If you Google Schedule for ADHD, you’ll get over 47,000,000 results. In 0.30 seconds…

Do another search and substitute “Planner” for Schedule, and there are over 10,000,000 results (although it did take Google 0.31 seconds to come up with this one).

Too Many Options

If you’re like many women with ADHD, including me - too many choices is not a good thing (Baskin Robbins is like the 7th circle of hell to me). And one of the things I’ve found true with a lot of planners aimed at ADHDers is that they’re too bloody complex! When my planner has a daily schedule, a weekly schedule, a monthly schedule, how many glasses of water I’ve consumed, goal for the day, intention for the day, important notes, monthly focus, what I’m grateful for… I want to just toss it and make my way through the day on my own.

I don’t understand why planners with hundreds of things to fill in and track are marketed to those of us with executive dysfunction issues and ADHD Paralysis. I used to purchase a new planner every year, but then end up not using it after January (sometimes after January 10th), then I felt guilty for spending the money and frustrated that this one “didn’t work” either. Maybe it’s Shiny Object Syndrome that encourages planner makers to keep marketing complex planners to us - even if 1/1000th of the estimated 366 million adults in the world with ADHD purchased one planner during their lifetime, they’d be making bank.

Flexibility & Accountability

Schedules can have the same inherent issues as planners. Our days don’t always go according to plan (do anyone’s?), so having certain tasks set for specific times can lead to more frustration.

Time-blocking can be a great way to narrow your focus but still maintain some flexibility. For instance, your top priority of the day is to spend an hour editing your article. You block off an hour at 3 PM, but Aunt Esmeralda called at 2:47, and you know you won’t get her off the phone in anything less than a half hour. You have the option of moving your time block to 3:30. (The trick here is not to create blocks for 24 hours every day, sleeping and eating are good things…)

If you like having a little accountability co-working might be a good option. One program I’ve used before is called Focus Mate. It’s a video call that can last for 25, 50, or 75 minutes. You’re matched with another person, you let each other know what you’re going to be working on at the beginning of the call, and then you both get to work. You can mute the other person if you find background noises distracting. People use Focus Mate for everything from working on their thesis to repotting their orchids. It’s not the task itself, it’s the accountability that’s the whole point.

What Works for Me

As noted earlier, as much as I love a pretty paper planner, especially if it has stickers (who doesn’t love stickers?), now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of 65, I’ve accepted that they’re not worth purchasing. I mean, I can just buy some stickers (that I’ll end up not using) and save some money - and a tree! So, I’ve gone mostly digital, but with a big paper calendar on our fridge.

My digital ride-or-die is Asana. The free version has plenty of options for me - I can create large projects - like writing a magazine article, with interim tasks like setting up interviews with sources, completing the first draft, etc., and I can add dates and priority levels to each of them. I also color code - so my writing work is blue, my family, home, and garden categories are pink, my self-care is purple, and my financials are green. I can also view my tasks in a list, calendar, or kanban style board - which is useful for things like blog and social media posts. I have columns for what posts are coming up next, which are written and edited, scheduled, etc., and I just drag the title of the post from one column to another as it progresses through the pipeline.

My other digital must-haves are my Google Calendar (long live pop-up reminders!!) and my iPhone. The “Hey Siri” feature does everything from sending a text to my daughter or adding an item to my grocery list while I’m driving (why do I always think of important stuff while I’m driving??) to setting the 7-minute and 15-second timer for my boiled egg every morning. I do like starting off the day with a perfectly cooked egg.

The large calendar on my fridge helps us keep up-to-date with medical appointments, etc. My daughter’s weekly chemo, my husband’s eye doctor appointment, and upcoming orthopedic procedure, my surgery and follow-ups… it can be a lot. I have different colored stickers for each of us, so we can see at a glance who has something coming up.

Avoiding Digital Rabbit Holes

The downside of digital work for my ADHD brain is that being on my computer can be an absolute rabbit hole. I love research (can you tell by the number of links in this article :-)?, and I usually have at least 2 or 3 programs open, and multiple open tabs in my browser. If digital distractions derail your work, there are a number of apps to help cut distractions.

• Freedom allows you to block websites and apps, or, if you really need to hone in on your work, you can block the internet (not great if you’re doing research though). You can also set recurring schedules, get a history of your sessions, and sync across all of your devices. Freedom is $8.99 for the monthly plan or $3.33 per month if you go with the annual plan.

• Focus Me offers many of the same features as Freedom. You can set it to only allow you to open your email a certain number of times a day, use the Pomodoro technique to boost your productivity, and it even includes parental controls. Focus Me’s pricing structure is $7.95 if you pay monthly, $3.95 per month if you pay annually, and $2.89 a month if you pay upfront for 2 years.

• Rescue Time combines anti-distraction features with time-tracking, so you can see where your time is going - automatically. Rescue Time works with apps like Asana, (more on that in a minute). Rescue Time will run you $6.50 per month.

You Do You

The most important thing to remember with planners and schedules, like everything else in our ADHD life, is that you have to use what works for YOU. If you find that filling out your pretty paper planner becomes just another thing on your to-do list that adds to your stress level, ditch it and go with what feels more comfortable - but keep those pretty stickers - they’re usually the best part!