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How do you organize yourself?
As someone who deals with ADHD, I often have a lot of trouble keeping myself organized. I have so many different thoughts swirling around in my head, and things I want to do, but it's hard to plan my time correctly. I often get the feeling that I'm wasting my day.
I'm wondering if anyone else has this experience, and what you do to keep yourself organized.
Something I've been working on recently is just making sure I dump everything I think of that I need to do into a to-do list. I don't worry at all about setting dates, or categorizing them, or anything like that, I just get it in the list. This is great because I know everything is in there, and I can review it once or twice a day.
Same. So so so many lists! I prefer a physical list, but I have them on my phone too. I don’t have ADHD, but I am very forgetful and struggle with executive function sometimes.
Opposite to you, though, I prefer things categorised. For example I just did a spring cleaning list for today and have it by room, so although “vacuum” and “dust” are on my list several times under each separate room, it feels more manageable to me that way. Plus I get to cross more things off which is motivating for me.
My favourite way to start a to do list is with “write a to do list” that way you get the momentum of crossing something off straight away!
Yeah, totally, categorized or not just getting it out of my head and written down in some manner makes a huuuge difference with mental load. No more "oh, shoot, totally forgot I have to do that".
I have started bullet journaling daily. I have a notebook that will last about two months that I carry with me (in the wallet I made/designed for this specific purpose!) Every morning, while I drink my coffee, I move yesterday's unfinished items to the current day and add things that come to me while I do so. This helps so that I know what's on the list for the day, I get to triage a bit and prioritize my day.
I also do the To-Do list. I have a white board with my important weekly items and a daily list on my phone. I'm a bit of a completionist, so I like checking off all the items. I'm also forgetful, so I like to review the lists multiple times like yourself
You gotta try a bunch of things. If you find something that mostly works, for the love of all that is holy DO NOT DEVIATE FROM IT. There is always 'better.' Fuck that, that's GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU RIGHT NOW.
Signed, a fellow ADHDer who's spent a fortune on planners and systems and apps and learned that a small agenda/planner and endless sticky notes Are The Way I Roll. If I was allowed to hang things on my walls (my landlord doesn't want holes) I'd have a wall monthly calendar and a memo/kanban board up instead so I can keep things in my line of sight at all times. (I'm still trying to figure out an on-the-go system that covers the broad view and micro view at the same time, but short of hauling a Plum Paper Planner-sized stack around, it's not happening)
But real talk, you might just carry around a pocket notebook and jot things down as they come to you, bujo style. Don't worry about taking action on those thoughts, just dump them out so you can move on with your day until your designated time to look over your pocket notebook has arrived and you can add things to tomorrow's to-do list or rearrange information to where it ultimately belongs. I did this for a few months when I first really started understanding my ADHD and it helped because any thought wouldn't escape, it'd go in the notebook, and when I looked at it later I could determine what to do about that thought (sometimes it was questions I wanted to google to satisfy my curiosity, sometimes it was things to add to my grocery list etc). The Achilles heel of ADHD is the need to do things right now lest you forget because you're distracted by the next shiny thought, and simply jotting them all down messily to deal with when the time was appropriate helped clear out my brain clutter and anxiety about forgetting things that popped in my head throughout the day.
There are apps for this. I think FDroid has one that's called My Brain, created by someone with ADHD. Unfortunately, apps/digital just don't have the same impact as paper for me, so I'm stuck in the analog world despite my best efforts.
I agree with this, not all “system” are created equal and not everyone is wired the same. Picking and choosing what works for you depends on your situation in life and mindset. The organisational system should fit your workflow, priority and how you brain. And you can always pick apart a system and take what works and patch it your system. Another thing is your system may change as you grow, what I used during uni is drastically different than what I use now, and I expect it to change in the future.
I am not ADHD, but I’ll share my current system. Its a combination of sticky notes, notes and calendars. Tasks that is important and urgent and needed to be done in within a week, is put in a very important pile. With sticky notes for instructions or labelling. Notes is used for reference information and calendars is used to block out my time for the near future. (Think a week or two ahead). Now the downside of this system is that I do not have a centralised place for all these datas. I have scattered physical notes, some stuff on my phone and some on my work pc. But broadly speaking, work tasks stays at work place and personal tasks stays on phone or google drive. I tried using a planner but that is just one more place for me to scatter my notes in. I could have organise all of this but…. Its good enough.
Just a suggestion for making a board/organizer - especially if you use sticky notes already, it's pretty easy to use painters tape or masking tape or label tape (something that sticks but won't damage your wall) to make a grid or set of columns on the wall that you can use. Then you can move sticky notes between categories based on whatever system works best for you. I suppose you could do something similar for a calendar but that seems far more challenging logistically.
I used to just color code my sticky notes but that got wildly out of hand very rapidly so this has been helpful to organize, and the tactile aspect of physically adding/moving/removing tasks seems to be helpful for me as well.
