#doom boxes

Here's an executive function prompt for those who put things into piles and boxes to get them out of the way, and struggle to 'deal with' them until calamity approaches (or has already passed).

It can be hard to stop viewing them as boxes of indecision and anxiety or piles of demands and decisions, but it's good to go through your doom boxes and paper piles from time to time.

Sometimes, there's time sensitive stuff hiding in there, because you thought you were going to handle that particular pile soon, and then you forgot about it. Sometimes there are things you are more easily able to find a proper home for than you were when you put them into the heap. Sometimes decision-making is just easier for some reason. Sometimes you can separate one big mess of a box into several smaller boxes with themes for what's inside them. Sometimes you can take many small scattered piles and consolidate them into a few organized piles.

It's okay if you still have piles and boxes afterward. The important part is looking through them every now and then, refamiliarizing yourself with what's in them, and deciding what, if anything, you will take some sort of action on at this point in time.

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I realize that 'instead of dreading your doom piles, try looking through them' sounds horrifically wrong. But the larger the doom piles and doom boxes get, the more scattered they get, the larger and more scattered the dread gets. There's still dread in actively going through the stuff, of course. But (for some people) it can get less dreadful if you do it more often. And, if you are able to make a habit of going through it all semi-regularly, there's fewer bad consequences.

Also, since one particular thing common to folks with executive function issues is the 'out of sight, out of mind' phenomenon, reviewing whatever is buried in those boxes and piles will refresh your awareness of it. It's hard to make decisions about things you don't think about. And making decisions is the only way to deal with the pile. One of those decisions can be deciding not to deal with it today. And that's fine. Until that's the daily decision for years in a row... which I admit to having been guilty of. And now I'm doing everything I can to ensure I don't go back to that.

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Having said all that, if it were as easy as 'just start looking through them and making decisions', you would already be doing that.

What sort of supports would help? I encourage you to think about the type of help that you could use, that you can access, and how you can get yourself started on that.

My start came when I realized that I needed someone to be an extra brain for me and give me recurring predictable times for me to talk to them, while I focused on my needs, my routines, my priorities, my plans, etc. I asked for volunteers, offering a small honorarium, in a facebook group for a particular demographic that I belong to and in which I felt I would be more likely to find the type of person I would want to work with. And I found someone. They listen, take notes when I ask, and remind me of things I asked to be reminded about. It's been five years now, and I can no longer pay the honorarium, but we're still having our calls. And it's really been helpful for me to have that dedicated time to focus on myself, with a body double who is also an executive function assistant, and a friend.