Unapologetically ADHD: The Planning Workflow
Today on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast, hosts Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright delve into the nitty-gritty of building an effective "planning workflow" as they continue the trip through their new book, Unapologetically ADHD. They acknowledge the aversion many with ADHD feel towards rigid routines and advocate for a more flexible, forgiving approach. Instead of aiming for minute-by-minute scheduling, they emphasize the importance of creating a system that adapts to the ever-changing currents of life with ADHD.
Nikki and Pete guide listeners through the key elements of their workflow, starting with diligently capturing new information from various "inboxes" like emails, text messages, and even those stray thoughts jotted down on scraps of paper. They stress the importance of regularly transferring this information into a centralized "workbox," utilizing tools like calendars and task managers to maintain order and prioritize tasks.
The duo emphasizes the need for resilience and flexibility within the workflow, acknowledging that consistency isn't always easy. They recommend scheduling regular "weekly focus" sessions, ideally twice a week, to review, adjust, and plan for the days ahead. Thursday, they suggest, is the sweet spot for this review, offering ample time to adjust for the remaining workday and plan for the weekend.
Finally, Nikki and Pete tackle the often-contentious topic of time blocking. They debunk common myths surrounding this technique, assuring listeners that it doesn't require rigid adherence to unrealistic schedules or perfect time estimations. Instead, they advocate for a more forgiving approach, incorporating buffer time for distractions and transitions while emphasizing the importance of simply dedicating blocks of time to specific tasks.
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast on TruStory FM. You guys, I'm Pete Wright, and that's Nikki Kinzer, and we're co-authors today.
Nikki Kinzer:
We are. It's amazing.
Pete Wright:
It's amazing. I'm dating the show, but as we record this because there's lead time, it is the day that the book comes out. I should not be doing this, it is bad podcasting, but I'm just so excited because by the time the public hears this, two weeks will have passed-
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
... but I don't care. We're just-
Nikki Kinzer:
Uh-uh.
Pete Wright:
... really excited. The book is out. Oh my gosh.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yay. Yes, it's very exciting and surreal, and we're so excited to be sharing it with you-
Pete Wright:
Oh, so excited.
Nikki Kinzer:
... and this is our part four of our-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, part four.
Nikki Kinzer:
... Unapologetically ADHD series.
Pete Wright:
Can I just tell you how weird it is to walk into Powell City of Books on Saturday and see our book on the shelf next to ADHD is Awesome, the Holderness book.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes. That has to be pretty-
Pete Wright:
It was-
Nikki Kinzer:
... surreal.
Pete Wright:
... crazy, crazy surreal to see that. It is so exciting to see the books on bookshelves. I cannot believe it. Thank you to everyone who has checked it out. If you are just hearing this for the first time, mea culpa, you've got some episodes to catch up on. Anyway, today we are talking about the planning workflow and you can find out more about that in the book, Unapologetically ADHD, available anywhere finer books are sold today. All right, Nikki-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
... the planning workflow. Where would you like to begin?
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, let's do just a quick recap from last week where we talked about the Workbox. We talked about the Workbox is where your work lives, and the two main tools that we need here are the calendar and task manager, but we have lots of other supporting tools that we use that we work in. The calendar and the task manager are the ones that help us organize where we need to be and what we need to be doing. The key is that they work together and they're not separate. They're not little separate tools that you just sort of go into whenever you remember. They all have a function. They all have a flow to them to make it a complete Workbox. Now, we are talking about the workflow, which is also known as a routine, and both Pete and I agreed that we don't like the word "routine."
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yuck. It's not a great word. Sometimes it's hard because you have to just say it because it's really the only thing that fits that people are going to relate to, but we really when we were doing our editing piece of the book and talking about it and talking about the definitions and how we wanted to describe things, we really wanted to find a different word, and that's where workflow came in. Just like you can have different routines, you can have different workflows around your tools. Basically what it means is that you have a set of actions that you're doing to update and maintain your Workbox. What we teach in the book, and what I do in my GPS Membership program is we have this weekly focus, and then we have a daily detour. See, we are so ADHD-friendly with our terms because-
Pete Wright:
They just come out of nowhere.
Nikki Kinzer:
... right, I mean, because who wouldn't want to do a weekly focus?
Pete Wright:
Oh yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Doing a weekly review or weekly-
Pete Wright:
Routine.
Nikki Kinzer:
... routine, it just sounds icky. A daily check-in is okay, but daily detour, I like that. It kind of-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I like that, too.
Nikki Kinzer:
... goes with the whole GPS theme of it, too.