I have spent too much time with too many of the leading PKM tools (personal knowledge management), with Dendron and LogSeq being my two favorite, and obsidian not far behind
Here’s the secret: the habit of writing it down is the only thing that matters. You can have all the tools and templates and whatever you want, but if you don’t use it, or use it inconsistently, it doesn’t matter
To that end: Apple Notes. Seriously. I have an iPhone and MacBook Pro, and the notes just sync. They’re not markdown and it’s not open source, but I’ve given up on principles in favor of what I’ll actually use.
Something I have learned recently is to try doing one thing a day. A vitamin this day, a page in the book another day, garden another.
For a helpful reminder I will use for myself, physical writing will be best, but I am digital now all the time, Notepad.exe or onenote are working well enough along with Microsoft's ToDo app and setting dates or making check lists. Also https://goblin.tools/ makes simple things into lists, like washing the dishes into steps
I have found for daily vitamins to happen more, along with gardening happening at least once a week.
This is very wise advice.
I agree with other comments made here too about letting a todo list of some form be the kitchen sink that holds all the ideas and things to be done. Better to have that in the list than cycling in our minds.
But the focus that comes from simplicity -- of choosing one to three things that we're going to do really is key. Otherwise we often may just end up just doing cycles and loops of juggling all of the items in our mind and re-evaluating them over and over (vs. starting work on something).
While over two decades old now, I still like David Allen's ideas in Getting Things Done and the concept of figuring out what's the next action we can take. Rather than thinking of the whole project (e.g., baking a cake) think about the next action/step (e.g., cracking the egg).
p.s. THANK YOU for mentioning goblin.tools, that's a new one to me. Their "magic" feature is amazingly brilliant at breaking things down to smaller steps.
As someone with ADHD myself I understand where you are comming from. I'm definitely not perfect (just ask my wife 🤣) but a mix of calendar reminders (with appropriately timed notification settings), manual (pen and paper) lists, and coalition apps and services help me manage my day to day as best as I can.
Calander notifications are great for myself for some things (e.g. call about bill while at work) with notification settings of immediately. events further put have notification settings that are often a week before, a day before, and day of.
I use manual lists at work, to keep track of my daily tasks or requests. If it's not done that day, it goes to the top of the list for the next day. If it ends up a date further away, see above.
Finally, ive gone ahead and finally consolidated digital stuff. all my passwords and online form auto fills are with bitwarden. Offloading passwords out of my brain has been so nice. As a gamer GOG Galaxy has a plug-in for other services to consolidate all your games onto platform. Helps not double buying and collection management in general.
ADHD is a tool. You can utilize it as such without medication. We can have 50 tabs open on chrome at work and know exactly what each one is for, and as such are able to help our workmates more quickly than others.
Embrace the ADHD
We were kicking ass long before adderall and vyvanse were a thing.
While I agree, because this is how its manifested for me. There is a lot more behind how this effects people. Folks who have learned to manage and build systems can have 50 tabs open and know what everything is. Folks who are struggling can have 50 tabs open and be entirely overwhelmed and lost.
Yea my ADHD is coupled with executive dysfunction, if I'm not medicated I can literally be doing everything but the thing I need to be doing, knowing damn well I'm just hurting myself but unable to force myself to focus.
I know @fruitybisket means well but it really reads like the Johnny Five-Dicks meme
Yep yep. Additionally, my understanding is that if you learn to manage and create systems (on purpose or not) early in life, you end up with a very very different experience from someone who hasn’t.
I like to practice "Inbox Zero." My email is a to-do list. Anything in my inbox is something I need to address soon. Once it's been addressed, I delete it. I delete sent messages, unless they're something I mean to address soon or save until I get an inbox response. I only archive things I mean to come back to in the coming months. Anything that needs to be saved long-term is printed to a PDF and filed. Currently I have 2 items in my inbox, 2 items in my sent box (I should just delete them both), and 19 archived (about half should just be printed to PDF and filed). My entire email box is using 850KB of storage. Most important things I need to address come to my email, so this system really works well for me. I use it at work, too, where I'm even more cutthroat about what I keep.
I do the same, but I just file all completed emails into folders in outlook. Then I track anything that needs to be done that hasn't been emailed to me in a OneNote.
The system struggles a bit with tracking multiple long-term, complex projects. OneNote lets you tag tasks and completions as automatic reminders in outlook, but that doesn't really do it for me for whatever reason.
Lists. Lots and lots of lists. Repeatedly. And lots of sorting and repeated decluttering. Every year I do car boot sales and get rid of stuff. I spent a long time in my 20's acquiring things, collections etc. Slowly but surely i've sold lots of that and decluttered. That helps a lot to focus on what I actually really want. But even when doing that, lists.
Ticking things off does me wonders in my mood.
I'm not super organized/systematic with it, but I absolutely cannot remember anything, so I've got about a 10-second countdown once I have a thought where I need to get it out of my head and recorded somewhere. So the most important factor for me is sort of a personal "inbox" where I can quickly dump thoughts to flesh out and file away later.
