Why Planning Systems Fail
On this week’s show, Pete and Nikki break down how to create and implement planning systems that work with the ADHD brain.
“There is not a perfect calendar, planner or task manager for ADHD,” notes Nikki. “What matters is that you build trust and consistency with your chosen tools.”
They start by addressing common misconceptions about finding the “right” organizational system. As Nikki explains, no one tool determines success - only your willingness to use it consistently builds planning skills. She cautions against getting distracted searching for a flawless system. What matters is finding tools that fit your workflow and building habits around using them daily.
What causes so many to abandon their carefully chosen systems? They share the psychological traps that sabotage trust in planning tools, from perfectionism to learned helplessness. They discuss how forgetting to use the system consistently or failing to personalize it to your needs also hinders success. Tune in to gain insight into why your tools may be failing you.
The key to results is forming a habit of using your system, not the system itself. They offer tips like starting small, scheduling planning time and allowing flexibility as you build consistency. Nikki emphasizes that mistakes are part of the process - you must persist through frustration to cement reliability.
Create order amidst the chaos of ADHD through insights on building planning systems you can trust. Pete and Nikki guide you through myths, pitfalls, and practical strategies for long-term consistency. Discover how small steps create big change.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello, everybody and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. I'm Pete Wright and there is properly planned, Nikki Kinzer.
Nikki Kinzer:
Hello, everyone. Hello, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Oh, hi.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh hi.
Pete Wright:
It's a fine day to see you here to podcast. We are kicking off our series here. We're talking about planning.
Nikki Kinzer:
Something I love.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah. That is a thing that we love and makes the ADHD brain go into fireworks.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
And so we're going to talk about that. Specifically as we talk about today, what we're going to get out of today is we're talking about what are planning systems and planning tools and the things that, what do we think of when we think of planning tools versus what are they really and what happens when they fall apart? And so we're going to talk about that. I actually think this is a great conversation, particularly on the heels of our optimism, joy conversations because it's pretty easy to hyper generalize when things go south with ADHD, but what does that model tell us from our optimism conversation about what is really going on there and how might we reframe what we think of when things go south in planning?
Nikki Kinzer:
I love that. Yeah, that's good.
Pete Wright:
That's great timing.
Nikki Kinzer:
Great connection there, Pete Wright.
Pete Wright:
Before we dig into that, head over to takecontrolADHD.com and get to know us a little bit better. You can listen to the show right there on the website or subscribe to the mailing list and we'll send you an email each time a new episode is released. Don't forget Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest. It's all Take Control ADHD, and we'd love to have you hang out in the Take Control ADHD discord server, takecontrolADHD.com/discord to signup. It'll whiskey over to the general invitation page. And I just have to say, if you were to sign up to Patreon, you get access to all kinds of extra Discord channels and one of those channels includes in the deluxe level or better includes our livestream channel where you can, yes, of course you could watch along and chat along with the show that we are recording right now.
But most especially, we have special events and as we record this, last night, we released part one of our special event for members, which is Take Control ADHD, and D where Nikki, Marion, Brian, and I all formed a party. The Four Eyes, we made a glasses joke. And Melissa Discord mom, now DM guided us through a two and a half hour part, one of a D&D campaign. And it was so much fun. It was so much fun.
Nikki Kinzer:
It was.
Pete Wright:
Most of us are total novices. We had a blast and thank you for everyone who showed up for part one. And you only get that if you are a member. Patreon.com/takecontroladhd. Sign up, you'll get all other stuff in addition to special events like Take Control ADHD. If you're curious, if you've listened to the podcast for a long time and you want to see what Nikki Kinzer, CSI is really like you-
Nikki Kinzer:
And I'm pretty good.
Pete Wright:
You go to yourself to sign up.
Nikki Kinzer:
I'm pretty good at it. Not going to lie.
Pete Wright:
Oh my goodness. She wanted paw prints from this cat. She was trying to do paw prints and impressions and goodness. She goes deep.
Nikki Kinzer:
Every paw is different.
Pete Wright:
It's a little intimidating. Of course. And there were, I don't think I'm exaggerating, a lot of cats.
Nikki Kinzer:
There were a lot of cats to take paw prints of.