Pete Wright:
Well, it implies different. I mean, look at why we hate routine. Routine implies boredom. It implies ugh. It's the same thing again-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
... but a workflow, those are guidelines. They're just, "Here's how I do a thing that implies the thing to be done."
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
It's like jazz. It can change, it can move, and that's what-
Nikki Kinzer:
It doesn't have to-
Pete Wright:
... that's [inaudible 00:04:32] love it.
Nikki Kinzer:
... take a long time.
Pete Wright:
No.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
No, it doesn't have to take a long time, so I really resonate with this.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, so I'm going to go through some of the things that we recommend in doing in these workflows, and we're going to talk about time blocking, which I know Pete Wright has a lot to say about that.
Pete Wright:
Just a few.
Nikki Kinzer:
Just a few things, but going back to reviewing what your inboxes are because the very first thing that we do in GPS and that we recommend in the book is that you want to capture your new information that is coming to you. We talked a lot about this last week with your inboxes. Where are you getting new information? For me personally, I get a lot of information through text messaging, especially around my calendar because that's how my clients communicate with me.
If they need to cancel a session or they need to see if I'm available on a different day, all of that is happening in text message and that's an inbox that I can't ignore. It's something I need to pay attention to every day. Email is an obvious place where we get new information. I'm also notorious for writing. In fact, I did it today when Pete and I were talking before the show. I will have a little piece of paper next to me and I write what I'm thinking, so Melissa, edit everything. Melissa, you're editing everything. Just so you know that.
Pete Wright:
Oh, presented without context [inaudible 00:05:59]-
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
... views.
Nikki Kinzer:
Just edit everything.
Pete Wright:
Over the moon.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah, just so people know, Melissa is a really good editor.
Pete Wright:
Oh God, she is so precise.
Nikki Kinzer:
She's so-
Pete Wright:
It is-
Nikki Kinzer:
... good at it.
Pete Wright:
... insane just how good. Some people have superpowers that go beyond, and Melissa's superpower is proofing-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes, and that's hers.
Pete Wright:
... and she catches-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
... everything.
Nikki Kinzer:
Then, I have this little note here that says, "Ask for reviews at the launch party," but we can also ask our podcast listeners for reviews, too. If you really like our book, please review it because that's going to get more exposure for it. Anyway, there's my pitch for that, but however you basically take in information, new information, those are the things that you want to check. That's where your workflow really begins is collecting this new information from your inboxes and then transferring this new information into your Workbox. You need to set some time aside where, "Okay, I see that So-and-So canceled today. I need to change that on my calendar. When I get done podcasting, I'm going to put these two tasks that I put on this little piece of paper into my task manager."
These things can happen as you're transferring your new information, and it can happen in the weekly focus, and it can also happen in the daily detour, which we'll tell you more about in just a moment. Once this information is in your Workbox, then you can start updating and prioritizing what is most important in your task manager. That's when that work starts to happen. You collect the new information, you enter it into your Workbox, and then you start updating and prioritizing and using all the features that you may want to use. What happens or what needs to happen with this workflow is we need to make them resilient because nothing is perfect. You're not going to be consistent where every day you're... You're not going to write something down on a piece of paper and then five minutes later put it into your task manager. We know that that stuff isn't going to happen.
We want to really go in with a flexible mindset that, "This is something I need to pay attention," but it's also very flexible. If I don't pay attention to it in a couple of days. It doesn't mean it doesn't work. I just need to go back and pay attention to it. There is a little bit of a mindset that has to kind of happen when you are working in this workflow. I want to talk just a little bit about what a weekly focus session is, and basically what this is doing is it's maintaining your tools, it's maintaining the calendar, the task manager, and all of those other tools that you maybe working in.
In our GPS Membership, we actually meet twice a week. We meet on Mondays and we meet on Thursdays, and the reason we do this is because Mondays, we're looking at the next few days, we're looking at the week ahead, but we're not necessarily doing a lot of planning. We're just looking to see what's coming up so that we're aware, but we're really planning the next couple of days, and then on Thursday, we can adjust that schedule as we need to because what you think you're going to do on Monday doesn't necessarily happen on Thursday, so it's building in that flexibility of knowing that you're going to have some time to be able to work in these and update these systems-
Pete Wright:
Well-
Nikki Kinzer:
... so-
Pete Wright:
... and why Thursday? Why not Friday? This is important.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah-
Pete Wright:
I think people-
Nikki Kinzer:
... because it was very-
Pete Wright:
... are going to wonder.
Nikki Kinzer:
... thought out and-
Pete Wright:
Yeah, very thoughtful.
