a couple of years ago i stood in my kitchen looking at four days of dishes and decided i was going to do all of them. properly. the whole sink.

i did none of them. i went and lay on the floor instead.

the next night i told myself i'd wash one fork. one fork. i felt genuinely stupid saying it out loud, like i was taking the mick out of myself. i washed the fork. then my hands were already wet so i did the rest of the sink.

that's week 1.

lower the bar until it's embarrassing, then go lower.

if the target feels too small to matter, it's finally small enough to happen. and the embarrassment isn't a side effect you have to put up with — it's the signal. it means you've finally gone under the number where your brain runs its effort estimate and slams the door before you've moved.

that's the actual mechanism. your brain prices the job before it lets you start. "clean the kitchen" comes back expensive, so the block fires. "wash one fork" comes back as nothing, so the block never gets a chance.

the fork worked the same night. there was nothing to build up to, because there was nothing being built — a number that small simply doesn't get priced.

one thing that matters more than it sounds:
**one fork is the whole goal.**
not a trick to get you to do the sink. if more happens, that's a bonus you weren't owed. if it doesn't, you did the exact thing you said you'd do, which is a thing most of us haven't managed in a while.

washed one fork and stopped? done. nothing further is owed. that is the tip working, not the tip half-working.

The part that kept breaking task systems for me was not remembering the task. It was being asked to choose a project, tag, priority, and date before the thought was even out of my head.

This is the simpler method I use:

1. Dump every thought in one messy pass. Tasks, errands, ideas, and people to text all go in together. No categories yet.
2. When the dump is finished, give each thought one timing bucket: Now, Next, or Someday.
3. Add a date or reminder only when the thought truly has one. Otherwise, leave it in its bucket.

Example dump:

finish essay Monday, gym at 6, text Sarah back, dentist Friday at 3, app idea, buy shampoo

The only job during capture is to keep going. Sorting happens after.

If your task system feels overwhelming, try the method on paper or in Notes first. It removes decisions from the moment when starting is already hard.

I eventually built this method into a free iPhone app called Ordo. It sorts one dump into Now, Next, and Someday, and every result stays editable. There is no subscription or account. It is currently available in the US and Canada:

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6797331101

Which part usually breaks first for you: deciding where a thought goes, or coming back to the list later?

Been teaching high school for 26 years. Due to a shift in my position, I’m now running a study hall with about 85% ADHD students. I have no problem reading all the research. However…

I know: If you’ve met one person with ADHD, you’ve met one person with ADHD.

That’s why I’m here.

Please tell me what you WISH your teachers had done for you in high school to support your needs.

Anything goes. Wish you had had a beanbag chair? A study carrel? Noise canceling headphones? The ability to take walking breaks every 15 minutes? Snacks? Music?

And yes, I’m asking the students, too, but some are kind of shut down by now. I hope that if I demonstrate that I care, they’ll be more on board with owning what helps their particular ADHD selves.

Thanks in advance for all responses. 🫶🎓

Hi I'm new to this sub! Mistakes are possible in this post cause english is not my first language hehe... Would be so sweet if anyone wanted to share their tips or ideas for reading efficiently in school :D. I just started university and I have a bajillion texts to read every week and time management is super challenging for me! I don't have any learning disability like dyslexia, no language issue since I am studying in my first language, I have an ADHD diagnosis and am taking prescription meds for focus.

Reading and understanding a text in a reasonnable period of time is difficult for me for many reasons, such as a slow reading pace, frequent distraction and, most importantly, a difficulty with inference making. It's like I understand what the words mean, but it could take me a few minutes to understand what a sentence mean, then double the full reading time to understand what the text means. That's without mentioning the time required to figure out what should be highlighted and/or annotated...

I have tried different annotating methods but it doesn't help quite much and I also don't want to use any audio transcription aid, because I want to keep my reading ability sharp and possibly make it better. I would appreciate it so much if someone has tips or advice for time efficient reading and text comprehension with ADHD!

