Dear fellow ADHDers,

It has been brought to my attention on far too many occasions that there are systems out there that people recommend, and they all seem great.

I love a good system. Put me down for loving their hopeful shine. New systems are glorious in their promises of all the problems they’ll solve. They are so pure and clean - devoid of the stink of our failure. We haven’t fucked them up yet, so all we can see is how good they could work. I love that feeling; potential!

The hilariously depressing and relatable memes tell the tale:

Guy loves a shiny new planner and only writes his name in it “if lost, please contact”….if he even does that much! Am I right or am I right or am I right?

I would like to advocate today for buying that planner. I absolutely loathe the idea of telling someone “you’re probably just going to do that thing you always do.” Because what if you don’t? What if that was the right planner? What if that was the way you needed things presented to you?

The only question(s) I would like to add to the new planner is this:

When will you use it?

When will you reference it during the day?

And how will you remember to look at it?

These are the often overlooked extra steps. Simple questions with some simple answers, would take no more than 5 minutes to answer all three. We do a thing in my Consistency Crew group situation where we take accountability to the next level. We don’t just say what we’d like to do. We don’t just say what we are going to “try and get done”. We create appointments for those things and put them in our calendars.

This is how you make something more likely to happen. It doesn’t guarantee it, but we are after “more likely” in this ADHD shit.

Keep EVERYTHING on the Table

I can hear people saying that “consistency” is a bad word for ADHD. This is a perfect example for this section.

I have ADHD and I personally love the word ‘consistency.’ It’s a motivating word to me. And there are some people out there who can’t stand the word and day streaks make them feel like shit about themselves.

That said, I would like to advocate for one more thing today. Keep everything on the table. One day, I might lose my love of the word consistency, and others may suddenly connect with it.

So many of us struggle to manage our lives. Something will work great one day and then stop working. But it might come back around and start working again! What if, instead of eliminating a tool from your tool box just because it’s not working today, what if instead of saying, “That won’t work for me.” Or “That didn’t work for me”, we add “…today”

My case in point: I am a bullet journaling freak. I had finally found a planning system that worked for me and then about a year ago something happened and I couldn’t do it. It repelled me. I wasn’t looking at it. And so I spent a good many months scrambling for my daily/weekly planning. I cobbled some shit together, but about two months ago I bought a new bullet journal because it was yellow and looked cool. And guess who is bullet journaling again? The shine came back.

In Summary

My scientific evidence is me. I am fortunate to have experience in the ADHD coaching space, so I can see certain trends, and I run a community of adults with ADHD who are all about looking for and sharing ways to “do the work”. I believe it’s more effective, and fun, to have 20 solutions that might work on any given day than to throw in with “a” way or “a” solution.

What do you think?

Have a great week!

Russ