planners! part 2

Made with AI. Obviously.

Okay, you’ve got the planner. Now, how do you use it?

(Continued from Part 1…see my previous post on ADHD and planners if you haven’t read it yet, this will make a lot more sense if you do!)

Don’t get too precious

For a while I tried to schedule my whole days, and it never worked. I would go hour-by-hour, filling in the blanks with “time blocks,” very hopefully thinking I would just look at my schedule and follow it and it would be so easy! 

Yeah, no. That never, ever worked for me, and turned out to be just a huge waste of time and also made me feel like crap when I had to face how far off my schedule I veered every single day. 

So I dropped all that. The below process is what I do now, and you know what, it works pretty good. It’s not an art form, it’s not precise, in fact, it’s pretty messy. But I get (more) things done, I feel (more) in control and I’m not overwhelming myself with these long detailed task lists and time blocks that make me feel intimidated before I’ve even started my day.

Check it, a lot 

The most important thing, after choosing a planner and using it, is checking it very, very regularly. Some people say once a day (not enough), some people say twice a day (still not enough). What I have found is that in order for this to work and for me to actually, really do the things that are on the list, I have to check it multiple times a day. 

I know. 

I for sure always check it first thing in the morning and last thing at night, but even then I still miss things so I generally just check it many times throughout the day, especially when I’m about to schedule something new, which is why the planner should be taken everywhere.

If I leave it too long without checking it, I miss stuff. I just do. So for me, the best thing to do is to crack open my planner as part of my morning start-work routine, and keep it open somewhere in sight for the whole rest of the day. I know this sounds nuts, and also I work at a desk so that makes sense. I realize for a lot of you you can’t do that. But the point is keeping it somewhere where you can’t help but be reminded of it. Because personally, even if I have it all filled out with all the things, if it’s not right in front of my face where I can’t miss it, I’ll forget that it exists. 

Whatever version of planner you go with, there are three integral parts that I think are non-negotiable: the big calendar, the days, and the gratitude list. I’ll go into detail about them here, then I’ll explain how they work together. 

The big calendar

Your planner should have a monthly calendar section. This is where you will put all your appointments, deadlines and other important dates, as they come in, and immediately. 

The moment you make an appointment or agree to do something or make some sort of plan with a friend — anything you want to, you know, actually happen — you are immediately going to your planner (this is why you are taking it around with you) and entering it in the calendar section, complete with the time and whatever other detail you can fit in there. After awhile this will also let you know if you’ve already planned something for that day, so you won’t double-book by mistake. Amazing, right? 

I also (when I remember) put bills on here, a revolutionary idea for me: how much I owe to each utility on which dates, so I actually have a chance in hell of paying my bills on time — and yeah, of course I still fail at this sometimes. But not as much.

The days

Ideally, as I said before, you have a full page for each day. This has become such a routine for me that it’s equal to brushing my teeth; I don’t feel right if I don’t do it, which of course doesn’t mean I never miss, but when I do I notice and it bugs me.

Also, I do this part at night, which will make sense in a moment. 

So here’s exactly what I write on the “day” pages, every day, over and over. The top part is the daily “List of things” I want to do or remember. Underneath that is the ‘What I did’ list.

The ‘What I did’ list

First, and this is the most important and most rewarding part, I write down every single thing that I can think of that I accomplished that day. This includes not only appointments I successfully showed up for on time or deadlines I met. I also put down tasks and chores I did (even the ones I started but didn’t finish - it counts!), people I talked to, all the way down to “had a shower” and “cleaned the kitchen,” which are all things that should be celebrated when we have ADHD. Maybe you hung up a couple of shirts before going to bed instead of chucking them on the floor: write it. Or you called back your uncle you’ve been meaning to for ages: write it.

I make sure that next to each one I draw a little box, just so I can check it off with a little tick-mark. That might sound a little silly, but it’s so satisfying—and if it’s something I’m especially proud of, maybe I’ll even draw a little smiley face next to it or a heart or something. This little practice of acknowledging the things I accomplish, no matter how small, just turns the usual focus on failure on its head. It’s so much more helpful than a to-do list that shows me all the things I didn’t do, because everyday (especially for NDs) we do so many things that aren’t on the list but are still really valuable. The ‘what I did’ list puts a highlight on those things and less value on what you missed.

Another bonus benefit is that this turns into a running record of all the stuff you did, which comes in super handy.

List of things

Now, I plan the next day by filling out the main part of tomorrow’s day page. First, I go to the big calendar, to check if there are any important things written there, and if there are, I write them down on tomorrow’s day page. 

Then I go over today’s list, and everything that’s on there that didn’t get done today, I move to tomorrow. And I’ll also flip back a few days just to make sure nothing’s being left behind. 

