We're now at Day FIVE of HiveBloPoMo. You can read more about it here. It's a worthy challenge for those who are regular bloggers, or trying to become regular bloggers.
Today's writing prompt was to create a "Market Friday" post but I was nowhere near a market and too far to make a special trip, so I'm gonna "free form" today, instead.
I Have a Short Little Span of Attention
What that "means" is that I am very easily distracted and sidetracked from what I sat down with the intention of doing/focusing on.
Modern-day "Mind Science" would like to declare that I "have ADHD" and potentially medicate me into a foggy oblivion, so I could start behaving like a nice little automaton.
I have fervently resisted this idea for most of my adult life — even though I acknowledge that I DO definitely have many of the characteristics of the ADHD diagnosis — choosing instead to self-manage the situation.
Because I do spend a lot of time "looking inwards," I am pretty tuned into my processes and am able to "observe myself" as my day unfolds.
Contrary to what many might think, the biggest challenge in being "concentration challenged" isn't really that I jump around a lot... but that I tend to "lose the thread" when I jump sidways.
For example: A viable idea for a blog post comes to me, and I can see the entire concept unfolding, from beginning to middle to end. So I sit down and start writing. And I really get into it. All is going well... and then there is suddenly a fly on my window, so I "jump sideways" to get rid of the fly because it is annoying me... and 60 seconds later, I am back to my blog post.
What's the big deal?
Where I stumble a lot is that I will most likely have "LOST the flow."
During the slight distraction to go dispense the fly, the groove I was in is pretty much gone, and what seemed like a fully developed idea is suddenly just foreign words on the screen.
In some many cases I will even have forgotten what the point I wanted to make was! And when that happens... I completely lose momentum, and might as well just scrap the original idea.
Expanding this oversimplified example a bit further, the "issue" I am always dealing with is that my thoughts tend to be extremely fleeting and I will often have completely forgotten a whole series of ideas I had... just a couple of minutes later!
Unless... I carry around little pieces of paper and immediately write down the ideas as they are occurring to me.
Hence my concept of "Pancake Creativity" because I so often have my best ideas while I am cooking breakfast and am FAR away from the computer.
One of the primary reasons I have managed to become relatively successful as a blogger is precisely that blog posts tend to be fairly short and easy to create.
The likelihood that I will be distracted in the course of writing a blog post is much lower than if I were writing an entire chapter in a book.
Often the best thing we can do is get a thorough understanding of our strengths and weaknesses, and then play into them, as much as possible!
Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend! See you again for the next one...
How about YOU? How is your concentration? Are you easily distracted? If you break away from something you're working on, is it easy for you to resume your trail? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT cross posted anywhere else!)
Created at 20211105 18:40 PDT
0393/1634
I so understand! Sometimes I forget the main idea even if I start writing the idea down immediately. I guess those are the deeper, fleeting thoughts. Maybe it's best not to pin them down.
Adhd medication does not make you a zombie or alter your personality, or make you dumb and slow. If any of those happen then you either have the wrong meds or the wrong dose.