ADHD and the To-Do List for my To-Do List

If you have ADHD, you know the vicious cycle called "The To-Do List For My To-Do List". Keeping track of our thoughts can be chaotic and so overwhelming that we completely shut down and end up doing nothing at all. Each person and their experience is unique, but today I'm sharing two tools I am successfully using to manage my life and thoughts. Read on to learn what works for me, and a bit about what doesn't work.

Why calendar blocking doesn't work

Many people cite calendar blocking as a useful technique to get things done. And I'm happy for them for that. This doesn't work for me for a few reasons:

• My calendar would fill up very quickly and that would stress me out, causing me to shut down, feel behind, feel guilty, and ultimately do nothing productive instead.
• My calendar would literally fill up so quickly that people who might need to actually get an appointment in my calendar for a meeting wouldn't find any openings, then DM me to see if I'm flexible with other appointments, which leads me back to my calendar to find ways to move things around, and then feel stressed out...see point 1.
• Most importantly: I don't know that on Thursday I'm going to be motivated to do whatever I blocked to do on Thursday "write blog about ADHD", leading me to stress out, shut down, feel behind...see point 1 again.

What I do find effective is putting in a block for 2 hours on Monday through Thursday for "Personal Focus Time". During that time, I go to my To-Do list (discussed next) and select an item I feel motivated to work on. Then I feel inspired and get shit done. And it's contained in those 2 hours so if I don't get anything done outside of those 2 hours, that's ok because I checked off a bunch of stuff in those 2 hours. As a result, my view of my calendar is it is only for appointments where I'm held accountable to another human being (work meeting, coffee chat, lunch date, webinar registration, doctor's appointment, etc). If it's not an appointment with another human, then it doesn't belong in my calendar (with the exception of the Focus Time block on Monday to Thursday).

ToDoist + Notion

I split the world into 2 kinds of To-Do Lists: 

• The Today List - I use an app on my iPhone called ToDoist (thanks to the ChooseFI Podcast for turning me onto this)
• Long Term To-Do - I use a website on my laptop and app on my iPhone called Notion

The Today List is small things on a daily basis that I don't want to forget that I need to do, because I have a bad memory. Text someone to remind them to drop by with the shoes, pickup the package at the counter, book the appointment at the doctor, and all of the other random things that pop into my head in daily life. The problem with The Today List, is it's so easy to dump everything into it that comes to mind that when I open the list first thing in the morning, my brain is overwhelmed by 20+ items, shuts down, closes the list, and ends up doing none of them, and then carries a 6+ month old "overdue" red-reminder-of-shame in an endless cycle for a task that probably would take 5 minutes if I had just done it. 

The Long Term To-Do are things I would like to do one day, and I don't want to forget about it, but it doesn't need to be done today or even next week. These might be things I occasionally feel inspired to research or execute on like learn Italian, take horse riding lessons, research getting a will drafted, take the Udemy course on blockchain technology, paint the ceiling on the terrace, etc. Some people will say to me "why do you even need to write those things down? If they really need to get done you will just remember them". Yes this is true, however I may randomly do bits of research here and there and I need a place to store that information so I don't lose it. Like maybe I've already decided my paint colors so where do I write it down? Or I have favorited a few horse riding schools, gotten a few recommendations for a lawyer, and so on. Having a Long Term To-Do list is not just about the task itself but also any interim research, blogs, websites, recommendations, or other information I don't want to lose track of when I finally pick up the task 6+ months from now.

ToDoist guidelines for my ADHD brain

• When I drop a new item into ToDoist I quickly make an assessment "will this take me 10 minutes or less to do?". If yes, I leave the item white. If no, then I give it a blue color using the Priority flags.
• I never use red or green colors, those send specific messages to my brain (sometimes bad ones). Blue is a neutral emotion.
• When I open the app each day I have it set to only display "Today"s tasks. If I see any more than 2 blue tasks, I pick the 2 that definitely need to get done today and then push the remaining ones to another day in the future. I set my limit on 2 blue items because any more than that is a higher liklihood of feeling overwhelmed and shutting down.
• If I see 5, 10, or even 15 white items when I open the app, my brain is unlikely to shut down because it knows white =  tasks that take less than 10 minutes each. Achievable.

I'm learning embracing using color techniques to train my brain into the right frame of mind for productivity.

Notion guidelines for my ADHD brain
There really aren't many guidelines for Notion other than:

• Use lots of pictures and emojis/icons
• Invest 5 hours watching YouTube video tutorials on using it to help overcome the learning curve and use it to its maximum potential
• If you don't have 5 hours today, just start with a simple check list like you see in the screenshot below, and you will slowly layer in more functionality as you try new things bit by bit - don't let the learning curve overwhelm you into shutdown / inaction: make one small change today

It's worth noting here that I have tried Evernote and Trello and did not like either of them. I used Trello for a while but its usefulness is very limited to task progress boards and did not give me the nice tree structure for locating lists/content. I used Evernote for like 1 week and then gave up because it did not give me user friendly, attention grabbing icons/emojis/cover photos and there was no tree structure for locating my content. I'm a very visual person and Notion is the best I've seen for this, as well as giving me options for displaying the same information in 6 different views (gallery, board, database/list, timeline, etc).

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