In the Apple ecosystem, this usually ends up being a combination of Reminders/Notes and Drafts. Reminders/Notes for quick things because I can tell Siri to remind me when I get home to x (usually through my watch) if I don't have time to pull out my phone, Notes for stuff I want to be quick to reference later (and I like it for recipes), and pretty much anything I actually write (emails, forms, etc) starts in Drafts and eventually gets copied/pasted into wherever I'm submitting it.
For more long-term storage, I like eventually migrating important stuff over into Obsidian since it has a lot of nice features but is just a markdown editor at its core, so I don't feel locked into any proprietary system and my notes archive is just folders of markdown files I can back up anywhere.
I've tried sooo many things ... phone, watch, computer, tablet, etc. What works (sort of) for me is a hobonichi weeks planner.
https://www.jetpens.com/Hobonichi-Techo-Weeks-Japanese-Bow-Tie-Bunnies-2023-Apr-Start/pd/36699
I write everything down in the notes section whenever I think of it, then go back to it a couple times a week to remind myself what I'm supposed to be doing. Very few things slip through the cracks. Not perfect but the best I've found for me. Plus I get the viseral pleasure of crossing things off that I've actually done.
How do you remember to keep this around?
Girl here ... carry it everywhere in my handbag. Sorry. Galen leather cover adds about 5lbs but totally worth it (mine is forest green and gasp I use a fountain pen: it's glorious).
https://www.galenleather.com/products/leather-slim-hobonichi-weeks-planner-cover-c-h-brown
5lbs!
I’ve got a sling bag / Fanny pack that I carry 99% of the time now. Going to see how it fits in there
Weeks Mega for me, all those extra note pages for brain dumps. Though if they come out with an A5 Hon I'm switching to that in a heartbeat.
You must know about Cousins, yes? Right size, wrong format ... https://www.1101.com/store/techo/en/2023/pc/detail_cover/cb23_jan/
The Hon has a hardcover-ish similar to the Weeks/Mega. Last year they debuted it with an A6 Original, I'm really hoping the popularity of the English Cousin and how fast those Hon sold out means they'll fasttrack an A5 Hon.
I don't like the Cousin's covers, and I haven't had much luck in stabilizing the cardboard cover it has to my liking. I did like the feel of the Hon in my hands, though, so I'm hoping the A5 Hon is part of the August announcements.
I tried it once: fell apart. Weeks all the way for me. I add the little notebooks for extra room when I've used up everything (Mega was just too big for me). Nice to find a fellow fan here!
I have two options,
I don't plan anything and just let time/the flow of the world "dictate" my day (within reason of course)
Or I note things down, even if I never look at the notes again it does help me to be focused.
So I got myself 2 nice fountain pens with different inks and a stack of notebooks and just write my plans and thoughts down
Glad to read someone else who trusts the flow of time (within reason :)! Whereas most people use the metaphor of head-as-a-sieve to criticize their memory, I consider it to be a feature. My head is in fact a sieve: it retains what needs to be retained.
Oh, I do have a ‘done’ list that helps me to wrap up a task when it’s done.
My personal life is a complete mess and I mostly rely on my wife for organization. With work I at least have bite sized chunks of work that I mostly self assign from a Kanban board. Sometimes the work is a little more vague and I either freeze from not knowing what to do or where to start or I spend too much time hyperfocused on tangential issues. I find when I'm spiralling like that I like to go take a walk to think about it, come back and if I'm still stuck I'll write out an email/slack message describing the problem and some potential options. Usually that is good enough to figure out next steps without ever hitting send and if not then I do hit send and get help from a peer to help me break it down
I'm a tremendously disorganized person. I legitimately have issues with sorting myself. I'm also extremely particular about how things look, so nothing used to get done. That said, I learned to make my own very basic wooden desk, wall-mounted multishelf, and other stuff to get things off of my floor. It's helped me a lot.
So far as scheduling goes, I put my calendar on the home page of my phone so I can remind myself what day and number of the week it is and if I have anything scheduled. I'd love to get one of those raspberry pi's that goes in the mirror. One day.
For sorting online information, I put it all in my discord server. It treat it like a library of online sources and relevant information. It's not perfect to sort through, but it's at least there and marginally organized.
I soon want to make some wall-mounted shelves that are kind of close to the ceiling for putting more of my shit away.
I don't have ADHD, but I have seen this YouTube video highlighting the different motivators for productivity in neurotypicals and those with ADHD. It sounds like simple, old school methods (task lists, reminders, alarms, etc.) are better than productivity systems with robust features, which devolve into distractions. There are also tips in the video such as using micro commitments and making things into a game to motivate you to complete the not-so-fun stuff.
I just discovered Zotero for organizing academic references, and have been able to close almost all my tabs! (If anyone is into research, I always make sure they know about sci-hub.se for access to original journal articles.)
For organizing information, the PARA Method taught by Tiago Forte.
For task management, I use the Getting Things Done (GTD) method. There are a ton of todo list apps that can implement this.
For to-do lists I’m using kanban boards, with the open source project : Kanboard.
And every event, meeting etc is in my phone calendar, sometimes there is too much details with stuff like « do the laundry ».