Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life (14 page)

Heart:
I feel sick and tired about the mess in the garage. I really want this feeling to go away, so I'd like to just keep working out here and clean it all up so I'll feel better.

Head:
I'm sorry to hear that the mess is distressing, and I empathize with your desire to get it over with once and for all. However, we must be realistic: it will probably take several more sessions and many more hours to complete the job…and do it right. So it seems to me that it would be best to stop after one hour, feel good that we've made some real progress out here, and then move on to the other important tasks we've planned for today. That way, by tonight, we'll feel good about our overall accomplishments and not just be miserable because the other things were neglected and the garage
still
isn't where you want it to be.

Heart:
Thank you for your wise counsel, oh brainy one, but I don't think I'm going to feel good about anything if so little is accomplished in tidying up the garage.

Head:
Now, now. Let's not get snippy. How about this: I'll remind you before bedtime that we had this conversation and that we made the best decision? By then, we will have made a small but meaningful dent in the garage…and the other tasks will have gotten done as well. In a way, we will have accomplished even more. Think about how good you'll feel then!

Heart:
You make a good point. Okay. Let's tell the lungs now to take a deep breath, and I'll leave the garage and move on to the other stuff we have to do today. And hey… I'm glad we had this little chat. We should do it more often.

Know yourself—and apply that knowledge

As you can probably tell by now, one of the best ways to help get better organized is to become more aware of the situations and circumstances in which we are not. Seeing patterns, whether they're with our sense of
frenzy, in our ability to sustain focus or (in the current Rule of Order) to apply those brakes, is a key step toward starting new habits.

Keep a journal for a day or two and make a note when you respond to an impulse without thinking, without braking. What was the trigger? What did you do without thinking? Did you think a little but not enough? The time spent noticing how impulsive you are and when and what led you to ignore the impulses is a first step to training your brain to better manage your emotional impulses.

You may notice that you do a great job managing your impulses with work colleagues but fall apart during a tricky conversation with your spouse or child. Or you may see that some colleagues seem to be able to activate your emotional impulses instantly and inactivate your thinking brakes by implying that you are underperforming in some way. Or as we say, they know how to “push your buttons.” Instead of pushing back, maybe you learn to apply the brakes instead. Other patterns may emerge: you may be able to exert your inhibitory control better on Monday morning than Friday afternoon. Being aware of that may help you next Friday!

Remember, your ability to manage your impulses isn't a constant, and being curious about the variability will help you find ideas to improve and situations to work on.

Manage your energy

Appreciate that it is harder to apply the cognitive brakes when the car is out of gas, when you're driving on empty in terms of physical and mental energy. Typically we are best at regulating our thoughts and emotions early in the day after a good rest and breakfast. Our worst periods are at the end of the workday when our brains and bodies are depleted.

Your brain doesn't have a way to store energy, which means that if your blood sugar is depleted so is your brain. Keep your blood sugar at
a steady level by eating lean protein with every meal and snack. Avoid high doses of carbs, which lead to a spike and crash in energy.

Personally, I haven't discovered a better way to process and tame my impulses than to exercise; whether vigorous or not, even five minutes can calm down my emotions and make it easier to handle emotional impulses. Next best is a good night's sleep, allowing the brain's machinery to do its work in processing emotions. There are studies that confirm the energy-enhancing, emotional-calming effects of both physical activity and sleep.

When in doubt, take a walk. Or sleep on it and tackle it again in the morning, when you're well rested.

Apply the lessons of crisis in daily life

Remember the famous pilot who landed a crippled plane in the Hudson River and saved 155 lives? Imagine what it was like for US Airways captain Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger on that frigid morning of January 15, 2009. Think about how many impulses he had to manage and how he had to put the brakes on paralyzing fear and the terrifying thought that his life and the lives of his passengers and crew were in grave danger—and then summon himself to think clearly.

Talk about being able to tune out distraction! Sully showed us all that it can be done in the most extreme circumstances.

