Hello all,

It’s been a while since I’ve posted but it’s the new year so I want to let you know my plans for this site over 2011. Many of you know I keep a few blogs including TheDADvocateProject.com, Metzgerbusiness.com and now RoadToThin.com and Kevin-Metzger.com. Technically Kevin-Metzger.com isn’t a blog as I don’t post anything to that site and RoadToThin.com is a partnership with three other men. I also write at 5minutesForSpecialNeeds.com, DadRevolution.com, DadOMatic.com and soon the EastCobber.com. so you can see I’m quite busy. This site has lost focus over time and I had to think about how it fit into the other work I’m doing. Really this site and my work at 5MinutesForSpecialNeeds.com is very complimentary and I’ll be refocusing on issues related to ADD, Dyslexia and Cerebral Palsy specifically on this site. I’ll promise a weekly article to be published on Tuesdays and a reference to the article I write at 5 minutes for special needs on Thursdays. If my audience would like I’ll also point to any other articles I’ve published that week.

The one thing that I think many in this audience will miss is the Dad/family focus that many of the stories I write have. If you are among one of those readers please go over to TheDADvocateProject.com and choose to sigh up for the news letter. Most to all of my dad/family articles will be posted on that site moving forward.

Regards,
Kevin

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As a reader of this blog you know I have ADD and I’ve occasionally referenced how it impacts my current abilities but for the most part I reference how my experiences with it and my dyslexia give me a perspective on raising my daughter with special needs.  Unfortunately lately my ADD has really kicked in. I’ve noticed over the years that during some periods in life my ADD tendencies are much stronger than others. The last time I had trouble was about 10 years ago and I went on Aderal for about 6 months. The problem is after six months or so I could no longer sleep at night and I just didn’t feel comfortable in my skin. So I stopped the medicine.

That was the third time I’ve taken medicine for my ADD.  The first was when I repeated 4th grade at 11 years old. I took medicine then for about a year and then again in College. when I took it in college it wasn’t prescribed but a friend had some and offered it to me. I know this was technically wrong but I was having a hard time and wasn’t going to pay hundreds of dollars to go through testing to prove I had ADD again after having been through it so many times and hating the process. I actually did go to the school clinic first and all they could recommend was testing. BTW it is not uncommon for undiagnosed ADDers to self medicate with various drugs. At any rate I only took meds that time for about 3 months.  I also notice that after getting off the meds I have always been able to sustain my newly established thinking patterns for about eight years without the meds.

I have never had good long term experiences on the medicine yet I’m troubled right now. My ADD thinking patterns are disrupting my ability to sit down and complete simple tasks let alone complicated work tasks. I don’t really want to go back on meds but I also have to deal with the disruptive thinking patterns now or I fear they will start to disrupt my ability to earn income. If anyone has any ideas to alternative means like diet, I’d be interested to hear about it but if you haven’t had success with diet please don’t tell me its the answer. I’ve heard natural supplements might work too. Please let me know what you know.  I’ll post the results of anything I try.

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I had seen these video’s recently and was reminded of them today by my Rabbi’s Yom Kippur sermon. I thought they would be great to share here with my readers. Please enjoy! Also note – the website on the top of the video brings you to a sales page for something unrelated so don’t waste your time.

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I haven’t been posting as much as I would like to lately but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. I’d like to give a brief update of some of the going on’s around here.

1) Metzger Baby #3 is on the way. We expect to have a little boy here no later than Thursday October 8th. We are very excited and had the room completely finished before some flooding made us move some toys into the room while we fix the flood damage.

2) Flood – We did have some minor flood damage but are so very thankful that it wasn’t worse. There are so many people who lost so much and we pray for them daily to recover. We are getting a new roof , thankfully covered by insurance,  and replacing some carpet not covered by insurance.

3) You have seen in some of my recent posts that Haley was called weird at school. We have worked with Haley to write a book. I am now in the process of getting it published. It will likely be self published and available for sale on this web site in the near future.

4) Haley and I filmed an interview about her writing the book and I hope to have the video posted before the baby arrives.  The video is currently in the editing room.

5) Articles for Cerebral Palsy Magazine. I was asked to write an article for the winter edition of Cerebral Palsy Magazine because of my election to East Cobber father of the year. I’m very excited about this honor and have written 2 articles. I’m trying to decided which one I like better. I’ll publish the other article here on the blog once I decide.

