Looking for some ADHD time management tips that really work?
If you have an ADHD brain like mine, you probably struggle with time blindness.
Perhaps it’s challenging to recognize how much time has passed or estimate the time you need to complete that big work project.
Maybe you’re often running late or telling your family, “Just 5 more minutes…” before another 45 slip by.
If these situations sound familiar, my guess is you’re also on the lookout for ADHD-friendly time management strategies that actually work for your brain.
(Yes, please!)
Well, good news; that’s exactly what we’re exploring in episode 205 of the I’m Busy Being Awesome podcast.
Tune in now to learn 5 proven approaches to better time management with ADHD and why these strategies actually work for your brain.
You can listen to the episode above or stream it on your favorite podcasting app here.
Prefer to read? No problem! Keep scrolling for the entire podcast transcript.
In Episode #205, 5 ADHD Time Management Tips, You’ll Discover:
- Five proven ADHD time management tips
- Why these strategies work so well
- How to apply them in your life
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Episode #205: 5 ADHD Time Management Tips and Why They Work (Transcript)
Today we are talking about five powerful time management strategies that are not new.
My guess is that you have heard somebody say each one of these at some point in the past; you may have even heard me talk about them in the past.
So why am I sharing them here today?
Well I am sharing them here in a new way. Today I want to talk about why specifically these five time management strategies actually effective for an ADHD brain.
You see, those of us with ADHD and ADHD tendencies often have an easier time adopting new approaches and strategies when we fully understand the why behind them.
If we are arbitrarily told to do something, especially if we can’t hazard a guess as to why we’re supposed to do it or why it would be effective, it’s easy to ignore it. And we might not even do it intentionally. It just doesn’t stick as well.
Instead, it’s like we hear someone say, “you should use this strategy.” and that’s it. And it goes in one ear and out the other.
When we…
- Understand the compelling evidence behind those reasons and why they are effective, the strategy have a little bit better staying power.
- See why the concept or strategy works, and we understand the underlying purpose or relevance or potential benefits, it can help us increase our motivation and willingness to give it a try.
- Are willing to give it a try, we’re much more likely to see the positive impacts for ourselves, which has the longest staying power.
- Better grasp the underlying logic or the rationale behind the concept, it becomes easier for our brains to connect this new information with prior knowledge or prior experiences, which again creates a more comprehensive mental framework or structure for our brains.
- Have this deeper understanding, it can improve our memory retention, and in turn make it stick when we meet it later.
- Better understand the “why” behind the concept or the strategy, it also empowers us to take ownership of our experience and make more informed decisions.
- Understand the strategy and why it works for ADHD brains generally, it promotes this curiosity and greater self-awareness. And in turn, this helps us better understand ourselves and our brains and make decisions about what is potentially the most supportive given our unique situations.
So it’s for all of these reasons that we are exploring five highly effective time management strategies and why each one specifically is so impactful for an ADHD brain.
You ready? Let’s get started.
5 Time Management Tips For ADHD Adults
1. Use Timers
The first ADHD time management tip we repeatedly hear when it comes to time management and ADHD is to use timers. And this makes sense. Timers are awesome.
We want to use timers to help us allocate specific amounts of time for different tasks and also to remind us to take regular breaks.
Again, we’ve heard this advice to use timers over and over, but why?
Why are timers effective for an ADHD brain?
What makes them powerful?
We’re Time Blind
First of all, most of us are time blind. So many of us ADHD brains have difficulty knowing how long various tasks take to complete, so using timers is helpful on two fronts.
First of all, when we dread doing the task, we can intentionally choose a short container of time to help get our brains on board.
We think to ourselves something like, “I can do this for 10 minutes. Or I’m willing to go do yard work for one hour. However much I get done is enough because that’s what I’m willing to dedicate to it today.”
By using these timers for the tasks we’re not super excited about, we can usually get our brain on board to start with less resistance.
Timers Are Great When Hyperfocusing
On the other side, using a timer is also helpful when we’re in hyperfocus because it can pull us out and help us transition. It alerts us to that passage of time and helps us realize that it’s time to pull back.
