Spoons, spoons, spoons. If you haven't heard about spoon theory, this is a good time to read about it since today I am talking about having spoons or something kind of like spoons, but not the spoons you need. Instead of a soup spoon, it's a giant ladle!
Or I need to do my math homework, but what I have energy for is cleaning my room or working on the gala dresses or one of a hundred other things that probably also need doing, just aren't what I need to do right now. Sometimes I can make the sewing energy work for the math homework, but not always.
Sometimes I can sip my soup out of the ladle, and sometimes I can track down a mug to ladle my soup into, but sometimes? Sometimes I've got a shallow bowl and it really needs to be a soup spoon and I just can't make the thing that actually needs doing right now work. At that point, I can either work on whatever it is my spoons are right for or not do much of anything. (I very rarely run out of spoons completely, but finding myself with the wrong ones happens reasonably often.)
And the wrong spoons can cause just as much trouble as no spoons when they mean that what really should get done still doesn't. It doesn't help much for me to sit here working on my cure paper notecards because I have the spoons for that when I need to get food, for example. (That+writing this is what's going on as I write.) It doesn't help much when I need to get math homework done and all I can focus on is the sewing. Sure, it also needs to get done, but not right now due tomorrow crud kind of needing to get done.
Often enough, my executive functioning/wrong spoons/whatever you want to call it looks like procrastination by doing other things that also need doing, just not right now. It's just how I work. I think it's how "I didn't do my history homework because I was too busy studying... for history" became an excuse I actually used in high school and got away with. Really. I was that random kid in the Honors section who decided to take the AP test anyways because hate hate hate history and never want to see it again, and well, it was the week of the test. I needed to study for it, and I had history homework. (These are two different topic, since the AP people need to finish the curriculum by the test date and Honors people don't, so no, doing my history homework would not have been studying for the AP test.) I had homework due the next day that I just couldn't start, but I could focus on the reading, so I read on the topics I needed to get. I still did fine in history for the year, and I still passed the AP test, so it came out OK. But yes, I think that "too busy studying for history to do my history homework" is a very me thing to say in that it gives a good sense of what my problem with getting things done it. It's not that I don't get things done. It's that I don't do things in the most logical order because wrong spoons.
Or I need to do my math homework, but what I have energy for is cleaning my room or working on the gala dresses or one of a hundred other things that probably also need doing, just aren't what I need to do right now. Sometimes I can make the sewing energy work for the math homework, but not always.
Sometimes I can sip my soup out of the ladle, and sometimes I can track down a mug to ladle my soup into, but sometimes? Sometimes I've got a shallow bowl and it really needs to be a soup spoon and I just can't make the thing that actually needs doing right now work. At that point, I can either work on whatever it is my spoons are right for or not do much of anything. (I very rarely run out of spoons completely, but finding myself with the wrong ones happens reasonably often.)
And the wrong spoons can cause just as much trouble as no spoons when they mean that what really should get done still doesn't. It doesn't help much for me to sit here working on my cure paper notecards because I have the spoons for that when I need to get food, for example. (That+writing this is what's going on as I write.) It doesn't help much when I need to get math homework done and all I can focus on is the sewing. Sure, it also needs to get done, but not right now due tomorrow crud kind of needing to get done.
Often enough, my executive functioning/wrong spoons/whatever you want to call it looks like procrastination by doing other things that also need doing, just not right now. It's just how I work. I think it's how "I didn't do my history homework because I was too busy studying... for history" became an excuse I actually used in high school and got away with. Really. I was that random kid in the Honors section who decided to take the AP test anyways because hate hate hate history and never want to see it again, and well, it was the week of the test. I needed to study for it, and I had history homework. (These are two different topic, since the AP people need to finish the curriculum by the test date and Honors people don't, so no, doing my history homework would not have been studying for the AP test.) I had homework due the next day that I just couldn't start, but I could focus on the reading, so I read on the topics I needed to get. I still did fine in history for the year, and I still passed the AP test, so it came out OK. But yes, I think that "too busy studying for history to do my history homework" is a very me thing to say in that it gives a good sense of what my problem with getting things done it. It's not that I don't get things done. It's that I don't do things in the most logical order because wrong spoons.
Me too. :)
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