Pete Wright:
You heard me say it, Patreon is listener supported podcasting. With a few dollars a month, you help guarantee that we continue to grow this show, add new features, and invest more heavily in our wonderful community. Again, patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. Thank you so much to all of our existing members and to those on the fence, water's warm. Come on in. All right, Nikki, we're talking about planning systems.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. And why they fail.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Why they fail.
Nikki Kinzer:
We're kind of starting in an interesting place because starting of where they fail, but I think it's really important that we do understand why they may not be working so that we can take this information and actually start to build things that do work. We're starting with systems failing because I think it's one of those things that when we build awareness around what's happening, then we can take that information and actually use it to build something that will work. Even though it seems strange that we're starting here, I think it actually really makes sense to figure out what is working and understanding why things aren't working. We might want to start with what a planning system is, don't you think?
Pete Wright:
That's what I'm hoping we'll do is let's back it up even further and talk about what it means to have a planning system and what we are counting on our planning system to do for us. Because I think that's where a lot of confusion comes in when planning systems fail.
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly. And what are you using, what tools for?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
A planning system in the way that we're talking about it is that you have the tools in place to stay organized and track your projects. And with those tools you have a routine that's based on how to keep these tools updated. And then you use these tools to help you conduct long-term, monthly, weekly, and daily plans. And building a planning system takes probably a lot more time than people expect, attention and a lot of intentional thought. And it's not just plans for work or what am I going to do at work today, it also includes your weekend plans. What am I going to do today at home or how do I plan to get my house clean? How do I plan meals during the week? There's so much planning. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
It's anything that assigns an activity to time, anything. I think we lose track of that too because we think, oh, well, I'm going to sit down and play some video games. Well, but that tends to be kind of black hole time if you're not really thinking about it and you're absolutely infringing on other plans of assigning activity to time if you haven't approached leisure time with sort of intention. Anything that associates activity to time, that's a plan.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. Absolutely. And I think to your point, it's not always about being productive. We can plan our downtime, we can plan the time that we want to spend with loved ones. But all of that, if you have a friend and you want to go see them for lunch, some planning has to come from that to make that lunch happen. Yeah, absolutely. It's not uncommon to talk about planning and talk about calendars and task managers and having that feedback from people that say, "I've tried everything. I have everything. Look at all of the journals and planners I have," and literally seeing stacks of them downloading a lot of different task manager systems. From listening to us, I can imagine that probably a big percentage of our audience has tried Todoist things and probably now TickTick because we are using that now so they hear something and then they want to start and review it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, you're saying, but really you're saying you Pete, because remember I am also a task management planner addict. I have a problem. I recognize it. I've used them all for many of the reasons we're talking about today.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. I don't think it's... I think you're kind of an interesting person.
Pete Wright:
Well, that's loaded.
Nikki Kinzer:
For many reasons. But in this situation it's interesting because I think, yeah, your curiosity certainly gets the best of you and you want to check things out, but you're also very loyal. I don't think you move to anything unless you really, really think it's going to be a better move for you. And your systems are really solid and your routine is really solid. And I think where you show a very good example is that the tool is really just the tool. What you bring to the tool is very unique and loyal. You're very loyal to that routine. You have gotten to the point where you understand that I have to rely on these systems to know what I'm doing today.
Pete Wright:
Well, I appreciate that reflection, which I think also may make me patient zero when it comes to when task management systems fail. I feel like I've learned and been burned so many times that I actually, I think I have a bit of resilience when it comes to that, but it comes to understanding what they're really for. That's the thing I think that's important for us to set out first. Now we have this assigning task management or assigning activity to time. Let's talk about what these things are really for.
Nikki Kinzer:
What they are. Yeah. The tools that are required is a calendar. You need to know when you have appointments, what time the appointments are, and so you have to have that kind of visualization. Now, this is where it gets a little tricky because some companies, and I find that this is more true than I thought it was with our membership program, is that some companies only allow you to have Microsoft products. They have to use, I believe that's Outlook
And they don't want to put their personal into their work calendar. There are going to be situations where you might have a work calendar and you have a personal calendar. There might be some people who have two different calendars. There might be some people like you and I who we are not restricted for that, so we have one calendar. We have 24 hours in the day and this is how it's being spent. When we talk about these tools, I understand and I want to make sure that we leave room for that flexibility for people. What we don't want is five different calendars and we don't know what is going on where, and we're not checking those calendars and making sure that we're not overbooking or over committing ourselves. The calendar, what I have found is that most ADHDers are doing really good in the calendar. They really have it. They have it down, they know where they're going to put things, and that's very positive. And if you don't, you can figure it out pretty quickly. I think the calendar's a lot more easy to manage than the tasks.