Remember we have other things going on in our life, and prepare for what can sometimes be an uncomfortable transition to something different.
You Can See The Passage Of Time
Finally, if you use some kind of visual timer – for example, I have an 8″ time timer, which is a larger-than-usual version, by the way – you can actually see the passage of time happen. It’s really cool.
Unlike traditional timers that use numbers or digits to represent time, a Time Timer uses a visual representation, typically in the form of a colored disk (mine is red) that gradually disappears as time passes.
So you set the time you want to work by turning the dial on the timer. Think of it like a pie.
- If you have a full hour, it’s a full red disk – a whole pie.
- If you want to work for 45 minutes, it’s 3/4 of a pie, etc.
As the timer begins working, the red disk slowly disappears – more of the pie is eaten – which represents how much time has passed. The smaller the pie, the less time you have left.
Feel free to check out The Time Timer here.
This visual cue helps my brain see – at a glance – roughly how much time I have left to work. I love it.
There are lots of different colors and sizes available. There are many brands, too. Though I’ve found Time Timer to be the most reliable. I’ve used other brands that tend to stop working after a while.
So again, the first tip people often give when it comes to time management with ADHD is to use timers. This is for good reason; doing so helps us both recognize the passage of time and work more effectively within it.
2. Practice The Pomodoro Technique
The second time management technique people often talk about for people with ADHD is to practice the Pomodoro technique.
First of all, what is the Pomodoro technique?
If you’re new to the Pomodoro Technique, the original concept is to work in focused 25-minute blocks followed by short 5-minute breaks to help us maintain our focus and productivity.
As a connection to tip one, many people also use a timer for this exercise. They set the timer for 25 minutes to work and 5 minutes to rest.
There are also other iterations of the Pomodoro:
- 15 minutes of focus and a 5-minute break – great if you prefer smaller chunks of time
- 45 minutes of work and 15 minutes break – this is my preference, since transitions are harder for me to get into and out of work, I generally like to work for longer stretches of time.
- 90 minutes of work and 30 minutes break – perfect if I’m in a hyperfocused state. This latter option – the 90-30 – is rare for me. I can’t usually focus that long. It’s really only when I’m engulfed in a creative project like my podcast or creating content for something that I really dive in like that.
Otherwise, I love both the 25 minutes of working and a 5-minute break for emails, creating social media content for work, cleaning, etc., or 45 minutes of working and 15-minute break for other projects and tasks in my day-to-day.
As always, if you’re new to the Pomodoro Technique and want to give it a try, this is an opportunity for you to play around and see what time frame feels most supportive for you. It may change based on the work you’re doing, how well you’re sleeping, your season of life, etc.
So be flexible as you try the different time frames.
Why is the Pomodoro Technique so effective for ADHD brains?
Provides Time-Bound Structure
Our ADHD brains often struggle with acknowledging the passing of time and also staying focused for extended periods of time.
The Pomodoro Technique provides a clear structure by breaking work into manageable 25-minute intervals, known as “Pomodoros.”
This time-bound structure helps our brain set small, achievable goals and maintain focus within a defined timeframe.
For example: I’m much less likely to sit down and think, “okay, I’m going to create my podcast in the next 25 minutes.” That’s ridiculous.
Even I know that’s not enough time – despite being super time blind.
Instead, I am forced to break things down into smaller pieces. I might think, “I’ll pick a topic for this week’s episode and do a brain dump of all the different ideas surrounding that topic for 25 minutes.” So it makes choosing your tasks more bitesized and realistic.
Increased Focus
Pomodoros can also help foster increased focus. Again, unless we’re in hyperfocus, it’s challenging for an ADHD brain to sustain our attention for a long period of time.
By using these bursts of focus for 25 minutes, we can often get our brain on board to keep at it for that time.
Rather than thinking, “You have to stay focused all morning.” Instead, it’s “Let’s stay focused for 25 minutes, then we can go flip the laundry in our 5-minute break.”
The time constraint creates a sense of urgency, which can help increase our commitment and concentration during that period of time.
