What is the most helpful for everyone's add here? Is there a particular part of the site that you find useful? I guess I'm trying to confront difficulties processing information (coming to more synthesized and larger conclusions) and haven't really figured out yet my own consistent style of doing this.

Surely, there are other ways to cope than just external organization? I find that med's don't do that much for me, so am trying to find a way to deal.

I'm on meds, but not for ADD.
Organization is a must in my life.
Without it, I tend to lose things, forget things, etc.
At work this would be a disaster, because I'm in charge of all Purchasing, Printing, and supply requests. I'm also in charge of a 95 vehicle fleet, and everything that goes with car problems.
My desk is only clean when I lose something!
It's hard, it really is, to keep up with everything going on.
But somehow I just push myself to do it.
I do get up and walk around every so often, to keep from getting bored, or
lose focus on a particular project. Once I start drifting, I get up and walk around a bit. It helps.

Ditto on being organized. Also alarms...alarms are starting to be my...ugh...best friends...whether I like it or not...=P Inducing habits, that's another one, also a tough one. I guess this all falls under "behavior modification"...then again, I'm not a severe case (only when I'm stressed out), so maybe I can get away with this....

...and patience. For me, I'm learning to be patient, that I'm not going to be learning new things overnight like I used to 10 years ago. So behavior modification with attitude adjustment following as a close 2nd have been working best for me.

Testing will show your Weaknesses and Strengths. That helps with designing your Accommodations.

When you say your issue is "info processing", do you mean your auditory processing (or auditory working memory) or visual processing? Or another type? (Or do you know?)

My 2 cents are:

good nutrition and limitation of tv/computer

But that's just what I feel best with. I shudder to think what would happen if everyone here tried to give up the 'puter. :P

Routine, exercise, attitude. . . . .

My testing might indicate that I'm not capable of anything. It didn't really show my strengths/weakness, and I was pretty depressed at the time of the testing. On the other hand, I disproved a lot of teachers by making an incredible amount of progress in english (hardly a terirble student to begin with, b's). I'm not sure anymore that I am capable of much, though and ready to truly throw the towel in and settle for a lesser life.
Sure I'm at an Ivy league as well. It's frustrating because I can see where I'm off yet I just can't get myself to make certain connections, to ground what I'm thinking about. This takes up my life along with some other family business. I feel like everyone I try and see is on the verge of telling me to give up, some think I am incredibly intelligent, yet I just can't for some reason consistently take notes, read write and get to a point where I'm producing coherent and persuasive work.

blank,

If you are looking for some kind of tool or technique to better organize your thoughts (as opposed to your closets) some people use concept or mind mapping. There is a nice little software package available called Inspiration:

http://www.inspiration.com/productinfo/inspiration/index.cfm

You can download a trial copy from there and buy it from Amazon for $45.

The website will tell you about the paradigm. And there's a pdf tutorial you can download to get you started. You can buy books about about it too. The idea is to build out a concept visually and then annotate it with additional detail. The visualization allows you to see and manage the connectivity between concept elements so relationships and synthesis is clearer. Inspiration allows you to toggle between a map and formatted document that is created on the fly from your annotations. You can port that to Word. It's used to help students frame out a subject area. But writers use these kinds of tools too to generate storylines.

Mapping is more intuitive for some people than others. But it might be worth a try.

SteveM

Environment is a big factor with a lot of people like myself for example. White noise machines are helpful in some instances to block out noise but at times the sound of it can be distracting

I don't know really what else to do. I am rather devastated that med's can't leave me at a clearer ground. At any moment my attention problems can kick in, lead me to be near-sighted, prevent my moving towards anything like progress.

Since I am trying to figure out other habits, I am looking for some type of therapy/coach. unfortunately, the psychology field is rather mixed up. some say that despite loads of psychotherapy attention problems will persist (and would I just be going to rant about these rather than getting more focused to come up with really tailored strategies). Other strategies that deal with attention deficit focus on this really minute way of teaching schedules and routines--I really find it degrading to think that I am impaired in such a way that snail teaching is the only way to get used to these skills. What I am trying is to develop ways of addressing particular concentration problems--undefined, strong interests, and keeping to a flow of conversation and setting up goals.

A major problem that results from my self-struggles is a problem socialization and identifying the types of relationships I want to have. I often have trouble spending my time meaningfully and in past youth, sunk into such despair, that I simply offered to be somewhat of a hand-foot servant in order to endear people to me. I figured feeding off of others' personalities was the only way to develop a life, if I could even develop myself.

It is hard to say how much of this is real or just my negative self-perception, as I grew up with a perpetually depressed father who has been nearly hospitalized several times. My parents had very little social contact as I was growing up and I was always plunged into highly competetive situations. Makes it difficult to put things into perspective, to source out if some biological misery makes many aspects of life IMPOSSIBLE. I'm beginning to reach the latter conclusion.

Right now, I spend every day trying to learn to "focus." (in the spare chances I get off from my schoolwork) Yet weirdly, I don't know what I would concentrate on if I miraculously learned how to focus. Somehow I feel that if I learned to focus, I would know what was important. Days go by with my spending time in the library trying to pick up acting techniques in order to better read social situations, or just haphazardly trying to cope with a slew of blindspots. If maybe I were able to identify one or two areas to work on this wouldn't be as agononizing and perhaps counterproductive. I would prefer to not settle to the whims of my attention problems.

Anyone have any ideas what therapy would be helpful or would not be helpful?

If you are taking medication, and your symptoms are not getting better than you need to address that with your doctor. I think that ADD medication is somewhat of a guessing game and unfortuntely, you may have to try different drugs at different doses to find the right one for you.

You probably would benefit from an ADD coach, so I'd defintely encourage you to do that.

But most of all, you need to talk to a therapist or someone about a lot of hurt that you're carrying around. ADD can be a really fantastic thing, but when it's undiagnosed it's just hell. And the emotional fallout can take such a long time to get over, never mind all the organization and things we need to do to get our selves in order.

I feel that really needs to be addressed before you need any more tips on organization.

The Franklin Covey seminar and use of their organizer system has helped me a great deal in my professional life.

I have tried many orgnanizational systems and this one works the best for me.

It's a great feeling to finally get control of the disarray but it doesn't happen overnight and it takes time to restructure your life.

I really find it degrading to think that I am impaired in such a way that snail teaching is the only way to get used to these skills.

Please remember you didn’t get the way you are over night, so it will take time to change the way you do things. Going slowly is really the best and most long lasting way to approach life long changes.

Coaching information here on ADDF (http://www.addforums.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=138)

Coaching
livingwithADD (http://www.youraddcoach.com/)


Behavior modification check list (http://www.addforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25530)

Hope this helps.

Has anyone found that once recognized that they could turn a rather blank and frustrating life around? I think that is a key sore spot right now--the fact that I couldn't push aside a lot of the anxiety in the past and try and get to the main, sharper point.