ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life
by Judith Kolberg, Kathleen Nadeau
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Book Reviews of ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life
Book Review: Good for an upper middle class career mother...
Summary: 2 Stars
Pros:
Good organizing advice is scattered throughout the book. Most of the basic ideas are modified to help someone who has various ADHD characteristics get around to doing them, which is nice and realistic.
Cons:
More or less written for a fairly well off person who isn't sure which simplifying solutions to spend their money on. Also geared towards a suburban lifestyle in ways that were unhelpful for a single apartment dweller in a big city.
Far too many of the suggestions involve help from your Personal Organizer. Or, to be fair, if you have "a friend" who has a lot of free time they wouldn't mind spending helping you clean out your closet, shopping for a color-coordinated wardrobe for you and going through your unpaid bills, that's ok too.
I've tried many times to overlook the upper middle class angle and take what I can use from it. But every other page has something that makes me grit my teeth - they assume everyone reading has a dish washer, or helpfully point out that the "better department stores have personal shoppers". Or just the cost of feeding yourself and your family healthy, portable pre-packaged breakfast foods every day and ordering in every weekend... It's extremely annoying if you're on a low-income budget.
Book Review: Friendly to the Organizer and Coach industry
Summary: 2 Stars
Do you have patient, well organized friends and family members who relish the thought of helping you organize and keeping you on a track in a friendly, helpful, non-confrontational manner?
Or
Do you have piles of cash to hire a professional organizer, ADD Coach, and a therapist (with an MD hook-up to adjust your prescription meds) in order to get your life back on track?
If you answered yes to either of the above then this books for you. If you answered no, then you'll probably quickly return it or add it to yet another tower of clutter in your home.
Certainly plenty of people disagree with me - check out the rest of the Amazon reviews - but for me this book wasn't so much about empowering and equipping my life but an advertisement for professional organizers, life coaches, and a reminder that my friends and family just *don't* understand how my wiring differs from their everyday run of the mill neurological system.
[...]A word of note or warning: Fly Lady can get a little preachy so if you're easily offended you might want to pass. Also, Pam Young, one half of the slob sisters, has a new venture called Bratland that I don't find helpful/useful and is borderline insulting. Just my opinion - your mileage may vary.
Book Review: Possibly the best ADD book I've read
Summary: 5 Stars
As an adult with ADD, I struggle on a daily basis with all aspects of organization and most books on the topic are fairly meaningless to me. The ideas just don't quite apply to my world.
This book, however, encourages one to work with their ADD instead of against it. There are strengths that comes with the disorder.
The tools and tips are written in a way that makes them applicable to my life. I've had to laugh at parts, because it's almost as if the authors were sitting in my head and/or home as they describe traits of adults with ADD.
Other reviews have mentioned that it promotes hiring professional organizers, which is true. It does go there frequent (with little regard for the fact that having ADD does not always lend itself to job success and some of us are living on a small, fixed income that does not allow for the luxury of hiring somebody to help). Still, that option is presented as the option to use if the other - free - suggestions don't help and the person is in need of further support with their organizational goals. It certainly does not negate the incredible usefulness of the book itself.
It's written in an engaging, light-hearted, easy-to-read style and really addresses the needs of an ADD audience.
Book Review: It really is ADD friendly in the way its written
Summary: 5 Stars
UNLIKE many other books on ADD, this book is written to actually help you find and implement the practical and easy compensatory means by which to overcome the many difficult and dis-abling hardships to function normally in everyday society. Many other books I've attempted to read have provided much insight into what ADD is, why it is so misunderstood by both professionals able to treat those with ADD, as well as the general population at large, and also give a better understanding to the reasons how and why ADD affects your entire life so dramatically.
This book takes it a HUGE step further, and most of the book is dedicated to showing you specific techniques to self-coach and council yourself to over-come the crippling effects of this frusterating mental disorder. I have ADD very severely, and this is the first book I've come across which offers this sort of practical self coaching, as well, it is definitely written in such a way that it is a very easy read for adults with any type of ADD or AD/HD.
Currently I have no means to pay for an ADD coach or conselor, and this book has more than sufficed for what a very expensive ADD coach or conselor would cost me.
Book Review: Just for us ADDers...
Summary: 5 Stars
ADD-Friendly Ways to Organize Your Life
There are so many books on organization, and ever the optimist, I have bought a lot of them with the wide-eyed belief that that particular book would be the magic bullet to transform my clutter and piles of paper into the minimalist I know I am deep inside. And of all the books I have bought on organization, I think this one is the best because it is so specific to the organization and time-keeping challenges so many of us ADDers face every day. I found my habits and behavior described to a "T" on almost every page which made me feel more like a valued member of the club than depressed and overwhelmed. But most important, the authors offer specific ideas that address our special way of thinking and doing things. I use it as an ongoing reference book and wake-up call, especially when I'm looking to improve some area of my life. In fact, there is an excellent reference section in the back of the book that lists ADD organizations, professional organizers and more. I recommend this book be part of every ADDer's library.