the second half of this post is going to be about specific examples. They may or may not be relevant to you. But I bet you’ll be able to relate to it a few of them. Some of them are examples of where waste is already happened. Some of them are examples of where waste is inevitable. Some of them are examples of where you can choose to avoid waste through your behavior. here’s an example of waste that’s not your fault. The world has decided that physical sets of encyclopedia are no longer necessary. If you happen to have one of these dinosaurs in your house, it’s not your fault the internet happened. Get rid of those bad Larry’s. The best you can do is rip off the covers and recycle the insides. Or you can use them for fires in the winter. But keeping them doesn’t mean they don’t have to go at some point. Eventually you will die and someone will have to clean out your house. How about clothes? Well, I think that depends on why you’re getting rid of them. If you’ve got a box of clothes from before you had kids and it is just not physically possible that they will fit anymore, that doesn’t seem like waste. That seems like a thing that just happened. But here’s the funny part. The longer you hold on to them, the more wasteful it is. Why? Think about what you wore 20 years ago. How many people would want to buy that in a second hand store now? Probably not many. Of course, some fashions will circle back especially in the hipster population. But the most bang for your buck in terms of giving things another life and being less wasteful is to donate them to…

my general philosophy is that in order to be successful we have to manage three things our time, our tasks, and our stuff. I started my career as a professional organizer dealing mostly with stuff. As a coach I’m more deal with the other two. And even though I’m not in clients homes helping them organize anymore, the topic does come up quite often. One of the things that many of my clients struggle with is getting rid of things. I’ll probably do a follow-up on why getting rid of things is difficult. But I won’t get into that now. The takeaway that I’d like to give to you today is about the concept of waste. Many of my clients struggle with getting rid of things, throwing things away, because it represents waste to them. But waste does not occur when we get rid of something. Waste occurs when we bring something into our life that we don’t need. Waste occurs when we buy an item of clothing that doesn’t quite fit or isn’t quite right. Waste occurs when we bring things into our lives that are essentially disposable. And sometimes waste occurs that’s not your fault. It’s helpful to realize that once something enters the consumer ecosystem, it exists. At some point it will have to be dealt with at its waste, no matter how durable a good it is. So, ultimately, waste, and minimizing it, it’s about changing behaviors going forward, not lamenting decisions already made. And sometimes it just is what it is. I think I’m going to split this into two posts. I also think I’m going to go back and write the post about why it’s hard to get rid of stuff first and post all three in order.

acquiring things is super easy. I furnished my whole first apartment from things in the trash in Newton and from yard sales. I think the entire apartment from furniture to dishes cost about $150. When I talk to my clients about the concept of stimulation seeking, shopping is one of the categories of stimulation seeking. We get a little dopamine hit when we acquire something. And yes, both impulsive and compulsive shopping can be associated with ADHD. But, as I think I mentioned in my post about my infinite possibilities theory, we acquire things through a variety of means, not just by purchasing them. of course, there is no inherent problem with that. The problem lies and how much more difficult it is for us to organize and then eventually get rid of the things we bring into our world. I once made a client laugh and coined a phrase when I said to her, “do you want to live your life or do you want to be the curator of the museum of your own crap?” This question came out of many sessions of her intense difficulty getting rid of things which I would objectively categorize as junk. and that’s no judgment on this client. I want to be clear that I don’t judge anyone who I work with. The point is to illustrate how difficult it is for people to get rid of things once they are acquired. I think there are a couple reasons for this that are directly related to our adhd. I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned in the past the idea that we are reluctant to get rid of things because of their potential use. Emphasis on the word potential. There’s this famous ADHD book entitled late lost and unprepared. That tells you a lot…

I think I’m going to do a short series of quick entries about adhd-isms that I have developed over the years. Not sure where I’m going with this yet. But I’m pretty sure it’ll be helpful. the infinite possibilities theory is my favorite thing about ADHD people. But it is also one of the things that holds us back the most. As always, it doesn’t apply to everybody. We don’t all present the same way as ADHD people. But there are trends. And this is a pretty strong one under the heading of the average ADHD or is more likely to be creative than the average human. the vast majority of us do not suffer from a lack of ideas. If anything, we are overwhelmed by all of the amazing ideas we have. In fact, that can be paralyzing if executive function and decision making are weaknesses. I always make a joke about the handy guy who sees a broken bike in the trash and says that’s awesome it’s only missing one brake cable three spokes and a gear. I could totally fix that up and have a new bike or sell it on craigslist. Most of my clients smile and identify with this in some way. Your thing might not be the bike. But most of us have a thing or a few things that we get a little dopamine hit from acquiring and a more substantial dopamine hit from the potential Joy of what we can make it into. The problem with having so many great ideas, is that it’s basically impossible to execute all of them. It may not even be possible to execute most of them. I always tell my clients that you may have to endure the pain of letting 97 ideas go in order…