Practicing physical disciplines help improve mindfulness. Try taekwondo or dance.

Practicing mediation also helps. Try your local Buddhist teacher.

Only took me till I was trying to figure out what was up with my 9 year old, when I was in my 40's. Intense focus on things that engage one, spacing out things that do not? Check. Losing things that one really ought not to lose? Check. You really do not want to go through 5 umbrellas in one rainy fall at the University of Minnesota--it's a BIG campus.

And absolute loathing for mundane tasks? Probably do NOT want to have Neonatal ICU nurse as your first job out of school--the bulk of that role is reading charts and meters, not actual patient care. And even then, the patient is most likely sedated so as not to fight the respirator. With ADHD, jobs that are 90% routine and 10% interesting are a set up for failure.

So I worked in Labor and Delivery--about as un routine as you can get. And then sold Real Estate--again, same thing. Then worked for insurance companies, where the routines were guaranteed to be frequently interrupted by the phone, and thus made more interesting each time I went back to them.

Bottom line, you are probably in the wrong job, but IF you can find a way to break up your day, you can make it work. When you go to employee meetings, get the reputation as the one with the notebook, furiously scribbling down what you hear. THE ONLY WAY I can ever stay awake in a meeting or conference or lecture, no matter HOW interested I am in the subject, is to take notes. So I do. And my colleagues in the network marketing organization that I belong to love me for it--they know I'll get quotes.

When you are doing rote work, break it up. Put in your earphones and listen to your iPod while doing those tasks because you probably do those sorts of functions better with distraction.

Devise a routine. Have a home at your place of work for your essentials: wallet, jacket, whatever, and ALWAYS put them there. I never buy a purse that doesn't have an outside pocket, because that's where the car keys go if they're not in the doorlock or the ignition. ALWAYS. The purse ALWAYS goes on the little desk in my kitchen. ALWAYS. I have lots of phone appts, and used to, quite regularly, miss them. I'd write them down and then neglect to see them on the calendar. So I abandoned my online system, which didn't FORCE me to look at it, and went back to a day planner. Appts are ALWAYS highlighted, and I check it, several times a day, because it's snuggled up against my laptop. I can't avoid seeing it.

One more thing. Omega3 fatty acids are your friend. Get the highest quality ones that you can afford (IOW: not from WalMart) and take a lot. There is excellent research, going back several years, now, to show that Omega3s not only are essential for brain development in babies, but also help with brain function and attention. The last time I ran out of them, I drove away from a gas pump with the nozzle still in the gas tank. My gas tank door never did recover fully from that.

I truly hope that some of the things that have helped me learn to live with my ADHD can help you!

I am like this too. Spacy and distractable unless there is some big urgency to the experience that gives me the adrenaline rush and focus I need.

I can't be like this with small kids tho, they require a lot of attention.

Two things helped me cope and get organized-- the first-- yoga and mediation which I don't have time to do regularly but the principles of living in the moment really have helped.

The second-- having an anal-retentive, ocd-ish roommate through four years of college. I was sloppy and disorganized, creative, artistic, musical-- she was orderly, efficient, scientific, dependable, predictable, a little bit boring.

Four years I defined myself as oppositional to her-- but she was yin to my yang and little did I know I was taking notes the entire time I lived with her. I have a huge debt to her for any professional success I have acheived since she taught me how to get organized. My parents could never teach me that no matter what they said to me, because they themselves walk around the house depositing objects wherever they are standing, while completely distracted by other things.

It is such a mundane thing but so brilliant a solution for people like us. You just need a defined space for your wallet and your keys, your glasses, your asthma puffer, and whatever else is crucial to day to day survival.

That is all you need to keep yourself from losing things. You have to put that defined space right near the entry and exit door, install a basket or shelf or place a table with a nice bowl right there. Then every day you do this like putting on your seat belt, until it becomes habitual and doesn't require any thought on your part. You put it down there, and its down there until you need to pick it up. You don't have it in your hand unless you need it, so you can't put it down any where else.

As for not spacing out in the absence of an intense project or deadline-- I am working on that too and SYA doesn't help matters. But go back to being meditative-- "in the moment" if you can, whenever you find yourself getting dreamy. Sometimes I think that my brain needs to be dreamy and ruminative at least 75% of the time in order to be well-oiled and geared up for those times of intense focus and concentration. But maybe that is just an excuse for indulging in more comfortable and lazier state of mind?

You're not describing a wife, you're describing a mother.

LW, please don't get married just because you need someone to take care of you. You're an adult. Learn to take care of yourself.