Executive Dysfunction : locus of control and my experomints

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Today I am experimenting. I am setting myself an alarm to go off every twenty minutes. When that twenty minutes elapses, I will go and do something else for twenty minutes. I hope this means I will only spend half as much time wasted in endless drifting on the internet. (Or internment as it sometimes feels like and I sometimes call it.)

Sometimes I roll dice or flip a coin to tell me what to do. Sometimes I pull a tarot card, or use my home made astrological deck to help tell me what to do.

Often I am simply responding to events occurring around me.

Some people just let other people dictate everything. Do we wait to be pushed, or attempt to carve a path of our own choosing?

Some people believe in divine providence and the guidance of God.

When one has executive dysfunction or autistic inertia or whatever, I think it means that you have one more very large obstacle to get over in taking control of your own life and giving it a direction of your choosing. People certainly have enough obstacles in this regard anyway.

I believe that if I didn't spend so much time in a flacid funk of foggy forgetfulness, I'd be some kind of irritating go getter.

This is quite interesting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

This just a thread, respond if you like

My twenty minutes are up.

Really, really interesting idea. I think I could do it now that school is out...

...

Actually, I think I'll try it tomorrow! Thanks for the idea!

Let us know how it goes.

I realized that I manage to get the most done when I'm waiting for something else. For example, if I'm cooking something, I learned a long time ago that I can't wander off or I'll completely forget about it and come back hours later to a ruined pan. So instead I force myself to stay in range (no pun intended). But I can't just sit there bored, so I'll actually do things like wash dishes, cut coupons, sweep the floor, that I would normally put off doing indefinitely. The same thing happens if I know someone is coming to the house. I can't go off and do things that I'm interested in, because they'll interrupt me (and I get seriously angry when that happens), so instead I end up doing small tasks that I'd normally never get around to. I've considered arranging things so that I was always waiting for something, but I can only take so much of that.

Someone once told me that I have a high internal locus of control though. I think it was when I was ranting about people always talking about things "happening" to them when it's obvious that they caused these things to happen. Cars don't just suddenly decide to ram into other vehicles. Babies don't just magically pop into existence inside a woman. There are reasons that these things "happen", and there's nothing mysterious about them.

I used to make tons of personal superstitions because I hated school and that was my way of coping.

Do you get that all emcompassing annoyance when you need to change what you are doing? I'd really like to know how to overcome that.

Let me know if you find out how. I'm curious, too. I get so annoyed when I am interrupted or need to stop what I'm doing.

Same here. For instance, if I am out walking somewhere, I really get annoyed if somebody makes me break my stride. I was hurrying along the other day, already 5 minutes late for an appointment, listening to my walk-man, when some dumb guy stopped me to ask me to do a survey. Not only did I have to stop, interrupt my favorite song, and listen, it wasn't even relevant to me. I told him I was late already and resumed my walk. He looked surprised, as if he thought everyone was just dying to do stupid surveys instead of having a life.

I certainly suffer from the inertia with both big and small things. With small things it helps me to write a list of even the smallest chores like go to the mailbox and get the mail. Larger things would be overcoming my art making block I've had since being out of school. My parents paid money to send me to school and even if I don't expect to be a self supporting artist I should be doing something. It's hard when you don't have feedback from the artistic community and community is well...community ( ).

The time unit thing is something I've read in a getting rid of clutter book. Spend 15 minutes in one room, 15 in another, 15 in another and then rest for 15. It gives structure and variety.

Thank you! Let us know how you find it.



That's funny, I do that too, when people come round, I do the dishes, it must seem kinda rude. Good ideas there, thanks Zen.



That's interesting too, I would have speculated that aspies are more likely to develop more of a sense the other way.



I do if I'm changing against my will. It's like there's an attachment to what I was doing.

Maybe it's because our ability to switch tasks is fragile, or it's difficult for us; getting back on task is much harder than staying on, so we'd far prefer to stay on?

Golly, I really don't want to have to micromanage myself to that extent. I'm too lazy



I would think that having a disconnection from the 'artistic community' would mean you can go nuts without worrying how your work is coming across.

Doing my timer thing means I think about what I'm going to do, rather than just letting inertia keep me doing stupid timewastey stuff.



Oh yeah? That's cool! I promise I came up with the idea independently. I time my meditation sits, and I just thought, why don't I use a timer to tell me to start or stop doing other things?

I did manage to get a lot done yesterday afternoon, but I think I got bored or annoyed with it later on, and I did succumb to inertia later in the day.

I might do a thing where I switch with short periods for a while, 10 minute blocks, then have some longer periods 20, 30 or 40 mins, and some longer ones. Or maybe go 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 in a cycle throughout the day.

I'm too lazy to do the quote thing Moog, but I will say I don't do the list thing often but it does help me. I often put too much on it and I get overloaded before it is complete. I am a world class procrastinator.

Perhaps the art making thing is a larger problem. I have never had the "fire in my belly" desire to make art. My parents bemoaned the fact that as a child I was inconsistent. It does help me to be around other people making art. When I do get started I get totally focused though. When I was in another town I belonged to an artist's group that had shows regularly. I would suffer through terrible blank canvas syndrome but if the show had a theme I could go from there easily. I think I self edit too much and sometimes over think a subject to the point that I get worn out with it too quickly.

I like the idea of doing this. Maybe I'll change it to an hour or something though. Lately there has been far too many things for me to have to do, and they all seem to have great importance, and yet I spend all my time on here, just sat on my bed all day doing nothing to help myself. I need to get things in order or I'm going to miss out.

I can relate to most what's written in this topic, but don't like the idea of a clock telling me when to do what or switch to another task. I don't like when a clock wakes me up either, I do it all by myself, to avoid the stress it would impose on me. I suspect I also would succumb to inertia soon if I tried.

This is a good idea. I might actually try doing this.

We should have an inertia olympics, see which of us is the best procrastinator



I get you now. In many ways being exposed to the group was inspiring or motivating, and that helped you get going.

Last edited by Moog on 05 Jun 2011, 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hmm, I guess the big difference is in agreeing with it. It's about wanting to. Sometimes I get rather upset or dissapointed if I've wasted a whole bunch of time. A timer just reminds me to think about what I'm doing really. If I want to disobey the rules, then I will, just decide to schedule another 20 minutes websurfing

It's really just about inserting a bunch of reminders into my day, reminding me to regularly assess what I'm doing, and ask myself if there's something else I perhaps would rather be doing.