Nikki Kinzer:
... this was not just a random, "Oh, I'm going to pick Monday and Thursday," so I'm glad that you brought it up. Thursday because it gives you enough time to adjust your Thursday and Friday schedule, but it also gives you some time to look at the weekend ahead. It's not just all about work and what you are doing for work, it's also looking at, "What do I do on a personal level that I need to look for in the weekend?" We rarely do that, so it gives you that time to adjust and plan for the last two days, but also gives you that time to look ahead into the weekend.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, very important. I think leaving the planning for Friday invariably gets skipped because it's Friday. Come on-
Nikki Kinzer:
Sure.
Pete Wright:
... it's Friday, you're tired.
Nikki Kinzer:
Oh yeah.
Pete Wright:
Thursday is still sandwiched by workdays for many people still sandwiched by workdays, so there's still some motivation to get those last things done, and you might find some things on that schedule that are actually effectively sort of high-priority tasks that you haven't been able to get to. It may influence how you think about Friday and how you use Friday morning.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's so true, and it's also a day where you realize you start to learn what's realistic and what's not realistic to put on your lists because on Thursday you're thinking, "Okay, I'm not going to get this done this week. I've got these other things that have to get done this week. I'm going to be okay with moving it into review of next week." On Thursday, you'll see yourself doing a lot of pushing dates forward because they're just not the priority and you're not going to have time. You start to learn more about what's realistic and what's not, and you get to learn how to prioritize more efficiently because you are still looking at the... You're still doing this review twice a week rather than just once a week, so you don't have to know everything on Monday.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
You can change, you can adjust, and so there's just a lot of flexibility around that for sure. Okay, so then we're capturing, we're collecting, we're updating. Then, this last piece of the weekly focus is around intentional planning. This is time blocking, and we have a whole chapter on time blocking. This is something that I talk a lot about in different presentations that I've had. I talk a lot about it in our membership. We talk a lot about it on the show. We both have really strong opinions about this, so first of all-
Pete Wright:
I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about.
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, first of all, what I want to talk about is breaking down some of the myths of time blocking. A lot of people will come to me and say, "It doesn't work. It just doesn't work." They'll say it doesn't work because they don't trust that they're going to do what they say they're going to do or they don't do what they say they're going to do, or they didn't give themselves enough time, whatever they were doing before, to get into the time block. Just all these things can kind of happen, and so I want to break a couple of myths. One is that not everything in your task manager need to be time blocked. You can have white space and that can be stressful sometimes for people, and I get that, but it's also good to keep the meaning of when you actually are time blocking something. It means something to you.
If you are trying this method and you keep not following through, it doesn't have any meaning to it anymore. It's just like, "Oh, that's just another thing that I don't do." Then, you'll stop doing it, so intentional planning also does not rely on knowing how long a task will take. This is another thing that people get stumped on is, "I can't estimate time. I have time blindness. I have no idea how long this is going to take, so I don't know how long to save that or how-
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
... to schedule that time block. Intentional planning, again, I want to repeat this, does not rely on knowing how long it's going to take.
Pete Wright:
Right. We don't-
Nikki Kinzer:
It-
Pete Wright:
... care.
Nikki Kinzer:
... it doesn't matter. It's just doing the task. It's just saving time to do the task. If you don't finish it, then you schedule another time block, so that's it. You don't even have to know how long something's going to take. We always want to consider your ADHD. This is something that I'm really proud of Pete and I, and what we do in the book is we are always considering your ADHD. You want to include buffer time for distractions, for transitions, for tasks taking longer than you expect. As soon as you start considering, "Oh, right, I have ADHD, I need a little bit more time to switch from this context to another," your schedule is going to start making more sense.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
Time blocking, you want to talk about why it can be difficult? I know you've got a whole bunch of stuff here that you want to talk about that are coming from some of the essays that you wrote in the book.
Pete Wright:
Well, and I wanted to make sure we covered... I think you've covered a bunch of them, right? The-
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
... what the objections are, but I think there are sort of the big three reasons that time blocking is difficult. Before we even get to the objections, it's one is this identity issue, it's fear of failure, right? Like-
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
... if I tried time blocking before in whatever manner I've tried it and it didn't work, then why would I want to give myself that feeling again of not being able to do something?" Right? We're just suggesting maybe here's a new way.
Calendar anxiety, how fast does the calender get out of date in your life? How attuned are you to the calendar? Let me tell you, it's a muscle and it can be built. It can be built, but it doesn't have to be built the say way everybody is building it, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
It doesn't have to be built that way. You can built it the way it works for you and your brain. The other piece is overpersonalization, and this leads to a bit of a different topic, that time blocking is a tool. It's not a personality test, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
So true.