Encourages Us To Build In Breaks
On the flip side of those focused bouts of time, using the Pomodoro Technique also encourages built-in breaks. Having regular breaks is crucial for our ADHD brains, and this is especially true when we’re doing things we’re not super interested in.
By making the task smaller, it helps prevent mental fatigue and restlessness because we’re not requiring ourselves to do the thing for such an extended time.
By having those 5 minutes of breaktime after each 25 minute block or the 15 minute break after each 45 minutes block, it allows our brains to recharge, reset, and check in with what we need to support ourselves for the next working block.
“Pomodoros” Highlight Incremental Progress
Finally, Pomodoros are also supportive for ADHD and time management because it highlights incremental progress.
Using the Pomodoro technique helps us break our work into smaller, more manageable chunks.
This helps our brains experience a sense of accomplishment when we complete each interval.
When we’re aware of each win, it provides this continued boost of motivation to keep at it for the next session.
3. Break Tasks Into Smaller (More Manageable) Parts
This brings us to tip three, which is to break tasks into smaller chunks.
We’ve heard this time and time again, right?
We know it’s helpful to divide larger tasks into smaller, more manageable parts, but why?
Why does this work for us?
Why is it so helpful for an ADHD brain and people with ADHD tendencies?
Helpful To Navigate Potential Overwhelm
For those of you who joined us in Overwhelm to Action a few weeks ago, you know that those of us with ADHD and ADHD tendencies tend to navigate overwhelm a lot because we struggle with our executive functioning more so than a neurotypical brain.
Our executive functions are housed in our prefrontal cortex, and they’re responsible for helping us execute all our adulting tasks, and they play a big role in helping us break down and sequence steps from a bigger project in the right order.
By intentionally breaking down tasks into smaller pieces and putting them in order before we get started, it makes the process of beginning less challenging for the brain.
It makes things more approachable and manageable overall.
For example: It’s much easier for me to put the toys in the family room away on the shelves than it is to clean the whole house, right? Yet we often tell ourselves to just clean the house. And our brain freezes up because we don’t know where to start.
Breaking things up makes that easier.
Similarly, as we talked about in passing with the Pomodoro Technique, breaking up bigger projects into smaller tasks can also help us maintain our focus on one project and sustain our attention for longer periods.
This Blocks Out Other Distractions
By breaking our tasks into smaller parts, it helps our brain essentially put up blinders to other distractions, so we have clarity on what to focus on first.
Helps Us Create Clearer Objectives
Breaking things into smaller tasks also really works for our brains because it not only creates clearer objectives and milestones for us to measure, but it also builds opportunities for celebration and recognizing our accomplishments along the way.
So, if we think about the cleaning house example; when we break the process into smaller steps, we make it easier to both recognize and track our progress.
It’s harder for our black and white thinking to offer, “Ugh, I didn’t get the whole house cleaned this afternoon, I didn’t get anything done today. I never follow my plan.”
No way! Instead, you can think to yourself, “Heck yeah! I got the toys put away, I put all the things that DON’T belong in the family room in a separate box to put away later, AND I vacuumed. I crushed it today!”
And we can celebrate those smaller wins to fuel our motivation for the next cleaning block whenever that comes along.
So again, by breaking tasks into smaller, more manageable parts, we help our brains navigate overwhelm, increase our focus with clear objectives, and create space for celebration and continued motivation as we go along – all of which are key for making the most of our time when working on bigger projects.
4. Establish A Routine
The fourth time management strategy we often hear people talk about is the benefit of establishing routines.
We’re often told that to better manage our time with ADHD brains, it’s helpful to create daily routines – whether morning routines, evening routines, start-up and shutdown routines for work, etc.
This advice is not wrong. I agree with it wholeheartedly. I think that when you’re creating routines with the right level of structure for your brain, and you’re doing it to support goals that you genuinely want to reach, it’s incredibly powerful.
But again, I think it’s even more helpful for us to stick with these routines when we know why they’re effective in the first place.
Why does establishing routines help those of us with ADHD and ADHD tendencies make the most of our time?
Routines Help Us Create Predictability
First of all, it helps us create structure and predictability, which many of us often crave.
