I’m excited to bring you my conversation with Nikki Kinzer and Pete Wright, hosts of "Taking Control: The ADHD Podcast."
If you haven’t checked out their podcast before, Nikki and Pete have been a mainstay in ADHD podcast realm with over six hundred episodes across twenty-nine seasons - if there’s an ADHD topic you’re interested in, they’ve probably covered it. And Nikki and Pete recently released their new book, Unapologetically ADHD, A Step-by-Step Framework For Everyday Planning On Your Terms.
In our conversation, we explore how their personal experiences and professional expertise in managing ADHD shine through in their work, providing both structure and understanding. Whether it’s tackling procrastination, enhancing organizational skills, or simply learning to partner with your ADHD, this episode is packed with practical advice and real-life strategies.
Unapologetically ADHD: A Step-by-Step Framework For Everyday Planning On Your Terms available on Amazon now!
William Curb: Pete Wright and Nikki Kinzer here from Taking Control, the ADHD podcast.
Nikki Kinzer: Thank you for having us.
Pete Wright: Yeah, we're really glad to be here.
William Curb: And we're also going to be talking about their new book, Unapologetically ADHD.
Pete Wright: We've spent almost a year working on this, and it is a step-by-step framework for everyday planning on your terms.
William Curb: Awesome. Yeah. So, and that was actually one of my first things. I was wondering how long you guys have been working on the book. So, been about a year now.
Nikki Kinzer: Almost exactly a year from this moment in time. So, it's been a year in progress because we started writing, I would say, more like in October. Pete, you didn't really start writing until December.
Pete Wright: Right. I participate in NaNoWriMo every year, National Novel Writing Month in November. And so, it was part of the deal. I couldn't turn my attention to this until December 1st. But from there on, it was a marathon to get it done.
Nikki Kinzer: Because, I mean, a year ago, I had no idea that we would even be having this conversation. So, it's pretty surreal that we're here and talking about it. It's in our hands and pretty exciting.
William Curb: But I imagine it did help that you have the two of you working together on it and that having that like built-in accountability there. Because I know if I was just like, I'm going to do this, I'd need to build in those systems. But you kind of have a natural system built in here.
Nikki Kinzer: We do. We work well together. And one of the things that we really wanted for the book is it to look like our podcast. And so, it came pretty easy to kind of figure out, OK, what part am I going to have, which is more of the ADHD coach. This is the how-to kind of method, the framework.
And then Pete being able to put in what we call his essays with his own point of view from having ADHD, his experiences with these concepts. And so, it mirrors our podcast, which was really important to us because that's our personality. We wanted our personality in the book. And his, to be honest, William, he's a lot better writer than I am. He's a lot more creative and his stories are good. And so it puts some interest in the book.
William Curb: I definitely got felt both of your personalities in the book. I'd gotten the advanced copy and I just put it in something that would automatically read it for me. So it kind of had like a little bit of a robot voice. It worked out. I could still like hear both of your personalities in the book, even with not having your voice in the book.
Nikki Kinzer: Oh, that's so good to hear.
Pete Wright: I love it. Even the robot knows who we are.
William Curb: And yeah, you definitely have, like with Pete's section talking to Jordan, our protagonist of the book, as it were.
Nikki Kinzer: Yes.
William Curb: I was like listening. I'm like, did I remember the name right? Did he change the name? That would be really amusing if you just switched names throughout the entire book. It's a different person each time.
Pete Wright: I'm just going to tell you, when the first draft of the book, our protagonist, Jordan, was not Jordan. It was something else. And we wrote the whole book and then our editor came back and said, you know, we need to have someone in here who is not gendered. If we really want like the goal of this character is so that when I'm talking to the character, I'm talking to you, reader.
So you have to be able to see yourself. And so we went with Jordan as a name that was not explicitly gendered. And that was really important. And it was such a good call. I was lazy in my initial draft. But that was my greatest fear was that we missed one somewhere.
Nikki Kinzer: Oh, right.
Pete Wright: Yeah, we did a thorough find and replace. So I'm pretty sure we caught it. Enough eyes were on it that I'm pretty sure we got it.
William Curb: Yeah. And there was just some like great metaphors and ideas in the book that just really clicked with me. You were talking about FOMO in this one part, but you're like, and then there's this other thing, the "FOBO", the fear of better options. And I was just like, I have had buy socks on my to-do list for two months because I've been looking for the best socks. This is exactly what's going on here.