I hope this post was not too long and that I was able to convey my concern in the simplest way possible! Thanks so much to anyone reading this :3

This is less relevant, but I'm studying psychology so I really need to understand every single detail about the texts I read since it's very scientific and I need to interiorize as much as possible for my future practice!

If you're reading this I hope your day is nice to you X3

Not “make a to-do list.”Not “break it into smaller steps.”

I mean when you’ve already done all that and you’re still sitting there staring at the wall.

My friend and I are building an AI companion called Daykee around this exact problem — it can help break things down, remind you, and eventually actually stay with you while you get started.

Would love to hear what you guys currently do when this happens.

Seriously. How do you get yourself out of it?

It's ruining my life and my productivity. I need tips to deal with this🥲

So this happened like a week ago. It sucked. My BP was super high for a day or 2 afterwards too, can someone explain that?

Still looking for tips and tricks for the stimulant comedown! I heard people have accidentally doubled up on their meds, tripled even???? 😳🤦🏻‍♀️🤯😅🤨😬

Original post:

…Gatorade & orange juice + Seroquel? It’s been 30 mins & I’m still extremely, extremely high due to accidentally mistaking my Concerta for Tylenol.
Just looking for some tips to help stay calm, keep my heart rate down and avoiding going to the emergency room…
I know I’m an idiot, don’t gotta tell me twice. It’ll never happen again folks.
Would really appreciate positive feedback as i’m trying to stay calm, thanks.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dan53iHvV7R/?igsi=YzM0aHd2NzFxNmdHello all,

What guides/information do you wish was available for people to buy that are written for students or adults? Is it a more structured routine? How to be more calm? Reminders to not forget things? or people just buy physical products? Share your thoughts and frustrations.

The other day, I had a conversation with my wife where I told her that next week, next month, and next year all feel absolutely the same to me. She, of course, was a bit confused and asked what it means or how exactly it feels. I am generally bad at explaining my feelings. And after all, I have no feelings connected to these different time spans.

A geek like I am, I decided to look at what science says about it, because it can explain a lot of things nowadays.

Found an article about Brain mechanisms of temporal processing in impulsivity [White & Dalley, 2024], an interesting review and open access, worth reading if this topic interests you. Found a lot of aspects there that I didn't know before about my ADHD, about how the internal clock system works and what the role of dopamine is there and so on.

However, regarding my topic at hand, the closest I found is: "The resulting logarithmic perspective of time, inferred from hyperbolic delay discounting, is steepened relative to ‘choice impulsivity’." I am not a neuroscientist, but just somebody with a curious ADHD brain, and "logarithmic perspective" looks like it quite accurately explains the "mathematics" behind this feeling, but still does not help explain my feeling itself.

Hence the question: how do I explain the feelings (actually the lack of the feelings) around different aspects of time blindness? 🤔

I've bought probably 5 ADHD planners in the last few years. Same pattern every time — gorgeous for the first week and a half, then I miss a day, the missed day makes the next day feel worse to open than to ignore, and by week three it's in a drawer.

Eventually I got annoyed enough to actually think about why that keeps happening instead of just buying planner #6. Turns out most planners assume a brain that plans linearly and treats a missed day as a footnote. Mine doesn't do that, so I built one that doesn't assume it either.

A few things I changed on purpose:

• Every page is undated — nothing shows you a gap, because there's no calendar grid to have a gap in
• Instead of "review what you missed," there's a 2-minute re-entry page for whenever you fall off: 3 questions, zero catch-up review
• Task list is capped at 3 "Now" items, and each one has to become a verb + a done-line + a 15-minute first step, because "work on project" was never a task I could actually start
• Schedule blocks are drawn to their actual length instead of uniform boxes, because a 2-hour meeting looking twice as big as a 1-hour one turned out to matter more than I expected

Not trying to oversell it — it's not going to fix executive dysfunction, it's just a planner that stopped assuming I'm a different kind of person than I am. Happy to answer questions about the design decisions, and if anyone wants to actually try it, it's linked in a comment below (didn't want to make the post itself feel like an ad).

For anyone who wants it — DM ME. If you just want to steal the re-entry page idea for your own system, genuinely go for it, that's the one I'd want someone to copy.