Charlie, I came back to this classic post just so I could be the FIRST person to comment on it now that it’s in your new home.
Ok, just kidding. Mostly.
Actually, I’m here because as I’m exploring methods of externalizing executive function for ADHD types there’s a further aspect of TEA that I’m trying to wrap my brain around. Namely that Time, Energy, and Attention are not monoliths. As we briefly chatted about earlier, “standard” time is something that is at most only a few hundred years old — both in terms of nature (precession of the equinoxes) and in terms of subjective experience. I may have two hours on the clock, but do I have two hours of spreadsheet checking in me? Two hours of writing? Two hours of exercise? It varies…and likewise Energy has to be different types (else why would we have that whole “7 types of rest” theory) and Attention also — for ADHD folks, mainly ruled by a simple binary of “interesting/boring”, but likely more complex than that.
I came to this from the idea of planning a day based on trying to understand the capacity of each of the executive functions (4-15, depending on what model you want to use) and then trying to estimate what types of executive function are needed for a particular task — because if you know those two measures, you can much more accurately (and, i suspect, pleasantly) plan out a day/week/etc.
And just to throw a bigger wrench in the idea, I’m also working on the idea of thinking less about ‘what i want to accomplish in a day” and more “how I want to feel at the end of the day.”
So, for example, if I know that I CAN transmute my capaci-TEA into enough emotional regulation to handle an all-day networking event, BUT I know that I’ll be miserable at the end…I think that falls into the whole “operate at 85%” idea but maybe more so. “85% works, but I’m miserable. Maybe I’ll do 40% and still be able to smile at my kids.”
Sounds lovely, but using percentages like that (as far as I can tell) is simply a way to pretend we have an effective way to measure such things. And if a brain doesn’t work well with that type of linear measures…what else could we use?
That’s not actually my question for you (unless you have an answer). My question is a few steps back: have you done any kind of mapping of capaciTEA to different types of TEA (or the alchemical transformation of TEA into the executive function needed at any given time? Or is there a rubric to measure what kind of TEA is needed for the tasks we need/want to accomplish during the day, so that we can plan ahead? It seems to me that knowing this kind of thing can give a better idea of what kind of morning routine you want to do — “I’m going to be staring at numbers all day, so I should go walk in the forest this morning instead of journaling…”
also, this is a ridiculously long “comment”, so if you choose to delete it in favor of a shorter “Gray said a bunch of stuff here, but just read this other article I wrote about it instead,” I will completely understand.
I love this comment, Gray, and I'm chewing on some of the more complex pieces of it to see if I can better articulate my thoughts. I appreciate the invitation to apply more rigor to the ideas!
> Sounds lovely, but using percentages like that (as far as I can tell) is simply a way to pretend we have an effective way to measure such things. And if a brain doesn’t work well with that type of linear measures…what else could we use?
Most of the time, I do not mean for energetic assessments to be measured in this sense. "85%" is a shorthand that means something closer to "highly engaged, but a _little_ energetic margin left in the tank." How much is always a moving target, especially when we account for disassociation (which I've been thinking a lot more about.)
In that sense, "linear measure" may be a bit of a red herring on both words ('linear' and 'measurement'. We can re-translate it from percentages to
"If I commit almost all of my energy to this, I'll be able to handle this all-day event, but I'll be miserable. Or I can do it a walk-like level of energy and still be able to smile at my kids."
Why I think it might be a red herring is that we still may not actually have a good sense of how much energy we actually have OR, as in the case of folks with ADHD, if "a walk-like pace" makes it boring and thus is MUCH MORE draining than if they were more hyper-fully engaged. (Which I suspect is one of the reasons why folks with ADHD _tend_ to be so exuberant - it's FUN, interesting, or creates excitement, even if that excitement quickly turns to drama.)
> Or is there a rubric to measure what kind of TEA is needed for the tasks we need/want to accomplish during the day, so that we can plan ahead?
For myself, Angela, some teammates, and 1:1 clients, yes. Your narrative that follows is how I think about it. I haven't done much to create a general theory/correlation about it yet because "staring at numbers all day" is one person's joywork and another's dreadwork, or, another way of saying it, the same activity may activate different kinds of executive functions and emotional processing depending on the person's relationship with the activity.
Consider: you and I may find cleaning a rifle meditative, but someone who's idealogically opposed to guns will have a whole different experience with it, regardless of their technical capability to clean a rifle. The activity itself is neutral; we humans add subjective meaning and emotions to the activity. It's that subjectivity that makes creating a general map challenging.