Pete Wright: Right. Yeah. For sure. Yeah, there are no best socks, it turns out.
William Curb: It's one of those things I've always found is like, there aren't any right options, but there are certainly wrong options. Right. And it's like, OK, I just need to get over that first turtle and then I can pull the trigger and do what I need to for that research portion.
Nikki Kinzer: Because it's so easy to get sucked into, for sure.
Pete Wright: It really is. And it's the hardest thing. I mean, in terms of the ADHD note for me, it's just the act is not finding the best options. We have to stop trying to find the best options. And our only focus is eliminating, as you say, the worst options. Because once we eliminate the worst options, we can't lose, really.
We can't lose because they're all good options as long as we eliminate the worst options. And wrestling that sort of act of critical thinking, that discernment is the ADHD task. That's the muscle memory you have to develop with a practice because context is everything. You might figure out the sock problem and the next day you have to buy shirts.
William Curb: Yeah, also this week I bought new headphones and I did that in 30 minutes. I was like, these are the ones I want. There we go. Done. I was like, why are socks so much harder than headphones?
Nikki Kinzer: Right? Yeah.
Pete Wright: Man, weird opinions held strongly. That's true.
William Curb: There was so much in the book that I was just like, oh, this is perfect for talking to ADHD and both from your different perspectives, because there's definitely this aspect of people with ADHD being like, I only want to hear from other people with ADHD. But we also need to have that structure to like build off of that really helps be like, OK, here's how these ideas work. And here is how we can actually apply those within our ADHD.
Nikki Kinzer: And that's really the key, right? Is to embrace the ADHD partner with it and not pretend like it doesn't exist. And that's what I've seen so many times with clients and people that I've worked with is that they want to ignore it or not even intentionally. It's just there's all these shoulds in the world and these high expectations. And when you're not accounting for your ADHD, when you're planning your day, it's going to be really unrealistic. And then that shame starts to just kick in day after day. And that's what we're hoping to start to really break and have a different mindset around planning.
Pete Wright: And it's a funny shame, right? Because sometimes the shame is the shame that I'm living with ADHD and I'm incapable of dealing with the task in front of me. And sometimes the shame is I can't mask hard enough to truly believe that I don't have ADHD right now in this context. I am pretending and I can't fool myself. And sometimes we can.
Sometimes, depending on your flavor of ADHD, you can pretend you don't have ADHD for a little while. And then it makes you question the world. And suddenly you're faced with the things that are usually challenging to you. And you realize that your mask is not good enough. It's not strong enough. It's not thick enough, whatever it is.
So so much of our kind of message is like what happens when we stop pretending in any context that we don't have it? What happens if we, we don't have to love it or hate it or whatever? It doesn't have to be a superpower or a boat anchor. It just is. Now what do we do next?
William Curb: One of the notes I have here is just I love this focus on that instead of trying to fix yourself into this mold of how you want to work with your ADHD, just being like, OK, I have ADHD. How am I going to work with it in this context? How am I going to not change what I'm doing? Just accommodate what I'm doing.
Nikki Kinzer: And I think also not to assume that if there's another way is the right way and what you're doing is the wrong way. I have just a quick little side note story, something that happened with my daughter. So she has ADHD and she part of her age, her hyper hyperactivity is that she talks fast and she talks loud. And there was a moment in the kitchen, I was probably cooking something and she's talking to me. And I remember I looked at her and I said, can you just quiet it down just a little bit? And she looked at me and she's like, well, can you speak louder?
And I'm like, point taken, like, I get that. Thank you. You know, I get that. Like my way wasn't necessarily the right way. And her way asking me to talk louder was in her right to do so. Right. So I think it's also kind of not assuming that just because somebody else has a different way of doing something, that they're the right way. Like we can advocate for ourselves. We can say, no, this is how we like to work. We need extra time for this or we really don't know how long something's going to take until we're in the project.
So, you know, let me have some time to get into the project and then I'll let you know, you know, like it's sort of changing the expectations of what others are expecting from you by letting them know without even labeling ADHD. But this is just how I like to work. This is how I do things.
William Curb: Absolutely. Because I mean, that's one of the biggest lessons I've always been keep coming back to is like, I can't work against my brain. That just isn't fundamentally something that's going to be effective.
Nikki Kinzer: Right. And nor should you have to.