Pete Wright:
Why are tasks so hard?
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh my gosh. Because there's so many of them. There's many projects. There's so many tasks and so much to do, and how do you keep track of all of that?
Pete Wright:
Part of our methodology is for tasks that are hard to wrap your head around, to break them down into even smaller tasks. Tasks are gremlins that you've fed after midnight, right? They will expand and multiply.
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
And that's hard. Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's very difficult. That's a lot harder to figure out, which it takes some time. It takes some time to figure out what's going to work for you. It also, one of the things I have found in my membership too is that most ADHDers to have a combination of both. They like to have a digital system and they like to have some kind of written system. And something that we have kind of found to be a happy medium is again, being really clear how you're using those two platforms.
But a lot of people will use kind of project management in the digital form because it's easier to take a project into Todoist and then start to section that into different categories and start to assign different tasks. It's easier to see, it's easier to move things around. You're not having to rewrite things because if you try to do that on paper, that paper just gets lost and it's hard. It's hard. But they still like to see that daily list. A lot of times people will have that digital project manager and then they'll look at that on a daily basis and write down on a planner or a to-do list, these are my top three things to do today.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
All right. With these systems, we need to trust them. And this is where I'm going to start with why systems fail is because we don't trust them, we don't use them. And what I'm talking about when I say trust is that you believe that you will find what you need when you need it. When you look at your calendar, you believe it's going to be honest and tell you where you need to be today. When you look at your task manager, you're going to believe that it's updated enough or you to kind of at least get started on what your priorities are going to be for today. We have to build trust and there are many reasons why we don't trust our tools, and that's what we're going to explore today.
Pete Wright:
Finding what you need when you need it, that is a staple we've been talking about for 15 years.
Nikki Kinzer:
Definition of organization.
Pete Wright:
Core principles, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
What is it that causes the fibers of trust to be cut in terms of our behavior?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Well, the first area I want to look at is I think that people often confuse the job of what a task manager does. It's interesting because I definitely have questions that come up about what goes into a calendar, what goes into the task manager. The task manager is doing its job if it's telling you what your next task is, right? Or if it's telling you what's due today. If tasks are not getting done or you're seeing a lot of past due dates and you're going into your task manager and you're just overwhelmed because the list is so big, your task manager is still doing its job. It's doing what it's supposed to do, it doesn't mean that you should now go get a new task manager, because-
Pete Wright:
Right. This is my challenge. You see a bunch of red tasks and it's very easy to assume that the red tasks are the task manager's fault. And you can rationalize that any number of ways.
Nikki Kinzer:
Anyway.
Pete Wright:
Oh, I remember when we were first using OmniFocus, that was a huge complaint that the tasks, that overdue tasks are red. Well, they're red because you see it stands out. But also red has an emotional color when you are feeling stressed and it makes you feel worse, it can make you feel worse if you have assigned that sort of, if you wired your brain as red means bad. And all it's saying, all the task manager is doing is saying red means overdue. It's not a judgment. It just means you asked the task manager to tell you that this thing was due and you didn't do it, and now it's showing as red because it's not done. That's all. There is no judgment. There's no emotion. Your task manager does not feel anything ever.
It does not feel.
Nikki Kinzer:
And because of that, I think that emotion gets in the way and then we immediately think, okay, well this isn't working for me, so I need to find something different. We really do need to just be clear of what is the job of the task manager, and maybe we need to review how you're using the task manager versus just going and getting a new one.
Pete Wright:
And I did want to say, I know... I just want to say as a caveat, because I know people are listening to this and being like, "Well, yes. Pete, so I feel bad. So is that my fault or OmniFocus' fault?" Well, I should just reflect on, I don't use OmniFocus, I use TickTick, and in fact, they're still red. It's just less red. And the whole point is once you find a home, understanding that the task manager was designed in a certain way is the thing that we're trying to free ourselves from judgment from, right? It's not the task manager's fault that you didn't have time to finish all the tasks that you thought you were going to do, but I still understand taste.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Those two things have to be in alignment at some level. And that's kind of not the point. But anyway.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, no. But I hear what you're saying. I mean, you do have to what you're looking at. And I think it's a really good point around the emotional piece of it, and I think that we really have to separate the emotion from the task manager itself as well. Not only is it's doing its job, but like you said, there's no judgment. And so it is just a tool.