Charlie, I came back to this classic post just so I could be the FIRST person to comment on it now that it’s in your new home.
Ok, just kidding. Mostly.
Actually, I’m here because as I’m exploring methods of externalizing executive function for ADHD types there’s a further aspect of TEA that I’m trying to wrap my brain around. Namely that Time, Energy, and Attention are not monoliths. As we briefly chatted about earlier, “standard” time is something that is at most only a few hundred years old — both in terms of nature (precession of the equinoxes) and in terms of subjective experience. I may have two hours on the clock, but do I have two hours of spreadsheet checking in me? Two hours of writing? Two hours of exercise? It varies…and likewise Energy has to be different types (else why would we have that whole “7 types of rest” theory) and Attention also — for ADHD folks, mainly ruled by a simple binary of “interesting/boring”, but likely more complex than that.
I came to this from the idea of planning a day based on trying to understand the capacity of each of the executive functions (4-15, depending on what model you want to use) and then trying to estimate what types of executive function are needed for a particular task — because if you know those two measures, you can much more accurately (and, i suspect, pleasantly) plan out a day/week/etc.
And just to throw a bigger wrench in the idea, I’m also working on the idea of thinking less about ‘what i want to accomplish in a day” and more “how I want to feel at the end of the day.”
So, for example, if I know that I CAN transmute my capaci-TEA into enough emotional regulation to handle an all-day networking event, BUT I know that I’ll be miserable at the end…I think that falls into the whole “operate at 85%” idea but maybe more so. “85% works, but I’m miserable. Maybe I’ll do 40% and still be able to smile at my kids.”
Sounds lovely, but using percentages like that (as far as I can tell) is simply a way to pretend we have an effective way to measure such things. And if a brain doesn’t work well with that type of linear measures…what else could we use?
That’s not actually my question for you (unless you have an answer). My question is a few steps back: have you done any kind of mapping of capaciTEA to different types of TEA (or the alchemical transformation of TEA into the executive function needed at any given time? Or is there a rubric to measure what kind of TEA is needed for the tasks we need/want to accomplish during the day, so that we can plan ahead? It seems to me that knowing this kind of thing can give a better idea of what kind of morning routine you want to do — “I’m going to be staring at numbers all day, so I should go walk in the forest this morning instead of journaling…”
also, this is a ridiculously long “comment”, so if you choose to delete it in favor of a shorter “Gray said a bunch of stuff here, but just read this other article I wrote about it instead,” I will completely understand.
I love this comment, Gray, and I'm chewing on some of the more complex pieces of it to see if I can better articulate my thoughts. I appreciate the invitation to apply more rigor to the ideas!
> Sounds lovely, but using percentages like that (as far as I can tell) is simply a way to pretend we have an effective way to measure such things. And if a brain doesn’t work well with that type of linear measures…what else could we use?
Most of the time, I do not mean for energetic assessments to be measured in this sense. "85%" is a shorthand that means something closer to "highly engaged, but a _little_ energetic margin left in the tank." How much is always a moving target, especially when we account for disassociation (which I've been thinking a lot more about.)
In that sense, "linear measure" may be a bit of a red herring on both words ('linear' and 'measurement'. We can re-translate it from percentages to
"If I commit almost all of my energy to this, I'll be able to handle this all-day event, but I'll be miserable. Or I can do it a walk-like level of energy and still be able to smile at my kids."
Why I think it might be a red herring is that we still may not actually have a good sense of how much energy we actually have OR, as in the case of folks with ADHD, if "a walk-like pace" makes it boring and thus is MUCH MORE draining than if they were more hyper-fully engaged. (Which I suspect is one of the reasons why folks with ADHD _tend_ to be so exuberant - it's FUN, interesting, or creates excitement, even if that excitement quickly turns to drama.)
> Or is there a rubric to measure what kind of TEA is needed for the tasks we need/want to accomplish during the day, so that we can plan ahead?
For myself, Angela, some teammates, and 1:1 clients, yes. Your narrative that follows is how I think about it. I haven't done much to create a general theory/correlation about it yet because "staring at numbers all day" is one person's joywork and another's dreadwork, or, another way of saying it, the same activity may activate different kinds of executive functions and emotional processing depending on the person's relationship with the activity.
Consider: you and I may find cleaning a rifle meditative, but someone who's idealogically opposed to guns will have a whole different experience with it, regardless of their technical capability to clean a rifle. The activity itself is neutral; we humans add subjective meaning and emotions to the activity. It's that subjectivity that makes creating a general map challenging.