William Curb: And yet it is something that is such a hard lesson to like internalize as well because we have all these like if I go, I go on to like re-productivity blogs, I'm like, oh, that person saying this is how this works. I should be able to do that. And maybe even I've been able to do that once or twice, but I don't know why I can't do it now.
Pete Wright: Oh, totally. This is the peril of intermittent reinforcement. It's the worst with ADHD because Monday, you're amazing. Monday, you can do anything. Monday, you can put your mind to planning and you have your hyper focusing on just the right stuff and you know when to turn it off and context switching is great. And Tuesday is a disaster. You don't know how to get out of bed, right? Let alone see what's next.
And that intermittent reinforcement causes you to believe you're capable of incredible things and be just devastated when reality creeps in and you don't have a system that's resilient to the kinds of feelings that have ADHD. And to your point, traditional productivity systems are created by people who don't necessarily live with ADHD in one shape or form or another and don't acknowledge it. So we spend our lives as productivity nerds searching for systems and mining through systems that were not created for us and are making us pretend again, that we don't have ADHD.
So for me, that looks like buying year's worth of Franklin planning systems before Cove even bought them and having them on my binder and having them meticulously labeled, but still forgetting appointments, right? Like still being on the edge of constantly on the edge of whatever was coming next, because my focus was on setting up the systems because I love systems, not using the systems. There was no gateway through my ADHD to do that.
William Curb: I know exactly what you mean to about like setting up the system is the best part.
Pete Wright: It's the dopest. Yes.
William Curb: I remember one job where I spent days and days building this really complicated spreadsheet system to like track these things we're doing. And I was like, the person likes into the like, this is like the best thing I've ever seen and I never used it.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah. Yeah.
William Curb: Like up to the end of the season and I was like, huh, that'd been really useful to actually use. Shoot.
Pete Wright: Think of what we could have done.
Nikki Kinzer: Next time.
William Curb: And I think this is also like a great point to pivot into. One of the big themes of the book is how to set up your own systems that work with your ADHD. I think one of the chapters I really loved listening to was one on the system fragility and like how to be like, hey, your systems are going to have days when they fail, but you're at ways to not have that be the end of the system.
Pete Wright: Yeah. Well, I mean, my entire consideration on system fragility is I have to look at something that's not related to how I work every day in order to really understand where systems break down. And so I wrote this whole essay on industrial supply chains.
Nikki Kinzer: Because why not?
Pete Wright: Right. Like that makes sense. Like why not? I wanted to try to it's about a laptop and it comes from China and what are all the systems that have to work seamlessly together in order to make it to my doorstep? You know, once we understand writ large, what system fragility means and how professionals risk analysts look at system fragility, it actually makes it a little bit easier for me to look at my own simple systems on my computer and off and look at how, you know, my schedule, my contact list, my calendar, my to-do list, all of my systems that fall together in this work box actually do work together. And when they break, I have a better understanding of how to come back into the system and rebuild them quickly and easily.
So I don't feel like I'm starting over anymore. That's what we mean by resilience in our systems. And that's the going through the interrogation process of the systems, of the tools that I'm using and how I use them is one kind of fun, right? It's easy for someone with my flavor of ADHD, like we were talking about, like setting up systems is great. But once I documented, I have a checklist on my wall here that I'm, I can see the tools that I use and I can look at, okay, my schedule is a mess today.
I know what part of my system I need to interrogate to get things back on track and make sure I'm delivering to the people at the time that I've agreed. For me, that metaphor of large scale industrial supply chain helps me understand my role in the world a little bit better. So I hope that essay resonates.
Nikki Kinzer: I think the message that both of us were really trying to let readers understand is that just because you've been inconsistent or haven't seen something for a while, it doesn't mean automatically that it's broken. So to pause for a moment before going and grabbing that next planner or that new system that you just heard about on a podcast that somebody's using, right?
Because sometimes that will take more work and more time than it would for you to actually go in and update what you currently have. But you have to get past that fear of what you're going to find out. You have to like work through the shame of I haven't looked at it for a while, not blame yourself for it breaking, you know, and really kind of get past some of those emotional pieces. But yet at the same time, if you go back into it and you're like, no, I really just don't like this anymore, then it's OK. Go get a new one.
