Nightmare of a One-eyed Old Lady Helped Me See

Let me share a dream I had about 10 days ago.

It was one scene but it did its job.

I was staring paralyzed in fear at an old woman. She had long gray stringy hair in an unwieldy bun on the top of her head with strands of hair flowing in the wind. In the background was a dark gray sky. She was shouting and pointing at me. She had a large black patch over one eye suggesting that she was blind in one eye. (My mom is actually legally blind in one eye, but is not a screaming old woman – more on her in later posts, my mom not the screaming old woman.) She was screaming one thing to me:

“You have it! You have it! You have it!”

I was a little perplexed, but I knew exactly what she meant. I woke up and it was clear without a doubt what she meant.

I had Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

How could this be? I was never diagnosed with this. Yet on one level I knew the one-eye blinded old lady in my dream was right, at least partly.

I had taken a computerized test for ADHD and I scored well above average in my ability to pay attention on that task. So on that level there wasn’t an issue. I had never been identified by teachers as having difficulty with staying on task. I had attended and graduated from Notre Dame, Harvard and DePaul Universities. I graduated on time and I had one or two degrees from these schools. This gives me 4 degrees including a doctorate which means I finished a dissertation. Finishing a dissertation takes ‘sustained focus.’ So, on many levels I do not really have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Yet, I have struggled with staying organized, remembering and getting daily details right and following through.

On this level she was right. Maybe I did not have the full blown version of ADHD but I had some symptoms that did get in my way. We psychologists tend to call this “Not Otherwise Specified”. There is actually a diagnosis called “Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Not Otherwise Specified”. It is for cases just like this where some of the criteria are met, but not all. So, I’ll call it NOS. I may be ADHD NOS. She may be right about that.

For me there is a combination of a few specific ADHD symptoms and then my own excuses and misdirected behavior which have historically gotten in my own way, slowed me down, limited my effectiveness and efficiency.

When I looked through the symptom list for ADHD I found the following symptoms did pose significant challenges for me:
1. Often fails to give close attention to details…
I used to tell the story of my primary professor for my research assistant job at DePaul had this huge “Detail Hammer” and he would pummel me with it whenever I missed a detail. Unfortunately that was more often than I would prefer.
2. Often has difficulty organizing tasks and activities…
I am using Zen to Done as my strategy to attack this one habit at a time. This battle started about 6 months ago and I am making significant strides.
3. Often does not follow through….
I too often switch to new programs without finishing the first one. Or from one topic to another in a conversation in what I consider to be creative, but which loses some listeners.
4. Often forgetful in daily activities…
Just ask my wife about the “Honey Do” list, upon which I have made significant progress after I ‘finished’ Cogmed.

So I am willing to accept the critique from my “Inner One-Eyed Wise Old Lady” that “I have it.” I have ADHD NOS. Okay, now we have that established. Let’s consider two programs I ‘completed’ recently and that I advocate because of their effectiveness.

“Completing P990X and Cogmed”:

In light of my ADHD NOS, let’s consider how I have completed P90X and Cogmed.

With P90X the first time I took out days of exercises if they didn’t fit logistically or were too rigorous. One was removed for risk of injury, another was due the needed time commitment, and others were due to the rigor of the program itself. So, it could be argued that both my first two rounds of P90X were not truly ‘completed’. However, just this summer I did truly ‘complete the program’ for the first time and the results were great. I was able to go from 1 to 10 or 11 pull ups with no assist. I could do around 19 with the assist of a large rubber band. So, I can say unabashedly I completed P90X.

With Cogmed, I ‘finished’ my first version of the Cogmed program which requires you to finish 25 sessions in 35-40ish days. I finished 22 sessions in 52 days. So, I did not technically finish it in that I did not do 25 sessions and I did not finish them in 40ish days, but my ‘real life’ behavior improved markedly. (Yes, this thought is both part excuse and part reality-based.)

