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Treating ADHD Blog

Heal Thyself

Archives: October 2008

Save Your Work-A Handy Tip

It is better to lose your focus than your hard work--a tip for ADHD Microsoft Word users.

So maybe you're not like me. Maybe you don't mind feeling that you don't have the brains God gave a katydid. Maybe you have so much free time that you like to do things twice, even if there is no possible benefit in doing so. Maybe self-loathing is, to you, as appealing as a dry martini. If so, stop reading here. Go cut your toenails. If that's not the case, perhaps you can profit from today's tale of woe.

I got about three-quarters through a lengthy proofreading job yesterday. Part of my responsibility is to compile a running list of queries and suggestions that accompany the proofs when I return them to the publisher.

To make this simple, I developed a template on my computer. As I proof, I keep entering stuff that bothers or puzzles me in the template. This way, it's easy to correct and re-order my queries and I can present a nice, organized, legible document to the editor in charge of the project.

This morning, I opened the query sheet while most of my brain was still working on some other problems. Now, I've never taken the time to sort out what MS Word means when it opens a file that you've saved and has this whole dialogue about how it found previous versions of the document and should it save them and if so which ones or do you want to look at them later. Something like that. Without devoting a nano-second of thought to the issue, I clicked on something, and found myself looking at a blank—totally empty—tabula rasa—Word doc, as pristine as the polar cap must have been 3,000 years ago. Nothing, nada, zilch, niente.

To avoid this nightmare, which will result in my spending two hours this sunny afternoon reconstructing my query sheet, would have required hard-wiring one set of instructions in my brain.

1. Open Word
2. Hit function key F12.

That opens the "Save As" dialogue box. It refuses to allow you to proceed any further until you've named the new magnum opus and specified where you want to save it. After this you're golden. There will always be a way to access your work. If you blithely begin working without executing this simple procedure, you can find yourself where I sit this morning, sipping a cold cup of coffee and contemplating my stupidity.

This is not the worst scenario by the way. Sometimes I edit onscreen. A mistake such as this could result in the loss of a week's work, maybe more. I get sick just thinking about it.

F12. Got it?

You're welcome.

Have a nice afternoon.

Forget ADHD. Let's Talk Politics

Now is the time to concentrate all of our ability as citizens to focus on finding the truth and finding leaders who will lead

"Good evening, everyone - there is good news tonight."

That was the opening line of Gabriel Heatter's news broadcast - words which raised the morale of millions of Americans every night during the depths of the Second World War. You can only imagine that it was a far less cynical age. Can you imagine listening to… let me not name names, in the interest of objectivity…anyone on the radio or television today, and finding solace or enlightenment or inspiration in their words? Maybe Alan Shore, the mercurial character so brilliantly played by James Spader on Boston Legal. But where is Murrow? Sevaried? Collingwood? Trout? Reasoner—the literate, intelligent, courageous journalists I grew up listening to?

I'll tell you where. Spinning in their damn graves.

There is no good news tonight. We have watched, mesmerized, greedy, craven—and, therefore, complicit—as our beloved nation has been brought to its knees by spineless politicians, mute clerics, compromised journalists, reptilian lobbyists and rapacious businessmen. An acquaintance of mine who has a working knowledge of finance summed up the freefall on Wall Street in three words, "Arrogance. Greed. Stupidity."

We are destitute, disspirited, unprincipled.

We are pathetic.

Someplace, I think in one of the Patrick O'Brien novels, a character speaks a line which I can only paraphrase, to the effect that "Contemplation of one's impending death has a wonderfully clarifying effect upon one's mind."

That's where we are now, regardless of whether the odious popinjays in Washington pass the bailout or not: at the edge of the abyss. Only a fool could fail to recognize that truth. All the safety nets have rotted away.

We are impaired; we are not incapacitated. Now is the time to concentrate all of our ability as citizens, to focus on finding the truth, on finding leaders who will lead, on finding courage and self-respect and on finding the intelligence to refuse to accept any more of the cheap, meretricious malarkey we're fed every day of our lives. Big Pharma, the Pentagon, Wall Street, Big Oil, the White House, even (biting the hand that feeds him) the Press—take your pick—all have the same basic business model: Making Sure That I've Got Mine.