Like that's great. One of the things that we talk about in the book is we, we have like four or five different reasons why task managers fail. And so I think that's also very eye opening is to be able to see that. Oh, if I'm in between two task managers and I'm in between for too long, it's probably going to break because there's confusion and nothing is really being like used all in, right? And so that's something to be aware of. And so there's just. things there that we want people to think about and not just assume first that something's broken. There might be another underlying reason that they can actually challenge and get back going.
William Curb: The one I see the most for myself is like losing trust in my system because I haven't been using it and then that reinforcing not using it and being like, oh, I need to do something else. Yes. Because like, oh, I can't look at my to-do list if it doesn't have the actual to-dos I need to do.
Pete Wright: What do we say? We're like, oh, well, TicTic didn't work for me or To-do-list didn't work for me. They failed. Well, the reasons that systems fail or apps fail for us invariably have nothing to do with the apps, right? The apps are doing what they promise to do. It's the human part, the human interaction where there's a mismatch. And that's not to say every tool should work for you.
There's no should in that sentence. Like there are tastes and personalities, but the app itself, the tool, the system, the checklist, it's doing what it promised to do generally. It's us. It's our sort of commitment to making it a practice and understanding what to do when that practice breaks because it will.
Nikki Kinzer: Right. It will. And that's part of the expectation is that it's not going to be a consistent, perfect system. That's not what we're looking for. We're looking for something that's complete and that is resilient when these things happen. But going back to fear of better options, that's the other thing is that I will tell you almost every single time I do a presentation on either time blocking or something to do with planning.
There's always the question being asked, what is the best one for ADHD? And there isn't any, and that is such a hard thing to say back. It's like, there is not a perfect system. There is not a better option because I have seen things work that are very complex systems that are in these systems like Notion and OneNote.
Like they're just really complex to having a client literally have a note card that had the three things that they were working on today in their back pocket and it worked. So it really depends on what works for you. And I think practicing and giving it enough time and chance to see if it works, but really adjusting it and customizing it for you. And only you can really answer that question by investing some time and some focus on what it is that you really need, what is the purpose of this tool? How is it going to help me?
How does it work with my ADHD? And I think most important is how do they work and connect with the other tools? Because if we're only looking at the calendar and the task manager as two individual tools, you don't have a complete system. We have to really look at all of these things working together. What's your workflow? So I'll tell people, hey, if you need a sticky note, like I did it today, I was in a meeting and I wrote a little task, it says add team member to FreshBooks.
This is what came out of my meeting today. It didn't go straight into my task manager. It's on a sticky note. This is one of my planning tools is a sticky note. This is an inbox for me, right? So now when I have a moment, I will put this into my task manager and I'll take care of it when it's time to take care of it. But then once it's in the task manager, I can throw away the sticky note. Understanding that flow of how you work is so important.
William Curb: It's funny with those sticky notes, like, yeah, if you don't get rid of it, then like three months later, you're like, did I do this?
Nikki Kinzer: Exactly.
William Curb: Is this still relevant?
Nikki Kinzer: Right.
William Curb: I remember there was also a very specific thing and they're like being more specific with what you say on your notes and things and tasks that you put in your to think because you do need to have context and the action to do something within your task because it's very hard to, you know, a couple weeks later look at something like, what did I mean by this task and how am I going to get started on it?
Nikki Kinzer: Yes. Pete, you can tell me what you think, but I think that's like a work in progress. Like, I always am seeing something that what did I mean by that and having to rephrase it and think about like, what is the verb? What is the verb that is asking me? What do I need to do here? Or do I need to break this down because it's really three things, not just one. But yeah, it's always a constant review and constant adjustment to change because, you know, when you're getting it out of your head, it may not make sense. But then when you go back and look at it, like, what do I need to do to make it make sense?
Pete Wright: Yeah. And the last piece, and this is just something that I've been playing with very recently, I guess in the last year or so, but most conveniently very recently, is we talk often about breaking complex tasks down, right? If the task that we're writing is really complicated, then break it down into its smallest atomic points. And one of those we got from our friend, Korosh Dini, Dr. Dini, who says, you know, you just visit the task, that's his thing, like just visit it.
That might just mean bring the resources out that you need for it and touch them and look at them and maybe read them and then put them away again because it keeps it in your head. For me, I've just been playing with, you know, our sort of shared task management tool of choices to do this. And there's a function in there over the last year or so, where you can click on the three dots next to a task. And there's an AI option that says break tasks down. And it adds six or eight new tasks that it thinks would fit into the task that I can't quite wrap my head around.