I will ‘redo’ the program in the time frame suggested by Cogmed and with the proper number of sessions. However, I reviewing my completion of the Cogmed program in more detail is useful for me and I think it might help you.

There are two issues here. One is that I truly did start to see progress in myself as a result of doing this program in that I was not forgetting items on my “Honey Do” list. Honestly, ask my wife.
Also, I was getting details right, the vast majority of them. There were very few I was missing. I was not forgetting much either.

Yet my two biggest challenges are still getting and staying organized and finishing.
So, because I had ‘kind of finished’ and I had seen tangible progress on my ‘real world goals’ or what we call in psychology ‘generalization’ I stopped at 22 sessions instead of 25.

Let me introduce a few concepts here to guide my evaluation of my own progress. I invite you to use them to evaluate your progress toward a goal as well.

Total Responsibility

This concept is really ‘radical’ responsibility. The word radical has to get with getting at ‘root causes’. Total responsibility suggests that the root cause for not finishing is me. No way around that. I had the goal. I didn’t get it done. If I did not finish it is totally my responsibility – no fault finding, no blaming, it is ‘on me’. Total responsibility for your business, for your health, for the health of your relationships is critical. If I am not where I want to be it is totally my responsibility, even in relationships, to get there. So, when I look for reasons I have to look inside. Not in a self-blaming way, but in a let’s sit back in our reclining chair and investigate the facts and consider what is going on, both the good and the bad as objectively as possible and then take total responsibility for where I am and how to go somewhere new.

Confront the Brutal Facts, Use Disciplined Thinking and Disciplined Action, And Have Unwavering Faith that you will accomplish the Goal – It might just not be in the time frame you expected.

These concepts were used in the book Good to Great by Jim Collins. The concepts are simple. You have to look with hard-nosed honesty and discipline at the “brutal facts” of progress toward a goal. Companies that go from Good to Great use disciplined thinking and then take disciplined action. Disciplined thinking considers and incorporates the unpleasant reality of the ‘brutal facts’ in progress towards a goal.

Collins uses the example of what he calls the “Stockdale Paradox” to capture how to integrate a combination of these strategies. Stockdale was an officer who was a prisoner of war in Viet Nam. When asked who died first in the camp he said “That’s easy, the optimists.” Essentially they thought they would get out of the camp in a few months. They didn’t. Stockdale confronted the brutal facts of his situation and developed a way to communicate with taps on the walls and ceilings to other prisoners of war to help them in various ways with support and strategy. He also had unwavering faith that he would get out – eventually. So, his judicious use of disciplined thinking and action with unwavering faith resulted in him surviving a Viet Nam prison camp when others died.

So, let’s confront the “brutal facts” of my ‘completion’ of the Cogmed program with disciplined thinking and action and with unwavering faith that I will get this done, even if it is not on my preferred timeline.
Put simply, I did not finish it.

22 sessions is not 25. Getting them done in 52 days is not the same as getting it done in 40ish days.

So, disciplined thinking would lead me to conclude that I have not garnered the full benefit from the program. I will do it again. However, disciplined thinking also requires me to better understand what happened, the facts of why I did not finish it and what progress I did make. Considering that factual progress is also a part or ‘the part’ that many people leave out. They are more than happy to be very hard on themselves even denigrating, but they struggle to admit to themselves that yes they did make progress too.

Self-Monitoring:
Also, possibly the most under-rated and most effective tool for making progress is self-monitoring/and or tracking. Yet, that self-monitoring must incorporate the ‘brutal facts’ not sugar-coated facts or ‘fudged facts’. So in that vein let me explore why I didn’t completely finish and my ‘valid reasons’ which are real, but obviously I have to guard against making ‘excuses’ when I talk to myself. Usually I just let go of the goal too easily.

So what happened that affected my ability to ‘git-r’done’? A lot happened… More on that in my next post…… You will have to return to find out…

Charles Shinaver, PhD

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