A Lesson On Finding Lost Things That We Can All Use

I dabble in reading fiction that includes ADHD characters, so I got a copy of D.L. Green's CJ Baker Mover and Shaker: The Mystery of the Missing Book. (Debra is a Facebook friend from way back.) This is an early reader from Capstone Publishing, an educational publisher, so it is instructive fiction, so to speak.

The book includes a four-step process for finding lost things, and IT WORKS! I used it last night to find my box of straight pins. I only had to go to the second step. Sadly, I didn't think to do this until the pins were lost for two hours, and by then, it was time to go to bed.

I was pretty amazed, nonetheless.

Capstone published four CJ Baker books last year, all written by Debra, all coming out at the same time. They may each have some kind of coping lesson.

Because I don't read a great deal of fiction that's written to overtly teach something, I can't address how well that is done here. But the basic, very short story is complete, and the program for finding lost objects being taught makes sense in the context of the story.

And the program works. Assuming I can remember to use it.

A Story Behind the Story with My Search for Adult ADHD Characters

Heber Galindo @ Unsplash

 As writers often do, I repurposed some material. My two blog posts on the lack of ADHD characters in adult fiction became one essay on the subject, which was published today at Books Are Our Superpower. 

What I find fascinating about the three pieces I've published on adult ADHD characters in fiction...and promoted here and there...is that no one has responded with "Why, Gail, you are so very wrong about this. There are so many adult books with adult ADHD characters. Read this and this and this."

I would actually enjoy being told I was wrong and be referred to the kinds of books I've been looking for. But so far, nope. Nothing.

ADHD Awareness Month: Still Looking for Adult ADHD Characters in Adult Books

With adult fiction dealing with ADHD characters there are two issues to consider: 1. Characters who are not intentionally created as being ADHD, readers see it in them. 2. Characters who are intentionally created as being ADHD. In my limited experience, there may be more of the first than the second.

Unintentional ADHD Characters

This is a matter of readers perceiving a character as ADHD whether or not the character is clearly identified as ADHD or whether or not the author intended to be writing an ADHD character. 

This Book Riot article, for instance, argues that Jane in Dread Nation and Ayoola in My Sister, the Serial Killer both have ADHD characteristics. I've read both books but before I became what I might call ADHD sensitive. Thus, I can neither support nor refute their characters' ADHDness. Certainly, these books were written in a time period when ADHD is recognized as ADHD and authors could be interested in creating ADHD-like characters, even if it wasn't discussed as such in the story.

But I've also found articles about characters in books from periods when the disorder must have existed and was even recognized within the medical world. But how much the general public and reading public knew about it is another thing. Were the authors modeling characters on people they knew with what we'd now recognize as ADHD characteristics? Were they intentionally creating ADHD characters, though they wouldn't have known that designation? 

Characters from older books who are sometimes believed to be ADHD-like include Sherlock Holmes and Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables. But the character from an older book that I frequently saw listed as having ADHD qualities is Emma from Jane Austen's Emma. 

Unlike the Sherlock Holmes stories and Anne of Green Gables, I don't believe I've ever read Emma. I made an attempt this past month, but the characters in that thing talk a lot. They talk about the neighbors, primarily. I used to have to finish reading a book once I'd started it, but not anymore.  

However, I did get through, I believe, 18 chapters and found some of the material sited by readers who find Emma to be an ADHD character. 

• She has been meaning to read more since she was 12, has made lists, but another character says he has given up expecting her to do any reading. 
• When her mother died, a character says, Emma lost the only person who could cope with her.
• Emma describes having been interested in painting portraits a few years before but had given it up in disgust and not one painting had been completed.
• At one point, Emma herself describes how little she's able to maintain attention.

I find Emma to be incredibly elitist and overall unpleasant, which has nothing to do with these ADHD type characteristics. I'm not at all sure what Austen was going for here.

Authors With ADHD: More Unintentional ADHD Characters?

Adult authors with ADHD include Rebecca Makkai and Mary Robinette Kowal, both of whom were diagnosed as adults, after they were established in their careers. Kowal has a marvelous short video on ADHD and writing.  In a conversation with Mindy McGinnis (The Female of the Species) Kowal says "I think I'm writing all of my characters as ADHD characters, but if I were trying to write a character who is explicitly ADHD, I wouldn't actually know how, because that's just the way my brain works all the time."