Nikki Kinzer: I had no idea it did that. Yeah. Wow. Mind blowing.
Pete Wright: I know. When I'm in complete vapor lock on a task, because I just don't know the way in, sometimes the tasks that it comes up with are nonsense. And I'm not going to do them the way it suggests, but it helps me unlock what I do need to do next, because I read something immediately and say, Oh, I'm not going to do that.
But, and the but is the lesson. If I can get to a but essentially what we're doing is the same thing we did with the socks, right? We got rid of the worst options so that we could see that we have a number of different ways into this particular task. And that's the ADHD way of sort of creatively finding your way around the direct path, because we don't take the direct path. We got to find our way in through the side door. And this tool in using AI to break down tasks has been mind blown. We didn't write about that in the book because it didn't really exist when we were writing about the book.
Nikki Kinzer: I'm just now knowing you can do this on to do it. So that's incredible. Yeah, it's great. It's incredible.
William Curb: I've done something similar with my kids and being like using that how do you clean your room so that I can break that deck?
Nikki Kinzer: Good idea.
William Curb: And then printing that out and then giving that to them. And they're like, Oh, the first few times were great. And then they're like, I still don't want to clean my room.
Nikki Kinzer: But yeah, but at least they know how to do it now. And they have the steps. So that's good.
William Curb: Yeah, I mean, I love being able to kind of like offload that executive function of figuring out how to break down that task, because it's one of those things that feels like it should be easy, but it's not. It's where we're like mistaking the idea simple for easy. And when we can really look at it, okay, this takes more effort than I'm giving you credit for, and then be like, okay, give it the thing. But then being able to just like, Oh, I don't even have to do this anymore. I can just ask and then I can get maybe not the best answers, but at least guidance and where because I always find that structure of not starting off at nothing so helpful.
Pete Wright: So helpful. You just said something that I just want to anchor on a little bit because it's an implicit message in what we're trying to do. I think with the podcast and the book, that, you know, when I run into something that I feel deeply should be easy, that's not like a cognitive response. That's an emotional response. And it's a judgmental response because I'm judging myself against what other people the degree of ease other people might have or not have with a particular task. But what happens to my ADHD brain, when I stop saying this should be easy and just say, Hmm, this is hard, and then stop talking in my head, right? What happens when my practice is this is hard.
What I do naturally is introduce clarity that was not present before. When I say this should be easy, I'm in a fog because my brain is focusing on all the ways other people do a thing. It's a complete mess. I can't, I can't rationalize should be easy when I'm approaching a task, but I can rationalize this is hard because then I'm in a provocative sort of curious, maybe slightly fearful state, maybe an anxious state, but I'm not in a confused state, which makes it 'easier' to find the way in. If I just stop talking about what it should be to everybody else, or what I think it should be to me because of everybody else's experience, I find an easier route into a hard thing.
William Curb: And this idea I always have where I'm like, I'll step back and like, why is this so hard for me? And then I go, Oh, it's my ADHD. And if I go from that, oh, this is a solvable problem then. Yes. If this is hard for me because of my ADHD, I know ADHD solutions and I can work from that.
Pete Wright: Because this is reality right now. That's just that's an act of accepting reality right now. So let's move forward using our ADHD tools.
Nikki Kinzer: And that really, I mean, that is a great example, William, of being unapologetically ADHD. Like, I get it. This is what's happening, but I can separate that. And I know, like you said, I have solutions here. I can do something about this. And yeah, that's great.
William Curb: The ADHD acceptance piece is so important, I find because before I'm like, because we always have some sort of label for ourselves. And a lot of labels are really not useful for solutions. But I'm like, why can't I do this? Well, it's because I'm lazy. The solution for not being lazy is to just do the thing. But that's a bad solution. Like being like, just do that. I'm like, well, that's still hard.
And I'm not going to do it. It's like, Oh, but I'm having executive dysfunction and can't get myself to want to clean the dishes. Like, well, maybe I need some music or I need to do something there. And that becomes the solution rather than just this aim and purpose. I'm lazy or something that doesn't have good solutions.
Pete Wright: Right. Right.
William Curb: I had a couple more notes here that I saw that I really loved the one I had to like, stop the book and make sure I made the note for was writing it down is not a commitment to do it. Or a task list. And I was like, this is something I know and something I've said before, but you guys said it like three times in the book in a row. And I'm like, there's a reason for that.
