-done style that might feel very alien. But while our even better is the enemy of good enough mantra may seem shocking; it gets the job done. Or as one witty reader put it, If something is worth doing, its worth doing badly, because at least it is done!

A NOTE ABOUT THIS METHOD AND EDITION

The ADHD method of organizing relies on efficiency above all other values; because organizational systems that require spending a lot of time getting prepared for events that may not even occur (protecting against possible but unlikely misfortune, creating multiple back-ups) and generally making everything beautiful or perfect are disastrous for a population that has limited focus for maintenance tasks.

But I am going to tell you a secret: Since the original edition of this book came outnay, even before it was publishedI had started using these get-it-done fast and sufficiently (not painstakingly and perfectly) ADHD-appropriate methods with all my clients, whether they had ADHD or not, and with every family member, including me in my own home. It turns out that any home that struggles with organization, whether because of illness, lack of time, multiple children, working parents, tight space, excess clutter, or an overcommitted schedule (and what home doesnt have at least one of these?) should rely on a system that gets things done efficiently, with the least amount of time and effort expended. And even those who are organized can benefit from further streamlining their systems. After all, how many people really want to spend their time doing chores? I dont.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This volume is divided into two distinct sections: , feel free to flip ahead and find an organizational project that suits your needs. With each project you complete, my hope is that youll have gained enough confidence in your organizing abilities to tackle yet another task until youre well on your way to a happy, harmonious, and more organized life.