A New Time Management Plan (Start of a Series)

I Know How Long Things Take, Things Just Go Wrong.

I think this is how EVERY ADHDer feels about time management. We're not always great at it. I personally coined the term "I'm always 1 hour early or 2 hours late" in highschool. When I had kids I started having irregular appointment times and it threw a wrench in how I operated. When my phone navigation told me there was a traffic accident and 10 minutes was added to my trip, it made me 15 minutes late because I took a wrong turn or two during the reroute. I couldn't find my keys, or my hairbrush, or my wallet. I spent another 10 minutes looking for them... All these normal things compounded into an avalanche of chaos.

People without ADHD naturally take all of these pieces into account and have a general sense of how long things take. They have the memory to know that these things happen enough that they need to be planned for. I don't naturally remember these things, which is a symptom of ADHD. This means that I have to really work through each piece of the task and preparation, then be able to change them as necessary. I'm not a naturally flexible person, so I must make systems that plan on being flexible.

Planning on Being Flexible?

Yep. You have to find a way to build your plan that involves things going wrong. Promises and plans are made to be broken if we aren't already equipped to handle them. With time management that means having a lot of whitespace in the schedule to make up for small problems or interruptions. It also means a constantly updating system for getting through the day.

Time Management Takes... Well... Time.

When I say updating the schedule constantly, I don't mean making a brand new schedule where everything is entirely thrown out the window every day or every week. We want to have some relative constants in our schedule that we can use for muscle memory, but knowing that things can change or we can discover new things about ourselves that will benefit the schedule. Kids are born, take naps, take fewer naps, go to school, have summer vacation... Those things can make an ADHDer panic and revamp everything about their lives when really, all we need is a small update.

Related Spoiler/ Thing I Just Found Out About/ Skippable Backstory

In my spare time, I've been trying to develop an ADHD friendly planner or Bullet Journal page. [No promises YET] When I was talking to my husband about my plans he let me know that it was a lot like something he does as a high-level computer guy. "That sounds like the Agile (Or Scrum) method", to which I said "Huh?" This led to a bit of research and a total 180 on what I thought I was working on. This is what teams use when making videogames or other products that need to be made quickly, and don't necessarily have to be 100% perfect to start. Think of how your phone is constantly getting updated to make it work better. This is the method that the developers use to make sure that what they are doing is both what the customer wants, and can be fixed quickly if there's a problem. In the world of computers, they do a monthly update but for a mom/computer muggle who just wants to make life easier, I'm sticking to one week and filling all of the team's hats.

How Did Your Tangent Affect Scheduling?

What I learned was to take my schedule into workable chunks that are easy to work through. It's changed my system for managing time when you aren't home or you have actual projects you need to do. So, this is a more in-depth process with very different results and a more flexible approach to time management and making routines. It also gives me cooler words that remind me that changing things or not getting everything right is okay.

Parts of an Evolving Schedule

In the computer world, this is referred to as a "Sprint". I'm just going to lay it out there as a weekly plan. When you put this as a regular "work week" it starts as Sunday and ends on Saturday. My weekends are relatively free, but my goal is to make this as flexible to any schedule as possible.

1. Plan- (Day 1, Part 1)
• This is meant to be a rough sketch of what you want. For me, I'm using this to create and prioritize task blocks and routines without assigning them spaces. I just want to get all the ideas down and understand what those ideas mean.
2. Build- (Day 1, Part 2)
• Putting all the pieces together in a way that makes sense and doesn't conflict with other obligations. This is where we actually play with our time and use our priority list to make things happen.
3. Test- (Days 2-6)
• This is where we actually use our schedule and see where our conflicts are.
4. Review- (Day 7)
• This is where we look at all the things that went right, all the things that went right, and do what we can to fix the problems. Every week is a TEST, not the final product.

I love the way this feels in my brain. I've instantly turned into a time scientist who is watching myself from the outside and not thinking in terms of failure or success. This is an experiment and no one knows what the results are, not even me!