So I added another app along with the Lickety Split – it’s one of many time keeping type apps out there.  It have learned a lot over the past 24 hours about my difficulties staying focused.  So I set a timer to get dressed.  Extra time left over to make the bed.  Ten minutes to take care of my morning toiletries and meds.

This is where I noticed my problem.  Taking meds, remember I have to contact doctor about something, start to leave the bathroom to go find my phone to put a reminder in.  No, stay and finish your makeup.  It was very difficult not to leave that room to go take care of things that were popping into my mind.

This happened every time I put the timer on to finish a task.  It was torture to have to stick with it and know that I would be able to take care of the mental gnats that were buzzing around my ears as soon as I was finished with what I was doing NOW.

I started to notice how all day, timer or not, I flit from one task to another – some trigger will remind me of something else I had to do and, dropping what I’m doing, I start to take off to do  that instead of finishing the little task (which would only take another five minutes perhaps) that is in front of me.

I think I’m on to something here.

The last nine months have not been easy.  Packing to move, losing Terri, getting settled in a new place.  I have responded to these stresses not in the best way – eating comfort food, being lazy, watching TV, playing games on my phone.  With the results of my blood test causing clouds of doom to roll in, I’ve completely turned my diet around and of course that makes one feel better right away.  Still lazy but – at the risk of having my midwestern and eastern kin send me rotten cheese in the mail – it’s way too hot here for me.  I have deleted most of the games from my iPhone and slowly the TV habit that I got into keeping Terri company will be replaced by schoolwork and work work.

Then this past year will become a memory.  Life will go on.  It will go on a little more smoothly, however, if I kick the worst habit of all – procrastination.