Now I had read the first of Kowal's Lady Astronaut books a few years ago, before ADHD was something I was what you might say sensitive to. I have no recollection of seeing anything ADHD-like in it. But for this ADHD Awareness Month project I read her book Ghost Talkers.

Kowal writes alternative history, and Ghost Talkers involves an alternative World War I-era world in which the British government employes mediums to work with recently deceased soldiers who are trained to report back to them immediately after being killed in order to pass on information about what is actually happening during battles. On the very first page the main character describes having to try to struggle to maintain control during a work session.  "She tried to hold the awareness at bay, along with the dozens of other spirit circles working for the British Army." "...if she weren't careful that would pull her back into her body." There are references throughout the book to her being in danger of coming unmoored, in danger of losing her grip, and dealing with thousands of memories at once. At another point, one of the ghosts has to struggle to focus.

Was Kowal using ADHD characteristics to create characters and even plot? Is this something other ADHD authors may do? Or is this just a reader finding what she's looking for in a text? 

Intentional ADHD Characters in Romance

I've read, more than once, that romance writers have embraced ADHD characters. In fact, you can find ADHD romance lists. I found Portrait of a Scotsman, a historical romance by Evie Dunmore, on a couple of ADHD romance lists. 

Right away in the first chapter the main (wealthy, of course) character is concerned that she has gone to the wrong address. "Or perhaps she had done it again...She squinted at the address, then back at the house number with full attention." She struggles with impulse control in a gallery. "...she shouldn't touch it. She really should not." When caught touching something she shouldn't have, she says, "I had not meant to touch it." She later describes how she had failed to get her mail that morning and thus didn't know about a cancellation. In a discussion with the male lead, she says, "...there's the matter of my attention...It is either scattered or directed with an unnatural focus. I lose track of time when I paint, for example."

She, and her family, are aware of her ADHD, even if they don't have a word for it.

She is also clearly dyslexic, however. The two conditions do sometimes occur together. Having seen  doctors about her inability to write without spelling errors or keep numbers in the correct order, her family is finally told that it's not her eyes causing the problem, but a sort of "word blindness." This leads her father to fear there is something wrong with her brain. Her brain is considered odd within the family, though the male lead in the story recognizes early on her superior visual memory.

We don't see a great deal about her conditions over the course of the story, but I think what we do see is mainly related to dyslexia. Dyslexia is like the autism I wrote about earlier. Neurotypical readers feel they know what it is and can recognize it. That would make it easier to show in fiction than ADHD.

My short study of ADHD adult fiction has been as interesting as it's been disappointing. I'll definitely be looking for ADHD in my adult fiction reading in the future.

ADHD Awareness Month: Where Are the ADHD Characters in Adult Fiction?

I have reached the end of my reading for the Heritage Months that were recognized by the U.S. government prior to 2025.  The State Department only recognizes Black History month now. The former history months can be found at an archived web page.  

That left me free this month to read for ADHD Awareness Month. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder affecting how the brain works. People with the condition sometimes identify as neurodivergent, because they think differently than what is considered typical or neurotypical. (Remember that. I'm going to use the terms  later and needed to squeeze them in early, sort of like foreshadowing but different.) ADHD has become an interest for me, because we have a family member with the condition. Thus, I have a dog in this race, so to speak.

These days, adult books are also an interest for me. This month I was interested in finding adult fiction relating to ADHD. I came up really short on that. 

In children's fiction, there have been ADHD characters for years. Since back in the day when it was called just ADD, in fact, if not earlier. Why can't I find much in the way of adult fiction dealing with them?

You've probably guessed I have a theory.

Theory Part 1. Children's Gatekeepers Love a Fictional Problem

Problem books are a definite thing in children's fiction. This may be connected to the belief that children's books should be instructive, something that goes back to the nineteenth century, anyway. If a problem is addressed in a book, child readers can learn about it. Huzzah!

I also used to see a theory that problem books are easier to teach than, say, anything else, meaning problem books would have a good chance in the educational market. And then the school library market. And the parent and grandparent market. All the markets that buy children's books so kids can learn something.

Now there are excellent reasons for including ADHD characters in children's books, whether or not the book is specifically a problem book. Representation for ADHD readers is one of them. Opportunities for readers without ADHD to gain more understanding of the condition is another. I am going to argue that ADHD characters can also have something unique and interesting to add to a work of fiction, something new I haven't seen over and over again because I've been reading so very, very long.