And so we need to work through those issues of whatever those emotions that are coming up, whether it is shame, embarrassment, frustration. But one of the things that I try to teach in the membership program is that we don't want to fear changing our dates. We don't want to fear these due dates because a lot of times we put due dates in that aren't really real due dates. We are just putting expectations on ourselves. Part of the program that I do with GPS is not about getting more work done, it's about really being realistic about what you can do and planning accordingly and being okay to move these things around. It is okay to say, "I'm not going to get to this until next Wednesday, so let's move the date to next Wednesday," so that you don't have to keep looking at it and feeling bad about it.
Pete Wright:
Yes. And this is another area where guess what? Your calendar and your task management system are not judging you.
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly.
Pete Wright:
They don't care that you're moving things around. Now, the problem that I carry forward is that when I start moving dates around for the work, I am using this sort of anthropomorphized calendar that I might sometimes think is judging me as a vessel for the judgment that I feel from other people when I'm slipping deadlines, when I'm missing things, when I'm dropping proverbial balls. And I recognize that that is an emotional connection that is effectively nonsense. As long as I'm communicating clearly, it's nonsense.
Nikki Kinzer:
You hit the nail on the head. As long as you're communicating and not hiding from it, you're fine.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
But I also have this, and I know this is one of the points we wanted to talk about, is I also have this sort of image in my head of what perfect looks like and perfect means everything I agree with myself that I'm going to do on a given day, I'm able to do and deliver. And at the end of the day, my task list for the day is clear and I can see clearly what I'm going to do tomorrow. And at four o'clock in the afternoon when my plan for tomorrow task comes up, I'm ready to go. And that doesn't always happen. And getting okay with that has to be part of job number one, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. Yes. And perfectionism gets in the way. That is one of the reasons why our systems fail, not only because of what you just explained, but just in the basic setup of using a new system. If you have bought a new planner or you've decided to do bullet journaling or you've decided to download TickTick, there's this perfectionism that happens where I've had people actually tell me that they can't write in their bullet journal because they just don't want to mess it up. They want it to be perfect.
The first moment they start to outline something.
Pete Wright:
What is the first thing you say to somebody who says that to you?
Nikki Kinzer:
You have to let it go. Because when you're first starting a system out... Perfect doesn't even exist until you work with the system. Until you're actually in it, working in it, you won't know what works or what doesn't. And so we have to get something in there. And for an online digital system especially. Because Pete, how many times have you changed your categories, your projects, your sub tasks, the way that you title things? I do it all the time. I can't tell you how many times I have redone GPS membership on my task list as a category. And then what are the projects under that? What are the areas? I'm always constantly redoing it. Perfection, it doesn't happen. And if you think it's going to happen, it never does. And then guess what happens? You drop the system because you couldn't get it right, you couldn't figure it out, you didn't try. So it's gone.
Pete Wright:
I think that's an amazing observation and I've been trying to wrap my head around it. This is going to sound like a weird journey around the block, but I promise I'll get to a point. There is a wonderful photo in a technology like coffee table book that is dedicated to Apple technology. And in there is a first generation iPhone and it looks like it's been run over by a truck. It is battered and scratched and dented and all this. And it turns out that phone belonged to a lead design engineer on the Apple, on the iPhone platform. That was her personal phone. And you look at it, you think she used the hell out of it, right. Must have led animals to it. It was as lived in as anything, and it looked like Star Wars nerds are going to recognize this. It looked like the Millennium Falcon. It was an object that lived through some stuff.
