The Burnt Bacon

I did everything right.

I set the timer on the oven. I set a second timer on my phone as backup. I even built in a five-minute buffer before the bacon was supposed to be done cooking to give my brain a warning shot before the real deadline hit.

I was ready.

I also had 25 minutes before I needed to take the bacon out of the oven, so I decided to use that time to challenge myself to get more done. Yes, I actually follow my own guidance. With a challenge to knock out the list of random things I knew I could get done within that 25-minute timeline, I quickly dove in.

It felt like it had only been 10 minutes into these projects when my phone timer went off. Surprised that it had already been 25 minutes, I looked at what I was in the middle of doing. "Oh, I can get this done in less than 5 minutes," I confidently convinced myself. No need to reset my phone alarm; I'll hear the alarm on the oven. So, I slid the alarm cancel button on my phone and got back to work.

I moved at lightning speed, likening myself to a magician pulling productivity out of thin air instead of pigeons. I finished the task but hadn't heard the oven alarm yet. Putting my mastery of efficient time management back into action, I decided to sort a little pile of random items I had in my office. I sat back down and put my hand/eye coordination to the test.

As my hands moved the items into little piles, I clearly remember asking myself why I hadn't heard the oven alarm yet. I paused and listened closely. Nothing. Okay, I guess I really was a productivity magician.

But there was a flaw in my time calculation that I hadn't accounted for.

The flaw: When I was knocking out things in the first part of the house, I was close enough to hear the oven alarm. But in my office, I was a little too far from the kitchen, and that particular alarm wasn't very loud...at least not loud enough to get my attention while locked into my productivity flow.

I finished sorting my little pile of random items into even smaller piles of similar items. I was feeling pretty proud of myself when I caught the scent of my miscalculation. It was the very distinct smell of burnt bacon. I flipped my phone over. It had been 17 (additional) minutes. Crap!

I ran out of my office, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. I knew what I was about to see before opening the oven door. I put on the oven mitts, grabbed the handle, and confirmed it. The entire pan of bacon was burnt to a crisp. It was not the "leave it in another minute or two because I like it extra crispy" type bacon. No, every strip was black and brittle. It looked like volcanic rock. I had ADHD'ed the bacon.

I could hear my father's voice paraphrasing the Bible: Pride goeth before the fall. What I thought was efficient productivity in my office was actually my failure in the kitchen. I was really looking forward to that bacon. Plus, I needed some of it for a dish my wife and I were supposed to take to a friend's house that evening. Ugh. I had to start over.

Shout out to "A Couple Days Ago Larry," who bought a three-pack of bacon at Costco. It wasn't because I was expecting to burn an entire pack, but hey, at least I didn't have to run back out to the store.

I took another package of bacon out of the freezer and calculated that if I helped the thawing process along by submerging the package in hot water, I just might have enough time to cook it again, assemble the dish, and still have a couple minutes before we needed to be at our friend's house. Fast forward: we were about 15 minutes late getting there. But we all got a good laugh when I showed them the picture of the burnt bacon.

Although it was the victim of a flaw in my productivity system, this story isn't really about the bacon.

Chapter 12 of my book, Trying Harder Won't Work, discusses "Maintaining Your ADHD Productivity." About midway through the chapter is a statement that ADHD productivity is cyclical.

Start strong → crush it → life happens → system collapses → rinse and repeat.

I had a system. Two timers, a buffer, a plan. And it still failed. It failed because the buffer I built wasn't a warning; it was an escape hatch. My brain didn't register "five minutes left." It registered "you have more time to do what you were doing," and kept going. The system wasn't wrong. It had a gap I couldn't see until it burned to a crisp.

I now have an example to remind myself what happened, for when I face a similar situation in the future...because I will. So will you.

That's the point Chapter 12 makes. Maintaining a productivity system isn't about keeping it from breaking. It's about what you do after the moment it breaks. That's equally important, if not more so. The chapter gives you the tools to recover, learn, and move on. Using those tools, you get skilled at blowing off the "failure," diminishing its power over you by having a laugh about what happened, then going back in to adjust the design and start again.

Just as the title of my book conveys, trying harder won't work, the lesson here isn't "try harder next time." I tried pretty hard this time. I set two timers and built in a buffer…on purpose. Trying wasn't the failure. There was simply a design flaw. Those are fixable. In this example, the idea that my brain would appreciate the 5-minute buffer was the flaw. It resulted in the burnt bacon. It's okay. I recognize that it happened and why. I'm the same Larry afterward... now with (yet another) funny little story about how my ADHD loves to make my life interesting. But I also now know exactly where my system broke, and I fixed it.

Here's Version 2 of my bacon cooking system: no buffer. My phone alarm aligns with the oven timer. I'll also set the timer on the Alexa in the kitchen. She has a very loud alarm. All of the alarms will go off at the actual moment the bacon is done, not five minutes before. I no longer have a "5-minute window" for my brain to fill with something else I think I could get done in that time. Instead, I will have to act immediately, and I'll drive that home by reminding myself of this story as an example of what happens when I blow off the alarms.

Look, if you have ADHD, you are going to burn the bacon at some point. It may not be actual bacon. It may be some other action for which you had the best system designed. It's going to happen. Recognize it when it does. Laugh at it. Take a picture of it as a reminder.

Remember, you aren't what needs fixing. You are who you are. You don't need to fear doing that same task again. Find the flaw in your system, adjust, and keep moving forward.

You got this. Go be great!

lw

Note: If you do take a picture of your ADHD fails and feel like sharing it with me, I'd love it. Send it to: larry@tryingharderwontwork.com, or you can DM me via our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TryingHarderWontWork/

I also want to know how you fixed your system after the fail. I'm always looking for good tips too!

If you haven't read Trying Harder Won't Work yet, you can get your copy on Amazon. https://a.co/d/0bMDrFUf

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