The Keep talk:Habitican Exploration and Research Organization (H.E.R.O.)/Challenge 2:Weapons of Mass Distraction

I’ve never been able to overcome my distractions for a meaningful length of time. The best I can hope for is a temporary respite. Even goals I’ve achieved have been full of distractions; I manage to reach those goals by being able to do enormous amounts of work in a very short time and by using the distractions to my advantage. I’ll explain using a single example: this goal for the HERO challenge, writing a response to “Walking on Frozen Water”. It's part of the “Weapons of Mass Distraction” challenge on Habitica. The goal, of course, is to write about achieving a goal despite distractions pulling me away.

Wanna hear a secret? This goal is a distraction from drawing. Yes, that’s right – writing about distractions is a distraction itself.

I have only a handful of goals. First, be nice to people (not as easy a task as it sounds, at times). Second, learn to draw well enough to produce my OEL manga “Do-Over”. Third, find a job I can at least live with that doesn’t require me to manage people or work any overtime. Fourth, get my writing submitted it for publication.

On the other hand, distractions abound. Primarily these happen because I have ADHD, a pretty severe case, and a chronic case of “I’ll never be good enough.” Not the best combination. Despite all of that I’ve achieved a lot over my lifetime; making a list is pretty enlightening.

So here’s my “secret” to achieving goals despite distractions: I work with my ADHD to set my goals as “distractions” and switch between them whenever I need to. I am not always working on a specific goal at any given time, but by switching between them frequently I reach them all.

In other words, I don’t avoid distractions – I use them to get work done. Hey, you work with what you have.

And with that, I’ve reached the goal of a 250+ word essay on achieving a goal (writing this essay) despite having distractions pulling me away.

<span style="font-family:Arial,sans-serif;">Dan odea (talk) 14:18, October 26, 2016 (UTC)