Creating Your Perfect Schedule – When You Have ADHD

Are you ready for an unpopular opinion?

There isn’t a universal “best” approach to schedules, routines, habits, or planners. It’s true. There isn’t a universal “right” or “wrong” morning routine, or one scheduling approach for peak productivity. Instead, there’s the “best” approach to create the perfect schedule for you.

It’s all about finding what’s most supportive for your goals, your season of life, and your brain.

In episode 203 of the I’m Busy Being Awesome podcast, we’re talking about a powerful way to discover what what your perfect schedule is and how you can create it.

So grab your earbuds and tune in now!

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 #203, Creating Your Perfect Schedule, You’ll Discover:

• The importance of finding the sweet spot between simplicity and complexity when it comes to schedules, routines, and habits.
• Why it’s essential to tailor the level of support to your needs for optimal functioning with ADHD.
• How to find the right level of support that offloads decision-making and executive functions without overwhelming the brain.

Episode #203: Creating Your Perfect Schedule – When You Have ADHD (Transcript) 

Today we’re talking about a key concept that I return to again and again with my clients. In fact, I think it’s safe to say that I look at this concept with every single client that I’ve ever worked with. It is so core to figuring out how to work with your ADHD brain, and it really lays the groundwork for figuring out the best supports for you.

To guide the discussion today, I’m pulling from a quote – as I often like to do – and this one comes from Albert Einstein.

The quote reads,

“Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.”

This one sentence not only captures the essence of this episode today, but also provides a guiding principle in learning how to work with your brain.

Before we dive into that, let’s first think about the quote itself.

What does this Einstein quote mean?

Essentially, this sentence emphasizes the importance of finding that balance in simplifying complex concepts or systems, without oversimplification.

Simplicity is powerful. It can play such an important role in helping us understand complex ideas and carry out complex projects. But at the same time, we can go too far in the name of simplification and end up losing essential details or accuracy.

We can lose essential structure and support.

So, when we aim to make things as simple as possible but no simpler, we essentially want to…

Distill these complex systems into their most fundamental form without sacrificing their integrity or functionality.

And while this makes sense for Einstein as a renowned physicist, it also provides powerful instruction for us in our daily lives.

Whether you’re planning your week, mapping out a daily routine, figuring out a workflow in your business, or mapping out meals for dinner, we can all benefit from the reminder to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

This quote also has me thinking a little bit about the fairy tale Goldilocks and the three bears.

The message in both of these focuses on finding the optimal balance for the given situation.

• In Goldilocks and the three bears, Goldilocks encounters 3 bowls of porridge, three chairs, three beds, with different extremes of temperature, size, and comfort. And throughout the story, Goldilocks seeks that perfect balance that is “just right” for her.

• With Einstein’s quote, we have that similar search for the “just right” level of simplicity or complexity that’s suitable for a given context.

So, Goldilocks’s quest for the “just right” state aligns with Einstein’s notion of finding the optimal level of simplicity.

The three bears’ belongings are these different levels of complexity, and Goldilocks explores them until she finds the one that fits her needs perfectly. She tries out different options until she finds the best balance for her.

So again, we have the reinforced message of tailoring things to your specific needs and preferences.

Whether you are simplifying scientific concepts or determining the ideal temperature for your oatmeal, the underlying theme is to seek out what works best for you.

It is to find the level of support that satisfies the requirements without compromising the essence or the functionality of whatever subject it is we’re talking about – whether it’s the size of a chair, a scientific theory, or how complex your morning routine is.

Now, after working with hundreds of ADHD brains, here’s what I’ve found to be true.

We all do best with some kind of support or structure

I like to think of it as bookends. We all need something to help hold us up.

Our brain needs something to lean on as we move throughout our day.

What’s important to remember about this, however, is that we all thrive with different levels of support and structure. In other words, whether I suggest using a high, medium, or low level of structure will vary from person to person.

In fact, it might vary for you as an individual depending on the topic that we’re discussing, your season of life, the type of work you do, etc.

There is no one-size-fits-all schedule or routine

Not everybody likes to sleep in a firm bed and eat piping hot porridge and sit in really big chairs.

Not everybody likes or does well using incredibly strict schedules neatly time blocked and color-coded to the half hour. Some people thrive with more flexibility.

Unfortunately, our black-and-white thinking – our all-or-nothing / perfectionist thinking that our ADHD brains love so much – tends to trick us into believing we need to do it in just one way.