Pete Wright: How important is that, right? The only commitment you're making to write it down is just to think about it later. You might not do it at all. But like you said, you just don't want to forget the opportunity to think about it for later.
William Curb: My current tool for organizing is I just have the little notebook that I keep that has a bunch of sections and have my to-do list in the beginning. And there's something like in the beginning, I just have breakfast veggies, which is something I want to think about more.
Pete Wright: But yeah, just visit it, visit breakfast veggies.
Nikki Kinzer: Kind of see it in your head, you know, like mine's like, okay.
William Curb: But yeah, it's just something like, oh yeah, just use your tools and let it be okay to not let the tools like control you. You're in charge of the tool.
Nikki Kinzer: They're not judging you.
Pete Wright: We do talk often about, you know, especially in context of dealing with people who are charged with helping us with accommodations in college at work, whatever, right? HR. And we always use the sort of language around like you're your best advocate, right? You're the one who gets to own your advocacy for your ADHD. The same thing is true with your tools, right? You kind of have to advocate and assert yourself into the tools that you use. You have to make it your own thing. And that's a responsibility and an opportunity. And for some people, it's a huge turn off. You just want it to do all the work.
But I think with ADHD, we have to take ownership of the fact that the system is going to have to be supremely customized to how our brains work. And you might need a notebook and a pen that you enjoy writing with because of its tactile experience and paper that doesn't bleed just right. And the words you write might just be breakfast veggies. But that attaches to your brain in a way that it would never attach to mine.
And that's okay because you're the advocate in that situation. And I'm the advocate and to do this. And we have to own that like one thing isn't going to work for everybody back to Nikki's point. There is no best ADHD tool in spite of us being sold that constantly.
William Curb: One of the original concepts for this podcast when I was brainstorming ideas, I'm like, oh, I'm just going to talk about tools that work really well for ADHD. And I was just like, it doesn't matter though. But when I was like, I start writing about something and I'm like, well, the real thing that you need to pay attention to is how you use the tool. And then I'm like, I keep doing that. I can't make that the theme of the show. And I was like, well, then maybe I should do the thing that I keep writing about.
Nikki Kinzer: Yeah, right.
William Curb: All right. I was wondering if there were any ideas or anything that you wanted to leave the audience with.
Nikki Kinzer: You know, I think more than anything, we hope that this is a great resource for your listeners. It's that framework that we've been talking about. But more than anything, I hope it's something that you keep on your shelf and go back to later too. When you do notice that things are working as well as you want them to or you're noticing those roadblocks that we talk about are some of those things that kind of break the systems, that it's a resource for you. You know, it's not just a book you read once.
And it's a book that we hope you continue working out of to build that system and then be able to use it in the future when you need it. And we want you to be unapologetically you, you know, really embracing who you are as a person. And one of my final comments is that life is not just a to-do list. Let's make sure that we have joy in our life. Let's intentionally plan time with our friends and our family and the things that mean the most to us. Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you have dirty dishes in the sink. Do your kids know you love them? You know, are you spending time with your family? Like, that's the stuff that matters. And that's the message we hope to leave your listeners with.
Pete Wright: Couldn't have said it better.
William Curb: Super important thing to do because, yeah, it's so easy to leave that stuff off your calendar when that's precisely the stuff that needs to go on there first. Yes. Otherwise, we will fill it with stuff that we don't necessarily need to do.
Nikki Kinzer: So true.
William Curb: All right. Well, the book is now outright. And so people can imagine get that Amazon anywhere that books are sold.
Pete Wright: Absolutely.
William Curb: And if you guys want to hear more of, Pete and Nikki, go check out their podcast, Taking Control, the ADHD podcast, and listen to you guys for a while. So it's been a pleasure to have you on the show.
Pete Wright: Our pleasure as well.
Nikki Kinzer: Thank you so much for having us.
This Episode's Top Tips
Embrace your ADHD and plan your day around it to avoid unrealistic expectations and the ensuing shame.
When looking for a system, we need to recognize that no one-size-fits-all tool exists. Try to avoid the trap of looking for the best options; focus instead on eliminating the worst options to simplify decision-making.
When we recognize the importance of revisiting and adjusting our systems regularly rather than constantly switching to new tools, it’ll help us acknowledge that every tool or system will have days it fails. With that in mind, we can focus on embracing resilience so we can get back on track when things do go awry.