ADHD Time Management
How to Plan While Drowning
We are all so overwhelmed, aren’t we? We all have so much on our plates. Life is really life-ing all over us. And we have this fucked up skull spaghetti that makes activating and moving our needles forward really difficult.
So I’m going to try and offer some time management help here. Nothing gets fixed by reading, so I hope you have a plan to join our community and put what you learn into action. You are cordially invited, and I will personally help get you going if you like.
First things first.
There is no such thing as ‘no time to work on time management’. The only time to improve your time management is when you are drowning and unable to manage your time. Otherwise, why bother?!
Here’s something you can practice right now.
Do this during a time when you have mental energy. (Morning? Before bed?)
Set a timer for 15 minutes. This is not a suggestion of something to gage based on your vibe. Set an actual, literal, physical, timer. If you are going to try this, then please don’t skip this step. It is non-negotiable. Send me an email, or reach out if you need me to go in depth about why and I’ll vomit all about time blindness and ADHD and yadda yadda yadda set the timer.
During that 15 minutes, look at all the tasks you have that you determined you need to do. If you have tasks written on all manner of things, then starting today capture all your tasks in one place. Wherever it is, commit to it.
Pick the three important next things you have to get done. Things that you have determined are important. Don’t dwell on this too long. It’s just an exercise. You can be wrong. Your brain is going to second guess everything anyway, so go with your gut.
Now look at your calendar for tomorrow. If you don’t have a calendar, then this is of utmost importance. I use Google Calendar. Use something. You need to know where your time is going. You need to know when you have appointments.
By looking at your calendar, you can realistically decide when you will do these three things. You don’t have to schedule the tasks in your calendar, but you do have to be thoughtful about when you will do things.
How many of us say, “I’ll do this at some point tomorrow”? That is pretty much a guarantee that it won’t happen. Somebody that says, “I will do it tomorrow at 4:00 pm after I get my kids from school” is way more likely to be successful. Somebody that says “I will do it tomorrow at 4:00pm after I pick up my kids from school and I’ll set an alarm to go off at 3:55pm with a label to remind me” is waaaay more likely to get it done.
Doing these things for 15 minutes in advance doesn’t eliminate the chaos of your life. You may still be floundering. But it helps you manage it, and I can speak from experience when I say that it is a profound use of 15 minutes of your life. You do this for 5 days in a week, that’s a whopping hour-ish of your entire week.
Will you do the thing at that time? I don’t know. But ADHD tells me that when 4:00pm happens, if this isn’t your big fun thing, then your brain will look for a loophole out, so you would be best served having/using your strategies to get started. Here’s my tool for that.
Give this a try and let me know how it goes. If you need further help, this is my area of expertise. I am a productivity coach for adults with ADHD. I can help with the answers to questions like…
But what if something else more important does come up
But what if it takes me more than 15 minutes
But what if I need more time to do the task
But what if I can’t decide what is the most important
But what if…
I have answers to all of them, and they are always specific to you and your life. We are the same, but we are totally different. This is the ADHD way.
You can learn more about how I help at my website…
…or by listening to my podcast “ADHD Big Brother”, link on my website.