Difficulty organizing and prioritizing is a symptom of our hectic culture - you are not broken!

After a workshop a few weeks ago, a young woman opened up to me about her struggle to focus her attention, to organize and prioritize tasks.  “I must have ADHD, even though no one ever diagnosed me.” She cried as she talked about all of the things she wished she could accomplish, and the ways she feels like a failure for not having done them. 

As she shared, my heart broke.  Her words were full of self judgement, a narrative of not being enough or making the best use of her time, comparing herself to friends who, in her mind, were way ahead of her in their navigation of life. 

Together, we unraveled some of the self criticism that was really hurting her.  The more we talked, the less alone she felt in her experience. 

I am not qualified to weigh in on an ADHD diagnosis, but I do observe that this is reality for all of us these days, to some extent. 

It is really difficult to focus your attention when there are so many distractions, all the time. 

The phone has trained your brain to divide your attention among many things, and it’s no surprise that  when you want to apply yourself to something, it is very challenging to direct your energy towards one specific task.  

In some contexts, the ability to pay attention to multiple things at once is necessary and very useful.  And yet, when this ability becomes an obstacle,  it is so easy to judge yourself and feel like you are not enough in a culture that too often values you for your accomplishments. Please, be compassionate with yourself.  Over time, we have literally been trained to have a shorter and shorter attention span. 

It is revolutionary to reclaim your attention.  It is a contradiction to so much of the cultural education you have received. And, it is possible. 

Reclaiming your attention is a very important step in realigning with your personal power.  

We live in a culture where attention has become a commodity, and so many competing forces are vying for yours.  

What would it look like to choose how to direct your attention?

Needless to say, reclaiming your attention is a process and it is not going to happen just because I write an email about it. But, you can start small.  As a first step, write your to do list with pencil and paper, rather than on a device.  The  action of engaging your fine motor skills to write helps ground you, helps ground the list of tasks in your body,  and in reality.  The physical process of writing your tasks down allows you to take an extra moment to feel the task, if it is important or not. Not to mention how satisfying it is to cross something off the list when it is finished. 

And again, remember, it is not you that is broken because you have not been able to apply yourself to learning guitar or speaking Spanish or whatever other goal you are wanting to achieve.  Like me, you live in a culture that does not value doing things slowly and often leads you to feel that you don’t have the time to really delve deeply into something.  Like me, you live in a culture that sells your attention to the highest bidder and it is a massive act of resistance to take that attention back into your hands.  

And, it is possible.