I can't get there with my technology, but I kind of feel like that's the destination we need to get there for our systems. Our systems should be lived in. They should be torn up. They should be used. That's evidence of progress. And digitally, what does that look like for you? Does it look like lots of brainstorming documents or entire sections in your TickTick that are tasks that maybe you'll do, maybe you won't. You just have to get them out of your head. Are those the effectively the book ended or dogeared pages of your bullet journal? Is your bullet journal scratched up and messy? And that's the piece I think we have to wrap our head around, which is it's okay to live in our stuff. Digital stuff, physical stuff. It's okay to live in our stuff. And I know that's a thing I have to work on too because it is what it is.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's going to get messy.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, we're messy animals and it's okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Well, and with that being said, I think the next piece really connects with what you're saying is you never finished setting up the system in the first place. And perfectionism might be a reason for that, right? Because you never could really get it right. But there's another thing that happens that I don't think people necessarily think about, and I really didn't think about it either until I really did a lot more with planning and really digging into the GPS membership.
Is, what is your workflow? Because when we say that, that can mean a lot of different things, but what I'm looking at is how do you process your work? How do you keep track of it? If you have a project, how do you want to organize it in a way that you can see what's going on? And that's not natural for ADHD. It's not a natural thing to think about. We'll download a program and just start throwing things in there without really thinking about what do I really need? Do I need to have a folder for each of my employees? Do I need to have a folder for marketing? How does that look? And really taking some time to think about if email... And this is not a show about email, but I'm just going to mention it because it's a part of the to-do list. You have an email that has an action that you have to do. Where does that go?
Is it staying in your email or is it going onto a task manager? It's these workflows that we're not paying enough attention, and if we're not clear, then building a system gets very complicated and very confusing very quickly. And I'm going to walk away from it. Because the other thing that happens is ADHDers tend to over complicate and they think too much.
Pete Wright:
I don't know what you're talking about. You shut your mouth. I don't know what you're saying.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know it's a hard reality and I have learned so much with this GPS membership, believe me, because I have to catch people, because I'll work with them individually outside of the membership to help them build their systems. And they get stuck with, "Okay, I have this task and it's in the inbox. I thought about it. I put it in the inbox. Yay." That's huge, right? That's a step that we want you to do. You put it in the inbox, but now I don't know if it goes under marketing or does it go under this or does it go under? Because it could really go under these three different places. We have to be like, "Okay, you know what? Just stick it here, put a date on it because as long as it has a date, it's going to come back in front of you." But we need to not worry so much about all of the categories, subcategories, projects. But oh man, you can get so hung up there that you drop the system. We're talking about what makes systems fail. That is one of them.
Pete Wright:
I think there's an associated relationship to your technology and systems and trust, and that is at what point do you get over filing in the first place?
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly.
Pete Wright:
I think you came to that lesson some years ago where it's just like if it's not involved in a specific project or a trip that's coming up, it just goes into the archive and trust becomes an act of trusting search and being able to find the stuff that you need when you need it means can I trust the search in Gmail to surface the emails as referenced that I need, or can I trust the search in my system to do a tic to actually find the task that I need? What you're talking about with task systems, setting a date to make sure that it comes back in front of you is a number one. If a list isn't just an intentional brainstorming list, if there's an action associated with time, it's got to have a date.
Even if you don't do it on that date, it's got to have a date or you'll never see it.
Nikki Kinzer:
You have to have it come back in front of you.
Pete Wright:
You have to have it come back. But the rest of it is being able to trust the tools that are being designed to help you solve these problems and trusting those features is hard because I guarantee you, I ask anyone in our community, anyone in a happy hour, anyone in a pizza's coffee, and I'm going to say, "When has search failed?" You and everyone will find an example if not multiple, but if you come back and say, "When has search saved you?" They can't really think of it because it happens every day. It's like air.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
It's everywhere. That's trust is being able to get to the point where you reduce the number of times when it fails you and you don't even think about the times it's successful.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and one of the things that I try to be really sensitive to digital and paper, but I will be honest, and I think Pete, you'll probably agree with me, there are just so many positives of having a digital system of some sort, and it doesn't necessarily be the one that is still incorporating paper. But the thing that systems do digitally that paper just can't do is it can't get lost. It's in your computer, it's in the cloud, whatever. And there's a sense of... Oh, what do I want to say? It's streamlining your processes.
If you have a way to make things easier and simpler by adding a template, by adding reoccurring tasks, by saying, every time I add a new client, these are the steps I go through. And that is already in a system that you can just duplicate every single time you have a new client. There's a lot of efficiency that happens there. I know a lot of people get scared of... Not a lot of people. I mean, again, I think there's usually a mixture. But there's a good case of thinking digitally in some of this stuff just because of that.
