There’s a moment that nearly every ADHD or neurodivergent person knows too well: standing in the planner aisle, holding a moleskin or glossy cute little patterned planner that promises to change your life. “This is the one!” you may think, fingers brushing over its perfectly spaced lines and color-coded sections. This time, you’ll stick to it. This time, everything will fall into place.
It never does.
If you’re like me, by the second week, the planner is abandoned, half-filled with jagged to-do lists and doodles. What no one tells you in the stationary aisle is that no planner – no app – no perfect tool – can tame the ADHD brain that has trouble sticking to habits. Not on its own at least.
The Lie of Linear Productivity
The world loves linearity. It wants goals written in neat columns, broken into actionable steps, checked off one by one. It assumes that focus is a straight path, that everyone’s mind works the same way. For those of us whose thoughts move more like pinballs – you know, scattered, frenetic… this framework… feels like a torturous trap.
The myth of the perfect planner isn’t really about the planner. It’s about the pressure to conform, to force neurodivergent brains into neurotypical systems. It’s believing there’s a single “right” way to be productive, and that if you can’t figure it out, you’ve failed.
What Actually Works?
Hard truth: no 5-star review tool will work unless it works for you and your brain. The key isn’t finding the perfect system; it’s creating one that respects how your mind actually works.
- Ditch the guilt! If traditional planners don’t work, they’re not meant for you. That’s okay.
- Think in bursts! Try tools like time-blocking or the Pomodoro Technique to lean into short periods of focus. For my ADHD type (inattentive so my time management is.. not naturally great), these work when I have a lot of tedious tasks that I need to get done within a certain timeframe. I divide the time up, set a timer, and switch to another task when it’s time. I can always go back to the other thing at the end.
- Capture the chaos! Keep a catch-all notebook or notepad (I love a cheap yellow notepad) or digital notes app where you can braindump thoughts without judgment or self-pressure. If it helps, and you want to organize your dumped thoughts, try using an AI tool like ChatGPT to help clean them up.
- Celebrate small wins! Focus less on completing a massive to-do list and more on the tiny victories – email sent, laundry folded, brain intact. My favorite way to cross off tasks is with the Finch self-care app which gamifies things I don’t want to do while I also get to “grow” my little bird, Tamatgotchi-style (except this one doesn’t die if you forget about it for a bit). Plus, it’s free!!
These may take a few trials and errors. Maybe you find out that you need to switch it up every once in a while in order to avoid burnout.
Learning to Work With Your Brain
Somewhere along the way, I stopped trying to fix my brain and started working with it instead. ADHD can be an ugly beast and should not be romanticized or be considered a “quirky” “cute” personality trait.
It is debilitating and quite literally the source of 99% of my problems. However, as bad as it is, the joy of ADHD, the beauty of being neurodivergent, is that the chaos isn’t just noise. It’s where the
creativity lives and stems from.
We have a different way of looking at and approaching the world. Our minds are where ideas that no one else thought of are born.
So, no, I’ll probably never find the perfect planner. I’ll stick to my plain jane yellow notepad full of half-thoughts/notes and scribbles that sometimes make sense to exactly one person: me. And isn’t that the whole point?
Perfection isn’t the goal. The goal is to take care of yourself, keep moving, find joy in the mess, and to create something beautiful out of the tangle.