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hundred local highway reports of distracted-driving collisions to see what was causing drivers to take their eyes off the road. Here’s what the reporters on The Record found:
    About 20 percent of drivers were distracted by something inside their vehicle—fiddling with the radio or talking to other passengers.
    One driver told police he was driving with his knees while trying to roll up his window. He slid onto the shoulder and smashed into the concrete median.
    A passenger told police she was having a heated argument with her boyfriend, the driver. Neither noticed their car had slid onto the shoulder until she grabbed the wheel, causing them to lose control.
    Six drivers were distracted by food. One driver admitted she was cleaning melted candy off her steering wheel when she lost control of her car. Another started choking on coffee, and another let go of the steering wheel after spilling hot chocolate.
    But in almost half the cases, drivers were distracted by something outside the vehicle, most often other drivers, accidents, construction crews or road signs.
    One driver became so transfixed by pigs being transported in the next lane that she crashed her car into the truck.
    â€œAs I was in the turn, I looked off to my right at a transport truck in the right-hand lane,” she told police in her driver statement. “It looked like he was transporting pigs, so I focused on the animals. As I did, I started to head toward the truck… I remember slamming on the brakes. Everything went white and then I heard the crash.”
    Disclaimer to readers of this book: If you are someone who becomes transfixed by the sight of farm animals in trucks while driving, nothing we can say will help you.
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    THE RULES OF ORDER
    Through years of working with patients, through the growing body of clinical literature and through insights gleaned from advances in neurosciences, we have learned much about what ADHD patients and the general public struggle with. From that, we can better understand what we should do in order to stop being forgetful, start getting focused and stop allowing distractions and a lack of focus to mess up our lives. In Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life we boil down many essential “brain functions” to six principles—what we call the Rules of Order. Consider these “brain skills” or abilities that you can develop and master. In the chapters ahead, Coach Meg and I explain these Rules of Order and then show you how to learn these skills to give yourself more focus and your life greater order. We will start with three “simple” principles and build upon these more complex organizational abilities and strategies.
    1. Tame the Frenzy: Before we can engage the mind, we must control, or at least have a handle on, the emotions. It’s hard to be thoughtful or efficient when you’re irritated, frustrated and distraught. First, it’snecessary to calm down and stabilize the frustrations, anger or disappointments that we may be feeling at that particular moment.
    A wonderful example of this quality comes from, of all places, a well-known cable television program. There is no one better at taming frenzy than Cesar Millan from Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan. And just as Cesar teaches dogs and owners how to more happily coexist, so, too, can he teach us something about the necessary approach to thinking and organization. When he deals with dogs (and their often-distraught owners), Cesar’s tenet is to be “calm, yet assertive.” In order to have a healthy, responsive canine, you have to find your “calm-assertive” energy. As described on his website (www.cesarsway.com), this is “the energy you project to show your dog you are the calm and assertive pack leader.” Assertive, he adds, “does not mean angry or aggressive. Calm-assertive means always compassionate, but quietly in control.”
    Quietly in control. That’s a nice phrase.