In addition to this “instant visibility” filing system, this gentleman uses transparent plastic folders, instead of the opaque manila file folders common here in the United States, to store informatio
I do not think there is a filing system sufficient to manage an ADHD person's life. My bookmarks are evidence. ADHD people are interested in everything. They never have enough information on a subject because everything is nuanced. A filing system for everything is by definition everywhere. The ADHD challenge is to choose a few tasks, organize files to complete the tasks, discard the files, move on to a new set of tasks. The ADHD difficulty is the next set of tasks inevitably draws information from the previous set of tasks which leads to regret for tossing those files. In the past we depended in school on a competent reference librarian. Now I rely on, and donate to, Wikipedia when I want to research a subject. Nonetheless I continue to bookmark into a cascade of subfolders. Now, it is time to stop this discussion and choose which of my 100 plus projects to work on today.
Michael--Agreed. As I noted in my post, a work colleague taught me the idea of pause and clean up as a tool to keep from jumping into the next task or trying to multi-task.
Interesting that this topic was your subject. I had planned a response the prior post about the person putting on his pants last to ensure that he did not forget things. The use of color coded spaces has been used by the Japanese in organizing production environments. In the Germanic world, it is common to see different colors of the A4 size binders (from Leitz or Biella) set up on a book shelf.
Gwendolyn Galsworth has brought many of those techniques to the U.S. in her work in Visual Thinking practice (https://www.visualworkplace.com/)
The use of color coding is not itself a total solution to the distractions ADHD injects into behavior. How one German work colleague described his way to cope with ADHD type distractions was to use a pause and clean up task sequence. Before he would end something to start something, he would pause for a few seconds and then engage in what he called a clean up effort so that things did not get "all over each other." He would often leave me waiting a minute or two for a scheduled meeting as he prepared for our meeting that way.
I do not think there is a filing system sufficient to manage an ADHD person's life. My bookmarks are evidence. ADHD people are interested in everything. They never have enough information on a subject because everything is nuanced. A filing system for everything is by definition everywhere. The ADHD challenge is to choose a few tasks, organize files to complete the tasks, discard the files, move on to a new set of tasks. The ADHD difficulty is the next set of tasks inevitably draws information from the previous set of tasks which leads to regret for tossing those files. In the past we depended in school on a competent reference librarian. Now I rely on, and donate to, Wikipedia when I want to research a subject. Nonetheless I continue to bookmark into a cascade of subfolders. Now, it is time to stop this discussion and choose which of my 100 plus projects to work on today.
Michael--Agreed. As I noted in my post, a work colleague taught me the idea of pause and clean up as a tool to keep from jumping into the next task or trying to multi-task.
Interesting that this topic was your subject. I had planned a response the prior post about the person putting on his pants last to ensure that he did not forget things. The use of color coded spaces has been used by the Japanese in organizing production environments. In the Germanic world, it is common to see different colors of the A4 size binders (from Leitz or Biella) set up on a book shelf.
Gwendolyn Galsworth has brought many of those techniques to the U.S. in her work in Visual Thinking practice (https://www.visualworkplace.com/)
The use of color coding is not itself a total solution to the distractions ADHD injects into behavior. How one German work colleague described his way to cope with ADHD type distractions was to use a pause and clean up task sequence. Before he would end something to start something, he would pause for a few seconds and then engage in what he called a clean up effort so that things did not get "all over each other." He would often leave me waiting a minute or two for a scheduled meeting as he prepared for our meeting that way.
Yeah, I agree, work habits are important.