I’m talking about Executive Function problems or Demand Avoidance on some level.
While I don’t fit the PDA profile in terms of having aggressive reaction to demands, a certain amount of friction will discourage me from acting on reminders for attempting to form habits to help with organisation.
I’ll say something about my attempt to use the Bullet Journal technique, which I came across recently. It’s described here – and similar to many other organisational systems, it has quotes talking about it changing your life. These statements are off putting when you struggle to implement even a basic habit of any system, but I won’t get diverted from the main point…
The basic part of this is writing down any information that comes to you, by hand, in a notebook. The second element is actually looking at the notebook. Even with these apparently simple things, I have problems immediately.
With writing in the notebook, there is the problem of whether the book is nearby and if I’ve actually got a pen. In some cases I’ll have to go and find the notebook and find a pen. Yes, I could arrange things so the notebook has a pen attached and it’s in an accessible place, but the friction could be enough to sabotage the entire operation of Writing A Thing Down. When it came to actually looking what I’d written, I set a reminder. The problem was that again I might not be near the notebook and I kept dismissing the reminder, and then the reminder became like a nagging demand.
It’s a common thing I come back to with any life hack – it sounds good, but how the hell to I get myself to do it? Many times before I’ve come upon the friction which seems so intense when I’m trying to get myself from being primarily reactive and unreliable with things I’d like to do, to being more disciplined and actually getting a few Things done.
Returning to the notebook, the logistical physical issue of it not being possible to materialise the notebook in my hand has made Writing A Thing Down unreliable and not leading to Progress.
After thinking this through, I realise that a key factor I’m looking for is small friction reducing improvements that remove tiny psychological barriers. Software on computers or phones can have the same awkward barriers, make it a pain to record information or not give me the right view that allows me to make sense of the information or act on it.
One of the best things I’ve actually come across was in the Mac OS Calendar – a certain update allowed you to just type sentences to enter an appointment. This bypasses the need to fiddle with multiple data entry fields to describe the event, set the times and the reminders. Just today I was annoyed by the iPhone’s less slick entry method, where I have to fiddle with controls to get to a date a few months in the future. This can be enough to discourage me from putting a basic calendar entry in.
What I’ve also just discovered is that an app called Todoist, which was referenced on Zen Habits recently, has a similar data entry system, where you can write a short sentence to set up a task and set the time you want to do it, or if it’s a repeating task. Combined with the fact that I’m more likely to have my phone handy this might be a small breakthrough.
For some time I’ve thought there must be a way to create an app that does things exactly the right way for an Autistic person and this is one of those features. My theory is that finding these friction reducing techniques could be the thing we’re looking for – not whether we can make ourselves Do The Thing, but what exactly is making it hard, or demanding, without reverting to negative thoughts like “I should just be able to do it” or “everybody else seems to be able to make themselves go through lists of tasks” etc.
I imagine someone else can say these barriers I talk of are “silly”, but I have to not discount anything that might be hiding in the lower levels of “mind code” that are not considered in most organisational systems.