The big issues are unmistakable: ending this crippling, immoral, impoverishing series of for-profit wars, educating our populace, bringing universal health care to our country, stopping global warming and the destruction of our oceans and strengthening the constitutionally guaranteed rights that are our most precious birthright.

Walter Cronkite, who became, by dint of his forthrightness, impartiality and intelligence,"Walter Cronkite, the most trusted man in America" would end his shows, "...And that's the way it is."

We need to find out how it is, what it is and why it's that way, and do something about it, right now, before it's too late. We may never regain the stature we once had among the nations of the world. So be it. Let us at the very least try to regain the stature we once had—in our own eyes—as honest men and women, as good parents, as productive workers, as citizens.

The ADHD Time Frame

How do ADHDans enforce a sense of urgency and concentration in situations which do not possess inherent time and quality demands?

One thing about cooking professionally, which I imagine I've mentioned before, is that it's right up there with surgery and appellate pleadings as non-stop, alternative-free, piss-in-a-bottle, tie-your-nerves-up-in-sheepshanks activities. All three often involve confrontations between speed and accuracy, two masters which a man involved in those professions must serve simultaneously, adages to the contrary.

It may be counter-intuitive to outsiders, but we know that these are situations in which we can excel. It's the alternative-free part that makes it work. You must stay focused on the task at hand, or you'll fail entirely. Not "coulda' done better." Not "maybe next time." Burning food, botching surgery, having your client remanded are zero-sum games. You did it right or you didn't.

The situations where ADHDans come a cropper (whatever that really means) are those in which we have ample time to dawdle, consider possibilities, pursue origins and revamp the Yankee's starting rotation for '09. You know, and I know, that given this leisure we'll spend hours confirming C. Northcote Parkinson's Law, "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." C. Northcote clearly wasn't familiar with ADHDans, or he'd have amended his dictum to "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion unless you suffer from ADHD in which case increase the time actually consumed by a factor of three."

Clearly, the question resolves itself into the form, "How do we enforce the same sense of urgency and concentration in situations which do not possess such inherent time and quality demands?"

OK. I've defined the problem. That's my job.

Let me know when you've got some good answers for me.

Pronto.

Treating ADHD with Jazz

Forget the Adderall. Check out Miles, Satchmo, Trane, Monk, Pres and Duke.

Considering how I've bemoaned my inability to stay focused on a piece of music, particularly lyric-less music, it seems reasonable to offer, gnomically, some exceptions that prove the rule.

Sunday, September 28, was the anniversary of the death of Miles Dewey Davis III. Miles, of course, is not a discovery of mine, some half-forgotten musical giant like Lucky Thompson. He is, along with Satchmo, Trane, Monk, Pres and Duke, one of the monomial giants. (Note to self: find out how much a plot at Woodlawn Cemetery would cost. Nice place to wind up, since Miles and Duke, inter alia, are residents.)

But the music, Bill— have you forgotten the music already?

Nope. As a matter of fact, I recently paid $2.99 to Verizon for the privilege of downloading the first few bars of "Freddie the Freeloader" because I couldn't stand any more of the generic ringtones, and couldn't find any Monk that I liked.

So, then here is what you should hear. Clear your bean and relax. Give your corpus callossum a vacation. Indulge, if you will; god knows that Miles, cynic, addict, s.o.b and genius, indulged, widely and incessantly.

Actually, you can do it with one album, possibly the best jazz album ever recorded, Kind of Blue (1958). If you're like me, you will have little difficulty "understanding" the music. You won't drift away. The possibility of hope extends its hand. On piano, Bill Evans. "So What" and "All Blues." Pure uncut brain candy. This is the stuff that, once you've heard it a few times, will allow you to identify Miles' music across a crowded room.

My second favorite is the post-epiphanic Bitches Brew (1976), which followed Miles' introduction to Jimi and Sly (anyone who thinks "Sly" refers to Stallone should leave the room posthaste and get a funk infusion). This album has cuts that not only keep you tuned in and turned on while you're listening, but implant themselves in your head forever. I can't play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" (especially since I keep thinking about the perverse subtext) on any instrument, and can barely whistle. But I can play, intracranially, passages of "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" at will. Or in Will. If you will.

Forget the Adderall for a while. Check it out.