ADHD and my plan
I've always had ADHD throughout my life and jump from shiny thing to shiny thing. It is great to have massive exposure to a lot of different ideas but not great for really honing on things that work well for me.
I have been meaning to write this post for a while once I got a good working system. A productivity system will never be perfect so I'll go through my setup that works for me. The only priorities I care about is that it is easy to start - and simple enough structure that I can put as little or as much as I like. My system is in Obsidian with a daily template.
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tags:
- journal
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**What's happening? ( it's {{date:dddd}} )**
Make Sure to fill this out! Spend 5 minutes. Tell weird interesting stories. Share hopes and dreams. You'd be glad you did in a few years.
**Today's Goals / Calendar**
**Today I learned ...**
Another system I have been testing is a week plan and reflection. This is a work in progress because it has not been working as well as I'd like - ie I follow it loosely and the reflection is more of a self-therapy session.
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tags:
- weekplan
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**BCC:** _a bunch of relevant stakeholders (I tend to be liberal in this distribution list since folks can easily filter or mute)_
**This Week**
_My big focus for the week is to X. After that, I’m planning on delivering Y. I’m looking into Z, since I’m worried about it for a few different reasons (link to docs)_
- _[ ] a list of the top 3-5 things I’d like to accomplish_
- _[ ] these are generally specific + measurable goals_
- _[ ] I’ll call out any cross-team collaborations here, and usually try and include those folks on my email_
**Last Week**
- _[x] copy of last week’s top 3-5 things_
- _[x] links to any collateral (docs, mockups, reports) to support it_
- _[~] explanations for anything that slipped_
- _sometimes things like outages or urgent requests come up_
**Something I’m learning**
_A quick book summary goes here… more on that below…_
The reflection part is a review on what I did well ( or not! ) and basically me observing ways to do better next week. This can lead to feelings of dejection if it's just self-criticism. Focus on the positives and actionable improvements you can make. This is a brain clearing exercise first and foremost, and the most important part of the plan process. The following excerpt is from Ben Kuhn's excellent process
I’ve had to iterate a lot on the format and timing of the weekly review to get to one where I can consistently maintain the habit and output useful weekly reviews. The format I currently have is:
Review happens first thing every Saturday morning. This time is sacred and (largely) immovable. Morning is really important for having the right energy and mindset; weekend is important so I’m not distracted by work; consistency is important so that I don’t lose the habit.
I start the review by re-reading some parts of my favorite essays of life advice. (Different parts/essays every week. This also sometimes gets me to notice new parts of the essays that resonate or spark interesting thoughts.)
Next, I load the week back into working memory by reviewing what happened during the week.
Based on the above I’ll write down a list of topics to think about, taking written notes on each topic as I think about them.
I also have a set of recurring prompts that I think about every week. I tweak them over time as they get stale, but some examples would be:
Was I consistent at my core habits this week (exercise, morning routine, todo system, etc.)? How can I tweak them to be more consistent or more useful?
What did I do this week that was a mistake and how can I avoid repeating it?
How much of this week did I spend on stuff that was truly my comparative advantage? For everything else, how can I get out of the loop?
One aspect of that as an ADHD person is not Thinking Hard Enough. If OCD is the different side of the same coin phenomenon, then over thinking would be the downfall of that mental habit. How do you force yourself to think hard about something? Constantly question if something makes sense and pull on the threads that do not. This could be time consuming if it's you talking to yourself so I recommend talking through things with an AI to really get the all the floating thoughts into an artifact.