Now this doesn’t mean that we don’t also rebel against that very predictability – but this rebellion is usually because we are either creating routines for things we don’t genuinely want to do, or that are too rigid for our preferred level of structure.
Most of our brains are craving at least some level of structure or some kind of regular rhythm in our days and our weeks, which a routine can provide.
By incorporating routines into our days, we’re essentially creating a road map of sorts. We’re helping our brain know what to expect in our day and how to prepare for it.
We Lighten The Cognitive Load On Our Brain & Develop Habits
That brings me to the next reason why routines are so effective for saving time for an ADHD brain.
When we practice our routines enough – when we are willing to stick with it and be perfectly imperfect time and time again without beating ourselves up or throwing in the towel, we start lightening the cognitive load on our brains.
We begin forming habits. When we don’t expect perfection and we instead stay persistent, we start carving those deeper neural pathways so the new behaviors become easier.
With practice, it becomes easier to follow through on these specific habits and rhythms throughout the day because we don’t have to think so hard about what to do when we get into the office for work or before we get ready for bed.
We don’t have to decide what to do in each of these moments of transition because we’ve already decided ahead of time.
We’re not taxing our working memory as much because we don’t have to remember all the individual steps; we’ve either written them down in a workflow so it’s easy to follow, or we’ve created such a well-worn neural pathway that the steps have become almost automatic.
By deciding all the smaller, seemingly inconsequential actions in your day ahead of time, you essentially offload unnecessary planning and organization for your brain.
You’ve made it possible for your brain to follow these predictable patterns that support you in doing what you want to do with less work, which ultimately allows you to focus on the more cognitively demanding tasks with greater clarity.
You can focus on the hard stuff with more gas in the tank.
5. Use Visual Cues To Manage Time
The fifth and final time management strategy that I want to talk about today is one that I think many of unintentionally use, and that there is space to use it with even greater intention should we want to.
In fact, as I was thinking through today’s episode and this point in particular, I thought it would be fun to do a deep dive into this topic in particular in another podcast episode.
For today, however, we’ll do just a quick overview of how using visual cues like:
- Color-coded calendars
- Sticky notes
- Different visual organizers help us better manage our time
Why is this effective?
Why do we often find ourselves gravitating to sticky notes and reminders with bold colors?
Provides Visual Stimulation To Increase Engagement
First of all, they provide that visual stimulation and engagement.
When we have bright reminders and bold colors and visual cues, it provides that higher level of sensory stimulation, which helps capture and hold our attention more effectively when we have an ADHD brain.
When you add in colors, shapes, and different visual elements, it makes the information we’re learning – or trying to remember – a little bit more engaging.
It captures our attention a bit better. And ultimately, it helps increase the likelihood that we notice and recall that important information or those key deadlines more often. Now when it comes to using this strategy of visual reminders, and important thing to remember is to not overdo it.
You may be asking, “But Paula, what does that mean? How will I know if I’m overdoing it?”
I’ll give you an example…
When I was in grad school, I often used a highlighter – or multiple highlighters – when reading articles for class. But because I had a hard time deciphering what was most important – which is a whole other obstacle regarding prioritization – I essentially highlighted everything!
There would be pages where I’d have it 90% highlighted; it was rare when a sentence wasn’t highlighted. And in these situations, nothing actually stood out since everything was either neon green, blue, pink, and yellow.
I realize this sounds extreme, but it’s true.
So we want to make sure we don’t overdo the use of visual cues and reminders because when we do that, everything blends into the background.
It’s almost like we’ve highlighted everything, so nothing’s highlighted.
However, by using visual cues intentionally, that extra boost of visual stimulation can really draw our attention and help us remember things more easily.
I notice myself wanting to put in more and more caveats here, so I think this is a clear sign that we should deep dive into this topic in another episode soon.
Provide Organization & Structure
Another reason why using visual cues and reminders is effective with supporting time management is that they provide us with clearer organization and structure when used in specific situations.
When we use color-coded calendars or sticky notes or folders, we can identify important information more easily according to that color.
For example, in my Google calendar, I have all my:
- 1:1 private client calls in one color
- My group calls for We’re Busy Being Awesome in another color
- Personal appointments in another color, etc
Having these different types of appointments color-coded allows me to quickly see, at a glance, what I have coming up next.
