If you have ADHD, your rebel soul might stay up past midnight because it’s the only time you have peace and quiet. The idea of locking into a structure or planning out your day might feel painful. I bet you have tried to be more “organized” and have failed. Failure never feels good, and for someone with ADHD, it happens, a lot.
What if I told you that planning your day will actually give you more freedom? When you use a planning system to schedule your personal and professional life, you will find yourself with more time to do the things that you want. This approach is helpful for everyone but is essential for the ADHD brain. Let this sink in: planning leaves room for spontaneity.
Does this sound familiar? We refuse to be a slave to our planner, so we don’t plan anything. We do things on a whim or based on urgency. The downside, we feel like we are constantly putting out fires and attacking the alligator closest to the boat. When everything is an emergency, things get lost in the shuffle. There are missed opportunities, tension in relationships, and a lack of options. Interestingly enough, this doesn’t sound like freedom at all.
On the other extreme, every moment is planned. Your life is planned out in one-hour increments. There is no room for spontaneity or buffers for things we didn’t account for. If it isn’t on the calendar then it doesn’t exist. Is there a new restaurant you have been wanting to try and a table just opened up? Nope, sorry. It wasn’t on the calendar. Better luck next time.
For an ADHD brain we can often find ourselves oscillating back and forth. We try the latest and greatest planner or hack. We get out our Big Ass Calendar and plan out the rest of the year.
But then, life happens and you must switch modes to address the tasks that are urgent and important. You put out fires one at a time feeling frantic. This approach works until you are completely burned out and realize that this is no way to live. You find another planning system that is “guaranteed” to work. And back on the pirate ship ride we go, lingering in the air for a few moments before we rush violently to the other end and linger there until we realize that this method is not sustainable either. It’s exhausting, isn’t it?
The Paradox of Planning and Freedom
This conflict between wanting the freedom to do what you want when you want and planning out your time is a common conflict. This is the paradox of freedom and commitment. This paradox is one of many that Brene Brown discusses in her recent book Strong Ground.
The idea of a paradox is that two opposing things are true. As humans we can find this insanely uncomfortable. If there are two conflicting ideas that we are faced with, the discomfort we feel will often lead us to choose one idea, usually the easiest or most familiar idea, and go with it.
What happens if instead of going from one extreme to another, you embrace both ideas? Commitment leads to freedom. What does this even look like?
The ADHD Approach to Planning, Time Management, and Prioritization
A key element to time management and task prioritization is finding a system that works for you. There are four requirements for a planning system:
It’s portable – you can (and do) take it with you wherever you go
It’s not complicated – it’s easy for you to use. This will be different for everyone. Some folks are comfortable with their phone calendar, others will need a paper planner.
Has a space for daily to do lists and long term projects.
Can be updated easily. You can erase, move items around, add pages, remove pages without having to start over again.
Read my previous blog for a deep dive into planning and the CBT for ADHD course that uses this approach,
ADHD Planning Tip #1: Schedule Appointments Before You Need Them
Make your next appointment before you leave your current appointment. I’m talking hairdressers, therapy, acupuncture, or dentist. If you wait to schedule your appointment when you need it, odds are you will have to wait or go at a time that is less than ideal.
Scheduling appointments in advance gives you more choices. Your dental hygienist has way more open time slots 6 months from now than they do 6 days from now. You can choose a day or time that works best for you without being at the mercy of a last-minute opening that has you racing across town on your lunch break.
ADHD Planning Tip #2: Give Yourself a Bedtime and Honor It
If you go to bed on time, you are more likely to wake up on time and less likely to hit the snooze button ten times. When you are well rested you think clearer, mornings are less chaotic and you don’t start your day trying to make up for the 30 minutes you overslept. You can read more about this in my blog. What does a calm morning look like for you? Do you sit and enjoy your cup of coffee? Do you pack a lunch instead of eating junk from the vending machine?
ADHD Planning Tip #3: Prioritize Before You Start Working
When you decide ahead of time what is important, you may be less tempted to divert your attention elsewhere. For an ADHD brain, task prioritization is tricky. There is an executive function that is not fully operational, and everything is categorized into NOW or NOT NOW. I know you are probably thinking “I don’t have time for this” but give it a shot.