But those reasons for including ADHD characters also exist for adult fiction. So why have I found it so difficult to find ADHD characters in adult works of fiction?

Theory Part 2. Adults Are Our Own Gatekeepers 

We adults have a great deal more flexibility in choosing our own free reading than children do. No one is assigning us meaningful books to read or insisting we read from an approved list of improving titles. Fiction around conditions as conditions doesn't appeal to us that much. If we have a condition or disorder we want to learn more about, our first thought isn't a novel, but nonfiction written by a professional of some sort. 

There is a great deal of ADHD nonfiction for adults.  A great deal. So many nonfiction lists.

But the lack of representation in fiction is fascinating. Perhaps if adult readers wanted to see ADHD characters, they would appear?  A market would be born! But my guess is that after having spent their youths seeing treatment of ADHD in children's literature as a problem to cope with, neither those with ADHD or those without it are wildly enthusiastic about having to read more.  

Theory Part 2, Subsection A. Writers Don't Know How to Write ADHD.

But why aren't there characters with ADHD in books that are not specifically about ADHD? After all, other neurodivergent characters, and I'm thinking autistic ones here, appear in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and The Maid. (Both mysteries for what that's worth.) I've recently finished watching the wonderful French TV series Astrid et Raphaelle, a clever, even witty, buddy cop story in which one of the cops is autistic. So neurodivergent characters can be successful in fictional worlds.

I'm going to do some speculating here and throw out a guess that neurotypical audiences and gatekeepers believe they know the common characteristics of some types of autism--lack of eye contact and stimming, for instance, and sensitivity to sound. These happen to be characteristics that are relatively easy to show. 

Though knowledge of ADHD behaviors goes back at least to the beginning of the twentieth century, it became far more known among the neurotypical public around the 1980s. At that time, it was generally thought of as involving struggles to pay attention in school and impulsive behavior. Those general issues are harder to quickly use in a piece of fiction for adults than the issues general readers and writers associate with autism. In an adult book the results of having had trouble in school, something that happened in the past, or the results of being impulsive would probably be easier to work into a story than the real time school problems and impulsive behavior.

ADHD was also associated with children at that point in the late twentieth century. It appears to have taken the literary world a while to recognize that ADHD children grow up to become ADHD adults.

Or that ADHD can go undiagnosed until adulthood.

Perception of ADHD in the Twenty-first Century

These days a great deal more is known about what ADHD involves, things we so called neurotypicals had never heard of a few decades ago. In addition to the famous difficulty focusing attention and impulsive behavior we now know about:

• Hyperfocus--The ability to stay fixated on a subject or project for lengthy periods of time, which, yes, seems unexpected since superficially ADHD is seen as the inability to maintain attention. I've witnessed this.
• Sensory processing issues--This can involve any of the senses, including taste and smell. Connected to the eating problems in some people with ADHD? I've witnessed this, too. Though there are other reasons ADHD can be accompanied by eating problems.  
• ADHD paralysis--Sensory overload or overload from having too many options or tasks to complete, so the individual just shuts down. Maybe collapses on the couch. Yes, I've witnessed this.
• Anxiety--Anxiety is common in people with ADHD. I have witnessed this, too.
• Hypersensitivity to rejection/criticism--Or maybe even perceived rejection/criticism? Yes, yes, you've guessed it. I've witnessed this.

Those are just aspects of ADHD that my shallow knowledge of the subject has turned up. They could definitely be used to create unique, well-rounded characters.

In another post I'll cover some books I read in my attempt to find ADHD adult fiction, including older books ADHD readers look to to find themselves, a genre that is supposed to be taking the lead in including ADHD characters, and a little bit about some ADHD writers.  

Time Management Tuesday: Specifically Planning What You're Going To Do

It is still ADHD Awareness Month, but instead of reading widely on the subject, I am still focused on J. Russell Ramsay's article Why the ADHD Brain Prioritizes the Less Important Task--And How CBT Improves Prioritization Skills in ADDitude. (Maybe I'm a little hyperfocused?) Today I'm interested in the second part of the article, about improving prioritization skills.

First off, CBT is cognitive behavioral training, which Ramsay simply describes as a type of brain training. So, we've got that out of the way.

