So I Married an ADDer

Division of Labor in a Mixed ADD Marriage

Jen and I have been asked by a number of people how we split up the household chores. In what I call a "mixed marriage," where one spouse has ADD and the other does not, household chores can be a source of conflict.

A lot of couples follow a "chore chart," where each person takes a turn doing the dishes, taking out the garbage, cooking dinner, etc. But all the charts in the world aren't enough to convince an ADDer to do something they can't stand to do.

So Jen and I split the chores permanently instead of on a turn-taking basis. She always cooks, always does the yard work, and always builds and tends the fires (we use the fireplace every day from October-March). I always do the dishes, always vacuum the house, and always clean the bathrooms. That way, there is no doubt as to who's responsible for what.

There is another important thing to keep in mind when assigning chores. Pretend for a moment that Jen and I are cars. Jen has a 12 gallon fuel tank and I have an 18 gallon fuel tank. That means I can go about 30% farther than Jen without refueling. Nagging her to run on an empty tank is not going to help.

So that's how we manage the housework. It's a great system, but I'll be honest - I am looking forward to someday hiring a housekeeper.

What About Me? Wednesday: On Piles

In case you're just tuning in, I do not have ADD. My partner Jen does, but I don't. So by default, I'm more inclined to keep things neat and organized, stay on top of paperwork, and all those tasks that fall under what I like to call "life admin". And since I'm also Jen's business partner, I get all the business admin, too.

But even though I'm ADD-free, I'm not superhuman. I get behind on boring tasks, I procrastinate, and worst of all, I make piles. When I joined AMG full time in July, I was supposed to organize and systematize everything. I was going to turn this place into a well-oiled machine.

But I fell into a clutter trap. I started making piles of papers which I labeled (literally) "To Be Filed", "To Do", "Pending", etc. Completely arbitrary names for random piles that kept accumulating behind my back. I added "deal with piles" to my to-do list to no avail. They sat there for 3 months.

When the dog started napping on my piles, I realized I needed help. And then I smacked myself in the head, because Jen's Kiss Your Clutter Goodbye toolkit was literally right in front of me the whole time. I had spent hours editing the audio CD, so I knew it inside out, but I didn't think to apply her methods to my own clutter.

So I revisited Kiss Your Clutter Goodbye and finally got through my piles. I can proudly say now that every single piece of paper is either filed or shredded. Not only that, but I'm following the strategy for keeping the piles from coming back.

Don't you love when the solution to a problem is right under your nose?
   

Ernie Gets Organized

For your Friday amusement, another Bert and Ernie moment. This week, ADD Ernie comes up with his own organizational system.

 

 

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Complicated

I'm into my second week of working full time with Jen, and she's clearly starting to get frustrated with the way I do things. She wanted me here in the first place because I'm organized and good with details, but she keeps accusing me of overcomplicating everything.

For example, she asked me to make a contact sheet of phone numbers for people we call all the time. No problem. I made a very nice table in Excel. She hated it. "Why can't you just use Word?" So I made a table in Word. Apparently she doesn't want a table. She just wants a mishmash of tabs. Something that can't even alphabetize itself!

And that's only one example. I am struggling to find ADD-friendly ways to organize a business that still make sense to me. I know that I have a tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be, but I underestimated the challenge of coming into an ADD-run business and having to make sense of it all.

Knowing what I do about adult ADD, I understand that it's critical for ADDers to do things their own way. Most of them have spent most of their lives conforming to standards that made absolutely no sense to them – standards that have caused endless frustration and feelings of failure. I don't want to be part of the problem. I want Jen to steer this ship. It would just be nice if I could find the rudder.

 

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Differently Organized

The chaos has died down and I'm settling into my new work environment. I love working from home (especially after commuting 5 hours a day for a year), but it's definitely going to take me some time to adjust.

In her newsletter yesterday, Jen had some nice things to say about my joining AMG:

"As the non-ADDer in the company, Erin adds strengths and skills that compliment the rest of us very well. She's highly organized and detail-oriented, and she enjoys managing projects and creating systems. Better her than me."

While I appreciate the kind words, I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to live up to them. This environment is very ADD, and trying to organize everything from the finances to the files is an enormous project. It can be done, but it can't be done in a day. And that's what I need to remind myself as I stare at the pile of papers breeding on my desk.

Jen has been organizing herself in ways that work for her, which is an absolute must for ADDers. A lot of people with ADD get criticized for being sloppy when they're actually just organized differently. Jen can tell you where every single piece of paper is, but her systems don't make any sense to me.

We need to find systems that work for both of us (which is essentially the point of this blog) and so far we've done so successfully in our home and in our relationship. Now we just need to come together on managing the business.

I'm going to start by removing all the coffee cups and water glasses from Jen's office...

 

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