From the Deep

It’s summer break, and today has turned into one of those glorious, go-with-the-flow days around the house. My kids are currently preoccupied with their vast array of Legos, so I’ve taken this opportunity (how ever long it may last) to attempt some semblance of organization in my life.

As a gifted adult, I find myself extremely divergent. I have a plethora of ideas and projects running through my mind, and I enjoy creating and brainstorming. I can expand on these ideas exponentially, ad infinitum…and none of them achieve completion in the real world. As well, “minor,” mundane tasks, such as signing my son up for fall football or charting my daughter’s occupational therapy activities, can flit in and out of my brain at the speed of light, never getting done.

So far, everything I really need to do gets done. But I find this existence a little stressful, and sometimes I wonder if I could accomplish more and feel more at peace if I became more organized. Now as you can probably tell, “more organized” isn’t that high of an expectation around here. I’ve learned that I will never become an organization maven. My brain isn’t built that way. Checklists and day-at-a-time organizers don’t move me. Instead, anyone who knows me knows how I love stickie notes. I come alive brainstorming projects when I post colorful small stickie notes to gigantic stickie notes adhered to my wall.

This method, while fun and life-giving, has its limitations. I have only so much wall space, I can’t pack my walls in my purse with me when I hit the road, and it can lead to a cluttered feel instead of a clean, clear one.

While I imagine I will always carry on a love affair with stickie notes, today I’ve decided to find some fun online ways to organize myself. I’ve heard wonderful things about Evernote.com. This is a program you can find online and download onto your computer to create notebooks for projects and to-do lists. You can also upload photos from your phone or camera, and Evernote will make any text in them searchable. As well, you can gather links and pdf files in one place. One mom told me she keeps recipes, activity schedules, and her husband’s travel itineraries in Evernote. These items are not only kept on your computer but online, so you can access them from any computer or your mobile phone. Sounds like a mobile brain to me! Today I created a notebook for a new role I’m adopting. I’ve had ideas for this role swirling through my brain, and I just dumped all those ideas into Evernote. Now I can think up even more!

I’m also playing around with Remember the Milk. RTM is basically a monster to-do list. You can create various lists, such as for yourself, each member of your family, any roles you fulfill, your house, and anything else you desire. For each task, you can determine a due date, have the activity repeat on your list if you need, and have RTM send reminders to your phone and/or e-mail address. I signed up for RTM long ago, but haven’t used it much. Today I’ve connected it to my Gmail, Google calendar, and Twitter accounts, and I’m hoping that these interfaces will make using RTM easier which will mean I will use it more.

We shall see how this goes. I must admit I’m susceptible to a “look, shiny!” outlook on life. If something is new, I enjoy trying it out. However, I find it difficult to keep using systems long-term unless they integrate into my life in an easy, and more importantly fun, way. At least if these new online systems don’t work for me, I can return to my beloved stickie notes (or try these online ones!)

What tools do you use to organize your divergent mind? Please let me and the rest of the gifted, divergent world know!

©2010 Lisa Lauffer

I hung up the phone from my conference call, an hour’s worth of feeling like Charlie Brown’s teacher was talking in my ear. Wah wah wah waaaaahhhh…

I walked out of my office, bleary-eyed, aggravated, and only vaguely aware that the family room was completely dark. Didn’t matter. Within seconds, the lights flashed on, and I heard my kids say “Lisa Lauffer, you’re our next contestant on Deal or No Deal!”

Only then did it register that while I’d been on the phone, the kids had been awfully quiet, which usually means mischief is afoot. However, this time their stealthiness served a purpose: from their own resources they’d recreated the entire Deal or No Deal set. On a large piece of cardboard they’d listed the amounts of money I could win (from a penny to $6517.01). They’d placed numbered labels on the drawers from my son’s portable shelving system, and each upside-down drawer covered a paper with a dollar amount written on it. 

I sat in the chair they’d set out for me, and boldly chose my “suitcase”: number 11. I stated loudly and confidently that the $6517.01 was in my suitcase. Then, just like the TV game, I had to prove it by having the one lovely lady (my daughter, who also served as Howie) open other cases: first four, then three, then two, then one until we were done. Halfway through, they invited my husband down from the second floor to give me input on my decisions: which suitcase to choose next, whether to accept or decline the banker’s offer.

And the banker, my son, sat behind another large piece of cardboard, cold and calculating (literally–he had a calculator with him!). After each set of cases I opened, he used his self-developed algebraic equation to determine his offer: $4578.51, $3026.34, $2000.25 (yes, the amounts kept going down since I’d knocked the $6517.01 out in the first round–oops). He wrote the offer on a piece of paper and displayed the number through a hole cut in the cardboard.

I couldn’t stop myself. After every offer, I just knew I had a higher amount in my suitcase. In the end, I walked away with $1500 in clean, cold Monopoly money. And a smile on my face.

Here’s the deal. Creativity comes with a price: mess. My kids turned the family room topsy-turvy, and in that state it stays, since the kids continue to play the game. That night, having just finished a phone call that had left me depleted, I could easily have unleashed my frustration onto my kids for encouraging entropy to continue its reign over our home. And the game would be over. No winners.

Or I could engage in this surprise they had created just for me. I had a moment to decide: Deal or No Deal? Fortunately, this time it took me only a nanosecond to choose. Deal. I’m in. And delight was the result.

In the most recent issue of Parenting for High Potential, Dr. Del Siegle, the President for the National Association for Gifted Children, writes about encouraging our children’s creativity through curiosity and engagement. In this article, he makes a comment that stopped me in my tracks. He says “As parents, we have some control over the environment. We not only need to give our children permission to be creative, we need to model curiosity and creativity in our lives” (emphasis mine)*. He further encourages us not only to model asking questions but to also set the example of pursuing understanding and accepting making mistakes along the way.

This speaks exactly to what I hope to encourage in my life coaching practice. I so long for parents of gifted children, moms especially, to find their freedom to create–to tap into their childlikeness and joy, into their own giftedness (because most of them are gifted, and if not, at least they’re extremely intelligent), and to not worry so much about the results as to enjoy the journey of discovery. What better reason to pursue this than to set the example for our children?

So what’s sparking your curiosity these days? What questions are you asking? Where are you willing to go to find the answers?

What about your creativity? How do you most long to express it? When’s the last time you did? Why not go do it? And I mean right now!

We look at our children with wonder. We marvel at their intelligence, precociousness, and creativity. It’s time to recognize our own, not only for our own sakes but for theirs. Parenting these children requires so much energy, but as we engage our own senses of wonder and creativity we gain new vitality for the parenting tasks before us.

So go for it! Let me know what you find out and what you make up!

*Siegle, D. (2008). Promoting Creativity Through Curiosity and Engagement: Wonder Is Not Enough. Parenting for High Potential, September 2008, 3.