Pete Wright:
It would terrify me to go back to a paper planner and-
Nikki Kinzer:
And only have that.
Pete Wright:
... used one for decades, but to only have that as the single source of truth. Even right now, paper is not truth. Paper is temporary. Paper is a thing I write down because of context, and as soon as I get to a point where I can put it in a digital system, I do and then throw away the paper, and that's really key. I throw away the paper because if I don't throw away the paper, I don't know I did anything with it. And I'll end up doing the same thing again and again. Cross stuff out if I want to keep using that sheet or throw away the paper. That's huge. That's huge.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and something that we aren't talking about today, but I think is important to think about is these systems do work when you have a routine around them. The very second thing I said when we were explaining systems is that you have a routine based on how to keep these tools updated. And that goes back to the trust that a lot of people might think, well, if it's in the computer system or if it's in the computer, out of sight, out of mind. But that's where your routines come into play. Where it's no longer outside out of mind, because the first thing I do when I get in the morning is I look at my calendar, what do I have on the schedule today? And then I look at my task manager. It becomes a routine. It becomes something that you do open. And so the fear of it being out of sight, out of mind, well, you lose that paper too. You have to kind of balance the pros and the cons.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. For sure.
Nikki Kinzer:
But anyway, we're not talking about routines at this point. The other reason that sometimes these systems fail is we're trying to duplicate a system that someone has shared, but it's not ADHD friendly. When we look at all of the greatest time managers, productivity speakers in the world, they're not writing to ADHD, and they'll have aspects that are really great, but then they have aspects that really suck for ADHD. We have to be really careful that when you find something that resonates with you, that you don't get into that absolute thinking where it has to be exactly the way this person has laid out or it's not good enough. We have to again, watch that perfectionism and not try to do something exactly like someone else. And that includes another ADHDer. If you go onto YouTube and you Google Pete Wright and Tick ick, and Pete happens to have this video of how he uses TickTick, the goal is not to duplicate exactly what Pete Wright does.
Pete Wright:
Please don't. For the love of God, please don't.
Nikki Kinzer:
The goal is to take what resonates and then tweak it for you because you have a unique way of doing it. And that's what I tell people in GPS too, is that everyone is going to have their own GPS system. I have a process that I guide them through during our sessions, but that looks different for everyone. And it's so interesting to me how it just looks different. Again, you might have two calendars you have to look at, or you might have something that is totally random that no one else has, but you have to put that into your system. It's really being able to practice and make the adjustments that make sense to you. Don't try to duplicate and copy exactly.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I would say as a corollary to that, that's why it's really hard. And I think I have moved away from recommending specific apps. I'll tell you what I use, but I'm not going to recommend This is the A number one best thing that you could ever possibly use because I don't think it exists, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Because all of this stuff is so personal. If red tasks and OmniFocus light your fire then OmniFocus for you. But if you have an engineering brain and you want to tweak everything and create all of the kinds of views that you could possibly create, OmniFocus may be perfect for you. The trick is what features are you looking for to make ADHD planning work for you? And a lot of different tools have that, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
You've got to have tags, having lists, having sort of saved views or filters that you can sling tasks around just by associating a hashtag to it and make sure it shows up in the right place. Those are the kinds of features we're talking about. You may want to choose a system that has both start dates and end dates versus just end dates. Todoist is an end date only system, although I think in the beta they do have start dates. They've really working on start dates. But if you need two sets of dates so that something doesn't show up until a certain time, you need to pick one of the tools that actually has start dates and end dates to work with your field. Those are the kinds of things we're thinking about, and I think that's really important to embrace that when you hear someone say, "This is the best thing ever for X," is it the best thing ever for you?
Nikki Kinzer:
Absolutely.
Pete Wright:
And whatever you can configure to make it work better for your brain, that's going to be the best tool.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's so true. And just to add to that, if you were to look at the members of the GPS membership, there is such a wide variety of what people use. It just really justifies what you just said. It's just the tool. It's what you make out of it, how it works for you. I think that's just a great thing to say.