The first suggestion Ramsay makes was the one that I found particularly meaningful. He called it "Attach manual, step-by-step descriptions to must-do tasks."  I think this just means specifically break down tasks.

This concept jumped out at me, because just a few days before I read this article, I happened to have a week when I only had an hour here or there to write. One evening I decided I wouldn't just write the next day, I would work on Dinner at Shirley Farr's House. And I wouldn't just work on Shirley Farr, I would begin by moving a section of the piece about my family to the beginning of the essay, instead of beginning with Shirley Farr. I wanted this memoir to be related to my writing about eating. Plus, it was a memoir. It should be about a personal experience involving Shirley Farr, not about Shirley Farr. I suspect someone could write a book about her, but it won't be me.

Knowing what I was specifically going to do before I sat down to work was hugely helpful. It was as if I didn't have to start the job, it was already started. What's more, being able to get that kind of start made it easier to continue. 

Maybe We Could Think in Terms of Goals and Objectives

Okay, that one example of how I had broken down a writing task should not convince anyone that attaching a step-by-step description to writing is a best practice for that job. Because one is not a statistically significant number. But think of a "must-do task" as a goal and the "step-by-step descriptions" as objectives. Now we're talking about something we have experience with.

"Writing tomorrow" is big and overwhelming. Also, morning is a lot of time. Surely, I can use some of that to see what's trending on X and go to Facebook, not just to look at my wall but to check a bunch of my groups to see if something has happened that I've missed. (I belong to many, many Facebook groups.) 

But those of us who are accustomed to working with goals and objectives can see that "writing tomorrow" is the must-do goal we need to do. Of course, we need to assign step-by-step objectives to that goal. 

What am I going to write tomorrow?

• I'm going to work on Project C
• I'm going to start with looking at yesterday's work
• I'm going to work on the section related to _________
• I'm going to create a voice
• I'm going to maintain the voice
• I'm going to shorten the part about__________ 

The point being that if we apply objectives or step-by-step descriptions to "going to write tomorrow," when we sit down to work, we know exactly what we have to, and are going to, do. Yes, that makes work easier. You know what else it does? It gets rid of the anxiety about what we're going to do. What a relief.

A Good Time to Mention Bullet Journals?

It appears that it's been five years since I've mentioned bullet journals here. The official bullet journal website defines bullet journals as a "mindfulness practice designed as a productivity system." I love that. It is so what I want to be me. However, I found the original bullet journal method way too complex for me. I modified the system to meet my needs and continue to do so. Why, I just added a new section to my journal a couple of weeks ago.

I get a lot done with a bullet journal. Though, of course, never as much as I want to. Also, sometimes in order to get a long-standing task done, I have to put it in my bullet journal. But that's okay!

An example of how my simplistic bullet journal works.

Week of Oct. 27th Work Section  (I may add more during the week):

• Submit scifi story
• Submit reprint story
• Plan next writing projects (I could have got more detailed with this, as in "check started work on laptop" and "check journal.") / 
• Humor/Raw Dog post
• TMT post (that's this one) 
• Register for workshop
• Update website.

Week of Oct. 27th Food Section (I will probably add more during the week. Also, this is usually cooking related.):

• gf cider doughnuts
• gf cider biscuits

Each week has additional sections for other aspects of my life. Strike throughs mean a task is done. A slash means I've started it.

My point here is that I think that if you work with some kind of bullet journal system, it seems as if what you're doing is, indeed, attaching "manual, step-by-step descriptions to must-do tasks," as Ramsay describes in his ADDitude article. So you may not be surprised to hear that a few years ago, while doing some reading about bullet journals, I learned that Ryder Carroll, who created the bullet journal system, has ADHD. 

ADDITION: I mentioned a few weeks ago that we have a family member who has recently been diagnosed with ADHD. This is a child I'm talking about. So today I thought I'd take a look see if there's anything about bullet journals/journaling for kids. I'm having a hard time finding something that isn't focused on the idea of "journals" and not "productivity," let alone "mindfulness designed as a productivity system." My gut feeling is these kids don't need to keep records of what they have done or their creativity and personalities. They need help focusing on what they need to do and getting things done. Which is what the original bullet journal is about.

I will keep looking!