We start believing that there’s a “right way” to approach your schedule, a “best way” to establish your routines, a “right workflow” to follow.

In other words, anywhere we think about establishing a schedule or routine, the brain often thinks there’s a “right way” to do it, and if we just keep buying new planners or reading up on morning routines, we’ll finally find it. But that’s just not the case. There is no one-size-fits-all approach.

There’s only the right way for you. There’s a “just right” for you.

What I want to suggest today is that to find your “just right,” we need to make it as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Why Do We Want To Find A Just Right Schedule For YOU?

Some of you might be pushing back against this idea a little bit. If that’s the case, don’t worry. You are in good company. We have been conditioned to believe that there is a one right way. Heck, that’s what we’re taught in schools.

We need to get the one right answer period to get the a comma we have to do it “write” and I’m not going to argue against some of these situations. There are times when there is a one right answer.

When pure water goes below 32 degrees Fahrenheit, it will freeze. Fact.

However, when it comes to a planning approach or a morning routine or a workflow or a meal plan, it’s much less factual. There’s a whole lot of flexibility here. And we want to find what’s right for you.

If we have zero structure whatsoever, we have nothing for the brain to lean on.

Imagine having a bunch of paperbacks, some magazines, and some children’s picture books that you wanted to stand up so you could read the spines. If you don’t have a bookshelf or book ends or some way of supporting them, they are going to topple over.

We need some level of support.

If you think about your paperbacks and your magazines, and your children’s books as different tasks throughout the day, and you didn’t have any structure – you didn’t have any bookends or shelves for support – it would be like having all those tasks and to-dos and projects held in your mind with no plan of when anything is due, how long anything will take, or how much you want to get done that day.

When we don’t have any structure whatsoever, we are leaving so much work for our executive functions to do in the moment.

If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a minute, you know that as ADHD brains and people with ADHD tendencies, our executive functions are underdeveloped. In turn, we overtax them simply by tending to these different adulting tasks throughout the day.

It is literally more challenging for our brains to plan things out, manage our time, break down projects, and sequence them in the proper order.

When we have no structure – when we’ve made things too simple – it actually becomes much more challenging for our brain to do the thing.

Many of us feel untethered. We feel like we’re lacking direction. When we lack the structure our brain needs to thrive, it’s easy to slip into that overwhelm state that we talked about in last week’s free training Overwhelm to Action.

It’s easy to slip into thoughts like, “there’s so much to do, and I have no idea where to start. I have no idea how I’ll get it all done. There’s just too much.” We’re unable to identify the things that actually matter and focus on them. Instead, we get stuck in the spin cycle, and our productivity plummets.

Why do we feel this way?

So many of us think to ourselves, I’m a free spirit. I don’t like feeling tied down. I like to act on impulse and do whatever comes to me. And this may be true. And there’s ways that we can weave that into your level of support.

It may be that when we make things as simple as possible, but no simpler for you, there is less structure in the way. But we still need some.

Because if we have absolutely zero structure, it becomes especially challenging since we only do we have to get ourselves to do the thing, but we also have to fulfill all the steps required to get ourselves ready to start.

We tend to forget about all the steps that allow us to initiate the task.

For example, we must decide what we want to do first

We have to choose from the list of things running through our mind what we want to do.

Then we need to…

• Break down the steps
• Put them in order
• Ensure we have everything required to get started
• It’s only then that we can actually begin the task

That’s so much work on the front end that we tend to overlook, and when we don’t have any structure in place, the brain tends to get overwhelmed by all these unseen steps, and we end up doing nothing.

However, when we can find the right level of support for you, we can offload some of those decisions – we can offload some of those executive functions – so that it’s less work for your brain in the moment.

Adding in some structure – some complexity – can actually make it easier for the brain.

I know I sound like a broken record here, but I’m going to say it again because it’s SO IMPORTANT.

That level of complexity is going to differ for each person. It can differ depending on the person, depending on…

• The season of life
• If you have a menstrual cycle, where you are within that cycle
• The type of activity you’re doing
• Your level of interest in the project – as I mentioned in episode 142, boredom is ADHD kryptonite, so the level of support required may differ in those situations.

And that’s okay – we just want to be aware of it so we can create the proper support for it – and make it as simple as possible, but no simpler.

As Adults with ADHD, We Can Also Overcomplicate Things

Now on the other side of the coin, we can also run the risk of over complicating things.

