Correction

Perhaps I'd misjudged one thing I put down as a weakness in my last post. I said that I am a poor communicator. That is not entirely true. I am poor at communicating certain things. However, I am extraordinarily gifted at communicating others.

I have an ability to break down complex things into simple terms and to translate them into terms that are easily grasped by my audience. I am good at code-switching and tailoring how I speak to my audience. I suppose that comes with being very empathetic. I have honed this ability through learning to communicate with my mother and father. My mother and father are extreme opposites of each other. My father is very logical and wants to cut to the cold, hard facts. My mother is more concerned with emotions, how decisions make me feel, how they make her feel and more human considerations. I learned to gloss over details with her because she's not paying as much attention to the details themselves as opposed to the confidence with which I present them. My father listens to the details and may go off and research them himself later on, so my arguments to him are often more elegant, minimalistic, and fact driven.

I have been told that I am a very good public speaker, although I find it difficult to write and read a speech. I am excellent at speaking extemporaneously. However, I am only able to speak extemporaneously. Even in my public speaking class in college, for a long speech, I never wrote down everything I had to say, but rather, I wrote down certain points I wanted to be sure I hit, and certain facts that I wouldn't be able to remember off the top of my head. But I often ended up rearranging the order of things and elaborating on certain points that I didn't write down--which actually won me acclaim from my professors in subjects in which I had to give presentations because they said it showed a greater depth of knowledge and comfort with the subject.

What I am poor at is communicating emotion. I rarely show emotion and I am terrible at describing how I feel at particular moments. I'm often even unable to adequately respond to someone asking me what's on my mind. It makes me seem like a much colder person than I am--much more aloof and disinterested than I intend to be. That makes establishing and maintaining relationships with people difficult. But it is only one aspect of communication. So perhaps I should be more specific when I say communication is a weakness of mine. It's more complex than that.

Strengths & Weaknesses

Part of my problem is that every few years, I decide that I'm extremely discontent with life and that things need to change drastically. Then, I drastically change things and I enjoy the changes for a while, mainly because of the novelty of a new experience. But sooner or later, I find myself right back in the same spot--lost, discontent, searching for something that is just past my ability to describe.

The problem is that there has been no guidance to this process. It hasn't been based on any principle. I'm very good at rationalizing the changes I make, but that doesn't necessarily make them rational. I am in the wrong place. Ph.D., I can't stomach the tedium of scientific research--nor the inability to control the circumstances. I don't want to go to school in East Giblipp, and then do a post-doc in West Giblipp, and then teach at a school that will hire me in South Giblipp, making essentially peanuts, teaching students who will be making more than me in their first job out.

I hate engineering. I love creating new things. Or at least, I love thinking of new things to create. When it comes down to actually creating them, that's another matter. It's difficult to finish projects. I end up spinning and iterating over them, never progressing.

I'm certainly in the wrong career and the wrong industry, if not in the wrong field altogether. But that puts me back at square one and in search of direction. Furthermore, I cannot yet be sure that I'm at this point as a result of the new understanding I have, or rather this is just another impulsive move on my behalf.

In his book, Delivered from Distraction, Ed Hallowell listed seven habits of highly effective ADD adults (a play on the excellent book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey). They are:

1. Do what you're good at. Don't spend too much time trying to get good at what you're bad at.
2. Delegate what you're bad at to others, as often as possible.
   
3. Connect your energy to a creative outlet.
4. Get well enough organized to achieve your goals.
5. Ask for and heed advice from people you trust--and ignore, as best you can, the dream-breakers and finger waggers.
6. Make sure you keep up regular contact with a few close friends.
7. Go with your positive side. Even though you have a negative side, make decisions and run your life with your positive side.

So, from what I can tell, there are three steps here. One, identifying my strengths. Two, outlining my goals--the real ones, not ones based on others' expectations or societal norms. And three...I just lost three. Hopefully it'll come back to me. Oh yes, three is finding a way to leverage my strengths in order to accomplish my goals and mitigating the influence of my weaknesses.

So, I've created a list of my strengths and weaknesses.

Strengths

1. Working in parallel
2. Long-term memory
3. Creativity
4. Innovation
5. Thinking out-of-the-box
6. Thinking on my feet
7. Intuition
8. Empathy
9. Rapidly filtering information to get to the most important aspects
10. Collecting and synthesizing information from a wide variety of sources
11. Managing chaos
12. Working against a deadline
13. Changing gears
14. Passion
15. Vision
16. Determination & Resiliance
    
17. Learning new skills
18. Taking calculated risks
19. Collaboration
    
20. Planning

Weaknesses

1. Working in series
2. Working memory
3. Following through with things
4. Following established procedure
5. Communication
6. Stepping through a source of information thoroughly and extracting detail
7. Organizing
8. Down-shifting
9. Intimacy
10. Sitting for long periods
11. Listening for long periods
12. Attention to detail
13. Managing others
14. Practicing skills over time
15. Delayed gratification

These are by no means exhaustive lists, but they provide a basis for my thinking on what direction to take.