Take a moment, write down all the things you want and need to do. Next, look at the items that have due dates or specific time anchored to them. These are the items to prioritize. If everything has a due date of NOW. Go back to your list. What is the most meaningful to you? What will help you feel the most accomplished? A word of caution: Sometimes things FEEL urgent, but they aren’t. Be cutthroat here, if it isn’t important to you or align with your values, it can wait.
Take the time to pick three things to get done today. Spend a few uninterrupted hours addressing those items. Spend other hours doing maintenance things like returning phone calls and cleaning out your inbox. The other stuff is still on your list; it will be right there waiting for you. This blog provides a more in-depth description of task prioritization.
ADHD Planning Tip #4: Consult Your Planner Before Committing
There are lots of reasons that we quickly agree to take on a responsibility or attend an event. We may do it out of guilt, obligation, or impulsivity. Practice putting a pause before the commitment. If you have your planning system set up and it’s with you, look at your calendar and see if you have space and time for a new endeavor. If the answer is yes, add it to the calendar. Pro Tip: be sure to add the corresponding tasks as well. Ex: if you RSVP yes to a birthday party, be sure to add “buy a birthday gift to your calendar”. This way you aren’t giving your dearest friend of 25 years windshield wipers and a crossword puzzle book from the gas station you passed on the way to the party.
Remember, when you say “no” to opportunities that are not a good fit, you are saying yes to more meaningful work. Just because you can do something doesn’t mean that you should do something.
ADHD Planning Tip #5: Reduce Mental Switching
An ADHD brain struggles with mental and physical transitions. The obvious transitions are changes in physical locations and contexts. Like sitting in car before walking in to pick your kid up from daycare or getting overwhelmed and flustered when you walk in the door from work.
The less obvious transitions are the mental ones. Have you ever noticed that irritation when you are interrupted from a challenging task? This could be a phone call when you are concentrating on a work task or an interruption from the backseat when you are trying to merge onto the highway.
There is also the transition between different types of tasks. Every mental shift of responding to an email, then going back to report writing, then updating the spreadsheet in Excel requires energy and a moment for your brain to recalibrate. Often, it is more efficient to stay in one lane at a time, the less mental shifting the better.
If you must do more than one thing at a time, one of the things needs to be mindless. This could look like folding laundry while listening to a webinar. The laundry doesn’t require a lot of mental energy, and you can focus on and absorb the information in the webinar.
ADHD Planning Tip #6: Match Your Work to Your Energy
Different types of tasks requires different types of energy. Doing repetitive tasks like data entry, while soul sucking, doesn’t require a lot of energy. But coming up with a new idea or learning a new skill requires more focus. If you are at your best self in the morning, do the more creative or challenging tasks then. Save the data entry and cleaning out the inbox for when your brain is tired.
We were not designed for mentally strenuous work for 8 hours a day. Chris Bailey talks about the idea of working less to achieve more in this article. Balance your time between hyperfocus and scatter focus instead using willpower to force yourself to complete a task.
ADHD Planning Tip #7: Protect Your Time with Better Boundaries
There are 24 hours in a day, and you get to decide how to use them. Think about all the things that fill your day. There’s sleeping, eating, commuting, working, down time, etc. Take a minute and write down everything you have done so far today or are planning to do. Let’s divide these activities into four categories based on urgency and importance. The Eisenhower Matrix, is a great way to visualize the activities and help you prioritize.
Credit to Dr. Sharon Saline and ADDitude magazine for this visual. Find the full article here.
Use the Eisenhower Matrix to Prioritize ADHD Tasks
The goal isn't to spend all day doing urgent tasks. ADHD brains naturally gravitate toward urgency because urgency creates stimulation. The challenge is learning to recognize that important doesn't always feel urgent—and that's exactly why planning matters.
ADHD isn't a motivation problem—it's an executive functioning disorder. Planning externalizes executive functions like prioritization, working memory, and time awareness. Instead of relying on your brain to remember everything, your planning system becomes an external support for your executive functioning.
