How I got better at adult-ing with ADHD by getting organised
TL/DR;
This is a bit of a story with a lot of details, if you want a really quick “how to start being organised” start here
Being organised has levelled me up
Before I was diagnosed with ADHD I managed to get organised. This took a considerable amount of discipline, practise and self-forgiveness. I got so well-organised that I ended up masking (or hiding) many of my ADHD traits — likely offsetting my time to diagnosis by a few years. Some of the traits or characteristics are:
- Object permanence (I can’t see it, so I forget it’s there)
- Working memory (or lack there of)
- Impulsivity/Distractability (SQUIRREL!)
- Disorganisation and problems prioritising
- Some more things (but not all) from here
I mentioned the process vaguely here a few of years ago — but since writing that post, I’ve described how I got organised to a number of people, mostly people that I mentor at work and other ADHD friends to help them be organised. Many of them have asked me to describe it to others, so I thought, I should probably write this down. (+1 task)
Being organised is about outcomes
In software development / devops / sysops / solutions architecture etc, we use project management strategies for teams of people to get things done in an orderly fashion. We break down high-level concepts into projects, then projects into smaller parts and then smaller parts again, we make a time-and-task based plan and we start at the beginning, working our way through to the end.
My life is a collection of projects
At a previous workplace, my manager introduced me to the idea of project managing my life. They called it “Roles, Goals and Tasks” it was quite clunky at first and I evolved the process over time. It’s more accurately called “Roles, Goals, Projects, Subprojects, and Tasks” because… I’m obsessive, I like a comprehensive taxonomy and I’m also really busy if I put my whole life into a project management plan.
Basically the process is to break your life into roles — examples:
- An effective human
- A good partner
- A good friend
- A good employee
Then in each of the roles you create goals, for example “A good friend”
- A good friend maintains regular contact
- A good friend remembers birthdays
Then for each goal you create a number of tasks, specifically S.M.A.R.T. goals — these goals have to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.
With the example above “A good friend maintains regular contact” — each time it occurs to me that I should maintain contact with someone, I create a recurrent task like this:
This task gives me the right amount of context to start or restart a meaningful conversation with someone that mattered to me in the past. Because it’s a recurrent task; if it pops up and I don’t feel the need to talk to someone, I can mark it as done and move on.
Tools: Todoist
I almost built my own tool to do this but it was really hard to get organised, I needed a tool to plan the project of building a project planning tool. The final nail in the coffin was that I need it to run on all my devices, so it made more sense to buy rather than build.
The tool I use for tasks is called Todoist (#not-sponsored) allowing me to:
- Create a virtually endless taxonomy (like a folder structure) of projects like the #Maintain Contact above
- Tag items with similar contexts (Items with the @ symbol)
- Create highly detailed tasks
- Create recurrent tasks that — once I tick them off — reappear after a specified time
While Todoist has a free tier, it’s been so useful to me that it just makes sense to pay for it.
Tools: Obsidian notes
A comprehensive list of tasks that recur when required is good, but projects and life-plans have a great deal more than just things to tick off. For the extended details I use notes apps.
I have used many different note-taking apps and about 2 years ago, my manager recommended Obsidian (#not-sponsored) because of all the micro-managing you can do with the community plugins. Obsidian is a markdown based notes app, which isn’t for everyone but I like it.
My Obsidian library with several hundred folders, many layers deep containing thousands of documents/drawings/notes and the structure largely mimics my Roles Goals and Tasks above. The information in Obsidian has the narratives of the roles and goals and the tasks are stored in Todoist.
Obsidian is free to use, they offer a monthly subscription that keeps all of your notes in sync on all of your devices, you can use a tool like SyncThing to do this on non-ios devices. I pay for the subscription because it’s simple, secure and it works well.
Tools: The ‘ol Calendar
Lastly, I keep really good calendar hygiene. I have 2 calendars, one for work and one for my personal life. I need them to be separate because I don’t want my personal life in my work calendar (personal privacy) and I don’t want my work life in my personal calendar (work security).
I have 4 goals with my calendars:
- Add items that are upcoming to know what I’m meant to be doing and to get things like alerts
- Add enough prep-time for deeper events
- Remember to have lunch (did I say I have an ADHD brain?)
- Adjust items as I go through the day to know how my day went
In the far-away past, I had a manager who constantly asked what I was doing, what I did yesterday and what I was going to do today (yes, a micromanager) — I started pre-loading my calendar with what I planned and updating my calendar as the day went on to reflect what I actually did.
Having ADHD, my working memory can be a challenge, so I kept up this calendar hygiene long after leaving that job, I kept doing it because quite often I’d like to know what I am doing this week and what I did yesterday!
This is a mock example of a work calendar — this may look like torturous madness to some but a full calendar helps me know just how busy I am and helps me plan when I can get things done.
The crucial thing here is that I know when or if I can do the new thing that squirrelled into my view and limits my propensity to over-commit.
Limit double ups and info “caches”
So I have projects, tasks, calendars and docs and plenty of them. But it’s really important that the right information is in the right place and it’s not duplicated.
