It wasn't a book, it was actually a symposium- trying to track down more information about it I'm hitting a brick wall; I don't even know what this McDougall guy's first name is. All I've got is what Wikipedia tells me. Which information, seems legit, but there could be honking gaps I don't know about, all that. All that I have is a list of what the problems are, with no specific strategies to combat any given deficit. Bleeehhh.
There are other resources online, of course; and I've already looked into in-print resources, at the district library back in Rexburg. The problem with all of these is, these are all from an educator's perspective, telling teachers how to combat executive functioning problems in students. I already know how to learn, plus I'm already graduated, plus, well the most important plus so you may as well call it a multiply by instead, I'm not a teacher I'm myself, I started this journey specifically because of that. I don't need to know how to combat learning difficulties in students, I need to know how to combat basic life skill difficulties in myself.
Thinking about the problem academically, though, just right now hands-off ivory tower armchair, I can think of a few rudimentary tools. Writing down what needs to be done, breaking it into smaller chunks, organizing those chunks into categories based on difficulty level and degree of importance/urgency (that's the good old, Eisenhower Matrix,) sorting those tasks into an order based on those categories, scheduling out those sorted tasks, going through the schedule and leaving some room for flexibility in case unexpected difficulties arrive. It sounds so easy in theory. In practice, for whatever reason, there's still this vast disconnect.
I thought in the beginning that completing a blogpost a day would imbue in me some executive function skillset and the ability to operate within deadlines and frameworks, and... well, it's given me those things, but only specifically within the context of, being able to complete a blogpost a day. I'm not sure if it's improved my writing skills or journalism skills any. I seem to have been good at that from the beginning.
So it seems that I yet lack (and may always be in want for) self-motivation.
But I know that getting forced to do something compels me to do it.
It's back to the SMART goals then, which I never really excelled at but which had good some good ideas still. I've read that telling people your goals may in some cases make you less likely to complete a task, for some stupid reason, (I don't even care enough to look that up,) but which IIRC would have something to do with it taking away your intrinsic motivation. There's this whole fascinating intrinsic-vs-extrinsic motivation debate, where if you offer a reward to someone to complete a task they'll complete the task specifically for that reward and thus find no intrinsic motivators to do so (take away their reward before they're finished, they won't finish the task because why bother.) But I don't really have intrinsic motivation for, well tasks certainly. Even things I want to get done and want to do, I won't do, because it's all just by myself and is all thus arbitrary.
Which means that telling people my goals would maybe actually work or something.
Not sure yet how to use this information (maybe in conjunction with blogging, which I'm actually already good at?), nor am I sure how to end this post today, but...
TRIPOD TOO HECK
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