Time Management Tuesday: Procrastibaking Is A Thing And Can Illustrate Attractive Aspects Of Procrastination

I'd seen the term procrastibaking a few times over the last couple of years but just thought it was a joke. Until a week ago Sunday. It sure looks real to me, and I also think it illustrates the four differences between procrastivity/productive procrastination and more demanding tasks described by J. Russell Ramsay in Why the ADHD Brain Chooses the Less Important Task--And How CBT Improves Prioritization Skills in ADDitude.

First Off, Procrastibaking

Articles on procrastibaking, like The Joys of 'Procrastibaking' to Avoid Real Work by Christina Ianzinto at AARP tend to treat it benignly. The AARP article was about a new cookbook, so, yeah, I can see that. In this case, procrastibaking is portrayed as a stress reliever. While Why Work When You Can Procrastinate by Julia Moskin at WRAL News includes some material from psychology professor Tim Pychyl on how procrastination, itself, is "one of the few situations in which people consistently make choices that are demonstrably bad, " over all the tone for procrastibaking is cheery.

Since I've mentioned Tim Pychyl's name, I'm just going to remind everyone that in his book The Procrastinator's Digest A Concise Guide to Solving the Procrastination Puzzle, he says that procrastination has a specific definition within psychology. True procrastination "is the voluntary delay of an intended action despite the knowledge that this delay may harm the individual in terms of the task performance or even just how the individual feels about the task or him or herself. Procrastination is a needless voluntary delay."

So I guess procrastibaking is that with brownies.

My Personal Procrastibaking Case Study

What was supposed to happen on Sunday, October 6:

I had two tasks planned that would improve my upcoming work week.

•  I was going to fold and take care of my clean clothes in the laundry room. I was going to do some of the ironing that has been waiting down there since last winter. We're talking only my clothes. Over the last few years, I've turned into that person who lives out of the clean clothes hamper, which is odd because I wasn't that person when I was washing, drying, folding, and taking care of laundry for four people. But that's neither here nor there. I was going to get my clean clothes dealt with so I wouldn't have to spend time dealing with it on days when I wanted to work.
• I was also going to do some research to support a minor part of an essay I've been rewriting. That would make the writing of that essay during the week go so much faster, because not only would the research be done, it would have been simmering in my brain for a while, which is always a good thing.

What really happened on Sunday, October 6:

I realized I had ten eggs that were going to expire on Monday, October 7. Even though I knew I could be loosie-goosie with expiration dates for eggs, I spent the afternoon of Sunday, October 6 baking

• rosemary sea salt bread
• drop biscuits
• and hermit bars

I bake gluten free, and gluten free baking sucks up eggs. I had only three left at the end of the day. I used them for lunch the next day, in case you're concerned. 

All the time I was doing this, I knew I was proving the point Ramsay makes in his ADDitude article, but I did it anyway. Mainly for this blog post. But still.

What Does My Procrastibaking Experience Illustrate?

J. Russell Ramsay says there are four differences between the small, unimportant tasks ADHD brains (and I'm going to argue other brains, too) select over more critical ones they put off. I ticked every one of them off with my work choice that Sunday.

1. Manual focus, meaning the tasks selected are often physical rather than mentally demanding. Certainly, baking was less mentally demanding than research. There's a lot of material on what I was writing about, and I don't find it terribly well organized. I was not running toward that task with open arms. 
2. Familiar script, meaning something you've done before and will find easier to do. I have been baking for a looong time. Additionally, two of the three things I made I've made a number of times. Sure, I know how to fold and iron clothes. But obviously I don't do it anywhere near as often.
3. Time frame, meaning a definite and predictable time frame. Recipes are all about time. How long was it going to take me to iron those clothes and find the little bit I needed in that research? I didn't know. 
4. Task progress, meaning a clear beginning, middle, and end. Again, what clearer beginning, middle, and end can you ask for than a recipe? I didn't expect to finish the ironing, even if I'd started it. Also, in this particular case I had the end date with the eggs expiring the next day. It was not at all difficult to convince myself that I was working on a deadline.

What Can We Take From All This?

For one thing, beware of procrastibaking! It is not benign and cheerful! If you're truly procrastibaking, it means you're not doing something more important. What is it and how are you going to address it?

For another, when you see yourself choosing to do something that doesn't address an important task waiting for you, ask yourself if you're choosing the lesser "work" because it's less mentally demanding, familiar, has a predictable time frame, and has a definite beginning, middle, and end.  A positive answer to any of those could convince you to take another course of action.

