Time Management Skills for ADD/ADHD Adults: 6 Strategies to Success
For adults with ADD/ADHD, with distractions every way we turn, sensible time management does not come naturally. But it is a skill that we can learn. It is not easy, and it may mean unlearning a lot of old habits, but it can be done, and it can change your life.
Here are a few strategies I’ve learnt to help me manage my time productively, and I hope they help you too:
1. Focus on what is important
This is the most critical - before you can take even the first baby steps towards good time management, you must know what it is that is really important to you. There are things which are urgent and important, which should take first priority, and the things which are important, which should be a close second. Then there are things which are urgent but not important (maybe some meetings and phone calls), which you should try to cut down on, and then those things which are not urgent and not important, which are simply a waste of time. My guess is that a lot of us with ADD/ADHD spend a lot of time on this fourth category of not urgent and not important things, but things interesting for some reason, like that sitcom rerun on TV. This is the path to ruin.
Learn to focus on what is important. For me, once I worked things out, it was my son who at four was not talking, and who doctors suspected was autistic. As another mother of an autistic adult told me, the problem with an autistic child is that his needs are important, but never urgent. But your life depends on how you manage to do things which are vitally important but not at all urgent.
2. Keep things simple
This is essential if you want to focus on what is important. For me, I found that simple scheduling helped: I spent one part of the day cooking, and after that never had much work in the kitchen. Once this urgent and important work was over, I could spend my time on other really important things: my son or my freelance job. And when I was with my son also, I learnt to keep my goals simple - enjoyment for him and for me, and learning through what he enjoyed, rather than elaborate activities which he was not willing to do and which left us both feeling defeated.
3. Use a year planner
Try to get one with lots of space for each day, week, month and year, and use it the way it is supposed to be used - don’t let it be just another place to make a list of groceries or jot down random thoughts. Keep your planning for a time during the day when you are relaxed and have at least fifteen minutes free. Make your goals for the day and the week, month, and year, and look at your planner frequently through the day to remind yourself of what you need to be doing. Again, keep it simple, don’t overplan. Jot down the most important things you need to get done rather than a schedule for the whole day.
4. Delegate
Train the people who help you to do things the way you like them to be done, and then leave them to do it. Don’t fuss over small mistakes they make - and don’t pretend to yourself that you could do it so much better if you did it yourself. If you did it yourself, you would spend all your time doing it, and the really important things in your life would not get done. So get others to help you, and leave them to do the things you assign to them.
5. Keep things neat
A cluttered desk (or office, or house) shows a cluttered mind. Spend some time organizing once a day or at least once a week. Many of us adults with ADD/ADHD may average four hours a week just searching for our keys, and this is something we need to avoid. I found that after I had got the domestic help to clean up, the job of keeping things in their place took me only some ten minutes every night before I went to bed. But I could wake up with a clear mind to an orderly house - a joy!
6. Don’t aim for perfection
If you do, things will never get done. All my life I found myself scrambling to put things together at the last minute, not because I did not work on them earlier, but because whenever I did I could think of so many better ways to do what I had to do that I never did much, and when the deadline loomed I was forced to do whatever I could do. Keep shorter deadlines for yourself and tell others - this may help you stick to them.
In short - decide what you want, and how you can get it, and then go get it - keeping the process as simple as possible. This is the key to conquering ADD/ADHD.
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