I have too many tabs open in my brain

I was watching a video about productivity and work, and it mentioned that every time you break your concentration to move from one task to another ( say, to look at a notification on your phone) you split your attention and it’s almost impossible to get the full attention back.

I’ve been thinking about the concept a lot lately, as my brain cycles through 5 or 6 different tasks it wants to work on all at once. That’s 5 or 6 real, concentrative tasks. Like reading an article, working on this or that piece of writing, checking emails, or trying to draw. That’s not even accounting for the dozens of others that pop up at the same time, like "I’m hungry,” “is my phone charged?”, “where did I put that thing?”, “ I need to clean this room,” etc.

I open my laptop to a complete row of tabs of unfinished tasks that I got pulled away from doing, and despite the amount of them that I have closed, I still seem to just open more. I leave them open as reminders of things I had meant to get back to. And sometimes I do get back to them! I love getting rid of tabs! But I can’t do all of these tasks at once.

All of these kinds of things can be pulling me in several different directions at once, and I lose countless minutes or hours of time shuffling through it all.

I have a system for it, of course. Aka a set of prioritizing rules that balance things based on urgency, ease of completion, interest, and subject. Is this system intelligible to others in a way that I can describe? Not exactly. But quick things do tend to get done faster. Or, I like to pair up my drawing and audio tasks, because one helps me focus on the other. Sometimes one task can get me in the mood for another, like sometimes a crafting video can inspire me to clean, or reading something can inspire me to write. But at all times, I’m choosing between several things at once.

It’s a bit of a madhouse in here!

All of this jumbling does make it difficult to track the amount of things I get done in a day, or a week, or whatever. There is a tendency for people with ADHD ( hi, that’s me) and artists ( also me!) to move on to the next thing without sitting with that feeling of achievement that comes from completing a task. It ends up creating an endless vortex of stress. And it also makes it difficult to recall all the good things you’ve done! How can I share things with the world if I constantly forget what I’m doing?

The answer to most things is the answer to this: A little bit at a time. Slow the fuck down.

If I take a few minutes to say “Hey, I did that!” and maybe share it with others, I’ll have built that confidence and trust with myself to know that I can do things in the future, and it’s less likely that I will burn myself the fuck out.

Because the cost of all this frantic productivity is indeed burnout. Artistic burnout, ADHD burnout, whatever the cause is, the brain is fried. Kaput. Out of commission for a while. And the more you try to push through a burnout, the more burnt you will get and the longer it will take to recover.

So take things slower. Put “rest” on that bottomless to-do list. Add things that relax you and don’t take a lot of effort, or that resemble play, and not work.

Your brain will thank you.