6) I have started on another book project. I’m going to be crowed sourcing a book about Dad’s by dad’s. I’m very excited about this book. It will start with a questionnaire that is being developed that I hope to have over 1000 dad’s complete. As the questionnaire is completed stats will be published to this site. One of the questions will be do you want to be interviewed for the book? I’ll set about interviewing all who want to be interviewed and compile the stories into a book. I have no idea how long this project will take but I’d like to have it close to complete by my 35th birthday in May, sooner if possible.

7) I could not tell if my Blog Talk Radio program was very good. I do have some additional guests who would be willing to do interviews but I’m just not sure if I should continue with the program. I’d love to hear some feedback. Please let me know your thoughts.

Finally as I expect to be very busy over the next few weeks until after the baby get’s here I may not have much of a chance to blog. Please be patient with me and continue reading as I will do my best to continue posting on a regular basis as my life normalizes again after the baby arrives.

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I was at dinner the other night with friends. We were talking about my web site and I was saying that I’m amazed that I hear from more people each day that are reading it and gaining some benefit from it. We then started talking about some people who have discovered late in life that they have ADD, ADHD or Dyslexia and I made a glib comment that probably came across as judgmental. I mentioned that people with ADD, ADHD or Dyslexia end up in the profession they do often to avoid dealing with their disability.

This is especially true of people who do not discover until late in life that they have a disability. Unfortunately many of the coping skills are not inherent and have to be learned. If an individual was allowed to grow up with out learning the skills or without understanding that there is nothing wrong with them they just have a different way of relating to the world then they tend to withdrawal and choose professions that allow for that withdrawal. Professions are typically chosen that allow the person to act individually, avoid writing, have minimal bureaucratic forms or allow for really individualistic and creative thought. Obviously these types of professions span a vast array of possibilities and provide an incredible amount of opportunities but as an individual with ADD, ADHD or Dyslexia you should be consciously aware that these factors when selecting a job.

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I haven’t written about my dyslexia/ADD in quite a while. As anyone who has regularly read this blog knows I tend to write about events that are current and related to my life now (this instant). Well today it’s time to writ about some difficulty I have with writing.

Obviously if you take the time to read this blog you can see that I am very capable of writing and sometime even capable of eloquency as demonstrated in the blog that won me Father of the Year. However this type of writing is free form, narrative, passionate, and streem of consiounious. It works well for this blog and I enjoy it tremoundously. I hope and believe that it benefits the reader.

Unfortunatly this form of writing does not bode well for business. Over the years I’ve managed to squeak by because of ability to verably communicate, think dynamically, negotiate, come up with strategic ideas and help the team come up with solutions, but my written work has always suffered from the way I think. My writing has always reflected my thought process. I was always able to do well when I was simply writing requirements because they are simple sentence structures and I always got group reviews, but as I’ve moved up in organizations and had to build more presentations and comprehensive documents I’ve had a harder time with my written communication. I can build great grand strategic thoughts but when it comes to putting them in a presentation I’ve always had to find someone to help me re-organize and pollish it. I truly believe that this has held me back from becoming a truly young execuative but I don’t want it to hold me back from becoming an execuative permanitaly. As such I’m working with some people who do excelent work to understand the strategies they use to organize and build their best work.

The first step is outlining. This is interesting. Of course we are all taught that we should always outline thoughts, but I’ve always been of the opinion that an outline should take 15 – 30 minutes. As of today I now understand that you can take days to build your outlines and the thought process allows you to organize how you want your ideas organized in the final written presentation.

I have no idea if this strategy will work for me but the people who are the best experts in the world say if you want to do something like someone else does it then you have to model how they do it. So here it goes. I’ll keep you informed. If it works for me hopefully I’ll have documented all the steps and you can model the same behaviors.

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I had one of my ADD days today. I was everywhere and anywhere except for in the work I was trying to do. I did get some work done on my blog’s this evening but I was utterly unproductive at the office today. I think it was the number of meetings I was in. I just can’t write or parse data if I don’t have uninterupted time.

