Counter-Intuitive

I have something that I doubt you’ve ever heard someone who is ADD say: There is something very relaxing about organizing, for me, at least.

I feel at peace when I lose myself in an organizational system.

Part of this, I am sure, is that I am usually organizing to procrastinate doing work, as I am tonight. I mean, yes, I can’t do this project until I find all the sheets I need in my messy binder, but there is not reason I need to organize the binder as I do it. I mean, dude, the class ends tomorrow. (Well, technically today, it is after midnight)

But I think that it is deeper than that.

In my educational psych class, we learned about disequilibrium. Short summary, it is when your mind is a little out of whack, and you need to be in disequilibrium to learn something. For example, a child sees all things that swim in the sea as fish, and know that fish don’t breathe air, then see a dolphin breathing air, they must go through disequilibrium and confusion to learn this new fact, and assimilate it.

My theory is that because of the ADD, my brain is always a little out of whack, always trying to keep up with everything I am trying to process. When I lose myself in an organizing system, I do what the system tells me to, and my brain can calm down, relax, and just rest. It doesn’t get to do that much.

I wish I could figure out how to achieve this piece when I’m not in the middle of a crisis period, though.