A Trick You Can Try at Home
I know I have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) but I've never officially been diagnosed. It doesn't take much gray matter to come to that conclusion though. Once on an innocent jaunt to the mailbox, I ended up at the mall, hell bent on buying half off on sheets I didn't need. I often find items in my hands that just don't go together. What was I thinking that put me in the garage with my bra in one hand and my Bible in the other? One time I slipped my hands into my winter coat pockets and discovered a dried up chicken leg bone in one and a mystery key to a hole I'd long abandoned.
In my scattered past I've learned several tricks to staying "on task." Here is one I got by observing a tethered goat on a near-by farm. She had about six feet of rope and had munched a weed-ridden circle into what could almost pass as a putting green.
I decided to try this trick at home. I tethered myself to the pedestal of the kitchen table giving access to about four feet of mess in every direction. My mission? Clean up without being distracted to other parts of the house. I was armed with Pledge, a garbage bag, a dust rag and a basket for put-aways.
The tether worked! Until the phone rang (a distraction I am never able to ignore). The ring made me forget I was foot-bound and I headed to the phone as I would normally, which was at a dash to pick up the phone before the answer machine kicked in. The force of my forward motion, coupled with the non-giving jump ropes I'd lashed together for my tether, sent my free foot backward in one perfectly executed Michael Jackson moonwalk step, before my belly flop several feet from the phone. The machine clicked on, as I lay there and listened to my sister say, "Hi Sissy, I'm on my way over, do you want me to bring lunch?"
Now, instead of tying myself to an area, I use yarn. I yarn off my cleaning target as CSI does on crime scenes. I've thought about getting some of that plastic, yellow, caution, crime tape, but that's just Nelly getting dramatic. The yarn works great!
You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, 'I release the need for this in my life'. -Dr. Wayne W. Dyer
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