Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life Read Online Free PDF

have been done? (never/rarely/sometimes/often/very often)
How often do you have difficulty getting things in order when you have to do a task that requires organization?
How often do you have problems remembering appointments or obligations?
When you have a task that requires a lot of thought, how often do you avoid or delay getting started?
How often do you fidget or squirm with your hands or feet when you have to sit for a long time?
How often do you feel overly active and compelled to do things, like you were driven by a motor?
    Source: World Health Organization
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    Whether or not you have ADHD—and chances are, you probably don’t—the purpose of this book is to inform, inspire and organize your brain. Whether forgetfulness is a “symptom” of a disorder for a person like Jill or an “issue” for someone else who doesn’t have the same degree of severity, this book will approach it in a straightforward way—and with equally straightforward and effective solutions.
    What was first labeled the “Distraction Epidemic” by Slate magazine in 2005 has now reached epic proportions, right up there with the obesity epidemic and is of no less import than that or other public health crises that have befallen modern society. In a 2009 New York magazine story on the attention crisis, David Meyer of the University of Michigan described it as nothing less than “a cognitive plague that has the potential to wipe out an entire generation of focused and productive thought” and has drawn comparisons to the insidious damage of nicotine addiction.
    â€œPeople aren’t aware of what’s happening to their mental processes,” says Meyer, “in the same way that people years ago couldn’t look into their lungs and see the residual deposits.” The difference here is that unlike the “mad men” of the 1950s and 1960s who went around merrilysucking up packs of unfiltered Camels, seemingly oblivious to the harmful effects, most of us today know that we are having problems staying focused, paying attention and maintaining some sense of order in our lives.
    Unlike smoking (which you either do or don’t do), it’s not just the people afflicted by the most serious and definable form of distraction and disorganization—ADHD—who are affected by this epidemic. Ask friends, family members and colleagues how they’re doing, and chances are, the responses will usually include words like “frazzled,” “stressed,” “overwhelmed” and “trying to keep my head above water.” In casual conversation, you often hear people talking about “brain freezes,” “blanking out” on something or suffering “senior moments” (often, when they really aren’t very senior). All of them…all of us…are affected to some degree by the epidemic.
    To get back to my patient Jill in the four-story brick building in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I knew that the woman with the lost keys and the lousy day was not one of the millions complaining to each other about how crazed their lives have become. She has a clinical disorder; most do not. But, as I listened to Jill’s story, I also knew the potential power of a rather simple solution that could help her and many others.
    A couple of weeks earlier, during one of our regular sessions, Jill and I had somehow gotten on to the topic of the Apollo lunar landing. We talked about the coverage of the fortieth anniversary of that historic moment, the spectacle of the great Saturn rocket that hurled the astronauts into space, how exciting it still was to see the old black-and-white images of Aldrin and Armstrong on the moon and hear their voices crackling over the television from Tranquility Base and about whether we’d ever go back.
    The memory of that conversation about the space program and her interest in it gave me the language needed to help frame the solution for