ADHD planner: do the right thing, and do the thing right

When you are looking for an ADHD planner, you might picture something like a regular planner, either paper-based or electronic, where for each day you carefully write down all your commitments and all the different things you need to do that day. Perhaps you do it the night before a week or a day starts: you think of everything you need to do, you assign each item to a time slot, and that's your day planned and ready to go, or your week, depending on how far ahead you're trying to plan.

Of course, there's nothing wrong with that approach, and sometimes, by a sheer feat of willpower, you might even stick with the schedule for a day or two or three. But if your experience is anything like mine, you will quickly notice that it starts to feel a little stressful. And if you really try to keep going, using up your willpower, there will come a point where you hit a wall and just don't want to tackle any of the things you've planned.

Additionally, one thing that happened to me every time I tried to use a planner was that, as the week went on (if I had planned a whole week), I gradually got a sense of being more and more behind. Feeling really behind on everything is very common when you've got ADHD.

The short version

Very few people in the productivity industry will tell you this directly, but the only productivity principle you need can be summarised in one sentence: do the right thing, and do the thing right.

What I mean by this is that there's really only one key task or action item you want to focus on on any given day. Figuring out which one it is is a matter of strategy. What helps with the strategy is having a complete list of all the different things you need to do, and a relatively clear mind, so you can go through them with calm and patience and really think about which one will make the most impact if you get just one thing done that day.

Then you put your best effort into doing it, perhaps breaking it into subtasks, because it will often feel too big to fully hold in your mind's eye. Breaking it down and getting it started creates real progress and real traction. Very soon you'll notice that you're not getting everything done, but you are getting the important things done.

Doing the thing right means you don't cut corners. Whatever task you've picked for the day, you do it as well as you possibly can. This ties in with the quality standards we talked about before, when we discussed what "done" means and why we should ideally decide it beforehand. Doing it right, and making sure it is the right thing, is all you really need to think about to feel in control, productive and moving closer to your goals.

This is precisely the design we've built into the Herding Chickens app. You keep your mind calm by capturing everything you need to do. You can look at your list and work out which item on it is the most important one. That becomes your main for the day, and from then on the only thing that matters is to do it right.

So whether you use a paper planner or an electronic one, one that's ADHD-friendly or a generic one, as long as it works for you, keep using it. But keep in mind what the planner may hide from you: there is really only one specific thing you need to accomplish on any given day to make progress on your objectives.

And with that, if you haven't signed up for the app yet, please do. It's now freely available on Telegram, and we're planning a web app very soon, as well as a version that will work on a wider variety of platforms. So stay tuned.

Keep reading

• ADHD one task at a time: why only one main
• ADHD perfectionism: decide what “done” means first
• With ADHD, dropping tasks from a long to-do list is a win
• ADHD task paralysis: break it down instead of “just do it”
• More on Time & Scheduling

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Herding Chickens is a productivity app in development, not medical advice, therapy, or an ADHD diagnosis. If you are struggling, talk to a qualified clinician. In the UK, start with the NHS ADHD in adults page.