I’ll be musing about clutter, distractions and the importance of systems and routines in living your life as a practice, and I thought this cute story below would be a great set-up. I have no idea who wrote it. Enjoy.

Recently, I was diagnosed with Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder (A.A.A.D.D.).
This is how it manifests:
I decide to water my garden.

As I turn on the hose in the driveway, I look over at my car and decide it needs washing. As I start toward the garage, I notice mail on the porch table that I brought up from the mail box earlier. I decide to go through the mail before I wash the car.

I lay my car keys on the table, put the junk mail in the garbage can under the table, and notice that the can is full. So, I decide to put the bills back on the table and take out the garbage first.

But then I think, since I’m going to be near the mailbox when I take out the garbage anyway, I may as well pay the bills first. I take my check book off the table, and see that there is only 1 check left. My extra checks are in my desk in the study, so I go inside the house to my desk where I find the can of Coke I’d been drinking.

I’m going to look for my checks, but first I need to push the Coke aside so that I don’t accidentally knock it over. The Coke is getting warm, and I decide to put it in the refrigerator to keep it cold. As I head toward the kitchen with the Coke, a vase of flowers on the counter catches my eye — they need water.

I put the Coke on the counter and discover my reading glasses that I’ve been searching for all morning. I decide I better put them back on my desk, but first I’m going to water the flowers.

I set the glasses back down on the counter, fill a container with water and suddenly spot the TV remote. Someone left it on the kitchen table. I realize that tonight when we go to watch TV, I’ll be looking for the remote, but I won’t remember that it’s on the kitchen table, so I decide to put it back in the den where it belongs, but first I’ll water the flowers.

I pour some water in the flowers, but quite a bit of it spills on the floor. So, I set the remote back on the table, get some towels and wipe up the spill. Then, I head down the hall trying to remember what I was planning to do. At the end of the day:

  1. The car isn’t washed,
  2. The bills aren’t paid,
  3. There is a warm can of Coke sitting on the counter,
  4. The flowers don’t have enough water, there is still only 1 check in my check book,
  5. I can’t find the remote,
  6. I can’t find my glasses,
  7. And I don’t remember what I did with the car keys.

Then, when I try to figure out why nothing got done today, I’m really baffled because I know I was busy all damn day, and I’m really tired.