I also hate parsing data. I love the results but I wish I could pay someone to pull the results out of the data. I like the interviewing to gather the data, I like comming up with the questions I want answered, I like learning the answers to the qestions but I hate parsing the data to get the answers. I’ve had it with pivot tables and excell.

Well that was today tomorrow, I have 2 major objectives for the day. Complete the parsing of the data so I can build my ppt deck and finish updating the other document I’m working on. So it is written so it will be done.

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This post is really just an update.

Please remember to look at our resource page as it is growing.

We have had some great interviews on the radio program and while the guests have been exceptional I think I’m getting better with each show. Check out the shows as there has been some great information provided.

I love feedback and comments so please don’t be shy. Sign in and leave a comment. I have finally gotten a spam blocker on my comments and it has worked tremendously well so I no longer filter every comment and they post immediately as long as they are not spam.

For the radio program please let me know if you there is anyone you would like me to interview or if you have contacts that I can reach out to. While I have a pretty deep guest list it will only be deep as long as I keep stacking it so I appreciate any input or contacts.

Please tell your friends and family about this blog. I produce it for 2 reasons 1) It’s therapeutic for me and 2) I truly intend it to help others. I need to know the value it’s producing. I know this by the visits it gets and the recommendations from others.

Finally look for an article from me in the upcoming fall issue of the Cerebral Palsy Magazine.

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As I’ve mentioned previously I never really learned to read until I was eleven years old. Since then I have become a veracious reader however no matter how hard I try and no matter what courses I may take to try and improve the speed of my reading. I’m just a slow reader. It takes me about a month to read through a book and I read for at least 30 minutes every day. That would mean that I could only consume 12 books a year and quite frankly that way too few for my information appetite.

Three years ago I switched jobs and my commute grew to an hour each way. This seemed horrible at first even though I was taking on a new job at a much higher salary, I now had to spend 2 hours a day wasted in the car in Atlanta traffic. Anyone who knows Atlanta traffic knows that this meant I would be in the car for up to 3 hours some days. I had to make some form of valuable use of this time. Talking on the phone and emailing on my blackberry were quite frankly too dangerous. That’s when I found Audible.

After the second day in traffic I started searching the internet looking for something that would provide me better use of the time and I came across audio books on Audible. I love to consume information so I signed up. I have listened to over 100 program since signing up. I payed for the $149.95 plan which include 12 books per year and a free subscription to the Wall Street Journal. They have another plan which provides you 24 books per year and cost $229.95 and you can buy books individually.

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Trying to stay consistently focused on doing one thing when you have ADD is always difficult. I have not worked on or looked at strategies for focusing as an ADD in years. Instead I have been looking at and learning from Success experts such as Tony Robbins, Steven Covey, and many others. They however offer general strategies that work for folks who are not ADD. The mistake I have been making is that every time I read a new book or article I always get distracted from what ever it was I was focusing on that the last expert drove me toward. This can be a real nightmare if you want to do something like build a business, blog or even career as you are constantly changing focus.

So how does one stay focused enough to move forward in a career, business or blog? Well, I’m not great at it but this is the strategy I’m currently using:

Funneling Concentric Circles:

The idea is that you have something that looks like a 3 dimensional bulls eye or dart board that has a funnel shape. In the center at the bottom of the funnel is your major goal. As you go out from the center and up the funnel you want to include all the interests that might catch your attention. The important thing is that you need those interests to take a shape that will direct all your efforts back into the funnel and towards the bottom center ie. your major goal.

This approach allows you to follow multiple interests but still stay focused on the goal. Unfortunately the strategy does not keep you focused on any specific task at any one time but it does ensure that you are always going down a path that leads towards your main goal.

So an example of how this works is this website. My major goal with the web site is to inform and educate people on Dyslexia, ADD, and Cerebral Palsy. What are the difficulties, What are some lessons,What are the treatments, How do the disabilities impact the life of the person with the disability and how does it impact the family, Who are some of the people who have been successful with the disability and what has driven them to be successful, the list of course goes on but you get the general idea. This is the core goal and innermost concentric circle. Some of the circles comming out are the blog, marketing, a radio program I hope to be doing soon, useful advertising of products, and more. The idea is that each of these in and of it’s self is a different interest area but all are focused in a way to progress the goal of inoforming.

If you have any questions about how this works let me know.

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