ADHD Planning & Prioritizing

Boundaries are rules you set to let others know what is okay and what is not okay for you based on your values and priorities. They protect your personal and mental space, including physical, sexual, intellectual or mental, emotional, material or financial, and time boundaries.  For this post, I’ll focus on how to set boundaries around your time. How about you? Do you have a hard time saying no when someone makes a request of you? And then you end up saying yes even when it would have been better to say no. For Adults with ADHD, this is a common challenge and is often one of the barriers to focusing on what is important to you. What if you could say no more often?…

You make lots of decisions every day. But, because you are on autopilot for at least half of each day, you may not even realize you are making decisions. You’re just acting out of habit. Also, one of your ADHD superpowers may be your ability to make decisions in emergencies. So, whether you are on autopilot or in an emergency, it doesn’t feel hard to make the decision. Then there are those times when you feel paralyzed trying to decide, like you’re in quicksand. Sometimes it’s because you’re stuck in analysis paralysis, trying to research and consider all aspects of the decision. But not able to make the decision. Alternatively, you might procrastinate even thinking about the decision even when the lack of a decision keeps you from moving…

 (originally published July 10, 2016, updated April 4, 2022) While it may seem simple and straightforward, I know adopting a practice of weekly review and planning is hard for adults with ADHD. It is also hands down the one strategy many of my clients have said gave them the most benefit in terms of being productive and feeling grounded. Yet, I know you may overlook or even resist doing it because you: Hopefully, after reading this article, you’ll be willing to give it a try, whether you’ve attempted to do it before or not. Because you’ll both buy into that it’s a good use of your time and feel more capable of doing it. Ready to see if this could be true for you, too?…

(originally published Jun 23, 2017, updated December 2, 2020) Once you’ve decided what’s essential to you, and you have a task list that reflects this (per my previous post), it’s time to execute. And to do this you’ll need to use ADHD time management tactics to decide when to work on your various tasks. Because you know just having a list of essential tasks is not a guarantee that you’ll follow through, right? Especially since, as is common for ADHD adults, you may often default to your sense of urgency to decide what to work on at any given moment. If this is the case for you now, even with a well-curated task list, you’ll likely continue to feel stressed and overwhelmed. Unless you break…