How to distract me

Weather: Cloudy and a little cold! I might need to get full gloves soon.
Wildlife: Nope
Stops: Nope
Nopes: Two
Tackling my ADD head-on has been a multi-sided struggle. The biggest challenge has been simply identifying behaviors in which it manifests, so I can realize "hey, you're getting off course" and make corrections. Some of them are easier than others - things like following a Metapicture link and losing a half an hour. There's a fine line between curiosity and distraction for someone like me. At its worst, I'll look at the links on the side or below a Metapicture post and my brain will go "that one looks interesting, and that one, and that one, and that one..." and meanwhile I'm middle-clicking a dozen new windows into existence, each one just as likely to result in another dozen. It's like a hydra where all of the heads are puppy gifs and image macros. Marginally better than the serpent kind, I suppose.

Recent research has suggested that willpower is a limited resource, a "muscle" that can become fatigued and fail to function. Managing ADD is absolutely about willpower, but the funny thing about it is that - at least in my case - succeeding at one thing sometimes bolsters my confidence and helps me to succeed at others. I've identified a lot of "points of failure" for my attempts at self-control, like
- buying food at the grocery store, and coming home with candy
- checking the news and spending hours reading only marginally interesting content
- binge-watching TV shows
- getting a snack and eating half the box in one sitting

In every case, there's a chink in the armor that gets cracked wide open. But identifying them, throwing a spotlight on them, helps me manage them. I've gone shopping twice now without buying any candy. I did buy some cheese and crackers, but I only take out a single serving of cheese at a time, and if the cheese is gone, the crackers get put away. Small victories, yeah, but they were victories. And if I can win once, I can win again.

One position that came out of the aforementioned finite-willpower research could be summed up in the instruction: "eat the muffin." The theory goes like this: if you have a finite amount of willpower, it should be saved for the important things. When someone offers you a muffin and you're trying to eat healthy, drip-drip-drip there goes your willpower, wasted on resisting a muffin. But giving in and eating the muffin isn't the solution, either - that's not saving your willpower, it's failing at self control, which is no better. The willpower was still expended. The solution, in fact, is a little more clever: decide right now that whenever you are offered a muffin, eat the muffin. No more willpower reserved or expended.

Part of the reason I'm still wary about this whole thing is that I haven't found my muffin yet. Nothing feels "safe" to let myself indulge in. I'm still watching too much Netflix when I should be sleeping (though I'm getting better), still spending 15 minutes too long reading the Internet before I bolt out the door for work. It's a precarious juxtaposition - "using up" my willpower vs. the snowball effect of success and self-confidence. There are definitely still things I want to be doing - continuing my game design education, for instance - that I haven't picked up yet.

I've got a ways to go. Luckily, I learned this afternoon that spare tires are only $6.50. I have no idea what that would be a metaphor for, but I was pretty happy about it. And hey, I took care of both errands I needed to run before work. Another small victory. (: