"However, I tend to feel better when I actually PLAN to ignore my to do list rather than have the tension of stuff I was "supposed" to be working on hanging over my head."

Omg, SHU, are you and I even members of the same species? Reading this sentence gave me an anxiety attack. I jest, of course, but only a little. Whenever you post a pic of the planner, I see a giant ball and chain.

I had a collaborator whom I think you'd like as she has a similar approach to organizing time as you. While I really respect her and her intellect, and we actually had complementary expertise, I think we were so fundamentally incompatible in our approaches to work, that we drove each other nuts. (Well, she drove me nuts. Not sure how perturbed she felt; she's too even-keeled to show much.)

Preach it, sister. The only things lists and plans do for me is fill me with burning a desire to just NOT whatever it is that was planned.

Stuff that absolutely has to happen gets entered into a calendar on the phone with multiple alarms, and is not looked at or thought about until absolutely necessary. Otherwise, my instinct to flee kicks in and I will do everything I can to get out of the obligation.

Different strokes and all that.

However, what's happening right now in our country has gone so far beyond the ordinary that I can't excuse those who try to pretend it is not happening.

Oh, rest assured, everyone notices what's happening. But I, for one, know better than to discuss it online. These are very scary times.

Note: This is all tongue-in-cheek; just trying to lighten the mood. In seriousness, I feel for SHU and I know breastfeeding can be challenging.

Take up a hobby where you will be subjected to constant rejection (I write short fiction and get rejections weekly; nay, daily). Take up writing research grants as a significant portion of your job, thereby assuring you will be mercilessly pummeled with a constant influx of rejections from the NIH and other funding agencies.

Completely lose confidence in own competence on any front, thereby getting cured of all A-type/perfectionist/control tendencies. Get pummeled by rejections some more, just in case you manage to raise your head a bit and contemplate possible non-suckage in any realm for more than three nanoseconds, because we can't have you entertaining such ludicrous ideas.

Realize that the fact that your kids are gorgeous, healthy, and well fed is a miracle since you have no competencies whatsoever. Bask in own ability to raise them despite lack of all ability. Gratefully reach for pumped milk or formula when facing a fussy child paired up with empty breasts in the evening. Pass no judgement on self because you have already established that you suck as much as it is humanly possible to suck. Contemplate becoming a "you suck" meme.

Write an essay about motherhood challenges, submit it for publication and get it rejected four dozen times, thereby exhausting all the markets. Serves you well; you don't want to start feeling like you're competent as a mother or a writer, do you?

Keep sucking. Secretly worry that you suck so much that perhaps this means you in fact excel at sucking. Have mind literally explode due to overheating as it tries to resolve this cognitive dissonance. Annoy husband as he now has to clean bits of brain matter from the sofa cushions. Feel vindicated because, had he listened to you and bought the leather sofa you wanted, he would now not have to scrape your gray matter from between the ridges of the corduroy upholstery.

Posthumously receive a large NIH grant, acceptance letters from top literary magazines for your fiction, and the La Leche League Most Devoted Breastfeeder Evah Medal of Honor.

Haha. No.

- THE END -

http://xykademiqz.com/2018/02/18/navel-meet-myers...

SHU, here's what I wrote up. I admit it seems chaotic once I put it in writing, but I promise it doesn't feel chaotic: http://xykademiqz.com/2018/02/18/navel-meet-myers...

Will keep you posted! Thanks, SHU!

I don't want to hijack SHU's thread any more than I already have, because I think you and I are likely not representative of SHU's readership, but please feel free to email me and I will also likely write about this over at my blog in a day or so. But yes, I definitely hear you on this: "It's almost like if I make a list - I don't want to follow it." I know exactly what you mean.

We are polar opposite Meyers Briggs!!!! Literally. I’m an ESFJ.

That's amazing! :-)

I am not against organization per se, but I have never found a way to use lists in any way that's not anxiety inducing because I feel that whenever I put things on paper I am missing so much key information because of the linear (or even 2D) nature of lists.

Perhaps the simplest way to think of the way I stay organized is to envision every task I have as a giant amorphous floating thingy. Each task has many attributes, how large, what color (e.g. how important), but also how it makes me feel (how excited I am to do it), how it interacts with other floaties (urgency, how it fits into a larger scheme of things), and a whole bunch of other ones. Now imagine a large 3D room (I like to think of the interior of a pirate ship or a castle) in which all these amorphous floaties float. The key is that they are able to move, and change size and color and all their attributes, and merge with each other if needed over time. The personal and professional are all in there, and sometimes they interact, sometimes not. The dynamics in their evolution is key. Another key is that how a task makes me feel is very important, as I can be a terrible procrastinator when something is boring or overwhelming, so I make sure I reward myself with something I enjoy doing before tacking something looming that I dread. This is how I stay very efficient (I am a theoretical physicist by training, working as a prof at a research university in a somewhat more applied area; I also have a long standing academic blog and I write short fiction with some publishing success (different pseud); I have three kids). It is also important that I minimize commitments: I avoid in-person meetings like the plague and don't commit to anything I can avoid (for instance, I've had a blog for 8 years, but still resist posting on a schedule because that would ruin things for me and likely make me quit). I can successfully impersonate a gregarious extrovert for a period (very good at large classroom teaching) but too much face time is extremely draining. You MDs are superheroes in my eyes!

The 3D pirate ship/castle with flying ever-changing multidimensional floating blobs is probably the closest to how my mental organization works. So it's all in the head, and attempts at lists generally leave me very anxious and uncomfortable.

Shu, what's your Myers-Briggs type? I ask because your planer posts fascinate me, but in an alien kind of way (I am allergic to planners and lists, but am very efficient in my profession nonetheless). I am obviously not a target demographic for planners but wonder if I'm really a freak or just not the right personality type. (I'm INTP-T, btw.)