Ways to organise life - a work in progress

I have tried and broken every system (paper, digital, apps, human) that I have tried in my attempt to organise my life.

Why keep trying? 

Because I need a way to keep tabs on all the areas of life to prevent myself being overwhelmed, losing things and burning out. 

Why do I keep breaking systems?

I'm neurodivergent. I am unique in my experience of neurodivergence (we all are). As I understand how my brain categorises, processes and observes/creates patterns I am starting to see why I break systems designed for other people using other people's ways of categorising, processing and making sense of things. 

Copyright is c/o Rachel Hughes, dotiau. Image created by her daughter

What is currently working for me?

I currently categorise tasks by type of thinking required. Anything about urgency or importance or area of life or length of task is secondary.

• Mull - reflective, creative work
• Schedule - big things that will require a block of time and some thought
• Do - tasks that require no thought (it's already be done) and everything is to hand.

Here's an example:

• Mull: how can I find a way to organise life that works with me rather than me forcing myself into it?
• Schedule: 'Work on being organised'
• Do: 1. Create new tags on Ayoa* for mull, schedule, do 2. Add tag to all tasks

I have just added a fourth category of thinking: pottering. More on that later.

Having added tags on Ayoa, it is easy to use the 'filter' to see only tasks with that tag. 

So if I'm in a particular mood or have scheduled time for a type of thinking, I can see just the options that need that type of thinking. 

Ayoa also has lighting flash and flag symbols I can use to give an indication of urgency/importance, so I've got that at a glance too. 

For me, doing one thinking type at a time works so much better than doing one project at a time. 

About pottering

This isn't a tag that can be attached to tasks or projects. It is a wonderful state of being where I have zero expectations of myself and I simply wander round the house or office doing bits that I feel like doing. I need to protect these times by scheduling nothing and having no deliberate purpose a few times a month. 

It's very relaxing and 'non-productive'. [The reality is that it is extremely non-productive in a non-linear and unfocused way. After a scheduled pottering time, I feel so relaxed and the next Friday 8.30am with the wonderful Hannah Retallick, I discover that I can update or archive a vast number of tasks on the Ayoa boards - without having tried or been intentional]

 *Ayoa is software designed by and for neurodivergent people. Well worth the outlay for Ayoa Ultimate in my experience. It is transforming my ability to be organised, plan and collaborate. I'm not sponsored by them (!) but they did grant me a free licence as I was trying to get started with NeuDICE CIC.   

Today I did not fail

Update on I will always fail

I have been continuing to fail for the last four years. 

I still spend a lot of time feeling vulnerable. Often it is because I am deliberately *making* myself vulnerable because I have enough privileges in life to make it less dangerous for me than it would be for many others. I have privileges like a great support network, strong personal faith, I'm White, my first language is English, I have had immense educational privileges. 

One of the ways I knowingly make myself vulnerable is when I choose to take something on knowing I will fail. I do it because each person who chips away at an issue brings the day closer when someone can tackle the issue and succeed. But it is difficult. At best, I feel like the fool in Shakespeare or the jester in the medieval court - someone not taken seriously or seen as a bit of a 'pet' or an eccentric but as a consequence is able to say things to someone in power that others could not safely say. At its hardest, I get sacked, marginalised, excluded and bad-mouthed as disruptive and difficult. And, being fair, both stories about me are true. I can be all those things. 

Last night, I had one of those moments where I realise how much burden I have carried over decades of being the difficult one, the fool, the distruptor. 

I received an email that almost broke me for a moment. And it wasn't one that added to the burden. It was one that made me aware of the accumulated burden because - for the first time - I felt fully seen and my role within a complex team genuinely valued. 

I hadn't expected the strong emotions - or as my occupational therapist and a friend with a younger child puts it 'big feelings'. My interoception and alexithymia are improving. I can't thank the NHS, friends and a book by Niamh Garvey enough for that. I can know recognise I am having a 'big feeling' and have tools to help me sit with the big feelings and gently explore what they may be and be curious about what made them such big feelings. That's another blog completely, one I haven't yet written. 

One tool I use is seeing if I can identify a time my body had a similar feeling. The only time my body had a similar feeling was when I won gold medal in the Welsh Open over-94kg* Olympic Weightlifting competition and stepped out to receive the medal. At that moment, I realised the burden I had carried all those years of traumatic school PE lessons and my scared, defient, bullied, eczema-covered, obese 12 year old self who had lied that she didn't care because she was a weightlifter. 

So today I am savouring the moment and feeling able to gently put to rest the stories of the past and add a new story. 

Today, I relax in knowing that, on this occasion, I did not fail.

* if you are curious, over 94kg is the athlete's weight, not the weight they lift. And an Open means people of any age from anywhere in the world can compete. I was 54 years old.