In fact, sometimes the extreme impulses call us to be our best selves and we are at our peak in terms of handling our impulses. While Sully may be one of the most famous recent examples, many of those who handle emergencies—doctors and nurses who work in emergency-room wards, firefighters and police officers, soldiers and those in command—are outstanding models of impulse control.

But while you might not have the coolness to land a plane safely in a river, command a platoon in combat or work in an emergency room,
don't sell yourself short. If you've been through a crisis or a period of danger, you probably noticed that during those moments or hours you became a little more adept at handling impulses. Many of us do—we just haven't been tested. Not that we're looking to put you or anyone into such a situation. The point is that you may be better at impulse control than you realize. It could be the daily “minicrises” of day-to-day life: a crying child, a rude store clerk, an inconsiderate colleague. These are all crucibles for developing impulse control. Rise to the occasion. I know you can do it.

Develop your own way of braking

Years ago I coached a woman, a freelance journalist, who was struggling with anxious outbursts caused by her relationship with her overbearing boss. She would sit down to write an article with a tight deadline. She'd make a good start and then she would get a call from her boss, who was typically in an agitated and impatient state. For an hour or more after his call, her emotions would interrupt her task as she thought about what she wished she had said to him. Her agitation would steal her attention so that she wasn't productive or creative, making her feel like she was in a sailboat tossed around by waves of frustration, not getting anywhere.

Although she didn't work for a broadcast network, we created what we called an “ABC” process where she worked on practicing three steps.

1. Awareness:
   Become a “kind witness”—and not a stern judge—to the arrival of the impulse to call him back and give him a piece of her mind. (In other words, I didn't want her to beat herself up over the impulse to give this guy a piece of her mind!)
   
2. Breathing:
   Take a few deep heart breaths (moving her awareness to her chest and heart) to bring in empathy and acceptance of her frustration.
   
3. Choosing:
   Make a conscious choice to apply the brakes on the impulse to call him back and the nonproductive rumination that it created, while promising to give her frustration more attention later. She eventually made time to write her boss a letter that explained her needs and frustrations, and she requested a new relationship dynamic. That launched a series of conversations and a more productive relationship.
   

Other tools used in the training of emotional intelligence are quite similar: the STOP tool—
S
tep back,
T
hink,
O
rganize your thoughts, then
P
roceed, or PRO—
P
ause,
R
elax and
O
pen.

No matter what acronym you apply, the process is the same. Instead of grimacing or cringing when the impulsive interruption arrives and your emotions take over, welcome your emotions. Try to understand what they are trying to say to you. Thank them for registering an opinion and for taking a stand. Then decide what's best for the team.

Practice the fine art of emotional balance

I like to think of people as leaning toward one of two camps much of the time.

The first one is Camp Spontaneity: Here we live in the moment. We're spontaneous and creative; we allow our impulses to drive us. Want to go skinny dipping in the lake? Sure, why not? Roast marshmallows by the fire and stay up all night? Let's do it! We indulge in the invitations around us, unconcerned about the future.

On the other side of the lake is Camp Sobriety: Here we look to the future. We conserve our firewood; we look before we leap. We are
like the industrious ants as compared to our live-for-today grasshopper friends at the other camp. We are happy to forgo the instant pleasure of following an impulse for the opportunity to feel satisfied with our accomplishments down the road.

Most of us spend our lives between both camps. We tamp down our impulses much of the time and then once in a while we have the strong urge to be impulsive about something. The key is to welcome the impulse and decide whether and when to indulge it. Have an ice cream cone once in a while, steal away from work for a couple of hours to meet a friend or spend a little extra to get a special sweater.

Let go of the brakes—unless of course (and this is the thinking part of the brain talking) your doctor has put you on a strict diet, your impulsive get-together with your friend means you have to miss a very important work meeting or your financial pinch is significant enough that you really don't have that little extra to spend on the sweater.

The impulse to visit Camp Spontaneity often comes knocking at the door of your cabin. Come on in; the water's fine! Don't worry, be happy. Enjoy a treat, do something special and take your foot off of the brakes for a bit.

Don't shut the door in the face of these impulses. Just don't go running down the street with them.