Similarly, I was working with a professor a few weeks ago who had different color-coded folders for different assignments and lessons in her class.
The lectures that aligned with a specific project were were all in a certain color folder. So everything related to her lectures on the history of X and the students research papers on the history of X were all in purple folders.
This color coded organized allowed her to quickly grab the folders she needed for class.
Better Comprehension & Retention
Using colors and other visuals can also help our brains with better comprehension and retention.
Many ADHD brains often struggle with processing and retaining information, so when we’re learning, incorporating visual cues can provide a representation of that information, which helps us process and internalize what we’re learning a bit better.
For example, think about how much easier it is to remember what something looks like when you can see a picture of it rather than reading about it or having someone describe it.
Having that visual cue is super powerful for understanding and comprehension. And it’s also powerful for quick recognition. It could be as simple as putting an emoji at the beginning of some of the computer files you use most often so they quickly stand out from the rest.
When we find ways to use this visual information for us, and we find ways to associate colors or symbols with specific tasks or key concepts, it can ultimately help us recall important details more easily.
There are times when I might be listening to a book when I’m out walking Bruno. And then later on, I might want to pull from a concept to share in the podcast. If I can’t quite remember what the concept was, I’ll often picture the walk in my mind and think about what I was seeing while learning that specific piece of information.
When I can pair where I was in the walk with the content, it can help me recall the more specific details, too.
In fact, I think that’s why, when I’m learning, I often prefer physical paper over reading digital text on my computer.
When I’m reading something on paper, and I circle it, or I underline it, I find it is easier to recall.
- I first think about the actual circle, or the blue underlying, or the arrow and how I drew it and then erased it and then drew it again.
- Then the words or the concepts come into focus after that.
So using visual cues and colors and reminders can help us save time by working with our brain and enhancing our memory retention.
In a less complex way, we do the same when we use a bright pink sticky note on our back door that says don’t forget the vase of flowers for dinner. Because our brain isn’t used to seeing that pink sticky note on the door, the reminder has a better chance of standing out.
It’s going to save you time by reminding you to grab the flowers so that you don’t have to turn around and go home and get them when you remember 3/4 of the way to dinner.
save time With organization and planning
Finally, using visual cues and colors helps us save time by facilitating organization and planning.
Visual timelines can help us organize and plan our day by visually representing the flow of time and the relationship between different tasks. We can see how much time we have between tasks or whether they overlap.
Color-coded calendars allow us to see how much time we are allotting to different types of tasks. For example, how much time am I working vs family events vs personal time?
This allows us to better understand how we are allocating our time and whether that’s in alignment with how we want to spend it.
Using visual cues, our ADHD brains have an easier time with creating organization, improving our task and time management, and reducing the cognitive load generally.
ADHD Time Management Tips: Let’s Recap
All right. So let’s do a quick recap of these top five ADHD time management tips.
We’ve heard about them before, and now we better understand why they’re so effective.
Many of our ADHD brains like to have a better understanding of the “why” behind why we’re doing a task. This is exactly why I’m providing those reasons for these five powerful time management strategies today.
They are effective approaches for our brain, so when we can get our it on board more easily with compelling reasons, that’s a double win.
- Use timers to help us both recognize the passage of time and work intentionally within it.
- Use the Pomodoro technique to get into the work, breakdown the tasks into smaller pieces, track our progress, and incorporate the breaks our brain needs to recharge
- Break tasks down – big projects into smaller pieces so the brain doesn’t feel frozen and overwhelmed. Instead, it can get started with less resistance.
- Establish routines in order to reduce cognitive demand and use your time more efficiently.
- Incorporate visual cues and colors to help yourself remember important information with greater ease.
I would love to hear which strategy you’re going to try this week. Pop on over to Instagram, I’m @imbusybeingawesome, and let me know! What’s working for you? If you’re listening within the first few weeks that the episode comes out, you can share it on the post for this episode. If you’re listening quite a while from now – which is super fun to think about – pop it in a DM! I’d love to hear about it.