Pete Wright:
Right. We're not judging you for how you time block, we're just judging that you're trying it because trying it means something. The essay, I'll just tell you that my cheeky title is Real Talk: You're Already Time Blocking, You're Just Doing It Like A Chump. We already block time for things like brushing my teeth, eating meals. I already block time for those kinds of daily buckle shuffle activities, so why not try to block time for a little bit more of a work activity?
This is where I think people's assumptions around time blocking get broken because what they're thinking of is not time blocking. They're thinking of hyper- scheduling. Hyper-scheduling is not time blocking. Hyper-scheduling is scheduling every minute of every day, and you'll see that it's a very common practice in professions that have client billing, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
If you're working in the medical field, then you have to bill against insurance. If you working the legal field, then you're billing against client activities, but it has been adopted by hyper-schedulers for everything, and you can look at certain calendars, people's calendars and see that their time is blocked at a degree of minutiae that makes me dizzy. All time blocking is saying is, "I have time focused on a dedicated task or a dedicated set of tasks to work," and it can be 15 minutes long, it can be three hours long. I probably would suggest you do not do three whole hours straight, and you don't have to work on the same thing.
On your calendar, you don't have to write, "Do task A." You can write, "Work on task A," or, "Visit task A." I think do is a word that carries a lot of judgment around it because it implies you're going to start something and finish it, and I'm encouraging you not to do that, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Don't tell yourself you're going to finish a thing. Be grateful if you do happen to finish a thing and ship it, but if you don't, just know that there should be another time block coming up for you to continue moving that ball down the field. The objections we talked about, sticking to a schedule is hard with ADHD. Right, it does, so what if time blocking wasn't rigid? What if it were able to adapt to your changing needs? We have difficulty estimating time, like you said. Yeah, okay, so what if we didn't aim for perfect estimations anymore? What if we just tracked how long it actually took us to do something and now how long we thought it would take us to do something eventually?
Let's just see. Let's just acknowledge interruptions. Let's acknowledge that sometimes you got to let the dog out. Sometimes the house gets busy and you got to come in the house and do some work. Sometimes people stand at your desk and tap their feet and wait for you to acknowledge them. Sometimes your boss calls you in for a meeting. Sometimes things happen, and we're just acknowledging that your calendar is fluid, it moves, and maybe you have to adjust your blocks of time accordingly. People say it's restrictive and overwhelming. Sure. Okay, I can see that, but what if time blocking was just a scaffold? What if it was just a structure? What if it just-
Nikki Kinzer:
A placeholder.
Pete Wright:
... a placeholder, right. What if it just showed you this space on my calendar is shielded for opportunity, right?
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
It's protected time. That is, I think, the switch that you can flip to say, "Look, this time is valuable. It's valuable for me to move something forward, anything. It could be a knitting project. It could be a painting project. It could be an accounting project. Whatever it is that's important at the time, you've shielded that tine from other activities because you value that as important.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Overly or difficulty switching tasks, we talk a lot about context switching. Time blocking doesn't necessarily mean with sticking to one task per block. Do many tasks. Be improvisational about it. Move from thing to thing depending on what your brain is most attuned to doing. It's okay.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
I think we feel like time blocking is a ball and chain to productivity tools, and it's really not. It's-
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
... really, really not. It is designed to help you protect time for the important tasks coming up next, so-
Nikki Kinzer:
Well, and one of the things that I want to bring up about placeholder, this came from one of our members of GPS. She had mentioned it and I loved it because it really does say it all, that we're putting it here, but it doesn't mean it has to stay there. It can move and it can be changed. Another member from our GPS group mentioned a line from Mean Girls where she said, "So on Wednesdays, if I don't want to wear pink, I really don't have to wear pink." I'm like, "Right, you've got it." Even though it says to wear pink if you change your mind, it's okay, so it's keeping that flexibility mindset in it, for sure.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah. That's great. Pete, thank you.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
The last thing that I want us to talk about is this daily detour, so a daily detour is a check-in, and it's something that you can do five or 10 minutes. One of the things I didn't say about the weekly focus is we really don't want to spend a lot of time on the weekly focus or you're not going to do it. If you're taking two hours to update your schedule and your task manager and all of that, it's too long because you won't be able to maintain that. A weekly focus, we really want to be around 30 to 40 minutes.
Then, the daily detour, we're looking at five to 10 minutes because all you're doing is you're starting your day, you're looking at your calendar so you can see what upcoming appointments you have. Is there anything that I need to prepare for those appointments? I'm looking at my task manager. What is showing up? Whether it's a paper planner or digital, what is showing up that I need to do today? Is it accurate? Do I need to update it or adjust it? Off you go. That's all it is-
Pete Wright:
Mm-hmm.
