"Have you tried GTD?"

April 21, 2017 1:19 PM

I have ADHD and my task managing is a mess right now. While I don't lack motivation or ability to prioritize, I have a terrible memory and poor sense of time. Help me figure out a process that lets me tackle my to-dos the most efficiently, and helps me remember to do them.

For the love of god, please don't suggest GTD. My personal system already pretty much follows it, and my problems are mostly in doing steps that GTD basically says "just do!" (e.g. "Capture everything!" "Organize by priority!" Thanks, but how do I get my brain to cooperate?) I don't think my problem is the conceptual process, but rather how I follow the process.

I've got three problems: First, I have trouble remembering to write down tasks. Second, I have trouble visualizing when tasks are due in relation to each other, so it makes it difficult for me to decide what to prioritize (if I have three things due on the same day, I can prioritize them no problem; if I have three things due at different times next week, I'm lost). Third, when I plan to do something, I often completely forget that I planned to do it until the end of the day.

I've approached this in three ways: full analog, full digital, and mixed methods. Here's what I've tried, and what didn't work.

Full Analog:

I used to have a small binder with homemade planner pages that contained events for the day, assignments/tasks, and a notes section. When something with a due date came up, I put it on the day it was due. Things without dates went in the notes section, and I rewrote them in the next notes page every day I didn't get them done.

Why it failed:
- I had no way to visualize all my tasks and due dates
- It was awkward and bulky to get out and write in so I wouldn't write things down as I thought of them
- I frequently forgot events and plans for the day even when I looked at my planner multiple times a day
- It was easy to forget at home or lose

Full Digital:

After that I tried using Pocket Informant, which let me organize by due date and gave reminders. Whoo! I put all of my tasks and events there and looked at my agenda for the day and made sure items had reminders. I used tags, contexts, etc. to organize my tasks. I was able to look at tasks by date to see what was due when.

Why it failed:
- Either I wouldn't think it worth the effort to pull out my phone, unlock it, open the app, type it in and add a due date, OR by the time I pulled out my phone and unlocked it and opened up the app I forgot what I was doing
- My sound is almost perpetually off because I'm in college and iOS has no way to set "do not disturb" to more than one specific time; even with vibration and an LED flash I constantly missed notifications. I'm considering switching to Android which might solve this problem, except I tend to leave my sound off because I'm really good at accidentally clicking on things that suddenly play loud blaring sound
- Even when I saw notifications I was often in the middle of something else and therefore immediately forgot about them, because as soon as I opened my phone they went away even if I hadn't completed the task or gone to the event
- It was frustrating trying to do all of my organizing through my phone. I worked much faster on a computer so when I had a lot of tasks to organize it was off-putting

Mixed methods:

This is what I'm currently doing. I have had a small notebook in my pocket that I write down any thoughts or tasks immediately as I think of them. Since it's got a pen clipped to the side it's much quicker than pulling up my phone. At the end of the day I put all of my tasks in Google Keep, with reminders, and any events in Google Calendar. After that, I spend some time blocking out my time for the next day on Google Calendar and making sure any events have reminders. Since both of those are on my phone AND my computer it streamlines the process some.

Why it's failing:
- I lost the notebook yesterday. This may be because the pockets on my new jeans suck (they're diagonal instead of horizontal), but I also suspect I probably just pulled it out to write, put it down and forgot about it, which is likely to keep happening
- I'm still having trouble noticing notifications
- I don't have a great way of visualizing due dates. Google Keep allows me to arrange notes by reminder date, but often I'll put a reminder for myself before the due date, so I'll do it. I still want to be able to see and arrange things by the hard due date

What do you all suggest? For my notification problem, I'm wondering if a smartwatch might be a good idea, but I literally just want to get notifications on it, and everything I've seen is extra fancy and expensive. I also don't know if the same problem would persist, where notifications disappear when you unlock the phone, instead of staying until you dismiss them in some way. For the notebook-losing problem, maybe a cheap source of notebook that comes with a small attached pen so I can just replace them? And for my due date problem I don't know what else to do except possibly move to a different to-do app, but I really want to try and stay in the Google ecosystem because that's where I do everything else.

posted by brook horse to Technology (9 answers total)

I had to stop using GTD after a while because it wasn't really working for me. What helped a little was thinking about it not in terms of "tasks," because I'd always just do the ones I wanted to do and avoid the ones I wanted to avoid, but as blocks of time every day where my job was to be working on Project X.

So every day I would look at what was due in the near-to-medium term and say, OK, from 11-11:30 I'll work on X, and 1-2 is for Y, etc. Frequently I am not actually doing what I scheduled myself to be doing at a particular time, either because it didn't take as much time as I thought or because I still have a bad, extremely avoidant brain. But having times, rather than a list of tasks, turned out to better reflect what was going on in my head.
posted by Polycarp at 1:30 PM on April 21, 2017 [5 favorites]

Best answer: I share your frustration with the methods you have described. Painstakingly typing things with my thumbs is annoying, and having a big notebook that I magically remember to bring everywhere just isn't going to happen, most likely. Ergonomics and portability seem to be directly at odds with each other when it comes to time management techniques.

How about starting each day at home by transcribing a day's events and tasks from an unwieldy notebook/calendar onto one or two index cards that you fold up and put in your pocket with a small pen or golf pencil. As different ideas/notes/miscellaneous to-dos come up during the day, record them and then organize them in the unwieldy notebooks and calendars at home the end of the day.

