How Organising And Planning Can Help In Adult Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder

Gili Malinsky is a journalist and would get fired from her job frequently. She would get overwhelmed by simple tasks like creating daily slideshows, researching content for social media work, make basic preparation for the same. But remembering it and organising it in her brain was very difficult for Gili. Although the information was not too complex she would find it difficult to process it. Due to these problems, she would get demotivated after 4-5 months with her roles. She had to go through a lot of struggle to write an article.

Malinsky would be distracted by her daydreaming often. After this struggle, she would become angrier and would give up. At the age of 33, she came to know that this constant struggle in organising her life was because of Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and since then she has not lost her job.

Organising and planning is often a major problem in adult ADHD. We will discuss a few techniques that help in better organising and planning the day, important events and work.

Organising and planning and adult ADHD

Use a Calendar system

Start using a physical or digital calendar for keeping all appointments. Make sure that you use a single calendar for all appointments. So all the work you want to do, and all the future meetings should be put on the same calendar. A digital calendar is sometimes better because it also has the feature of setting reminders. The appointment should be entered in the calendar at the time it is made and a reminder should be set at the same time. Postponing this can result in forgetting it. So as soon as you decide on a time for a particular task, put it on the calendar. This also saves a lot of time. If a physical calendar is used, it should be carried with you all the time and appointments should not be noted on any other paper.

Use task list

Make a task list to record all the tasks you want to complete. This helps to reduce anxiety about not being sure of what tasks you have to do as you have only made mental notes of them. Keep a master task list. Any task that must be completed must be added to this list. Along with the master task list, also keep a daily task list where you will add the tasks you want to complete on that day. If some tasks are incomplete, they should be moved to the daily task list for the next day. Make sure that you go through the Calendar, master task list and daily task list every day. Spending five minutes on this can provide immense benefits in planning and organisation.

Prioritising

We have a natural tendency to engage in tasks which are pleasurable and easy. But most of the time such tasks are unimportant and often detrimental. So use labels like A, B, C, D or numbers 1,2,3,4 to set the priority of each task. This labelling should also be used to decide which tasks are to be moved from the master task list to the daily task list.

“A” or “1” tasks- Tasks which are important as well as urgent. Tasks which are important and must be completed in the short term. E.g. completing a project which has a deadline of 3 days.

“B” or “2” tasks-Tasks which are important but not urgent. E.g. doing a course which is absolutely necessary for your promotion.

“C” or “3” tasks- These are the tasks which are not important but are urgent. E.g. paying the electricity bill.

“D” or “4” tasks-These are tasks which are not important and not urgent. E.g. watching series on OTT.

Make sure that you should spend most of your time the day doing the first two category tasks. “A” or “1” category tasks of the day should be completed first before “B” or “2” category tasks of that day are started and the same is to be applied for the latter categories.

Chunking

If a particular task is not completed for many days, it is important to understand why that is so. Oftentimes, adults with ADHD need to break a big task into smaller chunks to analyse, deal and complete the task. So if you have written a too-big task in the task list, which can not be completed in a single sitting, then it should be broken into a smaller chunk which is “do-able” in a single sitting. E.g. Organising your sister’s wedding is a big task. So break it into multiple smaller steps e.g. visiting five wedding halls, deciding on the food menu for the wedding day, buying the bride’s clothes, buying clothes for the family, buying gifts etc. Decide whether each of these steps is doable in a day or not. If no, then break that further into smaller chunks. Enter each of these steps in your master task list and daily task lists.

Use OHIO technique to deal with mundane tasks

OHIO means “Only Handle It Once”. When dealing with routine, mundane tasks, make a decision to handle these tasks immediately so that you can get them off the plate and do not have to waste time and energy coming back to them later. E.g. don’t wait for paying the bills on the last day. People with ADHD, often forget and later pay fines or late fees. So as soon as you see the bill, pay it.

The organisation should also happen at your home and workplace. The idiom ‘A place for everything and everything in its place ’ should actually be applied as it immensely helps in not losing things and also reduces anxiety of losing them.  Discarding things which are not needed also helps in decluttering the environment and helps in better organising the home and workplace. Better organising skills can really help an adult with ADHD as its an important aspect of adult life.

Dr Chinmay Kulkarni is a practising psychiatrist in Mumbai. The views expressed are the author's own.