And I know many people in our community tend toward this side of things. Or we tend to bounce back and forth from one extreme to the other-plan everything down to the minute, we don’t follow it exactly, so we swing to no plan whatsoever.

Black and white, all or nothing, do it perfectly or don’t do it at all.

If you hear yourself in this description, listen up. Again, having structure and complexity to your systems can be useful to a point.

But as Einstein reminds us, make it as simple as possible just no simpler.

Many of us create our perfectionist plans where everything is color-coded and categorized. Everything is neatly time-blocked down to the 15 or 30 minute increment.

In fact, some of us can find ourselves spending most of the day planning – we get stuck procrastiworking… or rather procrastiplanning… and never get around to doing the thing.

This is such an easy trap to fall into.

Just as having zero structure and zero direction creates too much demand on our executive functions, it can also be true that having every single step to your morning routine, from getting out of bed, to drinking a glass of water, to brushing your teeth, to putting in your contacts, or accounting for every 15-minute increment of your schedule throughout the entire day can also put too much demand on the brain.

That list of tasks can look far too long, and the brain might want to check out.

Though, please note that I said might here. It might make their brains want to check out. Because I also work with some incredible clients who have found that the level of support that feels best for them – their version of “as simple as possible but no simpler” is a very detailed morning routine because it keeps their brain on track without needing to make any decisions.

I have some clients who love having their schedules broken down into 15 and 30 minute increments because it helps keep them moving forward and keep their perfectionism in check.

They know that if they’ve spent more than 30 or 45 minutes on a certain task, it’s likely that the perfectionist brain – the ‘judge’ as we talked about in the four stages of creative perfectionism in episode 155 – has taken control and is keeping them from making progress.

With that being said, many of us think we “should” have such a detailed schedule because that’s what we see in the Pinterest feeds and the bullet journal spreads on Instagram.

But that’s just not the case. If it doesn’t feel supportive for your brain, if it feels like work, or you find yourself slipping into procrasti-planning rather than actually doing the work, it’s a sign that you could potentially exercise Einstein’s reminder to make it as simple as possible, but no simpler.

How can we remove some of the unnecessary steps?

How Do We Find A Schedule or Routine That’s Best for You?

Though you may not want to hear this, the way we do this is through a process of iteration.

We need to be willing to:

• Try different levels of support and different levels of structure in order to find what feels best for us.
• Experiment and let it be messy.

Again, I know that for this community, letting things be messy can feel challenging. But I promise you it’s worth it. When you let it be messy, when you let it be a disaster, that’s how you find your sweet spot.

It’s kind of like when you Declutter a space in your house or you organize the closet. You have to take everything out. It usually looks a lot worse halfway through. But you have to go through that process to get to the simple streamlined approach that you want.

So again, let it be messy. Let yourself get it “wrong” so you can learn from my doesn’t work and figure out what does.

What Matters Most To You?

In order to find your “just right”, it can be helpful to focus first on what matters most.

What is the point of….

The morning routine you’re establishing?

Creating a schedule?

Meal planning?

What’s the end goal here?

This may seem like an obvious question, but it’s really not. There are a lot of answers to each of these questions, and I encourage you to get clear on your one top answer. Because when you get clear on that top answer, everything else falls into place much more easily.

For example, when thinking about a morning routine…

• Is your morning routine meant to help you begin the day slowly feeling grounded and relaxed?
• Or is your morning routine intended to help energize you and gear you up for the day ahead?
• Maybe your morning routine is intended to streamline the rest of your day so that things unfold with less friction.

Each one of these objectives will drive different priorities in the routine.

If you want a slow, grounded, calming morning, we can set aside that “should” of attending a 5:00 AM HITT class because you heard someone on Instagram say that people who work out at 5:00 AM are more productive.

A HITT class does not align with the main objective of your morning routine. You have permission to leave it out.

If your goal is to feel energized and ready for the day, please stop telling yourself that you should make time for a 30 minute grounding meditation followed by a reflective journaling session. No! That’s not what matters to you in this season and that’s okay.

Instead, maybe what you prioritize  is a workout or listening to an encouraging podcast or dancing around to your favorite playlist.

If you want to use your morning routine to help remove friction throughout the day, then maybe focus on doing a little meal prep like cutting up vegetables for the stir fry at dinner while your kids eat breakfast, checking your family calendar, and having a quick conversation with your partner about who is picking up the kids from gymnastics at 5:00, and getting your dog walked before you sit down for your first conference call at 9:30.