If you're wondering if I ever took care of the clothes and did the research I needed to do, the answer is no to the clothes and yes to the research. I could have taken a few minutes this past Sunday to do some work in the laundry room, but now I have a lot of apples to use up. I made an apple upside down cake instead. 

Time Management Tuesday: Reading About ADHD Has Made Me Rethink Productive Procrastination

I haven't been doing much with Time Management Tuesday the last couple of years for two reasons.

1. I see a lot of time management articles on Medium that are clearly written with minimal research and are often rehashes of material others have covered. Not much that's new there. It's a little bit book reportish. This left me with anxiety about producing the same kind of material, which I'd really rather not do.
2. I don't feel I've been doing that great with managing my own time the last few years. Am I being a hypocrite writing about managing time or am I writing about how I deal with a professional problem? I can feel a headache coming on. Seriously. 

But recently I've read a couple of things that caused what we might call an interest flair. I am inspired again! I think I have a few months of time management material here, beginning with ADHD-related material for October, which is ADHD Awareness Month.

Can ADHD Behavioral Approaches Help Others Manage Time?

We recently had a family member diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. This was not a surprise, which I suspect is the case in many families. As a result, I am attracted to ADHD articles and definitely noticed the #ADHDawarenessmonth hashtag on Xitter. That led to one thing and another and some reading on ADHD and productivity and time management. Some of which sounded as if it could be helpful for any of us.

First off, the National Institute of Mental Health defines attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder as a "developmental disorder marked by persistent symptoms of inattention and/or hyperactivity and impulsivity that interfere with functioning or development."  The inattention part is of particular interest to writers, because it involves problems "staying on task, paying attention, or being organized."

Staying on task and being organized are hugely important for writers, because of the incredible, some of us might say overwhelming, array of things we need to do to write something, get it published, and market it. Each one of those aspects of the job require a large number of tasks. On top of that, the majority of us are working other jobs and possibly acting as caregivers for family members. So many balls to juggle. So many possible distractions.

How to decide what to do?

Procrastivity

In Why the ADHD Brain Chooses the Less Important Task--And How CBT Improves Prioritization Skills in ADDitude J. Russell Ramsay describes what he calls "procrastivity" in which people with ADHD procrastinate by working, but working at lower-priority activities. So they are doing things, but not making progress on a more important task. 

Productive Procrastination

When I read about procrastivity, I immediately thought of productive procrastination, something I've written about here a few times. I thought it was such a fine idea I republished the original post in 2022. My favorite willpower guru, Kelly McGonigal (She has a new book out! Or, at least, one I haven't heard of!) used the term "productive procrastination" in a Life Hacker piece on how she works and said, "I may have built my career on web searches I've done when I should have been doing something else." In another Life Hacker interview Ira Glass said, "I procrastinate by working." Though he did describe working at low-priority tasks when he should be writing as a bad habit. He wasn't as positive about it as McGonigal was.  

I've been feeling good about productive procrastination, believing that all those things I did while I should have been working on that last book for four years were a good thing. I was doing something. Anything. Now, after Ramsay's description of what goes on when someone with ADHD ends up in less necessary activities, I'm wondering about what I've been doing. 

Oh, and look. A far more recent Life Hack article, Productive Procrastination: Is It Good Or Bad? by Leon Ho, comes down firmly on the bad side. 

What To Do?

The Leon Ho Life Hack article includes time management techniques to avoid productive procrastination. But the J. Russell Ramsay ADDitude article has some fascinating stuff on why the ADHD mind leans toward low-priority tasks over the high-priority ones that could actually be more helpful for them to do. For instance, red flags for any of us might be noticing that we're spending a lot of time on tasks that are less demanding, more familiar, shorter, and with a very clear beginning and end rather than a big job that's waiting for us. Like writing a book. 

What I'm Going To Do

For the rest of October, I'm going to be looking for ADHD connected material that relates to time management and productivity, in recognition of ADHD Awareness Month. Next week I'll have a personal case study in how I spent an afternoon that illustrates some of what Ramsay talks about in his ADDitude article.

I think I should also give some thought to why I embraced productive procrastination in such a big way. Someone I liked did it? It gave me an excuse to get away from harder work? Yeah, I think that's it. Don't need to think about that any longer.

Also, I'm correct. As I said in the beginning of this post, I should be anxious about jumping into writing lightly researched blog posts.