green and white train in close up shot

Defeating tab chaos on a train

Do your browser tabs look like this? This happens to me a LOT, and not intentionally. I’m not actually working on 16 different tabs at once – this is ADHD on Chrome.

I am on a train in Sweden. I connected to the free Wi-Fi (thanks SJ!), got comfortable, and started to respond to a LinkedIn message I received overnight.

THEN…

  • I wondered if I could streamline my responses to LinkedIn connection requests, so I started writing a template in Google Docs.

THEN…

  • I realized I want to refer contacts to my website so they subscribe to my email newsletter so I opened more tabs to learn how to link my newsletter to my website
  • I started looking up ways to optimize my email marketing (more tabs)
  • I researched how often I should write a blog post, and of course there are a million opinions there (more tabs).

EVENTUALLY…

  • MailChimp needed to verify my identity and gave me a bright yellow screen labeled “Let’s get this show on the road”. Which got me thinking about how to “get my show on the road (rails?)” and work productively.

Wait, what am I doing again? — ADHD alert!!

Uh oh, I forgot to schedule my morning. Jason, don’t you have a to-do list? Yes, I have a to-do list. I use Todoist but there are many great tools out there.

BUT…

  • To-do lists work best for my ADHD brain if I keep the tasks small and reward myself after every few tasks with something that releases dopamine.

SO here’s today’s solution for increasing dopamine for my ADHD brain! I will…

  • Stand between the rail cars alternating on one foot at a time (exercise)
  • Watch the sunny scenery out the window (do something new)
  • Smile at my own reflection in the window

How will YOU defeat tab chaos today?