Being a dyspraxic perfectionist

Lately I have been feeling my lack of fine motor skills, and realising I might really find some tasks harder than other people.

[image description: a light purple & pink bell shaped flower, out of focus in the foreground, with bright green grass & stems tangling around a green wire fence. In the background water is visible]

Today I built a mini structure for my tomato plants on the balcony. I got some canes and when I started putting them up, I realised they needed something to hold them straight. I started by wrapping some twine around between the canes and tying them to a drainpipe, but quickly realised this wasn’t helping. Also of course the twine was pink plastic and not green or jute like most people have so it really started to look chaotic. I had some little twigs I’d saved and I started making a triangle frame between 3 canes, once at the bottom and once at the top. It was a process of discovery, how to make them tie together, and how to make it stand solid. In the end, I didn’t want to leave all the ends of the twine trailing, I realised wanted it to look neat. Its hard for me to just walk away and leave a task ‘done enough’ - once I start I’m there zoomed in to the tiny threads for hours.

I realised how much I enjoy doing stuff like that for gardening because no one is watching me! I have this underlying fear that someone is going to laugh at what I’ve done, and see how chaotic the inside of my brain really is. it made me reflect on art making, and how my perfectionism really might be a way of covering up, of coping and then over-doing it. How can I get to a place where I can put in a reasonable amount of effort, for instance for a scratch performance or a visual proposal, and not stay up all night trying to make it look ‘decent’ before its finished?

It also made me think about structure. About putting structure in place as a loving act, how creating structure can help something grow (like the tomato plants). I wonder how much energy they were putting into holding themselves up *and* trying to grow fruit? I hope that giving them these canes to rest on means they can finish making fruit before the end of the summer (even if its only one :). I want to do that for my practice.

Footnote Sept 2021: they did grow fruit! only small, some red & some yellow.

‘The boring shit’ #1 - schedule, focus & energy

One of the major things I learnt from my first fully funded period of working full time as an artist, was that I need a schedule. For me, this is not actually so much about managing when I do things, but working with my energy and focus to make sure different tasks get done.

As a neurodivergent person I always felt like time was against me - I struggled with 9-5 working because I couldn’t direct my brain to focus on the right thing at the right time. I was consistently late for a 9am start, but working through lunch breaks or staying late to get things done. During my Master’s degree I was consistently the last one there being kicked out of the computer lab when they locked up at 9pm - my hyper focus would kick in after everyone left and I would get so absorbed in editing video I would wish for another hour every time.

When I got my first grant I felt so happy to be free of these schedule demands and be able to flow with my ideas. But it turned out, that totally unstructured time was equally as hard to manage and feel healthy in!

Over the time since then, and the pandemic I have been able to get curious about my own energy and focus and at what times, in what conditions it comes and goes. Slowly I have pieced together a schedule that works for me - so I wanted to share that here. Not because it would necessarily work for someone else, but because the types of questions I’ve asked in the process might be helpful to someone else trying to design their own schedule.

This is an example schedule of my week:

ID: example timetable of a week, colour coded (see audio for full description)

Here are a few key things to consider for scheduling:

• Focus - when is the best time for me to focus? Mine is 11am, so now I try to keep that time free every day for any cognitively taxing work, for instance writing a proposal or having an important meeting.

• Types of work - I know that I can be really effective at thinking around 11am, but not so much after 2pm. So I schedule ‘physical work’ in the afternoon.

• One thing feeds another - if I focus for several hours in the morning on a very detailed task, my mind needs to zoom out and my body needs to move. So the physical work I do in the afternoon actually supports the morning work.

• Social or connected vs solo time - I can’t work alone all day. I lose track and quickly lose motivation. I need to schedule meetings, and social types of work, throughout the week to keep me motivated and inspired.

• Energy - when am I tired? I used to push through using coffee or sugary snacks. Now I try to listen to my body and rest when I am tired, and come back to it in the morning. Usually now this is after 5/6pm. This might seem frustrating but I have found that the quality of decision making is so much better the next day, I can usually finish tasks in half the time it would take me at 8pm.

• Flexibility! even though I know these things as general rules, I still keep space and allow myself to flex when I do things as much as possible to work with my body and brain. Sometimes I do still work all evening, once in a while if I get into a flow. But then its important to rest later in the week or the weekend.

Tricks:

• Flex on, flex off - I used to try and get one task done and only focus on that, even for multiple days or weeks until it was done. Now I realise I often need to do a rough draft of something, store it away, and come back to it later with a fresh perspective.

• Mini breaks - if I am feeling tired or mentally overwhelmed, I lie down and wear an eye mask for half an hour. Or if I have something to do in the evening, I rest and try to decompress from the day first.

• Stretching, bath or shower - even if I don’t have the time or motivation to exercise, stretching, or having a bath or shower helps me to get back into my body and clear my mind.

• Mini tasks - like going out to post a letter or return something to a shop. I dread these when they are on my list, but when I use them to break up my day and refresh between focussed tasks they can actually be helpful!

• Split the planning and the doing - I read somewhere (can’t remember where, sorry) that for neurodivergent brains with poor executive function, this is helpful because the planning drains all your capacity so when you get to the task your focus is too depleted to complete it. It works for me - I do the planning and break the task into steps in bullet points, then come back to it next time I have focus.

• Breaking things into steps - often the problem is the task on the list, eg. ‘Write proposal’, is actually 5 or 6 tasks. When I break it down into steps first it really helps, eg. ‘Read guidelines’, ‘research costings’, ‘get a bio from person X’, etc.

• Support or ‘body doubling’ - my Access Support Worker helps me do things like breaking tasks into steps. Many neurodivergent people work best by doing ‘verbal processing’ - talking about the task until you realise what the next steps are. I really, really need this and have also found I can share this with particular friends (obviously checking in first to ask if they have space). Usually this gets me unstuck and bumps me onto the next stage of the task.
  ‘Body doubling’ is where you arrange to work with someone - for instance just sitting together on Zoom while you both work for a fixed period of time, or checking in by text at set times to see how each other is doing.

• Food - I am terrible at this but one thing I saw recently was an ADHD nutritionist recommending banana & peanut butter on toast as a quick snack which provides slow burn energy and protein. Stuff like this does help me when I’m feeling too overwhelmed to eat but need to be on good form. I also keep protein bars in my bag for when I get a sudden energy crash during a cleaning shift or when I’m out.