What Katy Louise Did...

My photo
Katy Louise writes about health, wealth, happiness and relationships, and the spiritual insights she gains along her path. She is currently editor of Top Sante magazine (www.topsante.co.uk). Prior to that she was editor of Bodyfit magazine (now Your Fitness www.yourfitnesstoday.com) and the launch editor of Soul&Spirit magazine (www.soulandspiritmagazine.com). Katy is also a certified Fitsteps and STOTT Pilates instructor. She is the go-to girl for all matters relating to health, wellbeing and spirituality.

Saturday 22 December 2012

Does modern life give us ADHD?

OK another quick one before I depart for my intensive meditation retreat. It occurred to me as I sat eating my porridge that the real reason I'm going on this retreat is because for a long time now I've been suffering a form of ADHD, which is perhaps exacerbated by the type of job I have. It's all geared around not focusing for more than 20 minutes on any one task. At best, I can get my head down and put a double page interview together in an hour but only if I don't check emails. If it's a double page on anything else, I get far too distracted by other 'urgent' emails, or even the temptation to open non-urgent ones, and before I know it I've gone off and started work on another page, or the accounts, or got involved in an email conversation and been totally distracted from what I set out to do. And this way of working has spilled over into my personal life...

The inability to focus 
Just this morning, my only intention was to pack for the retreat and also wrap presents for my family, whom I'm visiting later today for an early Christmas meal due to me being away on the big day itself. But have I yet done any of that? No. I opened my laptop to do just one thing - transfer some money from one account to another - and before I know it, I'm in my emails, then Groupon, buying a voucher for a screenwriting course, then realising my bank card registered in PayPal has expired so having to go get my purse and log in and sort that out, then when I get upstairs I begin sorting out some of the numerous bags and boxes that are still clogging up my room as I've just moved house. And then I spy a book that takes my fancy so I bring that back downstairs to read, adding it to about five other books strewn about the house, into which I dip for a few pages at a time before having a thought to do something else...

"Hmm, what did I come up here for?"
Last night I went upstairs three times with the intention to get earphones so I could plus them into my laptop to listen to a meditation session, and only on the third time did I manage to stop myself before descending the stairs yet again without them, and remember what I'd gone up there for. This is what my gran does! (OK not for headphones but other stuff). Aren't old people the ones who are meant to forget what they are doing? But now we're all like it! Well I am, anyway. It's bonkers. Modern life is teaching us to multitask so when we get home we continue the same patterns, I'm convinced of it. Is it just me or is anyone else finding it just a bit too much? There is too much stimulation 'out there' to distract us. Maybe some people deal with it better than I do. So, this, I realised, is the main reason I'm off on this retreat; yes, partly to see whether the reason for some of my patterns - with men, and with making big decisions in life - crop up but mainly to force myself into stillness for a whole ten days. I could just sit at home and do it, of course, but would I? Unlikely. I'd be flitting from this to that.

You tell me
What do you think? Is modern life to blame for giving us all ADHD? Do you feel the same way as me? I'd love to hear your thoughts so please do post a comment - though I prob wont get to read it until I'm back, by which time I'll hopefully have stilled my mind enough to have the capacity to read the entire comment before thinking of something else to do! ...

No comments:

Post a Comment