#adhd planning

This time I’m not adding established routines in my planner. It’ll save on space, and as they’re routines I already have down I know aproximately how long they typically take me (as well as how long they take on days that they take longer than usual).

 I won’t be including things like when I’m supposed to wake up or shower, eat breakfast, make my coffee or do my morning reading

So for now all I’m including are essentials. When I work. When I have appointments. And when I’m going to study Korean.

Nineteen items. That was Monday’s list, written in one go, in a burst of Sunday-night optimism that felt productive at the time. By Friday, four were crossed off. The other fifteen got copied onto next Monday’s list, where the whole thing happened again. Here’s the part that took me embarrassingly long to notice: the fifteen leftovers weren’t harder than the four that got done. Some of them were…

A rest day left blank tends to fill itself in anyway. Not with rest. With scrolling, with a load of laundry you “might as well do since you’re up,” with the low hum of half-worrying about Monday. Nothing on the page doesn’t mean nothing happens. It means something else gets to decide. The first two posts in this series covered the why: rest isn’t earned, and the guilt that turns a rest day into…

Saturday morning, and the plan said rest. By eleven you’ve already run two loads of laundry, answered the four texts you’d been avoiding all week, and reorganized a kitchen drawer nobody was waiting on. The rest day happened. You just weren’t in it. That’s not a discipline problem. It’s ADHD rest guilt doing exactly what it’s designed to do — filling a day that had nothing decided on it with…

Some links in this post are affiliate links. If you buy through them I get a small commission, at no extra cost to you. I only link to tools or books I actually use or have used. The planner is mine — that’s the main thing this site exists for. I wrote a five-book list a few weeks ago about the ADHD books that actually reframed something for me. This is that list again, minus one. The one…

There’s a pattern hidden in most ADHD planning advice: it sounds sensible, feels helpful, and quietly stops working somewhere between the tip and the execution. Someone tells you to make a list. You make a good list. You still don’t start. Someone tells you to plan your morning routine. You design a beautiful one. It works for four days and then Wednesday happens. For many ADHD readers, ADHD…

You open the planner on Sunday. Something drops in your chest. It isn’t dramatic. It’s just a small feeling, quick enough to miss if you aren’t watching for it. A version of “not this again.” A pause before you pick up the pen. Maybe a scroll on your phone before you write anything down. Most people call this procrastination. For many ADHD readers, it isn’t. It’s the planner telling you it’s…