Here's an example: there may be a coworker who really annoys you—really presses your buttons. Applying the brakes—impulse or, as Dr. Hammerness would put it, “inhibitory” control does not necessarily mean that you try to suppress those emotions completely. Neglected emotions may come back to bite you or may lead you to, say, lash out at your spouse or child inappropriately instead of the coworker.

On the other hand, don't let the impulse urging you to tell the coworker to stuff it lead you to a rash action that will undoubtedly complicate and further disorganize your life.

Listen to your rational thoughts; let the skilled rider within you pull back on those reins. Besides, you may have a chance to achieve your objectives in other ways. The right time may come to demonstrate your displeasure with these people or address the situation. Remember, as the jockey would tell you, the race is won in the long run! And it is the long run—the future—that we are looking toward here as you work to learn better control and, through it, achieve a more organized life. Meeting face to face with our impulses brings to life the creative tension between living for today and living for tomorrow.

Today is less enjoyable if we don't listen to our hearts and follow our impulses in a conscious way.

Tomorrow will be better if we invest in making it so.

F
RANK ENTERED MY OFFICE FOR THE FIRST TIME
accompanied by the opening chords of the rock-and-roll song “Sweet Home Alabama.” Startled, I realized it wasn't his entrance music; it was his cell phone. A wiry fellow with a mustache, tattoos and a shaved head, Frank looked at me, held up one hand in a “Why me?” gesture of resignation and picked up the phone with the other. “Hello” he said gruffly, as he stood in the doorway. “Yeah, this is him, but I can't really talk…what? No, I…they didn't? Jeez, I thought I told him to…huh? Okay, okay, look, I'm sorry; we'll take care of it right away. Lemme get right back to you.”

He rattled off an apology—“Really sorry, doc; gotta make a quick call”—then tapped in a number.

“Hey, it's me…about that job in Brookline…didn't I tell you to make sure we cleaned out that stuff from her driveway? She has people coming over Saturday, remember? I didn't? I could have sworn I… You sure I didn't?” He sighed heavily. “Okay, just get over there
as soon you can and collect all that stuff, okay? She's pretty ticked off. Thanks.”

He started to make yet another call and then clipped the phone back on his belt. “She can wait. By the time I'm outta here, it'll be taken care of anyway.”

I grinned and nodded. “Nice to meet you,” I said.

He sat down. “Sorry, doc,” he said sheepishly. “That's the way my business is.”

Frank wore patched and faded jeans, work boots and a paint-spattered T-shirt.

“Let me guess,” I asked. “Are you a contractor?”

“Yup,” he said, fishing out a business card. It read, “Frank's for the Memories. Home Improvements That Last a Lifetime.”

“Nice card,” I said.

“Thanks, doc, but there's nothing nice about my business, especially in this economy. It's a bear.”

(Note: I'm paraphrasing Frank's actual choice of words here and throughout this recounting.)

“So, is it your work that brings you here?” I asked.

“No,” he said, with a crooked grin. “It's my wife.” He laughed. “Actually, it's something we heard on the radio the other day. They were talking about ADD or ADHD or whatever you call it. They were talking about these people who had it and how they were acting…” Frank now grew a bit sheepish. “And well…my wife said, ‘that sounds just like you. You should get that checked out.' So here I am.”

I'm not sure Frank thought he had ADHD. Many people who have the disorder have a hunch about it, but go for decades without an evaluation and diagnosis. At the behest of his wife Frank had decided to seek treatment and like many other people he finally, perhaps on
impulse, came in to get a better handle on a long-term problem that was affecting his life.

“I'm glad you came in,” I said to him, as his cell phone started ringing again. He clicked it off and apologized.

“It's like that all the time,” Frank said. “Kind of the nature of the business. What happened here is that I was supposed to tell one of my guys to get rid of a Dumpster we'd left at a job site. That call was from the client; she was flipping out because she's having her daughter's communion party there Saturday, and the Dumpster is still there….”

“So you forget to tell him to get it out of the client's driveway?”

He nodded. “Yup.”

I went out on a limb. “Frank, is this kind of thing that brought you here?”