There are four types of tasks that you do each day. As you read through the descriptions, think about your list and where each of those items may belong.
Urgent/Important Tasks
These are things that have due dates or hard start and stop times. Intentional planning for these when you can is like an external support system for your executive functions. These include:
Taxes (they are due April 15, every year FYI).
emergencies like vomiting kids or pets.
Appointments
Important/Not Urgent Tasks
These are the things that are important to you but are not immediately urgent. This is the meaningful work. Planning when you will do this meaningful work will help you feel more productive. These include:
Exercise and self-care
Volunteer work
Time with family/friends
Work that energizes you
Urgent/Not Important Tasks
These tasks are the interruptions, the phone calls, other people’s emergencies that have become your problem. It is easy for an ADHD brain to get emotionally dysregulated by other people’s problems. These include:
The science project that is due tomorrow that you are just now learning about
Slack messages demanding a TPS report NOW
Emails
Not Urgent/Not Important Tasks
These are the time wasters and the distractors. They serve no purpose except for an escape from the present. The ADHD time blindness will get us lost in a social media spiral without evening realizing it. There is a time and place for these sorts of tasks. It’s important that we don’t sacrifice meaningful, energizing work with the distractors. These include:
Doom scrolling on your preferred platform. YouTube Shorts, IG, TikTok
Reorganizing your sock drawer or file cabinet.
Checking the Prime Day deals just in case there is something that you NEED.
Setting up a new system in Notion, because this one will actually work
Turn Awareness Into Better Planning
You have your matrix and your tasks separated into each of the four quadrants. Now you can make some adjustments:
Important/Urgent: plan ahead for as many things as you can. Keep as few things as possible in the Urgent/Important quadrant. If everything is an emergency, it feels like we are on the pirate ship ride hanging on for dear life. This space needs to be reserved for the truly unpredictable events and the tasks that have deadlines.
Important/not urgent quadrant: spend most of your time doing the important and not urgent tasks. These tasks are replenishing and give you fuel for the important urgent tasks that will inevitably show up.
These tasks also include taking time to set up a system for your taxes. So, when April comes around there is less frantic searching and your documentation is right where you need it when you need it.
So where does all this time for planning ahead and meaningful work come from? Great question. Address the items that are in the remaining two categories.
Not Important/Urgent: reduce or eliminate the items by outsourcing and creating boundaries. How often are you interrupted for things that are not your responsibility? Are you sucked into conversations that really don’t concern you? I know, it is so tempting to immediately respond to messages, but ask yourself, does it need a response right now? Put your phone on do not disturb, set aside time to respond to emails and messages, close your office door.
Not Important/Not Urgent: You may need to physically block these distractors. Set yourself up to work in a distraction free environment at least when you are trying to do the meaningful work. Only have one window on your computer open. Block the social media apps on your browser or your phone. Set aside time for doom scrolling or organizing your desktop when you need a quick break from a difficult task. Use these distractors with intention.
The Goal Isn't More Structure—It's More Freedom
Take a moment to check in with your rebel soul. There is this pull to resist planning, because you want time to just relax. Your TBR list is growing by the day and you can’t seem to find the time. You feel burned out and exhausted by all the demands on your schedule and self-care is a luxury that you don’t have. Think about the tasks in those not important squares. If you can make some adjustments, will that give you some freedom?
The goal isn't to become someone who color-codes every hour of every day. The goal is to create enough structure that you have room to live your life. Planning isn't about becoming rigid. It's about protecting your time, your energy, your relationships, and the things that matter most. Freedom doesn't come from avoiding commitments. It comes from making intentional ones.
That's the paradox.
All of this seems like a lot to implement. Right about now you are saying “yes, but…” The therapy, no filter approach will give you some clarity and the support you need to re-focus, gain traction, and get shit done. Ready to schedule a consult?
References:
🔖 Strong Ground and the Tenacity of Paradox
🎙️ The Curiosity Shop - Exploring the Paradoxes of Human Nature