Again, all morning routines that I just mentioned can be incredibly impactful and effective. But they can also all be unnecessarily complex and inefficient.

We need to know what matters most to you so that you’re building a routine that meets your needs, not someone else’s.

Access Your Individual Needs

It can also be helpful to check in with yourself and assess your individual needs. Make note of when you have felt especially supported in the past in work contexts, relationship contexts, and perhaps in school situations.

Remember, some of us thrive in highly structured environments. We want the syllabus with the due dates and the rubric so that we can follow along and not have to make unnecessary decisions.

Others of us prefer a much more relaxed approach. Some of us want the professor who tells us at the beginning of this semester about a research paper we need to do. They let us know it is due on the last day of class, and they don’t mention it again.

While others of us want to know about the research paper, and would like a couple guidelines and reminders throughout the semester.

There is no right or wrong. There’s just what’s right for you. We want to make your approach as simple as possible, but no simpler.

7 Questions To Ask Yourself, When Creating The Perfect Schedule

To get you started on discovering your optimal level of structure and support when it comes to creating a schedule, here are a few questions you can ask yourself.

1. How do I typically respond to structure and routines?

Do I thrive in highly structured environments that provide clear guidelines and schedules, or do I prefer a more flexible and relaxed approach?

2. What type of support helps me stay focused?

Do I work better with frequent check-ins, feedback, and accountability, do I like the support of a body double? do I prefer more autonomy and independence?

3. What kind of structure and organization methods have worked well for me in the past?

Do I prefer visual aids, such as calendars or to-do lists, or do I find digital tools more effective?

4. How do I handle transitions and changes in routine?

Do I adapt easily, or do I require additional support and structure during times of transition?

5. What external factors or environments tend to enhance or hinder my productivity?

Am I more productive in quiet, isolated settings, or do I thrive in collaborative and social environments?

6. How do I manage my energy levels throughout the day?

Do I need breaks and downtime to recharge, or do I prefer to maintain a consistent pace?

7. How do I respond to deadlines and time pressure?

Do I find them motivating or do I find myself feeling stressed or overwhelmed when I think about them? How can I structure my tasks and timelines to manage this effectively?

By asking yourself these questions and reflecting on what you find, you’ll have a powerful start in identifying what structure and support will feel best for you as you lean into making things as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Next Steps: Join Us In We’re Busy Being Awesome

If you are interested in taking this concept much further and are interested in learning how to find your level of structure and support in all areas of your life, I would love to invite you to join us in We’re Busy Being Awesome.

This is my small group coaching program, where we meet weekly for four months in a small intimate group of 10 to 15 people. Throughout this program, you learn all my best approaches to working with YOUR brain so you can focus on what matters most to get things done.

The strategies you’ll learn are designed by an ADHD brain – yours truly – for an ADHD brain – that would be you.

Throughout these four months, we go through this process of iteration together.

• We try out different approaches.
• We see what works and what doesn’t.
• We celebrate and learn from what goes well, and
• we adjust and tweak what doesn’t.

We do this as you learn how to prioritize what’s most important to you and make a plan that reflects that.

It’s no longer this desperate search for the perfect planner or organizational system. You’re no longer convinced you need the perfect strategy to “fix” yourself. You’re not broken. There’s nothing to fix. You are exactly right as you are.

You just haven’t learned the tools that your brain needs to thrive. We’re Busy Being Awesome is my proven system designed for your brain so that you can learn how to meet yourself where you’re at and support yourself to do the things you want to do.

If you’re listening to this episode in real time, enrollment for the June cohort is officially open.

If you are reading this outside of real time, no problem – just click the button below to learn more about this group, how to sign up, and step into this life you know is waiting for you. Let’s do this.

Alright, my friends, that’s going to do it for us this week

If you know someone who would benefit from learning how to make things as simple as possible, but no simpler, would you be a rockstar and share this episode with them? You could send it in a text or share it on your IG stories. This is such an impactful way to help someone out.

If you’re enjoying the podcast or finding it helpful in working with your ADHD brain, it would be incredible if you’d consider leaving a review.

See details below. It only takes a minute, and it’s one more powerful way of getting these strategies to even more people. And I really appreciate it.

Until next time, keep being awesome. I’ll talk with you soon.