I noticed that he slumped in his chair ever so slightly—as if the admission of this was a weight on his shoulders.

“When my wife and I heard that show on the radio, and they were describing these people as ‘distracted, forgetful, fidgety'…it was like, wow, that is
me.
” He chuckled as he nervously shifted in his chair. “Good thing she reminded me about the appointment with you three times…otherwise, I wouldn't have remembered it.”

He was making light of it, and it was good he could do that. But there's really nothing funny about problems with memory. And in his case, it was short-term memory—or working memory. Think of it as the interaction between memory and attention. Working memory allows you to hold and process information over short periods of time and to use information as a guide to future behavior—even after the information is out of sight (something we call “representational thinking”). It's a kind of clearinghouse for the information we need to function on a day-to-day basis. When working memory isn't working well, all kinds of problems can arise. People often fluff these off as “brain freezes”
or “senior moments” or describe themselves as being in a temporary “brain fog”; certainly we all forget things from time to time, particularly when we're under stress. However, I was getting the sense that Frank's lapses in working memory were not occasional. I needed to make sure.

“Tell me something. Does this kind of thing…you forgetting to tell your workers about moving the stuff from that client's driveway…does that happen a lot?”

“Oh, yeah. I probably lost a really good job a couple weeks ago because of it. It was a big kitchen and bathroom renovation. I remember finishing the initial phone call with them, running through some good ideas about the job—and then something else must have come up. Doc, not only did I forget the details of that phone call, I forgot to show up at their house when I told them I would for an estimate. I mean, I just totally blanked it out!”

“Well, do you keep an appointment book? Or take notes?”

“Yeah, I got a book. But, I dunno, it just didn't work. I used to say I kept it all in my head. Now I joke that there must be a hole up there, 'cause it keeps leaking out.”

“So you used to be really on top of things? You never had this problem of being forgetful in the past?”

He sat up straight. “Doc, I've got a good memory. I remember things growing up; I remember a lot of details about things that happened when I was in high school and in the army.” He stifled a laugh. “Oh man, some funny stuff I could tell you about those days….”

“It's good that you can remember all those things from the past,” I replied. “But we're talking about a different kind of memory here. This is remembering things that just happened in the last few days, or in the last few hours…or even minutes.”

“Minutes?” he asked.

“Yes.” I went on to describe working memory to Frank. “Have you always had problems there?”

“I'll just tell you this one time in the army; I had a late-night detail and I guess it was so dark and I was so tired I forgot where my barracks were…and I ended up going to sleep with another platoon,” he said. “The funny thing was nobody even realized it until the guy next to me woke up the next morning and said, ‘Who the heck are you? Would you kindly remove yourself from our barracks?'”

(Again, I'm paraphrasing Frank here.)

Interesting, I thought to myself, as he broke up laughing in his chair, in the retelling of what was obviously one of his favorite anecdotes. Frank was able to use his long-term memory to recall episodes of short-term memory loss! I was about to ask another question when he leaned close and asked me one instead. “Doc,” he said in almost a whisper. “I'm only 45. Is it possible that I could have Alzheimer's?”

I'd heard this question before from young or middle-aged people who have problems with memory.

“Did anyone in your family have Alzheimer's at an early age?”

He scrunched his face up, remembering. “Nah. My grandmother was a little out of it by the time she passed, but she was in her late nineties. I think the nursing home did it to her.”

“And you have noticed these kinds of memory issues, forgetfulness, since the army and since childhood?”

“Oh yeah, absolutely,” Frank replied. “Drove my folks nuts. I forgot more coats then I can remember at school, at the park, friends' homes, you know.”

“Okay, then it sounds more like ADHD and working-memory difficulties than dementia.”

“Huh?” Frank looked confused. “Working memory? What are you talking about?”

“I thought I just told you….”

He broke up laughing again. “Just kidding. I got you going, doc.”

Now it was my turn to laugh and shake my head. You couldn't help but like this guy. Still, impairment in working memory is no laughing matter. “Frank, I think we need to work on this issue,” I said seriously. “I expect you could work much more effectively with an improved working memory. So why don't we…” I was interrupted by Frank holding up his index finger, and reaching for his cell phone. “Sorry again, doc,” he said. “I just remembered that I got an electrician doing a job for me in Newton, and I think I forgot to give him the address.”