Then, I wrack my brains for anything else that’s come up that I want to add, and I put that on there, too. Like maybe you remember that you need to make a dentist appointment, or you saw a reminder on your phone that your cousin’s birthday is coming up so you should get something in the mail right away. This stuff all goes down on the “list of things,” to deal with one way or another, instead of letting them float around in the ether. This is the “externalization” that Dr. Barkley talks about; it matters less what order the things are written in, or in what order you do them. What matters is that they’re outside of your head, on paper, where they can’t be forgotten.

Why sorting out your planner system is crucial: executive functioning (EF) and externalization 

The reason I’m harping on and on about planners is because having an external system for organizing that actually works is literally the only way for ADHD adults to be able to plan and achieve long term goals.

This is an example of the externalization practice pushed for by Dr. Barkey, who (again) said ADHD is a disorder of executive functioning, because of what a gigantic role EF plays in our lives. 

In a paper on executive functioning and self-regulation, Dr. Barkley defined EFDD (executive functioning deficit disorder) as “a deficit in internally generated and represented forms of motivation that are needed to drive goal-directed behavior,” and that “those with EF deficits will require the provision of externalized sources of motivation.”

What that means for normal people is that we can’t count on our own brains to motivate us to do what we need to do achieve long-term goals. Our brains are only aware of what’s right in front of us, which is why it’s so hard to do anything that isn’t pleasurable or interesting unless it has immediate positive effects.

Barkley goes on to explain that ADHD is also a disorder of self-regulation, since EF and self-regulation are essentially the same thing. In his paper he gives the example of walking into a coffee shop to order your regular coffee, and being confronted with a display case of delectable baked goods that look delicious but will also put a crimp in your plan to lose a few pounds. Self-regulation is what you do in response to that: walk away so you don’t see them anymore, talk to yourself about the logical reasons why you shouldn’t indulge, etc. — because you have the goal of losing weight in mind, and want to achieve that goal more than you want to eat a pastry.  

With EFDD or a self-regulation deficit, none of that self-regulation happens, and you just eat the pastry because you want it right now, and why not? That’s fine occasionally, of course. But when this happens every time you’re faced with such a choice, it’s a problem. 

Increasing self-awareness

Because of our EF machines that don’t work the way we need them to in the neurotypical world, we just cannot rely on our brains to remember stuff, because our brains only care about what’s happening right now. Maybe tomorrow. That’s not our fault, it’s just the way it is. As ADHD adults with no-one else to do it for us, it’s up to us to just accept that as a fact, stop fighting against it, and start working with it. 

Self-awareness is a crucial aspect of executive functioning that ND adults with EFDD lack: the ability to examine ourselves in an objective way, to better make decisions about what’s best for us now and in the future.

By writing in your planner every day in this detailed, hyper-granular way, essentially what you are doing is externalizing self-awareness.

Hooray!

When you write the list of things over and over, instead of forgetting about stuff you put off, you’re reminded of them every day when you have to transfer them over to the next day. When you’ve rewritten the same task three or four or five times, it begins to get tiresome, and you begin to not want to see that thing anymore. So one of two things happens: you find the time and just do it, finally. Or, you realize it’s just not that important to you so you put it out of its misery and take it off the list. Either way, you get to stop thinking about it. 

 I add all the little ideas and random stuff in my head to the list of things, and eventually they stick, or get absorbed into other tasks, or they disappear. It takes a lot for me to give up and just stop writing down a thing, and generally it means that I really don’t want to do it. But the difference here is that when I something does get knocked off the list, it’s a conscious choice, not a failure.  

Just try it 

With this process that I just outlined, everything more or less gets done, eventually, and I don’t miss important dates or deadlines nearly as much as I used to. It took me over a year of trial and error before I settled on something that made sense and balances routine and flexibility. I tried different methods and repeated what worked. 

You, too, will try different things and stick with what works. I’m not saying that my process is going to be your process. But I believe that it’s a good starting point. 

For me, my planner was the most important aspect of getting organized. I was the most chaotic, all-over-the-place person in the world (besides you) and yet I’ve stuck with this routine for a few years now, and trying to navigate my life without my planner now is unthinkable; I never want to go back to how my life was before. I actually can’t believe I operated like that, and that so many undiagnosed NDs are operating like that—going from day-to-day, desperately trying to keep up and keep everything organized in their heads. 

Now, I prioritize things that are the most important, and allow myself the space to let the rest slide—because I know it will still be there waiting for me tomorrow.

And, there’s one last perk to doing all this: I now have a detailed, easy-to-reference record of the last few years of my life. That’s pretty cool, right?