What a Waste: My ADHD Procrastination Runs Rampant Again

Seriously – enough is enough! I waste so much time every day that I feel like I don’t ever sleep – but I don’t ever accomplish anything either. The classic ADHD conundrum.

Today I was supposed to: go to work (duh), do my laundry (I have at least 3 loads), mail my car insurance bill, clean up my room, outline my thoughts on a book I’m reviewing for ADDitude magazine, write a blog, and go to bed at a decent hour since I couldn’t fall asleep until 12:30am yesterday.

It’s 11:15pm and this is what I’ve actually done: I went to work (yay!), I came home, went upstairs to change into my sweats and ended up reading a book for an hour. After dinner I looked for tickets to upcoming Celtics basketball games with my brother. At about 9pm I decided to do laundry; it took 20 minutes to sort the lights and darks, but one load finally got in the wash. While I was waiting to put it into the dryer I should have cleaned up my room, or made notes on the book – but do you think I did that? Of course not.

Instead I became mesmerized by iGoogle. My homepage was always Google, but I never bothered to customize the theme, add my zip code for the weather, or select which applications I wanted on my homepage. But because I had something else to do it suddenly became imperative that I customize my iGoogle right away. Well, my homepage now has pictures of a beautiful beach (where I wish I was; instead of in this feels-like-12-degrees freezing rain every day), and it tells me exactly how cold and windy it will be for the rest of the week (nothing above 31 degrees).

Now, I’m exhausted and aggravated at myself. Why do I do this to myself every day? In the morning I think of all the things I’m going to accomplish; I even make lists and put endless reminders on post-its all around my room. It’s not like I forget that I have things to do – I just don’t actually start them. I am the Queen of Procrastination.

The worst thing about ADHD (to me) is that if someone asked me: "If you wanted to get the laundry done and mail your bill, and clean your room then why didn’t you do it?" I wouldn’t be able to explain it. I honestly don’t know why I didn’t get things done – I just didn’t. I hope other people have the same problem; because I’m not sure I’m explaining myself well even now. I could say that I’m resolving to do better tomorrow – but I do that every night as I crawl into bed close to (or after) midnight.

Again – I can’t think of anything witty to end with. I guess the funny side of my brain doesn’t function well on 5 hours of sleep a night.