One last thing I want to end on of another reason that systems fail. It's that out of sight, out of mind, again. You simply forget to use the system and there's nothing, this is just what it is. I forgot to open it up. I forgot. I just got so focused on doing the work that I didn't plan. I didn't look. And this is so true and it happens, but I got to tell you, until the systems are trusted and you really do use it on a daily basis and the habits are in place, and even then you'd probably need a reminder on a daily basis to do your daily plan or to look at your calendar or... Because ADHD is ADHD. You're going to get distracted. It's going to be an internal or external distraction. You're going to get an email that pops up and you're going to feel like you have to be a firefighter. These things happen.
We need the scaffolding tools, these reminders to say, "Hey, Pete, don't forget to look at your calendar today," so that you feel more on top of your day.
Pete Wright:
And it feels like you're giving in to actually use the meta nature of planning to actually use a tool to help your brain plan better. That next level. It feels like, oh God, I shouldn't have to do this. But the truth is, why shouldn't you have to do this? Why do you care so much about letting the tool help you remember? I do it every day. I have the tasks that in there that help me to review the next day. If I don't, I literally will not do it. And you would think the end of the day would be a reminder. Literally, the sun going down might be a reminder that I have to plan tomorrow. And it's not.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's not. And it won't be. And that's the thing is that we have to remember that that's something that is a continuous scaffolding structure that we need to have, is to remember these things. I also want to make a point that when we talk about planning systems and we'll at some point talk about the routines and what it looks like to do a daily plan, we're also not looking at a lot of time. How much time, Pete, do you think you take to open up your computer and look at the day and look at your task managers?
Pete Wright:
10 minutes.
Nikki Kinzer:
How much time?
Pete Wright:
10 minutes.
Nikki Kinzer:
10 minutes?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
I would like probably 10 for me.
Pete Wright:
For my planning at the end of the day and another in the beginning. And then the only time I'm bouncing back to the task manager is to check things off as I do them.
Nikki Kinzer:
Exactly. That's exactly what I'm doing too. I'm looking at the calendar. I want to know what appointments do I have today? How much time do I have in between appointments? And that gives me an idea of what I can work on or not work on.
And then I look at the task manager and I can see, okay, I'll probably be able to get a couple of these things done, but I know I'm not going to have enough time to get all of this. I'm okay with that. Because in TickTick, we have duration dates that I love and it takes less than 10 minutes. It's not time consuming.
Pete Wright:
I think part of the challenge though is figuring out your strategic use of notifications, because one of the things in your outline is bold print. You forgot to use your system. Well, part of the reason that you might be forgetting to use your system is because even if you have a task that says four o'clock, like I do, review tomorrow, if you have surgically removed notifications, all of them, or you have too many notifications that you're blind to all of them, then that's a problem.
And so part of trusting the system is enabling the right notifications to get through when you need them and to know that any notification that hits your phone is one you need to pay attention to. And I find that all the time. People are like, "Well, I don't even see my notifications." Well, again, back to point number one, your tool is doing what you asked it to do. It's doing what it was designed to do. It's reminding you to do this thing at that time. If your notifications are a constant river of notifications from all the different social media networks, et cetera, you're not going to see it. Or if you have responded to the river of notifications by turning them all off, you're not going to see it. And so I do think that's another piece, making sure you understand how notifications work on your device and shutting off the ones that aren't important to you being productive if productivity is your goal.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right. So, so true. Love it. Yeah. All right. You might resonate with one of these, maybe all of them who knows. But as I said at the beginning of the show, what we do know is that the more aware you are of what's going on and where maybe your gaps are, the closer you are to focusing on those solutions. We hope that this was helpful and insightful and that our listeners can do something with it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, maybe you just pick one thing. Just pick one thing. Give it a try. Give it a try.
Nikki Kinzer:
Give it a try. That's right.
Pete Wright:
This has been great. And you know what? I didn't even talk about learned helplessness or explanatory style theory. I didn't even talk about it. We're going to have to bookmark that for next time. I didn't. Spoiler or go listen to the optimism episode. Talked a lot about it during the optimism episode. That's it. That's all we've got. Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to the show. We appreciate your time and your attention. Don't forget, if there's something you'd like to contribute to the conversation, head over to the show talk channel in the Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the deluxe level or better. Patreon.com/theadhdpodcast. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer and electronic planning systems everywhere, I'm Pete Wright and we'll see you right back here next week on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