My Favorite...

So far, my favorite quote of the book:

If anyone has a disorder, it is the people who plod along paying close attention to every little speck and crumb, every little detail and rule, every minor policy and procedure in every minuscule manual... I call it Attention Surplus Disorder. They did exactly what they were told as children, told on others who did not, and now make a living doing what they're told, telling others what to do, and telling on those who don't.

Things That Make My Life Easier

T-Mobile G1

No, it's not the "Google Phone." It's the first phone to run Google's Android operating system for phones. Google doesn't make phones, it makes software.

Although I've never been much of a person for "smart phones," I realized that I needed one. I don't like phones. I hate talking on them and I hate when they ring. They are the mother of all distractions, and when I'm talking on them, I feel anxious because there is so much else in my environment drawing me away from the phone conversation. However, I needed a personal organizer. I've had personal organizers in the past and I could never manage to keep them with me everywhere. I'd write things down in them and the minute I'd get home and sit them down I'd never see them again. I had a Palm PDA and I could rarely find it. But now, I am in the ritual of patting myself down every morning to ensure that I have each of four things before I walk out the door: my keys, my wallet, my badge, my phone. Now that phones and PDAs have merged, I'm able to keep up with my organizer without much cognitive distress.

So, why did I go with the G1 as opposed to the iPhone or the Blackberry Storm? Well, I'm a geek. No seriously, I research ad nauseum before I buy a gadget. I've come to hate Apple because of the fact that it's a closed platform and every product they make seems geared toward allowing them to more easily suck money out of you. Don't get me wrong, the iPhone itself is vastly superior to the G1 when it comes to the actual device, but Google's Android platform leaves endless possibilities for the future. With the iPhone off the table, I decided to look at the Blackberry Storm, which would be a natural since I already had Verizon and was still under contract for another 10 months. The Storm is a nice try by Blackberry to keep up in an area where they've begun to fall behind, but the interface still leaves a lot to be desired and the platform won't attract as many developers as Android and Apple. In lamen's terms, that means fewer cool apps to make it worthwhile.

The real benefit of Android is that my entire life is on Google, from this blog (yes, Blogger is Google) to my mail, reading lists, notes to myself (Google Docs). Basically, Google is a supplement to the deficiencies of my brain. It essentially is my memory. So, having something that I take with me everywhere that integrates so well into all of Google's other products is truly a godsend.

Lost train of thought...

Transforming

In order to cope, I've begun to impose some structure on my life. I hate structure, but in order to function, it is necessary. I created a new schedule. Instead of going to bed at midnight, or whenever I happen to get tired enough to fall asleep, I try to be in bed by 10pm. I get up in the morning at 4am sharp. I begin my morning with a shower--to help wake me up--and a then my normal hygienic routine. I then practice sitting meditation for 30 minutes. After getting dressed, I'm out the door by 5:20am and to the train station so I can arrive at work between 6:50-7am. I leave work at 4:30pm and get back to Pasadena between 6-6:15. I head to the gym for a workout from 6:30-7:30. I eat dinner when I get home and the rest of my night is free time.

I've been on this schedule for the past week, and despite the fact that I'm not a morning person and I am a night-owl, I've found that I'm much more energetic in the morning. I'm still completely out of my mind by mid-afternoon and I still find it difficult to focus during the day. However, my mornings feel slightly less erratic, which is progress.

I've been skipping breakfast regularly for the past 8 or 9 months. When I get to work, I'm starving so I have a cup of coffee, which not only takes away the hunger, it also calms me and focuses me. However, I'm going to make an effort to cut back on caffeine. I'm replacing my liquid breakfast with one full of vitamins, complex carbs, and protein. Hopefully, that will provide me with real mental energy instead of the fleeting and non-nutritious kind brought about by a heavy stimulant like caffeine, which wears off in the afternoon and causes me to unravel quickly.

Seeing Through the Fog

Seeing through the fog is an apt title for this blog because it describes my life. My entire life, I've been considered brilliant but quirky, spacey, and unfocused by those I've been acquainted with. My inability to follow through and accomplish things has had a profound affect on my life, from limiting my potential to shaping my worldview and outlook on life. Recently, I discovered that my difficulties are due to Attention Deficit Disorder. I am as of yet undiagnosed. However, through my research of the symptoms and reflection on my current and past struggles, I am certain that this has plagued me throughout life and I am anxious to begin learning how to cope. This is where I begin to see through the fog of my mind to a bright and focused future. This is the beginning of my march.