Series: What are your ADHD Tools of Thumb?

Making lists and time blocking

Don't take the appointment card from the doctor's office. Just put it in your phone calendar.

You might think if you take the card, you can refer to it later, or put it in the calendar later, but these are lies. LIES!!!

Just a normal alarm timer app.

Forget appointments? Lose track of time when doing things? I set timers. Most apps allow recurring timers. For example I got one going off twice each day to remind me to drink some water.

I gotta leave in 40 minutes so I got some time to read or whatever. If I don't set an alarm I'll lose track of time and be late. Easy fix.

As far as habits go.

Be honest with myself about my shortcomings. If I start gaming at 9 pm it won't be half an hour. Be honest. Go to bed now or accept it will be midnight.

No, I won't just do that later. I will forget. Write it down or do it now. Else I will forget.

Prep Bags: I keep a bag for each activity i regularly engage in (work, theatre, choir, social clubs) and it holds my accoutrements for that thing. When I remember i need to bring something to the next meeting/rehearsal/whatever. I drop it in the bag. If I am doing a one off activity, I’ll start a bag a day or few ahead of time.

Small things have homes: Car/house keys live on key hook, other dailies live in bowls near my bed.

Multiples of things: I keep separate charge cables each for home, work, and car. I keep an extra, hairbrush and hair ties at work. My old earbuds live at work in case I forget to put my new ones in my work bag when i am done with them.

Apple user here: Shortcuts.

Being able to design lil applettes that take a click or two out of doing a task is a lifesaver.

For instance, going into the clock app and setting a timer is at least a 9-step process (starting from unlocking your device). I made a shortcut to make it a 5-step process.

When I’m trying to hold something in short term memory (especially during a conversation), it’s a struggle

Write it down/put on your calendar now. You're not going to remember to do it later and then you'll completely forget it. Even if you're sure you'll remember it this time, you won't. Just write it down. And make a habit of checking your calendar frequently. Like multiple times a day. Putting it in your calendar and never seeing it again doesn't help.

Schedule just about everything. Even the things you didn't think you'll need to schedule. Schedule what time you're going to work out, or play video games. Put an event in your calendar to make that phone call to your insurance company at a specific time instead of remembering to do it after they're closed every time.

Since the calendar has already been mentioned, I'll drop another of my tools.

I check my pockets every time I leave a space, and confirm I've got Wallet, Keys, Phone. I do this at any transition: Leaving the house, a taxi, the office, a plane.

Got kick started into the habit when I lost a big (for a kid) chunk of money. Felt so bad that I started the checks, and haven't lost any of those three in many, many years (ง’̀-‘́)ง

Alarms for everything!

And goblin.tools

In my head it does not exist. Never trust myself to remember anything, write everything down in a system you trust (TickTick for me). In the same vein when leaving tasks halfway I write myself what I had planned to do next and all the details I can quickly jot down, even if they seem obvious or like I won't forget them.

Alarms on my phone to snap me out of hyperfixating on things to the point where time becomes meaningless.

Online calendar with a widget on my phone's homescreen that shows the upcoming week's appointments, so that I constantly see them by accident. And a habit to always put important appointments in the calendar immediately when I'm made aware of them or plan them.

And always have the calendar open in a browser on the computer.

Two things for me… pomodoro method and the mantra “Don’t put it down. Put it away.” Pomodoro got me through college and made hyperfocusing on assignments seem like more of a choice. The mantra? It is part of my inner dialogue all the time lol. I tend to put things where ever and wouldn’t you know it? In a day my home is a mess. So once I heard the suggestion I took it to heart and it does actually really help me remember WHY to put things away. Because the “oh I will grab it and put it away later” is a lie.

Whenever I close something that locks, I touch the key that unlocks it first. This has saved me many times from locking myself out of the house and locking my keys in the car or trunk

Getting rid of as many time wasters as possible. Reddit, Instagram, etc. They never, ever end. With Lemmy, I’m done my feed in five minutes. YouTube is still a challenge though.

When I'm at my doc for refill or something similar, I always book the next appointment before I leave. And every appointment is written on the calendar app with alarms. No I don't need you to write me the next appointment on paper, your paper doesn't have glow light and sounds so I won't look at it.

I think realising when to back off doing what Im doing because im putting off another task. I feel like since I started taking breaks between activities to let my mind "reset" has helped me transition to more boring tasks.

Im constantly watching films, listening to podcasts or music, so I have to take like a small 3-5 minutes of silence to unload what I was doing before loading in what I need to do.

Also taking this time is not at all wasting it. Ive become mindfull about how much "waste" ive been "doing" and stopped keeping it against myself so its been way more liberating. When you do that, its easier to justify schedualing, and not keep cranking the productivity knob to the max to make up for time.

Finally, I try to make things pretty, to get back to it with lesser resistance, like coding better looking functions, writing less hurriedly, cleaning my instruments for cooking etc with more minutia but taking my time with it.

Also, I stopped trying to multitask stuff to the extreme. I refuse to listen to music while im reading, I refuse to watch a movie and study, watching a stream and gaming at the same time.

This seems like obvious stuff, so the TLDR is take your time, don't find ways to blame yourself but concentrate on how to move on. And take breaks ppl, we are not robots.

Notifications from Google calendar - if it's not there, I will forget.

Also, in terms of motivation - if I don't have a purpose and a goal (however small or insignificant it may be) - then I will be stuck and won't be able to do literally anything. So I always need something to work towards.

Keep things actionable.

• Things you need go where they are useful or where their presence is a reminder not to forget them.
• When relaying things, it doesn’t need a story if the story isn’t actionable.
• When planning things, plan out the actions, and leave as much of the rest to the experience as you can, lest you get overwhelmed, frozen, and wind up with no plans.

Always determine the first action or step to a task/project to give you a specific, predetermined place to start on the task and get your first "win" towards completing it before you add it to your task list

You can decide on the rest later but get your subconscious working on it by making that first decision and the rest you can leave until you've completed step 1