That doesn't address the notifications and reminders, but I know I would be more likely to check a little piece of paper in my pocket rather than locating my purse, digging around for my notebook, and then flipping to the relevant page to find what I'm looking for.
posted by delight at 1:45 PM on April 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

For quick capture of ideas, you might like using Siri to add an item to your list. You can create a list called "To Do" and then just say "Add (whatever) to To Do list." Here are instructions. Then, just use the To Do list on the phone the same way as you did your notebook.

I went to school while working full time recently. For me, the key for staying on top of the school deadlines was not the tool I used, but two parts of my process:
- At the beginning of the semester, I would put all the deadlines from the syllabus on my calendar (and move during the semester if needed). I'd format them all the same - like "ENG 101 Paper 1 Due" so it was easy to see at a glance. I would also add my own deadlines to finish parts of that work, like give myself a deadline for a draft the week before a paper was due.
- Every day, I would review the upcoming week on the calendar, make sure I was on target for the deadlines, and prioritize work.

I would also make myself a to-do list, but I think it was the clear calendar of deadlines and the frequent review that helped me most.
posted by beyond_pink at 1:46 PM on April 21, 2017

When I was in college, I would add all due dates to my google calendar at the start of the quarter. I would set the calendar to automatically email me before they were due. This didn't address all due dates, but it did remind me about a lot of them, and it looks like it might be a partial solution for you as well.
posted by aniola at 1:47 PM on April 21, 2017

Response by poster: Thank you for the suggestions so far, but two things I should clarify:

1) I already do timeblocking, and it has helped, especially with large projects. However, I still have trouble with deciding when to do all the smaller tasks that come up throughout the week. For example, I need to get some papers together for a meeting that's happening next week, and I need to analyze the results of a survey for my internship in time to present a document sometime at the end of the semester, and I need to return library books before the 28th, etc... it's difficult for me to prioritize when to work on these things based on their due dates because I don't have a clear way to look at them.

2) I actually have zero problems keeping on top of my school assignments because I do in fact put every deadline into the app iStudiez at the beginning of the semester. That gives me a nice list of what's due next, and I just work one after another. Since I always work ahead I don't usually have to worry about prioritizing one thing over another. My problem is everything else--all the day to day stuff, preparing for graduate school, running school clubs, independent internship work, etc. tends to fall by the wayside because I don't have a clear idea of when all of those things are due, and don't have a clear outline for the whole semester the way I do for my school assignments.
posted by brook horse at 1:56 PM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

Is there a way you can put your day-to-day stuff into iStudiez? I'm not familiar with the app, so I can't say. If not, I'd look at your schoolwork and think about how that works for you, and see if there's a way to make the rest of the stuff fit that form, since that obviously is successful for you. Maybe something like setting aside one time once per week, like you do once per semester with iStudiez, to enter other stuff in might help?

I'm ADHD myself and bullet journaling seems to be working for me at my job, in part because I schedule time every Friday afternoon to set up my to-do list and think about the tasks on it, and time every afternoon to set up tomorrow's tasks. I am slowly learning that I should only list 3 or 4 things because if I list more I'll not do at least half of them because the list is overwhelming, but if I list fewer, I actually do more because I have time to add things one at a time and do them!
posted by telophase at 2:32 PM on April 21, 2017 [1 favorite]

As far as smartwatches go, if all you want is notifications on your wrist, grabbing a Pebble smartwatch isn't a bad way to go. Since Pebble discontinued it after the merger with Fitbit, you can find them for pretty cheap as retailers are trying to get rid of now obsolete and unsupported stock, like this Pebble Time (which is what I use) for $56.
posted by Aleyn at 3:08 PM on April 21, 2017

My approach for dealing with things that I know I might not be able to deal with when the notification occurs, I always make sure to use a system that allows me to snooze the notification, so I can always act on it immediately, even if the action is to postpone it to a time that's more convenient. The side effect here is that a lot of my more important to-do items appear as events in my calendar rather than items in a dedicated todo or notekeeping app.
posted by Aleyn at 3:12 PM on April 21, 2017

Best answer: Your follow up make it sound like you are a full time college student who is successfully keeping up with all of your assignments. Honestly, that is pretty much a full time job, and a challenging one for someone with ADHD. So I hope you're giving yourself credit for that.

I suspect that part of your challenge may be that you are overloading yourself a little bit. Being on top of school doesn't necessarily mean you can then tackle just as much stuff outside of school. I was in maybe one club in college? Certainly trying to run more than one club is a lot of work. I did have part time jobs but they didn't require any time outside of scheduled work hours.

Maybe a good strategy would be to pick one area you focus on each day. On Monday you handle life admin (bills, doctor appointments, etc) on Tuesdays you work on grad school stuff, on Wednesdays you have your club activity and planning, and so on. This should be arranged according to whatever pieces have their own schedule. Any internship work/homework should be bundled into the same day (or days).

1. Think about whether you are trying to do too much. 2. Decide what things really deserve your time. 3. Give those things big blocks of time. Those blocks of time need to include time for setting priorities and scheduling. 4. Also give yourself a block of time each week for thinking about how you want to spend your time that week. Which big areas are you going to prioritize, and which are you willing to let slide? Which days are favorable for which areas? 5. Only sweat the details on the day you've designated for that thing.
posted by ewok_academy at 3:18 PM on April 21, 2017 [7 favorites]