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Scatterbrain

 I am a scatterbrain. I am not very organised in most things in my life. My apartment is kind of a mess at times with books and things all over. I tend to do things last minute and am quite bad at planning. I think it comes from my perfectionism, but rather than looking at these (and other aspects of my personality) as defects, how about I treat them in a neutral way. As long as I am not causing active harm to others out there with these facets - they are not good or bad, they just are.

So a better way to think about myself would be - everything about me that doesn’t cause active harm to other humans (or myself) is to be judged in a neutral way. I am not allowed to label it as a “defect” or a “disorder”. I just call it a facet of my personality. And as with most things these facets give me certain advantages and also certain disadvantages.

So let’s take my lack of organization for example. Based on the above I don’t see how it could be causing any active harm to anyone else. So i shall deem this facet of my personality neutral. Listing the advantages and disadvantages of being a scatterbrain  - 

Disadvantages

- I am not good at long term projects unless they are broken down into smaller projects with concrete goals

- I procrastinate and am quite lazy to do things that I don’t enjoy doing

- I often start reading multiple books at the same time and usually don’t finish a book for quite some time

- I tend to lose things and do spend quite some time looking for them

- I don’t take care of the things i own 

- I don’t plan travel in advance and miss out on things that require bookings in advance

- I don’t plan my life in advance - i don’t really have 5 year, 10 year goals etc.

Advantages

- being scatter brain also confers a certain amount of creativity to me (I think)

- reading multiple things at the same time increases the breadth of my knowledge of all fields 

- knowing that I am not good at long term projects and that I am lazy/a procrastinator forces me to either a.   Create systems that take care of things for me with minimal effort or b. Delegate these things to someone else. Both of these have the benefit of being able to expand without the time/resource constraint if it was just me who had to take care of them. This has been especially useful in business for me.

- since I don’t take good care of things I own I also don’t value materialism. I don’t own expensive things (That aren’t really necessary) whose loss would be a significant economic loss for me. This also saves me the negative emotions I would experience when (inevitably) they will break or I lose them. 

-  Since I don’t plan my travels in advance I have unexpected adventures/experiences during my travel, which I value more. I have had some amazing trips and experiences by not planning in advance.

- since I don’t plan my life in advance I have unexpected adventures in my life as well.

I think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages for me. I am happy that I am a scatterbrain.




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