MOLD INFORMATION

We call this next Rule of Order “Mold Information,” but it really has a lot to do with working memory, the kind that Frank has a problem with.

First, let's make sure we've got our memories clear here.

When we talk about working memory, we're not talking about the memory of years gone by or the memory that recalls obscure facts or figures. We are referring to the active, working, need-it-to-function-on-a-daily-basis kind of memory—the kind of memory that can hold on to recent information and work with it,
mold
it so to speak, to allow information that is no longer right in front of you to be useful and accessible to you.

As Frank's case shows, that kind of memory—or the lack thereof—can cause all kinds of problems in your life. Indeed it may be one of the reasons you're feeling disorganized.

We'll look at that kind of memory in a second. But while working memory is a distinct form of the human ability to recall, it's useful to look at the other types—because, in general, problems with memory, in any form, are a “red flag” for many people. Start forgetting, start
having the so-called “senior moments” everyone jokes about, and we begin to wonder seriously:

“Do I have dementia? Do I have Alzheimer's disease?”

A good way to distinguish the types of memory is as follows:

As people get older, it's that “middle” type of memory that can be affected: the recent memories. This is a normal part of the aging process. But it can worsen quickly and may suggest a serious medical problem known as dementia. In dementia, memory can get much worse quickly—even over several months. With dementia, people forget about things they have done recently, including things they have done many times before, such as how to get to a friend's home or to the store. They can get lost in familiar places, become disoriented about what time it is or not recognize the people around them. They may not be able to keep track of what happens in a day.

Dementia is not simply caused by people being “stressed out” or overwhelmed by the demands put on them by jobs. Young or middle-aged adults who feel like they can't focus or that they don't know what to do next can still usually remember what they did last night or what happened at work yesterday—and certainly wouldn't frequently forget things to do. Their issue tends to be with short-term memory—as was the case with Frank. In addition, regardless of the kind of memory problem, the pattern or course of memory problems matters tremendously. As Frank described, his problems with memory (and some of
his other issues) can be traced back to early childhood, through his days in the army and right through to the present. This is consistent with a lifelong issue, such as ADHD, and not with a recent or sudden onset of problems in later adulthood (such as with dementia).

Getting back to Frank, the problems he was describing—missing an appointment, forgetting to call someone—seemed to be related to the type of memory that keeps immediate information accessible: working memory. Let's look a little more closely at how information is processed in this form of memory.

Here's an example: The hostess of a dinner party looks at her dining room and realizes that there may not be enough space to accommodate all the guests that have been invited. As she continues on with other chores for the party, preparing the hors d'oeuvres or driving to the wine store, the image of that dining room is played back, considered from different angles and weighed with constraints of budget and time. Views of the adjacent rooms are considered, as are the menu and the guests. All of this information is weighed, evaluated and compared at the same time…and then, voilà, the solution of serving the dinner in buffet style instead of sit down is arrived at. Most of this thinking was done without looking at the dining room itself.

Let's stop for a moment and appreciate this working-memory ability: the brain's ability to hold streams of information, analyze them, process them and use all of this information to guide a future action is remarkable and necessary in order to be organized. Imagine the experience of Frank faced with the task above. Okay, maybe a fancy dinner party is not his thing, but he wants to try it out. However, just as he is driving away from the house, contemplating seating solutions, “Sweet Home Alabama” blares at him, and…it's over. He pulls over, takes the phone call, attends to whatever the crisis is on the job and completely forgets about the seating arrangement. That information—the layout
of his dining room, who's coming, what he had been thinking about where to seat them—is all gone and unavailable. He must head back to the house to start over.

You can consider this brain skill as reflective, not gut-reacting, seat-of-the-pants thinking—as valuable as that can be in certain cases (and we should note that someone like Frank may be very good at that kind of thinking—what to do when one of his workers calls and says he just spilled a can of paint all over the client's floor, for example).