Being equally cursed and blessed with AuDHD, and also a former librarian, I’m aware that I’m probably… less casual than most when it comes to generally writing everything the hell down.
I take it a bit further than just a to-do list though. I have The System™. It involves several whiteboards which have a support module of paper notebooks, two electronic calendars, several typed lists for work, a few spreadsheets and a Google Keep addiction.
Like everyone who works in an office job and/or has an organised partner/family, I get loads of emails/calendar invites for things, which I add to my electronic calendars automatically when someone sends me something. I have running lists and step-by-step process documents for work and my own projects and I have spreadsheets which track long-term plans and stuff, usually all made when I am hyperfocusing on the act of planning itself.
Crucially, the whiteboard step is the key to this whole thing working. My brain runs so fast that, when I have a randomly-occurring thing to remember, by the time I located the correct list, or opened the right app on my phone, I would have already had 574389260y8932 other thoughts and the one I am trying to keep would be lost to the oceans of mental noise.
The System™ works because it allows me to easily write things down at the very nanosecond I have the thought or someone wants to make plans with me. By lunging at the nearest wall-mounted whiteboard and scribbling or sketching with a marker pen, I can facilitate having a clipboard for my brain, in the way you can have things in your computer’s clipboard for copying and pasting.
It works best when I am in the house, but I also carry post-it notes and a pen when I go outside, they are a moveable substitute!
Somehow seeing the things, which I know I won’t remember otherwise, represented in the real-space and not my colander-like brain, is soothing. It takes a lot of the stress away – it’s like thoughts stop being goblins in my head and start behaving nicely!
Another key part is it doesn’t have to be a ‘proper’ reminder with a specific time and place and additional info, or even have real details beyond that it exists at all. I failed at using to-do lists and calendars for decades because I didn’t understand that I simply need a reminder that there IS even a potential thing that was vaguely mentioned at some point in the past.
I’d wait to put something in my planner or on a running list until I had all the information. That. Does. Not. Work. For. Me. The thought maelstrom that passes for my consciousness will erase the notion for which I am awaiting further details or inspiration, and I simply won’t know that I even need them, because why would I chase details for something I don’t know exists?
What I need is to record the essence of the thing and feed it into The System™. Once I know something is a thing, I can usually then figure out details based on the reminder itself. For example, if a pal says in a messenger conversation that they wanna go for a drink maybe Thursday next week, I IMMEDIATELY write it down on a board. If my husband says his family are planning a thing vaguely around the somethingth of July I IMMEDIATELY write it down. If I have a flash of random inspiration about an art project, I IMMEDIATELY draw or scribble a reminder of the gist of it, something I know will trigger the deeper idea.
And I really mean I write down ‘drinks with Matt, Thursday, probably that place we go sometimes, message him on Monday to see’, ‘the somethingth of July, potentially husband family thing’ and ‘use those jewellery eye pin thingies as armaments for the slug sculpture!’. It can take a while to dial in the exact words to write; I also have a system of personal doodles/hieroglyphs I use as shortcuts.
And the System™ works not only because it traps all things within it, but because it acts not only as the net for the things, but the map to where the things are too.
I have a designated weekly map whiteboard, which I ‘set’ every week in a little Sunday ritual that speaks to my soul. I go through all my calendars, emails, other whiteboards and lists and I identify the things I definitely need to remember for the next 7 days. I then put them onto the board and bingo! I understand the shape of my week. I can then set phone alarms, figure out transport plans, seek further details etc because I am no longer flailing to catch up with forgotten plans, I am proactive in my forthcoming week.
Yes, it’s a lot of mental work and effort and yes it’s taken me a long time to get to this point. But I have accepted it as simply something I need to manage. In the way I take inhalers for my asthma, I have The System™ to manage my memory. I now manage so well that I haven’t double-booked myself socially or missed an appointment in months.
THE SYSTEM™ WORKS, BITCHES!
Ahem… *adds ‘keep neurodivergent organisational systems fetish a bit quieter’ to the whiteboard*