The spreadsheet is doing its best
I have said, more than once, that my being organized is not a personality but a coping mechanism.
Usually, I say this when someone compliments me on how organized I am. And that usually happens when they see my tools.
One of the partners I worked with at a previous job once sent me a message after I sent them partnership details and said, “That was a very specific document.”
Thank you. I have ADHD. Diagnosed. Unmedicated.
I like lists. I love calendars. I like knowing where things are. I make systems for things that probably do not need systems. I will happily spend an unreasonable amount of time figuring out the most efficient way to do something I could have just done in five minutes.
And I find there is something deeply satisfying about having a spreadsheet for something that absolutely did not require a spreadsheet.
This isn’t because I naturally love organization. It’s because I know what happens when I don’t have it.
Spoiler alert: I won’t have a job.
If I don’t write something down, there is a very real possibility that I will forget it.
If I don’t put something where I can see it, it may as well not exist. Case in point: the food in my freezer.
If I don’t put a deadline on something, “later” can become a surprisingly long period of time.
So I build systems.
Lists. Calendars. Reminders. Checklists. Notes. Folders. Labels. A system for managing the system. I literally have a spreadsheet that just contains the links to other spreadsheets.
And then there are the systems that are so specific they probably say more about the problem than the solution.
My laptop, for example, is programmed to tell me: “Lyra, I need charging” when it reaches 20% battery.
Then, at 10%, it says: “Lyra, I really need charging.”
Because I know myself.
I know that 20% is not actually the point at which I will charge my laptop. Twenty percent is the point at which I will think, okay, I’ll do that in a bit. And then I won’t. So I have outsourced the responsibility of reminding me to charge my laptop to my laptop.
This is what I mean when I say my organization is a coping mechanism.
It’s not that my brain naturally works this way.
It’s that I’ve spent a considerable amount of time figuring out how to make my environment work with the brain I actually have.
It works. Mostly.
The funny thing is that from the outside, this can look like discipline.
People see the formatted, formula’d spreadsheets and assume I have my shit together. They do not see the 47 mental tabs open behind them.
They see the spreadsheet. They don’t see the spreadsheet that exists to remind me where the other spreadsheets are.
They see the laptop with it’s organized folders. They don’t see that I had to teach the laptop how to keep itself alive.
They see someone who is organized. They do not see the increasingly elaborate network of systems I have constructed to make sure I remain that way.
My organization is not proof that my brain is naturally organized. It is proof that I’ve known my brain for a very long time.
Long enough to know that if I don’t put something in the calendar, it doesn’t exist.
Long enough to know that 20% battery isn’t an emergency.
Long enough to know that Future Lyra cannot be trusted to remember what Present Lyra thinks is obvious.
So Present Lyra leaves her notes. Calendars. Alarms. A laptop that nags her.
Fortunately, Present Lyra is extremely organized.
in transit, intentionally