I try to avoid unnecessary caches. I used to have a backlog of tasks to create, which had to be typed out and then entered later — when I came back to those cached tasks, I had less context about the tasks and often couldn’t create the task — now I create the tasks while I have the context in mind… Task! :D
In my case, if a task needs supporting documentation, I write the information in Obsidian first and then I create the tasks in Todoist. As part of the task, I include a “note-link” that bounces back to that note.
The little bits
The tasks that fall through
There’s plenty of things that are good to keep track of but don’t fit into my life plan of Roles, Goals and Tasks — for example, keeping track of items that are in the mail, this is really useful if you’ve ever wondered “where is that thing I ordered 6 months ago”.
Or remembering the shopping:
How many tasks is the right amount?
The answer is that it’s self regulating; however big or small you make each of your tasks, if you run out of tasks before you’re done for the day or if you finish the day with 100 left over, you had an incorrect amount of tasks.
If your tasks run out before your day does, you add more tasks to tomorrow. If your day runs out before your tasks do, you take a long hard look at the tasks and accept that you’re not going to get them done and it’s time to start re-prioritising or even deleting them.
Gamification
Aside from the little buzz you get when you tick off a task, in Todoist you can set daily and weekly task targets and it gives you a little pop-up when you meet them, so, you know, more buzz!
Todoist also has a “Karma” system that’s basically a high score. Since switching to Todoist about 7 years ago, I have completed 28449 tasks and reached the highest status in the app of Enlightened.
Meta: this project process is a project
Inside my “Be a good person” Role is a Goal titled “being organised” and in there I have a few short tasks to keep things going. It looks like this:
What goes on the list or in the docs?
Does it matter? Is this important to me? Will this intrinsically get in my way if it’s not on the list? — yes to any of these and it goes on the list and/or in the docs.
What’s not on the list?
Information that’s private, personal, privileged or secure about someone else. I have a few tasks for “Go and get that thing that I am not supposed to talk about for my mate who lost a tooth when he was 6 in a skateboarding incident”.
Prioritisation is still a problem
This process doesn’t change the need to prioritise tasks. Though a decent amount of the prioritisation is handled by due dates and context, like if it’s due today, that is kinda auto-prioritised.
In the end, prioritisation takes discipline and discipline takes practice. After some time, the benefits of being organised has made the motivation to prioritise flow easier.
Notification blindness
In general, the more notifications you have, the less attention you can pay to each of the notifications. For this reason, I have notifications for my calendar but not for most of my tasks in Todoist. If something is due on a date with a time, I will get a pop-up notification, if it’s simply due on a date, it will appear on your today list but it will not give me a pop-up notification.
I only have three out of thousands of tasks that have times on them, because I have found that when I get too many notifications I am less productive.
And what does this look like?
At the start of every day I force myself (kicking and screaming) to prioritise my day in the morning. This means I set each task a priority of red, blue, yellow and normal (Todoist has 4 priority levels) and then I ask myself; am I going to get everything done? and re-schedule as required.
Then I get started on the tasks for the day. At the end of the day, I re-plan what is unfinished and take a mental note of how well I did and gently adjust my cadence accordingly.
For on-the-day incoming requests, if it has to be done now, I add it to today, re-prioritise and I get onto it right now. Tasks that are to be done later, I set a date and get back to what I was doing. If a new item doesn’t need to be done at all, I drop it and move on.
One of the biggest benefits my daily grind through the to-do list is that it shows me precisely how cooked I am and that helps me deal with the most dangerous challenge that I get from ADHD;
The horrible thought that I need to do something but I don’t know what it is, when it’s due and how much trouble I am in right now.
In summary
By becoming more organised I have uncluttered my brain and my day-to-day anxiety is greatly reduced. I don’t have to have fear about how behind I am; I know precisely how behind I am and I have a process that allows me to re-prioritise instead of utterly freaking out about freaking out about what I don’t know.
I’ve reduced the impact that ADHD has on my life and in some ways become more effective than my non-neuro-spicy compatriots.
This helped to mask my ADHD
While talking through the testing scenarios with the psychologist, I figured out that almost all of the test scenarios were reduced or solved by being organised — either directly or indirectly by reducing my anxiety.
Being organised improved my friendships
At least once a day, at least one of the people that means something to me, hears from me. This could be about something specific, or it could be just a hi! message.
For example:
Hey, no action required! But I was just reminded that I think you’re great and I wanted you to know that. Have a fantastic day.
This is always well-received, even when they have the #no-hello on their status.
Being organised improved my relationship
My wife knows that I have an ADHD brain and frequently has a giggle at my zooming from subject to subject. She knows that I have a life-strategy that includes improving my role of “being a good partner”.
She knows that I have a reminder to put the rubbish out and many other house management stuff sorted.
She probably knows that I have a task that pops up 3 months early that says think about something for our anniversary #a-good-partner
As the elderly gentleman at the corner store tells me every time I visit:
Happy wife, happy life
Being organised helped my happiness
Being in a near-constant state of panic and anxiety contributes to depression, eats up your happiness and makes you dread tomorrow — being organised reduces that dramatically.
Final word
The apps and strategies above are right for the way that I work, your mileage may vary — if you want to get organised, I hope this serves as ideas more than rules. The one absolute rule I have is to avoid busy-work; each step in the process needs to contribute to improving my life and/or reaching my goals.
