For those of us without attentional issues, decorations and signs inspire us.  We love to put up treasured pictures and mount shelves filled with trinkets.  We make our space, well, ours.

If you have problems focusing, your tchotchkes can harm you.

 

They won’t attack you.  Your stuff doesn’t bite.  But they can harm you in ways that make you sad and tired.  They can drain your energy and provide the tiny little distractions that cause you to make errors that take time to fix.  This doesn’t mean people with attentional issues know this is happening.  You might be blaming yourself or your medications.  Your coworkers.  Your family, even.  You think you slept poorly or need to use your mindfulness breathing strategies.   You wonder if you need more magnesium, less magnesium, or liposomal magnesium.

 

It could be your pictures, posters, and tchotchkes stealing your bandwidth instead.  For those of you who don’t speak Yiddish or Slovenian (from which this word is partially derived), “tchotchkes” are defined as little items or trinkets.  Storing away most of your collection or “culling the heard” could be the easiest and most affordable treatment out there.  Safer than adding Stratera.  Easier than finding a new job.  Faster than learning to meditate.

WHY?

Because attention begins with orienting to a stimulus.  This is science.  Our brains orient to something and then have to decide on its salience.  Is it dangerous?  Is it important?  Is this something in the background to ignore, or something beneficial for the moment.  A wailing firetruck is a salient stimulus until you realize it is turning off behind you.  You are safe, you don’t need to pull over.  A wailing baby is also a salient stimulus if you are responsible for it or need to find the person responsible for that baby.

People who struggle with attention have brains that don’t do this sorting dance well, or have brains that don’t come back to a calm focused state smoothly and quickly after that firetruck (or conversation, or photograph) is gone.  They see too much as salient.  They make connections that stick when they should be going back to the job at hand.  Only a portion of this group struggles so hard that they cannot get anything at all done.  But being slow to finish, or being exhausted by the effort, counts as a problem.

Think your depression is the reason for your struggle to focus?

It could be.

Same strategy works.  Depression slows cognitive processing.  You are wading through sludge.  Medications don’t always remove this sense of mental fogginess as well as clearing the decks.  Bag or box things up instead of tossing them in the trash in desperation.  Just leave out what you need for the task at hand.  If it takes you a few minutes less than it did yesterday, you have proof that this could work for you.  Repeat it.  Placing less of a burden on yourself or thinking that your mind is broken won’t make you less depressed.  Knowing how to hack your mind could do that!

Sensory processing issues as well?  This is a win-win strategy.

Visual sensitivity is hard to measure and treat.  It is still real.  Think about a Victorian living room, filled with patterns and colors.  Now try to feel how your body reacts to it.  Move your vision to a Shaker room.  Simple lines.  Simple colors.  How does that feel?  Don’t overthink this one.  Some people really need less stimulation to think and stay calm.  A fidget toys isn’t the answer.  Create less stimuli to have to block out instead.

Sleep Deprived?  Your Brain is tired too.

Not getting enough restorative sleep (Lunesta, I am looking at you) is a risk for having daytime inattention.  Those Z-drugs are very good at sedation, but you pay the price by having sleep inertia for a longer period of time.  When they finally wear off, you don’t feel sharp while awake.  Maybe by 4 pm.  But that means that most of your day is spent recovering.  Short sleep affects frontal lobe functioning.  The part of your brain that does the selective attention work.

 

Start with taking everything off your desk.  Replace ONLY what you are certain will be needed.  Leave the rest out if, and only if, they have a home to go to when you aren’t using them.  Find homes for everything.  Taking something out of the box or pile to add to your desk means that when you are done, it goes back home.

 

Visual sensitivity experienced as inattention or distractibility is not necesssarily a neurological problem.  It might be a management issue.  Reconsider taking a medication and try redecorating.