Nikki Kinzer:
... so we're not doing any major planning. We're just checking and seeing if everything is still on track, and if it's not, we're making those adjustments. What happens when you do this is it makes your weekly focus much, much easier so that you really can get it done in 30 minutes because you're checking in with your self every day. You're updating it. You're checking things off. It's working. It's this flow, it's this workflow that we're talking about.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
If you get behind, though, it's okay because if you're not doing it every day, you've got your scheduled time for the weekly focus to catch up. Maybe it'll take a little bit longer that time, but that's okay. I mean, you can still get back into it because you have a resilient system, and that's the thing that you want to remember is don't blame yourself for having it get behind. Try to avoid that shame spiral. Get in there, do the work, and you're going to find that it's not going to take you as long as you think it's going to-
Pete Wright:
Right.
Nikki Kinzer:
... to update it. That's what I have to say about workflow
Pete Wright:
I would just add that a variation of the beginning of the day daily detour. I tend to do my daily detour check-ins at the end of the day.
Nikki Kinzer:
Mm-hmm.
Pete Wright:
Because just the way my brain works, when I hit the desk first thing in the morning, I want to make sure I'm not surprised.
Nikki Kinzer:
Right.
Pete Wright:
... and it helps me sleep better when I do my check-in at the end of the day. Then, I look at task list the beginning of the day, and I know exactly where I'm going to start. That's a variation, but it's the same principle. It's exactly the same principle is whenever you decide to build this into your system, just set a reminder and do it. Eventually, it will take three minutes, not 15 minutes.
Nikki Kinzer:
No.
Pete Wright:
It's fast. It can-
Nikki Kinzer:
It's really fast.
Pete Wright:
... be really fast.
Nikki Kinzer:
It's just part of your work. It's just part of what you do, and something I do want to talk about briefly before we end is the GPS Membership program, one of the things that does make it different is that we teach you all of the different things that we do in the book and we go into much more detail in the Membership program about different aspects of planning. What it does is it gives you those Mondays and Thursdays to actually do the work. You're doing it with other people-
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Nikki Kinzer:
... that-
Pete Wright:
Huge.
Nikki Kinzer:
.... have ADHD, have the same kind of issues that you had. You;'re learning from myself and from Melissa, but you're also learning from others in the community. That's really what sets it apart from group coaching as you're actually... You get to save that time with other people. If this is something you're struggling with on doing on your own, I definitely recommend you looking at the GPS Membership site.
Pete Wright:
Absolutely, but most of all, takecontroladhd.com/adhdbook.
Nikki Kinzer:
adhdbook because that-
Pete Wright:
Yep, that's-
Nikki Kinzer:
... is your-
Pete Wright:
... that's a big way.
Nikki Kinzer:
... right now, today-
Pete Wright:
...it's here right now in-
Nikki Kinzer:
... in the bookstores.
Pete Wright:
On that page, I put merch. We have book merch.
Nikki Kinzer:
I know.
Pete Wright:
You can get hats, you can get... We have the new I'm Unapologetically ADHD t-shirts and sweatshirts and hats and mugs and everything. They're all there, and they won't be there forever, but for now, it's fun to celebrate. I haven't placed my order, but you could bet I'll be getting an I'm Unapologetically ADHD pillow for my couch.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
That's important, so lots of fun things. Check it out. Thank you everybody for hanging out with us as we continue our journey through Unapologetically ADHD. We've got one more week. One more week next week. What are we talking about next week?
Nikki Kinzer:
We are talking about future planning, and yeah, so a little bit of long-term planning. We don't go far because we're not planning your life out, but we can-
Pete Wright:
No.
Nikki Kinzer:
... plan the next three months.
Pete Wright:
We sure can.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Think like a boss, and that's what we're going to do next week.
Nikki Kinzer:
Yes.
Pete Wright:
Thank you everybody for downloading and listening. We appreciate your time and your attention. If you have something to contribute to the conversation, we're heading over to the show talk channel in our Discord server, and you can join us right there by becoming a supporting member at the Deluxe level. We'd love for you to come over and share your thoughts on pieces of the book that resonate with you. Don't forget, Amazon loves those reviews, and so do we. Five-star reviews even show up on our website now. That's pretty exciting, so thank you for sharing and allowing us to share your thoughts. We appreciate you. On behalf of Nikki Kinzer, I'm Pete Wright. We'll see you next week right here on Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast.
